Star Trek Fest - Star Trek III The Search for Spock (1984)

Is the numerical coding correct? Are only the even numbered Trek films good? Fuck no. Case in point. Leonard Nimoy takes the reigns as Kirk and Co. steal the Enterprise and set off to rescue the corpse of their friend.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Welcome back, midnight viewers to Star Trek Fast. I'm follow
alone with me as always, navigating the spaceways. Mister hbhbi
you do, it's the spaceways.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm doing good, follow blone, Thanks for having me again.
Let's get into it.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Oh man, we're here. We are number three. We're here
to prove whether or not the fucking numerical coding with
the Star Trek movies is true or not. Are the
even movies good? Are the odd numbers bad? We're gonna
find out because we're talking about Star Trek three, the
search for spot.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Now join the search to the final frontier of space adventure.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
These are the continuing voyages of the Starship Enterprise, her
ongoing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out
new life forms and new civilizations, to vocally go where
no man has gone before.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Admiral James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise
take off on their greatest mission, beyond anything they have
ever accomplished before.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Kurt, you do this, You'll never sit in the Captain's
chair again.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
For the one thing that really matters, to find their friends.
Why did you leave him on Genesis Stock trusted you
an obviously to the planet man created a savage world
that could destroy them all.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Environment Scott.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
The needs of the many ways the.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Shoe join the search. Since the overwhelming power of an
adventure that troubles anything that has drawn.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
Before, this entire crew seems on the edge of obsessive
behavior concerning mister Spock, Sir Security reports the door to
Spox quarters has been forced.

Speaker 6 (02:46):
In Star Trek three, The Search for Spock.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Star Trek three, The Search per Spock, directed by Leonard Namoy,
written by Harve Bennett, and based on Star Trek by
Gene Rodberry. This one stars William Shatner Deforced, Kelly James
doing George ta Kay, Walter Kinig, Michelle Nichols, Merritt Buntrick,
Robin Curtis, and Christopher Lloyd as Crewe.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, this is a lover hated situation. There's nobody. There's
no halfway measure on this. You either love him in
this or you can't stand him.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
There are detractors, Oh yeah, at the time. Certainly at
the time. Certainly are there detractors now though after Doc
Brown and decades of adoration.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Judge Doom certainly is probably.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
People don't know him as Reverend Jimmy Kotowski anymore. If
you say Christopher Lloyd, they think Doc Brown.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, I think that's fair, and I think it's a
credit to him that Doc Brown is nothing like Reverend Jim.
He has rained, which maybe wasn't immediately apparent to see
him as Reverend Jim all those years. But yeah, I
can't say whether he has detractors in modern day. But
even now I have to admit watching it as a

(04:13):
fan of Christopher Lloyd, it took me a minute or
two to settle back into those familiar rhythms. By the way,
it has to be noted that this is Leonard Nimoy's
directorial debut.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
That is true. He did direct an episode of t J.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Hooker with his old buddy, But yeah, this was a stipulation.
He obviously Spock was killed in Star Trek two. Nimoy
had all this leverage that he didn't have previously, and
that was his condition for coming back a spot and
he directed, and sure enough they did. Although I think
there was a lot of medaling, studio medaling in this

(04:47):
picture that maybe he got past and four when we
talk about that.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
But yeah, I'll say this, he unbeknownst to the people
at Paramount Michael Eisner at all, Nimoi during the filming
of Wrath of Khan began very much. He began to
really regret the fact that he was going to die.
He realized that this was fun and it was going
to be a good movie, and they had a chance
at not being Star Trek the motion picture, that this

(05:14):
might not be the final voyage of the Starship Enterprise.
They might be going on a whole lot more. If
they're going to be like this, He'd be a fool
not to be a board. So really he wanted to
be there. And then they came begging and he said,
I'll do it if I direct him, which is a
great move. And now I don't think I appreciated until

(05:35):
now rewatching the film how well directed the film actually is.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
He next to Nicholas Meyer, who I think is still
the gold standard for the original series Star Trek movies.
He's I mean, Nimoy's track record speaks for itself beyond
Star Trek. I mean, obviously he did Little, Three Men
and a Baby. He did a bunch of movies in
the eighties. He was an in demand and he's a

(06:01):
very good director and excuse me, and like you, I
didn't appreciate that until watching it more recently and going,
you know what this actually it wasn't as terrible as
I'm led to believe by the rule of three with
Star Trek movie.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
So okay. So basically Star Trek two. The day after
Star Trek two is the day after Star Trek two premieres.
Harve Bennet get's a call from Paramount saying give us
Star Trek three, so he begins immediately writing the script.
He does this one all on his own, although he
does it in conjunction with Leonard Nimoy because he already
knows Nimoy wants to direct it, so it's gonna be

(06:38):
him shaping the story. So it's as much Nimoy's screenplay
as it is Harve Bennett's, even though Bennett does the
type in and the look. The movie's called The Search
for Spock. There was no way they weren't ever going
to not deal with the fact that they have to
bring Spock back. They had not front loaded it, but
like backloaded it at the end of that movie with
the quick little remember McCoy, here's a pinch for you.

(07:03):
So the script was always going to have to deal
with that, and it was always going to have to
deal with the Genesis project. And I don't know, what
do you think of the story that they've come up
with here. Do you think that this is the story
we needed as a follow up to the triumph that
was Star Trek to the Wrath of Khan?

Speaker 2 (07:21):
No? I think for me the story is my least
favorite aspect of this movie because as we're going to
get into, not a lot happens, And to be honest,
there's not even a lot of searching for Spock. They
find Spock pretty quickly as the movie goes on, so
that's a bit of a misnomer. I just think the

(07:42):
sort of the after effects of Genesis and the repercussions
of it, that's fine. It just felt like very little
to hang a story on. It just feels like not
a lot happens story wise in this They probably could
have come up with something a little more interesting and
maybe a little more expand this just feels like a
very This almost feels like an actual TV an expanded

(08:07):
version of the TV show. Very like a lot spread
out over an hour and a half. It could have
been a half hour and out to an hour's worth
of material to be spread out.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
The plot is very amorphous, there's nothing really driving it.
It's all story, no plot. Basically, the Genesis planet is
off limits. Spock's body is there. We find out Spock's
consciousness that lives on in McCoy and that it needs
to go back into Spock's body. So they have to
get spos body back from Genesis, but the Federation doesn't

(08:38):
want them going, and the Klingons are on their way
to Genesis because they hear it's a weapon worth having.
That's the whole movie, and it's just a slow progression
to put those pieces into place and then getting Spock
back the end.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Just the fact that the Klingons are on the search
for Genesis being this ultimate weapon. We just saw that
in Star Trek two. That was part of Khan's plan
is to seize the Genesis device so he would have
all of this power and be this force to be
reckoned with. I just didn't feel like it felt like

(09:11):
a redo of a very similar plot line from part two.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, without the sort of half, without the backstory, like
the reason the con story, as you said, like it
does mirror this a lot, like the way the dynamics
play out between Kirk and Kruge. But Kirk and Khan
had fucking history and really deep history, and there are
there were genuine beefs there. I don't know what the

(09:36):
Klingon's motivation is here. He's just we don't know anything
about the Klons. We don't know his place within the
hierarchy of the Klingon Empire. So I don't know if
this is a rogue agent from the Klingon Empire. I
don't know if he's like they're like undercovered division. So
I don't know what he wants from Genesis to begin with,
other than it's a big destructive thing. And then Harve

(09:58):
Bennett can't think beyond what directly in front of him politically,
and he's let's make this about the Soviet Union versus America.
You mean, like every other piece of entertainment at the time,
have great idea.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, there just wasn't a lot of meat behind the story.
It just felt very thin to me. Having said that, though,
I did find myself really enjoying it, and that's almost
solely due to the cast members themselves and the interactions
and the direction. I thought it was for a first time.
I thought he did an excellent job.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Look, it is a feature film of a television episode.
Like you said, there's not a whole lot plot wise,
it's nothing to get excited about. But it is a
movie and it works as a film. It's a very
well made film, and an exciting one at that. And
I always liked this movie. I never agreed with the
odd numbers star treks are bad because I was like,

(10:51):
I don't know, man like that. There was a trilogy there,
the Genesis trilogy they call it now, which is Wrath
of Khan, Search for Spock, and Voyage Home. I thought
those three movies all work on their own charms. But
I do like the movie even better now having rewatched
it and knowing a little bit more about the behind
the scenes and the lore and everything. But just on

(11:13):
the surface level watching the movie, I think it really works.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, I totally agree. And I was surprised because again
I had seen it. I'd seen it a lot when
it was on cable, but mostly piecemeal. I can't say
that I aside from once maybe sitting down to watch
the whole movie, so in a sense, I was revisiting
it for the first time in a long time, and
the reputation will always precede it. This like you said

(11:38):
this idea that all the odd number star Trek movies
are terrible, that's not really the case here. Is it
as strong as some of the better offerings. No, it's
not gonna it compares unfavorably to Wrath of Khan or
I would say first contact if we're talking about the
next gen cast. But that doesn't mean this movie doesn't

(11:59):
have its own merits, and it tells and the story
is told in an interesting way, in a visually appealing way,
even if the story itself was let down for me.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, overall, it's I don't know, it's anyway, Let's get
into the fucking plot. Nolly, what's this movie about? HB
Wait before we get there. Yeah, okay, here's one thing
that I wish I had been not on the set for.
I wish I had been in pre production meetings for
anytime Leonard Nimoy suggested a television actor in a major role.

(12:34):
To watch the producer fumble around and try to tell
Leonard Nimoy that they don't want a TV actor in
their big budget movie, because I imagine it would be
like we don't want this fucking TV Oh hey Leonard, Yeah,
Leonard who railed against being typecast so much they wrote
a fucking book about it. The fact that there were

(12:55):
conversations where and if you listen to the commentary you
can hear leonardymoight gleefully recall list where they said Christopher
Lloyd is basically just this guy from a sitcom on TV,
and he was like, and they're like, okay, I will
definitely consider it. And then the same later where James
Sicking as the Captain of the Excelsior. He was on
Hill Street Blues. That was all anyone knew him from.

(13:17):
He was famous for that show, and that was the
same reaction, Do you really wanted stunt cast as TV
guy in our big movie? And he was like, yep,
I sure do.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah. There's a lot of interesting little bit parts that
are cast here. Obviously beyond Christopher Lloyd as the Klingon commander,
his second in command is played by John Laracat, which
still blows my mind, even almost more so than Christopher Lloyd,
because this is Dan Fielding from Nightcourt. This is not

(13:48):
someone you would expect to be playing a and I think,
actually I read somewhere that Nimoy dubbed him the thoughtful klingon.
He is a good description.

Speaker 1 (13:57):
Because he really is, absolutely is and you know it's funny.
So he's Christopher Lloyd's first first officer, and over on
the Excelsior, his first officer is Mikhail Ferrer, like also
a professional prick and the just.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Another in a line of RoboCop actors who were in
Star Trek movies, because we're going to see Peter Weller
was in it. Obviously, what's his name? Kurtwood Smith is
going to be in Star Trek six.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Right, he's the president of the Federation.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
He is. One interesting piece of trivia that I found
related to the casting of Krug is and I'm forgive
me if you've got this queue up bottom alone. But
apparently Neimoy's original choice for krug was Edward James Almost.
I never knew this. I just found this out, but
Harve Bennett preferred Christopher Lloyd in the role then to

(14:55):
make it more interesting. Beyond that, Almost was also later
offered role of Jean Luke Picard in the Next Generation,
but he turned it down. He wanted to focus on
stage and film. Can you imagine how different the next
generation would be. It would be Paul Stewart.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
You know what, They would have ended up sticking to
Rodenderry's initial dictum that Picard never leaves the ship. That's
what the first officer is for. And almost would have
stuck to that, and you would have known the bridge
was a serious place. It would not have been a
fun loving.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
Yeah, no, not at all. I just that it's fascinating
enough to consider Edward James almost as a Klingon commander.
He would have been really good in it. But just
the icing on the cake was the fact that he
could have been Picard in the next generation. That blew
my mind.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
He would not have worked as Picard, he would have
worked as Card. He would have worked in a lot
of villain roles.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Here he would have And I wish they had cast.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Him as a Romulan, actually not a Vulcan, because the
Romulans are really scary.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
This is not to say that he almost should only
be playing villainous roles, because obviously he played hi Ma
Escalante and that that Standing Deliver movie, and he was
Gaff and playe Runner, and he was great in all
of these things. And he was in Miami Vice for years.
Wasn't he one of the cops.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
In my Oh yeah, it was the captain.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Was he the captain?

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, I told you there's that in that like that.
He signed on to that with Michael Mann, and the
idea was that no matter what, he could just do
whatever he wanted.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
Oh yeah, yeah. He ordered somebody to come back again.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Don Johnson breezed into his office and in character, he said,
go back out and close that door and knock. And
Don Johnson in character had to go do it.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
He's a bad ask, no question, but he would not know.
That would not have been a good pick card.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
You can see that as a power move. But at
the same time, I think Captain Castillo would have done that.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Sure, he's he He is one of those method actors
who really likes to get into it and become the character.
And I respect that. All right, So we're going to
talk about what the plot of this movie is effectively,
so it takes it actually picks up exactly where Star
Trek two left off, where Spock is dead.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
We've got a little time, we got a little time left.
The ship has been repaired, people have gotten off the
ship and are on different missions now. So this is
a couple of months later.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Let's say that's true, but it's pretty close.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
So now, what can I just and let me speak
to this because I've heard a lot. I've read a
lot of reviews, and I've heard a lot of reviews
about this movie. And one of the gripes that people
have is that the tone from the last movies ending
to this movie's beginning is wildly off, because we get
a hopeful Kirk at the end, and here he's desponded.

(17:54):
And this is the first time we get a straight
voice over in any of the Star Trek movies actually
of him, his personal log as it were. And I
would say maybe anyone who is criticizing this should live
for a few months after somebody dies and see how
fucking jubilant and hopeful you are all the time. What

(18:14):
the fuck kind of a criticism is that?

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, no, warning does not take place in a straight line.
It's not like he's going to be hopeful and then
that's going to continue on it's peaks and valleys. I
don't think that's not I don't think that's unnatural at
all that he would seem hopeful at the end of
two but then in three he's back to being he's
been without his effectively his best friend and somebody who

(18:39):
was integral to the operation of this of the Enterprise,
So of course he's going to be bummed about it,
for lack of a better word, but yeah, he's they're
heading back to Earth for what they believe is going
to be a refit of the Enterprise. But the Enterprise
is still damaged.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
It's been repaired, plates welded over at the scorch marks
on the side closely, like they got to some space
doc and they're just like, I'll just patch it up
and fucking send it on its way.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
Yeah, even on the bridge there's like all these there's
still scorches all around the bridge from when KHN attacked
them in the second one. So they're heading back. They're
going back to Earth, but there's something odd happens on
the way where they get a report that there's someone
in Spock's quarters. Spock's quarters were sealed after he died,

(19:28):
and they don't know what's going on. So Kirk decides
to go down personally and figure out what's happening, and
he discovers he walks in there, it's a very dark.
He hears a voice. He hears Spock come out of
the shadows saying, Jim, why did you leave me? You
need to climb the steps to Mount Celia and help me.
And he goes and grabs this person in the shadows

(19:49):
and it's McCoy, and it seems like McCoy's not all there.
He's speaking effectively like Spock.

Speaker 1 (19:56):
Now, I got chills when I saw this in the theater.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I can say it, oh, because it's very effective, because they.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Have When you heard voice, I was just like, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
N moy's voice. Because this was Look. I don't know
that we ever thought that Spock would never come back,
but there's something about the finality of seeing him die
in part two and then to hear his voice croaking
out of the shadows begging for help. It's nimoy. It's
chill inducing. It's it really is effective. But we know,

(20:29):
having watched too and know the whole remember bit where and.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
How do you remember that? Because Harve Bennett, television producer
upgraded to feature films, decides how do we remind the
audience what happened to the last movie I know previously
on Star Trek and they give us a they give
us basically just a replay of the last scene between
Kirk and Spock and then the remember with Macay.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, so it's fresh in your mind now as a viewer. Okay,
I remember now he mind melded and that left the
door open for him to come back, but they don't
make much of it at this point. They want to
get back to Earth. Meanwhile, there is a Klingon ship
captained by this guy Krug, who is making a deal
with some kind of a mercenary to get data related

(21:14):
to the Genesis device.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Not some kind of a mercenary. He's dealing with his agent,
who is also his lover, who has been out trying
to find information about the She's on a mercenary ship.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's the ship itself is a mercenary ship, but she
is a Klingon also, Yeah, and his lover you're.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
All Chris is her name, Sir Waal Chris.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
So they get into this thing where he uncloaks. They
transmit the Genesis data, but the woman makes the mistake
of saying to Krug over the calm link, I've seen
the data. I think you'll find it very interesting. I
love this part. Krug says, Oh, you've seen it and
she says yeah, and he says, that's very unfortunate. Now

(21:56):
you know that it's curtains and she knows it too.
She knows that she's He has to tie up all
the loose ends. Krug Kill destroys the ship with his
lover on board. That's how much of a ruthless guy
this guy is. And he also has this like pet
that he keeps next to him that looks kind of

(22:18):
like the Ghostbusters. What are the creatures that run around
the dogs?

Speaker 6 (22:22):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, if you starved one of those and it had
mangy fur and looked like it lived in a sewer.
The crew dumped that animal Fifi Riboso.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
It's the slimy looking ads.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah, and they creepy look. Apparently they would dump like
liquid on it, like right before shooting, just to make
it look extra fucking creepy. Yeah, but that's Krug's pet.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
It's so disgusting. So now so Kruge has this information
and he now he's setting a course for the Genesis
planet because he needs to then deal with the scientists
who developed it to better understand how to work weapon.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
That's our starfleet. Yes, because this is a very motivated Klingon.
He does not like Starfleet at all. He'd like to
see them fall. He can't stand the idea of living
happily under a flag with the Starfleet and logo on it.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
He keeps making the point that this is all for
the survival of the continued survival of the Klingon race.
But it's unclear, as you said earlier, if he is
acting on orders from some higher up in the chain
of command, or if he's just a rogue agent just
out there doing these things without the government, the Klingon government,
understanding what he's doing. It's never made clear.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
No, it's not. But these are great questions. And here's
the thing. You can say what you want about the
even and odd numbered movies. You can say whatever you
want about the effectiveness of the story and the plot
going on here, what you can't argue with is the
fact that this movie sends the template for Klingons for
the rest of the entire run of all the different
star treks. This is where the Klingon Empire is really cemented,

(24:02):
and we start to get to know these characters and
figure out what's motivating them and how they act and
their customs, and most importantly, their language, because here's for
the first time where somebody has come in and actually
written their language. The first film we got a few
snatches of dialogue that apparently James Dowan was like spitting

(24:23):
out guttural phrases and they're like, yep, that'll do. That's
not what they're doing here. Now they've got an actual
linguist who has decided how Klingon will be spoken. He's
on set coaching them. And this is fascinating to me
HP because Klingon is a language. Now you can go
get the books, you can learn how to speak it,

(24:43):
you can converse with others in the language. And that
modern language is in some parts shaped by Christopher Lloyd,
who would say things incorrectly sometimes and the linguists would say,
oh no, that sounds better, so they would in this
case the grammar would default to this, which makes it
an actual language in a lot of ways, because all

(25:04):
these weirdo rules would only come out through language. So
I don't know, it's just fascinating to me that whole thing.
And we get we already have the uniforms from the
first film, but more importantly we get the Klingon bird
of prey. Here this bit of ILM magic that they

(25:27):
will reuse over and over. The footage from this movie
is going to be used one million times in every
version of Star Trek. It's in Next Generation all the time,
it's in Deep Space nine. I'm sure they use it
in Voyager at one point. And there's a reason it
fucking stands up to this day.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, and thank you for bringing up the bit about
the language that I was surprised when I learned that
while researching this this episode. It's, if nothing else, this
movie doesn't get nearly enough credit for being the genesis,
if you will, of the Klingons as a real race
of characters with an actual language and a culture. It's

(26:08):
it's the kind of thing where you'd assume, well, Klingons
have been around since the original series, not like this.
They weren't go back and watch the original series. Klingons
did not have this level of sophistication with their chain
of command with the ships. The Bird of Prey, as
I understand it was actually acted out by Nimoy. He

(26:28):
was instrumental in what it would look like. He would
stand in a room and put his arms out like this,
and is it still looks like such a fierce and
aggressive starship compared to all the Federation ships. It's awesome.
Holds up even today.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
It's probably the best Klingon. They haven't really innovated the
Klingons enough as far as I'm concerned, throughout all the
different Star Treks, but it's the best Klingon vessel ever created.
And part of it is that what you're describing Nimoy
saying it should look like a bird and its wings
should fold up and down from whether it's attacking or flying.
Because they said they didn't notice if people or they

(27:06):
wondered if people noticed that it did that, and I'm like, yeah,
of course we did. We fucking love that it does that.
And what's the other thing about the fucking Klingon ships? Ah, God,
damn it.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
The culture, the ways, the way it would.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
The fact is that the designer based it on a
body builder. And once you know that and you look
at it, it clearly has shoulders like trapezes, like muscles
back there, like flexing. When the arms go up and down,
it looks like a hunched over, angry, aggressive thing.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
It's responsible for one of my favorite moments in Star
Trek four, which I know we'll get to We're not
talking about that now, but put a pin in that.
We're going to talk about it when we get to
star Trek four.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Oh yeah, this is their vessel for a while. Yeah,
whatever to this ship. Oh it sinks, It sinks in
the San Francisco But of course you think they would
pull it out of there though, Federations Starfly is just
gonna leave a fucking Klingon ship that can close that
at the bottom of the bay.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
They need that, if nothing else, to discover the secret
to cloaking technology, which somehow the Federation has never cracked.
In all of their decades of dealing with the Klingons,
they still have not figured out how to cloak a
vessel that I would have rescued the shell of the
ship just to figure out what the secret of their
tech was. Nevertheless, the Klingon ship is going to the

(28:24):
Genesis planet. Savag and David Marcus from the first from
the second movie, Excuse Me are part of a science
team that are studying the Genesis planet, so they're there.
By the way, Robin Curtis has now essayed the role
of Savac, in my opinion, doing a far better job
than Kursi aali from Star Trek two. Will you listen

(28:47):
to that episode if you want to hear my critique
of her performance Kurs the Alley. But I love Robin Curtis.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
And this, I will agree with you one hundred percent
that she is much more vulcan. Yeah, we're taking Savoc
as a pure Vulcan character. Then, yes, I believe this,
And there is no reason to believe she is half Yes,
there's no reason to believe she's half for Omulan because

(29:13):
they don't really mention it. You have to watch the
director's cut and blah blah blah. But as pure Vulcan. Yes,
Robin Curs is great and she is really good. I'm
not taking anything away from her.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Yeah, she's great. And so they're studying the Genesis planets.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Oh yeah, they've been transferred to the USS Grissom, which
is named after, of course, Virgil Gus Grissom, the astronaut
in the most ill designed starfleet craft of all time,
where the saucer section is held between the n cells.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
I kind of liked it. It was different.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
I mean it's different. I definitely want to hook the
cabin of my cruiser up to the fucking engine.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
But it's a science vessel. It's it's not made for war.
It's not made for.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
I don't need warfare to try and get the least
amount of radiation on me as possible. Nevertheless, it's a scientist,
so you'd think they'd know better.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Maybe so they're studying it. Kirk and company have gone
back to a star doc on Earth effectively, and McCoy
is not himself blah blah blah. But they at this
point they don't know what. They just figure its exhaustion.
That's what's been bothering him. Seems a little I don't
know I would be able to worried, but.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Kirk would immediately there's something going on with you, McCoy.
What the fuck is it?

Speaker 2 (30:32):
What he mentions Mount Celia, which Kirk knows is on Vulcan.
He should have that should have been his clue that, hey,
maybe there's something more to this, more to this. Nevertheless,
they're there. The Admiral meets them and says, you all
have sure leave, but except for you, Scotty. You're going
to be part of the crew of the Excelsior, which
is this brand spanking new starship that has something called

(30:54):
transwarp drive. Everybody. It's all the rage. Now it's a
young upstart to the end.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
That the designer of this particular ship, he took it
upon himself to design the Enterprise as if a Japanese
designer had done it, and that's the Excelsior And that
was one of many choices given to Leonard Deemer and
he was like, ooh, that one's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah. So Kirk asks the Admiral, what about what about
the Enterprise? Like, I know, Scotty says, it's all the same.
Admiral would like to stay in the Enterprise. The Admiral says, no,
the Enterprise is not going to be refit. The Enterprise
is going to be decommissioned. It's twenty years old and
it's not going to hold up to any kind of
beating that you can give it. It's the Enterprise's time.

(31:37):
This dismays Kirk because he was hoping to then take
the Enterprise back to Genesis to look or actually we
haven't even gotten there yet. I apologize, but.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
No, no, it's fine. We can like it doesn't matter.
Everyone knows the movie. But here's the thing. There is
some debate about this because it makes zero sense that
they're going to decommission the Enterprise. They just refit. It happened.
It was like five years ago, right, and now after
one battle and some scarring. Look, I bet it's fucked up,

(32:08):
but they're gonna just decommission it entirely. What are they
going to turn it into a revolving restaurant.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
I'm not going to do anything here.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
It is.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
But if you think of it in terms of the
Excelsior being, the tech is just so more up updated.
I guess maybe in theory it couldn't stack up to
the Enterprise in terms of technology. Maybe he makes more
sense at that point to say, maybe it is the
Enterprise's time. Nevertheless, the er or.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
How about this, you know what, Jim, just take her,
just take her.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
The problem with that is, in this case, once Kirk
mentions Jim.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Jim him, do me a favor, resign, take the fucking ship.
Just get out of here. We don't want to see
her again.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
But he won't do that because once Kirk mentions Genesis,
the Admiral says to Kirk, look in your absence, the
Genesis is now this really hot button topic. Nobody wants
to go near it. It's it's effectively quarantined by the Federation.
Nobody goes there except for this science vessel. So the

(33:20):
Admiral doesn't want Kirk going anywhere near Genesis, and he
knows that's why he wants to go there.

Speaker 7 (33:26):
Now.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
He wants to go, and eventually he's going to disclose
to the Admiral that he needs to go and retrieve
Spock's body. Because what happens is in the meantime, Kirk
is hosting a little soiree at his swanky bachelor pad
where he's got the guns mounted on the wall and everybody.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
He loves his pistols, he does.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
The weird thing is the way they're mounted. Did you
notice some of them are mounted upside down in this
strange configuration. I couldn't figure out what the rationale behind
that was.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
James T. Kirk is an artisan, That's what it is.
Hb all right.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
He's wacky.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
He sees things a little bit different than the rest
of us. He knows how a battle is going to go.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
What I like is so they're all having drinks and
they're talking, and then the doorbell rings and Kirk goes, oh,
that must be Scotty, Hey come in, and the door
opens and it's not Scotty, it's Sarah. Maybe one of
my favorite things in this whole movie is Sarak. I
love Mark Leonard is Sarak. He's great in this. So
he comes in. He's really upset at Kirk. He says

(34:27):
to Kirk, we need to talk right now.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Kirk, excuse me, yes, as Ambassador Sarak displays all of
his diplomatic skills by walking into the middle of the
party and going, I will talk to you Kirk.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
He doesn't exactly come in. He's not speaking softly at all.
He's coming in there with his big stick, saying we
need to put in fairness. It's his son that we're
dealing with here.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
So motions are high for this Vulcan.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
He sits down with Kirk and he says, Kirk, why
did you leave Spock on that planet? He's angry, He's like,
why wouldn't you like it was his wish. You should
have known that it was his wish to be taken
back to Vulcan. Kirk's like, I don't know what you're
talking about.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Of us would It's like, what are you talking about?
How would I know this? This isn't you guys aren't
publicizing this, this is a secret ritual.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah. So it gets to the point where I think
Sarak is just frustrated, and he says, let's mind meld.
I need to get to the bottom of this, which
which is, yeah, I will have your thoughts. So he
mind melds, and it's actually a very intense sequence. Shatner
plays it beautifully because what effectively what Sarah does is

(35:36):
have him relive the last moments of Spock's life, the
farewell that he made in that engine.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Room and ambassador making again.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Thanks. But you see the sadness he has. He literally
has tears in his eyes. Kirk. When all this is
said and done, he mind melds. Sark realizes that he
doesn't know anything.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
But I just kind of asking out here that this
is where I started falling in love with Leonard de
moist direction, because he's making the entire movie very big.
It's very operatic everything in it, except for these intimate
moments that he makes even more intimate by giving us
these extreme close ups of their eyes or their lips
and making us focus really on what's being said.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, particularly because the lips in the eyes are everything
in this scene. It's Sarah narrating this scene with Kirk
and Spock, cutting between Kirk's sad expression in his eyes
welling up with tears as he's reliving one of the
most awful moments in his whole, entire life. So the

(36:46):
sequence concludes, Sarah realizes that he doesn't know what's going on,
but then kirksys wait a minute, let's go to the tape,
so they play back, and I didn't like this. By
the way, I don't like when movies do this is
to what they so they're what they're supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
So hard would it be just to take the fucking
two actors and get them on a fucking set and
put a lockdown camera from a security position and refilm
the scene. You could do it with stand ins.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
It's They're supposed to be replaying the security footage of
Spock's last last minutes as he's saving the ship, but
all they can do is playback the scenes from Star
Trek two, which doesn't make any sense because it's cross
cutting and different angles and things. I get it. They
maybe didn't have the budget to refilm it as a

(37:37):
security cam, but it still took me out of the
scene a little bit.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
I don't even show the footage, just cut to them
watching the footage.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
You could have done that. So eventually Kirk rewinds to
the point where McCoy does the mind meld, and then
the penny drops. Oh my god, that's why Bones has
been acting so weird. It's because he has Spock's Katra,
his spiritual essence in his mind, because that's what that's
I guess that's what we're meant to believe he did

(38:05):
before he saved the ship and killed himself effectively. At
this point we cut to McCoy. I believe he's half
acting like Spock, half acting like McCoy. He's trying to
charter a ship off.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Of It's like that movie All of Me with Yeah Martin,
where Lily Tomlin is trapped in his body, except it's
this hilarious performance by DeForest Kelly where half of him
is acting very logical and having him is yelling at himself.
I'm kidding that. No, none of that's happened.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
But it's but he is, because it's scrambled between Spock
and McCoy, and he's saying things that Spock would say
and so forth. He tries to commandeer a ship, charter
a ship to get off the planet and go back
to Genesis. But he's overheard by a Federation officer.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Oh, are we not going to mention the greatest character
in this movie? The fucking he tries to chart the Genesis. No,
that guy with he was a makeup artist, by the way,
and it's you can tell because the makeup is fucking
on point. He put those little tiny feathers everywhere that
are just like fluttering with everything he does. I love

(39:11):
that character.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
He talks like Yoda. Everything he says is backwards. And
when he's all for getting McCoy off the planet, but
then when he mentions Genesis, he makes such a big
deal about it. He freaks Genesis, this is this forbidden No,
And that's when the Federation's.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
So worried about being caught talking about Genesis that he
stands up and yells Genesis.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Which everybody in the bar knows what he's talking about.
This officer, this Federation security guy, grabs McCoy and we're
led to believe he's going to be put into some
sort of institution because he's acting crazy.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
No, he's like, hey, I don't think you want to
be having that conversation, at which point Bones McCay should
have said, don't have any fucking conversation I have about
anything I want. I was there, motherfucker. I know what
genesis is. I'll tell everybody.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
But then, but all he can do is try feebly
to do the Vulcan neck pinch on the security guy,
but because it's bones, he can't actually do it.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Now here's the thing. Does the actual neck pinch? Is
that just anyone can do that? Or do you have
to be a Vulcan and boarded for that to happen.
Is Are they saying that he's just too clumsy to
try and do it doing that or he's saying because
he's not an actual Vulcan doesn't work. I'm wondering.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
I think he's too clumsy. I think if you take
the time to study the mystic arts of vulcan or
on Vulcan, anyone can do it. I don't know that
we've ever seen anybody but a Vulcan do it, but
I wouldn't be surprised if they could.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
But if you're being guided by the spirit of a Vulcan,
particularly when it's advanced to spok, you would think he
would just wou he would have knocked that fuck her out.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Could be but it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I think you know what, he could have worked too,
and actually could have worked. He could have just knocked
that guy out, walked out of the bar. Would change nothing, Well,
it would have, because they have to break him out.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
They have to break him out. Kirk has already sworn.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
So just rewrite it. That's always the answer. I think
of Harve Bennett to do it, because Harve Bennett, they
didn't include Carol Marcus as a character in this, who
was a big character in the last movie. It's her
son is involved in this, and they're like, we just
couldn't find a place for her, Like he says, we couldn't.
We couldn't rectify the idea that she would not have
known that David was using unstable proto matter. And I'm like, okay,

(41:26):
then just write something different. What are you talking about.
You just didn't want to muck up the works here
with a superfluous character. You can just say that too.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
I did feel her absence because she is so prominent
in part two. She's Kirk's old love interest. It just
seems weird that she wouldn't still be part of the
science team. That's it's weird, Genesis.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
It's weird that they give him a quasi love interest
in the next film. That is, like waiting for him
when they get back to Earth, or standing with him
when they're receiving their accolades when it should have been
Carol Marcus like welcoming him home. Yeah, where have you been?
Thank you for saving everything Again, I'm still grieving over
the loss of our sun, any our sun.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah yeah, if nothing else, that's their shared loss. She
should be feeling it even more keenly than him, because.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
He actually she actually raised that job.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
She raised them. Anyway, as this is all happening, Savoc
and David Marcus have beamed down because there's a life form.
They've discovered a life form on the Genesis planet that
should not be there. The captain refuses to beam it
up because they don't want to risk contaminating the rism,
so they beam them down to the planet. Now, the

(42:38):
planet already seems like it's going through something. It seems
to be a little bit weather stricken. They don't really
know yet, but there's problems with the Genesis experiment. Nevertheless,
they find the life form it actually originated from the
photon torpedo coffin that they used for Spock.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
They open up that shell that is designed to house
an explosive and probably dissolve easily. Somehow made it through
the atmosphere of this new planet, crashed onto its rocky surface,
and it's just sitting there, polished and looking wonderful.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Boy, you are just hammering this movie, father blone, you
know why don't do tell? Let's hear it.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
I think as much credit as Harve Bennett deserves for
keeping this series going and for guiding it as well
as he does, I think it was hubris for him
to not hire a writer to just go I can
do it. After Nicholas Meyer came in and saved his
bacon and made that fucking movie what it was. And

(43:43):
obviously nick Meyer didn' want anything to do with this
movie because it undoes his movie. But how many dozens
of fucking really good writers out there could have given
you an emotional story that makes scientific sense.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
There's a lot of alighting eliting over thing like papering
over things that you're not meant to think about too deeply,
and I think that's probably the root of a lot
of these sort of criticisms you're having with things moment
to moment, and I can't argue with you. You're right,
some of these things in isolation don't make sense, and

(44:18):
it's the writing, and that's what are you gonna do?
You're right. He should have had somebody. It doesn't necessarily
have to be someone on the level of a Harlan Ellison,
but surely somebody could have sat down and said, you
know what, we're not getting from me to be an
accounting for all these variables. So let's figure this out.
Let's make this make sense scientifically and emotionally and action wise.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
George R. R. Martin was writing for the Twilight Zone
eighty five. In fact, if they could have just called
the offices at CBS of Twilight Zone eighty five and
said send over anyone, and they would have turned this
fucking screenplay into something great, and I wouldn't be thinking
things like, wait, what the fuck is Spock exactly now?
So it is corpse landed there and then it regenerated

(45:05):
into a fetus, I guess, and then grew into a
child with no sustenance whatsoever and no guidance for those
early moments before we meet him. What the fuck is he?

Speaker 2 (45:17):
These are all good points and can't counter them. I'm
accepting things more on face value, I think, than you are.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
And here's the thing about the katra. Yeah, okay, so
if you transfer your mind into somebody and then your
body is obliterated in some warp accident, what happens to
your soul, to your cotra? It can't go back into
your body. Can you find another dead body and go

(45:44):
into that one? Is Is it a free for all
with the Bultans? You just pick a corpse and go.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
I would assume that in that case, Let's assume for
a minute that Spock is not shot onto the Genesis
planet and his body is lost. He's good's gone, but
the couture.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Let's say they find his body that is completely shriveled
from radiation. Okay, what happens next?

Speaker 2 (46:05):
I think just let's assume that the body's gone, they
can't use it. I think at that point I would
assume the ritual correct all of this, would merely release
the spirit so that it can be free again, Like
it's not bound inside, it's not warring with somebody's other
for lack of like a coatra, it's not going to
be stuck in someone's head while they're trying to live

(46:26):
their life. I would assume they're going to release it.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
So Akatra is basically like a destination wedding, like no
matter what, you're going to Vulcan.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
It's like the dating game Star Trek style. So anyway,
let's progress here. They discover Spock's burial robes, but there's
no body in the coffin, but they can still they
still have these energy readings. So they go to investigated
and by.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
The way, they got life readings on the planet that's
filled with life. That's surprising.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
I did think that was odd because there's a raft
of kin.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
It makes sense they're looking for no life anywhere, and
they're like, fuck, we detected a microbe. Now we got
to go check it out. Like we're getting life signs
from Genesis that planet with all of the fucking jungles
and forests and seas.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
And they know that there's increased aging on the planet
because when they first get to this photon tube, there's
all these little slug like creatures swarming around it, and
David Marcus goes there, you go, there was some surface
level microbes that aged incredibly rapidly, so there's your life form.

(47:38):
And then later after a few scenes later, when Krug
is on the planet looking for the scientists, he comes
across the photon tube coffin. Also, now these slugs have
grown into like huge, they're like they're almost like boa constrictors. Now,
So I think the idea is that any life that's

(47:58):
on the planet, or originally it's on the planet, grows
at a rapid rate, including this Spock life form whatever
you want to call it. If it's not actually him,
it's made from his DNA, I guess.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
And they're using fairy dust. I don't know, you just
go with that because it makes no scientific sense whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
It doesn't really. But at this point, like we're the
stories operating on several different fronts. We have Savog and
David looking for effectively Spock. We have Kruge on his
way to the Genesis planet to deal with the scientists,
and now we have Kirk and company trying to figure
out how they're going to get off off of Earth

(48:42):
and get to the Genesis planet. And by the way,
Spring McCoy who's now in custody because he's acting erradically.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Wow, this sounds actually being action packed movie. If we
spent any time, any appreciable time with any of the
groups and learned their plans and knew what their plot was,
then this could have been a great movie, and if
any of the scientific stuff made sense.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
In fact, this is my favorite part of the movie,
getting the gang back together. Yeah, because who doesn't love
a little caper where you get the gang back together
and they have to work together to figure out how
to accomplish a goal.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
And here's something novel and something that sets the tone
for all of Star Trek from here on out, thanks
to Leonard Nimoy. Hey, maybe let's give everyone a moment.
Let's give every cast member an actual moment in this
movie instead of just saying paling frequencies open or warp
factor six.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
There's more of that in this We're gonna see even more,
I think, probably for me. The apotheosis of that comes
in Star Trek four, which we're not talking about, but
we'll get to it. But you're right, every character gets
a little more of a signature in this. For example,
so Kirk leaves the Admiral. The admiral tells him, under
no uncertain terms, you can't leave, and then he meets

(49:58):
up with Sulu and Check, and he says, they told
us we can't leave, so I guess we're gonna leave.
So now he's going. He's going rogue, and he's gonna
get off the planet, come hell or high water.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Man, I love a going rogue story.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
It's fantastic. So he and everybody's behind him one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
They're gonna go fucking common dear the Enterprise. Goddamn right,
Except here's the thing, HB when you really think about it, right,
So he goes to the Admiral Morrow, who's the head
of Starfleet, and Morrow says, no, I'm telling you you
cannot take the Enterprise and go back to Genesis. It's
no way. And Kirk doesn't James T. Kirk, fucking renowned

(50:38):
captain of the Enterprise, doesn't know anyone with a fucking starship.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Not only that, I agree with you that, but the
bigger oversight, in my opinion is, look like, if we're
gonna cut to the chase, they do eventually common to
you the Enterprise, Scotty has automated it so they can
operate with the skeleton crew, and they escape and they
set course for Genesis. My problem is Starfleet's not going
to try to chase them. They know where they're headed.

(51:06):
But it's as if they just say, look, they're too far,
too fast, we can't catch them. That's bullshit. They have
warp drive.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
They can get And that's the problem with all of
the Harve Bennett movies. That's always his excuse. It's the
Enterprise is the only ship in the area. What are
they not a star fleet?

Speaker 2 (51:24):
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
I've seen them.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Fighting the Borg.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
There seem to be a whole bunch of fucking starfleet ships.
At any point they can call them all back, like
if it's actually a dire situation. But in Wrath of
Khan it was you're the only one out there. They
do it again in part five. You guys are the
only ship available. It's like they're on Earth at the
beginning of fucking Star Trek five. They're the only ship
available on Earth? Who's defending Earth?

Speaker 2 (51:49):
That to me just made no sense as I'm watching this, like,
why wouldn't they they go in pursuit. They know. It's
not as if they're just setting core they don't know
where they're headed. They know exactly where they're headed and
why they're headed there. Because he told the admiral that's
what he needs to do.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
Nevertheless, check off. Do you have that old run about?
Oh yeah, of course we can all that it has
warp capabilities. Right, yeah, we can be there by fucking
six o'clock. Let's go.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Let's do it. But they have to get this. They
have to get the enterprise. That's inexplicable to me, but anyway.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
They need a big surprise at the end of this
movie is what they need. They need a show stopper.
And of course, oh it's my poor enterprise.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
It is, and it's an incredible moment. We'll get to it.
But you're right, that's the only reason they need it.
So for right or wrong, they steal the enterprise. They
the gang does their thing. They each have a little
part to play. They're basically like, they're beating up other officers.
They're commandeering the transporter pad. Everything works, everybody's on the
ship except for Ahura, who is going to meet them

(52:51):
at the rendezvous. She says, which effectively means I'll see
you at the end of the movie.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Okay, yeah. Unfortunately, she does have a good moment where
she blocks that guy up in the closet that she
does she's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
Yeah, she's working in this transporter room and with this young,
fresh faced officer, and the officer is basically like saying,
you were I need action. It's okay, piece and quiet.
It's okay for people like you on the downside of
your career, but not me. So you already get the
sense that she's gonna put this guy in his place.
And then when Kirk and company come chomping in and

(53:24):
this guy's freaked out, holy shit, it's Captain Kirk, and
she's that's all well and good, but you're gonna be
in the closet while all this happens. She's like, closet,
what are you talking about? And she pulls a phaser
and says, get in the fucking closet. Basically, she totally
puts the guy in his place, and it's a good moment.
But nevertheless, she's not in the movie for the whole
of the meat of it.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
I agree, she's not sitting in the background every once
in a while saying channel open.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
I'm kidding nothing but static captain.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
Yeah, so I'd rather her not appear and actually do
something than just be a prop.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
Fair that's fair, but again, Scotty has automated the enterprise.
This will become important later so that they can operate
it with just Kirk, McCoy, Chekhov and Sulu.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
And he's shoveling the coal into the fucking.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
So off the Enterprise goes. Meanwhile, Krug has made it
to the Genesis planet and I sort of misspoke. He
and David are still on the planet dealing with Spock,
and Krug has told his gunner shoot at the grism,
but just target the engines and they switch and.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
To be honest, are right next to the fucking bridge.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
Because of the design. The whole thing blows up and
he goes like, what the hell did you just do?
And the guy says it was a lucky shot, and Krug,
being the pragmatist that he is, pulls out a like
a phaser boop just kills the guy. He's like, okay,
you want to make that mistake again? Fine?

Speaker 1 (54:57):
What are you making jokes? What do you think? This
is the f iteration exactly?

Speaker 2 (55:02):
This is I gave you an order. I mean, here
on the bridge.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Of a fucking klingon bird of prey, we don't even
know what our affiliation is. You're gonna make jokes.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
So we can see how ruthless Krug is from this.
He's willing to kill his.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Own say the wrong thing card, and it.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
Has to be said. Like again, people I think, mostly
at the time, could not reconcile Reverend Jim with Krug.
It was very hard for people.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
And now I don't think it's on anyone's mind, honestly,
and I don't know how it could be. And I
loved his performance then and I fucking love it now,
and it's one of my favorite Klingon performances. It in
fact sets the precedent for what Clingons should be for
the rest of the shoeries.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Yeah, but we've also, like you said earlier, we've seen
him as Judge Doom. We've seen him in all these parts.
We know that he has range, so naturally I were
willing to accept him in a different part and I
thought he I thought he was fine. There are I'd
be lying if I said there weren't a few moments
that reminded me of Reverend Jim.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
But that's on you.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
What are you gonna do? That's on me exactly. That's
my personal bias, and I'm okay with that.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
I put that aside, you know, because here's the thing
after this next generation really leans into the first of all,
they kept filling all of their Klingons mouths with too
much teeth, so all of their actors had to form
sentences around these stupid dental appliances, and they really leaned

(56:32):
hard into the honor and the anger of them. But
the honor as like a as a word like this guy,
as ruthless and as crazy as he is, Christopher Lloyd
gives him an honorable quality. There's a weird nobility to him.
We'll talk about it when we get to the sort
of actual exchange between him and Kirk. There's something about

(56:55):
his performance in that particular scene that makes me think, God,
there's a lot going on in this guy. This isn't
just the I need to kill the Federation, but this
isn't the fucking Klingons from Star Trek five.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
Wait five, meaning the are you talking about the Undiscovered Country?

Speaker 1 (57:10):
No, I'm talking about the Final Frontier, the trio of
Klingon idiots in that the Mad Magazine version of Klingons.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
That's true. He has basically has. So Savig and David
find Spock, they realize who it.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Is he it's a little boy.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
He starts as a little boy, but you see him
grow over the course. And what they also discover is
that the planet is become very unstable. And Savag questions
David on this and what you'd said earlier. He confesses
that they used He used proto matter in the Genesis matrix,
which she expositions, isn't that this highly unstable material that

(57:54):
scientists have denounced is unethical to use? Blah blah blah,
and he, I guess it's not unlike his father, as
she says. He says, Look, it would have taken me
years to make the progress that I needed to make
on Genesis if at all I cut corners. And this
is the result. So what we have here is Genesis
is now effectively a dying planet. It's going to die

(58:17):
within hours of the days of not hours, probably hours.
And the aging that's going on, the rapid aging, is
connected somehow to Spock and his rapid growth as from
an adolescent into a person and a may couple of things. Yeah, smiling,
I can see it. What's up?

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Okay? The Genesis planet itself, like you mentioned earlier, like
as soon as they get there, they realized that something
odd is going on in that the deserts have snow
in them, snows and yeah, like it's basically all these
different ecosystems are crashing into each other and they shouldn't
be happening than they are. This entire movie was shot
on sound stages at the Paramountain Lot. It was a huge, huge,

(59:00):
fucking mistake for the cinematographer kept saying, I really wanted
us to go to Kauai. I thought we really should
have shot it in Kauai, which is clearly I just
wanted to go to Hawaii, and I understand, and I
understand that, but the argument was made, because we were
going to be dealing with these bizarre environments, we have
to do it on a sound stage because that's where

(59:20):
we can control it. And I my attitude is, you
can fucking get a snow machine out into Kauhai or
the snow looked fake anyway.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Yeah, the cacti looked really fake. There's parts of the
planet that don't hold up effects wise.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
I think I'm not saying it it's a failure. Overall,
a lot of it looks really good. It's just that
when I think to the like the one shot at
the end of Star Trek two of the planet where
it's clearly where outdoors and it looks like a jungle environment.
Wanted some of that. They you can't send a fucking
camera crew with one actor just to have some like

(59:57):
pickup shots of running through the jungle. Like I understand,
money was tight and everything, but it's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Purely a budgetary thing, because if we've learned nothing else,
it's that every movie they tightened those purse strings even more,
which doesn't make any sense to me, because these movies
were very part profitable. I don't know that they were
ever maybe Star Trek five was maybe not as well received,
but I think they all made money. So I don't
really get the notion that they're going to try to

(01:00:24):
become more and more lean as they go along. It
feels like they should have been investing more into this world,
into the.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Look of it. Well, what's crazy is so that they
got this The budget is four million more than the
previous film, and they can actually stretch it a lot
more because so much of the sets are already built,
and the costumes are already created, and a lot of
the effects are like the models have already been built,
so they actually spent a lot more on the effects
this time, so they had a little bit more money

(01:00:53):
to play around with, but still, in comparison to what
Motion Picture had five years earlier, that was over double
the budget of this movie. But my point is Leonard
Nimoy should have just grabbed the cinematographer and his two actors,
jumped in a van a shuttle, call it the Galileo,
and just go to a botanical garden and run around

(01:01:13):
for one day, just getting pickup shots of them standing
with the sun shining on them and greenery, and then
cut that into the movie instead of just the clearly
evocative of fucking the nineteen sixties series with their cardboard sets.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
What's interesting is we've talked about the fact that these
movies and in fact the original TV show were all
to a certain degree remastered, right Obviously the motion picture
was the biggest recipient of that where they added effects,
and why didn't they consider doing that for this They

(01:01:50):
could have actually had a real rendering of the Genesis
planet in all of its horrific glory, blowing itself apart.
That would have been pretty cool to see that with
more modern effects. I think it would have worked really well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
I bet there's a fan who's done it, but I
don't think we're going to get an official anything from Paramount.
They can justify it with motion picture because it hadn't
been finished at the time, and nobody's really minding the
store when it comes to the original series, so they
couldn't get away from They've gone away with it when
they got away with it. But I don't think anyone's
petitioning them to go in this movie and make it

(01:02:26):
look more real.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
But it's a shame because I think a little bit
of a spit polish and I think this movie would
go up in people's estimation.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
We put it to you fans and fan editors.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Someone somewhere must have thought about this already. But anyhow,
so Krug sends basically takes Savoc Spock in David Prisoner.
He sends. He beams down to the ship to the
planet from the ship, which is cloaked, and he's threatening
them with torture if they don't tell him about the

(01:03:00):
secret of the Genesis device. At this moment, the Enterprise
makes its way into the sector. They radio down and
say Captain Krug, there's a Federation ship. So he beams
up but there's still a contingent of Klingons that are
holding them prisoner on the on the surface of the planet.
This is maybe my second favorite part of the movie,
where the we've all gotten used to the cloaking effect

(01:03:22):
of the Bird of Prey right where it gets watery
looking and ouchy and it's but the thing that we
that often gets lost is it's cloaked, but you can
still if you're looking in the just the right spot,
at just the right moment, you can see maybe the
that there's something wavy, like there's an outline of something

(01:03:43):
you can't quite make out. And what that's what happens
here is the enterprise is there. They're like, I don't
see anything, and they're looking through the viewport and this
is the only time I can remember them ever doing
this with Klingon ships. Kirk's looking through the viewport with
Sulu when he says, there, look right there, you see
that at Starfield. It looks like it's there's something funny
about it. He says, yea, almost like there's something there,

(01:04:07):
and that gives them the intuition that, okay, wait a
minute here, there's something going on. So they declare red alert.
They don't put up their shields though, and the Klingon
ship decloaks, thinking that okay, they're just a sitting duck
waiting for us to kill them. But when they decloak,
the Enterprise is already readied their weapons, so they get

(01:04:29):
a really good shot off. It's actually kind of a
neat little not a dogfight, but it's an interesting little
broadsides between the two ships. And it's logical because they
can see the thing fluttering out in space. They know
where to look now. They they both get some good
licks each other, but but the Enterprise is no.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
The Enterprise fucking decimates them like it shuts them down immediately.
And then and then Krug very wisely says, why haven't
they finished us?

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
And that's is that when Kirk says he radios for
their surrender, he's bluffing yeah, And the Klingon ship fires
back at them. Unfortunately it hits the automation that Scotty
worked up, so they're completely dead in the water. So
Krug informs him that there's hostages on the surface of
the planet and if you don't hand over the Genesis materials,

(01:05:18):
I'm going to execute them one at a time. And
sure enough, the guy they're going to execute savag actually,
but David, being the heroic son.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
Of Yeah, he has to make up for the fact
that he caused this whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
He's atoning for the fact he knows that the Genesis
failure is his fault and how many lives have.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
The horrible randomness of this murder must be justified.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Right, pretty much, he gets but unfortunately he fights back
against the Klingon but he's killed.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Oh come on, man, like that was every a Klingon
warrior versus this kid from the valley.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
He puts up a fight, but he's killed. In this
complete the Rex.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
It's really horrible too, because Leonard Nimoy frames it in
such a way that David falls just out of frame,
but he kind of alerts his just a little bit
up when the knife comes down.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
It's horrifying you hear him like, because it's it's a
blade that he's stabbed with and some of the there's
a shot with Kirk that I think is one of
Nimoy's best in this where it's first of all, he
does the whole thing where he several times he says,
you cling on, bestards, you've killed my son, and he

(01:06:33):
stumbles around a little bit and does that. But then
at one point they cut back and it's from behind.
Kirk is sitting in the captain's chair. You don't see him.
All you see are his arms, and I think McCoy
is trying to comfort him, and all you see is
Kirk's arm come up and shove him away, as if

(01:06:53):
to say, look, I need to grieve, but I'm still
the captain of this vessel and I need to deal
with this. But the way that it's framed and the
way you see him in the chair, it's a one
You get the grief and the resolve all in one shot.
It's a wonderful shot. All credit to leonardnimoy for that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
And I learned that Vulcans are exactly the best and
worst people to deliver news of someone dying.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah, she gives it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
To There's no fucking around, And that's the best and
worst thing about it. It's there's no prevaricating, there's no
have a seat, there's no are you okay? It's David
is dead.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
She says David is dead, and she again, she's vulcan.
But what I love about Robin Curtis is that you
can see the emotion behind the eyes, behind that effort
to stay logical and unemotional. I think she plays that
really well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Oh she got hired for those eyes because you can
see everything she's thinking when she's doing it, and you
can see nothing. You can see that she's thinking, but
you have no idea what she's thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
It's remarkable. So Crue, who gives Actually this is the
line I think maybe that you're thinking of. Krug says, Look,
I'm going to give you a minute to.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
He says, please give us a minute so I can
inform my crew. And he says, I give you two
minutes for your gallant crew.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
For your gallant crew.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
And which is a line I've been misquoting to you
for years as a line that came from Tom.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
That's because he just gives him like thirty seconds.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Or something sixty seconds.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
So Kirk, again a little bit of an aside, Krug
doesn't know what's happening. Kirk, unbeknownst to Krug, has started
the self destruct sequence on the Enterprise, which at the
time was like, oh my god, Kirk is going to
blow up his beloved enterprise. What is this coming to?
Oh my god?

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
So he does this I don't know. Didn't you feel
like it was totally appropriate at that point, the fact
that they had surrendered to the fucking Klingons and the
Klingons were going to come aboard their ship. I was like, yeah,
fucking blow them up.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
I wasn't. I'm not suggesting that it wasn't appropriate given
the circumstances. I'm just saying the fact that it got
to that point. This is almost like the Kobayashi Maru
all over again, where he's got he has no choice.
He can't the ship is defenseless, he can't bluff his
way out of this. All he can do is try
and formulate this plan to take some of them with

(01:09:21):
them and give himself a fighting chance to survive this situation.
So he does this, and Krug is preparing a boarding
party to get on board the enterprise of eight or
nine Klingons.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
My favorite moment in the entire movie coming up there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
It's great Kirk transports down to the planet. Krug doesn't
know this. The boarding party lands on to the Enterprise
and the guy one of them is He's like, there's
no one here. He says, they must be hiding. He says,
I don't I'm on the bridge. All that I hear
is the computer talking, and Krug says, what's it saying?

(01:10:00):
You can already tell that. He's like, something is not
right here, and he's like you. Then you hear the
computer say five four, continuing, and Krug just goes, get
out of there, get out. It's too late. The thing
blows up. It's a great moment.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
Yeah, awesome. How could anyone seek fucking reverende Jimmy the
task here? It's like, this is Commander Krug freaking out
over his men.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Yeah. So the Enterprise blows up except for part of
the hull and the nay cell.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
The saucer explodes.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
What you're saying, the saucer explodes and the rest of
the ship. This effect, actually, I thought was really good too.
Is you cut to the planet's surface where Kirk and
McCoy and everybody they're there looking up. They can see
the remains of the Enterprise burning up in the atmosphere
as it crashes into the planet, and it's just this

(01:10:55):
awesome trail of smoke and fire and debris. And Kirk
looks up at that and he says, my god, what
have I done? And Makoi says something like what you
always do, which is use death as a fighting chance
to live or something to that effect. But as a viewer,
you're like, holy shit, Like the Enterprise, this safe haven,

(01:11:15):
this thing that could never say die, has been blown up.
It was quite a moment.

Speaker 1 (01:11:21):
Don't It was never about the Enterprise. It was always
about these peoples, which I say, fuck you guys, how
dare you blow up the Enterprise?

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
And by the way, that was the big secret that
they kept under wraps, that they've strained mightily to keep
from getting out there. And then the paramount publicity department
puts it in the fucking trailer that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
The Enterprise was blown up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
The tagline was witnessed the final voyage of the starship Enterprise,
and then they showed the scene of the hull hurtling
towards us and the saucer completely decimated.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Yeah, that's marketing for you, Jesus Christ. That sucks's I.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Would have said, oh you're going to do that, We're
going to begin in the movie with the Enterprise exploding.
Then fuck that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:04):
That's right, it's right. Let's just get out of the way, Kirk.

Speaker 1 (01:12:07):
You cannot take the Enterprise okay, self destruct the enterprise.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
It was like with part two. Everyone had a suspicion
that Spock was going to die, so they have this
fake Kobyashi Maru thing where that kind of Oh, of
course he died, but it was only because of the
stupid simulation. He's not really dead. Of course that's not
the way it went. But anyhow, Kirk makes his way
to where the hostages are being held, and I think

(01:12:33):
Spock even takes one of them out. He's now like
super strong, and he throws one of them into this
fireball that is erupted from the ground because the planet
is completely breaking apart all around them.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
Hell yeah. And Kirk his first action I thought was
a bit unusual, where he took David's corpse and he
buried it in the planet and said, bring him back,
bring him back.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
That's right, where's the Genesis wave? Now they dispatch the
rest of the the Klingons, but Krug beams down dum. I. Actually,
he actually has another line that I really like, which
is they're gonna be he He's going to transport the
prisoners up to the Klingon ship, but actually would not.

(01:13:18):
Spock and Kirk says why don't you have them to
take the vulcan also, And he says no, And he
says why, and Krug says, because you wish it. Krug's
you know what, there's something about you wanting me to
transport that guy up. I'm not going to do it
just because you want to do it. He's a really
agree He's a really very smart, very savvy, very what's

(01:13:42):
the word. He's not as rogue and unstable as one
might expect because it's quote unquote Reverend Jim. This guy's
a pretty he's a force to be reckoned with.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
He is a way more vicious and mean character than
what we had in the previous film, which is a
very operation performance by Ricardo Maltibon, And I think everyone
loves that sort of level of theatrics. But here's a
real villain, and a really formidable one at that. Like, ultimately,
Cohn was a big fucking blowhard. He didn't know what

(01:14:14):
he had one ship and he didn't know what to
do with it. Here I will.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
Only point to the crew of the space Station Regular
one that had their throats slit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Yeah, he had a bunch of murderous thugs, so fucking
so did krug Man.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
The thing. The difference I think is that Krug has
a sense of honor. I think the fact that he's
willing to kill one of his own crewmen because they
screwed up, they didn't follow orders and they destroyed the ship.
I think that's Noble's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
I'm just saying that it's easy to get behind Kahn
and have fun with that character. There's fun to be had.
There is no fun with Krug.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
No, no, I would agree with you. There's no there's
no operatic performance to get behind like you have with
Ricardo Montalban.

Speaker 1 (01:15:03):
Like you said, it's that will be in Star Trek
six with Christopher Plumber. That's what people were hoping for,
a continuation of the villains of Star Trek when they
got what was an actual threat.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Sure, and I can tell you that's one of my
least favorite parts of Star Trek six.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Just a little bit of a giant slice of Dixie
Ham that Christopher Plumber decided he could get away with
because it's a space movie.

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
We'll get there. So effectively becomes a mono a mono
battle between Kirk and Krug at this point, as the
planet is destroying itself, all around them, and there's no surprise,
Kirk gets the upper hand. The thing I hate, though,
about their battle is what happens is that Krug has

(01:15:49):
fallen off of a cliff and he's hanging on barely,
and Kirk does the thing give me your hand, and
Krug uses this as an opportunity to try to pull
him down to and then Kirk does this thing that
I think is so cringey where he goes I have
had just about enough of you, and he's punctuating it
with boots to the face of Kruge. It's so goofy.

(01:16:14):
The lines are goofy is written, they're goofy the way
he says them. It didn't have to be there. I
don't know it just it left me cringing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:23):
HP quick autobiographical pause. Before I had seen this movie,
it had been out, but I hadn't yet gone to
the theater. I had the nerdiest friend you could ever
imagine in grade school if you looked nerd up in
the dictionary. This was the kid Okay, who had seen
the movie several times on opening weekend and told me

(01:16:45):
every plot point in minute detail, and regaled me with
this portion of the movie acting out the I kick
have had enough kick of you kick right, and kept
telling me how awesome it was, and I thought, God,
that sounds terrible, and then I saw the movie went ooh,
that's terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
It's bad. No officer with the pedigree and the experience
of Kirk is going to waste his breath on some stock.

Speaker 1 (01:17:12):
I have had enough of you. How about you killed
my son? You motherfucker, burn in hell or whatever passes
for it on Klingon.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
You bastard. There's any number of things he could have said,
just to dispatch him and make it meaningful. But either way,
he kicks Krug off of the off the cliff. He
falls into a lava sea that's erupted.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Model of Christopher Lloyd falls into a lava.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
Yeah, so he's gone.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
Then, by way, that's the biggest crime of the movie
is killing Krug because he should have kept coming back.
It should have been him in part six. Oh my god,
imagine if the Klingon Empire promoted that guy and he
shows up on the bridge of the fucking enterprise. What's
going on, Kirk?

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
That would have been great. Instead of Chang, you have Krug. Wow,
that would have been that never occurred. To me, blahlah, blahlah.
That would have been stupendous.

Speaker 1 (01:18:07):
Imagine Nicholas my writing that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Holy Moly, because you wouldn't have had any of that
flowery speech bullshit. It would have just been, look, we
know what this guy's capable of, and we're getting ahead
of ourselves. But that would have given Kirk real reason
not to trust any of these guys, because this is
the guy that killed my son and you want me
to invite him on the ship for drinks.

Speaker 1 (01:18:30):
He got promoted based on his experience on Genesis in
which he killed my son. These are the people we're
dealing with.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Let's put a pin in that. We'll get back to
that when we get to Star Trek six. But in
this case, he Kirk makes his way back to Spock,
who's still there, and this was actually very creative on
Kirk's party. He picks up the calmlink to the Bird
of Prey and he speaks Klingon back to Heates, basically

(01:19:01):
Krug saying maltz one to beam out, two to beam up,
and he goes up and I think they've already taken
like they've already taken prisoner. The other Klingons on the vessel.
There's no danger. They already had control of the ship.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
I'd like to point out that moment in the movie
when Kirk calls up to the Klingon craft and says
Jory two was the moment the linguist realized this is
going to work. Because when Krug says it, it's subtitled.
And then they chose not the subtitle at the second time,
but the audience made the leap and when oh, we've

(01:19:36):
heard that, we know what that means in Klingon, and
he thought this can work as a language from now on.

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
That's interesting. I didn't realize that. I think for me
this the subtitle is just the way it works. Are
always on, so I would not have noticed that. But
that's pretty cool. I still can't get over that. The
language of the Klingons, which is something that is seeped
into pop culture to the point where it's a joke
on sitcoms now, like the Big Bang Theory or something,
but it all started here. It's crazy to me. Anyway.

(01:20:06):
They take the Bird of Prey back to Vulcan to
to do this ceremony to restore Spock's Katra to his body,
and it's That's actually one of my favorite shots of
the whole movie. Not my favorite part, but the shot
itself is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
Oh, with the spotlights hitting the fucking the wings of
the bird of prey.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
When it comes down, when it lands, when it comes
in for a landing and lands on Vulcan. It's vulcan
Is in all of its sort of red sand glory,
and you have this bird of Prey come in for
a landing. It all looks really the matlines aren't as
thick as we've seen on some of these miniatures. It looked, really,
it looked glorious, was the right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:47):
This was the first stard Trek movie that ILM was
involved from the beginning to the end. Like they kept
coming in and helping in places, but this was they
got to work from the design to the final product
here and yeah, this in particular, I think it's spectacular.
And if you watch any of the behind the scenes thing,
you realize how fucking difficult that shot was. Because I
mentioned there are spotlights on the surface of Vulcan as

(01:21:10):
the ship comes down and they play on the surface
of the ship and to get those Ken Ralston had
to not only motion control of the camera going around
the ship. He had to motion control like little motorized
lights to move in synchronous in synchrony with the It's
a big complicated thing with math and everything. So it's
amazing and it looks gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
But it's also a completely lost art And I think
not to soapbox, but obviously CG makes a lot of
stuff possible that wasn't before. But for similitude of having
a physical model with real light playing off of the
hull and matted in against a real landscape or at

(01:21:52):
least a matted landscape, you can't get that with CG.
You just can't. There's still something that to me res fake.
With CG it may look get the job done more
or less, but I just I love this stuff. It
looks so compelling to me.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
The beauty is in the imperfections, and you can't never
get an imperfection with the computer generated thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
The biggest example of that it will always be Blade Runner,
which is it was such not to get sidetracked, but
I mean, if you ever watch any of the making
of stuff on that, it's like, it's incredible what they
were able to achieve with the physical models. Nevertheless, they
land they take Spock's body and McCoy. He accepts that.

(01:22:36):
The priestess says to McCoy, this is a dangerous thing.
You're in as much danger, maybe more danger than Spock,
and he says, I accept the danger. McCoy is committed
to doing this, so give I feel. I'm tired of
being schizophrenic and have this thing in my head. I
want to get it out. So they go up the

(01:22:58):
steps of Mounts to lea excuse me, and there's a
great scene between Sarah and Kirk the next day where
Sarah comes over and basically says to Kirk, look what
this has cost you. This cost you your ship, this
cost you your son. This is unbelievable. And Kirk says, yeah,

(01:23:19):
but if I hadn't gone, it would have cost me
my soul. I just I love that moment between because
Sarah is still Vulcan or not, he is still Spock's father,
and in his own way, he wants desperately to get
his son back. I love that interplay, and I love
I've already said I love Sarah. I love Mark Leonard
as Sarah. I think he's I wish you there had

(01:23:40):
been more of Sarah in all of these movies, but
we don't get a ton.

Speaker 1 (01:23:45):
Mark Lenard was the first Star Trek actor I saw
at a convention live? Was he really when I was Jesus,
wasn't too long after this, Actually it might have been before. No,
it's around this time. It was eighty five. I think
was my first Star Trek convention and Mark Leonard was.
It was a Creation convention in Boston, and he was
the big guest, and he came in and people did

(01:24:08):
horrible impressions for him during the Q and A, and
all they kept talking about was his role on the
Planet of the Apes television series, and they just kept
making bad ape jokes to him, and I just kept thinking,
like God, that, even at that age, like this noble
actor standing up here listening to these nerds like try

(01:24:29):
and try and be funny.

Speaker 2 (01:24:31):
He's so noble. That's really the key to the character.
And that's maybe that's why I think he did such
a great job.

Speaker 4 (01:24:37):
He was.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
Actually, wasn't he one of the first Klingons in the
original series. Didn't you play one of the original Klingons?
He showed the episode that it was introduced.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
I think he's the Klingon. Yeah, he's the very.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
First so the guy is Pedigree. Eventually they all McCoy
and Spock come down from Mount Celia. McCoy I like
this too, where McCoy walks by Kirk and he but
he takes a moment to say, I'm all right, Jim,
I'm all right. Just love the fact that he knows
how concerned that Kirk is for him, and he's like,
you don't worry about me. I'm okay, Jim, I'm curing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:09):
I don't care. I would have sacrificed you too, and
you're you're cool and all. But me and Spock besties.

Speaker 2 (01:25:16):
Screw you. Where the hell, Spock? What's up a Spock?

Speaker 6 (01:25:19):
Is he?

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:25:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
So Spock walks by.

Speaker 1 (01:25:22):
He was never worried about your bouce.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
I wasn't worried about you. You're an old man. Your
time is done you.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
How long Spock's going to be taking care of me
until I'm long in the tooth?

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
See you later, Bounce, Sarah says to Kirk. Only time
will tell if Spock is going to get back to
the way he was. And this is really the payoff
through this whole movie. This is what people have been
waiting for. We finally get to see Leonard Nimoy again
as Spock. He walks by in a priestly robe and
he stops as he walks by the crew, and he

(01:25:58):
walks by them all one by one, trying to remember
who they are and all that, and you can see
him struggling to remember this, and he goes over to
Kirk and he eventually remembers the speech from Wrath of
Khan about the ship being out of danger and the
needs of the many and what have you, and that

(01:26:20):
your name is Jim. He says this, and there's this
wonderful moment where Kirk says, yes, I'm Jim. You see
on Nimoy's face that he's getting confidence and assurance that
he's starting to remember, because it's almost like he straightens
up a little bit and he's like, all right, but
we're getting somewhere now, I remembering who I am. And

(01:26:42):
he's such a look. Not only is did he direct
this movie so well? But let's not forget I mean Spock.
His Spock is iconic, right, So.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
He's the only character that we would have based an
entire movie about just getting him back. He does at
all in the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
Yeah, this isn't the search for Sulu or the search
for Chekhov. I'm not sure they would have gone through
these hoops to rescue them, I'm sorry to say. But anyhow,
eventually the crew all gather around Spock and they're all
happy because they can see that he's getting his memories back.
And Nimoy even gives a little eyebrow raise, one of
his patented Spock eyebrow raises, so you as the audience

(01:27:26):
feels like, Okay, we're getting Spock back, Like he's getting
his memory back. This bodes well. Now we can breathe
a sigh of relief. He's back. And that's effectively where
the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Is, and the adventure continues. It tells us this is
true bigger than it is. A cheese head. He started
this movie. He started writing the movie by writing that
last line, first the Jim, your name is Jim, and
then he wrote it back where it's like a like
a locked door mystery.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
That explains a lot about the story and the lack
of logic in spots highly but look, the thing of
it is, ultimately, look, I think you and I remember
this movie or appreciate this movie more than maybe others do.
But at the end of the day. This is really
a means to an end, right, they knew that Spock

(01:28:13):
would have to come back. This is a necessary adjunct
to future Star Trek movies. I mean, I don't mean
to discount it and put it in those terms, but
that's effectively what this is. This is getting us to
the point where now we can we can have Spock
rejoin the crew and now have more adventures with the
entire crew.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
I think they should have done one completely without Meimoi.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
Yeah, it wouldn't have been the same. I don't think
you could agree.

Speaker 1 (01:28:40):
I think it would have been a whole different animal.
I think we could have given us one Star Trek
without Spock, so we could miss him and then make
a movie about getting him back, and it's interest him
show up inexplicably at the end of That's what I
was gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
You could have had maybe it's not about the search
for Spock, but maybe they maye like, all of a sudden,
like they're in this dire circumstance and then out of nowhere,
Spock comes in and you're like, WHOA, what the heck
happened here? And then he's got to we got to
figure out where that's at but that and that may
be one of my biggest issues. We've talked about this already,
but the fact that it's called The Search for Spock,

(01:29:15):
but there's really no searching. Like you go in thinking
that it's going to be this adventure where at the
end of the Rainbow they find Spock, but that's not
what happens. They find him in the first third of
the movie, and it's less about the search for Spock
and more about the race against time to get him
off the Genesis plane.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
The race to Spock.

Speaker 2 (01:29:36):
The race to Spock. Yeah kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
Yeah, yeah, there's no searching at all. It's like there's
no searching and oh, here's okay, I'm gonna say one
thing I liked and one thing I did.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:29:46):
One thing I liked I loved actually is when the
Enterprise returns to Space Stock and there's the gigantic lounge
windows that everyone is watching through and former Yeoman Rand
is surveying the damage and shaking her head like Jesus Christ,
what have they done this time?

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
Yeah? What have they done? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
I love that scene. Here's something I fucking hate. Robert Fletcher,
who is usually really reliable, he did the costumes for
all three of these movies, and I don't like the
costumes in the first movie, but that wasn't really his fault.
That was more Robert Wise. He comes back hard with
the admiralty uniforms in the second movie and then gives
us their civilian clothes in this What the fuck is

(01:30:26):
everyone wearing?

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
Kirk is wearing When Sarah goes to visit Kirk while
he's entertaining the rest of the crew, Kirk has this
it's like a jogging suit chop. It's like this red
or it's blue, white and gray, but it kind of
comes down like an arrow down towards his crotch and
with like red piping on the sides. It's very weird.

(01:30:51):
It's it's like sharkleet leisure.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
Yeah, that is okay. The fact that the terry cloth
material is just unusual on everybody. It makes everyone seem
like they're in an episode of The Sopranos, But more
specifically the fucking Chekhov's little Dutch boy outfit with the
giant pink collar. What is happening? I know that Robert
fless You was saying like he's trying to individualize each

(01:31:14):
of their outfits, so they have some sort of meaning
for them to clearly su lose is like kimono inspired,
and Bura has an African pattern on hers. But what
is Chekov? What is he saying about Russia there? Like
they they're fancy boys.

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
And it's a very it's an odd color too, It's
like this faded maroon color. It almost looks like it
had been washed too many times and the colors have faded.
It's a very peculiar outfit his in particular there.

Speaker 1 (01:31:40):
And that's my last word on Star Trek three.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
No, but I think my last word on it is
that it's if we're going to talk about the curse
of the odd numbered Star Trek movies, I think it's
a little unfair to characterize this as a bad movie.
It's not really a bad movie. It's not maybe not
as good as some of the even numbered movies, but
this is no way of failure. I think this is

(01:32:04):
a decent movie.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
Better than five, much.

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
Better than five. Five is the nadir. I think we
can all agree before we even get there to talk
about it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
I think it's better than Generations. I think it's better
than Insurrection.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
Wait, wait, five or three you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:32:20):
I'm talking about Star Trek Three is better than Star
Trek Part five. It's better than Star Trek Generations. It's
better than Star Trek Insurrection.

Speaker 2 (01:32:28):
I would agree with you there certainly Insurrection Generations. There's
parts of that I really like. It's hard for me
to compare those two for some reason, but.

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
There are parts of that movie that I like. I
will watch this movie beginning to end.

Speaker 2 (01:32:44):
Tough Call, tough Call, but it's certainly better than the
other ones you mentioned. It's way better, without question. It's
better than five, without question. It's better than Insurrection.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
So here's the rule for Star Trek movies. Sometimes they're
good and sometimes they're bad, which is.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
Like any franchise. We just got done talking about all
the Predator movies. Some are good, some are really bad,
some are terrific. That's what we have here. It's people
like to reduce things down to these little rules, or
these little clever rules of thumb. Don't believe it. Three
is a decent movie.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
Yeah, I really enjoyed the movie. I had a great time.
I think it's one of my favorite villains of all time.
It's set up the entire fucking Kling on Empire really,
and the fucking Sulu flips that fucking giant guy over
and tells him not to call him tiny?

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
What could be wrong with the tiny anymore? And it's
you had said this. It's the beginning of giving those
supposed ancillary characters the other members of the crew more
to do, and it we see that open up even
more with Part four. But I and I have to
assume that a lot of that is due to Nimoy's influence,

(01:33:53):
just being a storyteller and a director at that point, saying, look, people,
and he'd been to enough conventions, I'm sure or to
understand that no matter what Shatner thought of the rest
of the crew of the Enterprise being side characters, people
love these characters. People love Chekhov, Sulu and Ahura, and
they want to see them do things, do more.

Speaker 1 (01:34:16):
And I think only Nimoy could have done that, because
every other filmmaker coming into this is going to fall
into line with the same thing. People are here to
see Kirk and Spock and McCoy and that's who we're
going to focus on and focus on exclusively, and in fact,
we'll make up new characters just to support those three
characters and fuck the rest of these characters. And it's

(01:34:36):
Nemoy saying, let's give something to do for all of
my friends here who have active characters in this story.
And it continues from here on. Everyone is going to
get it at least a beat. They're not given anything
near what they're doing as characters, but at least we're
acknowledging them now.

Speaker 2 (01:34:55):
To me, it indicates it, and this is borne out
by every interview I've seen of Nemoy. This to me
indicates a lack of vanity on his part because he's
serving the story completely. I'm not necessarily going to suggest
that Shatner. We know that Shatner took lines away from
some of the other actors. He's the reason why Sulu

(01:35:17):
didn't become a captain for as long as he did,
because he made it. Memoy, there's a lot to be
He has a lot to be honored for in this
The directions solid, and the storytelling doing large part to
him is solid as well.

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
That scene between Krug and Maltz where he's describing his
planet's all close ups. Oh man, so good. Maltz, by
the way, that's John Lecat's character. What happened to Maltz,
I actually don't know, and I'd like to know, because
I know they kept him. They brought him back with them.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
So what we know is he they brought him back
up on the ship and he says something to Kirk
and Kirk says, no, I'll kill you later, and then
they take off and he tells them take Malts down
to the to the prison or whatever, and malt says, wait,
you said you would kill me, and Kirk says, I lied.

(01:36:11):
So we know that he didn't kill Malts. We just
don't know. He must have remanded him back into Klingon
custody at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:36:17):
HPN. That's what I'm saying. They took Malts with them
to fucking Vulcan, and then from Vulcan they came back
to Earth and went back in time. That is malt
still on a Vulcan or was he in the hold
of that Klingon craft the entire time in the brig?
Could they could we have a sequence where we cut
to John Larakett now and make up like in the
brig while I hear whales, I think someone want to

(01:36:40):
let me he's in.

Speaker 2 (01:36:42):
The brig as they're bringing this transparent aluminum that's surrounding him.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
What is he like?

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
What is Scott? He's like, don't you worry, It's fine,
You'll be fine. And then they fill it up with
water and he's just.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
Whale food at that point, Guys, I don't think that's
made for this. That's not gonna hold.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):
Oh my god, Oh I cannot wait now, I can't
wait to talk about Part four. We get some topics here,
good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
Long live months. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thank you
for joining us here for our latest Star trek fyt
Star trek Fay. Of course, what's going to happen next?
Star Trek four The Voyage Home Voyd. Yeah, the part
of the part three of the Genesis trilogy. We're all
going to forget about number one, tend it started with
two until that hpre Where can be to find you?

(01:37:28):
If they're looking for you?

Speaker 2 (01:37:29):
I co host The Night mister Walters, a taxi podcast
with you, fatherm Alone.

Speaker 1 (01:37:34):
Oh yeah, that's right, that's right. For light is involved,
So come on over Trekkers. Trekkers and not the derisive trekkies.

Speaker 2 (01:37:45):
Actually, be ause I pushed my glasses up on my
forehead here, So yeah, I host that with bottom alone here.
I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast. At some
point I'll get to it and then I also have
a band camp site Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:38:03):
As for me, you're listening to it here. That's Midnight
doing Falling Malone's weekly round Up every Monday or Sunday,
and regular show the anthology podcast every Friday. In fact,
by the time this comes out, we've had a change.
It's just me and Mike White now doing the anthology podcast.
We're looking at the hammer House of Horrors, the British

(01:38:24):
horrorse anthology series from the early nineteen eighties. Check us
out over there on Fridays or one of the fests
that are always going on. Until then, we'll leave you
with a bit from Star Trek three. Here we go.

Speaker 7 (01:38:39):
Speak great power to all dominate.

Speaker 6 (01:38:48):
Speak impressive. They can make a planet. Oh yes, new cities,
homes and the country.

Speaker 1 (01:38:57):
Your woman at your.

Speaker 5 (01:38:58):
Side, children play at your feet and overhead, fluttering in
the breeze, the flag of the Federation, charming station.

Speaker 6 (01:39:08):
Yes, my mod, share this with no one under start,
my lord, we are going to this planet.

Speaker 7 (01:39:21):
Even as I am a serious negotiate for peace with
the Federation. We will act with the preservation of our race.
We will seize the secret of this weapon, the secret
of wilcom and power success.

Speaker 4 (01:39:37):
My Lord