Star Trek III: The Search for Spock picks up where Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan left off, after the defeat of Khan and the creation of the Genesis planet. In fact, the film opens by repeating the death of Spock scene. It also recycles the Genesis effect computer graphics from the previous film, mostly because in 1984 this was still an amazing piece of graphics.

The movie proper opens with the Enterprise limping back to Earth after the events of the previous film. On the way, McCoy is caught breaking into Spock’s quarters and acting bizarrely. We cut to a space rendezvous between a merchant ship and a Klingon Bird-of-Prey warship. Valkris, a Klingon woman aboard the merchant ship, transmits data on Genesis to Kruge, the captain of the Bird-of-Prey, who then promptly blows the other ship out of the sky, with a bittersweet adieu to Valkris for her spy work. Kruge decides to go to Genesis to learn the secret of this planet-destroying weapon. Kruge is played by Christopher “one point twenty-one jiggawatts” Lloyd, which adds touches of both coolness and oddity to the character.

On Earth, McCoy continues acting weird, making out-of-context references to Vulcan and collapsing. Spock’s father Sarek visits Kirk and engages in a cross-purposes berating of Kirk for failing Spock. The confusion is only cleared up when Sarek mind melds with Kirk, then explains that Spock would have tried to meld with someone before he died, to transfer his consciousness, or katra, to them so it could live on in their body. Kirk points out Spock was isolated in the radiation chamber, then reviews log tapes of the incident, spotting Spock touching McCoy and whispering the word, “Remember.” Sarek tells Kirk they have to get McCoy and Spock’s body to Vulcan as fast as possible or he will die.

And here’s the plot hole in the film. Kirk appeals to Admiral Morrow to get back Enterprise, but Morrow refuses because Genesis is a “political hot potato”. It looks like Kirk never explained that McCoy’s life was in danger, and there was no diplomatic word from Sarek to assist in the request. And the USS Grissom is out there surveying Genesis anyway, what’s one more ship going to do?! On board the Grissom are Saavik and David. Saavik is very disappointingly not played by Kirstie Alley, but by wooden newcomer Robin Curtis. Kruge appears and unceremoniously blows the Grissom out of the sky, with only Saavik and David surviving, doing a survey on the planet and its incredibly fake cacti and snow. They find it’s unstable, because David cut corners in the research (remind anyone of his father and the Kobayashi Maru?). They also find Spock’s torpedo tube, distressingly empty except for some giant mutated rubber worm things, which David says must have been mutated by the Genesis effect.

Back on Earth, Kirk decides to screw the rules and do what’s right, arranging with Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty to steal the Enterprise and take McCoy to Genesis then Vulcan. This is a cool sequence in which they sneak around and outsmart an unlikeable smug captain in charge of the new, faster Excelsior by having Scotty steal the space-spark-plugs. At Genesis, David and Saavik have found Spock’s body, regenerated by the Genesis effect into a mind-blanked young boy, who ages rapidly. He goes thorough pon-farr and Saavik tries to ease this by stroking his fingers in the same way that Sarek and Amanda did to demonstrate their love back in “Journey To Babel”. Hmmm. A Klingon landing party soon find them and take them prisoner.

The Enterprise arrives and there is a brief space battle in which both ships are damaged. Kruge demands Kirk surrender and hand over the Genesis device, or he will kill prisoners. Kirk tries to delay, but Kruge has one of this flunkies kill a prisoner. David interferes and gets the knife himself, sending Kirk into a rage. He says he’s surrendering, sets the Enterprise to self-destruct, and beams down to Genesis. The Klingon boarding party are blown up as the Enterprise destructs. I always figured the Enterprise would self-destruct by breaching the antimatter containment thingy, resulting in an enormous explosion that vapourises the entire ship instantly. But no, the front half of the saucer sort of blows up, leaving the rest of the ship – including the engines and the engineering section – intact. (Supposedly canon says there are two different self-destruct modes: this one, and the full-on antimatter explosion. Kirk happened to choose the milder version, so as not to destroy the Klingon ship and their only potential means of escape.) It then forms a fireball as it falls from orbit, watched by the stunned crew. It’s an emotional moment, and I vividly recall watching this scene in horror in the cinema when the film was first released.

They find the Klingons and Saavik and Spock. Kruge beams down to engage Kirk in a clifftop fistfight, in which Kirk kicks Kruge off the cliff and he falls into lava as the planet breaks up. Kirk tricks the last Klingon crew member into beaming him up and takes control of the Klingon ship. They fly it to Vulcan, where a ceremony restores Spock’s consciousness from McCoy into the regenerated body of Spock. Spock is naturally a bit shaken by being split in half, killed, regenerated, and recombined, but the film ends in a feel-good scene when he recognises his friends. And the adventure continues…

EDIT: Oh, I suppose I should add my opinions on this film. Well, it’s not terrible, but it’s not great either. The biggest emotional impact comes from the destruction of the Enterprise (by which time it’s pretty clear that Spock would be coming back to life). Lloyd as Kruge is good. The sets and props are not great, particularly the fake looking scenery on the Genesis planet and the rubber worms which Kruge strangles. Curtis as Saavik is disappointing and stiff. The stealing of the Enterprise sequence is very cool. Overall… eh… middling.

Tropes: Face Death With Dignity, Our Souls Are Different, Sharing A Body, Obstructive Bureaucrat, The Other Darrin, Screw the Rules, I’m Doing What’s Right, Smug Snake, Vehicular Sabotage, Stolen MacGufin Reveal, Back From The Dead, Rapid Aging, Heroic Sacrifice, Self-Destruct Mechanism, Disney Villain Death, Lethal Lava Land, And The Adventure Continues.
Body count: Valkris and all on board merchant ship (destroyed by Klingon Bird-of-Prey), All hands on board USS Grissom, Klingon gunner (shot by Kruge), David (stabbed by a Klingon), various Klingon crew (blown up on board Enterprise), Klingon crewman (shot by Kirk), Kruge (falls off cliff), USS Enterprise (self destruct).

Ah, now here we have something. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is what really drove me to continue this series of reviews into the films. It is widely regarded as the best of the original cast Star Trek films. Watching it again, I am reminded forcefully why this is the case.

Although, the music over the credits is nowhere near as memorable as the music from the first movie. Perhaps just because that music was later used for The Next Generation, whereas this one still sounds unfamiliar (despite me having seen the movie multiple times). The opening scene makes up for it though, with the new character Saavik apparently in command of the Enterprise, in the now-famous Kobayashi Maru simulation. The impressive 1980s computer graphics are no match for the young Kirstie Alley, who bravely orders the ship into the Klingon Neutral Zone (the lesser known cousin of the more famous Romulan Neutral Zone, which is probably why we haven’t ever heard of it before now). In the simulated attack, Spock “dies”, prompting Kirk’s witty, “Aren’t you dead?” line a bit later when they meet. That’s an interesting bit of foreshadowing I hadn’t really noticed before.

We then get to see Kirk’s apartment, with a gorgeous view overlooking San Francisco Bay. The crew arrive to celebrate his birthday, and we learn that Kirk apparently has a fondness for antiques – something that somehow eluded our perception in three years of episodes. McCoy gives him a pair of eyeglasses, which Kirk has to amusingly ask what they are. Spock gives Kirk an antique edition of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, from which Kirk reads the opening lines.

Meanwhile, Chekov is on the USS Reliant, surveying planets to find a dead world for testing of the mysterious Genesis project. He and Captain Terrell check out Ceti Alpha VI, beaming down to check out some weird sensor readings. They find a shipwreck, sending Chekov into a panic when he discovers the nameplate Botany Bay. But it’s too late to escape, as one of the most awesome dramatic reveals in cinema history occurs. The cloth-swathed figure who captures them is slowly revealed (to the best music of the movie) to be none other than Khan, last seen in the episode “Space Seed“, in which Kirk stranded the genetic superman and his followers on Ceti Alpha V. It turns out there was a planetary catastrophe soon afterwards, disrupting the orbits and rendering Ceti Alpha V almost uninhabitable (and now apparently the 6th planet out). Khan’s wife died, and now he wants nothing but revenge on Kirk.

Khan sticks nasty parasites into Chekov and Terrell’s ears; the parasites’ mental influence gives him command over them. He uses this to capture the Reliant, go to and destroy the Genesis research base, and then ambush Kirk when he arrives to investigate what’s going on. Kirk is led there by a call from Genesis lead scientist (and old flame) Carol Marcus, when Khan makes her believe that Kirk ordered the civilian project turned over to Starfleet. To explain Genesis to Spock, McCoy, and the audience, Kirk plays a classified recording or Carol presenting the research proposal. We are treated to stunningly impressive computer graphics for 1982 (they look dated now, but it was genuinely mind-blowing then), showing the “Genesis effect” transforming a dead rocky planet at the molecular level into one primed to support life. As McCoy points out, it could also be used to wipe out an entire populated planet.

When Kirk arrives at the research station, Khan is ready, and cripples the Enterprise with a pre-emptive attack. Kirk pulls a trick to deactivate Reliant‘s shields and get a shot in, and the two ships withdraw. Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik check the research station and find dead scientists, barely alive Chekov and Terrell, and a transporter recently set to beam inside the nearby asteroid. Spock on board the Enterprise reports the transporters have died and Kirk asks how long until they are repaired. In a transparent piece of codespeak, Spock tells Kirk “hours would seem like days” and that they will be ready in two days. It’s kind of clever, since they know Khan will be listening in, but it’s a bit of a plothole that Khan (a genius, remember) can’t decipher the real meaning of this message.

In the meantime, the landing party beams down inside the asteroid, finding a hollowed chamber. Carol’s son David attacks Kirk, thinking he’s behind the attack, but she calls him off. Chekov and Terrell reveal they are still under Khan’s mental command, and contact Khan, who beams up the Genesis device. Terrell kills a redshirt scientist who tries to jump him, then fights off the parasite’s influence and turns the phaser on himself. Chekov collapses and McCoy tends to him. Carol explains to Kirk that David is his son, and then they reveal an enormous cave in the asteroid, terraformed by Genesis. On cue, two hours later, Spock beams them aboard and the final showdown with Khan commences.

The Enterprise limps to the Mutara Nebula, which clouds ship’s sensors and gives them an even chance against the less damaged Reliant. Khan again plays against his alleged genius intellect by famously thinking “two dimensionally” as Spock points out. Kirk commands the recovered Chekov to pilot the Enterprise down, and they manage to get behind Khan this way and deliver a killing blow. Khan decides to take Kirk with him, activating the Genesis device in a ploy to convert the entire nebula and everything within it into a new planet. The Enterprise can’t get out without warp drive, and the engines can’t be fixed because of radiation flooding the engine chamber.

Unknown to Kirk, Spock races down the engineering. McCoy tries to stop him entering the chamber, but Spock nerve pinches him, then in an odd move grips the unconscious McCoy in the Vulcan mind meld grip and whispers, “Remember.” Spock then enters the chamber and performs the necessary repairs, allowing the ship to escape in the nick of time as the nebula implodes. Kirk breathes a sigh of relief, interrupted as he notices Spock is not on the bridge and by McCoy calling from engineering and saying to get down there. Kirk arrives in time for poignant last words as Spock dies on the other side of the clear radiation screen. After a moving funeral, they shoot his body into space in a torpedo casing over the new Genesis planet, presumably to burn up in re-entry.

In the denouement, David and Kirk come to terms with their relationship. Then on the bridge, Kirk quotes the ending lines of A Tale of Two Cities, bookending this literary reference to Spock’s sacrifice to save his friends. The final shot is of the Genesis planet, on which we see Spock’s torpedo tube, apparently soft-landed. The famous “Space, the final frontier” speech is then delivered for the first time in the franchise by Leonard Nimoy.

The revenge theme is what drives this film. And despite the more obvious use of A Tale of Two Cities, it is another book that forms the core of the film. As Chekov and Terrell are surveying the wreck of the Botany bay, we see a copy of Moby-Dick on a shelf. Khan is Captain Ahab, and Kirk is his white whale. The parallels are deliberately played up, including the final showdown game of cat and mouse in the Mutara Nebula between the Enterprise and Khan’s captured Reliant that echoes battle on the high seas. Khan’s last words are even a direct quote of Ahab’s. And in a piece of coincidence that couldn’t have been better if it was engineered, Ceti Alpha is the brightest star in the constellation of Cetus – the whale.

This film is so much better than Star Trek: The Motion Picture, in so many ways. The villain is more accessible, more real, more threatening, more of an actual villain. There’s real conflict. There’s more emotionally involving backstory, as Kirk faces up to old age, and to his past. There’s a young Kirstie Alley. There’s more quotable dialogue. There’s more intense drama and tension. There’s Starfleet uniforms that actually look good. I’ve seen some reports floating around the net that this used to be generally considered the best original cast Star Trek film, but that nowadays many people prefer VI: The Undiscovered Country. I went into this viewing open-minded, knowing I’d be reviewing both films eventually. But watching it again just makes me more certain that this one is the best. By far.

Tropes: Naive Newcomer, Unwinnable Training Simulation, Sealed Evil In A Can, Bus Crash, Best Served Cold, Orifice Invasion, Puppeteer Parasite, Technology Porn, Genesis Effect, Creating Life, Doomsday Device, Cryptic Conversation, Luke, You Are My Father, Ham To Ham Combat, Space Clouds, 2-D Space, Taking You With Me, Heroic Sacrifice, Outrun The Fireball, Anyone Can Die, Whole Plot Reference, Space Is An Ocean.
Body count: Peter Preston (killed in initial attack on Enterprise), 5+ scientists (killed by Khan’s mob), 1 scientist (phasered by Captain Terrell), Captain Terrell (phasers self), Joachim (victim of Kirk’s attack on Reliant), Khan (Genesis explosion), all Khan’s followers (Genesis explosion or final attack), Spock (selfless sacrifice).