Red Letter Media

[TouchFluffyTail]

As promised, the hackfrauds got to it

 

[McMitch]

Ninja’d

 

[Mola Ram]

As promised, the hackfrauds got to it

Less than 3 minutes in and Rich says it's his favorite Trek movie. Ah well.

Nonetheless, this was immensely more interesting than the previous effort with Canada Jim. Chronicling all the revisions to the different versions of the movie, enlarging on what exactly they like about it. I still say they give it far too much credit for being the only Trek film to really attempt a Trek story, because the execution is just so limp. And yes, it's better than Abrams slops.

Kind of curious to see if they'll ever do Wrath of Khan, because Rich is sort of correct in that it set a lot of bad precedents. I say "sort of" because I don't think it was so much "bad precedents" as it was executives learning the wrong lessons, as is so often the case.

 

[mlanguishi]

I have one interesting thing I noticed growing up with TMP. It seemed whenever I was sick with a fever or flu it would be on this local channel late at night. It's already like a fever dream on its own but actually being all loopy and trying to watch it is a real trip, cause it seems to go even longer and slower somehow. Like doze off a half hour or so and it's still basically the same scene going on.

I don't look back on it as fondly as 2-4 and 6, but it's still a good watch.

Somehow there's still some really funny details they point out in this video after all this time, good one.

 

[AvonHertz]

I'd like to see Mike and Rich Re-View every TOS movie. I'd enjoy hearing their insights on them.

 

[Mola Ram]

I'd like to see Mike and Rich Re-View every TOS movie. I'd enjoy hearing their insights on them.

Rich's take on Voyage Home sounds like it could be interesting. He's not wrong that it's a gimmick, but it's an extremely well executed one, with some of the best ensemble work the original cast ever did on the big screen. And Mike is correct in that it's a gonzo science fiction plot that you're not likely to see from a big studio today. Also, I'd love to hear their take on how close the movie came to being a comedy starring Eddie Murphy (and nearly written by Harlan Ellison!).

 

[NomineNemo]

Rich's take on Voyage Home sounds like it could be interesting. He's not wrong that it's a gimmick, but it's an extremely well executed one, with some of the best ensemble work the original cast ever did on the big screen. And Mike is correct in that it's a gonzo science fiction plot that you're not likely to see from a big studio today. Also, I'd love to hear their take on how close the movie came to being a comedy starring Eddie Murphy (and nearly written by Harlan Ellison!).

It is a gimmick and it is oddly close to the feel of some classic TOS episodes...the sort of ones where they find a box of costumes and decide to make a filler episode with space nazis or shit like that.

I used to love that movie as a child but the older I get the more I assume that they embezzled 95% of the budget and just took a vacation in San Fran for a couple of days shooting random shots.

It just seems like such a lazy movie. 'Oh wow! Look at the Future People act like a bunch of stupid fish out of water for an hour and we can slap some schlocky sci-fi plot on both ends and call it a day!' The sort of movie that just spins it's wheels and wastes your time.

Strange how time changes your view of things. My opinion of The Final Frontier has inverted as well. Where once I hated the thought of watching it, I now think that it is a mighty fine Star Trek movie that feels like it came from the pages of TOS...mostly.

 

[Mola Ram]

It is a gimmick and it is oddly close to the feel of some classic TOS episodes...the sort of ones where they find a box of costumes and decide to make a filler episode with space nazis or shit like that.

I used to love that movie as a child but the older I get the more I assume that they embezzled 95% of the budget and just took a vacation in San Fran for a couple of days shooting random shots.

It just seems like such a lazy movie. 'Oh wow! Look at the Future People act like a bunch of stupid fish out of water for an hour and we can slap some schlocky sci-fi plot on both ends and call it a day!' The sort of movie that just spins it's wheels and wastes your time.

Strange how time changes your view of things. My opinion of The Final Frontier has inverted as well. Where once I hated the thought of watching it, I now think that it is a mighty fine Star Trek movie that feels like it came from the pages of TOS...mostly.

I dunno. I still enjoy it, though it's not my favorite (and where TMP has risen in your estimation, so Search for Spock has risen in mine) and I think there's something to be said for a lighter outing following the two very grim preceding chapters. Also, while filming in San Fran certainly helped the budget, I don't think you can really consider embezzlement when there are some genuinely impressive effects shots around the arrival of the probe, and the animatronic whales were convincing enough to get a nastygram from Greenpeace.

If you want to shit on the movie, shit on it for its hamfisted environmental messaging ("Who ever said the human race was logical?", fuck you, lady from Child's Play.)

Also, it occupies a special place for being one of the main reasons TNG got greenlit.

 

[Travoltron]

there are some genuinely impressive effects shots

Yes, getting Shatner's toupee to stay on in those underwater shots. I still have no idea how that was done.

 

[mandatorylurk]

I'm not a Star Trek guy but I enjoy them talking about it because you can tell they love it and I've known the franchise forever because of it's cultural legacy. I do watch the all the Plinkett TNG movie reviews (the HD versions that guy did) almost yearly. So if they would do Kirk Trek movies in earnest it would be fun, because it always messes with my head Star Wars came out before Movie 1.

 

[AvonHertz]

My favorite Trek movie usually rotates between The Wrath of Khan or The Voyage Home depending on what mood I'm in, I love them both. I used to not like TMP much until ironically enough their original Re-View of it with Canadian Jim. The way they described it finally made it click with me which Rich further elaborated on. I went in expecting TOS but in movie form when it's more of a slight deconstruction that by the end feels like what I was wanting. I'd mainly like to hear their thoughts on The Final Frontier. I know it's one of the weaker entries but there is something about it that has me revisiting it.

 

[khaine]

I do love most of the TOS movies (2,3,4 & 6). I think my favourite is probably 6.

 

[Prester John]

I do love most of the TOS movies (2,3,4 & 6). I think my favourite is probably 6.

3 is the most underrated IMO. 1 has always had its fans because it's the most "Star Trek" of the movies.

 

[moocow]

3 is the most underrated IMO. 1 has always had its fans because it's the most "Star Trek" of the movies.

3 had some real balls, depicting Enterprise limping home from the events of TWoK, being condemned to decommissioning, getting stolen again by her old crew who -- as far as we know until the end of IV -- are collectively destroying their careers on a last-ditch effort to save a friend, being flown (sorely under-manned) into unexpected combat, getting her ass kicked as expected after a hope spot, and then finally being sacrificed to buy a chance to escape a hell world (her last moments spent counting down the seconds to the invading Klingon bridge crew's doom, and burning up in said hell world's atmosphere).

The film really did a lot of risky shit looking back at it now. Spock gets laid (and knocks up Saavik while he's as it, though this was only revealed in a deleted scene in IV), McCoy goes nuts, Kirk's son gets killed, a Klingon gunner is murdered by his (rogue) captain for making too good a kill shot, the Enterprise is actually destroyed (everyone "knew" it would be yet another "last minute close call," right up until we all heard Kruge screaming at his boarding party to get back off the ship) and burns up falling out of orbit, and the crew (having successfully recovered the resurrected but instinct-only body of their lost comrade) winds up hijacking a Klingon ship to escape to Vulcan to try to restore their comrade's personality from a wetware tape backup jammed inside McCoy's head).

Not to mention literally everyone in the main cast betrays Starfleet in a career-killing, criminal way (Scotty sabotages a transwarp prototype (arguably setting warp theory research by humanity back decades), Uhura holds an underling at gunpoint while allowing the rest of the crew to steal the Enterprise, Sulu beats the shit out of Starfleet security officers to help break McCoy out of jail, McCoy for his part openly talks shit about a supposedly "forbidden" subject in public, including to an admiral whom he assaults trying to escape, Chekov monitors (and scrambles) comms to interfere with efforts to stop their escape or pursue them, and of course Kirk masterminds stealing the ship and running straight to a politically (and physically) volatile planet and breaking quarantine to do it, and caps it off by destroying the ship when it can't carry him any further).

I remember seeing people wiping tears away in the theater as Enterprise' destroyed hull burned up as it re-entered Genesis' atmosphere while Kirk & company stood on a mountaintop watching helplessly. "My God Bones, what have I done?" "What you had to do. What you always do -- turn death into a fighting chance to live."

Lots of really nice touches throughout the film too that you don't necessarily notice on a first viewing that suggest the cast & crew actually gave a shit about the story. Captain Styles (Excelsior's captain) bragging to Scotty that they're going to smash Enterprise's speed records soon, prompting Scotty to insult the ship's turbolift and start plucking chips from the transwarp drive computer. An underling taunting Uhura about how her career is "winding down," only to have a phaser shoved in his face a minute later and being asked "got the adrenaline running now, boy?" Kruge's gunner "accidentally" destroying USS Grissom early on in the film calling it a "lucky shot" to his captain, who kills him for his trouble. McCoy fucking up a Vulcan nerve pinch and being treated like a senile old man by an uncaring Starfleet security goon over it. Chekov responding to Kirk's admonitions that they don't have to continue on with them by pointing out he's wasting valuable escape time, and his "oh shit" face when he hears Kirk order the ship's computer to begin the auto-destruct countdown and sees him look expectantly towards him for his concurring voice authorization. Kirk responding to a whiny Klingon's bemoaning being captured -- "I do not deserve to live" -- with a simple "fine I'll kill you later." Lots of great moments.

Even pre-faggotry George Takei's Sulu gets a good few moments -- "don't call me 'tiny,'" smashing a security monitoring panel to screw with Starfleet security as they escaped, accurately picking out the Bird of Prey out of the visual muck on the view screen while it's still cloaked before attacking them, and quickly scrambling (with Scotty) trying to figure out how the fuck to fly that same ship out of harm's way once they steal it.

For a low-budget film nobody really expected to be any good (it was widely perceived as an "oh fuck we dun goofed" followup to Paramount's decision to kill Spock in the previous film and therefore expected to be hot garbage), they really did a good job cranking out something that was actually entertaining to watch.

They never destroyed another iconic Starfleet ship in the TOS films after that, and the choice to destroy the Enterprise-D in Generations was so unpopular they made a hail Mary plot out of "resurrecting" it to try to salvage Star Trek Picard. The TNG movies made a habit of beating up the Enterprise-E but apart from the first ten minutes of First Contact they never even used that ship properly in those films. NuTrek just treats Enterprise like a prop and is so fucking boring overall that nobody gave a shit (not even the crew, lol) when they destroyed it in the first few minutes of the third NuTrek film.

3 was definitely way too underrated.

 

[Mola Ram]

3 had some real balls, depicting Enterprise limping home from the events of TWoK, being condemned to decommissioning, getting stolen again by her old crew who -- as far as we know until the end of IV -- are collectively destroying their careers on a last-ditch effort to save a friend, being flown (sorely under-manned) into unexpected combat, getting her ass kicked as expected after a hope spot, and then finally being sacrificed to buy a chance to escape a hell world (her last moments spent counting down the seconds to the invading Klingon bridge crew's doom, and burning up in said hell world's atmosphere).

The film really did a lot of risky shit looking back at it now. Spock gets laid (and knocks up Saavik while he's as it, though this was only revealed in a deleted scene in IV), McCoy goes nuts, Kirk's son gets killed, a Klingon gunner is murdered by his (rogue) captain for making too good a kill shot, the Enterprise is actually destroyed (everyone "knew" it would be yet another "last minute close call," right up until we all heard Kruge screaming at his boarding party to get back off the ship) and burns up falling out of orbit, and the crew (having successfully recovered the resurrected but instinct-only body of their lost comrade) winds up hijacking a Klingon ship to escape to Vulcan to try to restore their comrade's personality from a wetware tape backup jammed inside McCoy's head).

Not to mention literally everyone in the main cast betrays Starfleet in a career-killing, criminal way (Scotty sabotages a transwarp prototype (arguably setting warp theory research by humanity back decades), Uhura holds an underling at gunpoint while allowing the rest of the crew to steal the Enterprise, Sulu beats the shit out of Starfleet security officers to help break McCoy out of jail, McCoy for his part openly talks shit about a supposedly "forbidden" subject in public, including to an admiral whom he assaults trying to escape, Chekov monitors (and scrambles) comms to interfere with efforts to stop their escape or pursue them, and of course Kirk masterminds stealing the ship and running straight to a politically (and physically) volatile planet and breaking quarantine to do it, and caps it off by destroying the ship when it can't carry him any further).

I remember seeing people wiping tears away in the theater as Enterprise' destroyed hull burned up as it re-entered Genesis' atmosphere while Kirk & company stood on a mountaintop watching helplessly. "My God Bones, what have I done?" "What you had to do. What you always do -- turn death into a fighting chance to live."

Lots of really nice touches throughout the film too that you don't necessarily notice on a first viewing that suggest the cast & crew actually gave a shit about the story. Captain Styles (Excelsior's captain) bragging to Scotty that they're going to smash Enterprise's speed records soon, prompting Scotty to insult the ship's turbolift and start plucking chips from the transwarp drive computer. An underling taunting Uhura about how her career is "winding down," only to have a phaser shoved in his face a minute later and being asked "got the adrenaline running now, boy?" Kruge's gunner "accidentally" destroying USS Grissom early on in the film calling it a "lucky shot" to his captain, who kills him for his trouble. McCoy fucking up a Vulcan nerve pinch and being treated like a senile old man by an uncaring Starfleet security goon over it. Chekov responding to Kirk's admonitions that they don't have to continue on with them by pointing out he's wasting valuable escape time, and his "oh shit" face when he hears Kirk order the ship's computer to begin the auto-destruct countdown and sees him look expectantly towards him for his concurring voice authorization. Kirk responding to a whiny Klingon's bemoaning being captured -- "I do not deserve to live" -- with a simple "fine I'll kill you later." Lots of great moments.

Even pre-faggotry George Takei's Sulu gets a good few moments -- "don't call me 'tiny,'" smashing a security monitoring panel to screw with Starfleet security as they escaped, accurately picking out the Bird of Prey out of the visual muck on the view screen while it's still cloaked before attacking them, and quickly scrambling (with Scotty) trying to figure out how the fuck to fly that same ship out of harm's way once they steal it.

For a low-budget film nobody really expected to be any good (it was widely perceived as an "oh fuck we dun goofed" followup to Paramount's decision to kill Spock in the previous film and therefore expected to be hot garbage), they really did a good job cranking out something that was actually entertaining to watch.

They never destroyed another iconic Starfleet ship in the TOS films after that, and the choice to destroy the Enterprise-D in Generations was so unpopular they made a hail Mary plot out of "resurrecting" it to try to salvage Star Trek Picard. The TNG movies made a habit of beating up the Enterprise-E but apart from the first ten minutes of First Contact they never even used that ship properly in those films. NuTrek just treats Enterprise like a prop and is so fucking boring overall that nobody gave a shit (not even the crew, lol) when they destroyed it in the first few minutes of the third NuTrek film.

3 was definitely way too underrated.

There are a few things about 3 that don't work that I think keep it from reaching the heights of 2 or people regarding it as highly as 4. Mostly IMO it's that what's happening to the Genesis Planet doesn't make any kind of sense, and the explanation for it is a Treknobabble throwaway line that can be completely missed if you happen to have stepped out when it's delivered. This is sort of understandable, in that Starfleet suddenly having a functional instant planeteering tool on the level of Magrathea from Hitchhiker's Guide would have been a gamechanger to the setting that was probably not worth dealing with, but getting rid of it could have been handled more deftly and more entertainingly. I think there was also some resistance to Saavik being recast with Robin Curtis, who was not as good in the part as Kirstie Alley.

But everything you mentioned elevates the movie way above its reputation.

 

[mlanguishi]

3 was always the ugly duckling of the early TOS movies but I'm glad to see some love for it more lately. There's some clunky moments and general decisions, but there's some of the best TOS movie scenes too. The Enterprise stealing scene has some of the best visual and score of any of them. The Grissom's intro flyby is so simple but is such a well done shot too, Kirk's reaction to David's death is top 3 Shatner moments in anything, and sometimes I think #1. The destruction of the Enterprise is a powerful scene and it's something Star Wars couldn't even do, like if they'd gone ahead and destroyed the Falcon at the end of ROTJ.

And final shots with Kirk and Spock and the line:
“Because the Needs of the One . . . Outweigh the Needs of the Many.”
is such a great twist of the line in a way that makes sense, unlike Into Darkness nonsense of twisting Kirk/Spock's death and just reversing the lines. The Genesis scenes themselves are a bit clunky, the sets are cheap for some reason and the pacing is weird. Otherwise, I think there's a good argument to be made that it's superior to 4 and about equal to 6.

 

[moocow]

There are a few things about 3 that don't work that I think keep it from reaching the heights of 2 or people regarding it as highly as 4. Mostly IMO it's that what's happening to the Genesis Planet doesn't make any kind of sense, and the explanation for it is a Treknobabble throwaway line that can be completely missed if you happen to have stepped out when it's delivered. This is sort of understandable, in that Starfleet suddenly having a functional instant planeteering tool on the level of Magrathea from Hitchhiker's Guide would have been a gamechanger to the setting that was probably not worth dealing with, but getting rid of it could have been handled more deftly and more entertainingly. I think there was also some resistance to Saavik being recast with Robin Curtis, who was not as good in the part as Kirstie Alley.

But everything you mentioned elevates the movie way above its reputation.

Yeah. Genesis was definitely the film's weakest element. Of course, they needed some kind of phlebotinum to bring Spock back, since Star Trek TWoK went to great lengths to make it clear he was fuckin' dead for real -- cooked him in reactor radiation runoff, stuffed his dead body into a torpedo shell and launched it to (deliberately) crash land on an experimentally-created planet that didn't exist 24 hours prior.

I think if they'd kept "protomatter" out of it and just described the planet as breaking up because it was formed by the Genesis device "detonating" in a nebula instead of on an existing planet (i.e. it wasn't designed to create new planets whole cloth out of the gasses of a nebula and the smoldering remains of a clamped-out Miranda class starship, but rather to reform an existing planet into something more useful) things might have made more sense.

Robin Curtis did okay as Saavik IMHO. They just didn't give her a whole lot to work with apart from banging Spock and tard-wrangling David. Kirstie Alley would have been fun to see reprise the role though.

 

[Mola Ram]

TWoK went to great lengths to make it clear he was fuckin' dead for real -- cooked him in reactor radiation runoff, stuffed his dead body into a torpedo shell and launched it to (deliberately) crash land on an experimentally-created planet that didn't exist 24 hours prior.

And yet they make it a point of showing the torpedo/coffin survived reentry, and the whole "Remember" thing is a real scene in 2 and not a retcon. So even with Nimoy in full on "I am not Spock" mode, they left themselves an out.

 

[Tablet County]

There are a few things about 3 that don't work that I think keep it from reaching the heights of 2 or people regarding it as highly as 4. Mostly IMO it's that what's happening to the Genesis Planet doesn't make any kind of sense, and the explanation for it is a Treknobabble throwaway line that can be completely missed if you happen to have stepped out when it's delivered. This is sort of understandable, in that Starfleet suddenly having a functional instant planeteering tool on the level of Magrathea from Hitchhiker's Guide would have been a gamechanger to the setting that was probably not worth dealing with, but getting rid of it could have been handled more deftly and more entertainingly. I think there was also some resistance to Saavik being recast with Robin Curtis, who was not as good in the part as Kirstie Alley.

But everything you mentioned elevates the movie way above its reputation.

One of the other things that keeps 3 from being more beloved is that it's coming off of Wrath of Khan. "No shit" I hear you say, but I mean in the sense that Doc Brown Klingon isn't quite as compelling a villain as Khan was and it makes the whole "you Klingon bastards killed my son" thing feel a little limp.
3 does have one of my favorite leave-it-in moments; the part where Kirk learns his son's been killed, Shatner was supposed to fall back into his chair but he missed the mark and hits the floor instead, and it works so much better.

 

[Mola Ram]

One of the other things that keeps 3 from being more beloved is that it's coming off of Wrath of Khan. "No shit" I hear you say, but I mean in the sense that Doc Brown Klingon isn't quite as compelling a villain as Khan was.

This is almost certainly going to be one of the "bad precedents" Rich was talking about. One of the things they seemed to take from the success of Wrath of Khan was that "Star Trek needs a villain," which it absolutely does not. Kurge was the first of a whole host of imitators, none of whom lived up to Khan mostly because only Khan had that personal backstory with Kirk that made him so obsessed. I think it's one of the reasons 4 works -- they knew the story didn't need a mustache twirling bad guy. Weirdly enough, 5 tried to subvert the idea, as Sybok is much more misguided and wrongheaded than he is villainous ... but 5 has so many problems I doubt anyone noticed. General Chang in 6 works because he stands in for the war-hungry Klingon faction as a whole, and of course Christopher Plummer is always fun to watch.

But then you get Soran, the Borg Queen, the absurd F. Murray Abraham, and finally Shinzon, who's probably the nadir of Trek villains. The antagonists JJ Abrams burped up were even worse.