Director: Nicholas Meyer
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Ricardo Montalbán
Have I Seen it Before: Hoo, boy. Long established in my family lore is the screening my mother went to at a second-run theater in the summer of 1984. As the USS Reliant exploded in a wave of the Genesis Effect, I—a learned elder, as far as fetuses were concerned—decided to give my ma a bit of a break and cut it out with the kicking and whatnot. It’s entirely possible that while some babies were exposed to classical music or the neurosis and bitterness of their parents in utero, I absorbed the bombastic score of James Horner and the sneering villainy of Khan Noonien Singh (Montalbán) as the foundation of my very being.
The first time I remember watching the movie while sentient was on a feeble VHS copy. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old and spent the rest of the day giddily recounting the plot to anyone who would listen. This time, my poor suffering mother got the raw end of the deal and had to hear a ten-year-old’s impression of a Ceti eel.
During this particular screening, I was able to lip sync every line of dialogue. I even felt the need to argue with several of the trivia questions before the feature presentation. Because they were wrong.
Yes. I’ve seen it a couple of times.
Did I Like It: At one point after the nadir of Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and the particularly wheel-spinning seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, I wondered quietly whether I actually didn’t care much for Star Trek at all, but was so in love with this film that I was willing to give every other entry in the series a pass because it shared some basic elements with this film.
It is a thrilling story, told at a breakneck pace that still manages to let smaller character moments have their due time. It is about friendship, and aging, and revenge, and sacrifice, and living the first, best destiny you know in your bones. It is told with a startling simplicity that allows fully-steeped fans and newcomers alike to delight in the proceedings. Any time I am trying to create a story on my own, I’m reaching for an experience somewhere in the vicinity of this film.
It is not only my favorite Star Trek film, it is certainly one of my favorite movies of all time. It may be my favorite film of all time, although I tend to blanche at ranking these things so precisely.
Every time I see the film, I notice something new. During this particular screening I noticed that Chekov (Walter Koenig) is not seen on screen after purging himself of the Ceti eel without cotton in his bloodied ear. Also, somehow I had never put together that the Genesis Effect billowing out of the Reliant also caused the Mutara Nebula to collapse in on itself, harnessing the material of the nebula to create the Genesis Planet that would be the setting of most of the action of Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984). I honestly don’t know how it has taken longer than my actual lifespan to put that one together. It is a film that keeps on giving.
And yet, it is not a perfect film. The subplot with Midshipman Preston (Ike Eisenmann) doesn’t resonate, and it is only in the director’s cut (first released in 2002) that things are slightly illuminated, although I still don’t understand why Scotty (James Doohan) brought the poor suffering crewman to the bridge first, and not directly to sickbay. Additionally, the effects of the Genesis Cave on the Regula planetoid are alternately a triumph of matte work (back when such a thing was still done) and a completely befuddling choice in animated optical processing. But the flaws give me comfort. Even if I am flawed in my own work, I can still reach for the ideal.
As with most films, watching it at home on a television is only imitating the experience in many ways. I had the delight to see it a few years ago during a Fathom Event screening. Seeing it projected on the big screen was a blissfully different experience. However, that screening was sparsely populated. This time, I saw it in conjunction with a live event hosted by none other than William Shatner. While the Captain Kirk emeritus was understandably more interested in talking about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), seeing the film with a packed and enthusiastic crowd was sublime. The cheering for cast members during the opening credits, the polite applause for GOAT writer-director Nicholas Meyer (which I believe he would have found staggeringly appropriate), the laughing at jokes I had long since internalized, and the genuine feeling that accompanied the climax gave every inch of the film a new life, as if it had been goosed by the Genesis Wave itself. I couldn’t help but feel like Kirk at the end. A movie that was old news at my birth was all new again.
I couldn’t help but feel young.