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Star Trek III - The Search for SpockRating:
Release Date: 11 April, 2000 Retail Price: $29.99 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (10 total) |
Star Trek III - The Search for Spock Reviews
The big in-betweener
You know, it's kinda suspicious how the Star Trek movies seem to follow a few of the patterns of the original `Star Wars' trilogy. After the success of the first `Star Wars' flick, Paramount decided to take advantage of the newfound promise of big-screen sci-fi, and launched the first Star Trek movie series a few years later. Then, following in the footsteps of `The Empire Strikes Back', the Trek-flick purveyors put out their own in-betweener, ST-III:TSFS. Like `Empire', ST-III had a somewhat open ending, which left its loyal Trekkie minions hanging for a few years, culminating in the resolution as presented in `The Voyage Home'. It's also interesting to note that the title of this little bit of `Trek-celluloid, directed by and featuring the man behind our fave half-Vulcan, is very similar to `In Search Of...', a then-recently-cancelled documentary TV series narrated by Mr. Nimoy himself. An innocent coincidence... or a subliminal plug? You be the judge!
But, conspiracy theories aside, I thought this particular Trek outing was a pretty good showing for our gallant Enterprise crew. Aside from a few silly less-than-special FX here & there (especially the `falling cliff' during the Kruge/Kirk hand-to-hand scuffle), ST III has managed to buck the curse of the odd-numbered Trek sequels. Of course, that's not saying much... but at least it's sort of an accomplishment.
Speakin' of accomplishments: I'm glad to see Paramount's finally come `round and giving the Star Trek movie line the Special-Edition-DVD-with-all-sorts-of-extras treatment... which is something I wish they'd done the first time `round. But hey, why put out the best stuff the first time `round when ya can soak the Trekkies with an inferior product first (AKA the initial DVD release), knowin' full well they'll also snap up the Special Edition platter in the future? Once again the ol' Dreaded DVD Double-Dip Ploy (read about this annoying phenomenon at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/guides/guide-display/-/3CVFIEG84F2PF) rears its ugly head...
On the upside, when compared to the picture & sound quality of the initial DVD release-- which was really good-- this "Special Collector's Edition" DVD outdistances it by a couple parsecs! Thanks to the superior sound clarity & separation, I can actually hear many subtle background bits ( for example, Starfleet officers being paged over the intercom at Spacedock) that I never picked up on before! And the picture quality is better than ever, with greater definition and clarity than what I saw in previous video releases. `Course, this superior picture has its drawbacks: you can actually see the shortcomings of the special effects technology of the time. The matte "shadows" surrounding the ships and the space Dock are more apparent. I guess superior visual resolution isn't all it's cracked up to be...
The feature-length commentary track is split between director Leonard Nimoy, producer Harve Bennett, Robin "Saavik, Take 2" Curtis, and photography director Charles Correll. Nimoy's thoughts take up about half the track, and includes his memories on directing ST-III as well as his desire to show the audience "what makes the Klingons tick" as a race. He also brings up the various Vulcan rituals and practices he had a significant hand in establishing in the original series and the previous movies. Bennett spends much of his mic time discussing his work as a TV producer, and how he applied and adapted these skills to produce the Trek-flicks. Correll's stuff is technical in nature; he talks about certain shots and FX in the movie, and the labors he and his crew had to go through to pull them off correctly. Robin Curtis' comments pop up whenever Saavik enters frame; she discusses her "inheritance" of the role from Kirstie Alley, and the joy & headaches she experienced working with Nimoy and the old-school Trek cast.
Disc Two is filled with various interviews, behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes, and the obligatory theatrical trailer. While the "Captain's Log" interview segment wasn't all that interesting overall, I did get a kick outta William Shatner talking about his efforts to keep the Genesis planet set from burning down when a fire broke out on a set next door (fortunately, he and his Turbo 2000 got out of the blaze unscathed). Another interesting segment features linguist Marc Okrand giving the viewer a lecture on how he created the preferred language of get-a-lifer fanboys everywhere, Klingonese! Okrand follows up his little "history" lesson by mapping out how he put the language together, from the sounds of the words on down to conjugation of tenses, and how Klingonese sentences are put together-- you know the placement of the subject & the predicate, and all that. If you've ever wondered who's to blame for the local community college adding a Klingon language class to its curriculum, look no further-- you've found him! Well, okay, he's not directly to blame, but-- well, I think you get the picture...
But probably the most interesting extra bit is the doc that discusses the possibility of terraforming other worlds. Mars is used here as a potential place for humans to take their first crack at terraforming. While there was a smattering of scientific jargon that I had a slight bit of trouble wrapping my brain around-- most of the folks layin' out the possibility and painstaking logistics of a Martian makeover in this featurette are NASA scientists-- I found the notion of such an undertaking kinda interesting. Only thing is, we haven't even figured out how send a manned mission to Mars yet, let alone found out a doable way of making it more Earth-like. First things first, guys...
`Late
Old Vulcans never die. . .
Leonard Nemoy's Star Trek directorial debut succeeds in two vital areas: A)It's extremely well-paced and B)There's quite a bit of good humor in it. The story takes place right after Khan's wrath and involves Kirk's starship-jacking of the Enterprise to go look for Spock's body to unite with his mind which in imprinted in McCoy's cranium. The problem is Spock's body landed on the newly created and recently doomed planet of Genesis. As luck would have it, a group of ambitious Klingons, led by Christopher Lloyd, want the information to make their own Genesis and go after the research vessel, which is inhabited by Kirk's son and the newly made-over Lt. Saavik, orbiting the planet for the information.
This is just good ol' fashioned Star Trek minus great space battles of the last installment. Lloyd makes an admirable and funny adversary, surprisingly almost as good as Ricardo Montalban's Khan but not as memorable. That's probably how you could sum up all of 'The Search for Spock': almost as good as Khan, but not as memorable.
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