Star Trek Movies

Here are brief descriptions, in case you've forgotten which one is which:

(And I may have confused a few of the plots myself. Please correct/embellish.)

StarTrek: The Motion Picture (1980): A giant space cloud is approaching Earth, destroying everything in its path. The newly refurbished Enterprise, with Admiral Kirk in command, goes to investigate. Original theatrical release was dreadfully tedious, but subsequent re-editing has made it palatable.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982): Khan Noonian Singh, a character from one of the StarTrekOriginalSeries episodes, played by Ricardo Montalban, plots revenge against Admiral Kirk. Lots of allusions to Melville's Moby Dick. Spock sacrifices his life at the end to save the ship.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984): It turns out that Spock implanted his memories into the mind of Dr. McCoy before sacrificing himself. So the crew members steal the Enterprise and head back to where they left Spock's body so that they can restore his psyche. They run into some Klingons, led by Christopher Lloyd (who played Reverend Jim on Taxi and DocBrown? in the BackToTheFuture? trilogy). They do get Spock back, but are forced to scuttle Enterprise and head home aboard the Klingons' ship.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986): Returning to Earth in the Klingon ship, the heroes find a huge ship making whale sounds and destroying the planet. They have to go back in time to 20th-century San Francisco to retrieve some whales, as the species is extinct in the future. Lots of gags in the 20th century, like the Russian Chekov asking a police officer "Where are the nuclear wessels?" and Mr. Scott trying to talk to a Macintosh. And Spock is still a little confused after his resurrection, providing humorous exchanges between him and Kirk. After saving Earth, Kirk is "demoted" to the rank of Captain and given a brand-new Enterprise. See also: WhalesInSpace

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) : The new Enterprise-A is hijacked by Spock's half-brother (Played by Lawrence Luckenbill, who was married to Lucie Arnaz), who wants to travel to the center of the galaxy, where he expects to meet God. Directed by WilliamShatner. This one was truly awful, though some diehard fans liked it.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991): The Klingons are forced to make peace with the Federation after a freak accident cripples them economically. But some bad Klingons capture Kirk, hold a trial, and put him and Dr. McCoy in prison. The rest of the crew goes to rescue them. Lots of action, similar to The Wrath of Khan in tone. Really not bad.

Star Trek VII: Generations (1994): Kirk is apparently killed doing something heroic. A hundred years later, Kirk and Picard meet and save an obscure planet. Another Enterprise goes down in flames. And then Kirk dies again. Serves as a bridge from the StarTrekOriginalSeries cast to the StarTrekTheNextGeneration cast. Hokey villain.

Star Trek VIII: First Contact (1996): The Next Generation crew goes back in time to prevent TheBorg from interfering with the first meeting between humans and Vulcans. Generally acknowledged to be the best of these flicks, if you can ignore the hokey 22nd century sub-plot.

Star Trek IX: Insurrection (1999): The Next Generation crew try to prevent a violation of the PrimeDirective. Stupid plastic surgery subplot. Very forgettable, a lot like an early series next-generation episode with a Hollywood FX budget grafted on. Horribly failed attempts at humor only make it worse.

Star Trek X: StarTrekNemesis (2002): The same thing as Insurrection, but less so. Perhaps most interesting when thought of as an exercise in US-Iraq war propaganda. Actually it seemed to be a retelling of Star Trek II.

Star Trek (2009): A mature Christopher Pike passes the torch to fresh and abnormally young faces playing TOS characters in a non-prequel. The bad guy is a Romulan, but really the movie is about the Federation characters. (I'm trying not to spoil the movie for you.)

A rule of thumb says that in general, the even-numbered ones are worth seeing, while the odd-numbered ones are bad. This is also known as the "odd number curse". Let's compare this with IMDB's rating (in stars, as of May '09; in brackets the changes since February '04):

 Number I    has 6.2 (+0.5) stars, 
 Number II   has 7.8 (+0.3) stars,
 Number III  has 6.5 (+0.3) stars,
 Number IV   has 7.3 (+0.2) stars,
 Number V    has 4.9 (+0.2) stars, 
 Number VI   has 7.2 (+0.3) stars,
 Number VII  has 6.4 (+0.3) stars,
 Number VIII has 7.6 (+0.3) stars,
 Number IX   has 6.4 (+0.1) stars,
 Number X    has 6.4 (same) stars, and
 Number XI   has 8.6  (new) stars.

Note that the best rated old-cast movie with an odd number is III (excluding XI), with 6.5 stars. This is only marginally more than the worst rated movie with an even number, which is number X. However, judging from the overall average rating of the first ten movies, number X seems to be breaking the rule - it is the only movie on the "wrong" side of the average line. Now, number XI apparently diverges from this rule even further - unless the rule is adapted: For example, when considering digit sums instead of just numbers, both number X (1+0=1) and XI (1+1=2) once again fit perfectly into the scheme.

This rule applies only to StarTrekMovies, see GoodMovieSequels?. It developed shortly after the awful StarTrek 5. People said, "Hey, the Even numbers are better than the Odd numbers". Future movies supported that rule of thumb.

Comments

Surely Nemesis has ruined the even number thing. [Concur. Nemesis deserves the critics' thrashing it received.] Maybe there's an overriding stinkers-are-divisible-by-five rule. [1+0 is odd?]

Well, fortunately, people seem to think it is still good enough so that the rule is not violated. Which brings up one other problem: The next Star Trek movie will be even worse than Nemesis!...

KrisJohnson's critiques: The Wrath of Khan is great. The Voyage Home is the funniest one, and the one most enjoyable for non-Trek fans.

(Note also that, apart from the abysmally dire GodIsaTrekkie?, "odd" StarTrekMovies have been steadily, albeit slowly, improving. I still fail to understand how WhalesInSpace could possibly ever rate a 7.0, at least in this Universe. Perhaps the ManyUniversesTheory was right after all... -- JonGreen)

WhalesInSpace has the Trekkies you know and love in _our_ world. All the stars got pretty good screen time and it was very character driven. Plus, how can you not love Shatner's Toupee? Look, he's swimming with it!!! -- SeanOleary

And don't you love how Scotty types fast, even though he probably never used a keyboard before?

I happen to love Insurrection and think it was the best of the next generation. It definitely had a hook to it major/minor you decide. But Nemesis puts an absolute end to the odd/even thing because it was terrible. Going off the "stars" rating I'd give it a 3.5!!! -- Dave B.

I have to disagree, actually. While it was no "Touch of Evil" or anything, I think "Star Trek: Nemesis" was a better than the odd-numbered movies in the series. (I haven't seen the fifth one, but I'm not particularly thinking I need to....) It was relatively exciting and intelligent (for a Star Trek movie), fair acting all around (for a Star Trek movie), good special effects, action...an enjoyable, if not deep, film. I was particularly pleased with the darker tone of the film, a concious decision on the director's part. Although it's gotten a fair amount of critical bashing, and the lowest-ranked even-numbered film in the IMDB, IMDB still puts it slightly ahead of the highest-ranked odd-numbered film (which played like a two-part TV episode.) -- JoAnne

I can't really say I mind that many of the TNG movies (Generations and Insurrection in particular) feel so much like regular TNG episodes with inflated FX budgets. They have managed to do a lot in the movies that never got done in the series, and as someone who was left still wanting more after the first 7 seasons of TNG, that's all good to me. -- W2k

I consider the odd Star Trek movies to be lousy, with 5 and 10 taking the cake. This has led me to devise a new way of keeping track of the bad ones: The poor movies have odd numbers while the even poorer movies have numbers divisible by 5. 5 and 10 weren't even close to consistent with the rest of the Star Trek universe. At least the other odds tried to be.

The 2009 movie is wonderful fun. I was going to say that, being 11th, here's an odd-numbered Trek movie that's actually good. But then it occurred to me that this one has no number and shouldn't. As the original series was just "Star Trek," this new movie is just "Star Trek". Aside: the new Bones gets my favorite sentence, "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence," and (as I had hoped) Spock gets the best dry quips. -- ElizabethWiethoff

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