Nicholas Meyer's Interpretation of Star Trek

I'm not so certain. The Search for Spock always seemed to me to be a strange mix of STAR TREKs 1 & 2 ... the best of two worlds! And was very good, as a result. The cinematography of STAR TREK III is stunning! And -- SPOILER ALERT!!! -- when Spock's returned to the crew, at the very end of the movie, the tonality of it is so perfectly balanced. In Nicholas Meyer's hands, it would've just been presented as-is, take it or leave it. But Nimoy's direction here is very good and it's very touching.

When he walks by Bones, for instance, De Kelley's just looking all haggard and worn out. He looks at Spock's uncertainty and vacantness with a mild frustration, almost. Did it work, or didn't it? He's right in front of us and we still don't have the answer! It was wordless and Brilliant! Even though I know Spock is still making movies and never in any real danger, I don't know ... I've always felt the concern, there. And when Nimoy cocks his eyebrow in true Spock fashion, I can't help myself ... I just break out in a big ol' Tom Sawyer grin. Every time!

 

I couldn't disagree more. In contrast to the cinematic TMP and the exciting TWOK, TSFS always looked to me like a TV movie. I guess YMMV.

 

Wow! A T.V. movie? Mmmmm ... no, I can't agree with that. The Genesis Planet is pretty fake looking and I won't even contest that. Especially the sequences involving Kruge choking the worm (hmm hmm hmmmm ... ) and when David makes the Ultimate Sacrifice. The set looks like shit and it's inexcusable.

However, the Pon Farr sequence is very moody and atmospheric and I think it works. But when Kirk offs Kruge, then heaves himself back up, over the lip of the cliff and looks around at Genesis imploding, as far as the eye can see ... the set he's on is lit so wonderfully, it almost looks like an actual location!

And when the ENTERPRISE limps past the Lounge windows in Spacedock, holy crap! That does NOT say Made-for-Television, to me. It's a very memorable visual and the emotional impact that Grace Lee Whitney helps sell with her subtle shake of the head is palpable.

Even when Uhura's about to beam the crew over and goes, "Oh, and Admiral? All my hopes ..." I don't know why, but I kind of feel a tug of sadness. This situation is so desperate and the uncertainty is so high at that moment, as to what's going to end up happening ... and they do this thing. All of them. I would be like, "I'm ruining my life over this crazy shit ..." It's just so big, dramatically ... I never felt it was anything but a big, event movie.

 

While I think some could argue that the themes don't quite live up to "film standard" in TSFS (The film starts to lose a sense of scope by the time our heroes are heading to Genesis), it certainly spends it's money just as well as TWOK did, if not more so. Earth Space dock, Excelsior, Bird of Prey, the freighter, Grissom. There's a lot of 'money on the screen' at least in starship designs and creativity.


I've never, and will never, understand the argument that TMP is somehow more brainy than TWOK. In terms of the richness of the story, both are lush with themes. TWOK is less about asking questions, and instead focuses on telling a story straight out, but it still taps into themes of revenge, loss, anger, age, and death. It's definitely not mindless action. Sure, concepts like "Ceti Alpha VI exploded" are really stupid, but it doesn't stop the film overal from being poetical, thematic, and smart.


I'll actually go the opposite of Warped9 (No disrespect intended by that, either. ) I think that TMP should have been the film to acknowledge the passage of time far more clearly. It should have been ten years after the original series' five year mission. I'd have really dealt with the passage of time and the changes that had occurred. I think it would have fit nicely into the themes of the film. By the end the crew would all be back together again, whole, and off to explore the galaxy because they had answered V'ger's penultimate question in more ways than one. "There is so much more."

But since that isn't the case, i'd say the creative instincts in Trek 2 to embrace the passage of time were probably for the best. If anything, I wish they had followed through on the ending of TWOK more so in the films that came later. It ended on a hopeful and victorious note. Kirk has come to find his energy and youth again, he's ready to "gallop around the galaxy" once again. They should have gone on to have new adventures without Spock. It's funny to think that they spend so much time in TWOK grooming Saavik and then she just fades out of the film series.

I also agree with Meyer regarding Spock's death. If you're gonna kill him, do it well, and then own it. Why tug the heart strings just to go "Nah, just kidding!"

 

I asked this in another thread, but what was even the reason for going back to Genesis? They were surprised to find a living breathing Spock on Genesis, so what exactly were they doing there in the first place? Someone replied to me that the novelization of the film cleared up some of the confusion, but IIRC it's never made clear in the movie.

 

Spock or no, Kirk seemed interested in following up on the planet's progress and didn't realize Starfleet had quarantined the planet due to the political fallout with the Klingons, who were rattling their sabers.

 

TOS has its essence--that which defined the series no matter the sub-genre of any particular episode. At its best, TOS' essence was the difference between having a story unfold as fantastic, or be some soulless, gadget-laden production, like most of Lost in Space. TMP rejected that essence in a vain attempt to be some eye-roll-inducing, would-be highbrow search for meaning. Chalk that up to Roddenberry, et al being hopelessly stuck in the pretensions of late 60's hippy / faux philosophers' inability to accept themselves, thus leading too many to fantasize that they "must" have some lofty purpose in the universe.

Where some ST episodes were indeed about man's "place," or destiny, they were human, amazing and clever--not the nose-in-the-air, heartless PBS production that just so happened to have Trekstuff in the background..that being Star Trek: the Motion Picture.

One of the reasons TWOK had to be produced as seen

 

^^ No.

Actually something Yarn said upthread I agree with. TMP should have been set 8-10 years after TOS.

 

Kirk had no choice but to maroon Khan and his people, IMHO: taking them to a starbase for trial and then a rehabilitation center would have just resulted in the same movie as TWOK, but it would be called TROK (The Return of Khan) since all Khan had to do was just be as he usually is, and then he'd take over and escape with his people.

BTW, the reason Khan acted the way he did in TWOK was because of what happened to Ceti Alpha VI; he believed that Kirk didn't care or bother to check up on him and his people, and so he left them to die. Also, it seems that Kirk didn't tell Starfleet anything about Khan or where Khan & Co. were placed, so Starfleet knew nothing about Ceti Alpha V and VI or what happened to both planets (although that doesn't explain why Chekov knew nothing about the system or just plain forgot.) Anyway, Greg Cox talked about it in his books, and IDW also did a version of the story (Star Trek: Khan - Ruling in Hell) that fills in the gaps.

 

Kirk had to tell Starfleet what he'd done. It was already part of his logs (and other officers as well) and he was holding a hearing at the end. And how can you realistically keep 429 other people silent?

What he did was give Starfleet and the Federation time to decide what to do: leave them there or go get them if they so chose. They could even have ordered Kirk not to go back.

But that part of TWOK was told from Khan's now insane perspective and not the reality of what happened in "Space Seed." Meyer and Bennett chose to ignore that part of the original material.

 

^ All examples of a False Dilemma #1: designed to find some "deal-breaking," all or nothing fault with a celebrated chapter of ST--a dilemma having no effect on the heart of the plot, its characters, or anything else. You are harping on what is MINOR point which would have been just as minor if Starfleet simply forgot Khan was on his world sans the explosion dialogue. Khan could still seek revenge for a host of other perils of being in exile--which he touched on in his dialogue with Chekov and Terrell.

There's a reason no one cared about the implausibility of the planet exploding: it was not significant, and it happens in a science fiction story, not a documentary. Again, it is not the problem of the film if one cannot accept a minor, fantastic event in a fictional universe where transporters, pointy-eared aliens who mind meld, warp drive and routine time travel are the norm.


False dilemma #2:

"if necessary?"

How are you missing the central plot/message of the film? He's aging, and in a different career position in life, so he's no longer a young ship's captain. The glory years are in the past--all tied to his depression--necessary, as Kirk has no solution for this sad turn of life (early on). The related theme of rebirth from a "death" applies to three: Kirk (escaping the "death" of old age in returning to space / conflict with Khan), Khan in gaining what he believed was a new lease on life (escaping the "death" of exile via Reliant, etc.) and the Genesis program/device, and its theoretical use--life from lifelessness.

There's no secret in how all are interconnected and necessary to the central plot.

Kirk being out of action is critical to his depression. There's no getting around that.

 

Meyer works for you, but doesn't work for me.

 

That's a very revealing statement. Don't you mean TWOK doesn't work for you? Looks from the above statement as if it's Meyer himself you have a problem with.

Or maybe not. There's a good reason I'm not a psychologist.

 

This thread started as about Meyer's take on Trek. So in those terms, no, his interpretation doesn't work for me.

 

It's funny. Just the other night, I was chatting with a long-time Trek writer who commented casually, as though it went without saying, that TWOK and TVH were the only two Trek movies that ever captured the feel of the original TV series.

I mention this not as proof that he's right and you're wrong, but as yet more evidence that there can never be any real consensus about what the "essence" of "real" Trek is. Trek is a Rorschach blot shaped like a Constitution-class starship. People see different things in it and can have widely varying views about what actually constitutes a good Trek movie.

Personally, I remember breathing a sigh of relief when I found out Meyer was coming back for #6--and wondering why, after TWOK, we had to wait so long to get another Trek film from the guy who'd made the best one by far. (Aside from the obvious fact that Nimoy and Shatner both pulled rank.)

Then again, TWOK, TVH, and TUC are far and away my favorite Trek movies so I'm obviously coming at this from a completely different perspective . . .

 

As I've said before I've gotten something out of each of the first six films, but as a whole they just don't register anymore. For me the best parts of the TOS era are in the series.

 

I've never seen the Trek movies as an integrated whole, so I don't even try to reconcile them. To me, there is no reconciling Roddenberry's version Trek with Meyer/Bennet's. But I've also never felt any real need to reconcile them.

 

There's no way to judge Meyer's Trek without understanding where the franchise was left post TMP. Much is made of how much money TMP made in order to prove it was a success, but I remember reading a Starlog episode which reported that a future Trek film was considered "doubtful". The franchise was hanging by a thread.

Khan was the anti-TMP. Whatever you may think about the TMP uniforms now, after Gene kind of tried something similar again in the TNG era, people hated the form-fitting leisure-suit look when the film came out, and they liked the nautical look of the Khan uniforms. They also liked the horatio hornblower vibe overall as it translated to the bosun's whistle and Khan's phaser broadsides and the loading of the torpedo tubes--not to mention Shatner's amazingly-ham-free Kirk (save Khaaaan, which people love regardless).

We've now had over 30 years of sci-fi between then and now to compare it to (including JJ Trek with its Star Wars kinetics). But at the time, Meyer's Trek was welcomed with open arms (including by your's truly). So say what you want about it now, but it saved Trek.

There's something about VI, maybe because of the low-budget and whodunnit storyline and just the fact the actors were getting so long in the tooth, that it just doesn't pop as well as the earlier films, but it's much better than V, that's for sure.

The worst part about Meyer for me is his penchant for anachronisms, like the old furniture in Starfleet HQ or the pots and pans in the galley. I'm fine with the buckles and pins but not the other stuff. Meyer was sometimes a little too literal in his horatio hornblower approach. It would have been just as easy to imply tall ships without going quite so far with the production design and the photon torpodo busting through the hull in VI like it's a cannonball going through wood in Master and Commander. It works, but it does stand out as quirky compared to the standards that were being very firmly established by that point in the TNG shows.

 

I thought it was interesting that Meyer caught the Hornblower-in-Space vibe without knowing that Roddenberry was shooting for that (along with aspects of the western genre) with TOS. But he leaned on it a bit too heavily--too much Hornblower, not enough -in-Space.

A similar example comes to mind with one of Goldsmith's early efforts to score the scene of TMP where the Enterprise is in drydock. In it, some people heard sailing ships, others heard covered wagons but no one heard Star Trek. When Goldsmith reworked it, pulling out of a somewhat aimless score what would become the basis for the Enterprise and TMP themes, it incorporated the sails and wagons but streamlined it into something that sounded futuristic.

 

It always puzzled me that Roddenberry then objected to these flourishes in the movies, feeling there was too much overt militarism in Meyer's production design!

I think Hornblower undoubtedly had some basic influence on Roddenberry's broader application of the universe of TOS, but he envisaged a looser interpretation, one that kind of used those military aspects as setting a kind of broad strokes tone for the audience at home to identify with. Certainly, Pike (and later Kirk) was inspired by a Hornblower-esque captain, thrust into great responsibility and having periods of self-doubt.

I do think maybe Meyer did swing the pendulum too far back the other way. He correctly identified the Hornblower-esque aspects of TOS, but in things like the Monster Maroons and the visual nods to the days of sail he arguably sacrificed the look of the 'verse a little too far towards historical romantacism. In my opinion.