Insurrection was like a 2 hour episode and it was all the worse for it and is frequently ranked near the bottom of most people's lists. I think Star Trek Beyond also suffered from this but to a much lesser degree as it had some big set pieces and some flashy visuals to fall back on.
Nicolas Meyer put his own spin on the film he directed and had never seen an episode of Star Trek before being approached to direct TWOK, which as we all know is frequently cited as the very best trek movie.
I kind of agree that TMP felt like an episode of trek because that's exactly what it was - a big budget remake of 'The changeling'. I would also add TSFS, TVH and TFF as films that felt like TOS episodes.
I do however agree that it is extremely difficult to make the perfect big screen trek outing. For me, the ones that have come closest to achieving this are probably the 2009 movie and TWOK.
Still, Star Trek II was at least
produced by a guy who sat down and watched every episode and was very concerned with the fanbase. There was an emphasis on character and was in the space opera vein of the original series. It wasn’t trying to be a blockbuster. Just the opposite, it was a modestly budgeted film that just wanted to be an entertaining story. New York critics of the day actually called it “an overblown TV show.” So it wasn’t a Big Summer Tentpole Blockbuster. It made less money than the first but made a larger profit (or so it’s been said) and was a critical improvement over the first.
Arguably, the second, third and fourth films were the most successful critically as well as in how they captured the essence of the series without bending the format to appeal to the normal or having to shoehorn studio mandates. It was “Star Trek before it became a franchise.”
Star Trek doesn’t require blistering action and lots of yuks to be good. Look at the best of Star Trek: how much action was in
City on the Edge of Forever? Did
Mirror, Mirror require 51 minutes of space battles? At the same time,
The Doomsday Machine and
Balance of Terror aren’t great episodes because of the combat. They’re exceptionally well written character pieces with a semi-subtle commentary. There needs to be content, not simply pyrotechnics. Something has to separate Trek from Wars other than "the guy with the ears" or whatever.
Even The Wrath of Khan wasn’t an “action movie” per se. It was a movie with action sequences – and not even that many. After the simulation, the first ship confrontation 45 minutes in, then the climax – much of which was a “seek and destroy” submarine type sequence. Star Trek's 2 and 4 were repeatedly used as templates for box office success, but the studio kept looking at the wrong things. It wasn't simply the battles, the laughs, the time travel and Khan like villain that made these films work. Without good writing, content and character, that's just bullshit.
