First up I'm not a Trekkie, Trekker, Trekite, or whatever the fans of this show call themselves, so my comments are not the usual eulogistic gushings you find posted about the Star Trek movies. In fact if you are a Trek fan I'd skip reading this because you aren't going to like what I have to say.
The main problem I had with this film, apart from the totally ludicrous Scooby-Doo type unmasking of the would be assassin, and Spock's plodding Jessica Fletcher impression, is the filmmaker's assumption that the audience is totally stupid.
For example, towards the end of the film, faced with having to find an invisible spaceship (a "cloaked Warbird" no less) the crew of the Enterprise come up with the wizard wheeze of attaching some of "that atmospheric equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies" to a torpedo that will seek out the Klingon ship's exhaust. They hurriedly attach the gear to a torpedo and blow the baddies space ship to bits. Hurrah! This is great - except this is the first mention of the Enterprise carrying "all that atmospheric equipment". There was scene at the start of the movie on board a totally different ship, commanded by Sulu, which had just finished surveying "Fifty-four planets - and their gaseous atmospheric anomalies" in which we are told the "sensing and analytic equipment worked well" but there's no mention of the Enterprise lugging this kind stuff around until the script demands it. This is just lazy. It assumes the audience cannot remember what happened 80 minutes ago. It's insulting. Why didn't they look for the suspicious "Neutron emissions" that Spock noticed just before the attack? If the Warship was venting "Plasma" (which is very hot) why didn't they bung a night sight on their 'sensors' and look in the infra-red spectrum?
Other moments of stupidity include:
The galley having a gun rack just so a crew member can vapourise a chicken and prove a point about the alarm system. Why the hell would the ship's kitchen need a gun rack? Maybe there is a setting lower than 'stun' for melting the sugar on a Creme Brulet. Who Knows?
The assassin's magnetic boots being left in a locker so they could be found later. Why didn't the bad guys just bung them out of an airlock or, even better, 'transport' them off the ship into the convenient undetectable , invisible space ship hanging about outside. But no, this is a Star Trek movie. Only the heroes are allowed to be smart (and that is only by comparison) so everyone else has to be REALLY stupid. Having found the boots, the locker's owner is brought forward and challenged to put them on to see if they fit. The camera pans down the suspect's legs to reveal he has huge webbed feet. Bare, huge webbed feet. No socks, no shoes, just ugly rubber feet. I guess this was supposed to be funny but it just made me think 'Starfleet only provides uniforms for Humans? Oh come on! Grow up, people!'
And what's all this guff about the Klingons only having 50 years? If Earth's moon exploded with the force that the Klingon home-world's moon did it - it was a big enough bang to rock a Federation ship light years away - it would have done more than cause "deadly pollution of their ozone" it would have wiped life of the face of the Earth, Mars and any other colonised planets in the Solar System.
For years, we are told, an uneasy peace has been kept along the border between Klingon and Federation space. A Federation ship is warned by the Klingon High Command to "Obey treaty stipulations and remain outside the Neutral Zone!" Later, when the Enterprise zooms to Kirk's rescue, it scoots into Klingon space at top speed with big coloured zoom lines trailing behind it and a loud stereophonic Swoooooosh! on the soundtrack. The Klingon's response? A bored and sleepy guard hails them and asks them who they are. He hails them in voice only mind you - the first time ever in the history of the Trekyverse that I can remember that people haven't communicated via wall to wall TV - because if they had communicated via the usual wall to wall TV, the bored and sleepy Klingon guard would have seen he was talking to humans and pushed the panic button - how convenient for our heroes was that! On board the Enterprise Uhura and company frantically page through old Klingon glossaries, manuals and dictionaries they just happen to have lying around and bluff their way past the Evil Empire's borders by mumbling "We art delivering food... things and...supplies to Rura Penthe... over...". Okay, says the guard, on you go. And that's it! No passwords, no words of the day, no sign of any basic military security measures at all. Nothing. So much for the mighty warlike and evil Klingon empire. It's pathetic.
At least once during every movie I watch, I seem to end up thinking "Why did they just do that?" only to have to remind myself "It's only a movie". Watching this turkey I asked myself the question far more often than I usually do. Too often. There come a point when "It's only a movie" mutates into "Because it's crap". This is crap. Another dumb Star Trek movie only partially redeemed by an excellent score.
The main problem I had with this film, apart from the totally ludicrous Scooby-Doo type unmasking of the would be assassin, and Spock's plodding Jessica Fletcher impression, is the filmmaker's assumption that the audience is totally stupid.
For example, towards the end of the film, faced with having to find an invisible spaceship (a "cloaked Warbird" no less) the crew of the Enterprise come up with the wizard wheeze of attaching some of "that atmospheric equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies" to a torpedo that will seek out the Klingon ship's exhaust. They hurriedly attach the gear to a torpedo and blow the baddies space ship to bits. Hurrah! This is great - except this is the first mention of the Enterprise carrying "all that atmospheric equipment". There was scene at the start of the movie on board a totally different ship, commanded by Sulu, which had just finished surveying "Fifty-four planets - and their gaseous atmospheric anomalies" in which we are told the "sensing and analytic equipment worked well" but there's no mention of the Enterprise lugging this kind stuff around until the script demands it. This is just lazy. It assumes the audience cannot remember what happened 80 minutes ago. It's insulting. Why didn't they look for the suspicious "Neutron emissions" that Spock noticed just before the attack? If the Warship was venting "Plasma" (which is very hot) why didn't they bung a night sight on their 'sensors' and look in the infra-red spectrum?
Other moments of stupidity include:
The galley having a gun rack just so a crew member can vapourise a chicken and prove a point about the alarm system. Why the hell would the ship's kitchen need a gun rack? Maybe there is a setting lower than 'stun' for melting the sugar on a Creme Brulet. Who Knows?
The assassin's magnetic boots being left in a locker so they could be found later. Why didn't the bad guys just bung them out of an airlock or, even better, 'transport' them off the ship into the convenient undetectable , invisible space ship hanging about outside. But no, this is a Star Trek movie. Only the heroes are allowed to be smart (and that is only by comparison) so everyone else has to be REALLY stupid. Having found the boots, the locker's owner is brought forward and challenged to put them on to see if they fit. The camera pans down the suspect's legs to reveal he has huge webbed feet. Bare, huge webbed feet. No socks, no shoes, just ugly rubber feet. I guess this was supposed to be funny but it just made me think 'Starfleet only provides uniforms for Humans? Oh come on! Grow up, people!'
And what's all this guff about the Klingons only having 50 years? If Earth's moon exploded with the force that the Klingon home-world's moon did it - it was a big enough bang to rock a Federation ship light years away - it would have done more than cause "deadly pollution of their ozone" it would have wiped life of the face of the Earth, Mars and any other colonised planets in the Solar System.
For years, we are told, an uneasy peace has been kept along the border between Klingon and Federation space. A Federation ship is warned by the Klingon High Command to "Obey treaty stipulations and remain outside the Neutral Zone!" Later, when the Enterprise zooms to Kirk's rescue, it scoots into Klingon space at top speed with big coloured zoom lines trailing behind it and a loud stereophonic Swoooooosh! on the soundtrack. The Klingon's response? A bored and sleepy guard hails them and asks them who they are. He hails them in voice only mind you - the first time ever in the history of the Trekyverse that I can remember that people haven't communicated via wall to wall TV - because if they had communicated via the usual wall to wall TV, the bored and sleepy Klingon guard would have seen he was talking to humans and pushed the panic button - how convenient for our heroes was that! On board the Enterprise Uhura and company frantically page through old Klingon glossaries, manuals and dictionaries they just happen to have lying around and bluff their way past the Evil Empire's borders by mumbling "We art delivering food... things and...supplies to Rura Penthe... over...". Okay, says the guard, on you go. And that's it! No passwords, no words of the day, no sign of any basic military security measures at all. Nothing. So much for the mighty warlike and evil Klingon empire. It's pathetic.
At least once during every movie I watch, I seem to end up thinking "Why did they just do that?" only to have to remind myself "It's only a movie". Watching this turkey I asked myself the question far more often than I usually do. Too often. There come a point when "It's only a movie" mutates into "Because it's crap". This is crap. Another dumb Star Trek movie only partially redeemed by an excellent score.