Meredith and I finally saw this movie last Friday. The movie title was truncated by Paramount for space considerations after they discovered that the original title, "Star Trek: The Return of The Wrath of The Phantom Praetor Nemesis who Strikes Back" wouldn't fit on the advertising posters.
My basic review: I have never before seen a movie that just made me want to giggle the entire time. Really. Meredith found a web site that commented that the old theory about even-numbered Trek movies being good obviously is superceded by this rule: every 5th Trek movie is unbelievably horrible.
The rest of my review contains lots of spoilers, so if you don't want to know, don't keep reading...
Some of my favorite scenes from the movie include:
- When visiting a pre-industrial planet to investigate some weird sensor readings, rather than beam down with native clothing to blend in, the Enterprise sent a shuttle down with Picard, Data, and Worf. Subtle. Then, just in case the natives mistook the Klingon for someone with a really bad skin disease, they roamed around on a souped-up Humvee, complete with phaser gatling gun. That whole Prime Directive thing was really just a nuisance, anyway. Good idea tossing that out.
- Picard and Data driving through the Romulan Trade Federation ship on one of the Trade Federation tanks.
- The two Romulan fleet commanders, on deciding that the Praetor really deserves to be sent back into slavery, show up to help the Enterprise with all of the ships at their command. Both of them. The Romulan fleet is that small? The Federation should have invaded years ago and wiped these idiots out.
- The Romulan boarding party. The first time the Praetor wanted Picard, he just beamed him off the Enterprise. The second time, he sent a boarding party over. To deck 21, so that the Enterprise crew would have lots of time to intercept them before they got to the bridge. Good tactical decision.
- Riker kicking Darth Maul down the reactor shaft. Or was that the Emperor? No, it was Darth Maul, because Maul is the quiet side kick to the real Evil.
- Troi reaching out with the Force to find the hidden vessel. For some reason, they cut out the image of Han Solo looking skeptical in the background.
- The Death-Star super-weapon, complete with the improbably long firing sequence. (Use The Force, Data!) What kind of super-weapon takes seven minutes to fire? One that our heroes need time to stop, obviously. When I design a super-weapon that can destroy all life on a planet, that thing is by God going to fire the instant I press the button.
- After the Enterprise rams the Romulan ship, they just sit around and look satisfied with themselves. Then they realize that they really should try to stop the other ship from unleashing the aforementioned super-weapon, so they send Picard over by himself. Has the Federation never heard of boarding parties? Some have argued that since the Romulan ship had 70% shields at the time, the Enterprise should have just bounced off. These people are obviously missing the fact that the Death Star Romulan ship had ray shielding only, and a carefully aimed torpedo Galaxy-class Starship could get through. Use the Force, Jean-Luc!
- Picard's clone pulling himself closer so he could say "For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee." Or it was something like that.
Parts that they must have cut in editing:
- Someone playing 'Amazing Grace' on bagpipes.
- "The ship -- out of danger?"
And let's not forget the powerful moral lesson that this movie leaves us with: the poor, downtrodden slaves are too evil to be let loose, so, really, they deserve to be slaves. Back to the mines with you, wretches!!
In the end, it looks like peace may actually break out between the Romulan Empire and the Federation, thanks to their common interest in supressing the slave rebellion. Whew.
This movie is terrible. It is not quite so terrible as Star Trek V: The Search for God (what was that called, anyway?), but it's close. They ripped off everything. If you've seen the other Trek movies and the Star Wars movies, you've seen this one.
Posted by Mike at January 27, 2003 11:59 AMIts one of the best films they put out excepy First contact, god have some respect!!!
Posted by: sleepspark on July 22, 2003 02:29 PM