While everyone is gearing up for the release of the new Star Trek movie, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the past movies and reminisce on what was good (or bad) about them.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

This movie saw the introduction of the re-fitted Enterprise and one piece jumpsuits (which thankfully didn’t last). While interesting and an alright movie, it felt as if they were trying to make a bit of an artsy-type movie with a soundtrack that was made by someone who was just learning how to play the electric guitar (that amusing comment is from my buddy Bryan, and while I didn’t think it was that bad, I can see his point).

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

One of my favourite Star Trek Movies to date; this movie set the bar high for the rest of the movies. This film brought out one of the best foes from the series and made him even better. Only Ricardo Montalban could make such an old character strong and bad-ass. He did such a good job of making the character and the writers did such a good job of laying the back story of the Eugenics Wars that created these super-humans that two other Star Trek series used them to make some pretty good episodes.

Mixed in with some pretty good space battles, we get to hear Kirk yell out one of the lines that he’ll never live down. I’m not going to tell you what it is if you don’t know it, you’ll need to watch the movie and figure it out for yourself. This movie ends on kind of a downer though; to save the ship and its crew, Spock sacrifices himself…

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

… and just kidding, Spock isn’t quite dead. That’s the nice thing about sci-fi movies or shows; you can bring back whoever you want from the dead. This isn’t a plot device that’s over-used by sci-fi shows at all.

This movie also tries to pull some tears out of it’s audience by killing the two things that Kirk loves; his son (that he just found out about) and the Enterprise. That scene of the Enterprise self destructing is one of the best ship destructions I’ve seen. Other than that, the story is kind of predicatble.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

How is this Star Trek movie the third highest grossing Star Trek movie out there? Seriously, the plot of this movie is based off of an alien species destroying the Earth because humpback whales are no longer singing and sending their groans and moans to outer-space. Lame. The only reason to watch this movie is the comedic moments, which luckily enough there are plenty of. “Double dumb-ass on you!”

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Also known as Star Trek Finds God. He’s angry, yelling and shooting lightning out of his eyes. This movie is also famous for giving several geeks a bit of a nerd-boner with Uhura doing her famous fan dance in the desert.

This movie also served to give some characters with a bit more of a back story, who knew Spock had a brother? Also, who knew the Enterprise was so easy to hijack? Well, I guess Kirk did, this is at least the second time it’s been stolen after all. Again, not the greatest Star Trek movie, but it has its moments.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Now this is more like it, also one of my favourites. This movie has a great story with some great space battles. This movie was so good that even Christian Slater making an appearance couldn’t bring it down. This movie was good enough that I’m just going to tell you to watch it if you haven’t.

Star Trek: Generations

Guess they decided to stop numbering them, Roman numerals are overrated anyways.

While slower paced than the previous movie and not as exciting as some of the other movies, this movie holds its own and is definitely worth a watch. It gracefully passes the torch from the TOS crew to the TNG crew, and throws in some of the ‘artsy-ness’ of The Motion Picture. You have to admit, the shot of the Enterprise exploding and crash landing is pretty awesome. I know I’m over-analyzing this, but as a pilot, I was a little amused by Data saying ‘oh shit’ just before they crash. Statistically speaking, ‘oh shit’ is heard the most on flight data recorders recovered from airplane crashes.

Star Trek: First Contact

I’d have to say that this move and The Wrath of Khan are tied for first in my books. When they first started working on the movie and I heard of the premise, I was disappointed, but when they put it all together, man what a story. Just like in The Wrath of Khan, they took the best nemesis from the series and made them more bad-ass (at least until Voyager turned them into a mere minor nuisance). The Borg’s updated movie-budget look, a look into the Federations’ past, and a few glory shots of the new Enterprise explains why this movie is the top-grossing Star Trek Movie. And you know what, ‘Borg’ does sound Swedish.

Star Trek: Insurrection

Talk about a disappointing movie. What Insurrection? With a title like that I expected to see at least a fleet of ships fight it out. This turned out to be nothing but a mediocre two-part episode, all it was really good for is seeing Data’s head float around while shooting up some village.

Star Trek: Nemesis

Contrary to most fans, I enjoyed this movie (even though it would have been a LOT better if they left out the character of B-4). I liked seeing more of Romulus and finding out how they’re getting along after their not-so-glorious run in with The Dominion. Although I do have to say, the introduction of these ‘Remans’ bordered on ridiculous and counter to canon. As well, Picard’s clone (Shinzon) was made to replace Picard for some dire Romulan Tal Shiar plot, that I can buy, but the whole point of this was so they could get on a soap box on the whole nature versus nurture debate (echoed with the introduction of B-4). That got a little old, but I’ll let it go because that is something that the Tal Shiar would do.

One thing I can’t let go is how they wrote in Shinzon’s ambush on the Enterprise. The Enterprise is running as fast as they can to Federation space, and in doing so go through a region of space where their shields AND communications don’t work. And the crew didn’t think of this as being a bad idea? They really didn’t see it coming? As I read this, I realize I make it sound like I don’t like this movie, but it does have its redeeming factors. For ONCE someone actually shot at the bridge on purpose; you’d think it would happen more often. What were the designers thinking? “I know, let’s put the nerve centre of the ship at the very top and very middle, nice and vulnerable.” It was also cool seeing the Enterprise rammed into Shinzon’s ship and all of the glory shots of the Enterprise. You could tell they knew this was the last movie for them.

Well, that’s my take on the Star Trek movies so far, I hope you enjoyed it. If you disagree leave a comment and we’ll fight it out. I hope the rest of you are ready to give this new movie a shot (even a very skeptical one). I’ll definitely be voicing my opinion on that after I watch it.