As Philip J. Fry once said, “You now what movies average out to be really good? The first six Star Trek movies!” Turns out, all 11 Star Trek movies average out to be pretty good. I, and friend of the site Alyssa, spent the past week or so watching a marathon of all 11 Star Trek movies because I’ve never seen them before, or at least most of them. I’d specifically never seen the first six, featuring the original Star Trek cast with William Shatner, Leonard Nemoy and the rest of those lovable old folks. Those films are a milestone of geekery, and it was my sworn duty as a geek to watch.

And sure enough, they’re all mostly pretty good.

To boldly go...yadda, yadda, yadda

I have never seen a single episode of the original Star Trek TV show from the 1960s. It wasn’t on in syndication when I was growing up in the 80s, as far as I know. My father was a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but as a kid, the show was boring and too ‘grown up’ for me to appreciate. That’s the one with Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard. Star Trek: TNG was like the Yankees’ game, the TV my dad wanted to watch while I begged him to change the channel to my show. However, I have seen a few smattering episodes of TNG, as well as Voyager.

But I have never been a Trekkie.

So I dove into these movies with the most basic background and understanding, and I found them to be pretty good – for the most part. The movies that involve the original show cast (Shatner, Nemoy et. al) were the best, whereas the movies that involve the TNG cast (Stewart et. al) were rather dull and just seemed like really long episodes of the show with better graphics. I also really like the franchise reboot from 2009 with Simon Pegg as Scotty and Chris Pine as the new Capt. James T. Kirk. But then I always prefer modern movies over the old stuff. Though I did learn that the 2009 reboot isn’t really like the classic movies at all.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Star Trek is the story of the future, where humans have gone out into the galaxy, met a bunch of aliens and formed the United Federation of Planets. Their military branch is Starfleet, and the various Star Trek series tell the story of several different spaceships having different space adventures. The most famous of which is the Starship Enterprise, commanded by Capt. Kirk, with Mr. Spock, Bones, Chekov, Sulu, Uhura and Scotty. They’re an eclectic crew, and you really get a sense of familiarity when they bounce off one another in the first six movies. The actors had been working together for years, were growing old together, and it makes for a more united sort of team.

I was surprised by how strong the continuity was between the first 6 movies. They all bleed one right into the other, with the first part of each movie essentially picking up right where the previous one left off. Each one has its own plot, but it’s one big ongoing adventure overall. The crew is getting old, but not so old that they can’t still have adventures, punch a few klingons and rebel against Starfleet every now and then. The adventures, no matter how varied, focus on the humanity of the crew working together to overcome whatever they’re facing. These are character-based adventures, which is always the best way to handle this sort of sci-fi.

The best of the six is Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Try to keep up with this plot: At the start of the film, Kirk and his crew are in exile on the planet Vulcan (Spock’s homeworld) because in the last film they went rogue from Starfleet, blew up the Enterprise and stole a klingon warship. They’ve decided to return to Earth to accept their punishment – but since they’re the only ones not on Earth, they’re the only ones not coming under attack by a mysterious space probe that’s trying to broadcast some sort of message to the ‘citizens’ of Earth. But the humans who are under attack don’t understand the message, they don’t speak the language.

Who does?

Humpback whales. But they have been extinct for more than 100 years!

So Kirk and their stolen klingon warship decide to go back in time to the 1980s to kidnap some humpback whales from ancient Earth. The rest of the movie is a wacky fish-out-of-water tale of the futuristic crew members wandering around mid-80s San Francisco having wacky adventures! But as silly as it all sounds, it’s quite enjoyable. The actors, and therefore the characters, are having fun, and it’s the most human of all the space adventures. Plus the plot is gloriously insane! So we get three space adventures of this crew to get to know them, then they give us a delightful adventure in a familiar alien world – our own.

Cruisin' the streets of San Fran

The firs three movies are alright, with the second one, Wrath of Kahn, being the standout. The first one, The Motion Picture, spends about an hour introducing the crew and then taking a looooong tour of the refurbished Enterprise. Then it takes another hour as the crew explores a gigantic mysterious spaceship with tons of different sections and zones. All the real action happens in the last 20 minutes or so, which includes a neat twist. But it’s all a good movie. Wrath of Kahn and the third one, Search for Spock, are more common action/adventure movies. So they’re pretty good.

The fifth movie, The Final Frontier, is not very good. It involves the crew being taken over by an enigmatic cult leader and then driven out beyond the edge of known space. That part is cool, but the rest is meh. The final movie, The Undiscovered Country, is better. Kirk and Bones get trapped on a prison planet while the Enterprise crew try to clear their name. Quite fun.

Though about halfway through these six movies, Capt. Kirk transforms into the hammy William Shatner we know in this day and age. He’s no longer the badass Starfleet Captain but is really just Shatner. The transition is not a good one.

Jolly good fun

Star Trek 7 is Generations, which combines the TNG crew with the old crew, and ends with Kirk and Picard teaming up to take on the crazy bad guy. This starts a four movie series (Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis) which focuses on Picard and the TNG crew. These movies are not as good. The new crew doesn’t have the same camaraderie as the old crew. Generations and First Contact are OK, especially First Contact, which is about the crew again going back in time while simultaneously fighting the Borg. This time they’re helping the farmer from Babe to create the first warp-drive engines.

The latter two movies, Insurrection and Nemesis, are basically just longer episodes of the TV show. There’s nothing particularly big-screen about them. The plots aren’t interesting, the adventures aren’t especially exciting and it’s all just business as usual. So boring. And no wonder it led to the reboot.

In 2009, new filmmakers came in and recast Capt. Kirk, Spock and the gang. They gave the movie all the modern attitude, special effects and lense flares that a movie can handle. I liked it when I first saw it, and I still do. But now that I’ve seen the first Star Trek movies with the original Kirk, I can see that the reboot is really just in names only. The familiar and comfortable camaraderie is gone in the new cast. The characters don’t have the same weight and importance as they used to. People like Sulu and Chekov are only around in the reboot movie because they were around back then.

They're fun, but not as fun as the original cast

And there is a lot more running. Everybody runs all the time in the reboot movie. There’s not a lot of that in the original Star Trek flicks.

So in the end, it was a fun marathon. It started out pretty great with a lot of fun adventures, then sagged towards the end and finally ended strong with the new reboot. I can’t say as how I’m now a converted Trekkie, nor have any interest in tracking down and watching the show. But I am definitely looking forward to more films from this new reboot crew. Perhaps they can recapture some of old magic of the old people.