Saavik: Hottest babe in a scifi film? I say yes.

Kirstie Alley was the perfect Saavik. Then she *had* to let success to get to her head and ask for a bigger paycheck. I was rewatching ST2 today and it just occurred to me that Saavik actually was the only Vulcan female in the history of Star Trek to have a decent hairstyle. Robin Curtis had this really horrible do that kinda looked like a mullet. Valeris was just like every other Vulcan female, rocking that horrible bowl cut thing that Vulcans and Romulans love. Only it always looks awful. I dunno, I always had a serious crush on Saavik when I watched ST2 as a kid. Alley was really great at portraying a half-Vulcan/half-Romulan hybrid. Robin Curtis just acted really wooden, which isn't the same as acting Vulcan.

Do you think it should've been Saavik instead of Valeris in Undiscovered Country? I'm totally with Meyer on that. It would've been a great callback to TWOK. The only thing is, I would've wanted Kirstie Alley to do it. And she probably wouldn't, since she was so famous as Rebecca Howe over on Cheers. Meaning an even larger salary demand. Really really would not have wanted Kim Cattrall to play Saavik. That would've been awful.

Am I being too hard on Robin Curtis? Did you like her? She's probably a nice person in real life, but she butchered Saavik beyond recognition. Let's put it this way. At the end of Star Trek 2, you felt like Saavik was a part of the crew, as much as Chekov or Sulu. That's pretty impressive. She's standing right there with them at Spock's funeral. And I felt like she deserved to be there, she'd earned her place at the table. With all that she'd done at the conn throughout the film, I thought she was a pretty great character and definitely more then just a glorified extra. As opposed to, say... Wedge Antilles, a guy who has maybe two lines of dialogue in a film and then goes on to have about 15-20 novels devoted to his life for some reason. I'm not saying that Saavik's the main reason, but people consider TWOK to be the best, and I'd venture to say that Alley's portrayal of that character is one of many factors that lift that film above the others.

Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan: Still holds up damn fine.

So, with all the buzz with the first Star Trek reviews pouring out, I figured I'd go and rewatch Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan. Ya know, just to revisit a classic. It's one of my favorite films of all time, so this rewatching business... something I do pretty often.

You have to know, Star Trek 2 was one of the first films I remember watching as a young lad. Back in the good ol days, channel 44, which would later go on to become UPN and then the CW, would rerun old movies all the time, and one of those would be Star Trek 2. This was my very first Star Trek film, and left an absolutely indelible impression on me. This film was what made me a Trekkie. It was pretty cool too, cause this was right around the time that TNG was starting up and I was able to watch that great show as it originally ran.

Then my family bought a VCR player and I recorded Star Trek 2. And rewatched it and rewatched it and rewatched it. Fuck all other films, I couldn't get sick of viewing this somewhat poor quality recording. It got to the point where I could pretty much recite the dialogue line for line as they said it onscreen. Ya know how it is, being a young kid and going all crazy trying to ape Ricardo Montalban with fun lines like "To the last... I will grapple with thee. From Hell's heart... I stab at thee! For HATE's SAKE... I spit... my last breath... at thee!" Just wonderful emotional lines that you could really rasp out. Of course, some of the dialogue made absolutely no sense back then. It took me years to figure out exactly what "Sauce for the goose" meant, for example. Still, great childhood memories.

So, that's just a bit of context to let you know how much I cherish this film. The best Star Trek film ever, and my favorite film until The Dark Knight last summer. What Nicholas Meyer pulled off was nothing short of a miracle, when you look back and see that it was following up on Star Trek The Motionless Picture. Who could have had the imagination, and force of persuasion to alter basically the entire Star Trek universe like that? Suddenly... awful pajama uniforms gave way to awesomely elegant red jacket uniforms. With that iconic clasp over the right shoulder? That feature's been copied for fucking decades now, in all kinds of scifi movies and video games. You've gotta give props, that was an amazing costume change. And the single best starship battle, STILL. You can show me all sorts of ship battles from DS9 or Nemesis, but I still hold that Mutara Nebula battle as the greatest ship to ship battle in Trek history. You cannot top that film finale. Which is strange, because it's two Federation starships battling one another.

Then you realize that's what made it great. What was great was how they made it two Federation starships fighting each other. It seems like that would be a weird dynamic, but they make it work. The Reliant is from Starfleet, but it looks totally different from the Enterprise. And I'm not just talking about the red lighting they used, which was blatant as all hell. It's got two low nacelles right under it, far apart, so it kinda looks like a mean pitbull. A pitbull in somewhat of a lean, crouched down posture. Small, but packing a punch. While the Enterprise is longer and much more graceful with two nacelle struts in a V, like an eagle. This really hits home when the Enterprise is cruising towards the Mutara Nebula with the Reliant hot on its heels.

The final battle is tense, just like the u-boat films which Nicholas Meyer referenced on his commentary of the DVD. But what's so important is how slow the ships move. This is what is great about Trek, they are these giant ships and they act like it. When the Reliant comes charging out of the static towards the Enterprise, we can see Kirk pivoting his chair, while ordering "Evasive starboard!" Yet the ship herself turns much more slowly then his chair pivot. We feel the engines straining for such a maneuver. Is it realistic? Oh hell no, of course not. Ships are weightless in space, yada yada yada. But it doesn't matter, because Trek ships need that sense of size and weight. After all, this is space... they have nothing but the Enterprise and an occasional alien planet. This ship is the workplace, and home, and overall landscape for 500 people. She's as much a character as any of the main characters. So to maintain the heft and importance, it is crucial that the ship not be pulling off all sorts of crazy loop-de-loops or whatnot.

So yea, Wrath of Khan still holds up. That's why it's a classic. I will always have a big goofy grin on my face while watching this film. Just can't help it. And yes, occasionally reciting a line like "Sauce for the goose, Mr. Saavik. The odds will be even."

Star Trek: A Shitty List

Oh my god... this is the worst list I've ever seen:

Shitty List

I just can't comprehend anyone placing TWOK below first or second. It just doesn't make any logical sense. Dismay grows heavy in my heart.

Some have criticized Kirk's midlife crisis in the plot, but I didn't have a problem with that, it made him much more human, instead of a caricature. And it had only partly to do with his age. Much of it was concentrated around his life as a deskbound admiral pushing data readouts. Seemed like a natural development. Didn't grate on me at all. Actually, I think the first time I watched it as a kid, I was really only bothered by the fact that the Reliant was taken over so easily and that we as the audience didn't get to see any of that.

Some people occasionally have VI The Undiscovered Country as their number one.

I can see where they're coming from with that. VI was also done by Nicholas Meyer and great in its own way.

VI was just more of a whodunit instead of a pure action adventure like TWOK. The ending battle with the Excelly and the BoP was fine, but the preceding scenes of Kirk and McCoy escaping from the mining prison and everybody searching through their drawers on the Enterprise... those didn't really captivate me. I'll always just remember it as the fitting swan song for the TOS crew that the TNG crew never got.