Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (
Paramount Pictures,
1984) is the third feature
film based on the popular
Star Trek science fiction television series. It is often referred to as
ST3:TSFS or
TSFS. It is a direct sequel to
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and has a similar feel although often with a lighter, more humorous touch.
Shortly after the events of
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the
USS Enterprise limps back to Earth, scarred from its battle with Khan. Once there, Admiral
James T. Kirk is informed that the obsolete vessel's days are over (it is stated to be 20 years old, but official production timelines place it as about 40 years old, with Kirk's command of the
Enterprise being about 20 years); it won't be refit, but will instead be retired, and its crew reassigned. Meanwhile, Dr.
Leonard McCoy exhibits strange behavior, somehow related to the deceased Captain
Spock.
Simultaneously, Kirk's son Dr.
David Marcus and Lieutenant
Saavik explore the Genesis planet, created at the end of the last film. While there, they discover, much to their shock, that Spock's body has been resurrected by the Genesis effect, although his mind is no longer present and he operates on a purely child-like level. Marcus, pressed by Saavik, admits that he used unstable "protomatter" in building the Genesis device and that it will never work as it was intended. Unknown to them,
Klingon commander
Kruge becomes interested in Genesis (for much the same reasons as Khan; as a weapon), and travels to the Genesis planet to learn its secrets.
Spock's father,
Sarek, visits Earth and discovers, with Kirk's help, that McCoy possesses Spock's "katra" (soul), but that both his katra and body are needed to properly lay him to rest on his homeworld
Vulcan, or McCoy could die. Disobeying direct orders prohibiting anyone from visiting the Genesis planet, Kirk reunites his officers and steals the
Enterprise and travels to the remote world, which is beginning to self-destruct.
Kruge arrives at Genesis first, destroying the research vessel
USS Grissom. (He also summarily executes the member of his crew responsible for Grissom's destruction; Kruge wanted prisoners.) His crew captures the scientists on the planet- David, Saavik, and a now-teenage Spock. Kirk and the skeleton crew of the Enterprise arrive, unaware that the Klingon ship and its crew are cloaked nearby. The
Enterprise detects the cloaked Bird of Prey and strikes first, hitting the Klingon ship as it de-cloaks, but is unable to raise shields during the Klingon counterattack. The
Enterprise is crippled, and Kirk is powerless to prevent the Klingons from killing David on the planet. Rather than surrender, Kirk, Scotty and Chekov order the Enterprise to self-destruct, killing several of Kruge's men, and beam to the planet's surface. They find Saavik and Spock and free them from their captors. Moments later, Kruge beams to the planet and has everyone but Kirk and Spock beamed aboard his Bird of Prey. Still demanding the technology of the Genesis project, Kruge and Kirk engage in hand-to-hand combat on the disintegrating planet. Kirk defeats Kruge who plunges into a volcanic rift. Kirk quickly grabs Spock, and, imitating Kruge's voice, shouts the order to beam them both aboard Kruge's ship.
The crew return to Vulcan, where Spock's
katra is reunited with his body in a dangerous procedure called "fal-tor-pan" which will reunite Spock's mind with his body. Dr. McCoy agrees to the ritual, knowing that the ritual is quite risky for both him and Spock. The ritual is successful and Spock's memories must still be restored, but, nevertheless, the Vulcan is now alive and well.
A theme of
TWOK was summed up by Spock as "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." A theme of
TSFS is "the needs of the one sometimes outweigh the needs of the many." Kirk and company are willing to sacrifice their careers, lives, and ship to put Spock's soul to rest, not even imagining that Spock's resurrection is a possibility.
In the
Original Series, much was made of the attachment Kirk had to the
Enterprise, so his willing destruction of the vessel here is a resounding note indeed.
|
Alternate promotional poster for the film. |
TSFS was directed by
Leonard Nimoy, which fueled advance speculation that Spock would turn up alive and well.
The film is quite literally a sequel, with the opening scenes picking up almost at where the previous movie concluded.
The film contains more humor than
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, fueled partly by the comic talents of Christopher Lloyd, DeForest Kelley and
James Doohan (as
Scotty). Shatner's performance, on the other hand, has been viewed by some as not up to the level of his
TWOK work, though Kirk's reaction to the death of his son David is a high point in the drama.
The destruction of the
Enterprise had to be done twice, since the initial destruction sequence - which ended in a
warp core breach rather than the saucer exploding and the remainder burning up in the Genesis planet's atmosphere - was deemed to have little emotional impact, and also appeared to be too similar to the ending of the
Star Wars film
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
Harve Bennett had been trying to keep the Enterprise's destruction a secret until the film's release, only for his efforts to be wasted when the event was mentioned in the film's trailer. The trailer didn't reveal exactly how the Enterprise had been destroyed, though, and instead implied that it was destroyed outright by the Klingon Bird of Prey.
Early drafts involved
Romulans as antagonists, rather than the Klingons. This is why in the final film the Klingon ship is a
Bird-of-Prey, which historically was a Romulan ship name.
Star Trek: The Next Generation would perpetuate this confusion between the two races, attributing the Romulans' sense of honor to the Klingons. However, the naming would later be explained as a result of an alliance between the two races, resulting in the Klingons garnering the
cloaking device.
The music was scored by
James Horner. This was the final Star Trek film to be scored by Horner, who was reportedly upset at the short amount of time he was given to complete the music for this film. Horner later reused elements from his Search for Spock score in his score for the film
Aliens.
Although fans welcomed the return of Spock, the film did not generate quite the same acclaim from critics and fans as its predecessor, helping to establish the notion that odd-numbered Trek films are somehow inferior and less financially successful than the even-numbered ones, a notion that held true until 2002 when the 10th Trek film failed at the box office.
While the film had a budget of $17 million, quite higher than its much-appreciated predecessor (
Khan had only a budget of $11 million), it was still a very low budget for a film of its period. For comparison, two science fiction films released that year,
Dune and
Ghostbusters, had budgets of $45 million and $30 million, respectively.
* The film marks the first appearance of a guest star "movie era" admiral, that being that character of
Fleet Admiral Morrow. It is also the first time in Star Trek that more than one admiral is seen on camera at the same time (Morrow and Kirk) and also the first appearance of a
Fleet Admiral in Star Trek (
a character named Fleet Admiral Nogura had been mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture but was never seen on camera).
* In the film, it is not exactly clear why (during the transporter room scene where Uhura gives Kirk and friends permission to beam aboard the
Enterprise) Uhura locks her fellow officer - dubbed "Mr. Adventure" in the script and "Lieutenant Heisenberg" in the novelization - in the closet. Some fans have speculated that Uhura did this out of revenge for Heisenberg's remark about Uhura's career "winding down", but it is unlikely that Uhura would stoop to such levels merely because of an offhand remark. The novelization makes it clear that Uhura's actions were intended to prevent Heisenberg from stopping Kirk and company's attempt to steal the
Enterprise, and also to make it clear to Starfleet that Heisenberg was attempting to do his duty (as evidenced by his objections in the film that Kirk's group had no official Starfleet orders, nor did they have proper identification) and was not involved in the conspiracy to steal the ship.
* This film contains one of the few instances of
Pavel Chekov actually speaking Russian. In the opening scenes when the crew discover life signs in Spock's quarters, Kirk leaves the bridge to investigate. Chekov, at the science console, says (in Russian) "I'm not crazy! There it is." (pointing to the computer screen).
* This film also documents the only recorded incident of a starship stalling. The
Excelsior stalls whilst trying to pursue the
Enterprise after Kirk steals it from Spacedock - in fact it has been sabotaged by Scotty. The film is also the first to feature an Excelsior class starship, and the first to introduce the NX prefix (for experimental or prototype vessels) in Federation ship registration rather than the traditional NCC. The Excelsior class was used in various forms in TNG, DS9 and notably as the
Enterprise-B in
Star Trek: Generations. The registration number for the
Excelsior in this film is NX-2000; the same ship features again in
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, by which time it has been re-registered to NCC-2000. Other ships seen to bear the NX prefix are the USS
Defiant (DS9 season 3-7), the USS
Prometheus (VGR,
Message in a Bottle), and the
Enterprise in
Star Trek: Enterprise. (The USS
Bradbury, mentioned in an episode of TNG, had the registry NX-72307, but this was not seen clearly or mentioned onscreen.)
* The now-famous Klingon d'ktahg knife is also first introduced here.
* In the scene where McCoy goes to the bar to try and charter a ship to take him back to the Genesis Planet, there's a brief shot of two Starfleet officers cuddling some
tribbles.
* The first scenes filmed in principal photography were the opening scenes on the
Enterprise bridge. In the televised version of the film these first scenes on the bridge of the
Enterprise had been cut out.
* At the Starfleet bar where Kirk asks Morrow to have the
Enterprise back, prop models of the Epsilon 9 Space Station from
Star Trek: The Motion Picture can be seen hanging on the walls as decorations.
* The
Enterprise has more external battle damage (there are additional scars/patches on the saucer, engineering hull, and nacelles) at the beginning of this film than it did at the end of
The Wrath of Khan, indicating that the ship sustained additional damage in another battle between films (highly unlikely, since very little time passes between the two movies). It is very possible that the additional battle damage was added to the filming model by ILM at the request of Leonard Nimoy to help give the impression that the Enterprise was a "pained" ship, and to give more justification for the ship's decommissioning.
* Actor
George Takei was reportedly upset that his character was called 'tiny' during Dr. McCoy's rescue from detention. After seeing the movie, he realized that his comeback "don't call me tiny" was one of Sulu's great moments in the series, and told writer-producer Harve Bennett so.
* Triangular-shaped plastic sandwich containers were painted and glued to the walls of the Klingon Bird of Prey ship for decoration. They were also attached to the base of Kruge's command chair.
* The Enterprise's self-destruct system was activated one other time on screen, in the
Original series episode
"Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". In that episode, the command to abort the sequence was "1-2-3 Continuity".
* The post-destruction model of the
Enterprise (with the main saucer mostly blown away, but with the secondary hull and warp engines attached) was later re-used as a model in the
TNG episode "
The Best of Both Worlds," and again as the wreck of the USS
Olympia in the DS9 episode "The Sound of Her Voice."
* The events of TSFS take place around the year 2285. In the film,
Fleet Admiral Morrow states that "the Enterprise is 20 years old," implying that the ship has been in service since around 2265, which would co-incide with TOS's Season One DVD release (Region 1), which states that 'the year is 2264.' However, these '20 years' do not coincide with the Season One Episode
The Menagerie whereby Spock indicates that the events of the Pilot Episode
The Cage take place "13 years ago," indicating that the ship has been in service since roughly 2253, when commanded by Capt. Pike.
* Saavik (played by
Kirstie Alley) is cut from the opening scene which repeats Spock's funeral wake aboard the
Enterprise from
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, as she is now played by
Robin Curtis.
* A romance was intended to develop between David Marcus and Saavik, but while it was mentioned in the novelization, it was not shown in the finished film.
* There was a debate during writing as to which character should die on the Genesis planet, Saavik or David, and it was ultimately decided that David should sacrifice himself to save Spock and Saavik as atonement for his actions regarding the Genesis project.
*
Edward James Olmos was the first choice of director Leonard Nimoy to play the role of Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, but producer Harve Bennett preferred Christopher Lloyd.
*The music score by
James Horner was actually adapted from the score to the previous film,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, with more emphasis on
Craig Hunley's composition "The Genesis Project" (which served as theme music for the Genesis planet, and heard primarily during Genesis' destruction).
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Star Trek III: The Search for Spock at StarTrek.com
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Five-Minute Star Trek III: The Search for Spock — Parody version
