Thread by @dolari

Star Trek III Watchalong Thread Starts HERE!

How I watched the movies for a long time in my childhood:

There's a transition between Shatner's credit and Kelley's credit that is long enough to put Nimoy's credit in. But it's not there as a subconscious sign that "Spock is missing."

Harve Bennett went to Nick Meyer to work on Star Trek III after the phenomenal Star Trek II. Nick actually declined to write the movie because he had killed Spock and didn't want to bring him back. We'll get back to that on Star Trek IV.

Bennett himself wrote the movie and said it was the easiest script he'd ever written. He simply started with Spock's rebirth at the end and worked the story "backwards."

FOUND SPOCK, THE END

I have to be honest here. The ships in ST3 look terrible. The Enterprise is the same ship from TMP, but is lit like it's sitting in an office hallway. All the dynamic lighting is gone, and it just looks chalk white. All through the movie the models look like this....

"Mr. Scott, have you always multipled your repair estimates by a factor of two?"
"Of course, Sir. How else could I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?"
"Your reputation is secure, Scotty."
Jenn: "Yes. They'll bring it up in every appearance you have ever after."

Star Trek III has a rep of being a bad Trek movie. In my opinion, it's very very very good. But it's not an action movie. It's a funeral dirge. After the Big Sci Fi run of The Motion Picture, and the Action Adventure Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock is an intimate emotional...

...movie about the death of friends and family and how far you will go to save them. It's almost quiet introspection, and it's very good at it.

The USS Scurrying Roach.

The original story involved ROMULANS getting the Genesis plans instead of Klingons. Script mentions of the "Bird of Prey" and avian markings on the ship from when it a Romulan ship made it all the way through production.

Christopher Lloyd was not the first choice for Kruge by Leonard Nimoy. It was actually Edward James Olmos. Bennett vetoed him because he didn't feel Olmos was physically big enough for that part. While both neither considered Lloyd for the part because they thought he was...

...too good for Trek, Lloyd himself was interested so they grabbed him and considered themselves lucky. Honestly? I love him here.

Also there's a contractual obligation that Christopher Lloyd must be in every movie known to man.

Oooh, Starfleet uses that new Phillips Hue lighting system I've heard about!

On the right, the Excelsior. In the middle, the Enterprise. On the left, hiding behind a pylon, a study model for Ralph McQuarries unused design for the 1975 Planet of the Titans unmade movie. Also, the inspiration for the USS Discovery.

"They say she has transwarp drive."
"Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels she'd be a wagon."
Jenn: "It's been thirty five years now, and I still have no idea what the hell he means."

Janice Rand makes a cameo.

"Nevertheless I am reading a life form there!"
Jenn: "Okay. On the USS Constitution, NCC-1700, which hasn't had a refit yet. I'll let them know."

I have to give DeForest Kelley a lot of credit. He really acts his heart out in this movie going from Stark Raving Mad to Genial Custodian of Whatever Is In My Head.

DeForest had pretty much retired from acting before TMP, and only came out to do Trek movies. He didn't have to put so much into the role, but he did time and time again.

"Jim, the Enterprise is twenty years old. We feel her day is over."

I've always had trouble wrapping my head around this timeline. 20 years for a starship doesn't feel like a long time, and on top of that the refit feels like Just The Other Day.

The Okuda's timelines aside, I've always taken this to heart that it's 20 years from the refit in TMP and everyone just looks REALLY REALLY good for their ages.

WE PAID FOR THIS CGI AND WE'RE GONNA USE IT.

And hey, District Prosecutor Dan "Scumbag" Fielding as a Klingon!

There's a line through TSFS that really rubs me the wrong way and that was Nimoy's idea that the Enterprise was a Grand Old Lady of Starfleet and the rest were...in his words...effete. How did he go about that? The Grissom's captain can't do anything without contacting Starfleet.

While that's not bad characterization, the decision to make the bridge chairs pink as a way to further "effete" the ship and then to have the captain of the Excelsior prominently filing his nails (which is not something a Man™ would do in the 80s), really comes across as...

...mean-spirited and offensive to the gay community. Which, unlike most people in the early 80s realized, did exist at the time.

Robin Curtis as Saavik. I prefer her over to Kirstie Alley, mainly because she plays a straight up Vulcan and does it well. She's not as dynamic as Kirstie, but for a Vulcan, that's perfect. What she IS though is intense when she needs to be. And very good at Vulcan Intensity.

FOUND SPOCK, THE END.

I've always loved that Star Trek RARELY recast their characters, even twenty to thirty years later. Mark Lenard played Sarek in TOS, they brought him back to ST3, 4 and 6, and then for several TNG episodes.

Also: You think Kirk paid for that VHS copy of Khan, or did Paramount give it to him as compensation for filming the movie?

Any one for pasta shells?

Also: Spock's robe from TMP.

Some pieces of the Epsilon 9 model from TMP gracing the back walls of the Officer's Club.

I love that Kirk's conspiracy is so bad at first that Federation Security is already waiting for McCoy at their first attempt to charter a ship.

DeForest is trying so hard here.

I WANT HER NAME TO BE FLO

"To your planet, welcome!"

From the big ears to the backwards talk and even the sly voice, this character is actually meant to be a riff on Empire Strikes Back's Yoda.

This poor guy. Signs on to the new refit Enterprise and on his first day on the job, Spock nerve pinches him and goes for a joy ride in V'Ger. Years later, he gets into Starfleet Security, cushy job at the local precinct, and then two days from retirement meets Sulu....

Scott: "Transporter Room"
Leonard Nimoy as Turbolift: "Thank you."
Jenn: FOUND SPOCK, THE END

Hard to see here, but Uhura is wearing a uniform consisting of a jacket,skirt, tights and boots. This was at her request as she wanted something more feminine. Years earlier she and Grace Lee Whitney petitioned for the mini-dresses in TOS for the same reason.

Twenty years on, and Nichelle Nichols finally gets her moment to shine, and SHE IS FANTASTIC. She completely drives this scene from beginning to end and does it WONDERFULLY.

"I'm glad you're on our side!"

In the soundtrack, there's about an extra 10 seconds of music between the end of the Uhura scene and the shot of the Enterprise in Space Dock. It sounds very "Gotta run right now and escape." The novelization of TSOS has Uhura rapidly putting in coordinates and beaming out...

...of the room before security shows up. Not sure if that was filmed or not.

In the novel, she ends up at the Vulcan embassy where Sarek takes her in.

2280s fashion. on a scale of one to ten:

Sulu: 15
McCoy: 7
Scotty: 6
Chekov: Whatever gets you through the day, man.

I do want Sulu's cape/jacket, though. That thing ROCKS.

I've never liked the Excelsior or Ambassador designs. Too flat and bubbly (and the Excelsior concept models were even FLATTER). Even the Galaxy took me a while to warm up to. My heart will always be with the Constitution II class.

Although maybe if it was lit better....

"The doors, Mr. Scott"
"Aye, sir I'm working on it....AAAAAA...no...AAAAAB. No that's not it either. AAAAAC."

It's mentioned that the Excelsior hasn't broken the Enterprise's speed records and we never hear about Transwarp drive after this. It's my headcanon that they never figured out Scotty's sabotage, thought Transwarp was a complete failure and never tried it again.

I gotta admit, I don't have a lot of production info about Search for Spock. Other than a fire on the Paramount lot, production went really smoothly and easily. Which usually means not a lot gets talked about, cause what you see on the screen is what you got behind the scenes.

Absolutely love the look of a world changing so rapidly that the life around doesn't have time to evolve to the new climates. Kinda like us.

Ow.

FOUND SPOCK, THE END

Klingon Life Lessons #435: When the boss is angry, just stare knowingly at him back. He'll know when he's wrong.

Klingon Life Lessons #870: What doesn't kill you makes you the winner.

Nimoy was very in-tune with who and what Vulcans were all about, having basically been the only Vulcan in Trek for the longest time.
He was VERY insistent that Pon Farr had to be shown, because it was part of the Vulcan life-cycle as per the previous series.

On top of that, he was responsible for the "finger touching" that starts off the mating. He felt, between the Vulcan salute, the mind melds, and the finger touching between Sarek and Amanda during Journey to Babel that touch was very important to Vulcans.

We also have Robin here, her voice never wavering from how we've heard it all through the movie. But she knows what she has to do, and what needs to be done and shows that intensity her eyes and deliberate actions.

She's one of the best Vulcans outside of Nimoy and Tuvok in my opinion.

EYE ACTING!

I had this poster as a kid:

One of the things that was very important to writer Harve Bennett was that in order to get Spock back, Kirk had to lose two things equally important to him.

The first is his son. Which to me didn't mean much. We didn't see a lot of him, we didn't have twenty some years investment in him. And Shatner's hammy reaction (YOU WERE SO GOOD AT THE END OF TWOK, BILL) hurts the moment.

This code hasn't been updated in twenty years. There are thousands of sysadmins crying right now and they don't know why....

(I rather liked the continuity porn, myself).

The second thing Kirk had to lose was the Enterprise, and this one hurt me. And hurt me deeply.

The Enterprise, to me, is as much a character in Star Trek as Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Losing her had me bawling as much as losing Spock did in the last movie.

Sure, she's just a ship, and not even in the same configuration as she was in TOS. And really, she's not even the same "Actor" as in TOS as that's a whole different model sitting in the Smithsonian.

But the CHARACTER. She's been with us since Captain Pike.

Got a facelist in TMP. And now she's gone.

Sure, she comes back as the 1701-A...but does she really? It's a completely different ship, just relabelled. The 1701 is gone, man. And while it's the same model, literally, the 1701-A is not the 1701.

And she never was to me.

This is one of two images that haunts me, not only because it's the death of the Enterprise, but because I think in pictures...and this picture is a lot of my life.

Sadly, this feels almost like an afterthought....

I've always had the idea that Kruge is NOT a run-of-the-mill Klingon, and in fact has gone rogue. There's a mention earlier that "Even as our emissaries negotiate for peace with the Federation, we will act for the preservation of our race."

In fact, I've kind of wondered if he's not exactly stable. He outright kills a crewman for botching a disruptor shot, kills some worms for fun, and then there's these amazingly delivered lines that again tell me he may be unbalanced.

KIRK: You should take the Vulcan, too.

KRUGE: No.
KIRK: But, why?
KRUGE: Because you wish it.
KRUGE: Genesis, I want it.
KIRK: Beam the Vulcan up ...and we'll talk.
KRUGE: Give me what I want and I'll consider it.
KIRK: You fool, look around you! The planet's destroying itself!
KRUGE: Yes. Exhilarating, isn't it!

Finally. Kruge gets the One Ring.

The second image from this movie that haunts me. Again, I've seen this image come up in my thoughts as a metaphor for events in my life far too often.

When I first saw this in the theaters, when Kirk fools Maltz into beaming him up from the surface, the entire audience loudly cheered.

There's a cut scene here of a little Vulcan girl who rushes up to greet and salute Spock who is laying unconscious on the stretcher, telling him to Live Long and Prosper.

Dame Judith Anderson as T'Lar. Apparently Shatner and Kelley serenaded her with "Nothing like a Dame" between takes.

The Vulcans speak in Olde English, with "Thou" and "Thee." This nice little touch of continuity stretches back to Amok Time.

The Kohlinar masters also spoke Old English before they were redubbed into Vulcan.

Nimoy wanted a very very very specific reaction from Robin Curtis when Spock and Saavik met eyes. He couldn't really explain it so he whispered to her something apparently very intimate. She reacted with what you see here, which he immediately said "That. That is what I want."

FOUND SPOCK, THE END

Sorry there wasn't a lot of production stuff with this watch-a-long. Like I mentioned, other than a few bumps at the beginning and a fire at Paramount, the production went fairly smoothly, so what's on page was pretty much what was on the stage.

We'll do Star Trek IV in the morning. Prolly about 10-ish my time.