Music
Although it’s great music I feel that Horner, returning to score this as a promise he made, sticks pretty closely to the theme he developed for the second movie, and while there are new sequences that accompany, for instance, the breakup of the Genesis planet and the battle above it, and on Vulcan at the end, I find it hard to separate the two whenever I hear them. Not surprisingly, this basic musical motif would become the new theme for most of the movies, especially as soon enough the original soundtrack used on the first movie would become the theme for TNG. It is nice though to hear the old fanfare from the TV series being used right at the end, as Spock recognises Kirk. Nice touch.
Themes and motifs
Loss and rebirth, faith and friendship certainly have their place in this movie. There’s the continuing gulf left by the loss of Spock, mirrored in Sarek’s eyes when he realises his son could not have mind-melded with his friend before he died. There’s even the loss of Leonard Nimoy from the opening credits for the very first time ever, and the loss of Scotty --- temporarily --- to the
Excelsior. Then there’s the initial loss of the
Enterprise, as Kirk is informed his ship is to be decommissioned, and later the very real and actual loss of the very ship that has carried Kirk and co through so many adventures. Genesis is a loss, too, as it is clear it is a broken flush. David having taken the shortcuts he berated his father for taking has ensured that this is an unstable process which will never fly. Kirk loses David to the Klingons, setting him up for the loss of any empathy or sympathy he might once have had for the warrior race. In the series, generally, the Klingons were seen as loud and obnoxious, occasionally evil but really more like the Vogons in
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. They were buffoons, foils for Kirk and the polar opposite of the do-gooding Federation.
Here though they become, at least for Kirk, a symbol of savagery and evil, a reckless, wild people who will do anything to take power and hold on to it, and he has good reason now to hate them. I don’t believe they’re even mentioned, much less used, until the final “original” movie,
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but it’s clear that Kirk now hates every Klingon and wishes they were dead. Here we come across failure: failure of the Genesis Project, Kirk’s failure to save his son, Spock’s failure to mind-meld with Kirk and Kruge’s failure to discover “the secret of the Genesis Torpedo!” Rebirth is another theme of course, most obviously in the regeneration of the body of Spock, with his immortal
katra trapped inside the mind of Doctor McCoy, a clever touch in itself, as if he had any choice in the matter this is the last place Spock would want to reside. Faith and friendship carry the movie far; if it wasn’t for Kirk’s faith in, if not the beliefs of his friend, their right to be exercised and credited, he would not have put himself at risk of losing his position in Starfleet as he steals the
Enterprise to enable him to help Spock. The friendship and loyalty of his crew demands they share the risk with him.
Does this movie deserve its reputation?
I’d say yes it does. It’s something of a get-out clause to bring Spock back, but let’s face it, nobody wanted him to remain dead and
Star Trek would excel at doing this sort of thing. In series like
Babylon 5 and
Battlestar Galactica, people who died stayed dead: there was no coming back. But
Star Trek has always been a series of second chances, and until the advent of
Deep Space Nine, no major character who ever died stayed dead, so this fits in with the whole ethos behind the franchise.
However, making this part of a trilogy was something of a master stroke, and obviously copied from the likes of
Star Wars. This idea of almost making a film-length episode of a TV series would become quite popular in film over the nineties and beyond, and of course left us all salivating for the next part, or conclusion. But up until almost the end, there is still no actual guarantee that Spock will be back, or at least as we know him, so there is some element of doubt there. It’s not as good as The
Wrath of Khan of course, but it’s a very worthy followup, and I would award it a good
