Quote Originally Posted by Rich-n-Texas
Okay. I voted for #1 BECAUSE... I was a fan way back when the first one was released; it set the stage and the pace for each one that followed and I, along with my brothers and friends, watched all three seasons on my family's first RCA color TV when the show ran from '66 to '68. I was nine when it started and I can still remember watching episodes in my pajamas (I can't remember which night the TV show was on so eat me! ) and eating my snacks on a paper plate while sitting on the floor in front of the TV. I even remember the style and pattern of the wall-to-wall carpet I was sitting on...
The first Trek flick was definitely the most ambitious production, and had the most lavish budget of all the Trek movies (the budget was at least 5X greater than Wrath of Khan). Problem I had with the first movie was that it seemed way too enamored with its own massiveness. The throwback of showing a blank screen while the music overture plays at the beginning was a cool homage to the old big screen epics.

But, so many other parts in the movie just dragged out -- case in point, the scene where Kirk flies out to the Enterprise for the first time is EIGHT MINUTES long! (Friends of mine who worked as sci-fi and entertainment writers have actually timed that scene, and they liken it to fanboy/geek porn) I understand that the effects in that movie are top notch and very expensive to produce, but that kind of wow factor can only carry a movie so far.

The most critical mistake was dragging out the V'GER punchline all the way to the end. No coincidence that William Shatner always considered the first Trek movie his favorite, and made the exact same mistake when he directed The Final Frontier and dragged out the whole "Let's meet God!" premise to the end.

Quote Originally Posted by kam
i voted for 6. 1 was a close second for the nostalgia factor, along with Wrath of Khan for my emotional involvement and love for Khan. but overall i thought 6 was the best story and movie, AND was worth is just to hear christopher plummer say: "Cry _____, and ___ slip ___ Dogs __ War." (carry over joke from the other thread)
Gotta love it when a Shakespeare fan like Nicholas Meyer gets to direct two of the best movies in the series. Plummer and Montablan got some of the best lines ever written for a sci-fi villain.

The Undiscovered Country was more like a murder mystery in space, but very well done. Makes me wonder if any of the Next Generation movies would have been any better had they called Meyer in to do the directing and script doctoring.

Quote Originally Posted by topspeed
I undestand the sentimentality of going with ST I. Being a sci fi fan, I remember going to see that in the theater as I had always enjoyed both the series and the cartoon. The problem was that it was 3 years after Star Wars came out, a movie that didn't raise the bar for sci fi movies as much as it threw it in the bushes forcing the competition to find it. IMO, it wasn't until Wrath came out that the series found it mojo and deftly blended story with action.
I think the first Trek movie might have been a lot better had it made more of a deliberate effort to channel Star Wars. Instead, they brought in Robert Wise and tried to make a widescreen epic (a la Lawrence of Arabia) in space.

Wrath of Khan was actually a very low budget movie, but the key that made that movie work was going back to the original series and bringing back arguably the best villain.