Entertainment Geekly’s ‘Star Trek’ series looks at an accidental self-portrait of a magnificent, narcissistic friendship.
Was anyone ever more important toStar Trekthen those two?
WouldTrekhave ever beenTrekwithout them?
Pair them off against a whole galaxy of extraterrestrials, humanoid and reptilian and globoid andabstracted beyond biological definition.
Of course, its always been a team effort, you want to say.
Isnt McCoy the third leg of the trinity, human Id, agnostic Holy Ghost?
HasntTreklong transcended Kirk and Spock, anyway?
IsntThe Next Generationmore thoughtful,Deep Space Ninemore provocative,Voyagerless socially Cro-Magnon?
Hell, anyNew Frontierfans out there want to talk about how Peter David was doinggender fluiditytwo decades ago?
Trekis bigger than any one person, sure.
Im not convinced its bigger than these two people.
And that scene lingers throughout the movie, getting replayed three times more.
First via mindmeld flashback, with Spocks dad Sarek as Spocks stand-in.
Then again, on future videotape, with Kirk watching security cam footage of Spocks death.
The age-old question with Shatner and Nimoy: Were they friends?
The embedded question within that question: Did they hate each other?
In later years they would both protest the latter point, with some teasing hesitation: No!
In his second memoir,I Am Spock, Nimoy recalled early days with his costar.
We were like a pair of very competitive brothers, he wrote, two squabbling kids.
(Shatner and Nimoy were both 35 by then, fathers of three and two, respectively.)
He remembers a vintage Hollywood incident of egomania.
Suddenly, the photographer disappeared.
Get rid of this guy.
Was Shatner upset that Nimoy was getting too much attention?
Sure, he complained to the producers.
Kirk and Spock were together forever, their duality providing a stark contrast rife for easy symbolism.
Their collaboration is the first great central achievement ofStar Trek, and it did not come easy.
As a feat of cultural production, Asimovs advice paid off.
(Years later, Paramount asked J.J. Abrams to rebootStar Trek.
And, in Nimoys whimsical remembrance, Asimov was part social engineer, part Hayley Mills.
But there is palpable honesty in Shatners recalled cynicism.
Money, and power, concerns Shatner.
Nimoy doesnt talk about such things very often inI Am Spock.
Politicians, take another note.
When its time to talk aboutThe Search for Spock,Nimoys book fills with details and thoughtful commentary.
(Wrong on both points but only the best directors are tough critics.)
But credit Nimoy for bringing a firm sense of teamwork back intoStar Trek or maybe for inventing it.
Nimoy showed thatStar Treks cosmic scope could produce whimsical human comedy.
He is still the only man to make aStar Trekmovie that could truly be called sublime.
And we will be talking about that movie next week, when we get toThe Voyage Home.
The Search for Spockis not any of those things.
It is a monument to egotism, Nimoys and Shatners.
And it is a point-missing victory lap aroundWrath of Khanthat repudiates everything the second film stood for.
When actors direct, even the best actor-directors indulge their vanity.
(Remember Affleck shirtless inArgo?)
(Shatner in his book: That sounds a lot more confrontational than I remember.)
you’re free to almost certainly read that moment as Shatner at his most egotistical.
I have no memory of negotiating that.
I just woke up one day, and we had a favored nations clause.
That meant of Leonard got to direct a film, I would get to direct the next one.
Translation: Leonards directing?
Good news, I get to direct!
Nimoy only appears inSearch for Spockfor a couple scenes.
Trying to say that, while Spock might have been in this film, Leonard Nimoy wasnt?
The mind wanders to The Anonymous Donor, an episode ofCurb Your Enthusiasm.
People are impressed when you donate a hospital wing but theyreespeciallyimpressed when you donate anonymously.
Spock and Nimoy: Whats the difference?
Part of what makesI Am Spockan essential read is that Nimoy himself doesnt really know.
He was a stay-in-character kind of an actor; three straight years as Spock changed him.
For Shatner, these method-y affectations were confusing.
This was beyond my understanding, he writes.
(Obvious retort: Who remembers T.J. Hooker and Denny Crane?
Hell, real talk: Who really understands what Kirk is?
Quinto-as-Spock is the archetype with cheat codes, plugged simultaneously into an action movie and a rom-com.
Bizarrely, theonlything that defines Kirk is his Shatner-ness: The inflections, the amused self-regard.
This makesSearch for Spocka work of egotism.
But this is first time that Nimoy was truly in command.
That push-pull continues now, even with Nimoy gone.
(Shatners book has a much bigger font, too.)
Unlike most divorces, I guess!
Then again:I Am Spockglosses over Nimoys divorce entirely.
Thats the memoirists prerogative, obviously.
Thats a wrap, I wanted a drink.
And then I would drink constantly.
Once I had that first drink I would not stop drinking until I passed out or fell asleep.
Nimoy said that, years after writingI Am Spock.
An unhappy, angry man.
Theres some poison in that pen.
This, in a book about friendship!
But how do you define friendship, anyways?
Nimoy himself once told Shatner, Youre my best friend.
Would this very stilted moment be happening without cameras around?
Neither one of us could have imagined that we would become best friends, writes Shatner.
You think he wont go one step further?
I had never had anyone in my life to whom I could completely emotionally unburden myself.
This strange mixture of friendship and narcissism is maybe the only truly convincing subject ofSearch for Spock.
And all skeptics are silenced.
Soon the Klingons explode her and the rest of her crew.
No one mourns for theGrissom; theyre too busy saving Spock.
I feel young, he said.
InSearch for Spock, that feelings gone sour.
Hes all alone, monologuing about his missing piece.
But reason arrives with Sarek, who mindmelds with Kirk and forces him to relive the death for Spock.
Anyhow: Given some flimsy spiritualist reason, Kirk immediately torpedoes his life to rescue Spock.
Along the way, his son dies.
When that happens, Kirk reacts majestically it is some of Shatners finest work.
(You Klingon bastard… youve killed my son.)
But the movie forgets about his grief almost immediately.
Ho ho ho, this man just lost everything that ever defined his life!
Doesnt matter, right?
All Kirk cares about is Spock; Spock is all; son, ship, career, all secondary.
(If Kirk is nothing without Spock, maybe Shatner is nothing without Nimoy.)
Then again: Maybe Nimoy just knew Shatner and Kirk better than anyone.
InI Am Spock, he recalls a telltale moment from filming the classic first-season episode Devil in the Dark.
…we were shooting a scene in which Kirk had a lot of dialog.
Bill Shatner got a phone call on the set.
Sadly, his father had just passed away in Florida.
He was determined not to walk away from the challenge.
In Nimoys recounting, Shatner returned from his fathers funeral to immediately stage a prank on the set.
So maybe Kirks goofy overreactionsarentout of place, so soon after his sons death.
They were alone on the bridge of theEnterprise:Nimoy and Shatner, Spock and Kirk.
Shatner screamed, Kirk wouldneverdo it that way!
And Nimoy yelled back, Myway is therightway!Imthe Director!
Well see aboutthat, Mr. Director!
They laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
It must have been nice, for once, to play themselves.
AStar Trekhorror movie
The movie begins with Spocks death, and his funeral.
His memory is an infection, torturing the living.
Kirks opening narration: Enterprisefeels like a house with all the children gone.
No, more empty even than that.
The death of Spock is like an open wound.
The ship is a haunted house now.
Chekov gets a curious reading: Theres a lifeform inside Spocks room!
On the Genesis Planet, David and Saavik finds Spocks coffin its empty!
TheEnterpriseis shot to look like an empty cavern, a decrepit old ship that Starfleet doesnt even bother fixing.
A bodyswitchingStar Trekcomedy
Spocks inside McCoys brain: Imagine the delightful comedic possibilities!
Really imagine them, becauseSearch for Spockdoesnt use any of them.
McCoy says logical a couple times, but the film mostly plays his Spock consciousness as a freakish dementia.
Ponder this logic: Heres aStar Trekmovie where Spock is dead and McCoy is a mental patient.
There is no real narrative preparation for this; Kirk says, Can I go back to Genesis?
and the team says Sure!
A big dumb Starfleet guy calls Sulu tiny.
He knocks the guy out and nonchalantly destroys his control panel.
Im obsessed with Takeis casualness in this scene.
The great experiment, says Kirk.
Shes supposed to have transwarp drive!
(No one ever explains what transwarp drive is, or what kind of experimentExcelsiorrepresents.)
What a setup for drama.
Its the oldEnterpriseversus the shiny newExcelsior, John Henry against the steam powered hammer, tortoise versus hare.
TheExcelsiornever appears again in the movie.
As a result, the Genesis Planet is an evolutionary nightmare, a global ticking time bomb.
Saavik chastises David for this.
How many have paid the price for your impatience?
How many have died?
How much damage have you done?
And what is yet to come?
Like your father, you changed the rules, says Saavik.
The Vulcan stuff in the originalStar Trekhas always been way kinkier than any of the later series ever allowed.
Unsurprisingly and not accidentally, what ensues between rapid-onset-puberty Spock and Saavik is deeply weird.
Spocks former protege takes care of a little baby Spock… Thats old-time, son.
Meet the new Starfleet, composed entirely of Crusty Old Deans and wannabe Paul Reisers and meathead jocks.
His subordinate Admiral Kirk trusted hero of the Federation begs him for the chance to revisit Genesis.
This is some serious Kremlin stuff, with more pornstache.
And all of this is mere prelude for Mr.
Adventure, a Ramsay Bolton-looking, Patrick Bateman-exuding, probably-cute-puppy-abusing young officer.
By way of introduction, he makes a crack about Uhuras age.
Jesus, you need any more evidence that Starfleet is on the wrong path?
Most of these characters appear exclusively during theEnterpriseheist sequence, and never appear again.
Introduced and disposed of:Search for Spock, in a nutshell.
Khan was Kirks mirror image; Kruge is a goofball.
(The Voyage Homehas no real antagonist, and is all the better for it.
But there is one cool shot of a snowy desert.
InSearch for Spock, your chariot has arrived.
The cosmology gets hazy, of course.
Said temple comes complete with a central-casting Mute Man With A Gong and various Greco-Romanic flowrobe nuns.
You remember,the beige-gray jumpsuitsthat made everyone look like imprisoned employees at a Stalin-themed Baby Gap?
The fun starts when the crew returns to Earth and dons their casual attire.
Dear god, almost too much to take in with this image.
Uhuras Tower of London ring, Sulus Emerald-green robe-shirt, Shatners workout-chic formal trackjacket.
Second only to Kirk is Sulu, who rocks a leather jacket-cape with cut-open sleeves.
McCoy has always been an adventurous style icon, perhaps surprising given his no-nonsense spirit.
The good Doctor is especially on point with his neckwear.
The future is now!
More makeup, damn you!
