A Voyage Back Home

I just saw Star Trek IV for the first time in my life. Yeah, I know I should have seen it sooner, I'm just not the biggest Trek fan outside of Wrath of Khan. Search For Spock, the third movie wasn't bad, but The Voyage Home was far better and a great conclusion to the cinematic trilogy that started with Wrath of Khan. Shame I didn't see it earlier.

You see, when I was a kid I watched all the "cool" franchises everyone was talking about. Raiders of the Lost Ark made me an Indiana Jones fan, A New Hope made me a Star Wars fan, Alien made me an Alien fan (I should not have watched it so young, though) and The Terminator made me a Terminator fan (another one I shouldn't have watched) but Star Trek stopped me cold on the first movie.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was so unfathomably awful that it turned me directly off of Star Trek for years and years. It was even worse when I heard that movie was creator Gene Roddenberry's true vision for the franchise. And if that was what he wanted for the series, then I wanted no part of it.

You see, I didn't have any Trek fans as friends to tell me not to start with the first movie and that Roddenberry's take on the Trek universe has never been considered the best one. It was only after years of being pestered by science fiction fans and hearing enough praise about Wrath of Khan that I finally decided to give it a watch. And boy was I glad that I did.

Wrath of Khan has everything. Adventure, romance, thoughtful reflections on life, Biblical allegories, action, and suspense, are more than enough keep any viewer glued to their chair. Roddenberry also had near nothing to do with it, too! I was kicking myself for years for never seeing it before.

But then I saw the sequel, Search For Spock, and it was good. But it was no Wrath of Khan. It was missing a lot of the great moments the older movie had, and the movie felt like a lot of the time that it was just trying to do the opposite of everything Wrath of Khan did. Still, it wasn't bad or anywhere near as awful as the first motion picture was.

It threw me a bit off track from seeing Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, but I'm glad I did.

So what's the point of this entry? Well, it's not a review of Star Trek IV. If you have the chance you should see the motion picture trilogy of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. They form a great film trilogy that really leaves you satisfied by the end.

The point of this entry is to point out how things have a habit of coming full circle. I spent a lot of my life avoiding this franchise due to a bad first impression, yet after finally giving it a chance and just recently seeing it end (the trilogy, that is) left me with a feeling of satisfaction and the impression of finally scratching a tiny itch that has been present since I was a kid. Sometimes, it seems, a little hope and optimism for the future is all you need to get you by a rough hump, and I could have used something like this much sooner. But it is what it is, and while I wouldn't call myself a Star Trek fan (Don't like any of the TV series, and have no desire to see any of the other films outside of VI) I will call myself a fan of this trilogy.

I guess I would say that the long voyage home was worth the trip. That happens a lot, doesn't it?