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This was my first time watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (I’ll pause a moment here and allow you, dear reader, to do a spit and/or double take, shake your head in disbelief, or go all googly-eyed like the country fox in the classic Tex Avery cartoon.) I had seen the sequence where the Ceti eel crawls out of Chekhov’s ear, on cable, when I was six or seven, but only in passing. In 2009, I even had the chance to see it at the Laurelhurst Theater, but deferred my pleasure again as I seem wont to do with certain films that I never quite get around to watching. In a delicious bit of irony, this cost my pub trivia team first place two weeks later as the final question concerned Khan’s quoting of a certain literary classic. This was doubly vexing, as I have actually read Moby Dick. So, as familiar as I was with the plot and the catchphrases, I had not experienced William Shatner’s agonized wailing of “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!” first hand.

I also decided to kill two (Klingon) Birds (of Prey) with one stone and rent Star Trek V: The Final Frontier - the only other Star Trek film I had never seen - and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which I had seen in the theater when I was eight and about which I can only recall being majorly bummed when the film broke with about ten minutes of running time left, and it took close to a half hour to repair.

I recall the shared wisdom growing up that odd-numbered Treks were disappointments and the even-numbered ones were occasions for much rejoicing. I think it is perhaps more accurate to consider the ten Star Trek films made between 1979 and 2002 as either exceptional, average or subpar episodes of the television show and to point out that of the three most praised installments (The Wrath of Khan, The Voyage Home, and First Contact) two had distinct villains drawn from the respective original and Next Generation series. (Voyage Home was a lark that played to the same strengths as that fall season’s other fish out of water success from Paramount, “Crocodile” Dundee.)

I don’t mean the equation of these movies to episodes as a diss. It is the familiarity that comes with seeing these small-screen characters enact their tried-and-true rituals of behavior and act as we would expect them to that is so comforting. At its best, this familiarity brings warmth and poignancy and humor. At its worst, well, The Final Frontier is a solid example of such. To wit, if The Wrath of Khan is a bang-up two-part season-finale with a shocking cliffhanger, then the Final Frontier is a 48 minute mid-season stand alone inflated with an extra hour of footage. It stays goofy and inconsequential for far too long before shifting into earnest “man’s place in the scheme of things” ruminations. William Shatner’s story and direction are admirably well intentioned, but he wants to be all things to all fans.

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