Time Travel Outcome/Purpose: To save earth from the whale-communicating probe.
Coolness Factor: It's Star Trek! The fun!!
Flaws: How nice are these whales? And this probe? The whales tell the probe, "Well, the present humans rescued us, but the humans in the past wanted to kill us," and the probe goes, "Okey-dokey, see ya later"?
Paradox: Some predestination:
McCoy: You realize that by giving him the formula you're altering the future.Kate says this is a great movie. In fact, the more times I see it, the more I appreciate how clever and well-directed it is.
Scotty: Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing?
However, since this movie ends the time-travel list (the next list--"Movies Based on Books"--coming soon!), I'm going to focus on comparing it to the first item we reviewed for this list: Star Trek's "City on the Edge of Forever."
Voyage Home is actually quite similar to "City." Not only does Kirk get a girlfriend (although this girlfriend doesn't die), but Kirk and Spock operate throughout the movie as a team. Nimoy did a very smart--and a very gentlemanly--job showing-casing all the actors (everyone gets a scene), but the bulk of the interaction is between Kirk and Spock, focusing specifically on their friendship.
Kirk's extroversion versus Spock's introversion, Kirk's emotional desire for connection versus Spock's Vulcan-training (with that substrata of human understanding), Kirk's desire to re-establish the original status of the friendship and Spock's growing understanding of his role on the ship and in Kirk's life are all nicely highlighted.
And the serious and humorous byplay between the actors is excellent. My personal favorite is the exchange on the bus:
Spock: Your use of language has altered since our arrival. It is currently laced with, shall we say, more colorful metaphors, "double dumbass on you" and so forth.This exchange is very reminiscent of exchanges in "City" such as the following:
Kirk: You mean the profanity? That's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays attention to you unless you swear every other word. You'll find it in all the literature of the period.
Spock: For example?
Kirk: Oh the neglected works of Jacqueline Susan. The novels of Harold Robbins...
Spock (supremely dryly): Ah, the "Giants".
Spock: Captain, I must have some platinum. A small block would be sufficient--5 or 6 pounds. By passing certain circuits through there to be used as a duodynetic field core...Most of all, I appreciate how well-written both the episode and movie are. In both cases, disparate events (McCoy showing up in the past separately from Kirk and Spock or, in the movie, the need to find the whales, arrange for the whales to be transported, and to replenish the ship's "gas") are handled cleanly and expertly. They don't feel jumbled at all.
Kirk: Mr. Spock, I've brought you some assorted vegetables, baloney and a hard roll for myself, and I've spent the other 9/10ths of our combined salaries for the last three days on filling this order for you. This bag doesn't contain platinum, silver, or gold, nor is it likely to in the near future.
Spock: Captain, you're asking me to work with equipment which is hardly very far ahead of stone knives and bearskins.
I enjoyed it as much as I did the first, uh, five . . . six . . . seven . . . (I'd have to go back in time and count!) times.
Mike says I've mention before (on this very list) that one of my earliest memories is seeing Back to the Future in the Theater. The truth is, I do have one earlier memory-- though it may be only by an hour or so, and that's the preview for The Voyage Home. As such, this movie has been a part of my life for literally as long as I can remember!
Star Trek, for as often as they explore time travel, has really become pretty adept at it. Out of the eleven movies, three focus on the topic. So, Trek writers are pretty much experts on making time travel work. The goal here, saving the whales, while of cataclysmic importance to the crew's home time, is so minor and small in the scope of the twentieth century that it's easy to see no big waves, no major ripples in the time stream.
And while the crew does cause different changes here and there (Bones saving the old lady, Scotty inventing transparent aluminum), I think this film, more than any other, shows just how big the world is, and how small little actions don't always carry from one day to the next in the grand scope of things.
This is the one Star Trek movie EVERYONE has seen, and it's easy to understand why. Not only does the real world really dominate the movie, but the characters are REAL, approachable people, with senses of humor, flaws, and quirks that make them likable and understandable. My wife normally doesn't like the "alien characters" because they're so different, so, well, alien. But this movie, when she first saw it, made her fall in love with Spock.
Leonard Nimoy did an AMAZING job with this movie. It differs from almost every other Star Trek film. I would imagine it has the most dialog; I know it has the most humor (at least, the most successful humor--Yes, I'm looking at you Final Frontier). What's even more notable is the lack of any real action scene, though there are two great, short, and fun chase scenes. One phaser is fired, no ship weapons are used at any time, and Spock makes a Mormon joke (well, not really, but "too much LDS" instead of LSD is pretty funny for most Mormons).
Many Sci-Fi movies, especially time travel movies, have a bad habit of getting their plots all tangled and complicated (I could preach a sermon on the idiotic complexity of the Transformers movies). Journey Home, however, keeps it simple and straightforward. It's hard to get lost when you have one, two, or three things going on.
I also love how the Trek movies feel timeless. They really avoid, for the most part, feeling dated. Journey Home doesn't really succeed with this as well, mostly due to the fact that they're walking around the streets of San Fransisco in the 80's! But still, it holds its own pretty well. But, I must say that Journey Home is a true product of its time. Not only was EVERYONE throwing iconic characters into the streets of the modern day (Beast Master 2, Masters of the Universe, Galactia 1980), but the ocean and the environment in general was really on everyone's minds (Cocoon, Superman IV).
I LOVE this movie, and it's really one of the all time great sci-fi movies, if only because of its universal accessibility--almost ANYONE can watch and like this movie, at very least as a comedy.
Wow! This was a great list! Time travel is one of those sub-genres that are so prevalent, it's almost its own genre! And the sad thing is, with a 16 week list, we barely scratched the surface! A week hasn't gone by the Kate and I haven't thought of another movie we could have added! But I've really enjoyed it, and I'm glad we were able to start and end with Trek, arguably the patron saint of time travel in television and movies. To end this great list, I thought I'd include one of my favorite mash-ups of all time. Wow, I really wish they would make this movie!!!!!
2 comments:
This was a great, fun list, Mike, and it is rather awe-inspiring how many more we could have done! An entire blog could be devoted to time travel fiction!!
I think we did cover most of the major plots. The mash-up (very funny!) refers to at least one major paradox and a slew of motifs that appear in many of the list's episodes/films.
But since the field is so vast, I'm not sure. Hmmmm.
We might have to do "The Return to the Time Travel List" one of these days.
That would be fun! We left out so much, it's almost to much to comprehend! I can't believe we didn't include at least one version of "the Time Machine!" Then there's the terminator movies, a whole slew of Trek we could still cover (Voyager's finale included time travel for goodness sake, as well as the new remake!).
Then there's cartoons, sequels, yeesh! Where do we draw the line, as even "Forever Young" and "Captain America" are time travel movies after a fashion (Being frozen for several years and then thawed could arguable be time travel!). There's just SO much. Whew.
And we thought the sitcom list was hard, eh Kate?
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