As sequels go, this puts much more distance between itself and its predecessor than most. But what is there that need, or prudently can, be said about it? The expected resurrection of Spock is ingenious in conception and suspensefully prolonged, with a brand-new baby Spock hatched out of his coffin-cocoon and aging at an alarmingly accelerated rate; and it even, within the established postulates about Project (and Planet) Genesis, makes a kind of sense. In technique, it is well handled, with the junior Spocks, or Spockettes, being very reasonable likenesses of the elder. The eventual reappearance of Leonard Nimoy himself is somewhat muffed, but modesty may have prevented director Nimoy from granting actor Nimoy quite as grand a reintroduction as Robert Wise gave him in the first Trek movie. The climactic documentation of what we have heard alluded to as "Vulcan mysticism," with its incanted gobbledygook and its gongs and its chorus-girls in white negligees, may have been modest to a fault: just a step or two above Plan Nine from Outer Space. And in truth, Nimoy, usually content to order up a mug shot of somebody or other, steers this third movie installment nearest the orbit of the old TV series. But the real and unexpected emotional core of the movie, as never before, is the Starship Enterprise, hastily patched up and still in need of repair after its last expedition, and ticketed for the junkyard. This old crate is enough of a source of anxiety and of exhilaration that its ultimate demise, as a brief sad comet in the heavens, earns the full emotional response that Spock's demise, in the previous adventure, didn't quite. William Shatner, DeForest Kelley, Christopher Lloyd. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd
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