DVD Review | Star Trek III: The Search For Spock 
                                    (Collector's Edition)
Written by: Kage Alan
Film Rating: A-
DVD Special Features: C+

To date, this is the only Star Trek film I've never seen on the big screen. 
How that came to be, I'll never know, but I had to wait until it was released
on VHS all those years ago before seeing it.  Was I outgrowing Science
Fiction?  Probably not.  I think what happened is that I heard from friends
that the Enterprise was blown up and destroyed and I just couldn't deal with
that.  Does that make me a geek?  Seriously, I've never had an easy time
dealing with death, at least in the sense of family, friends and anything
nostalgic, and the Enterprise has become an icon that represents a universal
place of safety.  It never gets destroyed, not until this film anyway, and
that bothered me.

"Star Trek III" picks up shortly after the events in "The Wrath Of Khan"
leave Spock dead and the crew of the Enterprise mourning his loss.  Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) appears to be suffering from exhaustion, Kirk (William Shatner) is depressed and the rest of the crew doesn't quite know what to do with themselves because they've hardly begun to heal.  David Marcus (Merritt Butrick), Kirk's son, and Saavik (Robin Curtis) transfer to another ship to begin exploring the Genesis planet, so people seem to be heading down paths leading them away from what once brought them all together.

Unfortunately, word about the Genesis planet has gotten out and several
parties are very unhappy about how the balance of power might be shifting in
the universe.  Klingon Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd) wants to seize the power of Genesis for himself, so he sets out to get it any way he can. 
Ambassador Sarek (Mark Lenard), meanwhile, comes to Kirk and the two discover that McCoy is carrying Spock's living essence.  Only by retrieving Spock's body from the Genesis planet and bringing it and McCoy to Vulcan can both find peace, yet Starfleet ties Kirk's hands.  What to do?  Steal the ship?  Engage the enemy?  You can just see the pressure building to a fiery finale.

From a fairly dramatic opening, "Star Trek III" soon shifts gears and turns
into a journey that only a crew like this could take who make sacrifices only
people who've been together this long could make.  It was a daring film for
the actors to undertake considering how action packed the previous
installment was, but each of the characters gets a moment of their own in the
film that demonstrates why they are there and why they are important. 
Director/star Leonard Nimoy truly shines here with an excellent script, the
ability to bring the best out of his fellow actors and a film that treats the
fans as well as the characters in with a great deal of warmth and respect.

Paramount, after releasing a phenomenal edition "The Motion Picture" and "The Wrath Of Khan", has brought us another 2-disc set for this film.  Disc 1
contains the Widescreen theatrical cut of the film in gorgeous 5.1 Surround
Sound.  The film almost sounds better than it looks, which I find odd.  I
don't remember "The Wrath of Khan" having as many noticeable glitches and
specs as this film does, but I could be wrong.  The real treats here,
theoretically, are the extras, which also start on Disc 1.  First up is an
audio commentary with Leonard Nimoy, writer and Producer Harve Bennett,
Director-of-Photography Charles Correll and actress Robin Curtis.  While much of the information given is solid, there just wasn't enough of it and I
believe the 4 speakers' comments were mixed together later instead of being
recorded at the same time.  Unfortunately, Correll's and Curtis' involvement
is extremely thin, making me wonder why they were included here at all.  This
isn't meant as a slam against them at all, but rather a simple fact.  I
really hope that the commentary on "Star Trek IV" is much more engaging than
this.

Disc 2 starts off with a 26-minute featurette called "Terraforming and the
Prime Directive", basically a lot of chitchat about terraforming and blah
blah blah.  After putting us to sleep with that, we move on to a still
gallery archive of storyboards and photos, the original theatrical trailer
that gives away far too much about the film, a 26-minute "Captain's Log" that
follows the film from beginning to end and features   interviews with cast
and crew and, finally, a trio of featurettes about that Star Trek Universe
that include the 28-minute "Space Docks and Birds of Prey", a 21-minute on
"Speaking Klingon" and a 12-minute "Klingon and Vulcan Costumes" where the
interviewee proceeds to slaughter the name of "Sarek" throughout.  There's
also a hidden 7-minute Easter Egg about some of the models and the Klingon
monster dog.  There are two problems will all of these featurettes; 1) many
of them are dull and 2) why is it the rest of the Star Trek cast members are
never included?  Very disappointing, Paramount.  Very disappointing indeed.

As a huge fan of "Star Trek", I've been looking forward to these collector's
editions because of all the background information that's never been
available to us in one place before.  Paramount is squandering their
potential, though.  I really wish somebody would speak up about how the film
did, how successful it was, what weak points were perceived etc, but we get
very little of that.  Oh, well.  Great movie, not so great special edition. 
Paramount has done better work than this, so let's if they can pick up the
ball with the next film.  On a plus side, we do also get the teaser trailer
for the upcoming "Star Trek: Nemesis".