What it’s about: Admiral James T. Kirk (Shatner) and crew, including a recently resurrected Captain Spock (Nimoy), are limping home from the planet Vulcan in a stolen Klingon ship to face the consequences for all the bullshit they pulled in the previous two movies. But a mysterious probe has appeared, also headed for Earth, neutralizing all known technology in its path and screwing with the planet’s atmosphere. Spock figures out the probe will only respond to the song of humpback whales, but since humpback whales are extinct in the 23rd century, the crew sets off on an improvised mission to travel back in time to 1980s San Francisco, collect some whales, and bring them to the future to save Earth. But not only do they stand out like fish out of water in our primitive time, local cetologist Dr. Gillian Taylor (Hicks) quickly becomes both intrigued by and suspicious of the oddball strangers who stumble into her orbit.

Reflections: I cannot be an objective viewer of this–it’s one of the first non-cartoon movies I remember ever watching and holds a special place for me, even among the Star Trek movies. But I can say, looking past its absolutely goofy premise and on-the-nose didacticism, that it’s one of the better ones. It’s interesting to see the Enterprise crew from the perspective of the native culture they’re stumbling into, for one thing. And the script, from a story by Nimoy and Bennett, plays that up without being overly cheesy about it. Instead, there’s dashes of alien-invasion flick and Cold War espionage thriller mixed in with the overall lighthearted energy. In fact, it might be the most intentionally silly of the lot, and that ends up working for it.

And the silliness holds up–Scotty (Doohan) interacting with the computer in the manufacturing office (“A keyboard. How quaint.”) only feels more true. Kirk trying to pass Spock off as a fried-out hippie who did too much “LDS,” knocking out the obnoxious punk on the bus, “nuclear wessels,” Sulu (Takei) accidentally turning on the helicopter wipers–the characters, kinda excepting Uhura (Nichols) who gets a bit of a short shrift in this one, are all given a chance to show off their charm without contending with Klingon conspiracies or universe-threatening pseudo-deities or whatever. And at its heart, Star Trek is fun.

Nimoy does a perfectly fine job at the helm–the psychedelic time-travel sequence is an interesting stylistic flourish, there is an unusually rich and grounded visual sense and flair for comic timing to it, and everyone is clearly very comfortable in their roles at this point and not being asked to push too hard. It’s not flat or without tension or narrative movement, but it’s more heart than head and well-executed enough that I mean that as a compliment.