THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK AT 40

Four decades after it first wowed cinemagoers, Roger Crow looks back on Star Trek III’s production, and asks if it still stands up today.

Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner were yelling at one another while a worried cast and crew watched from the wings of the Enterprise bridge. Was Star Trek III in trouble? Had they fallen out over the fact ‘Spock’ was telling ‘Kirk’ what to do? With a then-pricey $17million budget being pumped into the movie, and Nimoy finding his feet in a new job, this was not a good sign. But then, as Scotty might say, ‘They canna take it any more.’

Leonard and Bill started to laugh; they couldn’t keep up the pretence any longer. Having regained their composure, two of sci-fi’s most iconic thesps pressed on with one of the most moving scenes in the saga’s history: Kirk reacting to the death of his son.

Not that making The Search for Spock was a walk in the park. Around the same time, Ridley Scott’s Legend was also threatened by a studio fire in Blighty which could have been disastrous. The clock was ticking for that summer 1984 release date; Shatner was due back on the TJ Hooker set as soon as filming wrapped, and with ILM working tirelessly to bring their effects in on time, Nimoy was pushed to his limits, putting out ‘fires’ of his own.

THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM?

The first movie in the Trek saga had cost far more than expected in 1979. Thankfully The Motion Picture made a lot of money, and when The Wrath of Khan arrived in 1982, the relatively low budget, high box office return was a winning format Paramount bosses loved. Makers of the big screen Trek series had learned an important fact with the inaugural film: spending millions on impressive effects was one thing, but without an emotional centre and banter between much-loved characters, a Star Trek movie was like the Enterprise minus dilithium crystals - dead in the water.

As screenwriter/producer Harve Bennett was a veteran of episodic TV, he knew that recapping the third movie was essential. Spock may have ‘died’ in film two, but there were still plenty of issues to address: how would Kirk cope without his right-hand man? What would become of the newly formed Genesis planet? What would happen if the device that made it landed in the wrong hands? And as McCoy had Spock’s downloaded ‘marbles’ in his brain, how would the resurrected Vulcan get them back?