The is Leonard Nimoy's second attempt at directing one of these movies. Unlike the last one, he was on screen much of the time for this one, so he didn't have the luxury of concentrating on doing one thing, doing it right, and then moving on.
Saavik is back again. Played by Robin Curtis, she exists as a brief glimpse of what happened in the last film, and then she remains back on Vulcan while the rest of the crew takes the captured Klingon vessel back to Earth to face the charges of stealing and then destroying the Enterprise; I'm sure there are many other things they are in trouble for like assault, terrorist threats, etc.
There is a ship travelling toward Earth, destroying everything in its path. Yes, it is very much like V-GER in the first movie in that regard, but this one is sending out a "transmission" that is clearly audible to the human ear (even through the near vacuum of space) and of such immense power that it disables or destroys everything that comes in contact with it. It is determined early on that the goal of the probe is to communicate with whales. So, naturally, the crew has to go back in time before humans sullied the planet and killed all the whales. There is a subtle conservation message in there if you have not been hit over the head with it.
The actual travel back in time is accompanied by one of the trippiest videos of computer generated gobbledygook I remember seeing in a movie that was not directly associated with drugs. Once they get there, Uhura announces that she's receiving whale songs. It seems odd that she would pick up individual voices through her system, but this is what they propose. Also, the return trip has none of the same drug-induced 3D animations that the original trip had.
One of the more memorable points is when Kirk notes that, "They're still using money." It's odd that he would say that, as we saw McCoy try to barter a ride to the Genesis planet and they were very clearly talking about money. So... there is a bit of a disconnect between what the utopian reality and the effective reality of the future are.
What is possibly more unsettling is the homoerotic looks and innuendos that McCoy constantly gives to Spock while trying to cause his old personality to reassert itself. I had almost forgotten that those times existed before rewatching this movie. Scotty still has the problem of not knowing how to react to things this side of smiling to himself, as well.
The movie is actually not as bad as I remember. The inclusion of all the little jokes was probably a good one, as I found myself chuckling at some of them - even though I had heard them years ago. The movie has more of the feel of the original series than any of the other movies with this crew. It made me miss that original series, and I think I may re-watch the whole series to remember the moments and storylines that made me want to watch these movies again in the first place.
As a movie, then, this one did what it was supposed to do, and it did it well enough. I can't help but think that this might have been a more memorable movie if a dedicated director had been chosen for it instead of Nimoy pulling double duty, but I can safely say I've seen substantially worse directing jobs.
The storyline was good enough
The directing was good enough
The acting was good enough
The dialogue was better than average
Cinematography was very good
Special effects (aside from some very fake whales) were excellent, as usual.
3.25/5