The Best (And Worst) Star Trek Movies of All Time

2Star Trek: First Contact

The Borg go back in time to prevent the founding of the Federation by destroying the Phoenix, Earth' first warp-capable vessel, and the Enterprise follows. Picard and Data kill the Borg Queen just in time to ensure the successful flight of the Phoenix. Vulcans stop in for a visit, and everybody gets loaded and parties down to rockabilly music.

Why You Should See It
Jean-Luc Picard, known mostly for enjoying hot cups of tea, Brahms concertos, and avoiding fights by talking things over sensibly, turns into Bruce Willis in First Contact. He sprays Borg drones with hot lead from a tommy gun, courts death by calling Worf a coward and delivers a mouth-foaming monologue about killing every Borg he can lay his hands on that culminates in an awesome rockstar tantrum where he trashes his ready room. Later, he snaps the Borg Queen' spine like a breadstick. Apparently, there are any number of things you can do to Picard without making him lose his cool. But turn him an albino cyborg and he will fuck your shit up.

3Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

A super-powerful alien comes to future Earth to touch base with its good buddies the humpback whales, only to lose its shit when it finds out they're all extinct. Eager to stop Earth's destruction, Kirk and crew go back in time to present day Earth to retrieve some whales; Spock chooses to do this in a linen bathrobe, for some reason. The whales tell the alien probe that everything's cool. "Let's all just chill out, okay?" The alien, embarrassed about having made such a big scene, gets its chick and peels out of Earth's orbit in its Corvette without further incident, Zeppelin blasting from the speakers.

4Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

5Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

Kirk steals the Enterprise to retrieve Spock' corpse from the planet they'd shot it at from a ship's cannon in Star Trek II (they might want to start checking pulses before they keep doing that). Conveniently, the planet is being terraformed due to the explosion of the Genesis Device. Also conveniently, said Genesis Device resurrects Spock. Less conveniently, everybody's taken prisoner by a Klingon commander, who a pissed-off Kirk conveniently drops into a bottomless pit.

Why You Should See It
The second, third, and fourth Trek films function as an unofficial trilogy, so the two excellent films on either side pull The Search for Spock up toward their level, and it thus rises above the infamous curse of terrible odd-numbered Trek films. Plus, as the reborn Spock rapidly matures and endures the excruciating Vulcan mating urge, Saavik makes the calculated logical decision to let him bone her. Hot Vulcan sex!

6Star Trek: Generations

Kirk and whichever members of the cast were still willing to work with him by this point rescue dozens of refugees (including one Dr. Soran) from a mysterious ribbon of energy. Alas: Captain Kirk is lost, apparently sucked into the void of space. Decades later, the Next Generation cast encounters Dr. Soran, who is trying to bring back the ribbon of energy, which it turns out is actually a portal to a timeless paradise. Picard is pulled into it and meets up with Kirk, who' been chopping wood and riding horses for the last 78 years. The captains foil Soran just before he does something really evil. Alas: Kirk falls to his death amid the remains of a collapsed bridge and some heavy-handed symbolism.

7Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Admiral Kirk assumes command of the Enterprise to investigate an alien threat, to the annoyance of current captain Will Decker. A probe abducts Decker' girlfriend Ilia, replacing her with a robot double. Decker merges with the Ilia double, and the joined duo evolve into a being of pure energy and disappear into a higher plane of existence. Or something.

Why You Should See It
If you've ever wondered what the original series could have looked like with some half-decent special effects, look no further than Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Plus, if you've also ever wondered what life on the Enterprise would be like if the crew were allowed to wear pajamas to work every day, look no further than the newly redesigned Starfleet leisurewear.

Why You Shouldn't
2001: A Space Odyssey, with its at-the-time cutting edge special effects, had just been released when they were making the first Trek, so the heat was on to cram as many effects into this goddamn thing as possible. Impossibly long, ass-numbingly boring stretches of time are devoted to showing the Enterprise flying through space, which probably looked spectacular in 1979 but make you leap for the fast forward button three decades later.

Impact on the Franchise
Two proposed characters (Will Decker and Ilia) are revived from the aborted TV series Star Trek: Phase II, only to be killed off again. Not one to leave any part of the animal to waste; the character archetypes pop up again, essentially unchanged, as Riker and Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation. More obviously, the film revived a dead television series and was followed by nine film sequels, so that probably counts for something, too.

8Star Trek: Nemesis

The Enterprise goes on a diplomatic mission to Romulus, which is now controlled by the mysterious Shinzon, who turns out to be a clone of Picard with sinister plans. The Enterprise eventually defeats Shinzon' forces, with Data sacrificing himself in the process.

Why You Should See It
Picard indulges his midlife crisis by catching some air in his sweet new dune buggy, which is worth noting as pretty much the only appearance of anything resembling a car in the 24th century, in which spaceships, teleporters, and feet are the clearly favored means of travel. Also, those crazy kids Riker and Troi finally get together and get married, if you care about that.

Why You Shouldn't
Brent Spiner co-wrote the 10th Trek film, and his ego is clearly ballooning out of control. He casts himself in a dual role, writes himself a juicy death scene that' all too reminiscent of Spock' in Khan, and even sings an Irving Berlin song. The result is a film that breaks the "even-numbered Trek good; odd-numbered Trek bad" rule, but not in a good way.

Impact on the Franchise
Not only did Nemesis bring in the lowest box office earnings of any Trek film, but its main impact on the franchise was to demonstrate the utter lack of need for any more movies with the current cast. Accordingly, the next announced Trek film reportedly will be a prequel to the original series, with Matt Damon the leading candidate to play the young Kirk.

Celebrity Cameos?
Wil Wheaton shot scenes, but they were cut out of the final print. (File this under "Why You should See It").

9Star Trek: Insurrection

Picard and company stumble on a race of leprosy-ridden aliens called the Son'a who've found a planet that kicks out leprosy-healing properties. However, since the peaceful Ba'ku people already live there, they've cooked up a villainous scheme to kill them all off. Picard exposes the plot and defeats the Son'a leader in a poorly choreographed fight scene. The Ba'ku, peace-loving idiots that they are, then simply invite the Son'a to live on the planet with them, because apparently nobody thought of that before.

Why You Should See It
Observing the planet' rejuvenating effects, Troi (Marina Sirtis) mentions offhandedly that her boobs are firming up, and the audience is invited to notice same.

Why You Shouldn't
We don't get to actually see Troi' boobs, nor much else that' memorable either. (In retrospect, our best chance for a little Betazoids-gone-wild action was probably the scene when Troi turned into a sloppy drunk party girl in First Contact.) Marina Sirtis has since claimed at conventions to have fallen asleep during the film' premiere. Even director Jonathan Frakes has been vocal about his distaste for the weak script of the lackluster and instantly forgettable Insurrection.

Impact on the Franchise
It' a pretty disposable outing with few effects on the Trek franchise. Even Riker' beard, shaven during Insurrection, has been completely regrown by the time of the next film.

Celebrity Cameos?
Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello has a surprising cameo as an alien warrior. (And it' not even his first Trek role; he'd appeared previously on an episode of Voyager.)

10Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Shatner writes, directs and stars in Final Frontier, in which Kirk and company answer an urgent distress call from Spock' heretofore-unseen half-brother Sybok, who then steals the ship to go look for God. "Why not?" figures the Enterprise crew. The entity they find turns out not to be God after all-it' just some pissed-off alien with omnipotent powers. Kirk tells it off, then some Klingons show up and shoot at it until it explodes.

Why You Should See It
Uhura performs an erotic dance to distract some guards, which would have been sexy and awesome, had Nichelle Nichols not been 56 when this scene was filmed. It may be worth watching for a rare shot of Doohan' missing finger, visible here thanks to Shatner' sloppy direction. We're basically grasping at straws here-unless you've lost a bet, there really isn't much reason to watch this one.

Why You Shouldn't
Where to start? The production is rushed, the special effects suck and the script is an incomprehensible mess. The secondary cast are treated as jokes; aside from the exploitation of a past-her-prime Nichols mentioned above, Scotty is made clumsy and incompetent for the sake of comic relief, most egregiously in a scene where he claims to know his ship like the back of his hand only to turn around and knock himself unconscious on a bulkhead. The Enterprise' inexplicable ability to cross the galaxy in a matter of days is less the result of a warp drive and more that of a plot device.