Release Year: 1984

Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi

Director: Leonard Nimoy

Writer: Harve Bennett (screenplay), Gene Roddenberry (creator)

Stars: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Christopher Lloyd

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship—"

Wait, wait. Hold up. Do we really need to introduce Star Trek? It's Star Trek. It's warp speed and aliens with iconic hand gestures and beam-me-up-Scotties. It's a million-dollar franchise that encompasses thirteen feature films, seven TV series, countless video games, a mythology's worth of books, and enough plastic action figures to populate several Alpha quadrants.

It launched the dang Klingon Language Institute. And yes; that's an actual thing. For actual people. Learning actual Klingon.

But you know all this, right? That's what we thought, so let's just jump right into The Search for Spock. (And if you're a Trek newb, check out what we have to say about Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That'll set you straight.)

Released in 1984, The Search for Spock was the third theatrical film released in the Star Trek franchise and the second film of the Star Trek Motion Picture Trilogy. If that sounds weird, it's because the trilogy consists of the second, third, and fourth movies of the thirteen Trek films.

And if that still sounds weird, just know the trilogy ends with time-traveling humpback whales. We recommend settling in and getting comfy with weirdness.

The Search for Spock is about, well, the search for Spock. Picking up right after The Wrath of Khan—so spoiler warning if you haven't seen that thirty-year-old gem—Kirk's depressed over Spock's death. Sarek, Spock's father, tasks Kirk with bringing his son's body and his katra to Vulcan, so his soul can rest in peace.

Against Starfleet's orders, Kirk returns to Genesis to discover waiting for him a resurrected friend, a murderous Klingon named Kruge and a dangerous adventure on a dying planet.

So: basically a slow Wednesday for the captain of the Enterprise.

The film proved a commercial success, pulling in a domestic gross of $76.5 million with a budget of $17 million. (Source) It was also nominated for several awards, including a Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation and several 1985 Saturn Awards such as Best Director and Best Special Effects. Sadly, the film won none of them, but the competition was stiff considering The Terminator, Ghostbusters, and Gremlins were released the same year.(Source)

1984 was way more entertaining than George Orwell predicted.

In the thirty-plus years since the film's release, Star Trek and movie fans haven't been able to reach a consensus on its legacy. Darren Franich calls it a "monument to egotism" (Source) while Matt Maul ranks it as his favorite of the first half dozen films. (Source)

Some have argued it falls prey to the "Star Trek Movie Curse,"(Source) but others claim it is an underrated gem, despite some misfires. (Source)

Our point here isn't to enlist you into a decades-long fan war between pro- and anti-The Search for Spock camps. Peace has already been established…thanks to everyone find a common enemy in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Instead, we want to liberate you to explore and enjoy this film however you see fit. With no consensus on it being good, bad, or average, there is no pop-culture peer pressure to feel one way or the other.

We do have one word of warning concerning The Search for Spock, though: don't even dream of calling Sulu "tiny." You will feel pain.

It was the best of treks; it was the worst of treks. It was an age of high concept ideals; it was an age of silly fashion statements.

The Search for Spock's critical consensus is hard to pin down. Some people love it, some people hate it, some choose to perch on the fence of indecision. But whatever your opinion, you should care about this film because it's the embodiment of Star Trek's core philosophy.

That philosophy is: don't call Sulu "tiny."

Or, um, maybe it's something a wee bit more complicated.

When Gene Roddenberry created Trek for TV, he devised a technical and philosophical guide for writers working on the series. Dorothy Atkins summarizes this philosophy as "a future world very like our own in which moral problems are encountered and solved through a philosophy of nonviolent, rational humanism and a reappraisal of the basic nature of human essence." (Source)

The Search for Spock checks off all of Atkins' points above and, along with its companion films The Wrath of Kahn and The Voyage Home, provides a bite-sized version of Roddenberry's philosophy. Think of it as a distilled course in humanism for those of us who don't have time to watch seventy-nine episodes of TV…or have added the series to our must-watch list right after The X-Flies, Battlestar Galactica, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, and ten other TV series that people tell us we need to see right now. (Living in the Golden Age of TV is exhausting.)

In The Search for Spock, characters are flawed individuals (is there any other kind?) who may inadvertently harm others through their actions. But they try their best to find moral, humanist solutions to what problems may arise—except for Kruge, who's just a dirtbag.

Kirk manages to steal the Enterprise and stop the Excelsior without resorting to violence. He even tries to resolve his conflict with Kruge several times by nonviolent means. And Kirk's entire quest for Spock is about putting the human essence above other concerns like politics.

But why is Star Trek's philosophy worth caring? The answer: it's had a huge impact on our culture.

Many philosophers have viewed their field of study through the lens of Trek—no, we're not joking—and written books upon books on the subject. (Source)

And while you won't get your PhD by watching Search For Spock, you will get a chance to explore philosophy while also enjoying space battles, fist fights, and fatal tumbles into pits full of lava. (If PhD programs offered that, we'd all be doctors.)