[5.8/10] In television criticism these days, there’s a great deal of talk about “table setting” episodes -- those installments that don’t move the ball forward all that much, but get the major players in place and set things up for something bigger. These episodes aren’t bad necessarily -- sometimes they can even be rich with character development that a show can make time for apart from the major fireworks -- but they always feel a little more in service to prior or upcoming events and less like their own worthwhile stories.

*Star Trek III: The Search for Spock* seems like it shouldn’t feel that way. Plenty of major things happen in it: the Enterprise is destroyed, Kirk’s son dies, and Spock himself comes back from the dead. And yet, something about the film makes it feel interstitial, an in-betweener, more of a beefed up hangover from *Wrath of Khan* than a tale that can stand on its own.

One big problem is that the outing feels inevitable and low stakes. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that here in the distant future (or past, depending on your perspective) of 2017, we know that Spock lives to make appearances in several subsequent Star Trek movies, so it’s harder to wring any surprise or risk over whether he’ll be fully revived. But that same knowledge doesn’t hinder the ending of *Wrath of Khan* because the performances, the meaning imbued into the sacrifice is so good that it doesn’t matter that the whole thing will be wiped away.

*The Search for Spock* coasts on the power of that closing scene as much as it can. Partly that may be to simply remind the audience of what happened in *Star Trek II* since the consequences were going to be such a focal point of *Star Trek III*. But *The Search for Spock* doesn’t just replay the end of the the prior film, it has multiple characters recount what happened, throws in some security footage, and liberally repeats the magic words about needs of the many and always being friends and all that good stuff.

That repetition isn’t a problem but for the fact that *The Search for Spock* doesn’t really accomplish much with it. It tries. Spock’s sacrifice is Kirk’s key motivator here. In a nice change of pace, *Star Trek III* offers the opposite of a revenge tale like the one in *Star Trek II*, serving up a main character motivated by love rather than by hate. That’s a laudable tack, but in the end it just contributes to the feeling that this film is more of a postscript to *Wrath of Khan* than something that can work on its own.

Still, the best thing to say about the film is that it’s founded on the love, affection, and community shared by the Enterprise crew. Sure it lays that on a little thick in places, but the fulcrum of the film is that Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, Chekov, and Sulu would go to the ends of the galaxy for one another (and have). So little of this film feels like it matters despite the usual explosions and deaths and hand-to-hand combat. But its final scene, with the crew reunited once more, embracing and making up one of those found families that modern storytelling is fascinated with, it’s affecting, even if the path to get there is less than inspiring.

That less than inspiring bulk stems from the fact that the movie basically has two settings: bombast and doldrums. With Spock out of action for most of the picture (presumably making it easier for Leonard Nimoy to direct) and Bones dealing with the Vulcan lodger in his brain, Kirk is more of a focus than ever here. That means Shatner goes full Shatner here, with his soap opera-style deliveries and theatrical style that goes big even where the emotions are subtle. By the same token, Christopher Lloyd does a yeoman’s job of matching Shatner in scenery-chewing as Kruge, the film’s half-baked antagonist.

Lloyd is entertaining enough in his deliberately over-the-top performance, but Kruge is such a generic antagonist. His only motivation is wanting the super weapon so that he can do evil with it. His reasons for crossing paths with the Enterprise crew are coincidental, and he acts like any run-of-the-mill baddie our heroes ran into on a weekly basis on the original television show. He, like most of the challenges in the film, feels like an arbitrary road block along the way to bringing Spock back.

That’s a major contributor to the lack of stakes. Sure, Starfleet forbids Kirk to go (which is so foolish it should count as reverse psychology), and Kruge is on the loose, and what do you know, David Marcus made genesis with the wrong macguffin sauce and so *IT’S GOING TO EXPLODE* but none of it feels like it matters beyond adding a perfunctory chance for rebellion and antagonism and a ticking clock for what’s basically a delivery mission.

That’s where the mutedness comes in. I actually watched the back half of this movie twice, since the first go around, I was a bit tired and worried the next day that I’d forgotten something. But no, it’s just that the back half of the movie is pretty damn dull despite the theoretically momentous things that happen. There’s long, almost agonizing stretches where the characters are supposed to be reacting to some major event, but the emotional investment just isn’t there, so you find yourself waiting for the next scene to hit as beat after emotional beat falls flat.

The Enterprise blows up! David dies! These should be major developments, and despite Kirk’s corny recrimination of “you Klingon bastards” something about the subdued, going-through-the-motions tone of the film renders them non-events.

The best thing you can say is that even if the main plot feels like a side story suddenly brought front and center, there’s plenty of great character moments. Uhura gets the chance to hoodwink a young, braggadocious officer. Sulu gets to best an imposing guard who calls him “tiny.” Scotty short circuits the new Excelsior vessel so Kirk’s ragtag band of allies can get out. There’s a lot of “the old dogs aren’t out of new tricks” just yet material here, and while it’s more window dressing than anything, it’s still the most enjoyable part of the film.

The best work, however, centers around the relationship the show’s major characters had with Spock. DeForest Kelley does a great job at channeling Nimoy’s performance as Dr. McCoy deals with Spock’s presence in his mind, and his quiet confession to his comatose comrade that he misses him and couldn’t stand to lose him again is the most touching part of the film. Sarek’s presence ties a knot on the strained relationship between father and son that was explored in both *The Original Series* and *The Animated Series*. And as much as Shatner nearly sinks it with all his Shatnering and writer-producer Harve Bennett’s overwritten dialogue nearly does the same, the foundation of *Star Trek III* is the abiding love between Kirk and Spock, that motivates the captain to risk and lose a great deal to get his friend back. That’s a lovely thing to anchor a movie around, even if the execution leaves a lot to be desire.

Still, that’s the benefit of those installments that feel like in-betweeners and bridges from one story to another, whether on television or the silver screen. While they can feel superfluous or low-stakes at times, that also means there tends to be little harm done by them either. Sure, *The Search for Spock* is an underwhelming entry in the Star Trek pantheon, but it’s fine, and sometimes “fine” is good enough to get a story from one place to another.