Justin’s rating: Die soon and fester

Justin’s review: Six years before Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought that pompous title* to theaters, the world got its first Star Trek movie. Granted, it wasn’t official in the least and it shamelessly stole footage from the show, but that didn’t stop Turkey from planting its flag on this franchise.

Turkish Star Trek is technically Ömer the Tourist in Star Trek, the last of a series of films featuring a titular bum who traveled the world on all sorts of semi-comedic adventures. For his final outing, he travels right into an interstellar copyright dispute, because you might as well go out with a confusing bang.

Thus ensued a speed-run through five of the TV series’ episodes with this doofus tagging along and not being thrown out the first airlock. There’s the salt vampire, the fight against the Gorn, the famous Kirk v Spock battle, shapeshifting mimics, and so on. Tying this all together, Ömer brings his semi-drunk antics into every scene, whether it be on the mock-up of the Enterprise or the ruins of Ephesus**.

While the starship sets are a little too metallic and ’50s scifi for this Star Trek fan, I do want to give some honest praise to the outfits, which look terrific, and the general commitment to doing Star Trek — even if it’s a parody of sorts. I never got tired of the sheer length of “Spak’s” ear points, which are about a full inch taller than Leonard Nimoy’s version.

Obviously, Turkish Star Trek’s reason to exist these days lies in its connection to a famous IP and the terrible foreign take on Kirk and crew. It might be a lot more coherent than some of the other Turkish ripoffs I’ve watched — and I couldn’t find an English version of this, mind you — but it hurt something deep inside me to have this sweaty lush be the center of attention at the expense of heroes that we know and love.

It’s a curiosity. A novelty. A bizarre relic that shouldn’t exist but does. But little more than that.

*And associated film.

**Of “Ephesians” fame, if you’re a Bible nerd. Which I am.

Intermission!

• “Mister Spak”
• The Star Trek/Twilight Zone/beach music theme mash-up
• Wow, no expense was spared in building the Enterprise bridge. And by that, I mean “I think this is the director’s garage.”
• But the uniforms are pretty good, even if they sport some unorthodox colors.
• Could this Kirk look more smug?
• Could this Spock enjoy smirking more?
• The teleporter effects look like packing peanuts are eating them
• These girls are really hot to trot
• Random mostly naked background man. Oh, he’s a cyborg?
• Spak’s ears must be seen to be believed
• And now a wedding car covered with flowers and swarmed by gangsters
• That one gangster has a mega-Civil War mustache
• And then there’s the professor with the limpest of combovers
• Spak’s got some severe gum issues (the gingivitis variety, not the Trident kind)
• Ömer did the “PSYCHE!” handshake trick with Spock
• Why did they put a medical lead on his hat?
• This movie is about 15% staring contests
• I like the giant support columns in the middle of the Enterprise bridge
• Boy did they NOT get the red alert noise right
• Kirk’s feathery mullet makes me think he’s part duck