Quiz: 85% of people can't identify each Star Trek movie from one image! Can you?
85% of people can't identify each Star Trek movie from one image! Can you?
By: J. Scott Wilson
Image: TMDB
Trekkies are some of the most dedicated fans in film history. Do you find yourself being beamed from ship to planet or boldly going where no person has gone before? If you're a loyal "Star Trek" fan, you just might have a chance at this quiz. See how many "Star Trek" movies you can name from screenshots.
Which Star Trek movie title corresponds to this image?
tmdb
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Star Trek: Generations (1994)
This movie, while visually stunning, moved at a pace that could best be described as "glacial." Among Trek fans, it's often referred to as "The Motionless Picture."
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1987)
Star Trek: Nemesis
It's a shame that the Trek movies got their very best villain in only the second film. Ricardo Montalban's nutso menace has yet to be matched, even by Benedict Cumberbatch playing his younger self.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Star Trek Beyond (2016)
Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
The reboot series really hits its stride with this one, with the Holy Trinity of Kirk, Spock and Bones really beginning to take shape. While he doesn't have Montalban's menace, Benedict Cumberbatch does a serviceable job as a younger Khan.
When I heard that "Star Trek" was being rebooted, I was ready to summon all my fanboy loathing for the project. Then, when I found out J.J. Abrams was the man in charge, hope bloomed. The reboot series is outstanding, especially Zachary Quinto as Spock.
This film has a bit of everything: time travel, Starfleet history, Vulcans and, best of all, the Borg! Alice Krige as the Borg Queen added a whole new edge of menace to the enemy.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1992)
Star Trek Generations (1994)
Kirk takes on the role of sage advisor to Picard toward the end of the film. One of his biggest pieces of advice is to "Never let them take you out of that chair." A captain should remain a captain, in other words. Kirk made a lousy admiral.
Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)
Even though it was panned by critics, this was a fitting end for the "Next Generation" crew. Troi and Riker got married, Data died heroically and the crew once again saved the galaxy from a deadly adversary.
Idris Elba, rumored to be in line to be the next James Bond, turns in an outstanding job as the film's villain. The interpersonal issues and personal lives of the Enterprise crew get considerable play, but don't in the end stand in the way of a good tale.
One of the most hilarious things about the movie is that Spock, still in his long, white Vulcan temple robe, fits right in with the denizens of San Francisco. The scene where he uses the Vulcan neck pinch on a punk who refuses to turn off his thrash metal music is always a favorite.
Anytime you can hire Malcolm McDowell to play your villain, you're pretty much guaranteed at least a watchable movie. This one is far more than just that, though, as the final battle with McDowell's character Soran against Kirk and Picard is a true nail-biter.
You may well ask yourself what in the heck F. Murray Abraham is doing in a "Star Trek movie." In reply, I would point out that he was also in horror schlockfest "Mimic" and Schwarzenegger vehicle "The Last Action Hero," so clearly he likes to keep his menu varied.
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)
It's always fun when Star Trek gives us a history lesson, and here we get to go back to the day the warp drive was first ignited, drawing the attention of some passing Vulcans and leading to Earth joining the Federation. If only it weren't for those meddlesome Borg ...
One of the best scenes of the movie comes early on, when Kirk and Spock go to the aquarium to scout out the whales. While Kirk charms the cetacean biologist, Spock decides to swim with the whales, much to the amusement of the viewing crowd.
This movie tries really hard to come together, but it just never quite does. When we finally reach the climax, the sense of danger has largely disappeared into a "Huh?" sort of bemusement.
Who knew Kirk had a son? We get a sense of how devoted/addicted he is to his captain's chair when we meet Carol Marcus, a former lover of his, and learn that he's got a son he never met.
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Instead of a giant space dreadnought, the Enterprise crew this time faces the space equivalent of a swarm of bees. These mini-ships overcome the ship's defenses and nearly cut it in half, which is really bad for its structural integrity.
We get a sense of how close we might be to "Star Trek" technology, thanks to Engineer Montgomery Scott. He visits an aluminum factory, and with a few clicks on a computer keyboard, "gives" the formula for the transparent aluminum he needs for the whale tank to the company in exchange for a few sheets.
We've heard here and there that Zefram Cochrane was the father of Warp Drive, but in this movie we get to meet him. The "real" Cochrane, played perfectly by James Cromwell, is more a character out of Heinlein than Roddenberry, a boozy genius who's absolutely appalled at the idea that there are statues built to him in the future.
Peace is a tough process, and the road to it in this movie is complicated by conspiracy. Parties on both sides of the Klingon/Federation dispute are trying to sabotage the peace, leading to Kirk and McCoy being locked away on a Klingon prison camp asteroid.
This film starts three years into the "five-year mission" of exploration, and Kirk is starting to chafe at his role and at not being the swashbuckling free spirit anymore. He bucks to be promoted and puts Spock in charge of the Enterprise.
The Borg are the most chilling villains ever created in the "Star Trek" universe. They can't be negotiated with, they can't be bought off or intimidated, and their endless ability to adapt and modify makes it unlikely the same attack will work twice. At least they're fictional ... we hope!
We spend the entire movie wondering what the heck "V'ger" is and who or what the "creator" it's searching for might be. In the end, we find out it's one of our early space probes melded with some form of alien intelligence that's looking for its original programmer. Kind of makes you want to stop sending out probes!
The friendship between Kirk and Bones is one of the longtime pillars of the original series. In this movie, we see the moment they first met, and how Kirk quickly enmeshes Bones in his plans to subvert Starfleet justice and get aboard the Enterprise.
We all know that Spock and Uhura aren't an item on Kirk's original series Enterprise, and that gets established in this movie. The passionate translator and glacial Vulcan part ways amicably, to the disappointment of fan fiction writers all over the globe.
The Duras sisters, Klingon siblings whose nonstandard Klingon clothing is almost as distracting as they are devious, form a major part of the plot. They're scheming to steal a trilithium weapon, but will settle for destroying the Enterprise if they can.
Once more into the time-warp breach, my friends! It turns out that the villain from this movie is actually an old pre-Federation human soldier who, like a crusty old general, didn't like the peace-loving ways of the Federation and went rogue before being trapped by a wormhole and left on a distant planet.
In a moment that made fanboys everywhere sit up and take notice, as the Enterprise crew are trying to sneak up the bad guys, Uhura does a song-and-dance routine that mesmerizes every man in range. Her voice wasn't dubbed, and the dance was completely hers. Impressive!
Alfre Woodard gives a gripping performance as Lily Sloane, Zefram Cochrane's assistant. In one scene, when Picard's rage at the Borg has driven him to irrational extents, she refers to him as Captain Ahab, which finally penetrates his fury and pops the rage balloon.
Shinzon, the Reman clone of Picard, is aging rapidly as a side effect of the cloning process used to make him. In a twist straight out of '50s horror flicks, the only thing that will save him is a transfusion of Picard's blood. Picard, of course, objects to this.
We think of the Starfleet universe as one where just about all disease has been eradicated, but the early plot hinges on a couple whose daughter is dying of an incurable disease. A man whom we later learn is Khan offers them a cure if the father will set off a bomb in a Starfleet office. That sets the chain of events in motion.
When we first find the reincarnated Spock in this movie, he's just a boy. However, because protomatter was used in the Genesis device, he (and the Genesis planet) are aging unnaturally fast. By the time the crew escapes the planet in a stolen Klingon Bird of Prey, he's the adult Spock again. Holy plot devices, Batman!
The reboot crew harks back to its two predecessors by getting their ship destroyed at some point during the film. I'm sure there are very few habitable planets in the galaxy that don't have a chunk of Enterprise sticking out of the ground somewhere.
The Klingons have always been the most fully realized of all the alien races in "Star Trek," and that's true even here in one of the early films. As a special bonus, "Back to the Future" and "Taxi" madman Christopher Lloyd plays a Klingon captain, probably the best of the series.
At the time this movie came out, the visual effects were downright stunning. When the Enterprise is pulled into V-Ger, the shots of the ship's interior are incredible. Unfortunately, they also last entirely too long. It begins to feel like one of those long musical sequences in "2001: A Space Odyssey."
This movie's a lot of fun to watch, but there are a few scenes that might be nightmare fuel for the younger set. When Khan administers the brain-control worms, watching them crawl in through the victims' ears makes even me feel a little queasy.
This film marks the final voyage of Anton Yelchin as Ensign Pavel Chekhov. The young actor was killed in a mishap with his car that left friends and fellow actors absolutely stunned.
Some critics went after this film as feeling too much like a longer version of a TV episode, rather than a movie. Personally, I enjoyed the "Next Generation" series so much, I don't find this a bad thing.
This movie had to be tough for William Shatner. Acting opposite the man who'd assumed his captain's chair, he was acknowledging that the original cast's run was over. He was a true professional, though, putting in one of his best efforts in the series.
DeForest Kelley does one of his best acting jobs in any "Trek" in this movie, playing a man with an extra person in his head. Spock transferred his katra, or living spirit, into Kelley's character, Bones McCoy. Talk about strange bedfellows!
With galactic exploration comes the discovery of planets that hold secrets that might change human life, as is the case in this movie. Picard and crew end up battling a conspiracy determined to steal the secret of near-immortality possessed by the residents of a peaceful planet.
Tom Hardy stalks and shouts and stabs as a Romulan clone of Picard who was sent to work in a labor camp. He escapes, slaughters the Romulan Senate and, well, remember what I said about stabbing?
The plot for this movie was actually adapted from an unshot pilot for a relaunch of "Star Trek" on TV. When "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" made a truckload of cash, the Paramount execs decided that maybe another big-screen voyage was in order.
This is easily the funniest of all Trek movies. The fish-out-of-water jokes are played to the full extent at every opportunity, one of my favorites being when Scotty tries to talk to a computer, then picks up the mouse and tries talking to it.
"Star Trek"'s long dabbling with time travel has disastrous results here, with Romulans from the future coming back to destroy Vulcan. Fortunately, there are two Spocks available to thwart the evildoers' intentions.
Star Trek: (2009)
OK, show of hands: Who just KNEW Spock would be back when Kirk launched his body onto the still-brewing Genesis planet? The three-movie arc hinged on this conceit, which was never much of a mystery to begin with.
The Romulans have always been an enigmatic culture, seemingly with a government somewhat similar to the Roman Empire. In this movie, we learn that they even had an entire slave race, the Remans, which comes back to bite them in the end.
Uhura is one of the real heroes of this movie. When the crew is pursuing Khan deep in Klingon territory, it's her command of the Klingon language that keeps them from being shot on sight.
William Shatner directed this one, and the entire film is just as bombastic as its director. Spock's half-brother, who seems to have gotten all the "weird beard" genes in the family, hijacks the Enterprise for a trip beyond the edge of the galaxy.
We've heard about Kirk's early career in bits and snatches in the movies, TV shows and novels, but this version shows the young rebel at his most raw. The scene where he steals his stepfather's car and flees from the police before putting the car over a cliff is fantastic.
Since Vulcans have very long lifespans, it's been possible to work in all manner of crossovers involving the pointy-eared ones. Here, however, it takes an actual time warp for Chris Pine's Kirk to meet Nimoy's Spock, who's been marooned on an ice planet for years.
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