7. There's Actually Exploration!
"To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no one has gone before"
Does that sound familiar? Only three of the feature films had a plot that featured anything close to that iconic mission statement. All three happen to fall in the doomed odd-numbered category. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" had its heart in the right place with its attempt to make contact with the mysterious V'Ger. But the film was undone by slow potting, and its emphasis on impressive effects over characters that fans had been missing for a decade. "Star Trek V", admittedly one of the worst films, did have a brief moment of wonder to it as the crew passed through the cheesy looking Great Barrier. They were going into the unknown...But once they got there we began to wish they hadn't bothered in the first place. But in "Star Trek III", we have Lt. Saavik and Kirk's son David exploring the Genesis Planet, created in the previous film. They found rapidly evolving lifeforms. They were able to walk from a jungle to a desert in a matter of hours. And there's a flipping blizzard Did I mention there was a blizzard in the desert? I hate fake movie/TV snow as much as anybody, but it was still a visual you don't see everyday. The planet's subsequent slow self-destruction was just as stunning to watch. It was later revealed that the weirdness of Genesis was because of David using unstable Promomatter when constructing the Genesis Device. Nevertheless, how many times in the Trek canon did you see them exploring what was literally a "strange new world". It was Hoth, Tatooine, Endor and Mustafar all rolled into one!