DeForest Kelley Movies

The plot involves a peace conference between the Federation of Planets and the troublesome Klingons. The Klingons are hoping to perform a little damage control after triggering a mining disaster on one of their moons; their spokesman is the seemingly contrite General Chang (Christopher Plummer). All negotiations abruptly cease when a Klingon vessel is attacked, and Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) and Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) are accused of the crime. As they stand trial for murder, Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Vulcanian trainee Lt. Valeris (Kim Cattrall) try to locate the real culprits. It turns out that Kirk and McCoy are victims of a conspiracy to foment further hostilities between the Good Guys and the Klingons. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The first two episodes of the syndicated Star Trek: The Next Generation were originally telecast in tandem as a two-hour "TV movie" on September 30, 1987. After the obligatory introductions of the new crew of the Enterprise, the starship sets sail for the planet Daneb IV, for the purpose of investigating the new Farpoint starbase. Halfway to their destination, the crew is captured by obstreperous alien life form "Q" (John de Lancie) and placed on trial for all the crimes previously committed by the Human Race. One of the stars of the original Star Trek makes a surprise appearance in octogenarian makeup (Hint: He doesn't get to say, "He's dead, Jim"). "Encounter at Farpoint" was cowritten by Gene Roddenberry and D.C. Fontana. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) concludes the story arc begun with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and continued in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), but on a wholly new, different, and upbeat note. As the movie opens, months have elapsed since the events in Star Trek III; Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Scott (James Doohan), Sulu (George Takei), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Chekhov (Walter Koenig) are marooned in self-imposed exile on Vulcan, along with the resurrected and regenerated Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who also directed). While Spock tries to sort out the Vulcan and human halves of his resurrected psyche, the others prepare to return to Earth to face a brace of charges by the Klingon Empire and Star Fleet over events on Genesis. Taking off in their commandeered, jerry-rigged Klingon ship, they head to Earth, not knowing that a new crisis could destroy their home world -- a huge, immensely powerful alien probe has entered the galaxy and established a position near Earth, disabling every vehicle and installation in its path with its energy and communication output, and has ionized the entire atmosphere and started vaporizing the oceans, leaving the planet only hours to survive.

Spock determines that the probe is sending out signals to another intelligent terrestrial life form, humpbacked whales, which no longer exist. Using the gravity slingshot time-warp effect (established early in the original series) to travel back into Earth's 20th century, Kirk and company land in 1980s San Francisco to try and bring humpbacked whales to the 23rd century, to respond to the probe. Thus starts a surprisingly breezy, light-hearted, yet serious odyssey through the past (comparable to the best work of the original series), as the crew learns to deal with exact-change buses, angry drivers, punk-rock enthusiasts and other elements of '80s life, and Kirk tries to persuade a scientist (Catherine Hicks) of his good intentions for two whales in captivity. The screenplay, co-authored by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer, and Harve Bennett (from a story by Nimoy and Bennett), is the cleverest and most sophisticated of all the Star Trek movie screenplays, recalling some of the elements of Meyer's earlier time-travel movie Time After Time and also anticipating the feel and tone of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (which would be on the air not quite a year later). Nimoy's direction offers a combination of brisk pacing and a deep love of the characters and the actors, as well as a serious appreciation of the humorous aspects of the script, and Shatner gives his best performance of any of the movies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is fondly regarded as being the closest in spirit to the 1966-69 TV series that spawned it. Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) escapes the tedium of a desk job to join Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) on another space mission. While boldly going where no man etc. etc., Kirk crosses the path of his old enemy Khan (Ricardo Montalban), who as any die-hard Trekker can tell you, was the chief antagonist in the 1966 Trek TV episode "Space Seed." Leading a crew of near-savage space prisoners, Khan insinuates himself into the Genesis Project, which is designed to introduce living organisms on long-dead planets. Intending to harness this program for his own despotic purposes, Khan engages in battle with the Enterprise crew. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Giant Flesh-Eating Rabbits Ravage American Southwest After Scientist Slips Up! Such is the plot of this unintentionally campy horror outing. The trouble begins when a researcher's experiment to use hormone injections to control Arizona's burgeoning rabbit population goes terribly awry, causing the cuddly rodents to grow to enormous proportions. In order to facilitate their growth, the rabbits need extra protein, and what better source than the relatively slow-moving human population that surrounds their huge subterranean lairs? ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The third and final season of Star Trek is frequently written off as the series' nadir, if only because creator Gene Roddenberryhad relinquished a great deal of his creative control to the NBC executives and to new producer Fred Freiberger). Another reason given for the series' decline was the decision to cut the budgets to the bone, and to depend more on "house" writers than established science- fiction specialists. Also, there was a heavier reliance upon gimmickry and gadgetry than in previous years, upsetting those purists who preferred strong characterizations and story values to the standard sci-fi/fantasy cliches. But while Season Three was overall the weakest, especially in terms of ratings, several of the individual episodes are among the finest that Star Trek has to offer. We get off to a good start with the opener, "Spock's Brain", in which the titular organ is "kidnapped" from its owner Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Attorney Melvin Belli makes his acting debut as a sinister, corruptive life force (not a lawyer, but close!) in "And the Children Shall Lead". The crew of the Starship Enterprise is forced to sacrifice themselves during the Gunfight at the OK Corral in "Spectre of the Gun". "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" is an allegorical drama in which the fate of a civilization is determined by a duel to the death between its two last survivors (Frank Gorshin, Lou Antonio), whose faces are half-black and half-white. And in the series finale "Turnabout Intruder", the mind of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) is exchanged with that of his embittered ex-lover (Sandra Smith)--and vice versa. The season's most controversial episode was "Plato's Stepchildren", originally telecast November 22, 1968, in which Kirk and officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) share the first interracial kiss ever seen on network television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Johnny Reno (Dana Andrews) is a US Marshall who is bushwhacked by outlaws on his way to Stone Junction, Kansas. Joe Connors (Tom Drake) and his brother Ab (Dale Van Sickle) mistakenly believe the lawman is after them and fire on Reno, and Reno captures Joe after Ab is killed in the gun battle. The two face an angry mob in a town where local Sheriff Hodges (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is in cahoots with the corrupt Mayor Jess Yates (Lyle Bettger). Although Reno believes Joe may have killed an innocent Indian, he must protect the prisoner from the growing mob that threatens to lynch the man before his trial. Jane Russell plays Johnny's sweetheart Nona, owner of the local saloon. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Written by Paul Schneider, "Ride the Wind" was Bonanza's first two-part story. Ben Cartwright is willing to provide Charles Ludlow (Victor Jory) with money to help finance the new Pony Express service, but isn't keen on allowing his son Joe to join Ludlow's riders. Nor is the Paiute Indian tribe amenable to allowing the Pony Express to go across their land. Exacerbating the problem is Ludlow's assistant, Curtis Wade (Rod Cameron), who hopes to make a name for himself as an Indian fighter. The story is sufficiently exciting to make one forget that the real Pony Express had been disbanded some three years before the events depicted in this episode. Part One of "Ride the Wind" first aired on January 16, 1966. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As everyone on earth (to say nothing of everyone in the United Federation of Planets) must know by now, the debut episode of Star Trek's first season, "The Man Trap", was not the first episode filmed. Nor was the series' "official" pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", the first one to go before the cameras. The real launching pad for Star Trek was "The Cage", which stars not William Shatner as James T. Kirk, but instead Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike of the Starship Enterprise. Though Hunter was replaced by Shatner, producer Gene Roddenberry wasn't about to let the costly "The Cage go to waste: thus, the episode was reedited as a two-part "flashback" titled "The Menagerie", with an added wraparound sequence in which the Enterprise's first officer Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) explains at his court-martial why he attempted to kidnap the now-enfeebled and demented Captain Pike. With this out of the way, it can be said that Season One of Star Trek--or more specifically, year one of the Enterprise's five-year mission to "boldly go where no man has gone before"--contains several of the series' best and best-loved episodes, with the ensemble cast--Shatner, Nimoy, DeForest Kelley (Dr. "Bones" McCoy), James Doohan (Engineer Scott), Nichelle Nichols (communications officer Uhura), George Takei (helmsman Lt. Sulu) and Majel Barrett (Nurse Christine Chapel)--in peak form. In fact, the casting falls short of perfection in only one respect: Walter Koenig as ensign Chekov would not join the show until Season Two. This season represents the first series contributions of Richard Matheson ("The Enemy Within"), Jerry Sohl ("The Corbomite Maneuver"), Robert Bloch ("What Are Little Girls Made Of?"), Theodore Sturgeon ("Shore Leave") and Star Trek story editor D.C. Fontana ("Tomorrow is Yesterday"). Perhaps the most memorable--and certainly the most controversial--of the season's offerings is Harlan Ellison's Hugo-award winning "City on the Edge of Forever" (Alas, Ellison would never write again for Star Trek, the result of a well-publicized feud between the author and producer Roddenberry which has been exhaustively chronicled elsewhere). Finally, let us take note of two unforgettable guest star turns in Season One. First there's Roger C. Carmel, making his first appearance as intergalactic con artist Harry Mudd in "Mudd's Women". And last but not least, Ricardo Montalban plays the evil Khan, a genetically engineering superman who endeavors to take over the Enterprise in "Space Seed." Sixteen years later, Khan (again played by Montalban) would be up to his old tricks in the theatrical-movie spinoff Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this western, a world-weary bounty hunter begins working for an avaricious crook who wants to destroy the good name of a little town so that the railroad will be built across his land. To enact his plan he brings a notorious gambler to town. He also establishes a brothel in the saloon. The sheriff and the good townspeople protest, but the villain takes care of him. This angers the bounty hunter, who has come to like the lawman and he turns against his boss. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide