The Star Trek movie franchise really dealt with some interesting concepts but their execution could have used some work. Granted, it was the 80's. They didn't have the kind of wizardry we do now. This begins immediately after The Wrath of Khan and really doesn't make sense without that context.
Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) has jettisoned the body of his science officer, Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), onto the surface of the new planet Genesis and returned to Earth. Soon, however, Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) starts behaving very oddly. Ambassador Sarek (Mark Lenard) believes that the dying Spock passed the sum total of his knowledge and memory to McCoy in a Vulcan ritual because he thought the crew would know to take his body back to his home planet so his knowledge could be shared amongst his people. Kirk petitions for a ship to take McCoy to Vulcan but is denied so he steals the Enterprise and heads off back to Genesis to recover Spock's body.
Unfortunately, word has gotten around that the Federation has a terraforming device and a Klingon war leader (Christopher Lloyd) has laid siege to Genesis in order to steal the secret. David (Merritt Butrick) and science officer Saavik (Robin Curtis) are the only two survivors from the Federation's exploratory crew because they were on the planet when the Klingons showed up. They discover that the Genesis process is highly unstable and that the planet is probably going to implode pretty soon. Also, Spock's body has regenerated into that of a child but without his memories or personality. Kirk has to defeat the Klingons, save his people from a Frankenstein-ed planet, and reunite Spock's brain with his body without killing him or McCoy. All in a day's work.
Like I said, there were some interesting ideas here about loyalty and reincarnation and the pitfalls of hubris but they were muddled through with some uninspiring villains, unnecessary interactions, and frenetic action sequences. This was Leonard Nimoy's feature debut as a director so some leeway should be given in that respect.
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