 The Search for Spock received generally positive reviews from critics . Richard Schickel of Time praised the film as " perhaps the first space opera to deserve that term in its grandest sense " . Janet Maslin of The New York Times and Newsweek wrote that while the film felt weighed down by the increasingly aged actors and television tropes , it was leavened by its dedication . Roger Ebert called the film " good , but not great " and a compromise between the special effects @-@ dependent The Motion Picture and the character @-@ driven The Wrath of Khan . Conversely , USA Today praised the film as the best of the three and the closest to the original spirit of the television series . An overwhelmingly negative view of the film was offered by The Globe and Mail 's Susan Ferrier Mackay , who summed the film up as " ba @-@ a @-@ a @-@ d " . In a 2010 retrospective of the film franchise , author Jill Sherwin suggests the aging Enterprise served as a metaphor for the aging Star Trek franchise . The film has received a score of 55 / 100 on Metacritic , indicating mixed to average reviews , while review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes has given it 78 % , indicating positive reviews . 
