I guess they needed a “Latin lover” so Madlyn Rhue’s character would would get all crushy on him.
Still not as bad as Welshman Richard Burton in Rains of Ranchipur
So… Does anyone remember the review in the OP?
Here’s the only review I could find that says Montalban was miscast. Here’s the exact quote:
The late Ricardo Montalban (a bit miscast as a North Indian Sikh) really gave the movie his all.
Of course, there are two notes to this review.
-
The author says his favorite Star Trek movie was The Motion Picture, so his taste is suspect from the start.
-
He also says he saw TMP when he was in 8th grade. If he was 14 when he saw TMP, that means he was at best four years old when the original series was cancelled. In the days before home video, that means he never saw (or didn’t remember) “Space Seed” before he saw TWOK.
So what does he know!
Not true. Star Trek was re-run extensively in syndication in the 70s.
That’s the ONLY place I ever saw it. We didn’t even get NBC in the 60s. (I had to see The Monkees in syndication, too. 
) I was 17 when ST: The Motion Sickness came out, FWIW.
I got to watch that on Nickelodeon in the 80s.
In the early 70s, CBS would show episodes at 12ish local on Saturday’s after the cartoons were done. They rotated between the Children’s Film Festival, and Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp.
I was so conditioned by that, that, even now when I hear “For Pete’s Sake”, which was used as the closing credits song for syndication, I know it is time to turn off the TV and go outside,
Not where I lived. YMMV.
I believe it was by Rex Reed, who is a pompous twit, but who was one of the best-known movie reviewers of that era.
Well that’s a pretty mild comment about hiring a Mexican-American as a South Asian character.
He says TMP was “a personal favorite” which doesn’t mean it was his favorite Star Trek movie, just that he liked it more than a lot of other movies.
He’s about my age, and by the time TWOK was out, I had seen every Trek episode multiple times (like many another good Trekker) in syndication. Even in “Star Trek Lives” from 1975 talks about how common syndication was (and how syndicated versions of the episodes trimmed scenes, sometimes badly)
Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs up and a nice review, in contrast.
This thread is eye opening. I had thought the Trek movies were all badly reviewed and thought unimportant by most reviewers.
Same here, on both counts. When I was a tween, in the mid-to-late '70s, it was still several years before we had cable, so we only had four channels (CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS); all three commercial stations played old syndicated series during fringe time slots, and the local CBS affiliate played Star Trek re-runs every weekday afternoon. Thus, it was something I watched pretty much every afternoon, after arriving home from school.
I’m not finding his review.
The “even numbered Trek: good; odd-numbered Trek: bad” law covered reviewers’ reactions, too.
I took a look through Google, and I couldn’t find it either. I just remember friends, who were, like me, Trek fans, making fun of Reed for making that comment. (Then again, it’s a 42 year old memory, so I may well have the name wrong.)
I had to buy the DVDs to see them. I still have them. Probably 4 or 5 eps per disc.
I saw a few on TV late at night and knew I’d love them. My kids grew up watching them. I made made them Trekkies, and Beatlemaniacs (I had my oldest brothers LPs) accidentally. I’m a terrible parent.
Google, Roger Ebert had a column or something called “Can a bad review ruin a good movie?”
I think he mentions Reeds bad review of Khan.
That’s all I could find. I didn’t read the whole column, tho’
From the Wikipedia article:
He was born in Mexico City; raised in a Catholic family, he finished his studies in a Jesuit University in Mexico, Universidad Iberoamericana.
Stranger
I’m sure he spoke Spanish with a Mexican accent, but did it carry over into any other language … like English or Punjab?
Or Japanese?
