It had been decades since I had watched Time After Time, Nicholas Meyer's directorial debut, and it just has so much going for it:

Science fiction, romance, chase scenes, horror, violence, the scenery of 1979 San Francisco, cold blooded killer David Warner, Mary Steenburgen and Roddy McDowell falling in love both on and off screen:

Steenburgen's Amy is such a character, the epitome of a liberated woman who's in charge of he career, and chooses whom and when she wants to sleep with.

Meyer himself admits he was lucky to get the performances from the cast and advice from the seasoned filming crew, which he was humble enough to take, to make the movie better than it should have been.

The second half of the double feature, Star Trek 4, the one with the whales, pales by comparison. Leonard Nimoy directed that one, with Meyer only brought onto the project as an emergency writer to write the half of the script that is set in 1986 San Francisco. Which is quite a lot of the movie, and has the memorable quotes about commentary on modern society.

Catherine Hicks, the female lead doesn't work, the writing in her lines feels wrong more than her ability to act. Maybe he was writing so fast, he couldn't develop her dialogue and character.

In contrast, the TOS Star Trek crew he was already familiar with, having written (uncredited) and directed ST2 Wrath Of Khan, and he had their characters down pat.

A different host, the Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub, interviewed Meyer after that movie, but he should have attended the earlier interview, because he started covering some of the same ground, and made Meyer go over some of the same anecdotes, and I could feel Meyer's frustration.

Also unfortunately, Meyer wrote his parts of the script remotely, was never on the set, and couldn't give much insight why certain things were done that way they were in that movie.