STAR TREK: THE FIRST SIX MOVIES **** (out of ****) Starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, and Majel Barrett. Created by Gene Roddenberry.
		Star Trek:  The Motion Picture (1979, 132 min, G) – Directed by Robert Wise & written for the screen by Harold Livingston, featuring Persis Khambatta and Stephen Collins. This first feature is a sort of combination between the “Star Trek” TV show and “2001:  A Space Odyssey.”  Like Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece, it is slow-moving and filled with lavish, hypnotic special effects, and follows the Enterprise as she faces an enormous entity that is gradually devouring everything in its path.  The entity, which cannot be quite called a spacecraft, is the best part of the movie.  It is a cloud so enormous that it has planets inside of it and tremendous, machine caverns that dwarf the Enterprise once she has been swallowed.  The entity, which refers to itself as V’ger, is a machine lifeform of absolute logic, in search of something.  As such Mr. Spock feels a special connection to it.  “The Motion Picture” concludes with V’ger’s realization that logic can only take you so far, that there is a next, holier step that pure reason cannot dictate.  The film is packed with fascinating ideas, but does not explore them fully, and the human scenes directed by Robert Wise (“West Side Story”) are clunky and awkward; characters from the original series are given lengthy re-introductions out-of-proportion with the parts they subsequently play.  A newly-revised DVD version of the “The Motion Picture,” which I have not seen yet, is said to be a tighter, more direct story in which the clumsy scenes involving the crew are cut down and their response to the fascinating extraterrestrial are increased.  Oh yes, and the male costumes left less to the imagination than I would have preferred.
The premise of the original “Star Trek” films and television programs has never been good science, or even a consistent set of bad scientific rules about spacecraft, time travel, or alien life.  The thrust of “Star Trek” is the testing of man’s “human-ness” in the face of non-humanity.  In this sense “Star Trek” is as much parable as it is adventure, and more about subtext than speculation about mankind’s future.  Certainly there is a fascination with the accoutrements of science-fiction, such as spacecraft and gadgetry and aliens, but for “Star Trek” those are never an end in themselves.  Each episode, and subsequent film, follows the crew of the starship Enterprise, on a mission to not just explore the cosmos, but as a trial-by-fire for the betterment of humanity.  Thematically, “Star Trek” has probably less in common with Heinlein and Asimov than it does with King Arthur, John Ford Westerns, and the Old Testament. The leads are Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. McCoy (the late DeForest Kelley), and they crusade on behalf of an outer space UN known as the Federation.  Each of them has a place in an action-logic-emotion (or body-mind-spirit) dichotomy.  Spock is a Vulcan, a race that follows logic strictly and therefore cannot love or have a sense of humor.  McCoy, the ship’s physician, is emotion almost entirely untethered to logic and is Spock’s opposite.  Kirk is a synthesis of the two paradigms, with courage, headstrongness, and testosterone thrown in.  In a typical episode, all three approaches to life will be required to contribute to solving whatever disaster has crossed their path.  Kirk will be too hot-headed to solve the problem without Spock’s restraint, while Spock’s purely logical approach will lack the creative edge of the unkempt human mind, and McCoy’s gut-level compassion towards others will serve as both a hindrance and a help.  So the pattern goes, from the small screen to the big. The trio is regularly joined by Scotty (James Doohan), the Scottish chief engineer; Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), the African communications officer; Chekhov (Walter Koenig), the Russian navigator; and Sulu (George Takei), the Chinese helmsman.  The international crew—with its suspiciously moppy-tops—may not be as striking now as it was in the 1960s when the show started, but “Star Trek” was rightly hailed for tackling various issues such as racism and bigotry and is a television landmark for its progressive social agendum.  As for visual effects, sound effects, hammy musical cues, and aliens who are obviously humans under half-a-coat of makeup, well, let’s just say the show and the subsequent films never quite got the funding they deserved. Through decades of repetition, the actors and writers (chiefly creator Gene Roddenberry, producer Harve Bennett, and director Nicholas Meyer) have achieved an effortless, slightly self-mocking familiarity with their characters that gives their performances rarely-seen depth, ease, and gentleness.  By the last “Trek” film, there’s something touching about these men (and one woman) who have been jumping in and out of the jaws of death for years and years together, and somehow none of them ever bothered to get married or start a family.  The appeal is like a glorified boyhood bond, carried out through old age, with Uhura as the token girl.  Kirk may get all the hot alien babes, but these are essentially all single guys; is it any wonder the stereotype Trekkie is a dateless loser still living at home? Page two of "Star Trek:  The First Six Movies." Back to home.