STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979) The future, where people wear belt buckles but don't wear belts I think even the pointiest-eared Star Trek diehard would have to admit that the Star Trek movies have been, uh, uneven. Some have been really good, some have been really crappy, some have fallen in between. In fact, I'd say it's a pretty even spread across the crap/ambrosia continuum. The first movie falls somewhere around the ass end of the middle. And I'm not gonna lie to you - I've liked Star Trek for a long time. I've seen most of the episodes of all the TV series so far. Yes, I even liked Voyager, certainly more than Deep Space 9, anyway. And yet, I consider myself more of a casual fan. So far as sci-fi franchises go, I'm more of a Star Wars and Alien kind of guy. But Star Trek has definitely managed to consistently retain enough of my interest over the past...well, most of my life, enough for me to keep an eye on it, off and on, right up to the present day. When watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it helps to watch it with the understanding that when it was made, Star Trek was a rather different entity than it is now; it was basically one cult 60's TV series, and sure, why not, the animated series too. There hadn't been any new live-action Trek in ten years. Man, can you imagine ten years without Trek these days? Half the time we have TWO Trek series on TV, and a movie every two or three years. Like it or lump it, it's there, it's a constant, its place in modern pop culture is clear. Back then? Like I said, ten years without Trek. Many moons have passed since Kirk, his crew and the starship Enterprise completed their five-year mission. Of the Top Three, Kirk is an Admiral, Dr. "Bones" McCoy is retired, and Spock is back on Vulcan engaged in some sort of pointy-eared ritual in which the last vestiges of his emotion will be cast aside. One of the guys overseeing this ritual looks like Nosferatu! Of the Bottom Four, Scotty has been overseeing the refit of the Enterprise (badly, as it turns out), while Uhura, Sulu, and poor Chekhov, always screaming in pain from some sort of torture inflicted upon him, are still pretty much doing the same jobs they were ages ago. But something's up. A huge cloud the size of a small solar system is floating around out there, gobbling up everything in its path - Klingons (who, for no reason ever given in the history of Trek, look totally different from hereon out than they did in the original series), space stations, everything. And it's coming towards Earth. Naturally, the only ship in range is the Enterprise. This seems to happen a lot - something's happening in our solar system (headquarters of Starfleet, homeworld of one of the Federation's founding members, pretty important so far as planets go) and there's only one ship there. And it doesn't even work! (this happens again in Star Trek: Generations) The Enterprise barely gets out into space and already it's killed two people with a transporter malfunction (otherwise, probably the coolest transporter effect in Trek, ever) and accidentally drops into a wormhole. Good job, Scotty. (bonus for Kirk: according to the IMDb, the novelization says that one of the two people killed in that transporter accident was none other than Kirk's wife. Kirk looks displeased with the outcome, but not THAT displeased.) But, they haven't shipped out yet. Kirk uses this emergency as an excuse to snag command of the Enterprise away from its present captain, Decker (Stephen Collins, who might as well be wearing a red shirt), demoting him to science officer (a post Decker then has to vacate when Spock belatedly shows up). He also drafts Bones out of retirement. Y'know, Kirk's kind of an asshole, though all of the Bottom Four seem to be happy to see him. Scotty and Kirk ship out in a shuttle to the Enterprise, which is in dry-dock. Now, remember - 10 years without Trek, that's a long time to a Trek fan. So the Enterprise gets a long, loving re-introduction, which was probably a real thing of beauty if you'd been waiting 10 years for more Trek and another four days in a lineup outside the theatre trying to keep your pasty Romulan makeup from running in the rain, finally got inside, and saw it on a huge huge screen, in an ocean of Monkees haircuts and whirring tricorders. At home, you'll probably be using the FFWD button. They get one more crew member of note first, though - played by Persis Khambatta, she is Ilia, a Deltan. Which is to say a bald chick who looks down on humans as a "sexually immature species". I mean, what is that? Well, this movie is rated G (remember when ratings were assigned to movies, instead of movies being tailored for ratings?) - nobody ever got into it much. Some of director Robert Wise's wheezy commentary (well, he is almost 90 years old) suggests that in Deltan society, people have sex with each other like we shake hands. Man, that's one sweaty handshake. So they ship out, and Spock (who made telepathic contact with the cloud/being back on Vulcan, interrupting the ritual and ruining his whole day) shows up uninvited, apparently counting on everybody else being glad to see him. He takes Decker's job away from him, leaving Decker's remaining function on the ship to "nursemaid" Kirk around this newly refit and newly unfamiliar vessel. They catch up with the cloud, and make contact with it. The cloud then abducts Ilia and replaces her with what seems like an android replica (who looks awesome in a skirt that seems almost imperceptibly short), with which to communicate with the crew. She tells them that outside is one V'Ger (pronounced VEE-jer), who has come in search of the Creator, who is apparently on Earth. The Enterprise is then brought inside V'Ger, in a series of FX shots showing the ship dwarfed within this much greater vessel. This goes on for a very long time. It's impressive, and probably pretty neat when you're seeing it on the big screen. And for sure, watching the special features and listening to the commentary (first movie I ever watched with the commentary on) gives you a good idea of the superhuman level of effort that went into all this. But it's really, really long. And there's not much to it beyond the cool visuals - this is not like the psychedelic ending to 2001 where you're constantly wondering what this "means". On video, you're again likely to be reaching for your remote during this part, until they discover the secret of V'Ger, what it wants, what it is, all that stuff. However, they do not explain why V'Ger's hexagonal design motif, prominent throughout its vastness, is suddenly scrapped at the core in favor of an octagonal one. Performances by everybody are just fine. Shatner might be a bad actor in a conventional sense - I myself am fond of using "Shatner" as a verb, regarding some performances by other actors - but he IS James T. Kirk. Nobody else could possibly be a more Kirk-like Kirk. The mere suggestion is absurd. Nimoy is excellent as always - nobody else has much to do. Kelley has some crustily funny moments early on, but ends up spending most of his time peering over Shatner's shoulder. Doohan gets to repeat that accent, Koenig screams in agony at a burned hand, and that's about it. Nichols (check it out, her afro has a peak in the front!) and Takei spend most of the movie looking in awe at the viewscreen. Actually, just about everybody here spends entirely too long looking in awe at the viewscreen and "jiggling" in their chairs, trying to simulate turbulence. This set a standard for bad sci-fi acting gigs that went unmatched until the arrival of the guy on Stargate SG-1 who only says "Chevron six, encoded! Chevron seven, locked!" and the lady on Farscape who endured several hours of full-body makeup each day just so she could spend the show hugging a wall. Story-wise, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the mess you'd expect it to be considering that it was written while it was being shot. The history of making this picture, what happened and what almost happened, is a long and interesting one which I'm not even gonna start getting into. Go find yourself a source. Read Stephen King's hilarious take on Harlan Ellison's brief, abortive involvement in Danse Macabre, for starters. The general idea from the story came from a semi-planned episode of Star Trek Phase II, the abortive second Trek TV series that was scrapped in favor of making a movie. Reportedly, it existed even earlier than that as a planned episode for another series that never happened - a second-order autocannibalization, if you will. And we'll not even start with how this was already touched on in the episodes "Nomad" and "The Changeling". After that, it seems that just about everybody had their hand in this one, while Isaac Asimov lurked in the background as a scientific consultant, knowing that Arthur C. Clarke would probably make fun of him for this being so lame next to 2001: A Space Odyssey, from which this movie steals its conclusion. And after a ten-year absence, you'd think more time would be spent on the characters the fans were familiar with, and not the two newcomers who don't even make it to Star Trek II. Still, there's something really fresh about this. I just imagine that there has to be such a big difference between making Trek now and making Trek then, without more than 20 seasons (!!!) of TV to keep "canon" with. The look of this movie is very much 1979, as it should be. Cream-colored uniforms with pants that leave way too little to the imagination (would a God that is good let James Doohan go on camera wearing those?), lots of matte paintings used for sets. Trek movies have always been identifiably products of their time - that's part of their charm. The effects are awe-inspiring so long as effects alone are capable of inspiring awe in a viewer, in 1979 and even today. Jerry Goldsmith's score is excellent, even if the theme (later to become more well-known as the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation) is way too "high adventure" for such a slow movie. I watched this movie on DVD, the recent "director's version" in which Wise (hard to believe, Robert freakin' Wise made this movie) basically pulled a George Lucas and cleaned/updated some effects shots, and trimmed the anacondan running length very slightly. It doesn't really help the movie all that much, but at least Vulcan looks the way it should now, and there are a couple shots near the end worth seeing for fans, like V'Ger finally showing itself outside of that cloud (you got a hint of it in the original version, but you could've blinked and missed it), or all those steps forming outside of the Enterprise's saucer section. Lots of neat extras too, with some test footage from Phase II. It's kind of amusing to see women with such flamboyantly 70's Farrah Fawcett hairdos in 60's Trek uniforms. A stumbling start to the Star Trek movie franchise, and of the lesser ones, one of the few that just about everybody will agree is more lacking than most of the rest. But Star Trek: The Motion Picture serves its purpose - it's big and it's expensive and it brought Trek back into our lives after a long absence. You've got to be glad it happened, though - without it, not only would there never have been a Star Trek II, but there WOULD have been a Phase II, with Kirk and no Spock. No Spock, oh, the horror! BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE