So, if you've followed my Twitter of late, you've probably seen that I've been on a Star Trek kick (unless you're reading this long after 3/21/22, in which case - Hi future people! Is the pandemic over yet?). Rather than spend my time either being snarky or outright complaining about Star Trek: Picard getting a second season, I decided to actually talk about some good Trek.
...this obviously isn't that, but I haven't actually covered any of the movies, so I figured I'd have to start somewhere.
I'll go ahead and give you a spoiler alert here. This movie? Yeah, it's not good. It also doesn't make it bad, per se... I'll try and explain. I'll go ahead and tell that, out of the original six films involving the original cast of Star Trek: The Original Series, The Motion Picture is the second worst and is only beaten by one film that we'll be getting into later because I am wont to watch it even less than I did this. But, watch it I did, and here I am to tell you all about it.
The question you might be thinking of is "Why did Star Trek get a film anyway?". By all accounts, by 1979, Star Trek was a three season series that was cancelled after 79 episodes. Who would care about it? As it turns out, lots and lots of fans. Despite having gone off the air in 1969, Star Trek had been sold into syndication, which meant it was playing on television stations all across North America and even branching out into Europe and beyond! People were taking to it like fans of Firefly would be hoping that people would take to it and Paramount did indeed take notice of it. However, they weren't entirely convinced that a film was the way to go.
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| Give the old girl credit, she's still got it. |
Instead, series creator Gene Roddenberry was tapped to create a new show - Star Trek: Phase II. That sort of fell through because of the massive runaway success of two films in the genre of science fiction. The first was a little independent movie that you've probably heard of and really needs no introduction. The other, and the one that was the nail in the coffin for Paramount not trying out the movies, was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. With 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures raking in the mad dollars from those two blockbusters, Paramount decided to resurrect the Star Trek franchise, much to the delight of fans everywhere.
... fans who were promptly left bored out of their minds, but we'll get to that.
Sometime in the 2270s (seriously, Trek fans will argue about that for ages), an energy cloud in space destroys three Klingon vessels and a Federation space station. Starfleet Command decides to send the new re-fitted Enterprise under the command of Captain William Decker (Stephen Collins). However, Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) throws his weight around and gets put in command of the mission, knocking Decker down to first officer.
Indeed. A bizarre amount of the film is spent on Kirk and Decker having a dick measuring contest, which would be fine... except this is Star Trek and this isn't what we come to Star Trek for. While some members of the original crew are already aboard such as Scotty (James Doohan) and Uhuru (Nichelle Nichols), it is after Kirk's arrival that other members of the original crew come aboard such as Sulu (George Takei), Chekov (Walter Koenig), and a Unabomber-esque beard rocking Dr. McCoy (DeForrest Kelley). The final piece of the puzzle actually comes later on and was done very last minute in the inclusion of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy).
On an out of universe note, Nimoy was still pissed off as Paramount for unpaid royalties for Star Trek and had declined the film. The production team managed to convince him to join, but only if Nimoy had final script approval. In universe, Spock had gone back to Vulcan to complete a ritual to perge himself of all emotion... only to sense the entity and be unable to go through with it, returning to his friends to see this crisis through.
To finish rounding out the cast we have not an original member, but one Lieutenant Ilia (Persis Khambatta), a member of the Delta race and who has an oath of celibacy on record. Also, she had a previous romantic relationship with Decker, which sort of gives this film a romance subplot, but not really? Regardless, it is Ilia that is captured by the energy cloud when they first engage it, later returning and claiming to be a servant of the entity called 'V'Ger' within, wanting to learn about the 'carbon-based units'.
So what is V'Ger? Well, it's the Voyager 6 space probe that was lost in the 20th century and apparently has come back with sentience. How did it get sentience? Complicated issue that really isn't important for this story to work, although the Star Trek expanded universe has provided a smorgasbord of options. I'm a big fan of the "Borg created V'Ger" theory myself, even if there are several things about their respective MOs that make that difficult if not impossible.
Either way, when they actually get to the energy cloud, the film starts getting... effects heavy. And really not in a good way. Even before that, it's marred in many scenes by long, slow, boring shots with very little action. I don't mean as in "shooty shooty wahey" action I mean... no action. No nothing. We get a panning shot of an area, cut to a shot of people reacting to it, and back to a panning shot of an area. It's just... very, very slow and very boring and it's something that just makes the film drag, often earning in the sarcastic name of The Slow-Motion Picture.
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| Seriously, the uniforms for this are just...awful. |
That isn't to say that there aren't good things about this film. Along with being the first Star Trek film, it's actually responsible for a great deal of firsts for the franchise. It marks the first time that Jerry Goldsmith ever produced a score for Star Trek (the main title of this would late be reused and extended for Star Trek: The Next Generation). It has the first appearance of Klingons with rigged foreheads, a visual look that they would more or less maintain until Discovery gave us that weird blue beetle thing. It also has the first major uniform change for the franchise - going from the different colored tops and black pants of the Original Series to one-piece jumpsuits that were thankfully abandoned not long after this movie for a much, much better look.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture broke a lot of ground for the franchise in ways that are still being felt today, for good and for ill. In this case, however, I'm afraid the ill far, far outweighs the good. It's slow, clunky, and just a drag to watch. It doesn't have the campy feel of the original series, nor the absolute greatness that was to follow it. And, believe you me, greatness was coming. Hard!
Next time, when we return to reviewing the Star Trek films, we'll be looking at the myth and the legend itself. The very film that Star Trek has tired to rip off twice now and had absolutely no chance of success at: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Prepare yourselves for a review comprised of 98% of me gushing... because that's all I can really do for Wrath of Khan.
This movie, though? Toss it into the space cloud so it can be destroyed by a kickass guitar riff.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture was brought to us by Paramount Pictures.
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