Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is too many things at once.
It is, first and foremost, a return. It brings back the Star Trek universe after a decade off the air, and the requisite pomp and circumstance for the occasion is all over the film. It drips with the excitement of the people who got to make this thing and celebrate together their love of the material. It is, through and through, a victory lap for the show and the cast.
It is also, sadly, not enough of a film. It is so tied to the series that its 132 minutes feels padded by long, silent special effects scenes where you can’t help but think that the writers were so used to pacing a one-hour show that they simply spliced in long pans to make up the difference.
This turns out to be a remarkably correct assumption. The script for STTMP was originally the pilot for Star Trek: Phase II, a planned reboot of the series with a few new characters. The pilot got slurped into this movie, and a lot of the leftover ideas (and even some of the used ones) got slurped into Star Trek: The Next Generation. Late delivery of the effects shots meant that they were edited in at the last moment, and the director was never quite happy with it (he released a Director’s Edition in 2001).
But enough behind-the-scenes; lets jump in front of the camera.
Design
This film had a ridiculously high budget, and it used it to great effect. Gone are the days of shaking walls, reused props, terrible wigs, and repeated effects shots. The model work in this film is great, and really makes the ships look great. The more cinematic lighting gives the inside of the Enterprise a darker, moodier feel that plays well with the feel of the plot, and the greater number of extras makes the ship seem more alive.
It’s also very obvious that this movie is where TNG got a lot of its design ideas. It’s a little odd that they aped this design instead of the original series design, but the classic look was likely too dated-feeling, and they needed to show a future that looked different than the one the audience had been seeing on reruns for thirteen years. That Paramount obtained design patents to protect these designs (and the Original Series would be out of a similar protective window) was likely a contributing factor as well.
But let’s note a few missteps, here. The costuming is odd in the way you expect late-seventies costuming to be odd. The sleeves are too short, the lines are all angled wrong, and there is just a little too much pad in those shoulders. Scotty inexplicably wears a stormtrooper bodysuit for most of the movie. The hairstyles look odd simply because I’ve grown accustomed to the ones these characters wore throughout the 60s. I should say something about McCoy’s ridiculous beard but instead I’ll focus on his ridiculous necklace and medallion. I will skip over the rainbows that fly out when the Enterprise warps because I’m pretending they never happened.
Lastly, it’s a shock to see what a decade did to some of these actors. I’m coming at this with a few weeks between the last TOS episode and the movie, so the effect is more pronounced, but Nimoy and Kelley look plain old in this film.
Plot
Begin Spoilers
There is a giant cloud coming at Earth that kills three Klingon birds of prey, mostly so that we can see the new design for the Klingons. Kirk gets the band back together and goes to stop it. It turns out to be a probe Earth sent out long ago that has reached sentience and returned home. That sounds familiar.
Joking aside, this is a fine plot that gives us an excuse for the old crew to jump back together and save the world. It puts huge stakes up to make this a bigger, more epic adventure than any episode could contain.
The best trick this setup gives, though, is that it presents a conflict that can be resolved in a very classic-Trek way. V’ger is too huge to fight, so no one even talks about fighting it. Instead, Kirk guides the crew closer and closer and they attempt to reason out what the heck V’ger is and what it wants, and then they solve the problem at hand by applying understanding and humanity. Written out like that it seems fluffy and silly and incredibly lame, but in the context of the movie it works. Also, I’m happy that Kirk doesn’t talk the computer into a logical loop.
End Spoilers
The plot I have just described is the main plot. There are several fragments of other plots that at one time or another tried to rule some version of the script and were jettisoned. Kirk is trying to get back into the action, but we’re never given any reason why he was taken out of it or left to wonder if he should stay out. Spock is given a destiny and Kirk wonders if he can trust his old friend, but we never see anything that would cause us to doubt. McCoy is brought back from retirement because Kirk “needs” him, and then he is entirely unused throughout the movie, neglecting to even fulfill his role as Cynic in Chief or Head Snark. Decker and Ilia have a love plot going, which would be interesting if it involved any character we cared about.
And let’s wonder aloud for a moment why no one has had a promotion. Kirk got an Admiralty he didn’t want but Chekov is still at the conn? Sulu is still next to him? To show that they’re getting with the times, the women seem to have gotten ahead: Rand is back with a new, more technical but still non-commissioned job, and Nurse Chapel is Doctor Chapel now. Uhura gets passed over, though.
Even within the main plot’s arc we see the old weaknesses and tropes peek through: the Pretty Young Thing™ is taken by the alien force (in a scene far too long for it’s own good, which in an episode would be a two second “boing!”); the ship computer (voiced by some guy who is not Majel Barret!) speaks at random times to signal exposition; a wormhole appears, isn’t explained, is dealt with quickly, and is never mentioned again; the consistency of what Spock can do telepathically is once again stretched past the breaking point.
But the main problem is that the core plot is too small, and the leftover remains of old plots makes poor filling, unable to bring the movie together into a coherent whole.
They also completely forgot to bring the funny. Between the long 2001-esque space scenes and the nearly complete lack of McCoy being McCoy, this movie fails to bring the charm and humor that makes Star Trek so easy to like, that makes the future seem like a place full of people you’d want to hang out with and have adventures with. The fractured storyline would be a lot easier to ignore if the ride was more entertaining.
Grade
C; there’s nothing amazing going on here aside from the fact that the movie got made at all. It falls all over itself trying to do too much while not managing to fill the time it’s given. But it’s the bridge that connects TOS with the rest of the canon; it proved there was still life left in this idea, and for that it deserves some thanks.
