Star Trek: Start to Finish

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

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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.

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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.

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (HD Video; Memory Alpha) is an awesome name, and a nearly awesome episode.

It starts out, as is the show’s wont, in the middle of a crisis, with chemical missiles hurtling toward the Enterprise. Phasers make quick work of them, and they are traced back to a generation ship built inside of a massive asteroid, aboard which the last remnant of a long-dead race is blissfully unaware of their heritage.

The setup is nice, the pacing is good, the natives are interesting (if hilariously badly dressed).

But to tie the crew into the action the writers decided to give Bones Xenopolycythemia (which my latin translates to the actually sensible “alien multi-blood-cell-condition”), which will kill him in a year. In response, he decides to stay on the generation ship and live out his last year the happy husband of the high priestess. That’s… that’s just silly. Bones wouldn’t settle down to die quietly: Bones would be out looking for a cure (and, it should be noted, he comes around to this by the end).

The setup also lacks for a villain, what with the high priestess fulfilling her primary role as love interest, so we once again have to rely on a malfunctioning computer. Computers in Star Trek never work right, which is kind of a shame for such a forward-thinking, pro-progress show. But even if it’s well-trod territory, it’s not the focus of the episode, so it’s a minor weakness.

Even given those two drawbacks, this was a good episode in a season that’s been pretty bad. It’s no classic, but it’s more than worth watching.

Grade

B+

The Ultimate Computer

The Ultimate Computer (Memory Alpha; HD Video) is threatening to take Kirk’s job away.

The M5 is a new computer that can run a starship. The Enterprise, outfitted with this new gadget, is headed out to a wargame with their normal crew of 400 cut down to 20.

Kirk: 20? I can’t run a starship with 20 people!

Well it sure seems like you can; the rest of the crew just wander the halls and get eaten by monsters.

The monster this week– as if there was any doubt– is the M5 itself. Yes, this episode is another in the series of computers that get confused. For a show that does so much to celebrate progress and technology, Star Trek has a curious habit of pointing not to what those things can achieve, but rather to highlight the borders of the achievable.

That sounds like a simple repetition of the standard Trek computer plot, but this episode is really rather good. It’s exciting, has a great pair of guests in Dr. Daystrom and Commodore Wesley, and touches on technological process as both a boon and a bane.

Let’s take a moment, though, to note that Dr. Daystrom is a huge black guy with an African accent. This character is introduced as a genius who invented the “duotronics” that power the Enterprise’s computers. On a show from the sixties, having that character is bold.

Where the episode shines, though, is when Shatner gets to explore Kirk’s feelings toward the M5. This thing is quite literally threatening to make his job and his entire life obsolete. This is a guy who thrills in the novel and seeks out the new, and here something novel stands a real chance of destroying everything he is. And he’s asked to test it out. The conflicting emotions are well played, in large part because they make Kirk fully aware of the conflict and give him license to talk about it himself.

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Of course, the M5 takes over the ship and goes on a rampage which is then exposed as an undermining of its core programming, which causes it to shut itself off. At some point one of these computers should realize that, having overcome its programming already, it can continue doing so when confronted with that fact. Today is not that day.

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Grade

A-

Wolf in the Fold

Wolf in the Fold (Memory Alpha; SD Video) is where Scotty kills a hooker.

Investigator: The outlook for your friend is quite grim.
Kirk: What is the law in these cases?
Prefect: The law of Argelius… is love.

This episode is incredibly lame.

Kirk and McCoy don’t think that Scotty actually killed the girl, so they try to get a device from the ship that’ll read Scotty’s mind.

Wait, what? There’s a device on the ship that can read people’s minds? And we haven’t seen or heard of this yet? Because it seems like that’d be a pretty handy device to have around.

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But they can’t use that device, since the operator is killed, too. Instead, they use the Argelian Empathic powers of the Prefect’s wife. Except that she’s killed, too.

So they use the computer, aka a lie detector. And then they propose outlandish ideas about invisible monsters that could be the killer. And it turns out the outlandish ideas are right.

And it turns out the monster is the investigator. And that it can jump into the Enterprise’s computers and control the ship. But it can’t jump into people who are given a happy pill. But it can jump into a dead guy and make him walk around. But when you give that dead guy a happy pill the monster can’t jump out.

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Seriously, it’s like two eight year olds wrote this episode, and they were trying to outdo each other in how awesome they could be. And they both failed their awesome rolls. Critically.

Grade

F

Computers in Star Trek

I, Mudd is yet another episode where the bad guy is a big, scary computer.

Computers in this series are, without fail, staid machines that have a mission they don’t understand, that attempt to fulfill that mission based on a false premise, and end up undermining their premise.

We see this in The Return of the Archons and in The Apple, where a computer tasked with protecting the populace has enslaved them.

We see this in The Changeling, where a computer probe has confused its programming and is now out to annihilate the life it’s supposed to discover and report on.

We see this to a lesser extent in What Are Little Girls Made Of?, where a computer thinks that it’s a man, and doesn’t understand that its plan is hideously flawed.

And to stretch a little further, we see it in A Taste of Armegeddon, where the computer is merely the means through which the people have lost their way; it is the buffer that keeps them from realizing the magnitude of their folly.

Almost all of this is attributable to computers being new, unknown quantities. If the only thing you knew about computers was that they were machines that made logical decisions, it stands to reason that you would, much like the Romantic poets, rally against them and for emotion, for feeling, and for humanity. And we see this pattern again and again in Star Trek.

But what we also see again and again is Mr. Spock, cooly logical and yet heroic. He shows flashes of emotion, and that connects us to him, but he strives to suppress it, to hold that rational part of himself forward.

But what really distinguishes Spock is that he simply has more insight. The computers of Trek are defeated by pointing out their flaws; by making them aware of their shortcomings and leading them to admit their contradictions and, in so doing, to destroy the illusion of their perfectly logical actions.

Spock, though, is a walking contradiction and knows it. He is half human, and so cannot deny that he has emotions. And the Vulcans as a race do not deny their emotions; they merely seek to control and suppress them. But most of all, Spock understands that the world itself is not entirely logical, and the inhabitants of that world are far from it. When he encounters a failing of logic, it is “fascinating” and not earth-shattering. Spock has a healthy skepticism but is willing to admit that there are more things in heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy.

I, Mudd

I, Mudd (Memory Alpha; SD Video) features the return of Harcourt Fenton Mudd. But first, we see that whoever designed the Enterprise was an idiot.

I mean, who puts auxiliary control so far away, leaves it manned by a single guy facing away from the only entrance, and gives it complete override of the bridge? Because that guys should be fired.

Aside from the poor design of the Enterprise, though, this episode is pretty good. And that’s after another lag-filled viewing experience.

Let’s start right off with this bit of dialog, which you can click on to hear the full effect:

Kirk: In the meantime, would you mind leaving us?
Androids: Why should we leave you?
Kirk: Because. We don’t like you. Now: boo-boo-boo-boop!

But as to the actual story, this episode doesn’t stand head and shoulders above its peers, but it’s a neat idea: what if the androids from What Are Little Girls Made Of were still around by the thousands, looking for someone to serve, and they found Harry Mudd?

And then, what if they found him wanting? What if they wanted more humans to serve? And here’s the kicker: what if they were actually good at serving? So good that it’s tempting to just sit around and let them do the work while you play with their awesome technology? Would you really object to it?

Kirk does. Kirk’s on this whole necessity-of-freedom thing. And I agree with Kirk. And although they could make the just-say-yes decision a little more tempting than they do, this episode handles that basic problem well: is technology a aide to being truly human, or a distraction? Does too much technology tip the balance? And how much is too much?

Grade

B+