Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
(I originally wrote this while furloughed in January 2019, during which I decided to re-watch — or in the case of the final two in the series watch, since I hadn’t gotten around to seeing them yet — all the Star Trek TOS and TNG movies. The remastered version of TMP I am referring to is the Standard Definition DVD version which was the one available at the time.)
I decided to watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture for the first time since the early ’00s. I have to say, it stands up better than I remembered. Some of the pacing problems have been fixed in the Director’s Cut (although it still takes far, far too long for the Enterprise to physically get from the outer reaches of the cloud to V’ger itself). The script is obviously a mess in places. And as always when Gene Roddenberry is heavily involved, fun is almost a non entity. I don’t think there’s a single joke in the script. There are a few funny moments from Dr. McCoy, but they have more to do with DeForest Kelley’s performance than anything spelled out in writing. The more control Gene Roddenberry had over a Trek production (the two TOS pilots, TMP, very early TNG), the less fun everyone seems to be having (including the audience).
Visually, the movie is occasionally brilliant. The TOS-movie Enterprise is my favorite looking of the Trek ships, so I don’t mind the very long sequence where a refit Scotty flies Admiral Kirk in a shuttle around the new refit Enterprise. The refit Enterprise sweeps back the nacelles, streamlines the ship and looks more modern while retaining the classic elements from the ’60s model. The refit Scotty gets a refit mustache.
McCoy’s first scene is perfect. Pissed off and grouchy and ’70s as hell. Nice of Kirk to pull some strings to get McCoy drafted onto a suicide mission. “AND THEY PROBABLY REDESIGNED THE WHOLE SICKBAY! I KNOW ENGINEERS, THEY LOVE TO CHANGE THINGS!”
Also, I’m not sure why everyone is smugly giving Bones crap for not wanting to use the transporter. Literally thirty minutes before he beams aboard, the replacement Vulcan science officer is killed in a genuinely gruesome transporter accident which is chilling while showing no gore. McCoy is one of the best things about this movie, grounding it so it doesn’t float away under its own self-importance. Twice, Bones storms onto the bridge, has no lines, hangs out for a few minutes and them storms off (at least the second time he exchanges a meaningful look with Kirk). There is no medical reason for Bones to be brought onto this particular mission via a little known and seldom used reserve activation clause, but Kirk knows he needs someone to occasionally shout at him. (“Jim! What the hell kind of strategy is this?”)
The script is one where individual scenes and acts work, but it starts to fall apart when you start trying to look at it as a whole. What is the purpose of the scene where Ilia is revealed to be able to heal Chekov’s burn injury? Why is Spock the only person in the galaxy who has a telepathic link to V’ger despite there not being any previous connection? Or are we to believe that there are other Vulcans (or humans?) out there who suddenly felt V’ger’s longing emptiness.
Still, the pacing issues almost kill this movie. A personal anecdote. Back in the ’90s on cable, TBS (or was it TNT?) would just run the same movie back to back to back all day on weekends. One Saturday it was Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s turn. I was watching it until I needed to go somewhere, so I turned it off while the Enterprise was entering the V’ger cloud and everyone is staring at the viewscreen. Several hours later I came home and turned on the TV. The same channel comes on and by sheer coincidence it happened to have repeated back to the same scene of the crew of the Enterprise sailing through the inside of V’ger. It took my dumbfounded brain several seconds to realize that TMP hadn’t spend eight and a half hours of running time on that sequence.
For a good look at what a nightmare the production of this was, I highly recommend Lance Parkin’s biography of Gene Roddenberry, The Impossible Has Happened. Given how troubled the behind the scenes drama was, it’s a minor miracle that anything coherent ended up on screen.
[Originally written in January of 2019. According to my Letterboxd profile, I have subsequently watched it nine(!) additional times (I found it comfort viewing early in the COVID-19 pandemic) including a few viewings of the 2022 Director’s Edition which has since been released theatrically and on physical media (and varying streaming services, depending on the day of the week). My opinion on much of it has changed quite a bit since this furlough viewing (seeing it on the big screen for the first time later that year was an absolute game changer), but I figured to just repost this article and then post a revised opinion some time later.]
