Full Review: Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Bob’s guide to Star Trek films, part 1

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Cast: First generation + Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta

Introduction: I have been a fan of Star Trek for pretty much my whole life, which includes a time when Star Trek was a single TV show and a couple of movies.  Not the ginormous science fiction franchise it is today.  So what I would like to do is give a rundown of all the Star Trek movies that have been made to date, starting with the very first one.  Along the way I will try to provide some insight and trivia from the Star Trek universe that will help to explain some of the nuances of the films.

Basic Plot

The film opens with three Klingon battle cruisers converging on a huge blue cloud floating through space.  They fire some torpedoes into the cloud, and something unseen fires back at them, disintegrating all three ships.  This incident is witnessed by a Federation way station and the newly redesigned Enterprise, under the command of Capt. Willard Decker (Collins) is assigned to investigate the cloud.  Before takeoff, Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) convinces Starfleet command to reassign him as captain of the enterprise, demoting Decker to first officer- which he obviously does not like.  On the way to the cloud, they are met by former Commander Spock (Leonard Nimoy), whose commission has been reactivated after a leave of absence in his pursuit of the Kolinar, a Vulcan discipline of pure logic.  The Enterprise enters the cloud after a brief tussle and comes face to face with a ship roughly 1000 times the size of the largest Starfleet vessel.  They come to learn the ship has only one occupant, called V-ger, who hails from a machine planet from across the galaxy, and claims its creator is found on planet Earth.  This machine being wishes to “join” with its creator and will destroy the Earth if it cannot.  The crew of the Enterprise are then tasked with finding V-ger’s creator and helping it contact said creator.

My take.

What’s interesting about this movie was that it was not intended to be a movie. It was written as a two-part pilot to a new series starring the original cast (probably due to the fact that the cartoon was a washout).  But, instead of the TV pilot, we got a movie that brought a new Star Trek franchise on the big screen.

*Spoiler alert* As a first try at a Trek film, it’s not that bad.  Not great, but not that bad.  The story was an interesting one, bringing a man vs. machine conflict into the Trek world, which was a popular concept in the eighties in such films as Blade Runner and The Terminator.

V-ger’s probe, which is a facsimile of a crew member it “took” to study, informs the Enterprise crew that as biological organisms, they are an infestation on the Enterprise (since it is a machine, like V-ger), and V-ger intends to kill them.  It is later revealed that V-Ger is, in fact, one of Earth’s lost Voyager space probes and it had amassed so much data in its trek through the galaxy that it became sentient, and it has no concept that it was created by a human, and thus believes the humans are blocking its creator from contacting V-ger.  The final resolution is the melding of man and machine into a being which transverses our universe completely into a state of pure understanding.

You know what you’re going to get from the actors in this film if you have seen the original series.  Whether that is good or bad is in the eye of the beholder.  In my opinion, the first generation cast performances have become iconic in pop culture and science fiction, especially the mannerisms and well known dialogue delivery of William Shatner as Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Spock.

It must be noted, though, that several elements introduced in this movie helped to solidify the Star Trek franchise.  For example, Mark Leonard, who plays the Klingon captain in the beginning, delivers his line in the Klingon language (lines written by actor James Doohan, by the way).  MIT linguist Marc Okrand used these lines to create the syntax of the Klingon language and wrote the Klingon to English dictionary that is still used in the franchise today.  This is the first time we see the Klingons with the ridged craniums.  The audience is also introduced the sleeker, cooler looking Enterprise that would be used for five more movies.  Finally, the main theme would live on to be the opening theme to the series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

This movie had an interesting story that was held back by a slow pace and unsure writing (the ending wasn’t written until near the time it was shot,) but like I said, not bad for a first try, and worth a viewing.

*Interesting fact*  Stephen Collins, who plays Capt. Decker, would go on to star as Eric Camden in the tv show “7th Heaven.” Eric’s wife Annie was played by Catherine Hicks, who appeared in Star Trek 4.  So, both Camdens have shared a good amount of screen time with Shatner.