Cinema Sunday: Star Trek - The Motion Picture

With the news that Star Trek: The Motion Picture is about to go through a massive restoration project, today's Cinema Sunday will take a look at the much maligned of entries in the Star Trek filmography.   

In the 23rd century, Starfleet monitoring station Epsilon Nine detects an alien thing hidden in a massive cloud of energy.

The alien thing destroys three Klingon warships.

The alien thing zaps Epsilon Nine into dust.

The alien thing is heading to Earth.

Uh oh! 

For reasons (the plot requires it), the newly refitted Enterprise under the command of Captain Will Decker is the only ship in range to get from Earth and stop the alien thing. 

Admiral James T. Kirk pulls some strings to take command of the Enterprise again which is a pretty dick move on his part. Captain Decker has been in charge during the refit and knows more about how the Enterprise works than Kirk does. 

Kirk does get a really good long look at the Enterprise.  The shuttlepod that transports Kirk to the Enterprise takes a really long time cruising down the length of the starship while Kirk gets to ogle every nook, cranny and rivet in the hull plating.

It really goes on a very, very long while. 

A malfunctioning transporter scrambles the ship's Vulcan science officer Sonak. Oh damn! Where we will find a Vulcan science officer?

Elsewhere, on Vulcan, Spock detects a disturbance in the force. 

You might think, "OK, Dave-El, wrong movie franchise."

No, Spock detects a disturbance in the force. 

Decker losing the Enterprise to Kirk isn't his only problem.  Also on board is Ilia, a bald alien babe rocking a white micro mini dress whose sex is so good, it could kill a man. 

Seems she and Decker once had a thing but she's all "that was then and this is now" which leaves Decker a wee bit frustrated. 

The Enterprise warps off to go meet the alien thing. Kirk nearly blows up the damn ship because he doesn't know how the new warp engines work. Thankfully, Will Decker is on hand to save his ass. 

Spock meets up with the Enterprise. He felt a disturbance in the force and wants to help them meet up with the alien thing.  

So they do. 

And the big alien thing zaps Ilia dead. And then brings her back as an emotionless duplicate. 

It's actually hard to tell the difference between not dead Ilia and back from the dead robo-Ilia.

Will Decker still wants to fuck her. 

We learn the big alien thing is call "Veejer" but we'll call it V'Ger which is a much cooler way of spelling it.

Tired of ripping off Star Wars, Spocks hops out of the Enterprise into a trippy sequence out of 2001: A Space Oddesey to go talk to V'Ger and discovers it's a non-biological living machine.

Oooh! 

Specifically, V'Ger is Voyager 6, a 20th century space probe that got mushed up with some other alien junk and now has become so whole other thing. 

A whole other thing with no purpose in life. 

So Will Decker and robo-Ilia merge with V'Ger to create a whole new alien being with a sense of purpose and in a nice big glowy special effect, vanishes to go explore the universe while Kirk and the Enterprise crew head out to explore space in their powder blue and beige polyester bell bottomed pajamas.

The end. 

Well, that was a thing that... almost happened but mostly did not. 

There's a reason this movie is often derisively referred to as Star Trek - The Motionless Picture. 

Paramount wanted some of that sweet Star Wars money and remembered, hey, we got this Star Trek thing, right? Let's do something with that.  

Paramount wanted a big spectacular space epic and instead got this thing.

A big problem was Gene Roddenberry's obsession with big ideas and his idealization of a conflict free life in the future. We get this big, ponderous philosophical treatise on the meaning of life and our search for purpose.

Which is inherently not a bad thing to explore and a topic more worthy of Star Trek than Star Wars. But it makes for a slow ponderous movie where not much happens, hardly a worthy competitor to the Star Wars franchise on the big screen. 

V'Ger was not a new concept for Star Trek. In the original series episode "The Changeling", Kirk and the Enterprise crew confront an old Earth space probe merged with alien tech that becomes Nomad, a deadly threat.

Another alternative title for Star Trek - The Motion Picture? "Where Nomad Has Gone Before".  

Speaking of the original series, while the movie never makes it clear, it seems Capt. Will Decker's last name is too much of coincidence to not connect him to Commodore Decker from "The Doomsday Machine".  

The movie is way too long owing to conflicting visions from director Ray Wise, creator and writer Gene Roddenberry and Paramount studio execs. 

Paramount paid good money for special effects and damn it, they wanted to see those effects on the screen even though most were just there to make the movie look pretty. So every excruciating second of Kirk fetishizing the Enterprise or V'Ger's sparking alien cloud form is there on screen. The result is way more movie than there is story.

And hell, the special effects are not always that special.  

There was a cut of the movie made to be shown on airline flights that cut out a lot of the padding. Not a lot of action and still too much talking, the airline cut of Star Trek - The Motion Picture was considered by many as the best version of the movie.  

The production of Star Trek - The Motion Picture went over budget and the box office returns were below expectations. It was enough of a debacle that Paramount more or less fired Gene Roddenberry from his own creation. 

Which was not a bad thing. The worst enemy of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek was always Gene Roddenberry. 

So Star Trek: The Motion Picture is up for a restoration.  This movie may stand a chance as long as the restorers take away more than they add. 

I'm not sure what the restoration can do about those god awful uniforms and making Kirk less of a dick. 

Coming up tomorrow, it's a Movie Monday post with a current cinematic outing with Black Widow.