# Star Trek The Motion Picture **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies, star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [September 30, 2021, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691 "2021-09-30T21:09:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/41 "2021-10-01T04:09:36Z")
A while ago one of the cable channels ran all of the “classic” movies back-to-back, so I recorded them and watched them over a few days. The first movie really was the worst. No - I take that back, Star Trek V is! - “row row row your boat” anyone? I was in college when the first movie came out, so a whole bunch of us went as a group. We were pretty excited; one of the group’s big rituals was to watch the original series in the dorm’s TV break room; it was actually in color, which was new to me! We were so very excited going in, but pretty quiet on the way out. It was colorful, the warp jump was pretty cool, and the slow pan past the Enterprise in the space dock was inspiring. On re-watching, the warp jump is just another special effect, and the space dock scene is interminable. The one thing I noticed was the theme was the same theme in The Next Generation (of course I wouldn’t have known that in 1979!) After watching it, I went to the [Wikipedia-STTMP] ([Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture)) article; it was a rough project to get developed and financed. Lots of good info there. ---
**Author:** ![Jihi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jihi/32/17768_2.png) [@Jihi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jihi)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/42 "2021-10-01T04:44:17Z")
I love reading threads like this. The breadth of opinions and experiences is amazing. There are people here who regard it as the purest representation of Star Treks ethos and others who think it the most boring thing on the planet. First time recent watchers and people who saw it first run back in the 70s. And multiple people who felt the need to point out the TOS episode it was based on long after it had been been pointed out already. There was even one who poster who sandbagged WOTK as as “unscientific” and another who watched Blade Runner in a matinee in the early 80s and doesn’t know or care that it was one of the most highly regarded sci-fi films of all time. You all are great. Never change. This is what the SDMB is supposed to be. 😄 (Back to your regularly scheduled thread…) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/43 "2021-10-01T07:07:45Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > > [@eschereal](#): > > > > Yet, it is still the most engaging of the movies (though First Contact has a lot going for it. > > I’m forever intrigued by the love for First Contact, a movie that makes about as much sense as garlic scented mouthwash. Is it all the action and violence? It’s a character study of Picard and Data that has them defeat an old villain. It has good external and internal conflict. It’s like TWOK, except it’s the good guy with the Ahab complex. And, yes, the action is good, too. As is the ability for newcomers to enjoy it, without it devolving into the anti-intellectual mess of Star Trek (2009). ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/44 "2021-10-01T10:11:39Z")
I watched it a few years ago. I recall the pace of the movie being very, very slow. Like everyone was moving through molasses. Weird. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/45 "2021-10-01T10:38:53Z")
I still enjoy it. I enjoy anything Star Trek, uncritically, except the reboot movies & the excessive lens flares on Discovery. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/46 "2021-10-01T12:12:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s amazing they got a green light for Star Trek II, which is the movie that actually saved the franchise. Also note that with II they took the easy/safe route to make a good movie, a battle. Sort of reminds me of a game series, Outpost which was a builder sim which flopped, but Outpost 2 they changed it to a RTS war type game. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/47 "2021-10-01T12:37:30Z")
It’s not like TOS lacked for battles. I happened to rewatch TOS recently, for the first time in decades, and I think people here are overstating how cerebral the show was. It had its intellectual moments, sure, but it was also stock full of fistfights, gunfights, swordfights, bickering and sex - there was probably more sex in the first three seasons of Trek than in the following thirty-odd. Honestly, if TMP were really trek, Kirk and the bald robot chick would have at least made out a bit. TOS wasn’t a work of genius. It was pulp sci-fi that just happened to be slightly smarter than anything else on TV, and TMP completely failed in capturing that. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/48 "2021-10-01T13:13:00Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > It was just as I remembered. The acting was horrible. The special effects were horrible, even for the time (I think). The concept was something they repeated from an actual TOS episode (maybe they thought a 12-year gap would erase everyone’s memory of all the TOS episodes) and was unoriginal the first time. The special effects were actually pretty good. Given the inordinate amount of time the director spent with loving attention showing us the exterior of the Enterprise it’s clear they were pretty proud of their creation. Everything from the Klingons to V’ger looked pretty good with the worst offender being the horrible uniforms they were wearing. As far as the movie goes, yeah, it’s boring. They had a good seed for a story, back when the probe’s name was Nomad on that one episode, but the story just plodded along at an uncomfortably slow pace. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/49 "2021-10-01T13:23:37Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > > [@RickJay](#): > > > > > [@eschereal](#): > > > > > > Yet, it is still the most engaging of the movies (though First Contact has a lot going for it. > > > > I’m forever intrigued by the love for First Contact, a movie that makes about as much sense as garlic scented mouthwash. Is it all the action and violence? > > It’s a character study of Picard and Data that has them defeat an old villain. It has good external and internal conflict. It’s like TWOK, except it’s the good guy with the Ahab complex. > > And, yes, the action is good, too. As is the ability for newcomers to enjoy it, without it devolving into the anti-intellectual mess of Star Trek (2009). The Ahab complex thing is good (apart from the fact that they fail to kill Picard – the Star Trek franchise even now remains wedded to the TV ethos, afraid to be truly edgy or shocking), but the part I liked was Zephraim Cochrane, which was a well-written character given an excellent portrayal by Cromwell. Nothing at all like milquetoasty Glenn Corbett critter from Metamorphosis. The Montana scenes have a gritty realness to them (which is the aspect of ST:Enterprise that I found appealing). ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/50 "2021-10-01T13:31:10Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The Montana scenes has a gritty realness to them I saw some pretty silly looking sound stages and absurdly transparent California-countryside “Let’s throw up some shacks and say it’s a rough society” sets. It looked cheap as hell and it makes no sense at all for people living in a Fallout-style shantytown to up and decide to build a spaceship. The movie’s awful. Actually, MOST Star Trek movies are bad; it is a testament to the power of the franchise that it’s managed to produce thirteen movies (if my addition is correct.) They seem to have given up on movies for now, though, and are concentrating on making (mostly) bad TV shows. Lower Decks is a lot of fun though. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/51 "2021-10-01T13:34:26Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It’s not like TOS lacked for battles. In fact, “Balance of Terror,” episode 14 of the 1st season, is one of the best of the series and the plot revolves around the Enterprise trying to destroy a Romulan ship. (A science fiction ripoff of _The Enemy Below._) ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/52 "2021-10-01T13:38:54Z")
It should be noted that while the first movie was largely a rehash of “The Changeling,” it had elements of other episodes too. Specifically “The Immunity Syndrome,” in which the _Enterprise_ has to penetrate an energy barrier to deal with a killer amoeba (it was pretty damned big!), and “Metamorphosis,” which ended with The Companion and Commissioner Hedford merging to become one being, all for the love of a man. I hadn’t picked up on that last connection (however tenuous it might be) until an old friend pointed it out to me. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/53 "2021-10-01T13:44:24Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > The special effects were actually pretty good. Given the inordinate amount of time the director spent with loving attention showing us the exterior of the Enterprise it’s clear they were pretty proud of their creation. Everything from the Klingons to V’ger looked pretty good with the worst offender being the horrible uniforms they were wearing. As far as the movie goes, yeah, it’s boring. They had a good seed for a story, back when the probe’s name was Nomad on that one episode, but the story just plodded along at an uncomfortably slow pace. Yeah, just skimming through some of the contemporaneous reviews, I don’t see anyone slamming the effects, and I do see a couple of reviews saying that the movie seems to be a set up for showing them off. [https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star\_trek\_the\_motion\_picture/reviews](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star_trek_the_motion_picture/reviews) I love the original trailer for this, by the way, including the very familiar voiceover artist. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Et7Cji7y1uY/hqdefault.jpg "Star Trek: The Motion Picture Teaser Trailer") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et7Cji7y1uY) ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/54 "2021-10-01T15:53:03Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > > [@RickJay](#): > > > > > [@eschereal](#): > > > > > > Yet, it is still the most engaging of the movies (though First Contact has a lot going for it. > > > > I’m forever intrigued by the love for First Contact, a movie that makes about as much sense as garlic scented mouthwash. Is it all the action and violence? > > It’s a character study of Picard and Data that has them defeat an old villain. It has good external and internal conflict. It’s like TWOK, except it’s the good guy with the Ahab complex. > > And, yes, the action is good, too. As is the ability for newcomers to enjoy it, without it devolving into the anti-intellectual mess of Star Trek (2009). Great line from Worf after Picard accuses him of cowardice: “If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand!” ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/55 "2021-10-01T15:57:52Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > I love the original trailer for this, by the way, including the very familiar voiceover artist. Wow, that trailer moves as slow as the film ! What a perfectly accurate “teaser”! 🙂 You know, the flyby scene in the film is longer than that entire trailer. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/56 "2021-10-01T16:12:56Z")
I saw it during its first run. I was an enormous Trekkie back then (discovered TOS in 1977 at the age of 13 and by the time TMP came out I had bought pretty much every Star Trek paperback I could get my hands on.) I ate, breathed, and slept Star Trek back then. I remember being very disappointed by TMP. I _wanted_ to love it. I was primed to love every minute of it. I don’t think newer fans can comprehend what a big deal it was to finally, after _ten years_ of waiting, hoping, fan fiction, and art, to have _new_ Star Trek. I was a johnny-come-lately, and even _I_ understood the anticipation. It was _huge_. But yeah, the movie didn’t do much for me at all. It was _soooooo_ slow. The plot was weird. There were big chunks where nothing happened. I didn’t like the pajamas. The thing I remembered liking the most wasn’t even in the movie, but the novelization (because of course I bought the novelization): the scene with the transporter malfunction, where the person rematerialized with their internal organs on the outside. I can’t remember if that was in the movie, but the book’s description was so gory and fascinating, it stuck with me to this day. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/57 "2021-10-01T16:14:51Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > The Ahab complex thing is good (apart from the fact that they fail to kill Picard – the Star Trek franchise even now remains wedded to the TV ethos, afraid to be truly edgy or shocking), I don’t agree with that. Part of what makes the Ahab complex work is that Ahab could have seen the error of his ways, but didn’t. So it’s perfectly fine for someone to make the opposite decision, as long as it makes sense for them to do so. I would view killing off Picard as being edgy for the sake of being edgy, rather than seeming natural. Picard was acting out of character due to trauma. He’s normally quite rational and logical, so it was more narratively satisfying to have him realize that he’d lost control and correct himself. I find that part where Lily forces him to confront it really works, because we know that Picard isn’t the type of person who would keep on letting his emotions rule him once he becomes aware of them. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/58 "2021-10-01T17:45:44Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > TOS wasn’t a work of genius. It was pulp sci-fi that just happened to be slightly smarter than anything else on TV, and TMP completely failed in capturing that. Given that it was competing with the likes of _Lost In Space_, that wasn’t a very high bar. People often claim that they want more cerebral stories in science fiction TV and films, but you’ll find the critics of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ or _Solaris_ as entertainment far outweigh professed fans, and even film critics who appreciate the merits of these films often label them as “plodding” or “lugubrious”, seemingly missing the point that this is a more realistic portrayal of actual space exploration and contact with alien intelligences. There is a reason that _Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country_ is about a murderous conspiracy to prevent a peace treaty rather than the _Excelsior_ conducting a survey of gaseous anomalies. _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_, however, manages to be both slow and trite. The story concept is not a very original idea, the character development is facile and unengaging, and the biggest problem is that the resolution is a _deus ex machina_; there was no cleverness on the part of Kirk or the crew, and even Spock was essentially just an expositional mouthpiece. It is not a well-constructed story and is awkwardly padded out to feature length without even adding much in the way of cerebral content. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/59 "2021-10-01T18:49:10Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > I saw it during its first run. I was an enormous Trekkie back then (discovered TOS in 1977 at the age of 13 and by the time TMP came out I had bought pretty much every Star Trek paperback I could get my hands on.) I ate, breathed, and slept Star Trek back then. > > I remember being very disappointed by TMP. I _wanted_ to love it. I was primed to love every minute of it. I don’t think newer fans can comprehend what a big deal it was to finally, after _ten years_ of waiting, hoping, fan fiction, and art, to have _new_ Star Trek. I was a johnny-come-lately, and even _I_ understood the anticipation. It was _huge_. > > But yeah, the movie didn’t do much for me at all. It was _soooooo_ slow. The plot was weird. There were big chunks where nothing happened. I didn’t like the pajamas. The thing I remembered liking the most wasn’t even in the movie, but the novelization (because of course I bought the novelization): the scene with the transporter malfunction, where the person rematerialized with their internal organs on the outside. I can’t remember if that was in the movie, but the book’s description was so gory and fascinating, it stuck with me to this day. Thanks, **Infovore**. I could almost have written this, word for word. The movie _was_ slow-moving, especially once the _Enterprise_ was making its way deeper into V’ger, but I was mostly OK with that at the time, I was so glad to see Kirk, Spock & Co. back in action. I immediately noticed that the storyline was pretty much a retelling of “The Changeling,” but was also simply delighted to see the new starship in spacedock and then in action, and to pay my first visits to a Klingon warship and to a much more fully-realized Vulcan. The sfx were very good for their day, as I recall. The movie’s tone and message were consistent with Roddenberry’s hopeful, progressive, humanist vision of our future, which I’ve always appreciated. Terrific Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack, too, which I still listen to now and then. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2021, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691/60 "2021-10-01T19:04:58Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > The thing I remembered liking the most wasn’t even in the movie, but the novelization (because of course I bought the novelization): the scene with the transporter malfunction, where the person rematerialized with their internal organs on the outside. I can’t remember if that was in the movie, but the book’s description was so gory and fascinating, it stuck with me to this day. The movie scene wasn’t quite _that_ horrific, but it was pretty intense (especially compared to the rest of the movie). And then a few scenes later, they’re back to chuckling over Dr. McCoy’s aversion to having his molecules scattered around the galaxy… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-the-motion-picture/951691.md?page=4)