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Episode
091
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Ten years after the original series and five years after the animated series, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the crew of the Enterprise head to the cinema – and just in time, too! Something is headed to Earth, killing everything in its path. Big screen! Big adventure! Get your ticket to Star Trek: The Motion Picture!
2001: –
As you guys said – This is an excellent article celebrating the film’s recent 35th anniversary. http://futuredude.com/why-the-motion-picture-is-my-favorite-star-trek-film/
From TV guide…..
What we never saw…..
Letter to the Theaters before the film was even released
ELO offered a little more color
I was thinking Blue Man Group, but what the hell
Original analog VHS and Laserdisc video releases …
Alternative poster
Another
From Den of Geek: The Troubled Production
http://www.denofgeek.us/movies/star-trek/253838/the-troubled-production-of-star-trek-the-motion-picture
Really good article – people should check it out!
My personal favorite was this comic book cover art for TMP
Even though this was a recycled story line, I really enjoyed watching this movie again after all these years. Even though I just recently finished watching TOS and TAS, so it hadn’t been that long since I had been with the original crew, but I still got quite emotional during the opening scenes like I could almost feel like audiences felt at the time. At some point when you love the characters so much, you’re just so darn happy and nostalgic to see their story go on.
Kirk is a killer. Oh yes – hear me out. He boarded the Enterprise and interrupted Decker and Scotty while they were working on the transporter systems. Then while his new Vulcan science officer (Sonak?) and another are having trouble while beaming onboard, Kirk rushes up and pushes aside Transporter Chief Rand to work on the panel, despite not being familiar with the new designs, despite not having logged a single space hour in 2 1/2 years. And then afterwards, he has the gall to tell Rand, “There was nothing you could have done.”
Yeah, no kidding, Admiral. Your need to take charge fixed that.
I give due deference to the critics and to some of the problems with the film, but I LOVE TMP. I resonate with much of your commentary and the futuredude article. In the context of its release in 1979, it delivered. I was 10 years old. I had spent those years watching ST reruns in syndication with my dad. It was a special part of my life and imagination from my earliest days.
Young though I was, I remember being hyper with anticipation. As much as I looked forward to being with those people again, I looked forward to being in the environment, and to see THE SHIP. When the shuttle pod makes the wide turn to finally see the ship in all her glory, the look on Kirk’s face is mine, sheer adoration and wonder. It was an emotional reaction to the ship as a character in Star Trek. I’m reminded of Kirk in The Naked Time; “Never lose you. Never.” Probert’s take on updating Matt Jeffrey’s design was a masterpiece…. my favorite ship ever, the Constitution Class Refit. Yeah, so they over-delivered. Good! The movie’s audio-visual treatment of the ship is almost masturbatory. It’s true, TMP really is “starship porn” and I unapologetically approve! As you pointed out; never before, never since, and never again, will we be treated with such long scenes of unabashed worship of the Enterprise herself. I’m so glad those scenes are there for all posterity, even though it wouldn’t make sense to ever do it that way again. Plus, TMP is a great ‘episode’ of Star Trek. Yeah it’s got inescapable parallels to The Changeling, but Spock’s own duality and Decker’s merging make it so much more than that. It’s thoughtful science fiction. While I absolutely love subsequent films, many have been locked into a single basic paradigm. Before many Star Trek movies start shooting, we can already start asking, “who will be….. -the villain-?” There is no “villain” in TMP. V’ger is a massive threat, a grave danger, but V’ger alone is not even capable of manifesting the conscious experience of malevolence, which by the way adds quite a new element of risk to merging V’ger with a human being!
All that, AND a truly horrific transporter accident….. “Oh no…… they’re forming.”
@@MLhostJohn:disqus “Remember” https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c1dfb8b6322df8c5102a94d1d5e66186b17f96e6beedb391b07a258720cb8e8c.jpg
You had to be there.
I’ve actually never seen any of the movies, and I don’t know much about them (besides the parts that loom larger than the series itself) so I’m coming in fresh with zero expectations or preconceived notions. I found this movie to be extremely boring! I HATED it. I almost went straight into TNG and pledged to force myself to watch the rest of the movies eventually. Luckily, I decided I had to at least watch Wrath of Khan, which I loved! I then proceeded to marathon the rest of the movies, I was enjoying them so much.
I get the explanation of the “look at our CGI budget” and I get that an audience then would have been wowing while I was impatient. But it was just way too much. And Kirk (the character) was insufferable for much of this movie. And the costumes were atrocious. And the dialogue wasn’t engaging- the characters felt like strangers to me.
All of this being said, I acknowledge how this is tinted from my modern perspective. I’m 24. I started watching TOS my freshman year of college. My introduction to this movie won’t carry the same attachments as someone who is rewatching a movie they saw as a kid.