I first started watching Star Trek with my father. He worked second shift at General Motors, and when he arrived home on the weekends, I’d get out of bed, and we’d watch the 11:30 pm reruns of the Original Series on Detroit’s Channel 20.
It wasn’t long before Friday and Saturday nights were a ritual in the Hilden house. The realization that the show was also broadcast at noon on Sundays increased my joy exponentially.
What does this have to do with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (TMP)?… Be patient. I’m getting to it.
I first saw Star Trek TMP at my grandmother’s house on television. This was right after it was released on VHS. Grandma has always been a tech junkie, and she bought one of the first affordable (that’s debatable) VCRs, and one night nearing Christmas, she presented me with a Spock Mego Doll and a rented copy of Star Trek TMP.
I ended up watching the VHS copy of The Motion Picture four times before My grandmother returned it to the little combination video and grocery store down the road.
I found out later how much she had to pay to rent the movie, five whole dollars! That might not sound like much, but back then, that was close to seventeen dollars. Can you imagine spending seventeen bucks to rent a movie at Blockbus… oh lord, I’m old.
I am ashamed to admit that at five years old, Josh didn’t like the first Star Trek movie as much as he would a few years later. He found it to be too long, too boring, and he missed the character relationship between Kirk and Spock, which seemed to have been completely deleted from existence.
What I’m saying in this piece is dedicated to how much of a gem Star Trek: The Motion Picture is. That said, I can get why some people don’t care for the movies. I can get it, but I don’t agree with it.
But even a boy of five who wanted more Khan and less V’ger could see the hidden beauty under the surface. Or, in the case of the amazing special effects, right in the viewer’s faces.
Seriously, wow!…
So, let’s talk about the excellent parts of the movie, starting with the obvious. The visual effects.
The first point in the movie’s favour is it was, and still is, a gorgeous movie to look at. When it was released, the effects did something I believe most people didn’t think possible.
It took the visuals from 2001 A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, merged them, and turned it all up to eleven. I know the original effects may not hold up to today’s tricks and miracles but back then, it was a damn good-looking flick.
The most surprising thing about the visual effects is that over the years, Paramount didn’t let them stay stagnant. In 2002 the movie was remastered across the board and what we were gifted with was a breathtaking updating of the (at the time) state-of-the-art visual.
The announcement of a 4K HD remastering of the director’s cut set original series fans tongues once more wagging. Those of us who fell in love with the original effects, and lauded the 2003 remastering, are all eagerly awaiting what is sure to be a definitive edition of the film.
For as much time as I just spent extolling the visual effects, I will be spending a corresponding little amount of time on the soundtrack.
Why is that?… Because the soundtrack to the Motion Picture is pure gold.
Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Star Trek: The Motion Picture is as close to perfect as music has ever been presented in Star Trek. The sweeping epic of the movie is told in the musical prowess of the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.
The remastering in 2002 only served to polish the already brilliant score. There aren’t many orchestral soundtracks I will listen to from start to finish in a sitting. This is one of the few.
Moving on from the visual effects and the musical score, we arrive at the practical’s. By practicals, I, of course, mean the sets, costumes, and props.
I know a lot of people have issues with the uniforms in The Motion Picture, and I get why. The uniforms of the original series were vibrant and drew the eye, whereas the uniforms in TMP were, well, uniform. I’ve always respected Star Trek for trying to do something different.
We must remember at the time of the making of the motion picture, there was nothing but the original series to draw from. We didn’t have all the uniforms we have now. I, for one, liked the uniforms in the movie, although as time went on, I came to see them as a little too washed out for my overall taste. Still, there’s no denying the time and skill it took to make uniforms that, even if one doesn’t like them, you must admit fitting brilliantly into the movie.
The redo of the Starship Enterprise, on the other hand, is amazing. To this day, I’ve never been as blown away by a ship in the Star Trek franchise as I was the first time I saw the Enterprise From the motion picture.
The details on the bridge, the shuttle bay, the exterior visuals, everything just popped with life and excitement. While there are more complex ships and Amazing digital renderings Of all the ships these days, I’ll never be as impressed as I was with the Enterprise in the movie.
Now that we’ve covered the pluses and the minuses of the visual effects, the musical score, and the practical elements of the movie. It’s now time to talk about the story.
When I was five, I couldn’t quite grasp what the storyline of the movie was. I got that there was an enemy in space coming towards Earth. I understood that it destroyed a sweet-looking Klingon vessel which I really wanted to know more about, and unfortunately, we had to wait many years to really get into the nuts and bolts of that one. And I also knew it had something to do with the Voyager project.
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with space. I think you can tell that by the earlier paragraphs in this essay. At the time of my childhood, Voyager was all over the news. These probes were going out to the outer edges of the solar system to see what had never been seen with the naked eye before.
It was because of that that the ending scenes of Star Trek: The Motion Picture stuck with me even when I was five. To know that something from my era had made it into the Star Trek universe so many centuries in the future blew my mind.
As years went on, the subtext of the story Dug deeper into my psyche. And I started making the connections other people made Between the Borg and V’ger. Even to this day, I yearned to write a story explaining the origin of the Borg, which then led to the creation of V’ger.
Add the stories of Kirk taking the ship back from Decker, Sparks attempts to find perfect logic, The love story of Decker and Ilia, A story that, in my opinion, has never gotten enough attention when it comes to Starfleet romances. And the tale of McCoy coming back to do a job he’d long walked away from. And you have a story that really is Star Trek from top to bottom.
Even though many at the time didn’t believe so. Forty-five-year-old me loves the story that five-year-old me could not fully comprehend. It’s a story of renewal. It’s a story of loss. It’s a story of mystery, and it’s a story of men and women doing what they always do, trying their hardest to overcome the odds when everything seems to be against them.
Before we close this accounting of one middle-aged man’s views on a formative element in his life, I want to address the single greatest moment in Star Trek The Motion Picture.
Disco Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy… I know thousands have discussed this over the years but bear with me. I’ll be brief.
When we first see Doctor McCoy in the movie, he has a full beard and looks like he was dressed by the same person who outfitted Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. It’s one of the greatest scenes ever committed to film.
I am laughing as I write this because there is a GIF of the scene running right next to Word on my screen.
May the gods bless you, Deforest Kelly!
The remastered Director’s Edition will debut on Paramount+ in 2022, but we have no doubt it will eventually come to 4K UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray disc formats after the P+ exclusivity window closes.
Currently, only the theatrical edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is available on 4K Blu-ray in the new four-film set as well as in a standalone release, which features the remastered presentation on standard 1080p HD Blu-ray.
