{"id":2894,"date":"2022-04-15T11:00:13","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2894"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:09:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:09:21","slug":"trekaday-019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/04\/15\/trekaday-019\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday 019: The Motion Picture, The Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock, The Voyage Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star Trek The Motion Picture<\/strong> (\"3). It wasn\u2019t just\u00a0Star Trek<\/strong>\u00a0which went off the air in the early 1970s. Fantasy-based sitcoms like\u00a0Bewitched<\/em>,\u00a0I Dream of Jeannie<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Munsters<\/em>\u00a0had run their course. Irwin Allen\u2019s science-fiction adventure serials like\u00a0The Land of Giants\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Time Tunnel<\/em>\u00a0had finished. American television was dominated by domestic sitcoms, glossy crime capers and nostalgia. Movies were enjoying a new resurgence of gritty violence as censorship collapsed. Spaceships and aliens were at the top of nobody\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

Desilu was bought by Gulf + Western before\u00a0Star Trek<\/strong>\u00a0finished its original run. Thus, the rights to Roddenberry\u2019s creation now lay with Paramount, who considered trying to bring it back as a movie in the 1970s and then as a TV show, tentatively titled \u201cStar Trek Phase II\u201d. One key question was whether or not William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForrest Kelley would return. The assumption during the planning of Phase II seems to have been that Shatner would do the first few episodes, Nimoy probably wouldn\u2019t appear at all, and Kelley could be used if he was available. The others were making most of their livings at\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0<\/strong>conventions and could probably be relied upon to show up for almost anything. And then,\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>\u00a0hit and everything changed.<\/p>\n

A lot of the legacy of this confusing time shows up in the film which eventually emerged \u2013\u00a0Star Trek The Motion Picture<\/em>\u00a0directed by Robert Wise, which shunts Kirk off into the role of admiral, making him a stranger on the bridge of his own ship, and giving far more screen time to new cast members Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta than to our familiar crew \u2013 which makes some sort of sense when you look at the film as a pilot for a new TV series, except that Decker and Ilia\u2019s chief plot responsibility is to be killed off at the end. Kirk\u2019s journey away from and back to the captain\u2019s chair never pays off in any meaningful way, and McCoy gets almost nothing to do except grouse about Spock. Nimoy, who almost wasn\u2019t in the film at all, gets something close to an arc, largely thanks to a scene at the very beginning which asks him to choose between Vulcan and Star Fleet, but really this is the story of Decker and V\u2019Ger which is very odd for the film which brought Captain Kirk to the big screen. Worse, the conflict between Decker and Kirk isn\u2019t resolved. It\u2019s just busy-work to keep our attention during the first half of the film, using up the first hour which is how long it takes to get the\u00a0Enterprise<\/em>\u00a0to the cloud. Pretty much as soon as Ilia is converted into a probe, Decker gets off Kirk\u2019s back and becomes just another officer. He at least does better than Sulu, Chekov and Uhura, all of whom are never given any lines beyond the purely functional.<\/p>\n

Contributing to the disjointed feeling is the enormous amount of time in the second act devoted to uncovering Ilia\u2019s memories from within the probe. While this makes perfect sense as a thing for the\u00a0Enterprise\u00a0<\/em>crew to attempt, and it threatens to develop some of the characters (but not the ones we care about from the TV show) nothing ever comes of it, as once Kirk and co. make it on board V\u2019Ger they solve the mystery entirely without recourse to anything the probe told them or they told it. The same could almost be said of Spock\u2019s journey into V\u2019Ger, although that at least is developing his arc, as begun in the opening minutes of the film, and it does provide some of the clues which Kirk needs, but really everything hinges on the discovery that V\u2019Ger = Voyager \u2013 a nifty reveal, to be sure, but one which renders an awful lot of the preceding material moot.<\/p>\n

All of this sounds like I\u2019m giving it a bit of a kicking, but watching it again, after seeing 102 episodes of the television show, much of it does work. That score is completely iconic (the second of three genuinely great pieces of\u00a0Star Trek <\/strong>music and we don\u2019t have to wait long for number three), it does have a scope and a breadth which some other big-screen entries in the series sorely lack, and Shatner and Nimoy are as good as ever. It also isn\u2019t half as long as you remember at 133 minutes including titles. That\u2019s positively svelte compared to lumbering Nolan, Villeneuve or even Russo Bros epics. And the story is big enough to earn its place on the silver screen, even if (as I noted along the way) a lot of it is culled from bits-and-pieces of television episodes.<\/p>\n

What doesn\u2019t work? The pacing is off, the uniforms are drab, the supporting cast barely register and it feels stiff and cerebral in the way that\u00a0The Cage\u00a0<\/em>did (and\u00a0Where No Man Has Gone Before<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t). Roddenberry, Wise, Livingston and co. were so at pains to avoid it being goofy, they forgot to make it fun. But in the context of\u00a0Silent Runnings<\/em>,\u00a0Close Encounters of the Third Kind,<\/em>\u00a0or even\u00a0ET<\/em>, and as an alternative to the brash and cheerful slaughter of\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>, this successfully carves out a place in the starry heavens for a more thoughtful kind of storytelling, even if a large part of its legacy turns out to be making it clear to the next creative team what not to do.<\/p>\n

NB: I watched the theatrical version on Blu-ray. Maddeningly, when Robert Wise re-edited it in 2001 to improve the pacing and fix up some of the visual effects, the work was only ever done at DVD resolution. Even more maddeningly, the recently-announced 4K directors cut won\u2019t be available on home media until September.<\/p>\n

For another take on this movie, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan <\/strong>(\"5). How do you solve a problem like The Motion Picture<\/em>? Pretend it never happened. Gone are the sub-2001<\/em> beige corridors and philosophical conundrums. Gone are the shapeless uniforms and interminable spaceship porn effects sequences. In comes adventure, fun, and a swaggering joie-de-vivre<\/em> that somehow meshes perfectly with a story which is about age, sacrifice, obsolescence and failure. The sheer number of classic concepts and images packed into this one movie is nothing short of astonishing \u2013 the Genesis device, the Kobyashi Maru, Kirk\u2019s son, mind-controlling eels, that wonderful score \u2013 the list goes on and on.<\/p>\n

Once again, most of the regular cast get very little to do. Even Bones is side-lined in favour of Kirk and Spock. Chekov comes off best, although grumpy fans noted that that Walter Koenig was not in the first season which included the episode Space Seed<\/em> to which this story is a sequel. But who can be grumpy when we\u2019re having this much fun \u2013 until that heartbreakingly perfect ending. \u201cFranchise\u2026 out of danger?\u201d It is now, lads. How amazing that producer Harve Bennett and writer\/director Nicholas Meyer, neither of whom had seen a frame of Star Trek<\/strong> before starting work on this film, turned out to understand it far better than the man who created it, whose only role this time around was firing off absurd memos, all of which Bennett ignored.<\/p>\n

For another take on this movie, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock <\/strong>(\"3.5). How do you follow Wrath of Khan<\/em>? Well, you kinda undo its most celebrated and emotional story beat. But given that, and given this film\u2019s ruthless efficiency (Kirk takes Enterprise to Genesis, battles Klingons, takes Spock to Vulcan, roll credits), heavy death toll (Kirk’s career, Kirk’s son and the Enterprise<\/em> as well as a bunch of badguys), this does what it sets out to do, and does it with a certain amount of charm and grace. The theft of the Enterprise<\/em> from space-dock, as well as being the most crowd-pleasing moment of the film, is also the first time we see the Star Trek<\/strong> regulars working together as a team. In the TV series, they come-and-go at random. In the first two movies, they rarely get anything to do or say which isn\u2019t strictly related to the ordinary operation of the ship. Here, they\u2019re a gang, coming together to help a friend in need.<\/p>\n

In place of the extraordinary Ricardo Montalban as Khan, here we have Christopher Lloyd as Kruge. It\u2019s a testament to the amazing quality of the second film, that this one manages to get Christopher Lloyd<\/em> as the chief villain and it looks like a downgrade. Also a new face is Robin Curtis, providing a more straightforwardly grown up and less bratty (but also less appealingly vulnerable) Lt Saavik. The change in actor has prompted some fans to speculate that \u201cLt Saavik\u201d is a code name passed on from Vulcan-to-Vulcan but this is not considered canon.<\/p>\n

Standing between two classics, this won\u2019t be many people\u2019s favourite, but even if you do subscribe to the notion that the evens are gold and the odds are trash, this is handily the best of the odds and works especially well as a bridge between the swashbuckling Khan<\/em> and the lightweight Voyage Home<\/em>, speaking of which\u2026<\/p>\n

For another take on this movie, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home<\/strong> (\"4). I dunno, maybe I was in the mood for some Star Trek<\/strong> and this really doesn\u2019t feel like it. The beginning and the end (written by Harve Bennett, who got sole writing credit on III<\/em>) are largely functional, just tying up loose ends from either the previous film or the middle of this one. The contemporary section, written by Meyer, feels like any other eighties fish-out-of-water American comedy and the relentlessly generic Leonard Rosenman score and flat direction from Nimoy only add to this feeling. Again, after a film which focuses on the regulars, we get a new face eating up more than her fair share of screentime \u2013 Catherine Hicks as Gillian Taylor \u2013 but her relationship with Kirk does work, and this film is the only one to actually use the regulars as an ensemble, even if that does mean that McCoy ends up playing straight man to Scotty and Chekov becomes little more than a McGuffin in need of rescuing.<\/p>\n

Some of the humour works \u2013 Kirk and Spock talking over each other about Italian food, the famous punk on the bus \u2013 but some of it left me cold this time around \u2013 Spock\u2019s inability to master swearing, Scotty talking to the computer mouse, Chekov bleating about \u201cnoocular wessels\u201d. And yet it\u2019s hard to deny the charm of this film and its cheerful refusal to take itself too seriously. God, what a long way we\u2019ve come since V\u2019Ger.<\/p>\n

For what feels like the third part of a tight trilogy, not all the continuity is top-notch. The bridge of the Klingon ship looks almost nothing like the ersatz throne room seen in the previous film. I’ll have wait until The Final Frontier <\/em>to confirm whether or not we ever again see the gleaming white JJ Abrams-style Enterprise A<\/em> bridge which ends the film. I\u00a0also believe that this is the beginning of “there’s no money in the future.” Kirk pawns the antique glasses McCoy gave him in order to get cash, commenting “they’re still using money,” and yet as recently as the first act of the previous film, Bones was in a dive bar, haggling over the price of passage on a ship.<\/p>\n

For another take on this movie, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Star Trek The Motion Picture (). It wasn\u2019t just\u00a0Star Trek\u00a0which went off the air in the early 1970s. Fantasy-based sitcoms like\u00a0Bewitched,\u00a0I Dream of Jeannie\u00a0and\u00a0The Munsters\u00a0had run their course. Irwin Allen\u2019s science-fiction adventure serials like\u00a0The Land of Giants\u00a0and\u00a0Time Tunnel\u00a0had finished. American television was dominated by domestic sitcoms, glossy crime capers and nostalgia. Movies were enjoying a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,79,534,528],"class_list":["post-2894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tos","tag-trekaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-KG","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2894"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2919,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2894\/revisions\/2919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}