Thoughts on the TOS Movies.

The six Star Trek movies featuring the original series cast were Star Trek during the 1980's - The only Star Trek for most of that time. The success of the films led directly to the return of the franchise on television, and also gave a chance for viewers to say a proper farewell to the crew that started it all.

In effect, the six movies form one last, multi-year season of the original Star Trek. The films even end up having much the same structure as a television series - right down to an arc that connects the episodes... And right down to a pilot that bears little resemblance to what the series would properly become.


FALSE STARTS AND EARLY STEPS: THE MOTION PICTURE



It's now reasonably well-known that Star Trek almost returned as a television series in the 1970's - the aborted Star Trek: Phase Two. Then Star Wars, and its enormous box office performance, made Paramount rethink its decision to relegate its most famous science fiction property to the small screen.

This probably saved Star Trek as an ongoing franchise. From what I know of Phase II, and from the couple of Phase II scripts that were repurposed into (very poor) TNG episodes, I strongly suspect it would have been a weak series, one that likely would have lasted a single season.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture has many of the failings of early TNG. The atmosphere is too sterile, and the human characters often feel only marginally less emotionless than Mr. Spock. It is also awkwardly paced, particularly in the version that was actually seen in theaters in 1979. Robert Wise's eventual "director's cut" lessens the problems with pacing and characterization - but it doesn't quite eliminate them, and it's a little too evident that the film was put into production before the script was fully ready.

Still, the movie does have a sense of grandeur, aided by some top class visual effects and a sublime Jerry Goldsmith score. There are fantastic sequences and set pieces, and I admit to having had a soft spot for it long before the director's cut was ever released. Most importantly from a studio standpoint, it made money - Which meant that big screen Star Trek was given a second chance to get it right...


TAKE TWO: THE WRATH OF KHAN AND THE TRILOGY



The Wrath of Khan was a much smaller film than The Motion Picture, and in fact remains the lowest-budget Star Trek film of them all. It's also the best of the lot, perfectly capturing the core appeal of the series: The cameraderie and chemistry among the regulars, and most particularly among Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy. The film has some strong action set pieces and a remarkable villain in Ricardo Montalban's vengeance-crazed Khan - but at its heart, it's a character piece, with Kirk having to confront age and death, and having to learn to accept both of these.

The film was so successful, its own sequels simply carried on from it, forming a Star Trek motion picture trilogy. The Search for Spock picks up only a short time after Khan's endpoint. The Voyage Home carries on from Spock's endpoint. All three are very different films, but all were successful both financially and critically. All three movies revolve around the characters. The stories are built around their interactions, and those interactions feel right.


FALLING OFF THE MOUNTAIN: THE COLLAPSE OF STAR TREK V, THE RISE OF TNG, AND THE END OF AN ERA



What goes up must inevitably come down, and the Star Trek film franchise came crashing to Earth with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. William Shatner took his turn in the director's chair, and also collaborated on the story... Making it hardly a surprise that the movie centers entirely on Kirk, actively at the expense of the other characters. The film is poorly paced and even worse-structured. The seemingly endless first hour is centered on what is revealed to be a subplot, with the actual story not even starting until more than halfway in - which leaves the rest feeling rushed and underdeveloped.

The movie was released into a summer already crowded with blockbusters; and set along side the likes of Lethal Weapon 2 and Tim Burton's Batman, this particularly Trek came up decidedly short. Even worse for Star Trek V, it released just as TNG started to properly find its footing, leading many to grumble that the Star Trek television series was getting to be better than the movies. In the space of one bad film, the big screen future of Star Trek had gone from entirely assured to very much in doubt.


A GRACEFUL EXIT: STAR TREK VI - THE EPILOGUE



Star Trek VI was the final movie for the full 1960's cast, and it did much to recover viewer goodwill. Nicholas Meyer returned as director and co-writer, and the film features multiple callbacks to the core trilogy - most particularly in Kirk's resentment of the Klingons over the death of his son, David, something which helps drive the plot. In plot and also in tone, the movie feels like an epilogue to that trilogy... and with not a single mention of Star Trek V to be found, viewers who are not dedicated to being completists should feel absolutely safe in skipping that unfortunate misfire.

It's a dignified final bow for the crew, only slightly tarnished by Shatner's insistence on having Kirk be the one to outwit the villain at the end after the script had carefully laid the groundwork for Sulu to do so. A minor, if very visible, blemish on an otherwise very fine movie, one that allows the original series crew to go out with a winner.


FINAL THOUGHTS

As the above summaries make clear, the trilogy forms the core of the TOS movies, and those three films and Star Trek VI are what most people mean when they talk about the movies with the original cast. Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek V are clearly the odd men out, not quite fitting with the other four pictures, and it's likely no coincidence that these two outliers are the least popular TOS movies.

All of the movies (even Star Trek V) are carried by the seemingly effortless chemistry of the cast. There's a magic to this particular cast, and a joy in watching their interactions. I like all the subsequent Trek casts to varying degrees, and some of the later Trek stars would actually be better actors than some of the original stars. But however long Trek has run in however many forms, the magic of that original cast is one that would never be recaptured.


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Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Kirk's first full look at the new Enterprise.

THE PLOT

A Federation monitoring station detects a mysterious blue cloud of extraordinary size and power, under attack by three Klingon battle cruisers. The Klingons fight with their signature aggressiveness, but are easily destroyed. The station computes the cloud's trajectory, and determines that it is on a heading straight for Earth.

There is only one starship within range to intercept the cloud: The Enterprise, of course. But the legendary starship has just undergone a complete refit, and has several technical glitches to be worked out. Its young captain, Decker (Stephen Collins), is untried in first contact situation - something which Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) seizes upon to regain command of his old ship.

Now back in the captain's chair and reunited with his old crew, Kirk prepares for one more mission against impossible odds, this time to save his home planet. But is this Kirk, who has commanded nothing but a desk for more than two years and who is completely unfamiliar with the new Enterprise, going to be up to the challenge?

Kirk, Spock, and Decker prepare to enter the cloud!

CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: For the first half, behaves more like one of the Pompous Space Bureaucrats from the original series than like that series' captain. He uses the crisis to seize command, then bristles when an upset Decker points out what he did. Kirk shares Decker's doubts about his ability to command, which leads him to be defensive when Decker corrects what might have been a catastrophic error in dealing with a warp-generated wormhole.

Once he's dealing directly with the crisis, the Kirk we know comes back to life. The more by-the-book Decker would either have gotten the Enterprise destroyed by insisting on raising shields and performing scans the entity would have read as hostile.  Had he survived that, he would likely have waited too long to undertake the "unwarranted risk" of entering the cloud.  Kirk trusts his instincts and takes the risks needed to get into communication with the alien, identified as "V'Ger." William Shatner's performance is not among his best, the cold style of the film not best suited to his acting strengths. Still, he relishes some terrific Kirk scenes late in the film, particularly when the captain goes along with Spock's suggestion to treat V'Ger as a child.

Mr. Spock: When he arrives at the Enterprise (surprisingly late in the film), he is at his coldest and most remote. Leonard Nimoy erects a very stiff posture for this version of Spock, and lowers and slows his voice so that no warmth or emotion at all is reflected. Nimoy carefully eases off this stiffness as the film progresses, and as Spock begins to fall into the familiar interaction with Kirk. But it's only after Spock's epiphany following a mind-meld with V'Ger that Nimoy returns to his "normal" Spock performance, with that familiar hint of warmth beneath the reserve.

Dr. McCoy: Gets the least to do of the three leads, but he does have some good scenes opposite Kirk. As he observes the conflict between Kirk and Decker, he doesn't take his old friend's side. Instead, he bluntly lays out that Decker "is not the one competing here," and that Kirk has allowed his obsession with commanding the Enterprise to cloud his own judgment.  When Kirk starts becoming defensive again, as Decker argues alternatives for dealing with the V'Ger cloud, McCoy watches like a hawk. This does not go unnoticed, and Kirk actually pulls back under the force of his friend's glare.

Commander Decker: A ready-made Kirk substitute. Knowing that many elements of this film were leftovers from the abandoned Phase II series, it seems clear that Decker would have been poised to take the lead had Shatner not chosen to stay with the series. With the move to the big screen, Decker receives a demotion within the franchise similar to the character's within the film: Moved from status as a regular and potential lead to that of a one-shot guest character. Stephen Collins does a capable job, reflecting competence and intelligence throughout, but there's no question that Shatner has a screen presence he simply can't match.

Hot Alien Space Babe of the Week: Ilia (Persis Khamabatta) is the ship's new navigator. She is a Deltan, a race required to swear an "oath of celibacy" in order to serve in Starfleet. Reasons for this are more fully explained in the novelization.  Suffice it to say that she is Decker's old flame - a relationship that was copied all but note-for-note for the Riker/Troi backstory in TNG. There's not much noteworthy about Ilia as a character, and Khambatta's performance and the characterization are far more interesting in the second half, when Ilia is replaced with one of V'Ger's probes.

The Enterprise, in the belly of the beast...

THOUGHTS

This film has come in for a lot of flack, and it's fair to say that it's a flawed movie, even in its director's cut. It's overlong, and its tone is too antiseptic to truly capture the spirit of 1960's Trek.  But it has ambition and is gorgeous to look at - and unlike several later Trek movies, it is unmistakably a movie, not an elongated television episode.

Much was made in contemporary reviews of the film's then-enormous $46 million budget. It's worth noting that this budget did include all the costs incurred by the development of the discarded Phase II television project.  It's also worth observing that one reason the sequels cost so much less was that they were able to reuse sets and models created for this film.

Even ignoring that, the money is evident on-screen. The effects are breathtaking, most of them holding up more than three decades after the fact. The elegant model work blends with the optical effects and Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic score to create a genuine spectacle. The redesigned Enterprise is beautiful, both the exterior model and the interior sets - and it would never look better than it does here (including, in my opinion, the variant seen in the 2009 film).

The plot isn't bad, either. It liberally borrows elements from three TOS episodes: The Doomsday Machine, which also featured the Enterprise trying to thwart a planet-destroying machine (with a guest character named Decker, no less!); The Immunity Syndrome, which also featured the Enterprise flying into a void that threatened all in its path; and The Changeling, which also featured a machine that mistook Kirk for its creator. But the tone of the film is distinct, and it never loses its own strong sense of identity. The ending provides a good twist, one contemporary viewers likely didn't expect, and there is plenty in the buildup to that ending that is intriguing. I'll admit to a certain bias - as readers of my reviews might have noticed, I tend to be a bit partial to episodes in which the crew explores something genuinely alien and unknown.  Nevertheless, I will stand up for there being a lot that's good here.

Still, it's a good thing for the franchise that this did not become the template for future films. The tone and atmosphere may be consistent and distinct... but it's all too cold and sterile for a Star Trek movie. The real key to the 1960's series' enduring popularity is the warmth between the characters. There's very little of that here. All emotion is muted. This may serve one of the central themes ("logic and knowledge are not enough"), but it does keep the viewer at a distance.

Another problem is with the interpersonal conflict between Kirk and Decker, which drives the movie's first half.  Decker resents Kirk's usurping of his command, and he doubts (with cause) that Kirk is truly capable of taking command of this new Enterprise. Kirk privately shares these doubts, which results in him reacting defensively. It's an interesting conflict, but it doesn't resolve.  Kirk doesn't do anything to prove himself to Decker (or to himself).  Instead, this thread just vanishes about 80 minutes in, barely even obliquely referenced again.  Structurally, it feels like there's something extra needed, something which never comes.

The Ilia probe takes the Enterprise to V'Ger's heart.

OVERALL RATING

In all cases of multiple editions, I will be using my preferred cut as the basis for my review.  My final score here will be for the 2001 director's edition, which features improved pacing and stronger character interaction.  But this was the third of three major versions, so for the sake of completeness I will briefly discuss all three.

The Theatrical Cut, hastily edited to make a tight December 1979 deadline, suffers from the absence of several character exchanges and from extremely overlong effects scenes. In his director's cut commentary, Robert Wise states that he had no opportunity to preview and fine-tune the film before its premiere, and it shows: Even though this is the shortest version, it "plays" the longest. I'd give it a 5/10.

The Network Television Edition was widely circulated during the VHS era. This cut restores the character scenes... but it also restores a lot of footage that was cut with good reason (such as Sulu and Chekov behaving like horny adolescents around Ilia), and it does nothing about the overlong effects sequences.  It's an improvement, but still only scrapes a 6/10.

For his director's edition, director Robert Wise has done the kind of fine-tuning he would have done in 1979, had he not run out of time.  The effects scenes are cut back so that the visual wonder makes an impression, but doesn't linger so long on the light show that it completely kills the momentum.  The strongest character scenes have been re-inserted, adding a touch of warmth (still not enough), but pointless and/or stupid moments have been allowed to remain on the cutting room floor where they belong. The result runs slightly longer than the theatrical version, but it feels leaner, because most of what's on-screen fuels the story or at least the atmosphere.

 Even in the director's cut, the flaws remain.  The restored character material is good, but it's not enough to fully offset the sterile atmosphere.  The trims to the effects sequences help the pace, but some moments - notably, the Enterprise's flyby of V'Ger about halfway in - still go on longer than is truly ideal. Still, this is as good as I think the movie can be, and in this version I find it engaging enough to genuinely recommend, if only to see a very different type of Star Trek movie than the more action/adventure oriented titles that followed.


Overall Rating: 7/10.

Next Movie: Star Trek II - The Wrath of Khan

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