Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film directed by Robert Wise. It is based on and stars the cast of the 1966–1969 television series Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry, who served as producer. In the film, set in the 2270s, a mysterious and powerful alien cloud known as V'Ger approaches Earth, destroying everything in its path. Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) assumes command of the recently refitted Starship Enterprise to lead it on a mission to determine VGers origins and save the planet.

When Star Trek was cancelled in 1969, Roddenberry lobbied Paramount Pictures to continue the franchise through a feature film. The success of the series in syndication convinced the studio to begin work on the film in 1975. A series of writers and scripts did not satisfy Paramount, and they scrapped the film project. Instead, Paramount planned on returning the franchise to its roots, with a new television series titled Star Trek: Phase II. The box office success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind convinced Paramount to change course, cancelling production of Phase II and resuming work on a film.

In March 1978, Paramount announced Wise would direct a $15 million film adaptation of the original television series. Filming began that August and concluded the following January. With the cancellation of Phase II, writers rushed to adapt its planned pilot episode, "In Thy Image", into a film script. Constant revisions to the story and the shooting script continued to the extent of hourly script updates on shooting dates. The Enterprise was modified inside and out, costume designer Robert Fletcher provided new uniforms, and production designer Harold Michelson fabricated new sets. Jerry Goldsmith composed the film's score, beginning an association with Star Trek that would continue until 2002. When the original contractors for the optical effects proved unable to complete their tasks in time, effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull was asked to meet the film's December 1979 release date. Wise took the just-completed film to its Washington, D.C., opening, but always felt that the final theatrical version was a rough cut of the film he wanted to make.

Released in North America on December 7, 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture received mixed reviews, many of which faulted it for a lack of action scenes and over-reliance on special effects. Its final production cost ballooned to approximately $44 million, and it earned $139 million worldwide, short of studio expectations but enough for Paramount to propose a less expensive sequel. Roddenberry was forced out of creative control for the sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). In 2001, Wise oversaw a director's cut for a special DVD release of the film, with remastered audio, tightened and added scenes, and new computer-generated effects.

Plot

In the 23rd century, a Starfleet monitoring station, Epsilon Nine, detects an alien entity hidden in a massive energy cloud, moving through space toward Earth. The cloud easily destroys three Klingon warships and Epsilon Nine on its course. At Earth, the starship is undergoing a major refit; its former commanding officer, James T. Kirk, has been promoted to admiral. Starfleet Command assigns Enterprise to intercept the cloud entity, as the ship is the only one within range, requiring its new systems to be tested in transit.

Citing his experience, Kirk uses his authority to take command of the ship, angering Captain Willard Decker, who has been overseeing the refit as its new commanding officer. Testing of Enterprise new systems goes poorly; two officers, including the ship's Vulcan science officer Sonak, are killed by a malfunctioning transporter, and improperly calibrated engines nearly destroy the ship. Kirk's unfamiliarity with the ship's new systems increases the tension between him and Decker, who has been temporarily demoted to commander and first officer. Commander Spock arrives as a replacement science officer, explaining that while on his home world, undergoing a ritual to purge himself of emotion, he felt a consciousness that he believes emanates from the cloud, making him unable to complete the ritual because his human half felt an emotional connection to it.

Enterprise intercepts the energy cloud and is attacked by an alien vessel. A probe appears on the bridge, attacks Spock, and abducts the navigator, Ilia. She is replaced by a robotic replica, sent by the entity, which calls itself "V'Ger", to study the "carbon units" on the ship. Decker is distraught over the loss of Ilia, with whom he had a romantic history, and becomes troubled as he attempts to extract information from the doppelgänger, which has Ilia's memories and feelings buried inside. Spock takes an unauthorized spacewalk to the vessel's interior and attempts a telepathic mind meld with it. In doing so, he learns that the entire vessel is V'Ger, a non-biological living machine.

At the center of the massive ship, V'Ger is revealed to be Voyager 6, a 20th-century NASA space probe from the Voyager program. It was believed lost in a black hole. The damaged probe was found by an alien race of living machines that interpreted its programming as instructions to learn all that can be learned and return that information to its creator. The machines upgraded the probe to fulfill its mission, and on its journey, the probe gathered so much knowledge that it achieved sentience. Spock discovers that V'Ger cannot give itself a purpose other than its original mission; having learned everything it could on its journey home, it finds its existence meaningless. Before transmitting all its information, V'Ger insists that the "Creator" come in person to finish the sequence. The Enterprise crew realizes humans are the Creator. Decker offers himself to V'Ger; he merges with the Ilia probe and V'Ger, creating a new life form that disappears into space. With Earth saved, Kirk directs Enterprise to space for future missions.

Cast

thumb|right|The main cast of The Motion Picture in the film's costumes on the bridge set. Clockwise from far left: director Robert Wise: Collins, Barrett, Nimoy, Doohan, Shatner, Kelley, Whitney, Nichols, Koenig, producer Gene Roddenberry, Takei, and Khambatta. These and other publicity shots were taken after screen tests for the actors on August 3, 1978. Financial issues notwithstanding, Nimoy said he was comfortable with being identified as Spock because it had a positive impact on his fame. Linguist [[Marc Okrand later developed a fully realized Klingon language based on the actor's made-up words.

Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov, the Enterprises weapons officer. Koenig noted that the expected sense of camaraderie and euphoria at being assembled for screen tests at the start of the picture was nonexistent. "This may be Star Trek," he wrote, "but it isn't the old Star Trek." The actor was hopeful for the film, but admitted he was disappointed by his character's bit part.
Persis Khambatta as Ilia, the Deltan navigator of the Enterprise. Khambatta was originally cast in the role when The Motion Picture was a television pilot. and Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand, formerly one of Kirk's yeomen. David Gautreaux, who had been cast as Xon in the aborted second television series, appears as Branch, the commander of the Epsilon 9 communications station.

Production

Early development

The original Star Trek television series ran for three seasons from 1966 to 1969 on NBC. The show was cancelled due to low Nielsen ratings after the third season. After the show's cancellation, owner Paramount Pictures sold the syndication rights. The series went into reruns in late 1969, and by the late 1970s had been sold in over 150 domestic and 60 international markets. The show developed a cult following, and talks of reviving the franchise began. Roddenberry joined with Jon Povill to write a new story that featured the Enterprise crew setting an altered universe right by time travel; like Black's idea, Paramount did not consider it sufficiently epic. The actors grew anxious about the constant delays and pragmatically accepted other acting offers while Roddenberry worked with Paramount.). McQuarrie wrote that "there was no script" and that much of the work was "winging it". their concepts were shelved, although a handful of them were revisited in later productions.

The first draft of the completed script was not finished until March 1, 1977, and it was described as "a script by committee" and rejected by the studio a few weeks later.

Phase II and restart

thumb|right|upright|[[Barry Diller planned on anchoring a new Paramount television network with a new Star Trek series.]]

Barry Diller had grown concerned by the direction Star Trek had taken in Planet of the Titans, and suggested to Roddenberry that it was time to take the franchise back to its roots as a television series. Diller planned on a new Star Trek series forming the cornerstone for a new television network. Though Paramount was reluctant to abandon its work on the film, Roddenberry wanted to bring many of the production staff from the original series to work on the new show, titled Star Trek: Phase II. The budget was projected at $15 million.

During the rewrite of the final scenes, the studio executives clashed with Roddenberry about the script's ending, believing that the concept of a living machine was too far-fetched. The executives consulted Asimov: if the writer decided a sentient machine was plausible, the ending could stay. Asimov loved the ending, but made one small suggestion; he felt that the use of the word "wormhole" was incorrect, and that the anomaly that the Enterprise found itself in would be more accurately called a "temporal tunnel". Visitor's badges were created to keep track of guests, and due to the limited number were constantly checked out. Visitors included the press, fan leaders, friends of the cast and crew, and actors such as Clint Eastwood, Tony Curtis, Robin Williams and Mel Brooks.

thumb|upright|left|Douglas Trumbull was given the task of finishing The Motion Pictures opticals in time for a December 1979 release date.

After the groundbreaking opticals of Star Wars, Star Treks producers realized the film required similarly high-quality visuals. Creative differences grew between RA&A and the Paramount production team; in March the studio asked Trumbull if he could get the opticals work completed by December, the release date to which Paramount was financially committed (having accepted advances from exhibitors planning on a Christmas delivery). Trumbull was confident that he could get the work done without a loss of quality despite a reputation for missing deadlines because of his perfectionism. Paramount assigned a studio executive to Trumbull to make sure he would meet the release date, and together with Yuricich the effects team rushed to finish.

Music

thumb|Jerry Goldsmith began a long association with Star Trek by scoring The Motion Picture. Gene Roddenberry had originally wanted Goldsmith to score Star Trek<nowiki>'</nowiki>s pilot episode, "[[The Cage (Star Trek: The Original Series)|The Cage", but he was unavailable. When Wise signed on to direct, Paramount asked if he had any objection to using Goldsmith. Wise, who had worked with Goldsmith on The Sand Pebbles, replied "Hell, no. He's great!" Wise later considered his work with Goldsmith one of the best relationships he ever had with a composer.

Goldsmith was influenced by the style of the romantic, sweeping music of Star Wars. "When you stop and think about it, space is a very romantic thought. It is, to me, like the Old West, we're up in the universe. It's about discovery and new life [...] it's really the basic premise of Star Trek", he said. Goldsmith's initial bombastic main theme reminded Ramsay and Wise of sailing ships. Unable to articulate what he felt was wrong with the piece, Wise recommended writing an entirely different piece. Although irked by the rejection, Goldsmith consented to rework his initial ideas.

Much of the recording equipment used to create the movie's intricately complicated sound effects was, at the time, extremely cutting-edge. Among these pieces of equipment was the ADS (Advanced Digital Synthesizer) 11, manufactured by Pasadena, California custom synthesizer manufacturer Con Brio, Inc. The movie provided major publicity and was used to advertise the synthesizer, though no price was given. The film's soundtrack also provided a debut for the Blaster Beam, an electronic instrument long. It was created by musician Craig Huxley, who played a small role in an episode of the original television series. An enormous pipe organ first plays the V'Ger theme on the Enterprises approach, a literal indication of the machine's power. The rush to finish the rest of the film impacted the score.

A soundtrack featuring the film's music was released by Columbia Records in 1979 together with the film debut, and was one of Goldsmith's best-selling scores. In 2012, the score was released yet again via La-La Land Records in association with Sony Music. This 3-CD set contains the complete score for the first time, plus unreleased alternate and unused cues, in addition to the remastered original 1979 album.

The score to Star Trek: The Motion Picture went on to garner Goldsmith nominations for the Oscars, Golden Globe and Saturn awards. It is often regarded as one of the composer's greatest scores, and was also one of the American Film Institute's 250 nominated scores for their top 25 American film scores.

Sound effects

Sound designer Frank Serafine, a longtime Star Trek fan, was invited to create the sound effects for the picture. Given access to state-of-the-art audio equipment, Serafine saw the picture as the chance to modernize outdated motion picture sound techniques with digital technology. Owing to background noise such as camera operation, much of the ambient noise or dialogue captured on set was unusable; it was Serafine's job to create or recreate sounds to mix back into the scenes. Barrett suggests that with the Star Trek feature films this attitude of not addressing religious issues shifted.

Tor.com reviewer Dan Persons noted the film features a number of characters on their own voyages of self discovery, with each defining their concept of fulfillment differently. Persons notes that the result of individual pursuits of fulfillment are damaging or pyrrhic; meaning is only satisfactorily found through interpersonal relationships.

Release

Theatrical release

To coincide with the film's release, Pocket Books published a paperback novelization written by Roddenberry, the only Star Trek novel he was to write. The book adds back story and several elements that did not appear in the film; for example, the novelization confirms that Willard Decker is the son of Commodore Matt Decker from the original series episode "The Doomsday Machine"—a plot element intended for the Phase II television series and mentioned in early drafts of the film script. In addition to the novel, Star Trek printed media included a coloring book, ship blueprints, a starship "history book," a sticker book of graphics, a home costume how-to book and a comic book adaptation published by Marvel Comics as Marvel Super Special #15 (Dec. 1979). Toys included action figures, ship models, and a variety of watches, phaser mockups and communicators. McDonald's sold special Star Trek Happy Meals. The marketing was part of a coordinated approach by Paramount and its parent conglomerate Gulf+Western to create a sustained Star Trek product line. The Motion Picture novel launched Pocket Books' Star Trek book franchise, which produced 18 consecutive bestsellers within a decade.

Owing to the rush to complete the film before the scheduled release date, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was never screened before test audiences, which Wise later stated that he regretted. On December 6, 1979, the director arrived in Washington, D.C. with a fresh print of the film at the world premiere, rain that evening reduced fan turnout to around 300. The premiere was followed by a black-tie reception at the National Air and Space Museum. More than 500 people—consisting of the cast and crew, working members of the space community, and "hardcore Trekkies" who could afford to pay $100 for admission—filled the museum.

Home media

Paramount Home Entertainment released the film on VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, and CED videodisc in 1980 in its original theatrical version.

In 1983, an extended cut premiered on the ABC television network. It added around 12 minutes to the film. This "Special Longer Version" was released on VHS, Betamax and LaserDisc by Paramount in 1983 in pan and scan format.

Two members of Wise's production company, David C. Fein and Michael Matessino, approached Wise and Paramount and persuaded them to release a revised version of the film on video; Paramount released the updated Director's Edition of the film on VHS and DVD on November 6, 2001. Wise, who had always considered the original theatrical presentation of the film a "rough cut", was given the opportunity to re-edit the film to be more consistent with his original vision. The production team used the original script, surviving sequence storyboards, memos, and the director's recollections. In addition to cuts in some sequences, 90 new and redesigned computer-generated images were created. Included among the special features are the deleted scenes which had been part of the television cut. Although no new scenes were added, the MPAA rated the revised edition PG in contrast to the G rating of the original release. Fein attributed the rating change to the more "intense" sound mix that made scenes such as the central part of V'Ger "more menacing".

The Director's Edition was far better received by critics than the original 1979 release, with some considering the edit to have subsequently turned the film into one of the series' best. The DVD Journal's Mark Bourne said it showcased "a brisker, more attractive version of the movie" that was "as good as it might have been in 1979. Even better maybe." Complaints included the edition's 2.17:1 aspect ratio, as opposed to the original 2.40:1 Panavision. Jeremy Conrad of IGN felt that despite the changes, the pacing might still be too slow for some viewers.

The film's original theatrical cut was released on Blu-ray Disc in May 2009 to coincide with the new Star Trek feature, packaged with the five following features as the Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection. The Motion Picture was remastered in 1080p high definition. All six films in the set have 7.1 Dolby TrueHD audio. The disc features a new commentary track by Star Trek authors and contributors Michael and Denise Okuda, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and Daren Dochterman. A 4K version of the Director's Cut was released in 2022.

Reception

Box office

Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened in the United States and Canada on December 7, 1979, in 857 theaters and set a box office record for the highest opening weekend gross, making $11,926,421 in its first weekend. The film beat the 3-day weekend record set by Superman (1978) of $10.4 million in its third weekend (but not its 4-day weekend gross of $13.1 million) and the opening weekend gross of the 1978 reissue of Star Wars of $10.1 million. Overall, the film grossed $139 million worldwide.

In the United States, the film sold the most tickets of any film in the franchise until Star Trek (2009), and it remains the highest-grossing film of the franchise worldwide adjusted for inflation, but Paramount considered its gross disappointing compared to expectations and marketing. The Motion Pictures budget of $44 million, was the largest for any film made within the United States up to that time. David Gerrold estimated before its release that the film would have to gross two to three times its budget to be profitable for Paramount. Gautreaux believed that Roddenberry had not wanted Wise as director but Paramount wanted his experience, and that the two powerful men's differing visions hurt the film. The studio faulted Roddenberry's script rewrites and creative direction for the plodding pace and disappointing gross. With the successful revival of the Star Trek brand on the big screen setting an example, Hollywood increasingly turned to 1960s television series for material. a 2001 retrospective for the BBC described the film as a critical failure.

Roger Ebert, reviewing the film on Sneak Previews, liked it, calling it "fun" and "a good time". Judith Martin of The Washington Post felt that the plot was too thin to support the length of the film, although Martin felt that compared to such science-fiction films as 2001, Star Wars, and Alien, The Motion Pictures premise was "slightly cleverer". Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote that the film consisted of spaceships that "take an unconscionable amount of time to get anywhere, and nothing of dramatic or human interest happens along the way". Schickel also lamented the lack of "boldly characterized" antagonists and battle scenes that made Star Wars fun; instead, viewers were presented with much talk, "much of it in impenetrable spaceflight jargon". David Denby of New York magazine, wrote that the slow movement of ships through space was "no longer surprising and elegant" after films such as 2001, and that much of the action consisted of the crew's reacting to things occurring on the viewscreen, which he considered to be "like watching someone else watch television". Variety, disagreed, calling the film "a search-and-destroy thriller that includes all of the ingredients the TV show's fans thrive on: the philosophical dilemma wrapped in a scenario of mind control, troubles with the space ship, the dependable and understanding Kirk, the ever-logical Spock, and suspenseful take with twist ending". Scott Bukatman reviewed the film in Ares magazine #1, and commented that "With Star Trek, Roddenberry's trick has been to wear the mask of the humanist as he plays with his Erector set. The scale of the television series arrested his vision at a comfortable and still interesting level, but the new film has finally removed the mask."

The characters and acting received a mixed reception. Stephen Godfrey of The Globe and Mail rated their performances highly: "time has cemented Leonard Nimoy's look of inscrutability as Mr. Spock [...] DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy is as feisty as ever, and James Doohan as Scotty still splutters about his engineering woes. At a basic level, their exchanges are those of an odd assortment of grumpy, middle-aged men bickering about office politics. They are a relief from the stars, and a delight." Godfrey's only concern was that the reunion of the old cast threatened to make casual viewers who had never seen Star Trek feel like uninvited guests. Martin considered the characters more likable than those in comparable science fiction films. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the actors did not have much to do in the effects-driven film, and were "limited to the exchanging of meaningful glances or staring intently at television monitors, usually in disbelief". Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta were more favorably received. Gene Siskel felt the film "teeter[ed] towards being a crashing bore" whenever Khambatta was not on screen, "[Khambatta] is sympathetic enough to make one hope she'll have a chance to show less skin and more hair in future films", Godfrey wrote. Terry Lee Rioux, Kelley's biographer, noted that the film proved "that it was the character-driven play that made all the difference in Star Trek". and Where Nomad [the probe in "The Changeling"] Has Gone Before.

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