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 Synopsis
Star Trek the
Motion Picture (1979)
By Tom Hudspeth
Five years after the
Enterprise
returned from its original mission, a giant cloud of energy is approaching
Earth.
The refitted Starship Enterprise is the only vessel
available to intercept it, but it is still in spacedock and the new captain
has little experience.
Admiral James
T.
Kirk gets back
command over the new Captain,
William
Decker, son of
Matt
Decker (killed
in TOS: “The Doomsday Machine”) and picked for command of the
Enterprise
by Kirk himself.
Decker takes on the role of XO (first mate).
This sets up antagonism between Kirk and Decker.
Most of the original crew are still on board,
but for McCoy and Spock.
Before he leaves Earth, Kirk drafts McCoy back
from retirement and he is none too happy about it.
The Vulcan
replacement for Spock is killed in a transporter
accident (as well as Kirk’s current flame).
Kirk orders them to leave Earth, against
everyone’s better judgment.
Sure enough, something goes wrong and Decker,
not Kirk, saves the day.
They soon meet Spock on a Vulcan shuttle, but he
is cold to everyone.
He takes back his position as Science Officer
and fixes the problem with the ship.
They are now able to meet the cloud.
A long time is spent going through the cloud.
McCoy suspects Spock
may have ulterior motives for coming along, but Kirk can’t believe
Spock
would hurt the ship.
Tension continues between Kirk and Decker,
especially after Decker’s old girlfriend, Lt. Ilia is taken/killed.
Ilia returns as an android construct, their
only clue as to why the cloud is approaching Earth.
It seems the cloud goes by the name of V’Ger, and is curious about the earthlings.
It traps the Enterprise in an antechamber.
Spock takes matters
into his own hands, dons a spacesuit and enters V’Ger.
He attempts a mindmeld and sees the collected
knowledge of the universe.
But the mindmeld is too intense and he is
thrown back out.
Back aboard the Enterprise, Spock
reveals V’Ger is empty, alone.
V’Ger is asking
questions he can not answer.
Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my
purpose?
Is this all there is, is there nothing more?
The only direction V’Ger
has is to learn all he can and return that information to his Creator, who
just happens to live on Earth.
Oh, and if the situation isn’t bad enough,
V’Ger sends out energy bombs to destroy the carbon based units (all
life on Earth is carbon based) that infest Earth.
Finally, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Decker and robot Ilia approach the center of
the cloud to find the original Voyager probe sent out from Earth years ago.
Kirk
orders Uhura to transmit the code that makes Voyager send all its
information to Earth, thus fulfilling its mission and proving to
V’Ger that Mankind is the Creator and it should not destroy the
carbon based units.
V’Ger shorts out his
antenna wire so he can’t receive the signal.
V’Ger
wants to bring God to himself.
Decker, in a supreme act of sacrifice, enters
the final code into the manual keypad and he, Ilia and
V’Ger all combine to create a new life form able to leap beyond
logic and accept things on faith.
V’Ger disappears in
a spectacular display of fireworks and special effects and the world is
saved.
A decade after the original series went off the air, and with the success of
Star Wars, Paramount was in the
process of bringing back its most successful sci-fi franchise.
A whole new series, known now as Star Trek:
Phase II, was planed.
But somewhere along the way it was decided to
make it into a movie.
Because “Superman: the Movie” had come out the
year before, they changed the name to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Very imaginative bunch in Hollywood.
It was not known if STMP would make any money,
so the budget was low.
Even so, many wonderful things came out of this
picture.
I can not explain to you how it felt, after a decade of no Trek (except for
the animated series), to see the characters back again.
That first shot of Kirk stepping off the
shuttle at Starfleet Command was magical.
The tour of the new movie Enterprise brought tears
to my eyes.
The soundtrack and score remains the best ever
written for a Star Trek movie or TV episode with at least 5 separate themes.
STMP may seem pretty lame now days, but back
then it was a religious experience to watch in a theater.
And it made money, lots of it!
If not for the success of STMP, there would
have never been any more Star Trek.
Ok, but you are not a 17 year old pimply faced boy starved for Star Trek.
You have lots of Star Trek to watch and this is
not the best of the lot.
The plot was a rehash of a couple of original
series plots, most notably “The Changeling” with Nomad.
The story was originally planed for the new
series, and expanded to make the motion picture.
Viewers now days complain it is too long and
slow, even with the many revisions it has gone through, the latest being the
Director’s Cut.
The pajama uniforms are uninspiring and never
seen again.
STMP is now only really interesting for the
many firsts you can see, among them:
Klingons in modern makeup.
Klingon theme first heard.
First view of the planet
Vulcan.
First view of the new Enterprise.
First view of 23rd Cent.
Earth and Starfleet Command.
The main theme went on to be used for STNG.
Star Trek the Motion Picture
is a one off, unique in the Star Trek universe, not unlike “The Cage” or
“Where No Man Has Gone Before”.
It has a look and feel that we never saw before
or since.
It will never be the most popular of the movies, but
like many of the pilots, it was influential in making Star Trek happen.
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