Retro Film Review: “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” (4K)| The Roddenberry Cinematic Universe is (Re-)born
Long ago, in a Galaxy…wait, um, I have my “Stars” crossed. OK, “we boldly went, were no, er, Being had gone before”.
I have the good fortune of having been a teenager when “Star Trek: TOS” (The Original Series, for all of you ignoramusi) shone briefly forth on the National Broadcasting Corporation network in the 1970s.
Yep, I am that old.
Fortunately I have never had to say I am a “Trekkie” (God, forfend) but I did love the series, and have loved most of what has emerged in the Roddenberry Cinematic Universe (RCU) which was a “CU” before such a thing existed. TOS? Yep. “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”? Double check. Paramount’s recent animated series “Lower Decks”? Well, yeah. Its actually very funny.
Anywho…
Looping back to the original adaptation of a TV show for film, I decided to revisit this modern masterpiece through the glories of 4K on Paramount Plus. Yep, it has actually been re-mastered in 4K and looks, well, gorgeous.
Why make a movie, Gene?
How in the heck did “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” even get made? I mean, TOS was cancelled, then renewed in one of the first fever dreams of fandom the modern TV world had ever seen. But, it wasn’t like TOS had created a bankable franchise. The first of what would be many films, and new series, and films, and new series — well, you get the idea — was a real gamble.
The late, great Gene Roddenberry got Paramount to make a bet that there was a fanatical enough audience for the show that a somewhat expensive film might be successful. Remember this is pre-CGI, and post Matte Shots, and Motion Capture photography that made “2001: A Space Odyssey” so marvelous to look at. But very expensive to make.
Besides a built-in fan base, Roddenberry had a coterie of marvelous actors and characters from the show, and also a history of great writing. Who knew that writing (writing, mind you) would be the key to enlarging any “CU”, including a nascent one like “Star Trek”?
The Galaxies are Alive…
My first room-mate when I moved out of my parent’s house in LA in the 1980s was the nephew of Robert Wise — the same Robert Wise who directed, among other great films, “The Sound of Music”. I never met the man, but had forgotten until I searched IMDB that he also directed “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”.
So my ex-roommate’s deceased Uncle is probably a big reason why the film is so good. And it is, very good.
Why? Well, for one thing it took a cerebral, rather low budget TV series and gave it the large canvas it had always deserved. All of us who were excited that a Star Trek movie was coming out wondered how they would imagine the iconic Enterprise, fictional near-light speed space travel, and, well, Klingons on the big screen.
Not to worry. The great Douglas Trumbull is listed as “Special Photographic Effects Director”, music by the legendary Jerry Goldsmith and a screen story by SciFi writer Alan Dean Foster, who had penned at least one TOS episode, along with a literal cast and crew in the hundreds worked some real movie magic here.
And, as I said, in 4K you can see the film close to what it was like to see it on the big screen back then.
OK, but what’s the story, morning glory?
As I said, TOS set the gold standard for writing, and the RCU has benefitted from that, largely, ever since. So, “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” needed to be well-written. Or, at least, it had to have a good story. Which it does.
A massive, mysterious entity called V’ger is moving toward Earth, destroying any spacecraft that gets in its way. Upon first glance, V’ger appears to be a massive cloud of some kind, with colorful electric charges pulsing from within. But, what the heck is it?
Well, one of the film’s main virtues is that it has a great twist ending. And, I never include spoilers in my reviews, so, if you want to find out where V’ger came from, and why it is on a collision course for Earth, you’ll have to watch “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” straight through to the end.
The Enterprise, and crew are tasked with flying out to the edges of the Solar System to stop doomsday. Leaving aside that, without the fictional near light travel the Enterprise is capable of, such a voyage would take, literally, years…well, we’ll just go with that.
Its all about the crew
Ultimately, any entry in the RCU — TV shows, films, whatever — is about the crew, as much as anything. As much as people love to poke fun at Shatner for his hammy acting, he created Captain Kirk, and who wouldn’t want a Vulcan named Spock — played by the late, great Leonard Nimoy — as his Number One. Add to that the unusual, for its time, casting of an African-American actress, Nichelle Nichols, as Comms officer, a Japanese-American actor, George Takei as Navigator, along with a cranky Scotsman as Engineer and you have the formula for greatness.
Would this cast of characters translate to the big screen? And, more importantly would the relatively small scale they were used to playing on work in the much larger context of a 70 MM film?
Again, not to worry. The genius of Roddenberry is that he added characters to broaden the scope. The lovely Persis Khambatta as Ilia, popular TV and movie actor Stephen Collins as Decker — who has to step aside when Spock returns as “Number One” — and many others add depth and dimension to the original TOS crew. All are going to be needed to ferret out the mystery of what V’ger is, and why it wants to destroy Earth.
SFX were, and are magnificent
One of the things that blew my mind when I first say the film, and again when I re-watched was the extraordinary SFX, especially as Enterprise dares to travel inside of V’ger’s massive, colorful cloud to get at the truth at its literal center. Using a combination of motion control shots, matte paintings and other techniques, Trumbull and the massive crew of trad SFX artists created a beautiful montage that lasts throughout most of the last third of the film.
As the drama proceeds on the ship — they have no idea what they are dealing with — the Enterprise travels from one section of V’ger to another, first through rings of electrical storms and then into a kind of geometric structure on a massive scale, perhaps the size of a planet. All with Goldsmith’s wonderful score accompanying.
Again, this is like taking the thought-provoking, but lo-fi world of TOS and “tarting it up” (as they say in England). Big time. And, in the end, you find out the truth about V’ger in the big reveal. And, what a truth it is.
Magnificent.
If you can watch this in 4K on Paramount Plus, please do. But, it is widely available in HD on many streaming platforms.
