Boy did I hate Star Trek: The Motion Picture when it first came to theaters. Everything about this film was wrong. But over the years, I’ve had a change of heart. Don’t get me wrong, everything about TMP is still wrong, but it has one thing all the other Star Trek movies are missing. It has a sense of adventure.
** spoiler alert**
Let's list what TMP did wrong in order of increasing importance. This isn’t going to be pretty.
● The Uniforms: People hated the uniforms; they called them pajamas. I can see that. They aren’t very science fictiony, they’re too casual, and compared to the more Napoleonic dress uniforms of the later films they are way too dull. But I actually don’t hate them. I think they’re a sensible evolution from the series, and I particularly like the away uniforms being a throw back to the pilot episode The Cage.
● The Klingons: The Klingons don’t bother me per se. In fact, I thought they were pretty cool. But it’s poor judgment to so totally change the Klingons’ appearance and then only use them for the first two minutes of the film. If you’re going to radically change an icon of a beloved series, you should have a point.
● Sloppy Filmmaking: Now it gets worse. The film was directed by Robert Wise, who has impressive credentials (Andromeda Strain, West Side Story, Run Silent Run Deep), and yet the film was beset by sloppy filmmaking. The pace was so slow people called it “The Motionless Picture.” The story was stolen from an old episode ("The Changeling"). Unfinished sets appear in one scene. And much of it made no sense, e.g. in the opening scene, Starfleet taps into the Klingons’ view screens to watch the battle (which makes no sense technically) and not only gets images the Klingon's couldn't get, but also gets images after the Klingon ship is entirely destroyed, all of which immediately strikes fans as impossible. And how is it that assembling the Enterprise’s transporters and warp drive can be so difficult? These technologies are as mundane as cars or elevators today. . . they're frik'n plug and play! Yet all of Starfleet couldn’t figure out how to turn on the ship’s engines? Each of these moments and more was evidence the filmmakers didn’t think things through and assumed fans wouldn’t notice or care.
● The Vulcans: The Vulcans in the series had suppressed emotion and built a scientific, diplomatic society based on pure logic. But the film replaces that with mysticism. Hence, Spock goes from being computer-like to being a monk and in the process is robbed of the uniqueness of his character as he gets turned into something we’ve seen in dozens of other films. Moreover, this ruined the character dynamic, as I'm about to explain.
● The Characters: Now we come to the core of the problem. Star Trek IS James T. Kirk. The show was set up as a series of adventures and morality tales involving Kirk. Helping him were Dr. Leonard McCoy and Spock. They were his friends and his lieutenants, but they also represented the dual aspects of Kirk’s judgment. Spock represented pure logic. He analyzed everything with reason and he encouraged Kirk to make decisions without emotion. Dr. McCoy represented pure emotion. He urged Kirk to feel his way through decisions. Spock and McCoy fought each other constantly because they represent diametrically opposed forces. Kirk was the battleground. He had to choose between his friends while simultaneously navigating the duality of all decisions. This created an incredibly strong character dynamic because it meant each episode came with built in drama and it allowed the series to explore the decision process itself, where drama truly lies.
TMP tossed this out. When they changed the Vulcans, they took away Spock’s personality. Rather than being a creature of logic, he became a creature of calm who would no longer spar with McCoy as he had done. Instead of being one half of Kirk’s conscience, Spock instead became a monk who hands out sage advice. And since Spock no longer fought McCoy for Kirk’s soul, McCoy wasn’t needed anymore. So McCoy went from being the voice of passion and emotion to just being a cranky ship’s doctor. The triangular dynamic that let the writers explore the duality of humanity was gone.
But worse was yet to come.
As I said, James Kirk was Star Trek. And as the series progressed, we came to understand who Kirk was. He was superman, but not because he was stronger or faster or smarter than everyone else, but because he made great decisions. He was wise and moral and brave and ultra-capable. Kirk wasn’t inherently perfect, but he was a man who could overcome his own worst instincts and his flaws, who could put aside his ego, and who could learn from his own mistakes. Thus, he never made decisions for the wrong reasons. Essentially, he was each of us at our best.
But that’s not the Jim Kirk of TMP. The Jim Kirk of TMP was arrogant, petty and insecure. He coveted the Enterprise so badly he abused his power to steal it from its commander. Further to create tension on this point, the filmmakers invented the ludicrous idea that somehow Kirk wasn’t familiar with the way this ship worked, which gave Commander Decker a basis with which he could fight back. Not only is this nonsense, but it leads to one of the most embarrassing scenes in Star Trek when Kirk cowers helplessly in his command chair like some science fiction version of Captain Queeg as Decker saves the ship from his folly. Kirk then retaliates against Decker to satisfy his ego and loses the respect of everyone around him. The Jim Kirk from the series simply would be incapable of such behavior. . . and yet there it is on film, leaving a bad taste in your mouth.
This is why I hated this film. This wasn’t STAR TREK: The Motion Picture, it was The Motionless, Lifeless Star Trek Imagery Picture. It gutted everything good about Star Trek and replaced it with pointless special effects and characters sitting around waiting for the end of the movie. There are no dramatic decisions, no tests of will or conscience. In fact, there's little for Kirk to do. Even the love interest gets tied to the Decker character rather than Kirk for some reason.
Star Trek was a morality play, but it was also a show that looked to the future out beyond our little world. This was a show about people who went to other planets because they could. They weren’t flying between federation planets on a huge cruise ship cataloging space farts... sorry, gaseous anomalies, as the Next Generation crew did, and they weren’t out there engaged in geopolitics as the later films did. They were explorers. They were Columbus, Magellan and Lewis and Clark and Li Quan of Mars, and they wanted to see what was out there in the universe.
TMP captures that spirit. Sure, they went to stop a threat to Earth. But once they got there, the old explorer’s instincts kicked in and they wanted to see what was there. They didn’t just want to save the Earth, they wanted to know what V’Ger was. And when they got there, they used their wits to solve the puzzle they found. None of the later films did this -- they were all action films. This was science fiction.
I respect that.
Little in science fiction today contains any sense of adventure, and I miss that. Almost all of it is action films or dramas set in space. I honestly can’t think of the last show or film about a small group of intrepid explorers going to the stars to see what’s out there. . . going boldly where no man has gone before.
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** spoiler alert**
Let's list what TMP did wrong in order of increasing importance. This isn’t going to be pretty.
● The Uniforms: People hated the uniforms; they called them pajamas. I can see that. They aren’t very science fictiony, they’re too casual, and compared to the more Napoleonic dress uniforms of the later films they are way too dull. But I actually don’t hate them. I think they’re a sensible evolution from the series, and I particularly like the away uniforms being a throw back to the pilot episode The Cage.
● The Klingons: The Klingons don’t bother me per se. In fact, I thought they were pretty cool. But it’s poor judgment to so totally change the Klingons’ appearance and then only use them for the first two minutes of the film. If you’re going to radically change an icon of a beloved series, you should have a point.
● Sloppy Filmmaking: Now it gets worse. The film was directed by Robert Wise, who has impressive credentials (Andromeda Strain, West Side Story, Run Silent Run Deep), and yet the film was beset by sloppy filmmaking. The pace was so slow people called it “The Motionless Picture.” The story was stolen from an old episode ("The Changeling"). Unfinished sets appear in one scene. And much of it made no sense, e.g. in the opening scene, Starfleet taps into the Klingons’ view screens to watch the battle (which makes no sense technically) and not only gets images the Klingon's couldn't get, but also gets images after the Klingon ship is entirely destroyed, all of which immediately strikes fans as impossible. And how is it that assembling the Enterprise’s transporters and warp drive can be so difficult? These technologies are as mundane as cars or elevators today. . . they're frik'n plug and play! Yet all of Starfleet couldn’t figure out how to turn on the ship’s engines? Each of these moments and more was evidence the filmmakers didn’t think things through and assumed fans wouldn’t notice or care.
● The Vulcans: The Vulcans in the series had suppressed emotion and built a scientific, diplomatic society based on pure logic. But the film replaces that with mysticism. Hence, Spock goes from being computer-like to being a monk and in the process is robbed of the uniqueness of his character as he gets turned into something we’ve seen in dozens of other films. Moreover, this ruined the character dynamic, as I'm about to explain.
● The Characters: Now we come to the core of the problem. Star Trek IS James T. Kirk. The show was set up as a series of adventures and morality tales involving Kirk. Helping him were Dr. Leonard McCoy and Spock. They were his friends and his lieutenants, but they also represented the dual aspects of Kirk’s judgment. Spock represented pure logic. He analyzed everything with reason and he encouraged Kirk to make decisions without emotion. Dr. McCoy represented pure emotion. He urged Kirk to feel his way through decisions. Spock and McCoy fought each other constantly because they represent diametrically opposed forces. Kirk was the battleground. He had to choose between his friends while simultaneously navigating the duality of all decisions. This created an incredibly strong character dynamic because it meant each episode came with built in drama and it allowed the series to explore the decision process itself, where drama truly lies.
TMP tossed this out. When they changed the Vulcans, they took away Spock’s personality. Rather than being a creature of logic, he became a creature of calm who would no longer spar with McCoy as he had done. Instead of being one half of Kirk’s conscience, Spock instead became a monk who hands out sage advice. And since Spock no longer fought McCoy for Kirk’s soul, McCoy wasn’t needed anymore. So McCoy went from being the voice of passion and emotion to just being a cranky ship’s doctor. The triangular dynamic that let the writers explore the duality of humanity was gone.
But worse was yet to come.
As I said, James Kirk was Star Trek. And as the series progressed, we came to understand who Kirk was. He was superman, but not because he was stronger or faster or smarter than everyone else, but because he made great decisions. He was wise and moral and brave and ultra-capable. Kirk wasn’t inherently perfect, but he was a man who could overcome his own worst instincts and his flaws, who could put aside his ego, and who could learn from his own mistakes. Thus, he never made decisions for the wrong reasons. Essentially, he was each of us at our best.
But that’s not the Jim Kirk of TMP. The Jim Kirk of TMP was arrogant, petty and insecure. He coveted the Enterprise so badly he abused his power to steal it from its commander. Further to create tension on this point, the filmmakers invented the ludicrous idea that somehow Kirk wasn’t familiar with the way this ship worked, which gave Commander Decker a basis with which he could fight back. Not only is this nonsense, but it leads to one of the most embarrassing scenes in Star Trek when Kirk cowers helplessly in his command chair like some science fiction version of Captain Queeg as Decker saves the ship from his folly. Kirk then retaliates against Decker to satisfy his ego and loses the respect of everyone around him. The Jim Kirk from the series simply would be incapable of such behavior. . . and yet there it is on film, leaving a bad taste in your mouth.
This is why I hated this film. This wasn’t STAR TREK: The Motion Picture, it was The Motionless, Lifeless Star Trek Imagery Picture. It gutted everything good about Star Trek and replaced it with pointless special effects and characters sitting around waiting for the end of the movie. There are no dramatic decisions, no tests of will or conscience. In fact, there's little for Kirk to do. Even the love interest gets tied to the Decker character rather than Kirk for some reason.
But. . .But I’ve slowly changed my mind over time. I don’t retract anything above, but I’ve found a saving grace in this film, and it’s one I didn’t find until I realized why the other Star Trek films were all so hard for me to like. Sure, those films are better made and some of them are quite exciting. . . but they all feel hollow. What they're missing, which TMP has, is a sense of adventure.
Star Trek was a morality play, but it was also a show that looked to the future out beyond our little world. This was a show about people who went to other planets because they could. They weren’t flying between federation planets on a huge cruise ship cataloging space farts... sorry, gaseous anomalies, as the Next Generation crew did, and they weren’t out there engaged in geopolitics as the later films did. They were explorers. They were Columbus, Magellan and Lewis and Clark and Li Quan of Mars, and they wanted to see what was out there in the universe.
TMP captures that spirit. Sure, they went to stop a threat to Earth. But once they got there, the old explorer’s instincts kicked in and they wanted to see what was there. They didn’t just want to save the Earth, they wanted to know what V’Ger was. And when they got there, they used their wits to solve the puzzle they found. None of the later films did this -- they were all action films. This was science fiction.
I respect that.
Little in science fiction today contains any sense of adventure, and I miss that. Almost all of it is action films or dramas set in space. I honestly can’t think of the last show or film about a small group of intrepid explorers going to the stars to see what’s out there. . . going boldly where no man has gone before.