Star Trek: TMP questions and observations

^^^That can't be right because there are only tests on the DE, and there are tons of photos of Shatner an Nimoy in the various trench and memory wall sets.

 

Three possible explanations:

1: There wasn't enough money/resources/interest on the DE project to pull out the raw dailies of the Memory Wall sequence and try to put it together into a finished scene. That's all you would've had to work with, after all - no special effects, no sound fx/music/ADR, not even color correction.
2: Abel & Associates had the Memory Wall sequence when they were fired from TMP, and either they or Paramount destroyed the footage when the "Spock Walk" was decided on instead.
3: Gene Roddenberry chopped up and sold piecemeal all surviving prints of the Memory Wall sequence to get a little bonus money on the side from TMP. (Somebody here had part of that chopped-up footage and was restoring it, though I've heard nothing of it since.)

Whatever it was, the more accurate statement would be "very little surviving footage."

 

I've seen stills of the Memory Wall and I did NOT care for it, whatsoever. I truly hope that whole sequence disappeared. And I certainly would not put it past GR to try to make a few bucks off the surviving footage, some way. It's always interesting to me, to find out later what "might have been," and ended up in the movie that somebody in charge wanted to have in there. In this case, the Memory Wall looks and seems very odd. Spock's fly by through V'ger always kind of bugged me, when he saw V'ger's "home planet" and knew what it was, right away. He even knew what the inhabitants were like and ... and everything! And all from what appears to be thousands of miles away from it all. But whatever. I forgive it, because anything that showcases the art of Syd Mead and his ilk is worth sticking around for. I just chalk it up to Spock's telekenetic connection with V'ger, itself.

 

A sequence as complicated as the Memory Wall, with all the preparation needed for the wire work and such, would've probably taken a fair number of days to film, so just because there are photos from the sequence, that doesn't mean the entire thing was filmed. My impression is that they began filming it but were unsatisfied with the results and thus abandoned it.

 

There are a number of photos from the unfinished sequence which suggest much more than a partial shoot. I'm pretty confident that the live action shoot for it was completed and only then abandoned.

Does the Making of TMP book -- flawed as it is -- weigh in on this?

 

I remember an interview with Douglas Trumbull where he remarked he watched the rough cut of the Memory Wall sequence and told Bob Wise that it was totally unusable. I'm pretty sure he wasn't hired for the film until some time around when they finished the rough cut of the film in February or March '79. So, it sounds to me as if it was actually finished, but the extensive effects work needed made it impractical to finish by the December release date. Had they pushed it back to summer 1980, I think it could've been done.

 

Hmm, I guess I misinterpreted, then.

 

Ok, admittedly I am way, way late to this particular party, but I've wondered for years just what is up with this 'memory wall' stuff.

What was this scene supposed to accomplish? Why is it referred to as the 'memory wall' in the first place? The most I've gotten out of stills I've seen is Kirk and Spock just floating around this weird place, and of Kirk being covered with crystals, not too unlike Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage.

Is there a purposeful narrative to it? No one ever seems to discuss that aspect!

 

The Memory Wall sequence basically covered the same expositional ground as the Spock Walk/Ilia-crystal meld sequence, but Kirk and Spock were both on the spacewalk together and the setting was very different. You can read the script and see images from the sequence here:

http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/illustrated-script-of-the-memory-wall-sequence/

Once it was abandoned, the Spock Walk scene was assembled to deliver the same information, just in monologue in Spock's log entry rather than through dialogue between Kirk and Spock.

The Marvel Comics adaptation of TMP features a version that's mostly based on the 2-man Memory Wall version, but ends with the giant Ilia image and Spock melding with the crystal as in the Spock Walk version.

 

Trumbull said it would blow the entire effects budget to try to salvage the spacewalk.

 

1) Thank you, Christopher, that is a very helpful and informative link!

2) Curse you, Christopher, for reminding me of Marvel's Star Trek series from the period!

(Seriously, I know that licensing restrictions had a lot to do with that.)

 

I think there was a website that had a post here on Trekbbs that declared they had some footage of the memory wall scene, but after months and months of delay, they basically disappeared.

 

You mean alchemist from StarTrekHistory.com (which was in this thread). After the These Are the Voyages book fiasco I think we can forget about those guys releasing material they've restored for fear that someone will once again just use it without asking.

 

New questions…yay!

1. Why did they replace Xon with Commander Sonak as the person that could never replace Spock and thus would not get to be science officer? Why change the character's name? For that matter, why not let David Gutreaux keep the role since both Sonak and Cmdr Branch die in the film? Were they possibly saving the character for future use?

2. Does anyone else think that Kirk's space walk was kind of…odd to say the least? What exactly was he hoping to do out there? He wasn't even wearing a thruster suit.

3. One wonders if the crew got any sleep while in the cloud given that it took more than a day for them and the cloud to reach Earth.

 

As I recall from some interview with David Gautreaux, who was cast as Xon, Roddenberry assured him they'd have a place for Xon in the movie after the brought Spock back, but he didn't want to "Carry Spock's luggage" or words to that effect. How true this is I can't say.

 

Based on Kirk's log entries, we can infer that several hours elapsed between various scenes, so it's likely the crew rested during those times. OTOH, it's not unheard of for people in certain professions to remain awake for significant time stretches. I've been up for more than thirty hours without sleep several times for my job. The Enterprise was in the midst of an emergency mission with the highest of stakes, so I can believe that most of the senior staff didn't sleep during the mission.

--Sran

 

I'll give my take on a few of these:

3) Stupid. A plot contrivance. Even though space is vast, you'd think Starfleet ships would be deployed in a pattern that maximized coverage of Federation space. At warp speeds, even light years can be covered in hours with the right spacing.

4) I think the evidence is that the Klingons are within V'Ger's visual memory bank representation as well as Epsilon IX. So the same thing happened.

5) I think Wise wanted the DE to be the official version, despite that the original version was released on Bluray. I never watch the original version and consider the new one "canon".