TMP Myths Debunked via Return to Tomorrow and Beyond

[Maurice]

I recently finished reading Preston Neal Jones's impressive and massive book Return to Tomorrow, The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the book dispelled quite a bit of conventional wisdom and myth about the film's production and its history. I thought it would be fun to talk about some of what this and other first-hand accounts tell us about what happened.

As a for instance: the sound mix. It's often claimed that there wasn't time to do a proper sound mix or use all the sound effects in the film. But from reading the book, this doesn't seem to have been the case.

...we weren't able to carry the sound effects anywhere near as brightly or heavily as we would have liked to, as will be evidenced on the 70mm, if and when that comes it [it never did], simply because the Dolby Optical system will only hold so much dynamic information and we favored the music over the sound effects. That was Bob's choice and I think that was probably the correct one.

But we went for a very spartan approach to the sound. I didn't think it would be appropriate to have all kinds of little beeps and tweets and little business up on the bridge, as has been done before, because that just didn't seem terribly modern to me. It was very cluttered and it may have served well on TV, but on the big screen it just seemed unnecessarily busy, especially since we had all these visuals. Why would these people have all these extraneous beeps, clicks, pops, whistles and doo-dahs going on if they were so advanced?

—Tod Ramsay, Editor (p.564)

So, if anything, the mix was never ideal due to the Dolby limitations, and perhaps some sound effects were dialed down or out in favor of the music but overall the relative lack of pervasive sound effects, especially on the bridge, was a deliberate creative choice.

Anyone else reading the book find some fun facts they want to share/discuss?

 

[HaplessCrewman]

Interesting! I haven't bought the book and am still on the fence about it.

Curious that TMP's editor would not choose to follow Star Wars' immersive sound design style and continue in a sound aesthetic more in line with 70s cinema. Then again, they were not really trying to ape Star Wars.

Do they talk much about the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

 

[Harvey]

This doesn't quite debunk a familiar myth, but it does cast a little doubt on it. Here's Nichelle Nichols recounting how she decided to leave Star Trek (the television series) because she wasn't getting enough to do as an actor, and how someone talked her into staying:

There are eight stars on that show, and they still have not realized that they are losing a tremendous bet, they're wasting tremendous talent. They went out and got the best actors and the most beautiful people in the world to be that cast, and then they wasted us. In that way, to be quite honest, they missed the boat with the motion picture.

This was always a problem, and I almost quit the TV show at one point over it. It was in the third year and I couldn't stand it any longer. Gene said to me, "I don't know why I'm asking you to reconsider, you have every right to feel as you do..." I said, Gene -- with all my love and greatest respect, I would like to inform this company that I am not a communications officer aboard a starship in the Federation, I'm an actor. And it is essential to me to perform and function as an actor, and not just keep pushing buttons and saying, 'hailing frequencies open,' and enjoying a nice fat check at the end of the week. And if this is what it continues to be...I see beautiful scripts coming in, and then they're cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, and I'm cut down to nothing. And I'm not the only one, you know. Where is the Uhura story? Where is the Sulu story? I mean, one out of 13 damn episodes, for Christ's sake, let's do it."

Unfortunately, our show was under a hammer. The networks could say, "This can't go," and "That can't go," and, you know, "A woman can't take over the ship," and da-da-da...it was very frustrating, and it was very painful. But, the larger thing that was happening was so beautiful that when Gene said, "I don't know why I'm asking you to stay one more season before you make up your mind, but I just feel something. There is an undercurrent I feel about this show, it's not just an ordinary show. Stay..." Well, once Gene Roddenberry speaks, you wind up saying, "Why did I just sign this contract?" You've got to do it. I had complete faith in Gene, and, obviously, he was quite right. He had no way of knowing, he was in turmoil himself. Because his hands were being tied a great deal by the networks and the studio and all the various inputs about what should and should not be on the air. I think they just didn't know what they had. That marvelous thing they had there, nobody knew -- you could only feel.

Nichelle Nichols, Actress (p. 252-53)​

Later on, of course, Nichols would claim that Martin Luther King, Jr. talked her out of quitting Star Trek, and that he did so after the first season in 1967.

 

[Christopher]

^Couldn't they both be true? Maybe she considered quitting twice and was talked out of it twice. Although she does say she considered quitting "at one point" rather than twice; and you'd think the King story, if true, would be the one she'd default to if she were going to pick just one.

 

[Vger23]

Just found my first one.

Page 122. Fred Philips debunks the common belief that the cast was heavily made-up to hide the fact that they were 10 years older.

 

[Christopher]

^I've actually never heard that belief.

 

[Vger23]

^I've actually never heard that belief.

I can't remember where or when, but I remember reading more than one unflattering review of the film criticizing the fact that the movie does everything possible, including tons of makeup tricks, to try to hide the fact that the cast was older.

It may have actually been a review for Star Trek II, now that I think about it. I believe the context was acknowledging that TWOK had done such a good job incorporating the fact that the cast had aged into the plot while TMP faile in that area.

 

[Harvey]

^Couldn't they both be true? Maybe she considered quitting twice and was talked out of it twice. Although she does say she considered quitting "at one point" rather than twice; and you'd think the King story, if true, would be the one she'd default to if she were going to pick just one.

Absolutely. That's why I said...

This doesn't quite debunk a familiar myth, but it does cast a little doubt on it.

 

[FormerLurker]

^Couldn't they both be true? Maybe she considered quitting twice and was talked out of it twice. Although she does say she considered quitting "at one point" rather than twice; and you'd think the King story, if true, would be the one she'd default to if she were going to pick just one.

Absolutely. That's why I said...

This doesn't quite debunk a familiar myth, but it does cast a little doubt on it.

It's all about context, really. I'm willing to accept the idea that both are true based on that.

On the one hand, here she says she was wanting out because she wasn't finding the scripts challenging for her character anymore, alluding to the common complaint about TMP that is was long on effects and short on story and characterization. On the other hand, she often describes the meeting with MLK Jr. as being about how she felt that ST was just a TV show, and while it gave her a credit on her resume, she wanted to do something else. The context behind each story is very different, even though the events she describes are similar.

 

[Maurice]

Interesting! I haven't bought the book and am still on the fence about it.

Curious that TMP's editor would not choose to follow Star Wars' immersive sound design style and continue in a sound aesthetic more in line with 70s cinema. Then again, they were not really trying to ape Star Wars.

Do they talk much about the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

I think you're missing something. Outside of the scenes where they're using a computer or in a firefight or whatnot, a lot of the sound work in Star Wars is actually very subtle. There's nothing as dense as the TOS bridge ambience, even in the Death Star control rooms.

There's not much mention of 2001 in the book at all.

 

[Nightowl1701]

Just found my first one.

Page 122. Fred Philips debunks the common belief that the cast was heavily made-up to hide the fact that they were 10 years older.

I wonder how much of that myth came about because of the film's subsequent appearances on low-res TV and VHS/RCA SelectaVision, combined with the 'vaseline-smeared' Split-Diaplor lens Wise liked to use. I mean, on the Blu-Ray there is no hiding the extra years (esp. on Nimoy and Doohan).

 

[Warped9]

Do they talk much about the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

There's not much mention of 2001 in the book at all.

I think the similarities between 2001 and TMP have long been way overblown to the point that many accepted it as fact that TMP was meant to be something of a 2001 wannabe. I don't think it ever was an idea to make TMP anything like 2001 other than being a serious minded approach to the subject matter.

2001 deals with a first contact with a truly alien intelligence with an A.I. whose programming is just too narrowly focused. The film was visually spectacular and devoid of any real sense of humanity and emotional content. It felt sterile and (from what I understand) this wasn't an accidental result on Kubrick's part.

TMP deals with a first contact with an alien intelligence and one that is also narrowly focused but due mostly to a lack of comprehension and context. Once it understood the truth it changed its behaviour. TMP didn't lack emotional content, but what content there was wasn't played up enough and (I think) in tandem with a somewhat muted colour pallette (to some extent) it conveyed the idea of somewhat sterile film. Compared to 2001 TMP is an emotional feast, but TMP could have used more character dynamic to flavour the spaces between the nice visual sequences. This flaw goes back to the script and Robert Wise's direction.

TMP wasn't trying to emulate 2001, but TMP's missteps led some to that conclusion rather than simply accept mistakes were made along the way. Part of the problem is solved with some editing by tightening up some of the prolonged visual f/x sequences, but it's not quite enough. The inside of the Enterprise needed a bit more colour (either the interior sets themselves or the uniforms) and the story needed a bit more action or character drama. You can re-edit after the fact, but you can't give the story another rewrite after the fact.



I missed the initial run of this book, but I'll make a point of ordering a copy when they announce availability for the second printing.

 

[Christopher]

I think the similarities between 2001 and TMP have long been way overblown to the point that many accepted it as fact that TMP was meant to be something of a 2001 wannabe. I don't think it ever was an idea to make TMP anything like 2001 other than being a serious minded approach to the subject matter.

Yeah... I think it's just that 2001 was the best-remembered example of a particular approach that was common in SF cinema in the '60s and '70s -- a more thoughtful, deliberately-paced type of film than what we've gotten used to since Star Wars put its stamp on the industry, often with a cool and emotionally detached sensibility or a sterile depiction of the future. TMP was a film in that same vein, but that doesn't mean it was specifically emulating that film. I think when we reference 2001, we're just using it as a conceptual shorthand for that particular style of moviemaking.

 

[Warped9]

I think the similarities between 2001 and TMP have long been way overblown to the point that many accepted it as fact that TMP was meant to be something of a 2001 wannabe. I don't think it ever was an idea to make TMP anything like 2001 other than being a serious minded approach to the subject matter.

Yeah... I think it's just that 2001 was the best-remembered example of a particular approach that was common in SF cinema in the '60s and '70s -- a more thoughtful, deliberately-paced type of film than what we've gotten used to since Star Wars put its stamp on the industry, often with a cool and emotionally detached sensibility or a sterile depiction of the future. TMP was a film in that same vein, but that doesn't mean it was specifically emulating that film. I think when we reference 2001, we're just using it as a conceptual shorthand for that particular style of moviemaking.

My point exactly. You convey two different ideas depending on how you say it. To say TMP is a 2001 wannabe conveys something distinctly different than saying TMP shares some similarities with 2001.

 

[Shon T'Hara]

I always thought the 2001 comparison was because people thought the endless V'ger flythrough was like the stargate sequence.

 

[Warped9]

I always thought the 2001 comparison was because people thought the endless V'ger flythrough was like the stargate sequence.

Perhaps. I do think that while the Vger flyover is conceptually interesting it's too dragged out in the film. There are a couple of shots that really convey the difference in scale between the Enterprise and Vger and extended visual sequences feel largely superfluous to that.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, what was explained when the DE came out was that the flyover sequence was always meant to be cut down; they did an initial edit with all of it included as a first step, and Wise intended to go through it and decide what parts could be dropped later, with Jerry Goldsmith intentionally writing a lot of repetitive phrases into the music so that it could be easily trimmed down. But because the film had to be rushed into theaters, they never got around to that final trimming. The DE version does shorten both the cloud sequence and the flyover sequence by a minute or two each.

I guess it remains to be seen whether this new book confirms that account. I haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

 

[Joe_Atari]

I recently finished reading Preston Neal Jones's impressive and massive book Return to Tomorrow, The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and the book dispelled quite a bit of conventional wisdom and myth about the film's production and its history. I thought it would be fun to talk about some of what this and other first-hand accounts tell us about what happened.

As a for instance: the sound mix. It's often claimed that there wasn't time to do a proper sound mix or use all the sound effects in the film. But from reading the book, this doesn't seem to have been the case.

...we weren't able to carry the sound effects anywhere near as brightly or heavily as we would have liked to, as will be evidenced on the 70mm, if and when that comes it [it never did], simply because the Dolby Optical system will only hold so much dynamic information and we favored the music over the sound effects. That was Bob's choice and I think that was probably the correct one.

But we went for a very spartan approach to the sound. I didn't think it would be appropriate to have all kinds of little beeps and tweets and little business up on the bridge, as has been done before, because that just didn't seem terribly modern to me. It was very cluttered and it may have served well on TV, but on the big screen it just seemed unnecessarily busy, especially since we had all these visuals. Why would these people have all these extraneous beeps, clicks, pops, whistles and doo-dahs going on if they were so advanced?

Tod Ramsay, Editor (p.564)​

So, if anything, the mix was never ideal due to the Dolby limitations, and perhaps some sound effects were dialed down or out in favor of the music but overall the relative lack of pervasive sound effects, especially on the bridge, was a deliberate creative choice.

Anyone else reading the book find some fun facts they want to share/discuss?

Gots to call you out on this; you should note that the "[it never did]" above (in reference to the existence of 70mm prints of TMP) was not part of the text on p. 564, so it should not have been included within the quote--parenthetically or otherwise--since it was not provided by Ramsay or Jones.

To this point, has it ever been conclusively determined that absolutely no 70mm blowups of TMP were done, even for international markets in 1980? I understand there was no time to strike them for the December 1979 release, and as recently as 2010 it was believed that at least one 70mm print existed at Paramount, which was to be used for the "Summer STAR TREK Simply 70 Spectacular" at the Royal Theater in West L.A. At the last minute a 70mm print could not be obtained so they used a battered print of the SLV instead. As I recall, the organizers of the event weren't told why the 70mm print was unavailable (it never existed, it was lost, damaged, etc.), but presumably it was listed in Paramount's inventory along with the 70mm prints actually screened (II-VI).

Since a 70mm release was obviously part of the plan (and quite commonplace back in the day), there should be documentation (or at least recollections from someone close to the situation) that the blowups were definitely and completely cancelled. Without that, what was industry practice at the time? Were 70mm prints of other films ever struck for international release only, or only when there was a corresponding domestic release?

 

[Indysolo]

70mm prints may have been struck at a later date, according to the research done on this page. It certainly didn't have them when it was released, and there is no conclusive evidence that they were made.

Neil

 

[Joe_Atari]

70mm prints may have been struck at a later date, according to the research done on this page. It certainly didn't have them when it was released, and there is no conclusive evidence that they were made.

Neil

Thanks Neil; yeah I've seen that site. What I like about it is that it takes the Coates "Wide Screen Movies" book with the appropriate grain of salt (a great read and my personal introduction to cinematographic processes, but sadly riddled with errors), but still acknowledges the research done for that book. I don't have my copy handy, but I'm pretty sure it lists a blowup for TMP (maybe just an assumption on the author's part), and from this site and the lack of domestic 70mm screenings in 1979 I assumed the 1982 screenings were leftover international prints. Since these could have been made in very limited quantities we may never know for sure if they were made or not, and if Paramount couldn't turn up one for the 2010 screening at the Royal, one may never be seen. For what it's worth, I've never seen "70mm" in any TMP advertising until then either. Sure would be nice to hear that sound mix though...