TMP an attempt to revise Star Trek back to 'The Cage' style?

[David cgc]

This is Richard Schickel's review of TMP from the December 17, 1979 issue of Time magazine. He seems quite bummed-out that he didn't get another Star Wars-type movie. The part about "weirdos" is downright hilarious.

Well, I'm never going to complain about overblown complaints of "superhero-fatigue" again. This is just a small taste of the endless tedium of every comic-book movie being docked for not being exactly like X-Men.

The "weirdos" bit is just bizarre. How can you have lost that much interest thirty seconds into a movie? There's a big puffly blue thing and a little pointy green thing, and the camera gets closer to the green thing... and closer... and closer... and then there are some weirdos. Sure, okay, they're probably in the big blue puffy thing. And it's just a weird coincidence that every time they get all shouty, they're either reacting to the big blue thing, or anticipating the little green things doing something. This is, like, editing 101. It's like that infamous A.V. Club 30 Rock review (the writer missed several key conversations, apparently, and thought a character was given amphetamines hidden in jelly beans to keep him on-task; actually, the jelly beans were just to get his mouth moving while someone else spoke for him, a la Mr. Ed).

I'm tempted to see if there are any other winners in Schickel's oeuvre. Maybe a movie set in New York that he assumed took place under the sea, since there was a river in the establishing shot.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

How could some of those film critics not be in awe over the years long footage of miniature spaceships and people gawking at monitors?

 

[GNDN18]

How could some of those film critics not be in awe over the years long footage of miniature spaceships and people gawking at monitors?

The main viewer was a blue screen.

That’s some acting going on there.

 

[mb22]

It is a purely mechanical movie that is no more dazzling to the eye than a nighttime landing at Kennedy airport.

After reading that review, I used to hum the TMP theme every time I saw a lit up plane in the sky at night.

 

[Tallguy]

It is a purely mechanical movie that is no more dazzling to the eye than a nighttime landing at Kennedy airport.

After reading that review, I used to hum the TMP theme every time I saw a lit up plane in the sky at night.

See, I think nighttime landing are pretty gorram dazzling. These reviews are great. I mean I remember it all pretty well, but it lends some context for the people that weren't there. (Star Trek IV reviews are fun to read to.) A big part of this is that Star Trek was not the set in stone INSTITUTION that it is now. There was equal parts amazement that a movie was happening mixed with "Isn't this thing going away yet?!?"

 

[TrickyDickie]

(Star Trek IV reviews are fun to read to.)

I remember, very well, the title that Richard Corliss, of Time magazine, gave to his review of TVH:

The Over-The-Hill Gang Rides Again

So, in my mind, the spelling became 'Korliss'.

Yup, Klingon. Done. Next?

 

[Tallguy]

Back to the original topic, if I'm reading my Star Trek lore correctly, Roddenberry was against the lighter features of Star Trek from pretty much the get go, wasn't he? I gather he and Gene Coon were at odds about this. And the story goes (I don't know if it's true or not) that TOS season 3 was meant to be returning to a more "formal" Star Trek as well (as much as Roddenberry had a hand in it).

TMP from a writing and story style perspective TMP is fairly pure Roddenberry. It tries to be lofty, is pretty grim, it's not very good at humor.

Then Nick Meyer comes along with a (relatively) unbiased look at Star Trek, taking it at face value. He's not looking at what was MEANT, he's looking at what was DONE. Meyer got / gets some flack because he came to some different conclusions just watching the episodes that the Great Bird did. But they're the same conclusions that most people who just watched the show and then got on with their lives came to. Which is why a lot of people (viewers and reviewers alike) came away from Wrath of Khan thinking (not wrongly) that TWOK just FELT a lot more like overall Star Trek than TMP did. Because all Meyer "knew" less about Star Trek than Roddenberry did.

It's hard to argue that both times GR got his hands on Trek that he tried to pull it "back to basics" as he saw it. (I guess TAS would be an exception here.) And that both times the audience was less than crazy about it and it took other hands to pull it "back to Star Trek" at which point it took on more critical and audience success.

Please keep in mind that I adore TMP. But I also adore TWOK. I think "Ultimate Star Trek" is both.

 

[TrickyDickie]

In some ways, TMP and TWOK are opposite sides of the pendulum swing.

Some criticize TMP for not having enough "action".

Some criticize TWOK for not having enough thought-provoking plot.

When you really think about it, Generations is almost a blending of those two stories....though it could have been handled much better, in my opinion.

Soran was able to do what Khan couldn't. And the manner of it has left a sour taste in fandom for almost 25 years.

 

[FormerLurker]

Star Trek IV reviews are fun to read to.

What do you read to them?

 

[Tallguy]

What do you read to them?

TFF Reviews, of course.

 

[Maurice]

I remember reading these reviews at the time. Notice that Canby's review was published on December 8, not 7. Paramount didn't have advance critic screenings for TMP, a sign of anticipation of poor reviews.

That's because the movie wasn't ready for any previews. They basically shipped a still-wet print with Robert Wise to the premier in D.C. a few days before the release. They barely got the prints to the theaters to comply with their contracted release date.

 

[TrickyDickie]

That's because the movie wasn't ready for any previews. They basically shipped a still-wet print with Robert Wise to the premier in D.C. a few days before the release. They barely got the prints to the theaters to comply with their contracted release date.

When Roger Ebert talks about "early reviews" here, what kind of time frame is he referring to? :

"Some of the early reviews seemed pretty blase, as if the critics didn't allow themselves to relish the film before racing out to pigeonhole it."

 

[Maurice]

When Roger Ebert talks about "early reviews" here, what kind of time frame is he referring to? :

"Some of the early reviews seemed pretty blase, as if the critics didn't allow themselves to relish the film before racing out to pigeonhole it."

I perhaps should have said "traditional press previews". I have no idea, and we can't ask Ebert, but "early" could mean critics who saw the premier or perhaps there were a few screenings in the day or two before the film opened, but it couldn't have been much before given the circumstances.

 

[TrickyDickie]

perhaps there were a few screenings in the day or two before the film opened, but it couldn't have been much before given the circumstances.

That's what I'm thinking....

 

[mos6507]

When Roger Ebert talks about "early reviews" here, what kind of time frame is he referring to? :
"Some of the early reviews seemed pretty blase, as if the critics didn't allow themselves to relish the film before racing out to pigeonhole it."

Not sure about the average age of posters on this forum but I'm of the age that I was 9 when TMP came out and then eased into my teen years with the rest of the TOS movies. So the TOS movies were "my" Star Trek. Since this was mostly before TNG came out, being a Trek fan then meant watching TOS reruns and reading a lot of ancillary material and keeping up-to-date on the movies during and after production. You know, reading Starlog, watching Entertainment Tonight, Siskel & Ebert, etc...

One thing I distinctly recall from TMP onwards was a very ageist snark aimed at the actors. Even though the TOS films tackled aging, there was the continued open question of whether it was appropriate to have actors of this age bracket helm popcorn movies or to ask them to occasionally swashbuckle (like Kirk finally does in Trek III) or flirt (like in Trek IV). There is often a call for the cast to finally hang up their spurs. There's also a suggestion that the films really only appeal to overly-sentimental Trekkies and that they simply can't crossover beyond that. It really took until Trek IV before that myth was fully dispelled. (Trek II did well but was largely dwarfed by other films in 1982 like Poltergeist and E.T.)

Somewhere along the way, probably due to the proliferation of non-TOS Trek on TV, the public perception of Trek shifted away from it being just a literal continuation of TOS fandom and more of an evergreen franchise that could go off in different directions. When that happened, it was possible to look back on the TOS films in a different light. The TOS films acted as a successful bridge between TOS and the explosion of TNG-era Trek on TV.

Even reviewers today who don't particularly like Trek now need to afford it a certain level of respect due to its longevity and the proliferation of product. That was simply not the case back when the first few Trek films were coming out. They were really pushing upstream to win respect beyond the core fanbase and that's reflected in those dismissive reviews.

 

[johnnybear]

For instance, in the pilot movie of The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin was a civilian astronaut and he was forced to work as an agent for the ruthless government agent Oliver Spencer (Darren McGavin) as the price for his bionics, but in the TV series (produced by Harve Bennett), he was an Air Force colonel who was given his bionics by Oscar Goldman and worked for him willingly. Also, when they revisited his origin story in the episode "The Seven Million Dollar Man," they replaced his love interest from the pilot movie, the nurse who'd tended to him through his bionic surgery and recovery, with a completely different character and actress. (Plus the second bionic man introduced in that episode was Barney Miller there and Barney Hiller in his return appearance, because the sitcom Barney Miller premiered in the interim.) And then there were all the times they rewrote Steve's backstory to fit in new long-lost romantic interests, notably Jaime Sommers.

.

I've always thought The Seven Million Dollar Man to be the best episode of that series, Christopher! But I do remember being somewhat annoyed that Barney Miller's name was changed just to not annoy the producers of that other show even if they had the name first! Plus I like to think that Barney's girlfriend was probably Steve's nurse after the first one (played by Barbara Anderson) left his side! The other inconsistencies like Oliver Spencer and Oscar Goldman I can only think of being that Spencer was taken off the project or that Goldman was behind it from the start but not seen! Comments made by Dr.Bacon in Population:Zero mention Goldman wanting to be the first to build a Bionic Man years ago so it could be true! Not sure about Steve's back story to include Jaime Sommers though?
JB

 

[FormerLurker]

Jaime Sommers (possibly Somers) was Steve's childhood sweetheart from Ojai, California.

 

[Galileo7]

I liked both "The Cage" and TMP, so I guess for this one film it worked.