Star Trek: The Motion Picture 40th Anniversary theatre release 2019.

That. Was. GLORIOUS.

First off, I could have gone to the theater and closed my eyes and it would have been worth the trip. The sound was amazing. Yes, it needs more background in some places but not nearly as heavily as the DE gave it.

But WOW, the visuals. We make some visually amazing movies today. But really, they don't make 'em like that anymore.

You know everyone (probably correctly) compares this movie to 2001. Watching it last night during the cloud fly through I thought about how much like Fantasia this movie is. I've also decided that the shot at around 01:12:00 of the teeny Enterprise flying off of the Intruder is just about my favorite shot in the movie. And no, there is no home screen that does that shot justice.

Someone said it above: If you haven't seen this on the big screen you haven't seen Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The friend I saw it with told me after the fact (because he wasn't sure until afterwards) that he'd never seen this before. This was his first time. How fun was that?

 

The way Kirk treated Decker bothers me. I mean this is a military organization and Kirk was pretty unprofessional here. When Decker was like "Just as you wanted the Enterprise, I want this", I could completely understand that point of view and I think Decker ended up getting the better end of that deal. He gets to be with the person he had a relationship with and they pretty much birthed a new lifeform. That sounds awesome.

 

The entire Kirk / Decker subplot is lifted almost verbatim from Gable / Lancaster in Run Silent, Run Deep directed by... Robert Wise!

 

Kirk here seems very believable to me. You don't become the youngest captain in Starfleet without ambition, and I can see him accepting an admiralty, then completely hating pushing papers. He may be callous in how he gets the Enterprise back, but he has enough justification that he can still sleep at night. Such is human nature.

 

I can understand being ambitious. I can't understand treating a member of your crew disrespectfully on numerous occasions.

 

Interesting thought though: if Decker had led the mission without Kirk would they still have succeeded? Spock still would have shown up, and I can't imagine Decker would not have accepted his assistance. They might have intercepted V'ger a little earlier due to not being stranded by Kirk's initial rush on uncertified engines. On the other hand would Decker have been too rash at the initial encounter and got them wiped out before they established communication?

 

There's a lot more about in Roddenberry's novelization. Kirk wasn't promoted entirely willingly. But he definitely hated it.

 

Kirk wasn’t above pulling rank in TOS, even on his closest friends. He very much views himself as the boss, and, ultimately, he is.

(Contrast that with Disco Pike’s near-endless tolerance for insubordination from Burnham. Kirk wouldn’t have let that fly.)

 

I would agree with Uhura -- the odds of coming back alive went way up when Kirk took over. It's not a mission for a greenhorn.

Kirk's motivation isn't entirely altruistic, but he's also not wrong, IMO.

 

I think with Pike it was a matter of stepping into the pile of shit Lorca had left behind. If he had stepped in barking orders and not giving them room to recover, he would have not gotten the results he needed. Pike seems at least a mission oriented as Kirk.

I don't think Kirk was wrong in TMP necessarily (apart from his inexperience with upgrades) but busting Decker down a rank seemed overly harsh.

 

Oh, it's totally a reboot. I don't buy the notion that every ST is 100 percent canon up until 2009 and that the Kelvin movies and CBS Trek are the sole violators of canon. First of all, Enterprise refit my @$$ (do I really need to elaborate further? Seriously?). Second, only about 50-66 percent of the TOS episodes have premises that are not too goofy or silly to conform to the Motion Pictureverse. And third, the Motion Pictureverse (and I don't include subsequent TOS movies II-VI here) seems to conform almost flawlessly with the Next Generationverse or Berman Trekverse, which is itself definitely a reboot. And I think it's very fair to say that with TMP, early TNG (say up to 1/4th way through Season 3) and VERY early TOS ('The Cage', 'WNMHGB', 'Corbomite' and 'Mudd's Women') you're seeing Roddenberry's version of ST unfiltered.

I don't think it justifies Kirk's portrayal in the movie though. I don't know if Gene was resentful that his characters evolved more in spite of him than because of him (I think he kind of was), but mostly I think he was tone-deaf to their development and chemistry. Which is why TMP is an awkwardly tone-deaf movie from a character standpoint. But Kirk is effectively ending somebody's career for life. There's no real justification for that, it's as unforgivable as Picard's "Fight hand to hand if you have to!" in First Contact (which was cause for desertion in my unpatriotic opinion). Whatever Kirk's arc in the movie, I can't imagine anybody seriously intended him to be portrayed as an @$$ who sacrifices another captain's career in Starfleet. I think it's more likely Roddenberry, Wise and Livingston just didn't fully consider the implications of what Kirk is doing to Decker.

 

This seems like a dramatic reading to me. Is there anything in the movie to suggest the reduction is other than temporary? I have always taken it that Kirk assumes command like Matt Decker did in "Doomsday Machine." At no point did I think Kirk wouldn't resume command, or that his career was finished, even if the crazed commodore hadn't died.

I think Kirk even tells Will Decker that it's a "temporary reduction," doesn't he? And didn't Kirk get him the job in the first place?

Admittedly, the decision to bust him in rank looks weird after the subsequent TOS movies where everyone and their brother is a captain. But I don't know that TMP implies that the situation is any more than it appears -- Kirk assuming the captaincy of the Enterprise.

 

Could the movie work if Kirk was already in command of the Enterprise, as a Commodore, with Decker as his "Number One"? I mean, with the Enterprise as Starfleet's flagship?

 

Kirk says it's a temporary grade reduction, and I think he means it that way. But in real life, missing that promotion or that commission (as in, having it taken from you at the last minute) is a career-defining moment that never goes away. It's the moment when you switch companies, violating any employment-exclusivivity agreements if necessary (because loyalty no longer matters), and just try to salvage whatever you can of yourself.

 

I don't think they lost time by attempting warp without the engines being properly balanced. They just came close to losing the ship.

But unquestionably, I think Kirk was the better commander in this situation than Decker. We have only Kirk's intuition to say whether approaching Vger with shields up would've gotten then wiped out. Maybe it wouldn't have. But it's clear they used up all the time they had left in attempting to make contact with Vger. Debating whether it was "unwarranted" to continue through the cloud and attempt contact would have wasted what time they had. And I don't think Decker could have used the poker-faced stalling tactics that finally brought them face-to-face with Vger at the end (though he was sharp enough to play along with them).

 

I've always taken it as more of a temporary delay in the promotion. Admittedly, the end of the movie is a little odd, with Kirk staying in the command chair unquestioned, but it seems to me that the initial intent is that Kirk would take command for this one mission, with Decker resuming command afterward. The only thing that keeps that from happening is Decker's decision to join that windswept sparkle in the sky. Do you read it differently?

 

I think Kirk should have just been assigned, as someone else said, rather than pushing for command in this instance. Then all of Kirk's moments of self doubt, his getting lost in the corridor and making bad decisions during the wormhole sequence, as well as all of his conflicts with Decker and McCoy, could still have played out mostly the same way they did.

 

I think TNG's 'Best of Both Worlds' is more realistic in acknowledging what happens to you if you miss the chance to advance yourself. (And so of course that episode resolves as frankly unbelievably as TMP does, and Starfleet holds the command chair open for Riker another twelve years before he takes it).

 

They were out of warp with repairs after the wormhole incident for some time. Whether that ultimately delayed them or not, vs Decker's advise of getting it right and heading out, hard to say. The fact is Kirk nearly got them killed attempting it, overriding his own engineer's concerns, and if Decker had not jumped in at the last minute, Kirk would have finished the job. Doing something stupid and succeeding always takes the stain away, though.

The reduction in grade, I agree, was a huge blow to Decker's career. He could have simply been reassigned as XO WHILE kirk took the ship. It made no sense. To Decker's crew, he always would be the guy that got busted down to Commander. . You can't get that kind of face back. No wonder he opted to just go bang V'ger and make a new species.

Enterprise DID raise shields againt V'ger and it worked through one attack, but it was clear that it would not be possible a second time.

Kirk and Deckers just don't mix

 

Sure, they raised the shields once Vger went ahead with attacking them anyway. But that's a good point though, Vger would have attacked no matter what they did if they didn't reply to its greetings.

The need to intercept Vger as soon as possible, I think the situation just was what it was. Nobody was entirely wrong until Kirk tried to undress Decker for countering his orders, and ended up owing Decker a rather lame apology.