Spoilers TOS: Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry Review Thread

[Tallguy]

Enough of the love instructors. Let's talk about the standard contract marriages. Going from memory (because the book is too far away) it sounds like you get seriously hitched but you get an out every x number of years. (Was it two?)

Someone made the comment up thread that all the heavier world building stuff is up front and then the book gets to more straightforward plot in the last half. I could believe either way on that one, schedule or intentional pacing. The world that is built in the last half is Vejur itself and the film did a rather good job of doing that itself.

But everything else in the movie got crushed by time, why not the novel?

 

[Christopher]

Let's talk about the standard contract marriages. Going from memory (because the book is too far away) it sounds like you get seriously hitched but you get an out every x number of years. (Was it two?)

Sounds about right, since it had only been 2.8 years (per the novel) since the end of the 5-year mission, and Kirk's marriage to Lori had expired.

 

[The Wormhole]

I thought in the book it was said Kirk and Lori lived together for "the standard one year arrangement" or something similar.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Out of all the different printings, only the 1979 slipcased hardcover, limited to 500 copies, reads "This book is dedicated with love to Majel".


Star Trek: The Motion Picture slipcase dedication to Majel by Ian McLean, on Flickr

 

[Tallguy]

*sniff*

 

[PhotoBoy]

Does anyone know when Roddenberry wrote the novelisation to TMP? I’ve just finished another one of my occasional re-reads of it and I noticed how bare-bones the final section is compared to the rest of the novel. Things like Chekov’s line about an oxygen/gravity envelope forming are missing but Spock mentions they were promised oxygen/gravity but I can’t see where that happened. Some characters have lines that were spoken by someone else in the final film too.

I’m just wondering if Roddenberry was working with an unfinished script when he wrote the ending or if he was just hurrying to meet his deadline and changed things to suit (or both)! It’s a fascinating book at any rate, a bit like The Cage and TNG S1 it all feels very unfiltered where Roddenberry could put whatever he wanted in.

 

[David cgc]

They filmed the movie with an unfinished script, and the ending was particularly up-in-the-air until it was actually shot. One tidbit I remember is that they filmed the bridge scenes early, and after the shot the scene with the Voyager probe, the cast requested they set the bridge back up so they could reshoot the closing scene now that they knew what had actually happened while they were off the ship (which is the reason for the infamous goof where Spock and McCoy's jackets switch between shots; the final edit contains takes from both shoots, and they wore the wrong jackets during one of them).

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

I've been listening to the audiobook off and on. I forgot how juvenile and clumsy the prose is, as if written by a horny teenager.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Principal photography was completed almost a full year before the novelization came out, which hit the newsstands a couple weeks before the movie premiered.

Certain sequences were shot later, as late as mid-1979, such as the “Spock Walk” that replaced a discarded sequence where both Spock and Kirk penetrated Vejur. (Vejur gang bang!)

So, it’s unlikely Roddenberry didn’t have access to the script pages for the final scenes when he wrote the novelization. It does seem like Roddenberry slanted the novel to be what he thought the movie should be, so maybe he just didn’t like the final scripted version of those scenes, and wrote it how he wanted.

 

[Therin of Andor]

So, it’s unlikely Roddenberry didn’t have access to the script pages for the final scenes when he wrote the novelization. It does seem like Roddenberry slanted the novel to be what he thought the movie should be, so maybe he just didn’t like the final scripted version of those scenes, and wrote it how he wanted.

"The Making of TMP" and "Chekov's Enterprise" both mention GR getting close to his deadline on trying to finish the novelization and he was allowed to sequester himself off-lot (Palm Springs, IIRC?) to get it done. Which also meant the script pages, still being written daily, could not be as easily interfered with by the Executive Producer. Billy Van Zandt remembers Shatner and Nimoy constructing an ending together from their makeup chairs each morning. It must have been crazy. That's what you get for starting principal photography when the final third of the story has not been locked in. My copy of a "shooting script" has its last third as placeholder pages from "In Thy Image".

 

[Maurice]

There were pickups shot, too, on the bridge (one resulting in the famous Spock-Bones jacket switch) related to the ending, so it's possible some things changed as GR was writing.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Anyone have documentation on when Roddenberry’s deadline was for the TMP novelization? If it was 12 months before the book was released, then yeah, they were still writing the ending of the movie when the book went to the publisher. However, if it was 9 months or less, then they’d shot the ending by then (barring pick-up shots.)

The novelization has the final version of the Spock Walk, so the novelization couldn’t have been completed before that was scripted and shot, sometime in mid-1979, as I recall (I’m too lazy to look it up atm.) So, I believe Roddenberry had access to the ending as shot when he wrote the ending of the book. I chalk up the differences to artistic choices, rather than inability to get the final version of the pages.

 

[tomswift2002]

Anyone have documentation on when Roddenberry’s deadline was for the TMP novelization? If it was 12 months before the book was released, then yeah, they were still writing the ending of the movie when the book went to the publisher. However, if it was 9 months or less, then they’d shot the ending by then (barring pick-up shots.)

The novelization has the final version of the Spock Walk, so the novelization couldn’t have been completed before that was scripted and shot, sometime in mid-1979, as I recall (I’m too lazy to look it up atm.) So, I believe Roddenberry had access to the ending as shot when he wrote the ending of the book. I chalk up the differences to artistic choices, rather than inability to get the final version of the pages.

On one of the bonuses for the TMP Director’s Edition DVD, Robert Wise says that he was the one who took the still “wet” film reels to the theatre that TMP was debuted at (he also said that the film never had a final edit or sweetening and mix down, so the Theatrical version was, essentially a rough cut of the film). When you think of it, TMP was not even locked into a final cut until a day or two before it’s debut. Wise was even using the music to cover for the missing sound effects. So there may not have been a finalized third act script until 2 days before the premiere.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Anyone have documentation on when Roddenberry’s deadline was for the TMP novelization? If it was 12 months before the book was released, then yeah, they were still writing the ending of the movie when the book went to the publisher.

As mentioned, there is a timeline of sorts in the Sackett and Koenig books. Publishing timelines for novelizations are usually tighter than regular novels. GR was racing to get the first draft done, but there would have been more to do afterwards. And dialogue can and does change in the looping, of which there was a lot on TMP due to the whirring of the filmstrips running on all the bridge console monitors.

So there may not have been a finalized third act script until 2 days before the premiere.

It's a very pretty script. They ran out of colours of paper (such as goldenrod!) and had to rotate through the whole spectrum again.

 

[Kor]

Mechanical prose written by somebody who was used to writing screenplays and not prose fiction.
I did appreciate the effort to make human culture/society different from what we're used to.

Kor

 

[inflatabledalek]

In terms of the crunch, I was actually surprised listening to the audiobook that it was finished late enough to include the Spock Walk. I was really expecting and looking forward to a take on the Memory Wall (of which there seems to be hints as there is at least one mention of little probes flying about in V'Ger. I wonder if Roddenberry wrote a draft with that in and replaced it the same time he finally knew what the ending was going to be?).

I had read the book before, but with a long enough gap most of it was new to me.

The other big thing that surprised me was the book does properly resolves the Kirk suitability for command thing that gets kind of lost in the film... but in the strangest way.

In the book, the plan to get the Ilia probe in touch with her memories is first and foremost about fucking her. And as Kirk thinks himself to be The Best Fuck, he seriously wonders if he should do it instead of Decker.

Somehow, McCoy knows this internal struggle is going on and when Kirk doesn't do this he formally recognises Jim as Captain in his log because he's no longer competing with Decker.

Though as Decker's idea of foreplay is computer games and showing her pictures of the Enterprise, maybe Kirk would have done better.

 

[Christopher]

In terms of the crunch, I was actually surprised listening to the audiobook that it was finished late enough to include the Spock Walk. I was really expecting and looking forward to a take on the Memory Wall (of which there seems to be hints as there is at least one mention of little probes flying about in V'Ger. I wonder if Roddenberry wrote a draft with that in and replaced it the same time he finally knew what the ending was going to be?).

The Marvel Comics adaptation depicts the original spacewalk scene with both Kirk and Spock going into V'Ger and getting attacked by crystal "antibodies."

 

[Kertrats47]

I just posted a video for the 40th anniversary re-print of the novel: Star Trek: The Motion Picture: A Novel Peek Inside the Mind of Gene Roddenberry!

I've long been a fan of this novel, warts and all. It definitely is unique among the books that make up the Trek library.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

In the book, the plan to get the Ilia probe in touch with her memories is first and foremost about fucking her. And as Kirk thinks himself to be The Best Fuck, he seriously wonders if he should do it instead of Decker.

Somehow, McCoy knows this internal struggle is going on and when Kirk doesn't do this he formally recognises Jim as Captain in his log because he's no longer competing with Decker.

Holy shit, I'd forgotten about that. That is insane.

The Marvel Comics adaptation depicts the original spacewalk scene with both Kirk and Spock going into V'Ger and getting attacked by crystal "antibodies."

Yup. Generally speaking, you can retype something a whole lot faster than you can redraw it.

 

[Firebird]

"The Making of TMP" and "Chekov's Enterprise" both mention GR getting close to his deadline on trying to finish the novelization and he was allowed to sequester himself off-lot (Palm Springs, IIRC?) to get it done. Which also meant the script pages, still being written daily, could not be as easily interfered with by the Executive Producer. Billy Van Zandt remembers Shatner and Nimoy constructing an ending together from their makeup chairs each morning. It must have been crazy. That's what you get for starting principal photography when the final third of the story has not been locked in. My copy of a "shooting script" has its last third as placeholder pages from "In Thy Image".

I've nearly got the entirety of the shooting script revisions for TMP, and it's a monster of a binder - nearly 500 pages total. A good quarter or more are the infamous date AND time-stamped pages, with "HL," "GR," or "JP" tagged on them, depending on who was at the typewriter at that time, not even mimeo'd on colored paper. It's truly bonkers just how much stuff changed between the July shooting script and the last revisions at the end of November.

It's a very pretty script. They ran out of colours of paper (such as goldenrod!) and had to rotate through the whole spectrum again.

Near as I can figure out, there's almost no rhyme or reason to how they color-coded the revisions, versus the regimented order you'd later see in scripts for TNG and beyond. The earlier revisions from August are on blue paper, some are on yellow or green, by October and November, they generally switched to pink, although the big rewrite of the third act from 10/24 and 11/5 was all in blue. Like I said, it's kinda bonkers from a production organization standpoint.