Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[Tallguy]

Chapter Four - Kirk arrives in San Francisco and confronts Admiral Nogura.

For all of my complaints about Gene's TNG I LOVE his 23rd century Earth. It feels like a paradise that I can believe in. Earth's been through some stuff (Los Angeles is an island!) but mankind has managed to continue to thrive while turning San Fransisco back into a redwood forest. He mentions that much of the "clutter" of our lives has been placed "underground". I also love how it still feels like he's writing to a contemporary 23rd century audience.

Kirk has been kept on Earth essentially as propaganda. Starfleet, it turns out, is expensive (!) and some people (the new humans) have been objecting to the cost. Kirk as a living legend has been useful to Admiral Nogura.

So far this book is equal parts 23rd century travelogue and psychological examination of the last few years of James Kirk's life. And I have to say I'm totally here for both of these.

I'm amazed at how many times I have heard that the scene between Kirk and Nogura was somehow filmed and deleted. Maybe not a lot of people think this but enough that I've heard it more that once. As @TheUsualSuspect mentioned, Nogura has been in a lot of things (including Peter David's comics) and Ciana appeared in at least the Lost Years books.

The scene with Nogura is an OK scene. But I like the dialogue. Especially Kirk. It has a formality that I really enjoy. "Cowboy" Kirk who "never follows the rules" has all the rules on his side!

Oh, and there is a footnote:

Admiral Kirk’s comment: The fact that Nogura “used” me [and Admiral Lori Ciana, too] is no more shocking to me today than my memory of the times I have been forced to risk the safety and lives of my own subordinates when I believed it necessary to the safety of our vessel and crew. Ours is a difficult service, and the job of command can be the loneliest and most painful of all tasks.

This Kirk is a tough old bird.

 

[Commander Troi]

I love how Kirk is fooling himself so much about his motivations that he thinks he's being honest with Nogura.

And yeah, the dialogue is terrific. I easily hear Shatner saying this stuff.

 

[Tallguy]

Getting back to "Was GR a hack?" kind of territory again, scenes like this tell me "no". You're right, this is absolutely Kirk's (Shatner's) voice. And it's not just repurposed dialog from Livingston's script either.

The most verbatim dialog from the screenplay so far has been Kirk and Sonak. And even then there were tweaks.

 

[Tallguy]

Chapter Five Kirk meets Scott and Scott complains.

Nogura's last words to Kirk were "If you are convinced that you are the right man, Jim, then go! If you are not, then for God’s sake don’t!" To which Kirk's unreported reply was obviously "You betcha!"

McCoy isn't even here and he's looking over Kirk's shoulder. And presumably isn't going to be happy with what he sees. We're getting a fair amount of foreshadowing that Kirk isn't at his most self aware or possibly even capable. Even here we're told that he's thinking of the Enterprise first and the Intruder second.

Skipping way ahead: This movie and book have two major subplots. Kirk and Spock. (McCoy is just hunky dunky.) Spock has his problems with being Spock that actually resolve rather spectacularly. But Kirk's issues with command and the Enterprise (and of course Decker) just kind of... end. Or at least "they get better." More later, of course, but I'm putting that flag in the sand. We'll see how it goes.

Of all the names and ideas that are not actually in the film but I "know" what they are from this book, I just realized I have never called the orbital office "Centroplex".

It was Starfleet’s largest ship construction and repair facility this side of Antares.

Is that a figure of speech or does Antares have a really big ship facility?

Kirk took command of the Enterprise nine years ago. And it's thirteen years between filming Where No Man Has Gone Before and filming TMP. 9-5-3(ish) = 1. So the FYM started about a year after Kirk took command. Where this puts WNMHG? Who knows. But this means the actors are a few years older than their characters, but not by that much. Maybe five. Maybe less.

The scene plays pretty much as in the movie. It seems Kirk gives more detail (telling the story of the Intruder pasting the Klingons AGAIN) to Scott.

As gorgeous as TMP is, I get the sense that Roddenberry is describing a much larger complex that what we see in the film.

Hey! When did he find out that the Enterprise's transporters weren't working? I've always assumed that he requested the Enterprise and found himself in the Space Office. Er, "Centroplex". But I don't think “Navy yards. Centroplex, area seven" means "Enterprise." I mean, it's obviously possible that we missed some status update between the last scene and this one.

Next up will be the moment we've all been waiting for: THE FLYAROUND!

 

[Christopher]

This movie and book have two major subplots. Kirk and Spock. (McCoy is just hunky dunky.) Spock has his problems with being Spock that actually resolve rather spectacularly. But Kirk's issues with command and the Enterprise (and of course Decker) just kind of... end. Or at least "they get better." More later, of course, but I'm putting that flag in the sand. We'll see how it goes.

I realized some years back that TMP's plot works better if you think of it as a 2-part episode, with part 1 focusing on Kirk's clash with Decker (resolved by McCoy knocking some sense into Kirk) and part 2 focusing on Spock's journey during the encounter with V'Ger.

Of all the names and ideas that are not actually in the film but I "know" what they are from this book, I just realized I have never called the orbital office "Centroplex".

I didn't even realize it wasn't called Centroplex in the film until sometime within the past two decades, after I'd used the term in one or two of my novels.

Is that a figure of speech or does Antares have a really big ship facility?

"This side of Antares" was probably meant at the time to be a figure of speech, in line with the song "Beyond Antares," implying that Antares is an extremely distant star (which it is relative to the size of the UFP established in Star Trek Star Charts). However, an Antares Ship Yards has been established in TNG-era starship dedication plaque text. As well as a Beta Antares Ship Yard, referencing the system that Kirk alleged to be the origin of the imaginary card game fizzbin, though "Beta Antares" makes no sense as a Bayer designation and the Blish adaptation claimed that Kirk made it up. (Though Blish claimed "Antares is not a double star," which is doubly erroneous; one, Antares does have a companion star which was confirmed to exist in 1846, and two, it's called Antares B or Alpha Scorpii B, not Beta Antares, because Greek letter designations are used for visually separate stars in constellations, while members of a single star system are referred to by Roman letters after the star name.)

Antares, by the way, is a major setting in my original novel Arachne's Exile, so I'm pretty familiar with the system.

 

[Airin]

Kirk took command of the Enterprise nine years ago. And it's thirteen years between filming Where No Man Has Gone Before and filming TMP. 9-5-3(ish) = 1. So the FYM started about a year after Kirk took command. Where this puts WNMHG? Who knows. But this means the actors are a few years older than their characters, but not by that much. Maybe five. Maybe less.

This fits pretty well with the dates that can be gleaned from the series too. In "The Menagerie" is said that the events from "The Cage" happened 13 years ago, and Spock served 11 years under Pike. That means that Kirk had been captain of the Enterprise (at the very least) for two years, at the time of "The Menagerie": that first year of season 1, plus the year before.

The nine year mark also helps situate TMP in the timeline (almost three years after the five-year mission). If you just go with the TOS movies, the only reference is "Space Seed" happening 15 years before "The Wrath of Khan", but it's not easy to situate TMP inside that big gap, without this added info from the novel.

On the other hand, I think that the characters' ages were meant to reflect the actors' ages. Kirk was 34 in "The Deadly Years" (more or less like Shatner who was, I think, 36 at that moment). And McCoy was said to be 45 in the Writers Guide, also similar to DeForest Kelley. So maybe it would have been better if the novel had moved the events of TMP a bit later, to better match the actors' ages (yet again, in the movie they tried to make them appear younger than they really were).

 

[Christopher]

This fits pretty well with the dates that can be gleaned from the series too. In "The Menagerie" is said that the events from "The Cage" happened 13 years ago, and Spock served 11 years under Pike. That means that Kirk had been captain of the Enterprise (at the very least) for two years, at the time of "The Menagerie": that first year of season 1, plus the year before.

The Making of Star Trek, which came out after season 2, said that Kirk had been in command for 4 years, implying that he'd been in command for two years as of the start of season 1. After all, there was no indication that Spock was a new crewmember as of "The Cage."

The nine year mark also helps situate TMP in the timeline (almost three years after the five-year mission). If you just go with the TOS movies, the only reference is "Space Seed" happening 15 years before "The Wrath of Khan", but it's not easy to situate TMP inside that big gap, without this added info from the novel.

You're forgetting that Kirk tells Scotty in the movie that he was Chief of Starfleet Operations for two and a half years (though the novel says Spock had been pursuing Kolinahr for 2.8 years, IIRC). It's generally been assumed that he got that promotion immediately after the 5-year mission.

On the other hand, I think that the characters' ages were meant to reflect the actors' ages. Kirk was 34 in "The Deadly Years" (more or less like Shatner who was, I think, 36 at that moment). And McCoy was said to be 45 in the Writers Guide, also similar to DeForest Kelley. So maybe it would have been better if the novel had moved the events of TMP a bit later, to better match the actors' ages (yet again, in the movie they tried to make them appear younger than they really were).

Not sure what you're saying here. The intent in TMP was to ignore the age increase and pretend only a few years had passed since TOS. It was in TWOK that they jumped the timeline forward to reflect the actors' real ages.

Then you had three sequels that took 7 years in real time but less than a year in story time (mere weeks between TWOK & TSFS, 3 months between that and TVH, an implicitly brief time between that and TFF, asserted by Harve Bennett to be about 6 months), so they needed another multi-year time jump to reset TUC to align with the actors' ages again.

 

[Airin]

The Making of Star Trek, which came out after season 2, said that Kirk had been in command for 4 years, implying that he'd been in command for two years as of the start of season 1. After all, there was no indication that Spock was a new crewmember as of "The Cage."

That's why I said, at the very least, two years. Spock may have not been a new crewmember in "The Cage", but he was just 37 in "Yesteryear", so in "The Cage" he'd be around... 21? 22? Unlikely that he had been a long time in Starfleet.

You're forgetting that Kirk tells Scotty in the movie that he was Chief of Starfleet Operations for two and a half years (though the novel says Spock had been pursuing Kolinahr for 2.8 years, IIRC). It's generally been assumed that he got that promotion immediately after the 5-year mission.

There's a big difference between saying that Kirk had been an Admiral for nearly three years, and saying he'd been an Admiral for nearly three years immediately after the end of the mission. That explanation comes only in the novel. In the film it's not possible to know whether Kirk was promoted immediately or he just had other assignments before the promotion, regardless of people's assumptions.

 

[Tallguy]

I wonder if it was a function of when people started writing the story? Rather than the obvious (and still possible) motivation of "We don't want people to know we're ten years older!"

That's why I said, at the very least, two years. Spock may have not been a new crewmember in "The Cage", but he was just 37 in "Yesteryear", so in "The Cage" he'd be around... 21? 22? Unlikely that he had been a long time in Starfleet.

I actually have a whole spreadsheet for this. And Yesteryear is a primary data point for me.

For some reason many people think Spock is older than Kirk but I'm pretty sure they are contemporaries.

There's a big difference between saying that Kirk had been an Admiral for nearly three years, and saying he'd been an Admiral for nearly three years immediately after the end of the mission. That explanation comes only in the novel. In the film it's not possible to know whether Kirk was promoted immediately or he just had other assignments before the promotion, regardless of people's assumptions.

Decker also says he hasn't logged a single star hour in two and a half years.

 

[Airin]

I wonder if it was a function of when people started writing the story? Rather than the obvious (and still possible) motivation of "We don't want people to know we're ten years older!"

It could be. After all, the story of TMP was first conceived as the pilot for Phase Two, so a few years before the actual movie.

I actually have a whole spreadsheet for this. And Yesteryear is a primary data point for me.

For some reason many people think Spock is older than Kirk but I'm pretty sure they are contemporaries.

I once made a blog post for the characters' biographies as per TOS and TAS. I calculated that Spock would be one or two years older than Kirk. Supposing that Spock was 18 when he entered the Academy, he could be 36 in "Journey to Babel" (18 years not speaking with Sarek, presumably since he entered Starfleet). Of course there's a lot of speculation in it.

McCoy should be around ten years older than Kirk (as per Writers Guide). Later series made him younger during the FYM. But that poses a problem with him saying he's been a doctor for 25 years in TAS.

 

[Christopher]

That's why I said, at the very least, two years. Spock may have not been a new crewmember in "The Cage", but he was just 37 in "Yesteryear", so in "The Cage" he'd be around... 21? 22? Unlikely that he had been a long time in Starfleet.

Actually "Yesteryear" said that Spock went back in time thirty Vulcan years. It really, really annoyed me that the Star Trek Chronology assumed a Vulcan year would be identical to an Earth year. I mean, Mercury's year is 88 days long, Mars's is 1.88 Earth years. A planet in the continuously habitable zone of 40 Eridani A, which has now been confirmed as Vulcan's primary star, would have a year length of around 202 days, give or take several weeks depending on where it fell in the zone. Since Vulcan is a hot planet, it would presumably be in the inner part of the CHZ and have an even shorter year. (I discussed the Vulcan calendar in more detail in my DTI Calendar Notes on my blog.)

So if anything, Spock should be much younger than 37 Earth years if we take the "Yesteryear" line as accurate. Although the STC's bizarrely clueless assumption that it was Earth years has been canonized by later installments, despite the discrepancy.

There's a big difference between saying that Kirk had been an Admiral for nearly three years, and saying he'd been an Admiral for nearly three years immediately after the end of the mission. That explanation comes only in the novel. In the film it's not possible to know whether Kirk was promoted immediately or he just had other assignments before the promotion, regardless of people's assumptions.

Except that Kirk cites "my five years out there" when justifying his seizure of command to Decker. Granted, that line doesn't make any sense given that we know he was in Starfleet for at least 11 years before "Obsession," but we can take it as referring to his comparatively recent completion of a full 5-year tour. It isn't conclusive, no, but it certainly implies that he didn't log any star hours between the 5YM and his promotion.

I wonder if it was a function of when people started writing the story? Rather than the obvious (and still possible) motivation of "We don't want people to know we're ten years older!"

I think series back then were more prone to exist in a timeless present and didn't feel the need to pretend their in-story events were in sync with real time the way later shows have, so that actor aging just got ignored. I mean, look at M*A*S*H, an 11-year series about a 3-year war. More recently, the David Suchet Poirot series from ITV ran on and off for 24 years, from 1989 to 2013, but took place almost entirely in 1935-38.

Besides, TMP came out only 5 years after the animated series ended, so maybe they were counting from that. Okay, granted, TAS wasn't as popular or well-known as TOS, but it occurs to me that TOS built up a much bigger fanbase in syndicated reruns in the '70s than it had done in first run in the '60s. So it made sense from that perspective for a 1979 movie to treat it as a fairly recent thing.

McCoy should be around ten years older than Kirk (as per Writers Guide). Later series made him younger during the FYM. But that poses a problem with him saying he's been a doctor for 25 years in TAS.

Yeah, that was a problem with "Encounter at Farpoint" establishing him as 137 before the exact calendar year of TNG had been decided on. Once "The Neutral Zone" set it as 2364, that locked in McCoy's age, and it was just too young.

 

[Airin]

Actually "Yesteryear" said that Spock went back in time thirty Vulcan years.

The script mentions Vulcan years earlier, yes (20 to 30 Vulcan years in the past). But right before going into the Guardian, Spock just says: "I wish to visit the planet Vulcan, thirty years past, the month of Tasmeen. Location, near the city of ShirKahr." I take that as meaning simply 30 Earth years (for simplification for Kirk, who's present, and the viewer). I don't remember the exact details of Fontana's novel "Vulcan's Glory", but I think she mentioned Spock's age and it was consistent with the series in general and her "Yesteryear" episode. Spock being 37 here is also pretty consistent with him not speaking with Sarek for 18 years (assuming people enter Starfleet at around the same age they enter the military in the real world).

Except that Kirk cites "my five years out there" when justifying his seizure of command to Decker. Granted, that line doesn't make any sense given that we know he was in Starfleet for at least 11 years before "Obsession," but we can take it as referring to his comparatively recent completion of a full 5-year tour. It isn't conclusive, no, but it certainly implies that he didn't log any star hours between the 5YM and his promotion.

True. That probably settles it. And as @Scrooge McTall mentioned, Decker says that Kirk hasn't logged a single star hour in two and a half years.

Yeah, that was a problem with "Encounter at Farpoint" establishing him as 137 before the exact calendar year of TNG had been decided on. Once "The Neutral Zone" set it as 2364, that locked in McCoy's age, and it was just too young.

I don't think it was so much a problem with TNG. At that time, that birthdate made sense (by conscious choice, or happy accident). Wrath of Khan has that scene with the Romulan ale dated at "2283". That places "Space Seed", at the very least, in 2268 (but probably later, considering the ale is old). So taking TNG birthdate, McCoy would be at least 41 in season one (though again, probably older), putting him near the 45 years of the Writers Guide.
But in later series (I think it was Voyager), they canonized 2270 as the end of the five-year mission, and accidentally made McCoy too young.

 

[Christopher]

Wrath of Khan has that scene with the Romulan ale dated at "2283".

I never thought it was unambiguous whether represented a Gregorian year. It could've been a stardate or a Romulan year.

I was also never certain whether "It takes this stuff a while to ferment" was meant to be taken in earnest or as an ironic joke referring to something recent. Nor did I have any idea how much fermentation time it normally takes to produce ale, though the web search I just did reveals that it's typically on the order of a few weeks at most. So maybe Romulan ale takes much longer for some reason? I honestly have no idea what the point of that line was, or what it implies about how long ago 2283 was at the time of the movie.

 

[Airin]

I never thought it was unambiguous whether represented a Gregorian year. It could've been a stardate or a Romulan year.

I take it as being just a normal date, since Kirk says he comes from the late 23rd century in STIV. The stardates in TOS always had that special format with the decimal, as far as I remember.

As for the ale, I assumed the year in the label works just as in wine. At least in Spain, you buy now a "gran reserva" (aged wine) and it would have 2017 or 2018 in the label. Though I don't know if this conexion would be so obvious in other countries.
Since Kirk seems impressed, and McCoy says it takes a while to ferment, I take it as the current year being quite later than 2283. After all, it was Kirk's birthday, so McCoy could very well gift him a special, aged liquor.

 

[Christopher]

I take it as being just a normal date, since Kirk says he comes from the late 23rd century in STIV. The stardates in TOS always had that special format with the decimal, as far as I remember.

Keep in mind that before TNG: "The Neutral Zone" gave an explicit calendar year for the first time -- or at least until TVH's "late 23rd century" reference -- there were two competing schools of thought in fandom and tie-ins about when TOS took place. Geoffrey Mandel & Doug Drexler's fan publications favored the 2260s period that's now canonical, but the more popular theory at the time, or so it seemed to me, was the Spaceflight Chronology scheme that put TOS in the first decade of the 2200s (in order to reconcile the references to the 23rd century with the "200 years" references in "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "Space Seed"). That scheme showed up not only in the SFC, but in Diane Carey's novel Final Frontier, and implicitly in John M. Ford's The Final Reflection, whose plot was built heavily around the historical events posited in the SFC. In that scheme, obviously, there was no way the "2283" could be a Gregorian date, which is why those of us who favored the SFC scheme (myself included) believed it must be a date in some other calendar, whether Romulan, stardate, or something else.

(It came as quite a surprise to many of us when "The Neutral Zone" established the 2364 date, which, given McCoy's stated age and the behind-the-scenes info that TNG was about 78 years after TVH, required the movies to be in the 2280s and thus TOS in the late 2260s, as per the Mandel scheme. I had to rewrite my entire pencil-and-paper chronology.)

Since Kirk seems impressed, and McCoy says it takes a while to ferment, I take it as the current year being quite later than 2283. After all, it was Kirk's birthday, so McCoy could very well gift him a special, aged liquor.

Yeah, but how does that reconcile with real-life ale needing only a few weeks to ferment? Are there beers and ales that are set aside to age like wines? Or is "ale" merely an analogy for whatever the Romulan potable is?

 

[Commander Troi]

and Scott complains

As Scott usually does! Once again, I totally "hear" Doohan doing the dialogue. Gene knows these characters.

As gorgeous as TMP is, I get the sense that Roddenberry is describing a much larger complex that what we see in the film.

Agreed. "The transporter deposited Kirk in an engineering arm of the enormous Centroplex which housed administration and most of the other central needs of the vast, sprawling orbital dockyard."

Notice "AN engineering arm," ie., there's more than one. I doubt they could've afforded to put the one in his head in the film at that time.

When did he find out that the Enterprise's transporters weren't working?

I wondered that too!

I actually have a whole spreadsheet for this.

Of course you do.

For some reason many people think Spock is older than Kirk but I'm pretty sure they are contemporaries.

Watching TOS, they look roughly the same age, but in the movies, Nimoy aged more visibly than Shatner, so that may be where it comes from.

 

[Christopher]

Watching TOS, they look roughly the same age, but in the movies, Nimoy aged more visibly than Shatner, so that may be where it comes from.

Or maybe it's just that Vulcans are supposed to be much longer-lived than humans, so people assumed that it would take them longer to reach adulthood as well.

The novel Corona by Greg Bear (before he became a famous SF novelist), evidently set during the 5-year mission (since Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov have their TOS ranks), gave Spock's age as 79 or nearly so -- which is hard to reconcile with Amanda looking sixtyish in "Journey to Babel." Although the book also says Kirk is over 45, and it has other idiosyncrasies in how it portrays the universe.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Since Kirk seems impressed, and McCoy says it takes a while to ferment, I take it as the current year being quite later than 2283.

I wouldn't call Kirk's reaction "impressed", I always read it more as "skeptical". Kirk's reaction in that scene is what leads me to take McCoy's line as sarcastic.

 

[Airin]

Yeah, but how does that reconcile with real-life ale needing only a few weeks to ferment? Are there beers and ales that are set aside to age like wines? Or is "ale" merely an analogy for whatever the Romulan potable is?

The fact that McCoy has to explain after Kirk reads the date ("Yeah well it takes this stuff a while to ferment.") implies that it's nothing like regular ale. Would he need an explanation if it was just as the common stuff? Anyway, the drink is made in an alien world. Probably they call it "ale" for lack of a better word.
I guess the whole point of this dialogue was just placing the action vaguely in the 80's, without commiting to a very specific date.

 

[Tallguy]

Ale: It always read like we were kind of missing the joke. Part of that is that we don't have the context of knowing when it is "now." I get the impression that 2283 sounds surprisingly recent (if not current) and then McCoy makes it sound like this is the good stuff so it takes even longer (than bathtub gin?). By a couple of hours? Kirk's response of "oh?" is "Sure, Bones, why not?"

Kirk and Spock's age: Of course IRL Shatner is a few DAYS older than Nimoy. March 1931 changed the world.

It came as quite a surprise to many of us when "The Neutral Zone" established the 2364 date, which, given McCoy's stated age and the behind-the-scenes info that TNG was about 78 years after TVH, required the movies to be in the 2280s and thus TOS in the late 2260s, as per the Mandel scheme.

As a fan of the Star Trek Maps and the fan works that followed that dating scheme, that was a GREAT day!

But yes, most of the books at the time and the FASA role-playing game (chicken and egg) followed the Spaceflight Chronology dating. Which drove me nuts. If I follow up this project with a "The Final Reflection" book club I'm sure we'll get into that at length since that's a book that not only relies on that date scheme but the SFC specifically.

---

Chapter Six - The Enterprise!

So here, as in the movie, one of the functions of this scene is to tell us: Kirk loves this ship. (And so do we.) Since this is a book club I will not debate the cinematic merits of one of my favorite scenes in film with a score that shows up every year as my number one or number two track on last.fm, Spotify, etc.

GR manages to analogize seeing the Enterprise to a nude scene. The man was a wizard.

I have to wonder what was the tremendous advantage of launching eight hours early? What were they going to do that they were now not able to do? How much time was lost after launch that might have been prevented in those eight hours? Or would everything that would go wrong after launch also have gone wrong if they had launched as scheduled so moving the launch up actually was critical?

We meet Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov again. All promoted. Chekov having attended weapons-defense command school. Uhura still has "the same classically lovely features", Chekov is "boyish", and Sulu is "the Asian romantic". Sounds like the writer's guide to me!