Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[Christopher]

IIRC there were later additions to the writer's guide (maybe I'm getting this from The Making Of?) that indicated that for various environmental and sociological (and budgetary) reasons that the ships would be largely crewed by a single species. (Such as the Intrepid.) This is rather undermined by Journey to Babel where you have a Star Wars cantina of Federation members all running around the Enterprise quite comfortably.

But a short visit and long-term coexistence are different matters. Also, it could've been that we were only seeing the humanoid members, and there were more exotic species coming to Babel on different ships.

There are several indications in TOS and TAS that Spock is the only non-human on board.

TOS, yes, but TAS had Arex and M'Ress.

Then we have the rec deck scene in this film where we now say "No, we have lots of non-human crew! Look fast because you're not going to see them again!"

Another of those "pretend it was like this all along and we just got it wrong before" bits.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

I've been a Star Trek fan since before TMP. I started reading sci-fi in middle school in the late 1970s, beginning with Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books but quickly moving to other stuff including both Larry Niven's books and Star Trek. Because of Niven's diverse aliens, I think, I always imagined there being more truly "alien" aliens like the Kzinti, Gorn, Horta, and Medusans around the Star Trek universe, despite what we see on screen.

That's another thing that makes TMP resemble "One of Our Planets is Missing" more than "The Changeling."

Human-looking aliens are extremely common in older SFTV and film -- shows like Space: 1999, Buck Rogers, and Blake's 7 had plenty, for instance -- but they're also surprisingly common in older prose and comics SF where budget wasn't a factor. (Not just older ones -- the "humans" in Iain M. Banks's Culture series are actually several species of humanoid aliens that resemble us almost exactly through convergent evolution.) Some writers (like me) enjoy exploring alienness, but others just use aliens as allegories for stories about human relationships and concerns.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that the Enterprise was originally conceived as an Earth ship. It appears that Roddenberry's original idea was based on the human interstellar empires you found in a lot of the prose fiction he'd grown up with, where aliens were just outsiders humans dealt with or occasionally subject nations. ("The Conscience of the King" has that odd reference to Vulcan being conquered -- by Earth, perhaps?) The idea of the Federation evolved gradually, perhaps generated largely by Gene L. Coon, since the only first-season to use it were his. The first-season writers' guide has a reference to "Federated commerce," but in a passage referring to assistance to Earth colonies. Vulcan isn't explicitly established as a Federation member until "Errand of Mercy," and the idea that the Federation is really a multispecies government, rather than an Earth Federation with a token alien member world or two, isn't established until "Journey to Babel." Although that episode implied that it was a fairly loose alliance of members who pursued their own separate policies and interests and needed to be convinced to agree on a collective policy.

Thanks for those reminders of how Star Trek itself evolved from its beginning to where it is now. On the whole, I think the moves towards showing more diversity of aliens throughout all of the Star Trek series have been positive. And I was forgetting about "One of Our Planets is Missing" - that definitely is a close parallel to TMP. I just wish we'd been able to see more of that diversity all along.

I have appreciated how many of the novels have tried to show more "alien" aliens than the TV shows and movies have been able to. Christopher, your work in particular stands out for this. I definitely appreciated how the Titan novels were able to do this, and it's a shame they seem to have been pushed aside by the newer shows.

Then we have the rec deck scene in this film where we now say "No, we have lots of non-human crew! Look fast because you're not going to see them again!"

Even though it was just a glimpse, it was definitely an improvement over most of what we got during TOS. Episodes like "Journey to Babel" being obvious exceptions.

 

[David cgc]

Nope. The omitted scenes per Majel Barrent's copy of the script (https://web.archive.org/web/2018123...dia/vault/Script-StarTrekTheMotionPicture.pdf , pages 72-74) indicate that there were to be multiple probes appearing around the ship, and Spock observing they actively communicate back-and-forth with Vejur.

Well, now I wish we'd had the version where the whole ship was being invaded by lightning probes.

 

[Tallguy]

Diane Duane definitely had early depictions of a species diverse crew. Heck, she had a Horta! (Her Enterprise is arguably my favorite Enterprise.)

 

[Christopher]

Diane Duane definitely had early depictions of a species diverse crew. Heck, she had a Horta! (Her Enterprise is arguably my favorite Enterprise.)

Yes, I was trying to evoke the spirit of Duane's diverse Enterprise crew with my post-TMP fiction.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

Diane Duane definitely had early depictions of a species diverse crew. Heck, she had a Horta! (Her Enterprise is arguably my favorite Enterprise.)

Yes, I was trying to evoke the spirit of Duane's diverse Enterprise crew with my post-TMP fiction.

Vonda N. McIntyre also featured some alien crewmembers in her two ST novels. The Entropy Effect is still one of my favorites of the early Pocket novels, but I remember being somewhat disappointed by Enterprise: The First Adventure.

 

[DonIago]

I wish the theatrical release of TSFS more closely resembled Vonda's novelization of it. There was so much stuff in it that I looked forward to seeing in the movie (I read or skimmed the novelization first), and then it felt like the movie didn't even start until you were halfway through the book.

 

[Tallguy]

Vonda N. McIntyre also featured some alien crewmembers in her two ST novels. The Entropy Effect is still one of my favorites of the early Pocket novels, but I remember being somewhat disappointed by Enterprise: The First Adventure.

After Entropy Effect, Star Trek II, and Star Trek III (!!!!), The First Adventure had very big shoes to fill. As did The Voyage Home.

I wish the theatrical release of TSFS more closely resembled Vonda's novelization of it. There was so much stuff in it that I looked forward to seeing in the movie (I read or skimmed the novelization first), and then it felt like the movie didn't even start until you were halfway through the book.

Not felt like. That's what it was. A lot of that just wasn't realizable on the big screen. Would have been awesome though.

 

[Commander Troi]

Nice stinger at the end of this chapter. I imagine it was quite a shock when I first saw the movie.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

So, I received 'The McCartney Legacy Volume 2' for Christmas and I was surprised to discover that Paul McCartney contacted Gene Roddenberry in mid-1975 about collaborating on a science fiction movie together staring Paul McCartney and Wings.

It would have featured McCartney and the other members of Wings in dual roles, as themselves, and as their alien doppelgangers and incorporated songs from previous Wings albums as well as newly-written songs.

Gene got as far as writing an outline as well as several pages of script before McCartney pulled the plug on it after watching 'Star Wars' and 'Close Encounters' and realized what Gene was writing amounted to a TV movie and not the spectacular special effects laden movies he had seen on the big screen; and by that time Gene was already well involved in writing Star Trek Phase II, soon to become The Motion Picture.

At least one song was written for the movie in mind - 'Backwards Traveller', which wound up on Wings 'London Town' album.​

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[Tallguy]

Chapter Twenty-Four - Meet Vejur

OK. This is what we're reading a book like this for. We get a POV from... VEJUR.

Vejur seems... Well, rather confused. And apparently for the first time. The reason, it appeaars, is that Vejur has not really been paying attention.

If it thinks a sensor scan from Epsilon Nine is an "attack" then what must it think of the Decker Unit? Ah. Also an attack. And it almost kills him for it. Vejur is amazed that the Ilia probe will not respond to Vejur because of its interactions with Decker. But it never questions the construction of the probe itself.

The fact that one of the fragile, carbon-based units could cause Vejur’s probe to malfunction was incredible. Incredible? In all of its travel through the galaxy, Vejur had never before needed the concept of anything being incredible.

Really? I mean, I know it's kind of one of the themes to the story, that there is more to the universe than the universe. But it seems that Vejur has seen everything that it has encountered before as just the way things are. Except now these little carbon things are weirding it the heck out.

And also:

The carbon-based units inside Enterprise had also introduced another new concept to Vejur. Annoyance. Vejur had been unable to discern any order or purpose in the way they functioned. There did not seem to be any reason for them to exist—and yet they existed! It puzzled Vejur, and the fault for that had to be with the tiny devices, since Vejur had never been even mildly puzzled this way before. Annoyance.

It has had a reason for everything else to exist. I would be curious to know what that reason might be.

It was not long after this beginning that a small life form had almost ended Vejur’s journey. It had been scarcely four times larger than this one which calls itself Enterprise, and had attacked suddenly as Vejur passed near a small solar system. Somehow Vejur had survived and repaired its wounds—and the need to survive had forced it into a first flicker of conscious reasoning. It had realized that it would be guilty of disobeying the Creator’s commands if it allowed itself to be destroyed during the journey ahead. It knew therefore, that it must draw upon the knowledge it had so far gathered and use it to begin giving itself more strength to defend itself.

Vejur is paranoid. We also learn that it went back and "patterned" the whole planet that had attacked it. Also that this somehow made it possible for Vejur to continue and be stronger. Annnnd it had those carbon thingys but those could not have been important.

Few life forms attacked Vejur anymore. And none who did were worth serious examination. This primitive form called Enterprise had seemed no exception, and Vejur had almost patterned it before Enterprise had finally called out its startling claim that it had come from the home of the Creator.

And we get an answer! It did not bring the Enterprise in to examine as any kind of standard operating procedure. We were so close. It is interested because the Enterprise is claiming to be from Earth! Also, what happened to the vessels that did not claim to be from Earth? (Or were all of them just considered attacks regardless of their response?)

So much for Spock's idea of being a Rosetta stone.

 

[Christopher]

And we get an answer! It did not bring the Enterprise in to examine as any kind of standard operating procedure. We were so close. It is interested because the Enterprise is claiming to be from Earth! Also, what happened to the vessels that did not claim to be from Earth? (Or were all of them just considered attacks regardless of their response?)

Ah, I guess that makes sense, given that earlier script drafts specified that V'Ger's message was a request to identify oneself and one's point of origin. Presumably none of the other ships or planets that managed to communicate with V'Ger were able to say they came from Earth, so it didn't bother to look more closely, and that's why it didn't figure out before that carbon units were people.

Although how does it register the difference between Earth and another planet? A lot of science fiction points out that it would be extremely reckless to advertise the location of your homeworld to new contacts before confirming their non-hostility, and you'd think Starfleet and particularly Kirk and Spock would know that in the wake of "The Changeling." And a lot of alien names for their homeworlds would probably translate as "earth/soil." If Spock sent the message in linguacode, then it wouldn't have been in English, presumably.

 

[Tallguy]

Ah, I guess that makes sense, given that earlier script drafts specified that V'Ger's message was a request to identify oneself and one's point of origin. Presumably none of the other ships or planets that managed to communicate with V'Ger were able to say they came from Earth, so it didn't bother to look more closely, and that's why it didn't figure out before that carbon units were people.

Although how does it register the difference between Earth and another planet? A lot of science fiction points out that it would be extremely reckless to advertise the location of your homeworld to new contacts before confirming their non-hostility, and you'd think Starfleet and particularly Kirk and Spock would know that in the wake of "The Changeling." And a lot of alien names for their homeworlds would probably translate as "earth/soil." If Spock sent the message in linguacode, then it wouldn't have been in English, presumably.

This is the computer that doesn't know its whole name because it has gook on its nameplate.

Of course in this case I would think that Vejur knows where it is going (which happens to be Earth) and the message to Vejur was as simple as "We are from the place you are going."

At this point I might be curious to know the body count that Vejur has racked up. It's the Doomsday Machine with a memory.

 

[Christopher]

This is the computer that doesn't know its whole name because it has gook on its nameplate.

That's been driving me crazy for four decades. How does it know how the shapes "V GER" are pronounced in English? How does it know those shapes even represent its name?

Edgar Rice Burroughs's first Tarzan novel had the same problem. It stressed that Tarzan learned English only in written form and had no idea what sounds the letters represented, yet somehow he knew that his name in the ape language should be spelled "TARZAN" in the keep-out sign he wrote for his treehouse.

 

[Tallguy]

Star Trek is smarter than a lot of things but unfortunately that's often a low bar to clear. And it's still a 1960's TV show with a gazillion dollar budget and a world renowned director.

It's like a more extreme version of Space: 1999. The show that looks like 2001: A Space Odyssey and talks like Lost in Space.

I have a similar reaction to figuring out how to get 1970's / even 1980's programming to be anything so abstract as “Seek and learn all things possible”. (Apparently it's written in assembly.)

Also, what kind of absolute coordinates could have been provided to a space probe that was not expected to get much farther than the solar system that would allow it to return from the far side of the galaxy?

 

[David cgc]

Of course in this case I would think that Vejur knows where it is going (which happens to be Earth) and the message to Vejur was as simple as "We are from the place you are going."

They were sending "Linguacode and friendship messages." Back in the ENT era, they were explicit that part of their standard greeting was a pulsar map of Earth's location. IIRC, Archer became cynical about that after the Xindi, but maybe it was less of an issue a hundred years after the Federation formed and you couldn't get within a thousand light-years of Earth without meeting someone who already knew all about it. Or even if it was no longer part of the standard first-contact message, they might've thrown it in, as you say, since they wanted to explain what they were flying up to the Cloud for.

That's been driving me crazy for four decades. How does it know how the shapes "V GER" are pronounced in English? How does it know those shapes even represent its name?

Many years ago someone here proposed the best possible explanation: Ilia can read English. V'Ger never calls itself "V'Ger" until the probe arrives, after all. It might've just learned what that label meant and said when it absorbed Ilia (or was scanning the Enterprise library computer).

Though, apparently, some parts of the plaque were less obscure to it. It (or the Machine Planet) had been able to deduce its mission (not too difficult, it's a bunch of scientific instruments and a big transmitter with minimal ability to maneuver, not many things it could be intended for), and its point of origin (that damn pulsar map again).

Talking about the nameplate in the film, and the real Golden Record, I got a book and CD set of what was on it years ago, and I finally figured out what those three ovals were next to the word "Voyager 6" were. And now, seeing the whole plaque clearly on a high-res widescreen version, I think I see what's going on. The setpiece in the movie doesn't have a Golden Record on it, which makes sense, because it's ninety minutes of audio and almost fifty images saying, "Humans built this! Humans that look like this, and live in a place like this! Humans made of meat! Carbon meat!" which would be a bit of a plot-hole. But if Voyager 6 was teleported across space (and possibly time), how would the Machine Planet figure out where it came from?

The left side of the name plaque has, mostly unobscured, the pulsar map to Earth from the cover of the Golden Record (plus the diagram of a hydrogen atom illustrating the time-units used in the map to show the frequency of the pulsars, so you can actually interpret it). On the right of the name plaque are three ovals, which is one of the images encoded on the actual record, maps of Earth's landmasses millions of years ago, in the present day, and millions of years from now. So they removed the record so V'Ger could still be confounded by the concept of life as we know it, but added the name plaque with the two pieces of information it would need from the record to know where it was going, and how it would know it found the right place when it got there.

God, I love how storytelling is like an iceberg, especially in a big movie with so many people on it like this all considering their little piece of it. There's so much thought that goes into everything, and you're lucky if even a tenth of it gets made public in interviews and making-of books.

 

[Christopher]

Back in the ENT era, they were explicit that part of their standard greeting was a pulsar map of Earth's location. IIRC, Archer became cynical about that after the Xindi, but maybe it was less of an issue a hundred years after the Federation formed and you couldn't get within a thousand light-years of Earth without meeting someone who already knew all about it. Or even if it was no longer part of the standard first-contact message, they might've thrown it in, as you say, since they wanted to explain what they were flying up to the Cloud for.

As I said, the pulsar map idea seems naively risky, and at odds with how a lot of prose science fiction approaches first contact. However, given that the Intruder was already on a direct course for Earth, I suppose hiding the location of Earth wouldn't make any difference; on the contrary, you'd want to say "Hey, we're from the planet you're heading toward and we'd really like to know your intentions."

Many years ago someone here proposed the best possible explanation: Ilia can read English. V'Ger never calls itself "V'Ger" until the probe arrives, after all. It might've just learned what that label meant and said when it absorbed Ilia (or was scanning the Enterprise library computer).

Though, apparently, some parts of the plaque were less obscure to it. It (or the Machine Planet) had been able to deduce its mission (not too difficult, it's a bunch of scientific instruments and a big transmitter with minimal ability to maneuver, not many things it could be intended for), and its point of origin (that damn pulsar map again).

Talking about the nameplate in the film, and the real Golden Record, I got a book and CD set of what was on it years ago, and I finally figured out what those three ovals were next to the word "Voyager 6" were. And now, seeing the whole plaque clearly on a high-res widescreen version, I think I see what's going on. The setpiece in the movie doesn't have a Golden Record on it, which makes sense, because it's ninety minutes of audio and almost fifty images saying, "Humans built this! Humans that look like this, and live in a place like this! Humans made of meat! Carbon meat!" which would be a bit of a plot-hole. But if Voyager 6 was teleported across space (and possibly time), how would the Machine Planet figure out where it came from?

The left side of the name plaque has, mostly unobscured, the pulsar map to Earth from the cover of the Golden Record (plus the diagram of a hydrogen atom illustrating the time-units used in the map to show the frequency of the pulsars, so you can actually interpret it). On the right of the name plaque are three ovals, which is one of the images encoded on the actual record, maps of Earth's landmasses millions of years ago, in the present day, and millions of years from now. So they removed the record so V'Ger could still be confounded by the concept of life as we know it, but added the name plaque with the two pieces of information it would need from the record to know where it was going, and how it would know it found the right place when it got there.

God, I love how storytelling is like an iceberg, especially in a big movie with so many people on it like this all considering their little piece of it. There's so much thought that goes into everything, and you're lucky if even a tenth of it gets made public in interviews and making-of books.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I'd thought of the fact that the name was never mentioned until the Ilia Probe showed up, but I wasn't sure why V'Ger would consider that set of shapes on the plaque to be relevant information to provide to the Probe for the Ilia memories to recognize as a written name. But since it's on the same plaque as the pulsar map and Earth images (which I never noticed before, great catch), that marks it as relevant information for identifying the probe and its creators, even if V'Ger was never able to decipher the symbols before. So that's why the data from Ilia's memories and/or the Enterprise computer would let it recognize "VOYAGER 6" as being pronounced "Vejur" and understand that it was an identification for the entity itself. (Ooh, the inline spoiler effect let me do a neat trick there.)

 

[Tallguy]

Of course the loophole is that we're describing Voyager 1 and 2. Not the fictional Voyager 6. But 6 happens to look a lot like 1 and 2, so maybe not so different.

There is also a brief image from the Golden Record in Spock's mind meld, no? (Actually it appears to be an image from Pioneer 10 that was not on the Voyagers? Maybe people changed their minds after 2?) Oh, and there is literally an image of Voyager itself in the mind meld.

The meld flashing images are all stuff Spock already knows about (other than Voyager). Klingons, Epsilon Nine, a K't'inga, the Epsilon crew, Ilia. (Nothing of Enterprise?)

 

[DonIago]

Of course the loophole is that we're describing Voyager 1 and 2. Not the fictional Voyager 6. But 6 happens to look a lot like 1 and 2, so maybe not so different.

There is also a brief image from the Golden Record in Spock's mind meld, no? (Actually it appears to be an image from Pioneer 10 that was not on the Voyagers? Maybe people changed their minds after 2?) Oh, and there is literally an image of Voyager itself in the mind meld.

The meld flashing images are all stuff Spock already knows about (other than Voyager). Klingons, Epsilon Nine, a K't'inga, the Epsilon crew, Ilia. (Nothing of Enterprise?)

I've never watched the meld frame-by-frame, but one of these days I should.

 

[Tallguy]

I've never watched the meld frame-by-frame, but one of these days I should.

VLC makes it SO easy. (Having every episode of Star Trek and every film on a device that I can pull up like index cards is the science fiction I was looking forward to as a child!)