Everybody always talks about the Enterprise flyby, but nobody ever seems to talk about another long sequence with very little dialogue: the close-in V’Ger flyover where the Enterprise is a speck by comparison, and V‘Ger is a landscape covered by distinct features. I’ve always enjoyed this sequence (and like where the music gets weirdly “barbaric” as we pass over the huge energy spheres in V’Ger’s midsection — no snickering, please), but I can easily imagine it being considered “another boring sequence”. What do people generally think of it?
TMP V’Ger flyover
- Thread starter FredH
- Start date
Oh, if only Kubrick had directed TMP.
I've seen plenty of people talk about it?
It's often the part of the film where my interest starts to ebb, especially if I'm watching it at home (TMP really benefits from being on the big screen). I at least enjoy starship porn enough that the E flyby's alright, especially if I haven't watched it in awhile, but the V'Ger flyby is so abstract that it could basically be anything.
Some people feel the updates to the film that revealed V'Ger in its entirety took away from the sense of wonder, but for me and others V'Ger was so abstract to that point that it was nice to finally get an overall sense of what it looked like just so we could wrap our heads around it.
Yeah, count me among those. I get where you’re coming from, but I liked that V’Ger was filmed in a way that literally made it bigger than you can see, emphasizing the seemingly alien/weird aspect as something that humans can’t quite get. The updates turned V’Ger into basically just a big stick.
But V'ger was always a big stick.
Shame it wasn't possible to release both versions simultaneously and let the viewer decide which they prefer.
I get the appeal of V'ger remaining enigmatic, but for me it was so enigmatic that it became an abstraction rather than a real thing, at least until the end sequence.
I think it's a marvelous sequence. I've rarely seen anything so successful at conveying a sense of alienness and wonder. It's one of the only sequences in the Trek movies that really feels like it's about discovering the unknown, even if it's in the context of facing an existential threat. And it was very well-executed, with terrific miniature work and lighting effects, and of course Goldsmith's music. (Although the background lighting created by a laser beam sweeping through smoke looks very dated in retrospect, since that was a trendy effect in the late '70s and '80s.)
The thing is, the film had to be sent to theaters unfinished due to the inflexible deadline, so what we got was a rough cut. Rough cuts tend to be longer than they need to be, because they start by putting in everything, and then the director and editor decide which parts are expendable. It was always Robert Wise's intention to trim down the long FX sequences, and Goldsmith specifically wrote the V'Ger cloud and flyover cues to have a lot of repetition in them so that they could be easily trimmed to whatever the final sequence length turned out to be. So the leaner version of the sequence in the Director's Edition is closer to what Wise would've done in the first place if he'd been allowed to finish editing the film in 1979.
I agree. I appreciated being able to put the sequence in perspective, to understand that what the Enterprise flew over was one of the six identical sides of the ship. It was good to pull back and see an overview of the whole thing, to see how it all fit together.
I don't like things to remain abstract and mysterious. I like to have my questions answered, to understand as much as possible. I guess that's why I'm not that fond of Kubrick's 2001, which pointedly explained nothing; I preferred Arthur C. Clarke's prose version, which explained pretty much everything. (The two were really a very odd pair of collaborators, given their opposite approaches.) I guess you could say I want to "learn all that is learnable."
The thing is, the film had to be sent to theaters unfinished due to the inflexible deadline, so what we got was a rough cut. Rough cuts tend to be longer than they need to be, because they start by putting in everything, and then the director and editor decide which parts are expendable. It was always Robert Wise's intention to trim down the long FX sequences, and Goldsmith specifically wrote the V'Ger cloud and flyover cues to have a lot of repetition in them so that they could be easily trimmed to whatever the final sequence length turned out to be. So the leaner version of the sequence in the Director's Edition is closer to what Wise would've done in the first place if he'd been allowed to finish editing the film in 1979.
I agree. I appreciated being able to put the sequence in perspective, to understand that what the Enterprise flew over was one of the six identical sides of the ship. It was good to pull back and see an overview of the whole thing, to see how it all fit together.
I don't like things to remain abstract and mysterious. I like to have my questions answered, to understand as much as possible. I guess that's why I'm not that fond of Kubrick's 2001, which pointedly explained nothing; I preferred Arthur C. Clarke's prose version, which explained pretty much everything. (The two were really a very odd pair of collaborators, given their opposite approaches.) I guess you could say I want to "learn all that is learnable."
What was so danged important about that self-imposed deadline?
From The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, p. 204: "In March, 1979, a meeting was held in which the studio offered [Douglas] Trumbull virtual carte blanche if he would get the work completed by December of that year, a film release date to which Paramount was committed, having accepted advances from exhibitors on promising delivery for the Christmas holiday market." And this was after the production had already suffered delays, with Trumbull brought in to redo the effects after Robert Abel & Associates' work was deemed unacceptable. Missing the promised Christmas-season release date would've been too costly for the studio, as well as for the theaters, who would've had a gap in their release schedule at a crucial time.
So it wasn't a "self-imposed" deadline, but a studio- and exhibitor-imposed one.
It had more to do with Abel running massively over schedule and budget, though what little footage they did deliver was deemed inadequate. There's a pretty extensive article about it on Memory Alpha: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_Abel_&_Associates
I think the flyover sequence is beautifully done and Goldsmith's music is masterful, but unlike the Enterprise starship porn -- of which I would not touch a single frame -- I think the scene could be trimmed and paced better without losing the sense of wonder. This is one of the (very few) areas where I think the Director's Edition does a good job.
However, all that being said, I prefer we do not have the final reveal of V'Ger. I think that just lets all the air out of the balloon. I prefer to let it remain mysterious and keep that sense of trying to figure out how it all fits together. The reveal in the DE comes across to me as just another spaceship.
However, all that being said, I prefer we do not have the final reveal of V'Ger. I think that just lets all the air out of the balloon. I prefer to let it remain mysterious and keep that sense of trying to figure out how it all fits together. The reveal in the DE comes across to me as just another spaceship.
While the final reveal of V'Ger was never storyboarded in the original production, there was concept art done for the scene at the time, and the DE team based the reveal on that art and on Syd Mead's original design art for V'Ger. The DE was done in consultation with Robert Wise, with the goal of coming as close as possible to the way Wise would have completed it in 1979 given the chance, so presumably Wise approved of revealing V'Ger in full.
And I don't think the reveal diminishes V'Ger, because we'd already had the earlier sequence to establish its vastness and grandeur in our minds. It just puts the earlier scenes in context. The reveal shot starts out close in on V'Ger's surface, establishing an overview of the "landscape" we'd flown over before, and then V'Ger recedes from the camera and we see its full shape. I see it as having an analogous effect to the view from a jet as it takes off and you see the shape of the landscape revealed below you. Since we'd already seen how huge it was compared to the Enterprise, that lets us understand just how gigantic and powerful this thing closing in on Earth truly is. And all the subsequent exterior shots are close in on just one face of V'Ger, so that it looms over the entire frame, with the exception of the shot where they added a briefly visible V'Ger to the climactic outburst of light.
And I don't think the reveal diminishes V'Ger, because we'd already had the earlier sequence to establish its vastness and grandeur in our minds. It just puts the earlier scenes in context. The reveal shot starts out close in on V'Ger's surface, establishing an overview of the "landscape" we'd flown over before, and then V'Ger recedes from the camera and we see its full shape. I see it as having an analogous effect to the view from a jet as it takes off and you see the shape of the landscape revealed below you. Since we'd already seen how huge it was compared to the Enterprise, that lets us understand just how gigantic and powerful this thing closing in on Earth truly is. And all the subsequent exterior shots are close in on just one face of V'Ger, so that it looms over the entire frame, with the exception of the shot where they added a briefly visible V'Ger to the climactic outburst of light.
This argument gets thrown around all the time and, you know what? I don't care what was intended in 1979. Not even slightly. As Nick Meyer says, "art thrives on restrictions," and I think some of the best things often happen in films because the filmmakers can't get exactly what they want. The fact that Robert Wise approved of something doesn't change my opinion.
You are welcome to your opinion too, but I am convinced that the film is better without the reveal.
That has value in general, but I don't think it applies in a case where the filmmakers literally weren't allowed to finish editing the film. Editing is often what makes the difference between a bad story and a good one. Editing is where you figure out how to make the best of a story within whatever limitations were imposed. It is wrong to trivialize the difference between a creator solving the problem of how to do something good within limitations and a creator not being permitted to solve that problem. Restriction is not the same thing as interruption.
I mean, heck, part of the problem with the theatrical rough cut is that it wasn't restricted enough. The flyover sequences were too long and self-indulgent because Wise didn't have time to trim them down. So that's the exact opposite of art thriving on restrictions.
The V'ger flyover sequence doesn't work as well as it should because it's mostly straight ahead POV shots and there's really no sense of scale other than the four shots that show how tiny the Enterprise is against it. Also, because of the rush, the finished shots lack the nuances indicated in Mead's paintings, like the various arcs of energy crackling around edges.
Paramount was contractually bound to get the film into theaters, as they presold it for Dec. 7 to some theaters before going to full wide distribution two weeks later. If they missed that Dec 7th date they risked a class-action lawsuit by the exhibitors.
The reality of Abel's firing appears to be more complicated than most of the reporting indicates. I've interviewed Richard Winn Taylor extensively on the subject. The problems were many, including Abel agreeing to do more work than originally contracted, the changing nature of the script forcing them to re-storyboard some scenes more than once, Wise being somewhat uneasy with compositing (hence attempting the spacewalk with practical sets and men on wireas), and that people unused to working with extensive optical effects didn't understand that the test footage they were shown at that fateful screening was just that: test footage made as they worked out concepts and built equipment to execute the effects… which is not to saw Abel was blameless. Trumbull also may have gamed he system to his advantage, stepping it both to get. big paycheck and get back the rights to things he developed while under contract to Paramount: notably Showscan.
Paramount was contractually bound to get the film into theaters, as they presold it for Dec. 7 to some theaters before going to full wide distribution two weeks later. If they missed that Dec 7th date they risked a class-action lawsuit by the exhibitors.
The reality of Abel's firing appears to be more complicated than most of the reporting indicates. I've interviewed Richard Winn Taylor extensively on the subject. The problems were many, including Abel agreeing to do more work than originally contracted, the changing nature of the script forcing them to re-storyboard some scenes more than once, Wise being somewhat uneasy with compositing (hence attempting the spacewalk with practical sets and men on wireas), and that people unused to working with extensive optical effects didn't understand that the test footage they were shown at that fateful screening was just that: test footage made as they worked out concepts and built equipment to execute the effects… which is not to saw Abel was blameless. Trumbull also may have gamed he system to his advantage, stepping it both to get. big paycheck and get back the rights to things he developed while under contract to Paramount: notably Showscan.
Last edited:
I've always felt the intricate detail in the miniature and the slowness of the camera moves were effective at conveying a sense of vastness, like flying over an alien landscape, and Goldsmith's score certainly did a lot to sell it. I don't have an issue with the forward POV, since we were seeing what the crew was seeing on the viewscreen. And the backlit-moire effect in the pit the Enterprise overflew and the rear-projected electric arcs near the prow were effective at conveying the sense of immense energies at play.
One thing I hadn't realized that I read recently (I think in that Memory Alpha piece) was that Trumbull's Magicam didn't really have much more feature film experience at that point than Abel & Associates (although their team had built the Close Encounters miniatures).
Still, the question is, if Abel hadn't been replaced, is it likely that they would've been able (no pun intended) to complete the job by the deadline?
Richard Taylor thinks they could have pulled it off. Others who worked there have differing opinions. Some of what they were trying was far more ambitious than what we got (V'ger's surface, the energy probe, etc.) The situation was not entirely dissimilar to what happened with ILM on Star Wars, where building the facility and tools ate up a lot of time, and there was fear they wouldn't be able to deliver to make the release date, but once they got up and fully running the work happened fairly quickly, though the total number of shots were curtailed to get to the finish line. The finished TMP took shortcuts around a number of shots/sequences just to get done, and I think Abel would have had to do the same.
Taylor told me that Robert Abel kept saying "we can do that" so their workload kept increasing, whereas he says they should have just stuck to their original job of only delivering the optical effects.
Taylor told me that Robert Abel kept saying "we can do that" so their workload kept increasing, whereas he says they should have just stuck to their original job of only delivering the optical effects.
