Since When Is The Motion Picture A Good Trek Film?

[Cryogenic]

I was raised on Next Gen and there was actually a time when I was about 9 years old when I had seen all of the original series movies (renting them from the local library) and did not even KNOW there was an original series. I thought it was just the movies and then Next Gen. From that perspective, it puzzled me how TMP could ever have spawned so many sequels and an offshoot tv program. I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't really stand on its own. The few original series episodes I have seen are lacking something, perhaps only superficial things, but growing up on Next Gen, it is hard for me to appreciate the original series the way I'm sure many of you do. But the movies, beginning with WOK... well, that's more like it.

Born in '83, I am also a TNG child. I was aware of TOS and the movies from a relatively young age, but slavishly stuck to TNG and future endeavours, for a long, long time. I had a resistance to going backwards. I thought "newer = better". But then I grew up.

 

[Brady]

I was raised on Next Gen and there was actually a time when I was about 9 years old when I had seen all of the original series movies (renting them from the local library) and did not even KNOW there was an original series. I thought it was just the movies and then Next Gen. From that perspective, it puzzled me how TMP could ever have spawned so many sequels and an offshoot tv program. I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't really stand on its own. The few original series episodes I have seen are lacking something, perhaps only superficial things, but growing up on Next Gen, it is hard for me to appreciate the original series the way I'm sure many of you do. But the movies, beginning with WOK... well, that's more like it.

Born in '83, I am also a TNG child. I was aware of TOS and the movies from a relatively young age, but slavishly stuck to TNG and future endeavours, for a long, long time. I had a resistance to going backwards. I thought "newer = better". But then I grew up.

Well I don't feel that way. I have always had a love for the classics. For me, better is better. I was excited to watch the the original series, and although I enjoy it, it's just no where near as good as TNG or the movies after Wrath of Khan, in my opinion. Older does not equal better either.

 

[Nerdius Maximus]

I've always liked it.

 

[Vger]

ONE scene like that in ALL of Star Trek is not too much to sit through.

I loved the scene. And again, it was not just there because Kirk "loves" his ship, but because it was the first time we the fans had seen the ship on the big screen and in that way...it was a unique moment in Trek history.

So do I. It was awesome to see the ship on the big screen with the music kicking in.


The V'ger flyover and cloud entrance was too long but as I have grown older I have come to enjoy it more now.

 

[Ssosmcin]

The only things TMP "made me think" were "good lord, when is this scene going to end?" or "YES. IT'S THE ENTERPRISE. I GET IT ALREADY" or other such things. I thought it was dull, plodding, and on par with "Threshold" for how much entertainment value it presented.

The first TOS movies I saw were IV and VI, both of which I loved.

That explains why you didn't have patience for the Enterprise reveal. While the film does have pacing issues, you have to realize the context of this picture. It came after 10 years of desperately wanting new Trek. The fan interest and success of trek was at its peak in the 70's and when the film FINALLY appeared, it was after an eternity of waiting, hoping, rumors and wishful thinking.

So each element of the show had to be revealed importantly. The Enterprise was a MAJOR draw for fans and a huge target for admiration. While I agree that 5 minutes of sightseeing through V'Ger was pretty dull, even back then as a kid, I LOVED the tour of the Enterprise. It was as if we were feeling the same thing as Kirk, getting a chance to see our beloved ship for the first time in 10 years and for the first time on the big screen. The effects, music and Shatner's expression encapsulated what many of us were feeling at the moment.

At the time, it was appropriate. Now, it' seen as dull and a "get on with it" moment by many fans who just didn't come from that era. That's what happens with films and TV shows, time dilutes the context and the purpose behind the shots is gone or forgotten.

When watching an old film or TV show, context is vital in appreciating the result.

TMP is a film I always enjoyed. It brought back the cast and the concept after a long period of nothing but promises, plus the cast looked great. Some trimming was needed, but in all, a decent film.

 

[Bones2]

Having just watched it, though it has its interesting moments, and the V'Ger effects are fantastic, I'd say it's my least favourite of the Star Trek films. The main idea had been done in TOS at least twice, and it can be quite dull. The score's fantastic though, and the opening with the Klingons and then Epsilon IV was a great opening.

And the transporter accident is the nastiest scene in all of Trek. Forget Borg assimilations or the ear bugs in WOTK, this was horrific. Can't believe it got a U.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

I think this is sort of like reading classical literature. You know that it's a classic, and you know it's pretty good, but boy, do you have to work at keeping yourself reading through it. Then you get to the end and you're like WOW -- that was awesome. But you're not in a hurry to read it again. Kind of like how I felt about the book "The Portrait of Dorian Grey." That's another topic, though.

I will say though that the ending of the movie really blows my mind. The part where the crystal staircase appears next to the Enterprise and everybody steps out to walk up is the most 'epic' Star Trek has ever been to me. Forget planets exploding and crashing star ships, those guys were dealing with something far beyond them. Also, the truth about V'Ger is awesome. It shows how our actions can have consequences in a few centuries forward and it's kind of heartwarming that V'Ger came back to see us -- even if it caused some damage in the process.

I saw the movie a few years ago when I finally got my wisdom teeth out. I feel asleep during it, but I was drugged up. I watched it after that stuff cleared up and was moved. But with that being said I'm really not in a hurry to see it again.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

The only things TMP "made me think" were "good lord, when is this scene going to end?" or "YES. IT'S THE ENTERPRISE. I GET IT ALREADY" or other such things. I thought it was dull, plodding, and on par with "Threshold" for how much entertainment value it presented.

The first TOS movies I saw were IV and VI, both of which I loved.

That explains why you didn't have patience for the Enterprise reveal. While the film does have pacing issues, you have to realize the context of this picture. It came after 10 years of desperately wanting new Trek. The fan interest and success of trek was at its peak in the 70's and when the film FINALLY appeared, it was after an eternity of waiting, hoping, rumors and wishful thinking.

So each element of the show had to be revealed importantly. The Enterprise was a MAJOR draw for fans and a huge target for admiration. While I agree that 5 minutes of sightseeing through V'Ger was pretty dull, even back then as a kid, I LOVED the tour of the Enterprise. It was as if we were feeling the same thing as Kirk, getting a chance to see our beloved ship for the first time in 10 years and for the first time on the big screen. The effects, music and Shatner's expression encapsulated what many of us were feeling at the moment.

At the time, it was appropriate. Now, it' seen as dull and a "get on with it" moment by many fans who just didn't come from that era. That's what happens with films and TV shows, time dilutes the context and the purpose behind the shots is gone or forgotten.

When watching an old film or TV show, context is vital in appreciating the result.

TMP is a film I always enjoyed. It brought back the cast and the concept after a long period of nothing but promises, plus the cast looked great. Some trimming was needed, but in all, a decent film.

I watched TMP in the cinema back in 1979. I recall watching Kirk ogle the Enterprise thinking "Well, I'm enjoying this scene, but what about the rest of the audience", by which I ment the non-hardcore Trek fans.

If you have to know the context to appreciate a work of art, it is at least a partial failure IMO. It should stand as it is. Just because TMP was eagerly awaited by many fans (myself included) is no excuse.

It's main problem is that it isn't what the audience who had only seen TOS would expect. The people behind it wanted to make a serious SF film, not a fun action adventure story with some humour and character interaction.

 

[VulKhan]

The Director's Cut of TMP is fantastic, has better pacing, and is far more enjoyable to me.

J.

I agree, the Director's Cut is better than the original 1979 version pace wise, but in my opinion it becomes a little "long" towards the end, you know. I mean, If you put those bits and pieces in the last 40 minutes of the film together, you get a total of 20 minutes or so only showing them watching on the screen what it looks like outside the ship.

 

[RyanKCR]

The only things TMP "made me think" were "good lord, when is this scene going to end?" or "YES. IT'S THE ENTERPRISE. I GET IT ALREADY" or other such things. I thought it was dull, plodding, and on par with "Threshold" for how much entertainment value it presented.

The first TOS movies I saw were IV and VI, both of which I loved.

That explains why you didn't have patience for the Enterprise reveal. While the film does have pacing issues, you have to realize the context of this picture. It came after 10 years of desperately wanting new Trek. The fan interest and success of trek was at its peak in the 70's and when the film FINALLY appeared, it was after an eternity of waiting, hoping, rumors and wishful thinking.

So each element of the show had to be revealed importantly. The Enterprise was a MAJOR draw for fans and a huge target for admiration. While I agree that 5 minutes of sightseeing through V'Ger was pretty dull, even back then as a kid, I LOVED the tour of the Enterprise. It was as if we were feeling the same thing as Kirk, getting a chance to see our beloved ship for the first time in 10 years and for the first time on the big screen. The effects, music and Shatner's expression encapsulated what many of us were feeling at the moment.

At the time, it was appropriate. Now, it' seen as dull and a "get on with it" moment by many fans who just didn't come from that era. That's what happens with films and TV shows, time dilutes the context and the purpose behind the shots is gone or forgotten.

When watching an old film or TV show, context is vital in appreciating the result.

TMP is a film I always enjoyed. It brought back the cast and the concept after a long period of nothing but promises, plus the cast looked great. Some trimming was needed, but in all, a decent film.

I watched TMP in the cinema back in 1979. I recall watching Kirk ogle the Enterprise thinking "Well, I'm enjoying this scene, but what about the rest of the audience", by which I ment the non-hardcore Trek fans.

If you have to know the context to appreciate a work of art, it is at least a partial failure IMO. It should stand as it is. Just because TMP was eagerly awaited by many fans (myself included) is no excuse.

It's main problem is that it isn't what the audience who had only seen TOS would expect. The people behind it wanted to make a serious SF film, not a fun action adventure story with some humour and character interaction.

Remember I came into TMP with little or no knowledge of TOS. I was about 8 or 9 when I saw it in the theater. I liked it better than Star Wars and I was a big Star Wars fan. I didn't need the context to enjoy it.

 

[Maxillius]

There are only a couple of scenes that go on distractingly too long--the long drag over the Enterprise is, as people have pointed out, one of them. Although maybe it only seems like that now, when we've seen the 1701 refit a billion times already.

Trust me, that's not the issue. The Ent-E is probably my favorite ship in all of Star Trek canon. I think it's a thing of beauty, and I would be annoyed if they had a scene like that with the Ent-E. I know I don't necessarily speak for everyone, but that crap would be annoying with ANY ship.

I'm going to do a spoof of that scene that is 15 minutes of pure type-8 shuttlecraft pornography!!!

 

[royalfan5]

While I have always enjoyed TMP, I have always felt I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I had ingested a handful of magic mushrooms before I watched it.

 

[Hyper]

TMP is my favorite Trek film. Like others, I felt it came the closest to what the original series was about. This should probably be no surprise, Since Roddenberry himself was the producer, and it was adapted from a Phase II script.

With regards to the Enterprise flyby, it's really hard to explain how much that meant to us fans. I first started watching Trek in 1974, and for the next five years all we had was the original 79 episodes and the one-time run of TAS. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out how quickly you'll go through those 79 episodes when they're showing them five days a week. Because there's so much Trek available today, I think it can be hard for some of the younger Trekkies to understand what it was like back then.

When Scotty flew that travel pod back and forth across the Enterprise, he wasn't just showing it off to Kirk. He was bringing the rest of us home too. To date, that is my favorite Trek scene, period. I'll often load up the TMP dvd and select that scene just for the experience.

 

[nx1701g]

I've always loved TMP.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I know I loved it the first time I saw it.

 

[schatenjager]

Different movie, different time. There was a time when not everything on screen had to have an action sequence ever 15 seconds to make it "watchable". There were a lot of movies that came out in the 60's and 70's that had similar pacing. We look back at them now and call them bad movies because they're "slow". The audience used to have a much longer attention span, I think.

The world, in general, has turned into a very immediate, "Right NOW!" culture. I know people who can't manage to wait for literally 10 seconds for a programs to open on their computers. You couldn't make a movie like TMP today with that sort of pacing and of course in retrospect, it looks slow. I would imagine that when it came out, it was pretty on par with what was typical of the time, for that genre. Remember that Star Wars, just a few years earlier, broke all sorts of rules for what was considered "acceptable science fiction".

By the time that Wrath of Kahn came out (and there are still slow periods in that movie) the world was no longer accepting of movies that showed long scenes of visuals or scenes with little movement to them.

Now, in 2009, we have movies that are paced so fast that you can't take it all in in a single viewing. They're meant to be re-watched. Movies 30 years ago couldn't be re-watched other than at the movie theater or eventually on the Sunday-night movie. We didn't have the luxury of going home and watching it again. You couldn't rent it.

If a movie is actually paced so that it keeps the attention span of this ADD, Commercial length, super-fast cell phone culture, it's blasted as being "too heavy on action" but if the director takes the time to really create a beautiful scene, stretches things out, or doesn't pan the camera around 60 times a minute, the film is blasted as being too slow and unwatchable...Hollywood can't win.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

I think this is sort of like reading classical literature. You know that it's a classic, and you know it's pretty good, but boy, do you have to work at keeping yourself reading through it. Then you get to the end and you're like WOW -- that was awesome. But you're not in a hurry to read it again.

I've never had that experience with a book or a movie I actually thought was good.

I also think its a little odd that you seem to imply that "classic literature"="hard to read"

 

[Gepard]

I also think its a little odd that you seem to imply that "classic literature"="hard to read"

Remember, true art is incomprehensible.

 

[Too Much Fun]

I think this is sort of like reading classical literature. You know that it's a classic, and you know it's pretty good, but boy, do you have to work at keeping yourself reading through it. Then you get to the end and you're like WOW -- that was awesome. But you're not in a hurry to read it again. Kind of like how I felt about the book "The Portrait of Dorian Grey." That's another topic, though.

I think this is a very insightful comment that applies to both movies and literature. I try to watch as many movies that have attained 'classic' status in movie history as I can, and this is my reaction to a lot of them. Many of them are just so dense and mercilessly vague and complex at the same time that you really have to 'work' to grasp what makes them special. They're the kind of movies that a lot of people would dismiss as 'boring' and 'pretentious' early on and give up on before finishing, but can be appreciated as a lot deeper than they initially seem if you think really hard about what they're trying to say beneath their very impenetrable surface.

"Nashville" is an example of a movie I felt that way about, but to be honest, I generally prefer movies that are a lot more straightforward and don't require so much effort from the viewer to understand what makes them special. That doesn't mean I prefer movies to be fast-paced and dumb...I just feel more comfortable watching movies that aren't maddeningly ambiguous and mercilessly paced so trying to find the merit in them requires a significant commitment of your time and intellectual energy.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I liked The Motion Picture (Star Trek I). It don't think it was that slow and had an interesting storyline, especially with Decker and the Bald Girl.

No, there wasn't any mean and crazy villian, no great shoot outs or classic lines. There was no CGI to rip out your throat. I liked it, and if you didn't, well, then yhou can kiss my green behind.