Star Trek: TMP questions and observations

Right you are; after I'd posted, I recalled the "I'm afraid you're going to have to double as Science Officer." line of Kirk's.

 

Oh, cripes, he would have gone running to the Borg Queen, ready to be her "king."

He might have interesting as a guest character, but not as a regular.

 

It worked for Picard. Though having Decker of Borg might have confused some fans as to whether Shatner's ideas about V'Ger and the Borg being related were true.

--Sran

 

On the 1979 official plans there are what appears to be six additional hatches (four forward and two aft) on the saucer underside inboard of the rectangular structures labeled "landing pad", but there's no indication of their function (or if it's because of what Christopher said and were supposed to represent an aspect of "under construction", and ended up on the blueprints as they were cutouts on the model and the draftsman interpreted them as hatches).

I've seen some fan-produced blueprints where the forward hatches access a primary hull cargo bay.

 

But Decker would do it because he really wanted to, not because of being kidnapped and forced, or because he was trying to save his crew.

 

I don't know about the unused bits and pieces, as only the final film is "canon", and that is the only source of information I use when assessing the film. The Novelization departs from the film in so many ways, especially the third act, that it cannot serve as any kind of authority.

For this reason, I cannot agree with the idea that Decker hand picked everyone, or most of the key personnel.

He had spent 18 months on the refit, but he did not have the same history as Kirk had with the key personnel. He was more of someone working with the Chief Engineer on prepping the ship, and had yet to earn the loyalty Kirk had.

There's a big difference between being an administrator on an engineering project with no field command experience to being an experienced commander with a loyal familiarity with the crew.

That still makes him an outsider of sorts, and this was even commented on by Robert Wise and Mr. Collins in the special features as working well with him being cast late in the game.

He may have had command experience of various kinds prior to the Enterprise, but not with that crew.

 

I'm not sure if I noticed scaffolding, per se, the first time I saw this. I do know I didn't understand what I was looking at. I was confused if that was intentionally put in as some part of V'ger holding onto the saucer section, or what. In a multi-million dollar feature picture, you don't expect to see "The Man Behind the Curtain" ... especially in such a blatant way. Like seeing Frank Oz pop his head up in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, with his hand up Yoda's ass and puppetting his dialogue. It's just not done ... Of course STAR TREK has to be the franchise to shame itself in this way.

 

It's not like it was Paramount's idea. The theatrical cut had a runtime of 2 hours and 12 minutes, and at the time there were about 10-12 minutes of commercials per hour on TV, so it was too long for a 2.5-hour time slot and too short for a 3-hour time slot. So ABC needed to pad it out to fit a 3-hour slot, and therefore they crammed in whatever extra footage was available, including the Kirk-spacewalk footage from the abandoned Memory Wall sequence.

I suppose it would've been easy enough to go the other way and cut 6 minutes for a 2.5-hour slot -- heck, with TMP it would be very easy to cut 6 minutes -- but the network apparently wanted to make an event of it, to be more than just a rerun and offer previously unseen material. Apparently they helped finance the film in exchange for TV rights and wanted to get the most for their money.

And let's keep in mind that despite the production glitches of the Memory Wall footage, the ABC version also restores a lot of dialogue that fleshes out characterization in ways the theatrical cut didn't, so it's generally been considered an improvement.

 

Restoring deleted material often isn't an improvement over the original theatrical release (as with WRATH of KHAN), but yes, TMP needs to have more character moments in it, no matter how insubstantial. It's kind of always annoyed me, in fact, that while whole scenes got deleted, the real-life TREK nerds (particularly that one heavy guy with the bad skin) persistantly made the next cut. Now why is that? Granted a couple of the real life TREK girls mixed in there are cute.

But I'd rather spend a little more time with the crew during this movie, if I can. I would rather it not be solely in the Director's Edition, however, as I do not care for that version. It's just such a relief for me to get to talk about TMP to people who love it so much, when most fans seem eager to dismiss it. Owning it only as a completist, or having only viewed it once out of curiosity, or whatever ...

 

Lest anybody get confused by calling this "Memory Wall footage", the ABC version did not restore footage of the Memory Wall itself. Unless I am mistaken, of the scenes filmed with Kirk in the spacesuit used in the Memory Wall segment, the only scenes added for broadcast were of Kirk getting into the spacesuit and of Kirk leaving the ship to go after Spock, which includes the infamous "scaffolding shot". That was all edited together to make it appear that Kirk was exiting the ship right before Spock activates his emergency evacuation rocket.

 

Would it have killed "them" to blow up/enlarge the print of Kirk floating out of the Enterprise, so that the scaffolding was cropped-out? What would that have co$t them? An Editor's stipend? Hell, let some intern do it, I don't care. But no, just put it in raw, audiences aren't bright ... they won't even notice, so what's the difference?

 

Right, since that was never shot aside from some test footage. What I meant, which I should've made clearer, was that the footage of Kirk spacewalking in the alternate suit was the beginning of the overall Memory-Wall spacewalk sequence that was scrapped in its entirety in favor of the solo "Spock Walk."

 

In which I'm also thankful for since a lot of the new footage made it into the Director's Edition.

 

That still wouldn't have solved the problem of Kirk's spacesuit being different from the suit he's wearing when he picks up Spock. My opinion is that they should have just kept the footage of Kirk in the "alternate spacesuit" out altogether.

 

Like I said, once ABC decided to expand rather than cutting, they were constrained by the need to fit a 3-hour time slot that was about 12% commercials. In order to pad the film out to that length, they apparently had no choice but to use the alternate spacewalk footage. I'm not aware of any other major deleted sequences that they could've used in its place.

 

I remember some of the effects guys doing the Director's Edition wanted to make a joke by remastering that scene with a new matte of the Enterprise. They decided not to because those who don't get that it was a joke will interpret that the Director's Edition was going to restore the whole memory wall sequence.

 

IIRC, the 1st-Unit photography on the Memory Wall sequence was completed during principal photography. I know it was worked on at least beginning during November '78. Whether or not pick-up shots or 2nd-Unit shooting happened, I haven't a clue.

 

The memory wall spacewalk was shot. There are plenty of photos showing it. They were well beyond tests, but it's some of the tests that were included amongst the DE special features.

 

"Two hours and twelve minutes"...didn't Scotty say that once?

 

I think they abandoned the sequence because it wasn't working.

I remember reading or hearing somewhere that the Memory Wall sequence really had very little footage beyond what was seen on the DE DVD.