Movie anticipation for undiscovered country

[SpHeRe31459]

There was a ton of media coverage for TUC : it was the 25th anniversary, the movie was cleverly teased in a Next Gen episode (Unification), there was loads of new merchandise coming out all throught 1991 to cash in on the anniversary, and there were rumours flying around suggesting some of the crew might get killed off.

It was quite well-expected. I remember the Arts section of The New York Times giving its full (sectional) front page over to the movie and a huge (black-and-white, as befit the era) publicity photograph from the film. I kept that for a while until it was ridiculous to haul such a thing around.

Yep. I remember similar spreads running out in the west coast media.

I think people who weren't alive and/or were not interested in Trek in 1991 just don't have a clear idea of how big Trek was in the 1990s and how huge the 25th anniversary celebration was. It was everywhere. Trek was on Slurpee cups, in the Rose Bowl parade, parodied on In Living Color, SNL, and Mad TV, etc.

The sneak peek of TUC during the 25th Anniversary Special on TV, and then TNG Unification's hint at TUC from Spock (and seeing Spock with TNG characters!) had me whipped into a frenzy

 

[The Old Mixer]

I remember in earlier '91, Dana Carvey appearing on SNL Weekend Update as an incomprehensible Bob Dylan, with Dennis Miller interpreting for him. One of the random things that "Dylan" said was, "Can you believe they're making a Star Trek VI?"

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I remember in earlier '91, Dana Carvey appearing on SNL Weekend Update as an incomprehensible Bob Dylan, with Dennis Miller interpreting for him. One of the random things that "Dylan" said was, "Can you believe they're making a Star Trek VI?"

As an aside, nice holiday name change

 

[trevanian]

I remember the full year preceding TUC as one that seemed to indicate a lot of confusion or misdirection, a la TWOK's Spock controversy.)

Meyer's odd summation of TUC (which I think comes from before the film got greenlit) as a little story about Spock in love has always seemed like serious misdirection IMO.

I had a very bad phone interview with him (which in retrospect seems to have taken place the day after the film was greenlit, apparently through a veil of tears over everything being sacrificed to get the film made, though I didn't work that out for more than a decade) during which he was terse and unforthcoming, and he only addressed the story in saying the few word pitch he worked from did not relate to wrapping the TOS features up.

Given how every second sentence was how he could not afford to do this or that (couldn't afford Horner, couldn't afford to build sets or revise existing ones), I took his comment about handling things in a more theatrical fashion to mean he was shooting limbo sets a la THE EMPATH, but obviously that was not the case; he must have meant more cinematic/theatrical fashion given the moments of spectacle they did cobble together.

After that early interview, which I got on my own via a really good letter without going through any PR folk, I spent the better part of a year not getting any interviews at all for the article while waiting for Paramount PR to come through, and if not for associate producer Brooke Breton, who basically hooked me up with ILM and Matte World and all the makeup guys as well as the CimityArts graphics people, the CINEFEX article would not even have happened.

Folks I worked with at a software place told me that TUC had had some minor shooting with klingons taking place in Santa Cruz two months prior to release, but I've never found anything to confirm that at all.

The finished film really surprised me, in that I absolutely despised it for the way they handled Kirk and Spock, and for the extremely grainy Super35 photography, which in the theaters I caught it in, made scenes like the Kirk/McCoy bunkbed rure penthe scene look like it was being projected i a drive-in, it was just murk, nothing visible at all.

Seeing the thing on laserdisc and dvd was a real revelation, because it didn't look anything like this in the theater (same thing was true for GEN, though I wonder how much of that was just how all the Century theaters were using about a quarter of the necessary illumination in their projectors ... I had seen TFF at Palo Alto Square, a gorgeous therefore by now long-gone cinema that had a print which looked grand, so it is possible a lot of my bad memories of TUC/GEN have to do with where I saw them rather than how they were actually supposed to look.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

The finished film really surprised me, in that I absolutely despised it for the way they handled Kirk and Spock, and for the extremely grainy Super35 photography, which in the theaters I caught it in, made scenes like the Kirk/McCoy bunkbed rure penthe scene look like it was being projected i a drive-in, it was just murk, nothing visible at all.

Seeing the thing on laserdisc and dvd was a real revelation, because it didn't look anything like this in the theater (same thing was true for GEN, though I wonder how much of that was just how all the Century theaters were using about a quarter of the necessary illumination in their projectors ... I had seen TFF at Palo Alto Square, a gorgeous therefore by now long-gone cinema that had a print which looked grand, so it is possible a lot of my bad memories of TUC/GEN have to do with where I saw them rather than how they were actually supposed to look.

Definitely where you saw it exhibited. I don't remember such issues when seeing either movie in my hometown's Holiday Cinema (now owned by Regal) theater.

 

[The Old Mixer]

As an aside, nice holiday name change

Steering things violently off-topic, thank you!

 

[Therin of Andor]

I took his comment about handling things in a more theatrical fashion to mean he was shooting limbo sets a la THE EMPATH, but obviously that was not the case...

I dunno. That description kinda fits the admirals' long-table briefing, and the Klingon courtroom.

 

[bbailey861]

Personally, there was a lot of anticipation for this film. Expecting it to be the last film of the TOS crew was one thing, but hoping it would redeem Star Trek following STV:TFF was another main reason. Now I say that only as a result of the press it received and not my own personal feelings because to be honest, there was a lot about V that I liked although many others did not feel the same.

 

[KarmicCurse]

Yes that is Plummer's voice on the teaser. It's mentioned that he did that somewhere in the DVD's special features.

While I've always loved that teaser (it made me downright teary when I first saw it at age 15) the text is a bit overblown after the 30 second mark. I wonder if it would have played better without a vocal, just the imagery projected on the Enterprise (which was very well done) and the music, with maybe just fragments of that speech as simple on-screen text.

All the reminiscing about the publicity of the time reminds me of my primary source of Trek information in the early 90s: QVC! Yes, the home shopping network. Remember when they'd have a Star Trek themed night, with one of the actors actually present to chat with the host over 2 or 3 hours? We actually got a lot of information that way! It's how I first heard about DS9. I can't believe how much I'd sit through for a little nugget of information. It's hard to believe in the internet age. Actually shopping for anything by watching it on TV and making a phone call seems archaic now, but QVC is still around.

 

[Therin of Andor]

All the reminiscing about the publicity of the time reminds me of my primary source of Trek information in the early 90s: QVC!

In Australia, we came to depend heavily on "Entertainment This Week", a compilation show of the US "Entertainment Tonight". If we kept our fannish ears to the ground, we usually had about two weeks notice to set our video recorders to catch a promotional piece on TOS movies or TNG. This was more current than "Starlog", which had been our main news source for TMP, ST II and ST III.

With ST IV, my penpal in Michigan managed to catch the report on the filming of the Bird of Prey's crash into the carpark/tank at Paramount, and she drew our Aussie newsletter a series of little stick-figure cartoons, which we printed, along with her annotations. These were the days before many of us had multi-region VHSs, which also required a TV capable of switching from PAL to NTSC, so sending airmail tapes was expensive and frustrating. Eventually we got the real footage in PAL in a later compilation show aired locally.

Of course, we incorrectly guessed that the Klingon ship crashed early in the film and watching the actual film, and realising the crash occured at the end, was a revelation!

 

[Lance]

It was always amazing when Star Trek promotional stuff popped up on something else. I remember my mum recording a mid-day chat show on tape when Andrew Robinson was a guest on there once. It was so cool getting home from school one night and finding this whole interview with Garak was waiting there for me. So unexpected!

 

[F. King Daniel]

I took his comment about handling things in a more theatrical fashion to mean he was shooting limbo sets a la THE EMPATH, but obviously that was not the case...

I dunno. That description kinda fits the admirals' long-table briefing. . .

In my mind, that's the murky basement of the snazzy Starfleet HQ building from Into Darkness.

 

[arch101]

My peer group of rabid Trekkies was early 20s at the time. Most of us figured that TOS was dead after TFF. I mean, it was SO BAD that it was the first Trek film any of us didn't see even a second time. TNG seemed to be going so well that we all just assumed that "the winners" would get the next film. It was pretty surprising when it was announced that they were rushing a film out for the 25th with the TOS cast. But, when Nick Meyer was announced as Director, we all got immediately excited for it. We remembered what magic he worked with TWOK so anticipation got pretty high and he didn't disappoint. In the end, it was really good that the film was made so the TOS cast could go out on top. We all knew TNG would be the next film, it just seemed inevitable. We were just sad that TNG had to end on TV to make it happen. It was SO short-sighted of Paramount to think that a movie couldn't be good promotion for a current TV show- something Fox proved later on with The X-Files.
That montage trailer may be one of the best Trek ads of all time. Love that final comparison of Shat and Nimoy from WNMHGB and TFF. Yes, Christopher Plummer did the voice-over. I first saw it late in the summer that year when TMP was reissued on VHS in letterbox. That trailer was on the tape.

 

[Hober Mallow]

We were just sad that TNG had to end on TV to make it happen. It was SO short-sighted of Paramount to think that a movie couldn't be good promotion for a current TV show- something Fox proved later on with The X-Files.

The whole reason -- or one reason, anyway -- of sending the TNG crew to movies was so they didn't have to pay the casts' ever-increasing salaries on a weekly basis.

 

[Therin of Andor]

It was SO short-sighted of Paramount to think that a movie couldn't be good promotion for a current TV show- something Fox proved later on with The X-Files.

Economics. "X-Files" had a main cast of two characters and was set in the modern day. Signing your main cast to contract periods longer than 5+1+1 years is extremely tricky. Series like "Friends", "Cheers" and "Frazier" had large casts and went beyond seven years, but they were only half-hour eps and, again, were set in contemporary times.