Misconceptions about TOS

[Ssosmcin]

I think the syndication run order was set by Paramount as part of the package, which I'd imagine just defaulted to the production order.

I'm pretty sure that Trek ran in a pretty damned random order in the NYC area until the mid-80's. Then the series was pulled for a short time and brought back with new prints pre-cut by Paramount. Then, it fell into production order. But I'm old, so I could very well have a faulty memory.

 

[Lance]

I thought of another misconception, this time about TMP:

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture is too long, slow and boring. The Director's Edition fixes this."

I'll explain why I think this is a misconception that took hold.

I think this one is down to how most people (ie, "the broader viewing public" rather than simply the fans) experienced it on VHS. The theatrical cut of TMP has got its problems, including one or two pacing issues, but it isn't over long IMO. Its actually been cut pretty close, the only sequences that go on and on and on are artistic ones (and why shouldn't we see the full majesty of the inside of V'ger for the first time?).

What I think happened is this: a lot of people (again, talking about a broader public perception here) probably watched TMP on video in the eighties and nineties, and came to the conclusion that all the stuff people said back in the seventies about the movie having major pacing problems was right.

But but BUT..... the version of the movie commonly seen on VHS was the Special Longer Version, a cut of the movie that deliberately threw in as many extra scenes and asides as possible, and was nearly 2 1/2 hours long. So, we got all these extra sequences of the crew reacting to things which just aren't in the original theatrical cut. We get many 'Keep The Camera Rolling' scenes where we pan slooooowly across the bridge, taking in each individual actor's reaction shot without a single cut or edit away. We're talking about two minute long scenes here. Repeated across the whole movie and all of that stuff adds up.

So yes, while TMP always had a 'reputation' for being long and unwieldy in places even in its original cinema exhibition, the SLV I feel only codified that plus moreso. People walked away making jokes about how slow paced the movie was. "The Slow Motion Picture", "The Motionless Picture", you've heard all the cracks. What isn't remembered is that the theatrical cut was something in the region of ten minutes shorter than the VHS version. It didn't drag in some of the places that the VHS one did.

And then the Director's Edition got plaudits for editing it down a further ten minutes to just over two hours. Loads of people threw acclaim at this, misremembering TMP as being this long wieldy beast and being thankful for a leaner version of the movie. But I think most of these people were comparing it to their memories of the SLV, not the already reasonably paced theatrical cut (IMO).

 

[Gassy Man]

I thought of another misconception, this time about TMP:

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture is too long, slow and boring. The Director's Edition fixes this."

I'll explain why I think this is a misconception that took hold.

I think this one is down to how most people (ie, "the broader viewing public" rather than simply the fans) experienced it on VHS. The theatrical cut of TMP has got its problems, including one or two pacing issues, but it isn't over long IMO. Its actually been cut pretty close, the only sequences that go on and on and on are artistic ones (and why shouldn't we see the full majesty of the inside of V'ger for the first time?).

What I think happened is this: a lot of people (again, talking about a broader public perception here) probably watched TMP on video in the eighties and nineties, and came to the conclusion that all the stuff about pacing problems was right.

But but BUT..... the version of the movie commonly seen on VHS was the Special Longer Version, a cut of the movie that deliberately threw in as many extra scenes and asides as possible, and was nearly 2 1/2 hours long. So, we got all these extra sequences of the crew reacting to things which just aren't in the original theatrical cut. We get many 'Keep The Camera Rolling' scenes where we pan slooooowly across the bridge, taking in each individual actor's reaction shot without a single cut or edit away. We're talking about two minute long scenes here. Repeated across the whole movie and all of that stuff adds up.

So yes, while TMP always had a 'reputation' for being long and unwieldy in places even in its original cinema exhibition, the SLV I feel only codified that plus moreso. People walked away making jokes about how slow paced the movie was. "The Slow Motion Picture", "The Motionless Picture", you've heard all the cracks. What isn't remembered is that the theatrical cut was something in the region of ten minutes shorter than the VHS version. It didn't drag in some of the places that the VHS one did.

And then the Director's Edition got plaudits for editing it down a further ten minutes to just over two hours. Loads of people threw acclaim at this, misremembering TMP as being this long wieldy beast and being thankful for a leaner version of the movie. But I think most of these people were comparing it to their memories of the SLV, not the already reasonably paced theatrical cut (IMO).

It's not the literal length, but the pacing and introverted nature of the execution that makes the film seem so slow and cumbersome. I took a bunch of my friends to see it for my 12th birthday party, and half the kids fell asleep. So did some adults.

 

[Lance]

It's not the literal length, but the pacing and introverted nature of the execution that makes the film seem so slow and cumbersome. I took a bunch of my friends to see it for my 12th birthday party, and half the kids fell asleep. So did some adults.

I don't deny the theatrical cut suffers this too, but the extent to which people claim it has pacing problems seems exaggerated. Now, to my mind the SLV does have serious pacing issues, naturally so, and I wonder if the general public tend to get confused about that version in their minds.

When I watched the theatrical cut on Blu Ray for the first time, having only ever experienced the SLV and the DE before, it actually surprised me how well paced I thought the theatrical version was relative to its reputation. The DE definitely speed up the pace in its handling of the cutaways, but the theatrical cut wasn't exactly the slouch I've seen it proclaimed as.

 

[Warped9]

I really like TMP, but it's not hard to see why a bunch of 12 year olds would get restless or sleepy with it. It's not a rollicking shoot-em-up like Star Wars which is something 12 year olds would eat up.

Now we get lots of movies ideally suited for 12 year olds in terms of attention span while a lot of adults are left out in the cold.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I'm pretty sure that Trek ran in a pretty damned random order in the NYC area until the mid-80's. Then the series was pulled for a short time and brought back with new prints pre-cut by Paramount. Then, it fell into production order. But I'm old, so I could very well have a faulty memory.

That was the first time the show was remastered. Suddenly, no more worn-out, grungy film prints cut for commercial time by local stations. The mid-80s prints were syndicated to stations on video cassettes instead of film. Now instead of a few big cuts, we got a hundred clever little trims; I'm not really sure which is better. But the syndicated tapes had much better picture quality.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I saw TMP in the theater on opening day and several times after that. It does seem a lot longer that it is because of pacing issues. Things like the tour of the Enterprise and journey through V'Ger really bog things down. The later is more a less an excuse to show us pretty pictures.

 

[BillJ]

I think the syndication run order was set by Paramount as part of the package, which I'd imagine just defaulted to the production order.

I'm pretty sure that Trek ran in a pretty damned random order in the NYC area until the mid-80's. Then the series was pulled for a short time and brought back with new prints pre-cut by Paramount. Then, it fell into production order. But I'm old, so I could very well have a faulty memory.

I remember them being in a pretty random order here in Cincinnati as well.

 

[Christopher]

What I think happened is this: a lot of people (again, talking about a broader public perception here) probably watched TMP on video in the eighties and nineties, and came to the conclusion that all the stuff people said back in the seventies about the movie having major pacing problems was right.

But but BUT..... the version of the movie commonly seen on VHS was the Special Longer Version, a cut of the movie that deliberately threw in as many extra scenes and asides as possible, and was nearly 2 1/2 hours long.

You have a point that people's perceptions of TMP are shaped mainly by the ABC-TV version (the "SLV"). Another myth that led to was the belief that the film's sets and costumes were visually bland and colorless. True, the color scheme was muted compared to the "Hey, look, we're on color TV!" garishness of TOS, but it wasn't as bad in the original theatrical version as people think. The problem is that the technology for transferring film to NTSC video at the time tended to wash out the colors and make the film blander than it originally was. The Director's Edition fixes this. And the TMP photonovel has always struck me as quite vividly colorful.

Things like the tour of the Enterprise and journey through V'Ger really bog things down. The later is more a less an excuse to show us pretty pictures.

And I've never understood why that's a bad thing. Film is a visual medium, after all. And I've rarely seen a science fiction film that conveyed a sense of wonder and alienness as effectively as the V'Ger flyover did. It was so beautiful and imaginative that it was well worth savoring. Not to mention that it was a treat to get to listen to Jerry Goldsmith's score without a lot of dialogue and sound effects getting in the way.

Besides, there are plenty of films that devote sequences of five or ten minutes to scenes of people punching or shooting each other or cars chasing each other around, with just as little dialogue or plot advancement. Heck, look at Man of Steel -- you could probably cut ten or fifteen minutes of destruction out of the third act without losing a single plot point or line of dialogue. Now, that's padding. Why is it okay to pad a film with ten or fifteen minutes of pointless violence and noise, but wrong to spend five or six minutes letting the audience slowly savor a beautiful and awe-inspiring vista?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Things like the tour of the Enterprise and journey through V'Ger really bog things down. The later is more a less an excuse to show us pretty pictures.

And I've never understood why that's a bad thing. Film is a visual medium, after all. And I've rarely seen a science fiction film that conveyed a sense of wonder and alienness as effectively as the V'Ger flyover did. It was so beautiful and imaginative that it was well worth savoring. Not to mention that it was a treat to get to listen to Jerry Goldsmith's score without a lot of dialogue and sound effects getting in the way.

Besides, there are plenty of films that devote sequences of five or ten minutes to scenes of people punching or shooting each other or cars chasing each other around, with just as little dialogue or plot advancement. Heck, look at Man of Steel -- you could probably cut ten or fifteen minutes of destruction out of the third act without losing a single plot point or line of dialogue. Now, that's padding. Why is it okay to pad a film with ten or fifteen minutes of pointless violence and noise, but wrong to spend five or six minutes letting the audience slowly savor a beautiful and awe-inspiring vista?

I'm not a fan of overlong action sequences either. That can bog down a film, too. It's about the pace of the story. Sometime you've got to move things along. When you don't, it can give the impression you don't have enough story. Awe-inspiring vista or destruction it amounts to the same thing. To me the journey to Voyager was too long and oversold the point. I'd rather some of that time be devoted to the characters.

 

[Gassy Man]

It's not the literal length, but the pacing and introverted nature of the execution that makes the film seem so slow and cumbersome. I took a bunch of my friends to see it for my 12th birthday party, and half the kids fell asleep. So did some adults.

I don't deny the theatrical cut suffers this too, but the extent to which people claim it has pacing problems seems exaggerated. Now, to my mind the SLV does have serious pacing issues, naturally so, and I wonder if the general public tend to get confused about that version in their minds.

When I watched the theatrical cut on Blu Ray for the first time, having only ever experienced the SLV and the DE before, it actually surprised me how well paced I thought the theatrical version was relative to its reputation. The DE definitely speed up the pace in its handling of the cutaways, but the theatrical cut wasn't exactly the slouch I've seen it proclaimed as.

The more interesting aspects of the film happen in the first half. Seeing the crew get back together works for the most part, though the whole Kirk/Decker thing is too reminiscent of the Gable/Lancaster relationship in Wise's Run Silent, Run Deep. Things bog down once the mission gets underway. Essentially, it becomes a bottle episode, with some brief forays into V'ger.

 

[Gassy Man]

I really like TMP, but it's not hard to see why a bunch of 12 year olds would get restless or sleepy with it. It's not a rollicking shoot-em-up like Star Wars which is something 12 year olds would eat up.

Now we get lots of movies ideally suited for 12 year olds in terms of attention span while a lot of adults are left out in the cold.

True. I was really the only one in the group that had any excitement about it. But the adults were underwhelmed as well. It was so different than the TV series that people thought they knew -- less colorful, more somber, slower in pace, ponderous instead of truly thoughtful.

 

[Warped9]

...the whole Kirk/Decker thing is too reminiscent of the Gable/Lancaster relationship in Wise's Run Silent, Run Deep.

I would say the problem is the opposite. They didn't make enough of this conflict. It would have added needed character drama to the story.

Some years ago when I first watched RSRD I was struck by the parallels with TMP---two commanders in conflict and a mission no one may survive---and how that level of character conflict would have really benefitted TMP.

And given that Robert Wise had also directed RSRD it stikes me he should have recalled those similarities and played it up more.

 

[drt]

I think the syndication run order was set by Paramount as part of the package, which I'd imagine just defaulted to the production order.

I'm pretty sure that Trek ran in a pretty damned random order in the NYC area until the mid-80's. Then the series was pulled for a short time and brought back with new prints pre-cut by Paramount. Then, it fell into production order. But I'm old, so I could very well have a faulty memory.

I remember them being in a pretty random order here in Cincinnati as well.

I remember the switch to new prints on my local station, it was in production order both before and after. Oddly enough, they didn't show Trek in my neck of the woods for several years, when they restarted it was in the middle of the second season and in production order (which I was then aware of because of the Compendium, lol ).

We just need someone go dig through 1970s newspaper TV listings in their local library's microfilm department.

 

[Gassy Man]

...the whole Kirk/Decker thing is too reminiscent of the Gable/Lancaster relationship in Wise's Run Silent, Run Deep.

I would say the problem is the opposite. They didn't make enough of this conflict. It would have added needed character drama to the story.

Some years ago when I first watched RSRD I was struck by the parallels with TMP---two commanders in conflict and a mission no one may survive---and how that level of character conflict would have really benefitted TMP.

And given that Robert Wise had also directed RSRD it stikes me he should have recalled those similarities and played it up more.

For me, the feeling was "been there, done that." (I was a big fan of submarine stories when I was a kid.) But I agree that TMP didn't take it as far. In an effort to make the idea bigger than the people, it didn't see that relationship (or any other character one) as important as getting to the wondrous concept that the writers and director thought was the more important aspect of the story. Actually, instead of an Archie and Reggie rivalry that is a cliche, I would have preferred that Kirk and Decker have gotten along famously -- and then Decker's loss at the end would have been more poignant to me because it would have felt like a loss rather than a convenient way to get Kirk back as the Enterprise captain.

 

[T'Bonz]

A reminder, my dear posters, to not get personal while discussing the show.

You can disagree without resorting to that.

Don't try my patience during a bad BBS week.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

A reminder, my dear posters, to not get personal while discussing the show.

I can't find the offending passage. Just out of curiosity, what post are you calling out?

 

[Gov Kodos]

I really like TMP, but it's not hard to see why a bunch of 12 year olds would get restless or sleepy with it. It's not a rollicking shoot-em-up like Star Wars which is something 12 year olds would eat up.

Now we get lots of movies ideally suited for 12 year olds in terms of attention span while a lot of adults are left out in the cold.

True. I was really the only one in the group that had any excitement about it. But the adults were underwhelmed as well. It was so different than the TV series that people thought they knew -- less colorful, more somber, slower in pace, ponderous instead of truly thoughtful.

I was no 12 year old. My date and I saw it at a theater in Florida on opening day. We found it a tedious bore. We found TMP to be a slow moving, overwrought version of Nomad and 'The Changeling'. We were quite disappointed. Time has not improved my opinion of it. It is an over blown remake of a lackluster episode spending far too much time on maudlin banalities that are meant to pass for philosophic pondering on humanity and mind numbing sequences of people and ships floating about to eat up screen time in the hopes we don't notice the actors looking ridiculous in bad 70s haircuts and pajamas.

 

[Marsden]

I think the syndication run order was set by Paramount as part of the package, which I'd imagine just defaulted to the production order.

I'm pretty sure that Trek ran in a pretty damned random order in the NYC area until the mid-80's. Then the series was pulled for a short time and brought back with new prints pre-cut by Paramount. Then, it fell into production order. But I'm old, so I could very well have a faulty memory.

I remember this also, before WVIA started showing them in production order I barely knew anything about it. I mostly watched them on WPIX (11) and WPHL (17). I don't even know if those independent stations still exist, things have certainly changed.

 

[erastus25]

Things like the tour of the Enterprise and journey through V'Ger really bog things down. The later is more a less an excuse to show us pretty pictures.

And I've never understood why that's a bad thing. Film is a visual medium, after all. And I've rarely seen a science fiction film that conveyed a sense of wonder and alienness as effectively as the V'Ger flyover did. It was so beautiful and imaginative that it was well worth savoring. Not to mention that it was a treat to get to listen to Jerry Goldsmith's score without a lot of dialogue and sound effects getting in the way.

Besides, there are plenty of films that devote sequences of five or ten minutes to scenes of people punching or shooting each other or cars chasing each other around, with just as little dialogue or plot advancement. Heck, look at Man of Steel -- you could probably cut ten or fifteen minutes of destruction out of the third act without losing a single plot point or line of dialogue. Now, that's padding. Why is it okay to pad a film with ten or fifteen minutes of pointless violence and noise, but wrong to spend five or six minutes letting the audience slowly savor a beautiful and awe-inspiring vista?

I'm not a fan of overlong action sequences either. That can bog down a film, too. It's about the pace of the story. Sometime you've got to move things along. When you don't, it can give the impression you don't have enough story. Awe-inspiring vista or destruction it amounts to the same thing. To me the journey to Voyager was too long and oversold the point. I'd rather some of that time be devoted to the characters.

I'm the same with action sequences. I just get bored out of my mind after about 5 minutes. CGI porn can handle take a film so far if there's not a good story and good characterization to back it up. I can barely sit through most modern Summer blockbusters, as a result.

A reminder, my dear posters, to not get personal while discussing the show.

I can't find the offending passage. Just out of curiosity, what post are you calling out?

Yeah...I just re-read the last 1.5 pages and didn't see anything. Maybe she deleted something?

I really like TMP, but it's not hard to see why a bunch of 12 year olds would get restless or sleepy with it. It's not a rollicking shoot-em-up like Star Wars which is something 12 year olds would eat up.

Now we get lots of movies ideally suited for 12 year olds in terms of attention span while a lot of adults are left out in the cold.

True. I was really the only one in the group that had any excitement about it. But the adults were underwhelmed as well. It was so different than the TV series that people thought they knew -- less colorful, more somber, slower in pace, ponderous instead of truly thoughtful.

I was no 12 year old. My date and I saw it at a theater in Florida on opening day. We found it a tedious bore. We found TMP to be a slow moving, overwrought version of Nomad and 'The Changeling'. We were quite disappointed. Time has not improved my opinion of it. It is an over blown remake of a lackluster episode spending far too much time on maudlin banalities that are meant to pass for philosophic pondering on humanity and mind numbing sequences of people and ships floating about to eat up screen time in the hopes we don't notice the actors looking ridiculous in bad 70s haircuts and pajamas.

I'm with you. I first watched it when I was about 8 and actually liked it. I've liked it less and less (and less) as I've gotten. It does have some nice moments in the first half...but, man, is it plodding.