I think one of the worst scenes, and I will likely get flack for this, is the gratuitously long beauty shots of the refit Enterprise in TMP. It drags on forever. We get it, the ship is new and pretty. The scene felt super padded out to me.
Picture this: It's 1979. You've had reruns of TOS in all its 1960s low-budget glory. Sci-fi in general at the time was not given glorified budgets, especially since prop and set reuse are more difficult and most people do notice that prop and set recycling can and do take them out of the story's suspension of disbelief factor if overdone and I think a lot of people still had hangovers from all those "Lost in Space" episodes too...
...in 1977, in comes "Star Wars" on the big screen.
Now comes "Star Trek", after all this time - nigh on a decade A potential TV revival scraped thanks to "Star Wars". Even then, nothing new that's Star Trekky came out. In the context of the original time, those scenes were jaw-dropping.
That said: In rewatches, I won't deny it does get a little long and is indeed arguably padding since some deleted scenes do add a fair bit of needed plotting and context.
Still, seeing ship close-ups that looked tangible, real, and had a true and breathtaking sense of
scale when Star Wars just plopped a hundred whiz-bangy ships on screen* and faster than anyone two hours after eating a steak that had been left in the sun for eight hours would plop. That was innovation on top of a new f/x style that was already innovative in 1977. and only Trek did it. At least for only this one movie.
Save for some f/x recycling, which padded out TWOK at the start but - at the same time - was using it as a mini-reboot of its own, given the costume changes and other visual/tone alterations. (Well, season one TNG also showed some needed scale as "11001001" also did a really neat interior shot of the big-D with umbilical tube latching onto it with figures walking through, which still looks impressive. Triply so, considering that was a ginormous matte painting of the ship that they had used. It looks marvelous. and brownie points for the figures in the observation room walking during the opening credits... great stuff.)
But... that first viewing was a true proverbial feast for the pupils, which will have dilated to the size of football stadiums for those in the audience, which is a partial reason why TMP raked in thrice its budget and green-lit a sequel, albeit with some trepidation by the studio as another costly film may not get the same level of returns, having read the critics' reviews
of the time. And that's the ultimate point: the transition of this to the big screen, due to the factors precipitating it, were huge. TWOK's makers knew they had to up the ante for character and plotting, and not just because the critics pointed out the lack thereof in TMP.
* to be fair, TESB shows Luke hanging onto an antenna after falling down an amazing distance that would turn any human into jam for toast, and later the heroes are shown looking out a large window as the camera pulls back.. but, as Trek was inspired by Wars, Wars was inspired by Trek as well. (and weren't the f/x were done by some of the same people? I'll have to look that one up... but all those movies look gloriously awesome.)
