So Kirk makes the same mistake TWICE in accepting promotion?

[BillJ]

And TMP didn't meet creative expectations on some levels, but it was the FINANCIAL aspect of the film that caused the changes. That's why TV guys were brought in because they were used to doing more with less. If TMP had cost $5 million to make and made the money it did, I doubt you would have seen changes based of creative failures. Instead it cost a ton of money and wasn't a hit of Star Wars proportions.

This really makes no sense. Roddenberry or no, Paramount held the purse strings and would control the budget regardless of who was making the film. Part of the reason The Motion Picture cost so much to make was because it had the costs of various aborted attempts to restart the series added to its bottom line (Superman Returns had the same type of accounting).

If Paramount had been happy with the number of tickets TMP sold, they could've went straight to a sequel without any major changes. That would've saved them a ton of money. They could've done Roddenberry's "Spock shoots JFK" flick for a much smaller amount than what TMP cost.

Simply put, there is nothing that would make one think that Paramount was happy with how TMP performed.

 

[USS Triumphant]

According to Memory Alpha*, yes, he made the same mistake of accepting promotion to the Admiralty twice. However, the first time, he was Chief of Starfleet Operations, and the second time, he was some manner of big shot at Starfleet Academy. Maybe he thought passing on his knowledge, wisdom, and command style to new generations of officers would be more satisfying than the bureaucratic nightmare that was probably involved in the CoSOps job. So not *quite* the same mistake, after all - even though both involved him leaving the center seat.

*Yes, I know - it's a flawed site, yadda yadda. It'll do for my purposes here.

 

[gottacook]

The story of TMP, let's remember, is what caused the cost overruns - all those many minutes of shots of Vger, including the failures of the Abel company etc.

In addition (with respect to what enterprisecvn65 wrote), not even TMP needed to show and tell (to the extent that it did) what certain members of the bridge crew had been up to before the Vger news arrived; they should have just jumped right in, the way TWOK did. Why, besides the fact that she's played by Mrs. R, do we need to hear that Chapel is a doctor now? What story purpose did that serve? The whole group of scenes on and above Earth (including, of course, the endless ship fly-around with Kirk and Scott) sure put a crimp in whatever rhythm TMP might have gotten going, and hence in audience involvement.

 

[Trimm]

So it is easily possible that the Enterprise went from cutting edge to schoolroom over the course of the 12 years between TMP and TWOK.

But... there was no 12 years between TMP and TWOK. No time passed at all. They each could have begun on the same (Earth) day. The events of TMP really ought to be regarded as a pocket universe or a different time-track or something. I have seen arguments that the Spock of TWOK must have first lived through the events of TMP to have become who he is, but this is more a matter of belief than of internal evidence.

All this strict adherence to the published chronology of 20-odd years ago, which represents one or two people's attempt to make everything fit to that point, is beyond my comprehension. The chronology was written to sell books, and did so. But by Occam's Razor, the complete reboot (which may well have included a ship different from that in TMP if it had been made in the CGI era) makes the most sense.

Of course I know that not every sequel has a "II"; I also know that Nick Meyer had used the II for his Khan movie when he was still calling it The Undiscovered Country (as reported in Variety at the time) - which means that someone had seen fit to remove the II during the process of re-subtitling the movie TVOK and finally TWOK. I interpreted this to mean a de-emphasis on the sequel aspect, which surely corresponds to the new uniforms, new bridge decor and display technology, absence of any story elements in common with TMP, etc.

It just occurred to me that the "II" could have been re-attached to TWOK for the same reason that Ford (this is going back more than 40 years; my apologies) called its new-for-1974, Pinto-based sporty car the Mustang II rather than simply a Mustang. There had been three or four previous generations of Mustangs, each larger and less efficient than the last. So in that case, Ford's use of II was specifically intended to connote a fresh start, with a new, smaller, more modern-appearing car that promised better fuel economy while still including design cues that evoked earlier Mustangs.

With all respect to the thought you put into this, there is simply zero evidence to support your theory other than early prints of TWOK lacking the II. I also would argue that Occam would favor the second movie in a series being a sequel to the first by default, rather than a reboot.

I'll also point out that Kirk's conflict in TWOK is significantly different from TMP outside of the wanting to regain command angle. TMP presents a Kirk who has grown restless behind a desk when he would rather be in command. TWOK presents a Kirk grappling with the much deeper issue of aging and his role in life. They are thematically different, and presented so. We should also not ignore the fact that the Spock of TWOK is clearly played as having been influenced by the events of TMP. Whether or not that was due to Nimoy's influence or Meyer's I don't know, but it is there.

 

[urbandefault]

I think Kirk probably took the first promotion and thought of it as the next logical step in his career. But flying a desk is not the same as flying a starship, so when presented with an opportunity to get back in the big chair he was all over it.

He was probably "forced" to take the Academy position as a prelude to retirement. In TWOK he was aware of his own mortality, feeling old age creeping up on him, and I think he had resigned himself to the inevitability of being put out to pasture.

It's not clear when he actually retired and rejoined, but it was probably after TFF and before TUC. By GEN he had retired again, and Antonia was clearly not in the picture. Scotty's line "Finding retirement a bit lonely?" sets up his appearance at the cabin in the Nexus.

 

[BillJ]

He was probably "forced" to take the Academy position as a prelude to retirement. In TWOK he was aware of his own mortality, feeling old age creeping up on him, and I think he had resigned himself to the inevitability of being put out to pasture.

Odd that they would be pushing him towards retirement at only his 50th birthday. Seems like a total waste.

If one wanted to play the second-five year mission card. One could surmise that something went tragically wrong during it and Kirk got kicked upstairs as a result.

 

[urbandefault]

He was probably "forced" to take the Academy position as a prelude to retirement. In TWOK he was aware of his own mortality, feeling old age creeping up on him, and I think he had resigned himself to the inevitability of being put out to pasture.

Odd that they would be pushing him towards retirement at only his 50th birthday. Seems like a total waste.

If one wanted to play the second-five year mission card. One could surmise that something went tragically wrong during it and Kirk got kicked upstairs as a result.

Well, Kirk's a pain in the ass.

Not "not" a team player, but just enough of a maverick to make him a problem. Especially when they have guys like Styles and Esteban who are strictly by the book.

 

[BillJ]

He was probably "forced" to take the Academy position as a prelude to retirement. In TWOK he was aware of his own mortality, feeling old age creeping up on him, and I think he had resigned himself to the inevitability of being put out to pasture.

Odd that they would be pushing him towards retirement at only his 50th birthday. Seems like a total waste.

If one wanted to play the second-five year mission card. One could surmise that something went tragically wrong during it and Kirk got kicked upstairs as a result.

Well, Kirk's a pain in the ass.

Not "not" a team player, but just enough of a maverick to make him a problem. Especially when they have guys like Styles and Esteban who are strictly by the book.

But you also have Morrow who calls Kirk one of his best officers.

 

[Lance]

In addition (with respect to what enterprisecvn65 wrote), not even TMP needed to show and tell (to the extent that it did) what certain members of the bridge crew had been up to before the Vger news arrived; they should have just jumped right in, the way TWOK did. Why, besides the fact that she's played by Mrs. R, do we need to hear that Chapel is a doctor now? What story purpose did that serve?
The whole group of scenes on and above Earth (including, of course, the endless ship fly-around with Kirk and Scott) sure put a crimp in whatever rhythm TMP might have gotten going, and hence in audience involvement.

Alan Dean Foster's original story pitch for "In Thy Image" (which was the basis of TMP) did indeed feature the Enterprise already 'out there' in service, and simply encountering V'Ger in the same way that it encountered so many unusual phenomena throughout TOS (in this case by answering a distress call). At this time it wasn't intended to be the pilot episode of Phase II however, and once it got picked to be the TV pilot, all of the setting-up-the-backstory stuff got placed at the beginning (all of which, of course, migrated through to the finished movie as well).

Really, most of TMP's oddities come partly from what you describe, that it was "beefed up" to a theatrical film by using lots of camera tricks; and partly from the fact that the basic story breakdown underneath it all is still that of a TV pilot episode (particularly all the backstory of getting the crew back together, introducing the new characters, and launching the refitted starship Enterprise). Sure, none of it is necessary, but it's understandable within context of being a TV pilot.

As per Dr. Chapel, obviously she was intended to be a regular again in Phase II, as was Janice Rand. But another angle is that a 'cast reunion' special had been widely rumored for years before TMP came about, and there were parts of TMP which I've always felt were designed to scratch that itch for the fans. On some level, once "In Thy Image" became "The Motion Picture", characters like Rand and Chapel arguably became irrelevant, and could have been written out entirely... but for the fact that after ten years since TOS was cancelled, it'd be fun for the fans to see the whole cast reunited on screen again.

 

[urbandefault]

Odd that they would be pushing him towards retirement at only his 50th birthday. Seems like a total waste.

If one wanted to play the second-five year mission card. One could surmise that something went tragically wrong during it and Kirk got kicked upstairs as a result.

Well, Kirk's a pain in the ass.

Not "not" a team player, but just enough of a maverick to make him a problem. Especially when they have guys like Styles and Esteban who are strictly by the book.

But you also have Morrow who calls Kirk one of his best officers.

Even in the real world, a lot of flag officers are politicians.

 

[Warped9]

Captain, sir: I'm afraid you've been misled by Paramount's very late decision to attach "II" to the title of TWOK. There was no II in the pre-release ads, on the cover of the novelization, or on the original theatrical release prints.

TWOK is not a sequel to TMP. It's a reboot. Why else would Kirk be at a desk job at the start of each one?

This means that the ship as seen in TWOK is not a refit, but simply a better rendering of what we all saw on TV. In turn, the dialogue in TSFS "Jim, the Enterprise is twenty years old" (referring to plans to decommission the Khan-damaged ship) now makes sense, whereas it contrasts wildly with Decker's "Admiral, this is an almost totally new Enterprise" if the latter is to be taken into account.

If the ship is indeed 20 years old (despite resembling the refit ship seen in TMP), then it makes sense that it's now used as a training ship with a small trainee crew. Suddenly it makes sense that the huge and varied TMP crew is nowhere to be found. An almost totally new Enterprise wouldn't be used as a training ship, especially if it has features that are so new that other ships wouldn't even have them yet (channeling phasers through the warp engines, etc., as mentioned in the wormhole scene).

So relax. There is no continuity between TMP and TWOK, no matter what you may hear elsewhere.

This always made sense to me.


TMP has always been reported with a bloated budget primarily because Paramount saddled it with the costs of their aborted Phase II series. Take that money out of it and TMP's finacial situation looks a lot different. So the budgetary problems of TMP are a lot of Paramount's own making rather than those who actually made the film. Sets and models and costumes had all been made when Paramount decides to go for a feature film and they now have to remake everything for a feature film. That's a lot of wasted time and money. It also didn't help that time and money was wasted on an fx house that couldn't get the job done so that, too, needed to be redone.

 

[Cyclonus]

Not "not" a team player, but just enough of a maverick to make him a problem. Especially when they have guys like Styles and Esteban who are strictly by the book.

I've always suspected part of the issue was a shift in the culture of Starfleet, as evidenced by the fact that the ranks seem to be filled with unimaginative, conformisitic men such as these two. True, the SF bureaucracy has been an irritant for Kirk since the television show, but I can't recall ever there being an officer as timid and uptight as Esteban. There was an article in one of these Best of Trek books that explores the issue in somewhat more depth, but I don't know where it is offhand.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^It's a shame that Phillip Richard Allen has passed, both because he's no longer with us and because it would be interesting to get his take on the Esteban character, as he was presumably given some background information about the character so that he'd know how to play him.

Esteban was definitely more conservative than other captains we'd seen up to that point but seemed almost too conservative for his own good during TSFS. I wonder, however, if he was always that way or if he was on a short leash because of the controversy surrounding Genesis. He definitely seemed like a man worried about making a mistake, but was this normal or merely his way of dealing with a difficult situation?

--Sran

 

[Ithekro]

He was captain of a science vessel. A seemingly nearly unarmed science vessel. These would normally be operating within known Federation borders and scanning known places. They would not be going into harms way like the starships tend to do. By the book works if you are doing scientific proceedure work. Genesis is supposedly deep in Federation space, yet a new mystery and high profile assignement. Life from lifelessness is about as against the books as you can get in science. That things kept being really weird may have been out of the captain's comfort zone, or at least outside his experiance.

That he was attacked by Klingons is a whole different matter.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

That he was attacked by Klingons is a whole different matter.

Which makes me wonder if maybe Grissom was chosen as a last-minute replacement for Reliant after the vessel's destruction in TWOK. Had the incident with Khan never happened and Genesis had (months later) been tested as anticipated, would it not have made sense for Reliant--a vessel with both the speed and the armaments necessary to defend itself--to be the ship assigned to do the initial survey?

If nothing else, I'm sure Clark Terrell would have come up with something better than what we got from Esteban in TSFS: "We're under attack. Stand by for evasive."

--Sran

 

[Cyclonus]

Esteban is a desk-riding paper-pusher who had no business being on the bridge of a starship, especially not under such circumstances. He may have been painstakingly trained but had no real field experience. He clearly had no idea what to do when Kruge popped up. But I think Starfleet just wanted someone who follows orders and goes out of his way to play it safe.

It crossed my mind that maybe they should have sent Excelsior to Genesis - Styles seems like he'd be a competent military commander at least - but with all the controversy it may not have been deemed "politically expedient."

 

[Ithekro]

Excelsior wasn't ready. She was going on her trail runs the day after Kirk stole the Enterprise. You don't send a ship on trail runs, intentionally, on a mission unless you have no other options. Even as damaged as she was, Enterprise could have remained on station do survey Genesis after picking up Reliant's crew. But a purpose built survey ship is sent instead. They pick up a few of Enterprise's cadets and David Marcus as well. The many of Enterprise's cadets are reassigned and leave before Enterprise arrives at Earth. This would means the crew that brings Enterprise home is the Senior (Academy) Staff, and the crew of USS Reliant, with whatever cadets are to head back to class, rather than get assignements.

I don't imagine Captain Esteban as a desk rider. I just image that he had a much less exciting career that other starship officers we've encountered. I image he had been in command of a supply ship for a few years followed by assignment to survey ship USS Grissom. This ship would not typically go in harms way. Arrive at a system that has already been declared safe by the previous visiting starship (like Enterprise) that dealt with whatever problems the system had already. Grisson would then spend several weeks scanning they planet and conducting scientific or cultural studies in relative peace and quiet. By the book.

 

[Cyclonus]

You're probably right about Excelsior not being ready under any circumstance. (Who knows what would have happened with the transwarp had Scotty not tampered with their engines.) My point was that with Genesis being such a "hot spot," it was a poor choice to send an underarmed science vessel captained by man so obviously unprepared for trouble.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

And TMP didn't meet creative expectations on some levels, but it was the FINANCIAL aspect of the film that caused the changes. That's why TV guys were brought in because they were used to doing more with less. If TMP had cost $5 million to make and made the money it did, I doubt you would have seen changes based of creative failures. Instead it cost a ton of money and wasn't a hit of Star Wars proportions.

This really makes no sense. Roddenberry or no, Paramount held the purse strings and would control the budget regardless of who was making the film. Part of the reason The Motion Picture cost so much to make was because it had the costs of various aborted attempts to restart the series added to its bottom line (Superman Returns had the same type of accounting).

If Paramount had been happy with the number of tickets TMP sold, they could've went straight to a sequel without any major changes. That would've saved them a ton of money. They could've done Roddenberry's "Spock shoots JFK" flick for a much smaller amount than what TMP cost.

Simply put, there is nothing that would make one think that Paramount was happy with how TMP performed.

What about it doesn't make any sense? You seem to think Paramount had some kind of huge issue with the creative vision of TMP. I said it wasn't a creative thing at all it was financial, you seem to agree with me by saying Paramount wasn't happy with how the movie performed or the number of tickets sold, and then the next sentence you told me I am wrong.......

It had nothing to do with how the film performed or the number of tickets because it was the most successful out of the original ten. It had to do with the fact that Gene Roddenberry was incapable of making a film with a reasonable budget.

Paramount realized they had to have Roddenberry directly involved in TMP as their response to George Lucas. They also quickly realized that Roddenberry was a guy who wasn't going to take financial considerations as a factor when making a big screen film, but by the time the costs had escalated it was too late and they had to see it through.

Had TMP made Star Wars type money none of this would have been an issue. But, even though it made a good profit, it wasn't nearly enough to justify the cost of the film. Paramount also realized they were lucky once that they were able to turn a profit despite the cost, due in large part to sheer desire and intrigue of people wanting to see what a big screen ST film would have looked like, and they knew they wouldn't have that luxury on a second film. So the film would have to be either

1. An incredibly popular film, like Star Wars, that would still make scads of money even if it had a big budget.

2. A film made much less expensively that, even if it was only a moderate success, would still turn a nice profit.

Roddenberry had made clear he was pretty unbending in his belief he should have a blank check book and the best idea he could come up with was the stupid Spock kills JFK........Hence his getting kicked out.

When Paramount hired Meyer and Bennett I'd be willing they told them "Keep what you want to, change what you want to but make a good film within a reasonable budget. Period. End of Story. I doubt there was ever a mandate they had to do a soft reboot and get rid of many elements of the first film.

So if people want to argue Meyer and Bennett tried to distance the tone of TWOK as far from TMP as possible that's fine with me. I do not buy into this TWOK was meant to be the 2nd start of the film franchise and TMP never happened. True TWOK didn't reference the first film, but there was no need to. The first film was a self contained story with no loose ends that needed to be addressed. It ALSO didn't do anything to really erase TMP's existence so, for lack of better evidence, I have to believe TWOK was a continuation of Kirk and co after TMP......how many years later is another issue and one I think handled poorly.

 

[enterprisecvn65]

He was probably "forced" to take the Academy position as a prelude to retirement. In TWOK he was aware of his own mortality, feeling old age creeping up on him, and I think he had resigned himself to the inevitability of being put out to pasture.

Odd that they would be pushing him towards retirement at only his 50th birthday. Seems like a total waste.

If one wanted to play the second-five year mission card. One could surmise that something went tragically wrong during it and Kirk got kicked upstairs as a result.

Star Trek played the whole "real time" vs. "ST time" terribly between the end of TOS and TWOK.

Were supposed to believe that only 3 years passed in film time between the end of TOS and TMP when it was 10 in reality, yet believe 10 years passed between TMP and TWOK when in reality it was 3.

I understand films can't stay true to real time due to having to actually make them.....but try to be within reason, ST did a horrible job at trying to explain the time that elapsed between the end of TOS and TWOK.

They could have used the 10 year real world gap between TOS and TMP almost totally accurate with real world time.

So the Enterprise had two years left on her five year mission in 69...so that takes us to 1971. Assume they need a year or so to overhaul the Enterprise before another 5 year stint....1972. So they do another 5 year mission...1977. At the end of that mission Kirk accepts promotion to Admiral and assumes head of starfleet ops, which he had for a few years....and the Enterprise undergoes the complete refit which would also take a couple of years......and that brings us to TA DA! 1979...the year TMP was released. Could have easily been explained to the audience and filled in the 10 year gap between TOS and TMP with 10 years of film events. Instead of just saying "Oh it's only 3 years later since TOS....which is just ridiculous to buy given how much they aged. You mean Scotty went from his TOS appearance to him film one in 3 years?"

Then after TMP they could have had the Enterprise do another mission between 3-5 years in length before returning to earth, Kirk apparently becoming an Admiral, and Spock taking over as Captain and the events of TWOK unfolding. So at the most you have a 5 year story gap between TMP and TWOK, which is well within reason compared to the 3 years between the films in reality.

Sure as hell would been a lot more believable than telling the audience to believe 10 years in reality was 3 between TOS and TMP and then 3 in reality was 10 between TMP and TWOK.