Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[DonIago]

Hm. This makes me wonder whether Kirk thought it was more likely that they'd be able to sort things out with Vejur before the self-destruct, or whether he fully expected their efforts to fail and the self-destruct to be the 'solution' to the Vejur problem.

Hope for the best; expect the worst?

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

Speaking of Tarzan and framing sequences, the intro to the first novel implies that Burroughs changed the names to protect the privacy of the "real" people involved: "a certain English gentlemen whom we shall call Lord Greystoke," or words to that effect.

As I understand, this is the only time ERB made this distinction. The notion that "Lord Greystoke" is a substitute for the "real" name cannot be found in any of the many, many sequels.

I'd forgotten about that. I'm sure Farmer mentioned that as well in the Tarzan Alive! book.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

Hm. This makes me wonder whether Kirk thought it was more likely that they'd be able to sort things out with Vejur before the self-destruct, or whether he fully expected their efforts to fail and the self-destruct to be the 'solution' to the Vejur problem.

Hope for the best; expect the worst?

Realistically, the self-destruct should have been the expected course of action, since Kirk didn't yet know how his "hail Mary" visit to Vejur's origin would work out.

But this is Star Trek - 99.987% of the time the "hail Mary" plan works out!

 

[Greg Cox]

I'd forgotten about that. I'm sure Farmer mentioned that as well in the Tarzan Alive! book.

Or possibly Richard Lupoff in his non-fiction survey of ERB's work: Master of Adventure.

Which I devoured back in my teens.

 

[Christopher]

Hm. This makes me wonder whether Kirk thought it was more likely that they'd be able to sort things out with Vejur before the self-destruct, or whether he fully expected their efforts to fail and the self-destruct to be the 'solution' to the Vejur problem.

It feels weird to me to invoke The Wrath of Khan when I don't particularly like it, but in this case it provides the perfect answer:

"I don't believe in a no-win scenario." -- James T. Kirk

 

[Commander Troi]

^This is the way.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

Or possibly Richard Lupoff in his non-fiction survey of ERB's work: Master of Adventure.

Which I devoured back in my teens.

Could be. I had that book as well. I still have a few Burroughs books that I've kept over the years, but Master of Adventure and Tarzan Alive! are long gone.

 

[DonIago]

It feels weird to me to invoke The Wrath of Khan when I don't particularly like it, but in this case it provides the perfect answer:

"I don't believe in a no-win scenario." -- James T. Kirk

Is it weird that I can't even imagine the Kirk we see in TMP making a remark like that?

 

[Christopher]

Is it weird that I can't even imagine the Kirk we see in TMP making a remark like that?

I think by this point in the movie, he's back to his old TOS self, who would never give up trying to find a solution. If the odds were heavily against him, he'd just look for a way to beat the odds. I was going to say that, and then I realized the TWOK quote summed it up.

 

[Tallguy]

Good heavens! I... I was not expecting this to be the last chapter. I thought there would be at least Voyager and then What We're Going to Do About Voyager and the Wrap Up.

But no! It's all one and done here!

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Thataway

Voyager 6 is apparently uniquely famous because it slipped into a black hole. No, a "time continuum". In any event, it went from being a normal space probe to very far away and possibly even long ago. All five of the Starfleet officers know about it. Even Ilia.

“I shot an arrow into the air . . . ” said McCoy.

This is a line that should have been in the film.

It was hinted at during the Spock Walk and it is re-iterated here: The Machine Planet that Voyager encountered may have been super advanced but they were still just mucking out their old programming from the people that built them.

Here Ilia comes to life. It turns out that she has always been alive. (Scary.) I like it, I think it adds motivation and stakes (they're fighting for Ilia's soul) but I'm not sure it would be necessary or easy to communicate on screen. This movie wanders enough. (Is Ilia consulted on moving on to a higher plane?)

“Ilia” looked, nodded immediately. “Yes, of course, it . . . it . . . Misinformation is forbidden, Kirk-unit!” It was suddenly the probe again—cold, mechanical.

That's one hell of a bout of denial Vejur has going on there.

Vejur still expects a machine . . . it probably plans something similar to what occurs in our ship’s transporter chamber, except that two forms will be reduced to energy . . . ”

I don't like how literal this is. Just saying.

The book is missing what the film has: Kirk (and Spock) realizing what Vejur would gain from joining with a human. Here they simply figure out what Vejur wants to do. They never get to the next step where this might be an answer.

I think there is a line during either the Spock Walk or the Vejur chapter where it's said that Vejur is "stuck" here. Which is kind of what Spock says during this scene in the movie. That Vejur has to evolve to another plane because it already knows everything. (The fact that it only just found out that it has been running through the carbon units of the Galaxy like a scythe seems to be a rather big gap in its knowledge but we're skipping over that. What else doesn't it know?)

Maybe I've just been living with the line for 45 years. Maybe it's actually kind of trite. But when Decker says "I want this. As much as you wanted the Enterprise I want this," the comparison makes it all make perfect sense. (Not that exact line in the book.)

Kirk became aware that they were also hearing beauty—

Well. That's just Jerry, isn't it?

I was thinking though that a great "Wow finish, narrow escape" would have been for the Voyager complex to start coming apart as it does in the film but have Our Heroes beam away to safety. It could have been what the transporter had been saved up for this whole movie. But even before I read them describe the merge as literally as a transporter phenomenon I wondered if the two special effects, the Meld and the transporter, would have been too similar and would compete. Too much visual information. (I just want the transporter to be good again.)

Kirk found himself feeling very comfortable as he settled himself back into the center seat. He was realizing that there was a certain shrewd and sometimes ruthless commanding admiral down there, who right now would be unable to deny him anything—even permanent command of the Enterprise if Kirk demanded it. Well, that suited former Admiral James Tiberius Kirk fine. He did not intend to let Heihachiro Nogura get off this hook.

Yeah. Kirk's not going back.

At first, there were the old familiar star patterns. And then the quantum shift happened; the star mass congealed in front of them and they were in hyperspace. He relaxed back and began thinking about where he would take her first.

(Hyperspace! Ding! Eleven!)

Well. This has been a hoot! One month to the day from the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I have no idea when I read this. It was not long after the movie. Probably after Christmas vacation. But well before that summer. I know I did not get the soundtrack right away (although I did get The Black Hole). And I never got any TMP toys. (Nobody else did, either!)

But I'm guessing probably around this time of year was when I read it.

Wow, Star Trek, The Black Hole, Buck Rogers would have still been on television. We're just five months away from The Empire Strikes Back. It was a good time to be a nerdy kid.

---

Is it weird that I can't even imagine the Kirk we see in TMP making a remark like that?

A little. Kirk is pretty standard issue Kirk by the time Ilia shows up.

 

[Christopher]

Here Ilia comes to life. It turns out that she has always been alive. (Scary.) I like it, I think it adds motivation and stakes (they're fighting for Ilia's soul) but I'm not sure it would be necessary or easy to communicate on screen. This movie wanders enough. (Is Ilia consulted on moving on to a higher plane?)

If you watch Decker & Ilia's interplay during the climax, they carry out a whole conversation without speaking a single word, a silent drama of their own playing out in parallel under all the dialogue, as they arrive at an agreement about the action they take. It's deft directing and editing, compensating for what the script left out, but it's subtle enough that it's easy to miss, especially these days when people watch movies on their phones and only halfway pay attention.

I think there is a line during either the Spock Walk or the Vejur chapter where it's said that Vejur is "stuck" here. Which is kind of what Spock says during this scene in the movie. That Vejur has to evolve to another plane because it already knows everything. (The fact that it only just found out that it has been running through the carbon units of the Galaxy like a scythe seems to be a rather big gap in its knowledge but we're skipping over that. What else doesn't it know?)

That's kind of the point, as I see it. It's not that V'Ger has learned everything there is to know about the universe, but that it's hit a dead end in its ability to learn anything new without human emotion, empathy, and the ability to understand the data it gathers rather than simply collecting it. Okay, the film says V'Ger needs imagination and faith to be able to conceive the existence of unseen higher realms, which is New-Agey claptrap, but I see it as symbolic of giving V'Ger the ability to gain a higher level of understanding than the mere surface level of information.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I've been a Star Trek fan since before TMP. I started reading sci-fi in middle school in the late 1970s, beginning with Edgar Rice Burroughs' science fiction books but quickly moving to other stuff including both Larry Niven's books and Star Trek. Because of Niven's diverse aliens, I think, I always imagined there being more truly "alien" aliens like the Kzinti, Gorn, Horta, and Medusans around the Star Trek universe, despite what we see on screen.

A distinction of Diane Duane's Trek novels was her cast of Starfleet regulars, several of whom were aliens: Naraht the Horta, three Sulamids (Athendë, Hwavirë and Meshav), Mahásë the Eseriot, and K't'lk the Hamalki.

 

[David cgc]

Here Ilia comes to life. It turns out that she has always been alive. (Scary.) I like it, I think it adds motivation and stakes (they're fighting for Ilia's soul) but I'm not sure it would be necessary or easy to communicate on screen. This movie wanders enough. (Is Ilia consulted on moving on to a higher plane?)

The remaster of the Director's Edition a couple years ago had a few additional changes over-and-above what had been done in 2001, and the most important was the recovery of a lot of dialog recordings that hadn't been found before, both new lines and cleaner versions of ones that were in the film. I think the most impactful difference overall isn't even either of those, but Probe!Ilia's final "The Creator must join with V'Ger!" when they try to send it the download command from the ship. In the original, the line still had the Probe's distorted voice, even though they cut in with Ilia's Theme in the score on that line. The DE removes the distortion, making it much clearer that it's Ilia who's talking, telling them, no, this is serious, V'Ger really knows exactly what it's saying.

There's also some new score, a more romantic version of the music from the Cloud and Flyover sequences, and, as CLB mentioned, Ilia's close-ups throughout the following conversations show that she's Ilia and not the Probe, but it's overall a lot clearer in the new DE than it was in earlier versions. There was an interview I read a long time ago, I think with Harold Livingston, where he said he though there was way too much of a dramatic pause between Decker entering the code and the transformation beginning, and he thought V'Ger wouldn't dare wait a second for fear of the Creator slipping away, which the new DE also resolves with a low roar of distant machinery that starts as soon as Decker finished typing.

The book is missing what the film has: Kirk (and Spock) realizing what Vejur would gain from joining with a human. Here they simply figure out what Vejur wants to do. They never get to the next step where this might be an answer.

I remember reading Shatner (and the other actors?) requested that they reshoot the final scene on the bridge because it had been originally done before the V'Ger brain sequence was filmed (or, really, written), and now that they'd performed it, they had context for all the stuff in the denouement and thought they could communicate it better. That's where the Spock-and-McCoy-switching-jackets thing came from, those are shots from the second version.

I wonder if this aspect of the novelization reflects where the script was when they did the first attempt at filming the final scene, where the solution wasn't quite all the way there, and that's why Shatner et al. felt like they got it a lot more after the final version was written.

Writing it out, I'm also remembering a similar situation in the adaptation of The Expanse, where Thomas Jane wasn't satisfied that his character understood why he was doing what he was doing in the episode "Home," and they ended up adding his whole thought process as a verbal monologue so the audience (and the actor) could experience him working out what he was going to do and why he thought there was even a chance it could work.

 

[Tallguy]

I think the most impactful difference overall isn't even either of those, but Probe!Ilia's final "The Creator must join with V'Ger!" when they try to send it the download command from the ship. In the original, the line still had the Probe's distorted voice, even though they cut in with Ilia's Theme in the score on that line. The DE removes the distortion, making it much clearer that it's Ilia who's talking, telling them, no, this is serious, V'Ger really knows exactly what it's saying.

Wow. I didn't notice that before. (And it's actually when she repeats the line.) Jerry tried. I will continue to say that the sound mix to the 22 DE is the one truly complete aspect of the film.

(I watched the final flyover of the Enterprise last night with the new engines throbbing up to power, harmonizing with the score. I'm so sad that the one time I got to see the DE in the theater that the sound SUCKED. I wanted that scene to knock me out of my chair!)

There was an interview I read a long time ago, I think with Harold Livingston, where he said he though there was way too much of a dramatic pause between Decker entering the code and the transformation beginning, and he thought V'Ger wouldn't dare wait a second for fear of the Creator slipping away, which the new DE also resolves with a low roar of distant machinery that starts as soon as Decker finished typing.

It used to begin the score for The Meld right away. You got a blaster beam hit as soon as the edit to the long shot happened. They actually dialed out the score in 22. (I'm not going back to compare the 01.) I can't tell if the sound FX were always there or if they are just more to the fore with the music silenced. To me it seems like more of a gap. But I have to say I never noticed either way.

I have to say that Khambatta and Collins are acting the heck out of this scene.

That's where the Spock-and-McCoy-switching-jackets thing came from, those are shots from the second version.

Looking at the theatrical and the DE the only shot where they switched jackets is the very last shot is when they zoom in on Kirk and DiFalco asks "Heading, sir?" The whole time they discuss the "birth" they have the correct jackets. (Spock is orange, McCoy is green, right?)

Writing it out, I'm also remembering a similar situation in the adaptation of The Expanse, where Thomas Jane wasn't satisfied that his character understood why he was doing what he was doing in the episode "Home," and they ended up adding his whole thought process as a verbal monologue so the audience (and the actor) could experience him working out what he was going to do and why he thought there was even a chance it could work.

I need to watch The Expanse again. And probably re-read the books. So good!

 

[DonIago]

I don't have much to say here, besides that I'd love it if we did a thread like this for the next two films and novelizations as well. Thank you; it's been a fun ride!

 

[David cgc]

It used to begin the score for The Meld right away. You got a blaster beam hit as soon as the edit to the long shot happened.

There's still a few seconds of silence as Decker steps back, the music doesn't begin until after his "I want this" line. The new sound effect happens the instant Decker begins to turn away from the panel (and the blaster beam kicking off "The Meld" still happens at the same time as in the theatrical version, though it's much softer in the mix and gradually fades up).

Looking at the theatrical and the DE the only shot where they switched jackets is the very last shot is when they zoom in on Kirk and DiFalco asks "Heading, sir?" The whole time they discuss the "birth" they have the correct jackets. (Spock is orange, McCoy is green, right?)

The trouble is, that's the only tell-tale for which shot is from which day, so we can only guess for all the shots where we can't see the sleeve-stripes on the jackets. It's possible Shatner's close-up for his "sense of purpose" bit was from the reshoots, for instance, or even the close-up where McCoy serves up a zinger for Spock about "foolish human emotions," since the stripes are just out of frame.

 

[TheUsualSuspect]

"Between the V and the G was a torn, gaping hole, mute record of some encounter with space hazard. "V-GER . . . Vejur!" said Kirk. He traced a finger where the letters had been obliterated. "V-O-Y-A-G-E-R . . . Voyager Six!" "

I've always thought that this is how they should have filmed it. V'Ger couldn't scrape the gook off its nameplate because half the nameplate was gone! Works so much better.

' "We now have seven minutes, Jim," said Spock quietly. Kirk gave the Vulcan a nod. Even with all this, there was something comforting in hearing Spock use his first name again.'

This is a nice reminder of the crucial transformation/resolution of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy relationship in this film. Once Spock has dealt with his "Vulcan identity crisis," we get a renewed and strengthened version of the relationships from the original series that carries through the remaining movies. As bad as the storyline of STV is, I love the Kirk-Spock-McCoy camping scenes at the beginning and end of the movie. And TMP is what made that possible.

Yeah. Kirk's not going back.

While I like the way it plays dramatically, having Kirk send the message "Request denied" and then take the Enterprise on her merry way seems very unrealistic to me.
Even though I think of Starfleet as being less militaristic than it often gets portrayed as on the screen, any organization with a hierarchical structure would have a problem with what Kirk does here. Basically, he tells his boss to "F- off" and then chooses his own work assignment. In no workplace that I've ever been a part of would this fly. At the very least, Kirk needs to go confront Nogura directly. However, that would require a whole extra chapter that would likely seem anti-climatic.

If you watch Decker & Ilia's interplay during the climax, they carry out a whole conversation without speaking a single word, a silent drama of their own playing out in parallel under all the dialogue, as they arrive at an agreement about the action they take. It's deft directing and editing, compensating for what the script left out, but it's subtle enough that it's easy to miss, especially these days when people watch movies on their phones and only halfway pay attention.

Reading the description of Ilia's "resurrection" here, as well as some of the earlier details about her relationship with Decker has helped me get a better handle on his decision here than I think the movie supplies on its own.

I also may rewatch TMP soon with some of the comments and observations made in these discussions in mind.

 

[Tallguy]

There's still a few seconds of silence as Decker steps back, the music doesn't begin until after his "I want this" line.

I see what you mean now.

The new sound effect happens the instant Decker begins to turn away from the panel (and the blaster beam kicking off "The Meld" still happens at the same time as in the theatrical version, though it's much softer in the mix and gradually fades up).

EDIT: Oh! Interesting! It's only dialed out on my digital local copy! On Fandango, Paramount+, and most importantly my 4K disc the music is right where it always was and the "ramping up" sound effect under it is still new but far more subdued!

BTW: One of the few absolute fails of the DE (IMHO) is trying to show the whole Vejur ship right before the "explosion" that the Enterprise flies out of at the end. It was perfect as it was. (The Enterprise looks gorgeous in the DE of this shot, of course.)

I don't have much to say here, besides that I'd love it if we did a thread like this for the next two films and novelizations as well. Thank you; it's been a fun ride!

Thank you! I was thinking of doing The Final Reflection (as a belated 40th anniversary) next and if I do it will be at a slower pace. But yeah, now I want to do 2, 3, and 4.

I've always thought that this is how they should have filmed it. V'Ger couldn't scrape the gook off its nameplate because half the nameplate was gone! Works so much better.

I agree.

 

[DonIago]

Thank you! I was thinking of doing The Final Reflection (as a belated 40th anniversary) next and if I do it will be at a slower pace. But yeah, now I want to do 2, 3, and 4.

Ohhh, I've never read TFR. But...I anticipate a months-long freelance editing project being thrown at me at some point this month, which will probably kill any reading for fun for a bit. :|

 

[Commander Troi]

I was surprised this was the final chapter too!

This is a line that should have been in the film.

I swear I remember "I shot an arrow into the air..." being in the film.

Here Ilia comes to life. It turns out that she has always been alive. (Scary.) I like it, I think it adds motivation and stakes (they're fighting for Ilia's soul) but I'm not sure it would be necessary or easy to communicate on screen. This movie wanders enough. (Is Ilia consulted on moving on to a higher plane?)

I would've liked a little of it if Persis could pull it off, if only to affirm her assent. Plus, yeah, it adds more depth to the whole thing if she's been in there all along.

I have no idea when I read this. It was not long after the movie. Probably after Christmas vacation.

Ditto. I probably got the book for Christmas.

Wow, Star Trek, The Black Hole, Buck Rogers would have still been on television. We're just five months away from The Empire Strikes Back. It was a good time to be a nerdy kid.

Damn right.

If you watch Decker & Ilia's interplay during the climax, they carry out a whole conversation without speaking a single word, a silent drama of their own playing out in parallel under all the dialogue, as they arrive at an agreement about the action they take.

Now I need to watch that again. I admit it would make me feel better if I could see Ilia agreeing.

This was fun! I agree that we should do more "book club" threads. I haven't read most of these old books in decades.