Star Trek The Motion Picture 45th Anniversary Book Club

[drt]

Chapter Nine: I was surprised to discover that the novel pretty much states that Decker and Ilia never consummated their previous relationship back on Delta. I had always assumed they had.

Who was Decker's exec?

I thought it was Sonak, he was a full commander (presumably Scotty is too busy with his Chief Engineer duties), so outranks the rest of the bridge crew.

As in the film Ilia notes Decker's commander's stripes. I never noticed this before but when Decker appears in engineering and also when he sees Kirk after the transporter accident he is also wearing commander's stripes! (He has the little shoulder epaulets.) We never see Captain Decker. (45 years later and I just found a new goof!)

He's wearing captain's epaulets, instead of the solid-dashed-solid sleeve pattern, the epaulets have the dashed line above the two solid ones, plus it's like 1/4 the thickness for some reason so it's easy to miss.

If you zoom into this screenshot you can see three dashes above the two more prominent lines on his epaulets in Engineering:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/movie-01/screencaps/motion-picture-DE-bluray/ch05/tmp-de-bluray-0346.jpg-0262.jpg

Here they are on Kirk:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/movie-01/screencaps/motion-picture-DE-bluray/ch12/tmp-de-bluray-0877.jpg

Spacedock?

He still describes the dockyards as being separate from the Centroplex.

Man, I completely forgot about Spacedock. I had been thinking about the Technical Manual earlier and how the '09 complex was a homage to FJ's Starfleet HQ, so it came more immediately to mind. Oops, lol.

You could say the movie is anti-phaser too. It's long struck me that not one phaser is fired in the film; the one time Kirk orders a phaser fired, his phaaaaserrrrr orrrrderrrrr is beelayyyyed in favor of phoooootonnnnnn torrrpeeeeedooooooesssss.

I got the feeling the production was enamored with their photon torpedo special effect so used it as much as possible. There were originally to be two hand phaser scenes: a guard fires on the probe when it is inspecting the bridge, but that was cut, plus Spock uses a phaser to free Kirk from crystals in the abandoned memory wall scene. As a kid I was always a little disappointed they never fired any phasers in TMP because I wondered how that would have looked with more modern (for 1979) effects.

 

[Tallguy]

I thought it was Sonak, he was a full commander (presumably Scotty is too busy with his Chief Engineer duties), so outranks the rest of the bridge crew.

I think it was this movie that made me realize that science officer and first officer (exec) aren't the same thing.

He's wearing captain's epaulets, instead of the solid-dashed-solid sleeve pattern, the epaulets have the dashed line above the two solid ones, plus it's like 1/4 the thickness for some reason so it's easy to miss.

If you zoom into this screenshot you can see three dashes above the two more prominent lines on his epaulets in Engineering:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/movie-01/screencaps/motion-picture-DE-bluray/ch05/tmp-de-bluray-0346.jpg
Here they are on Kirk:

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery...picture-DE-bluray/ch12/tmp-de-bluray-0877.jpg

Yeah, I knew what they look like. It's just REALLY hard to make out that dashed line on Decker's uniform. But I do see it now.

Man, I completely forgot about Spacedock.

I was in no way implying that GR was describing anything on the scale of spacedock. I was being silly which may be inappropriate in a TMP thread and in a Roddenberry novel. I'll go find the movie that Gene Coon would have made. It might be called "The Wrath of Somebody or Other". (<-- ALSO being silly.)

I got the feeling the production was enamored with their photon torpedo special effect so used it as much as possible.

Twice? I do LOVE the TMP torpedo effect. It's a little bit cooler than the later variations. (And harder to do.) Same with the warp speed effect. (Ditto.) I LOVE THAT EFFECT and it has never been equaled.

I always wondered if phasers were more difficult to do, or to block the action on screen, or were less cinematic. I mean, here if the Klingons had fired phasers at the Intruder you couldn't show the phasers traveling to the target and vanishing into nothingness. And (HEY WE'RE NOT THERE YET) the Enterprise not firing phasers is plot driven.

And in TUC you can't have heat seeking phasers.

Am I right in saying that the only film that even tries to do a TOS phaser effect (updated accordingly), i.e. an unbroken beam, is the teaser for '09 with the Kelvin?

 

[drt]

I think it was this movie that made me realize that science officer and first officer (exec) aren't the same thing.

Me too. I suppose we can say Vulcans have the mental capacity to do both jobs. Although, the only "executive officer" thing I ever recall Spock doing was taking command of the ship in Kirk's absence. The only other high ranking officer we saw in TOS who maybe had some of the normal exec duties was Ben Finney.

To be fair to TOS, Spock seemed to be based more on a Hornblower-esque Age-of-Sail First Lieutenant than a modern naval executive officer.

Twice? I do LOVE the TMP torpedo effect. It's a little bit cooler than the later variations. (And harder to do.) Same with the warp speed effect. (Ditto.) I LOVE THAT EFFECT and it has never been equaled.

I love both effects too...

I suspect both involved some level of time-consuming process using the physical models and in-camera light trickery that ILM and later effects houses just animated in post, which is why we never really see either again.

Am I right in saying that the only film that even tries to do a TOS phaser effect (updated accordingly), i.e. an unbroken beam, is the teaser for '09 with the Kelvin?

I believe that's correct.

 

[Christopher]

Chapter Nine: I was surprised to discover that the novel pretty much states that Decker and Ilia never consummated their previous relationship back on Delta. I had always assumed they had.

Oh, but that's the whole point -- that it would've been so overwhelming for a human that it would've changed him forever. The only reason he was able to walk away at all was that they hadn't taken that irreversible step.

But I guess none of that came across in the G-rated theatrical version. It's always struck me as such an incongruity that TMP got a G rating when Roddenberry obviously would've preferred an R rating for sexual content given the option. (Based both on the novelization's sexual content and on the fact that Roddenberry's only other feature film as writer/producer was Pretty Maids All in a Row, an R-rated dark sex comedy with frequent nudity. Plus his TV pilot movie Spectre had a fair amount of racy content and had brief nudity added in its European theatrical release.)

I thought it was Sonak, he was a full commander (presumably Scotty is too busy with his Chief Engineer duties), so outranks the rest of the bridge crew.

Possible, I suppose, but there were multiple commanders in the command crew in TOS and movies, and even multiple captains in the later movies (which isn't entirely unprecedented in real life, I gather). And Kirk did specifically say that Sonak had only been appointed science officer. I think that if he'd been XO too, Kirk would've given that precedence.

I always wondered if phasers were more difficult to do, or to block the action on screen, or were less cinematic. I mean, here if the Klingons had fired phasers at the Intruder you couldn't show the phasers traveling to the target and vanishing into nothingness. And (HEY WE'RE NOT THERE YET) the Enterprise not firing phasers is plot driven.

Or maybe it was because Roddenberry and Wise were trying to be more scientifically accurate than TOS, bringing on consultants like Isaac Asimov, NASA rocket scientist Jesco von Puttkamer, and astronaut Rusty Schweickart (for the spacewalk scenes). Realistically, an energy or particle beam in vacuum would be invisible, since there'd be no medium for it to scatter off or ionize. But you could see torpedoes because of the bright emissions from their engines, which is what the light effects presumably were meant to represent (never mind all the rays of light shooting out).

 

[Tallguy]

Or maybe it was because Roddenberry and Wise were trying to be more scientifically accurate than TOS, bringing on consultants like Isaac Asimov, NASA rocket scientist Jesco von Puttkamer, and astronaut Rusty Schweickart (for the spacewalk scenes). Realistically, an energy or particle beam in vacuum would be invisible, since there'd be no medium for it to scatter off or ionize. But you could see torpedoes because of the bright emissions from their engines, which is what the light effects presumably were meant to represent (never mind all the rays of light shooting out).

I would argue no just because the rest of TMP isn't that scientifically rigorous and because (in the specific case of TMP) the use of torpedoes is all plot / drama driven.

But who knows?

 

[Christopher]

I would argue no just because the rest of TMP isn't that scientifically rigorous

Compared to everything else in SF film and TV at the time, it was. At least Roddenberry tried to keep one foot in plausibility while still employing frequent poetic license. At least Trek knew what rules it was bending or breaking, which put it parsecs ahead of the complete scientific illiteracy of everything else.

I mean, Jesco von Puttkamer's behind-the-scenes memo explaining how warp drive works is basically explicating the same theory as Miguel Alcubierre's groundbreaking paper from 16 years later, only lacking the mathematical specifics. They bloody well knew what they were doing, even if it wasn't always evident in the final product.

 

[Commander Troi]

The Making of Star Trek. (Now there is a book I would like a digital, searchable copy of!)

I don't know if any of these are searchable, but there are digital copies:

The Making of Star Trek : Stephen E. Whitfield : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

archive.org

The Making Of Star Trek Summary PDF | Stephen E. Whitfield

Book The Making Of Star Trek by Stephen E. Whitfield: Chapter Summary,Free PDF Download,Review. An Insider's Journey into Sci-Fi's Greatest Phenomenon

www.bookey.app

The Making of Star Trek - Anna’s Archive

[by] Stephen E. Whitfield [and] Gene Roddenberry. Written by Stephen E. Whitfield > **The Biography of the Leading Science Fiction TV Program** > > STAR TREK! The long, hard battle o Ballantine Books

annas-archive.org

 

[Commander Troi]

Just read chapter 10. Gene's very poetic here. I love several lines, this one best: "He felt the grace with which she had let the delicate metal lacework of the drydock slip from her shoulders..."

 

[mkstewartesq]

I always wondered if phasers were more difficult to do, or to block the action on screen, or were less cinematic. I mean, here if the Klingons had fired phasers at the Intruder you couldn't show the phasers traveling to the target and vanishing into nothingness. And (HEY WE'RE NOT THERE YET) the Enterprise not firing phasers is plot driven.

And in TUC you can't have heat seeking phasers.

Am I right in saying that the only film that even tries to do a TOS phaser effect (updated accordingly), i.e. an unbroken beam, is the teaser for '09 with the Kelvin?

Are we referring to different things here? In WOK, both the Reliant and Enterprise fire phasers during the film (the Reliant uses them to carve up the E in the first confrontation, and the E uses phasers to destroy the Reliant's nacelle in the final battle). Yes, they are "updated" (to a more "Star Wars-y" broken beam rather than a single beam extending from one ship continuously to the other) but they are definitely phasers and referred to as such in the film.

Mike

 

[Tallguy]

Are we referring to different things here? In WOK, both the Reliant and Enterprise fire phasers during the film (the Reliant uses them to carve up the E in the first confrontation, and the E uses phasers to destroy the Reliant's nacelle in the final battle). Yes, they are "updated" (to a more "Star Wars-y" broken beam rather than a single beam extending from one ship continuously to the other) but they are definitely phasers and referred to as such in the film.

Mike

Right. TWOK is the only TOS film with ships firing phasers. (Upthread.) And they are a more Star Wars pew pew pew look.

In JJ's '09 the Kelvin fires more TOS looking beam phasers. Then the Enterprise goes to a more TWOK / Star Wars "bullets in space" kind of look.

 

[Tallguy]

Chapter Ten - Take Us Out

But for James Tiberius Kirk to sit here again was like Lazarus stepping out into the sunlight.

But what of Lazarus?

Not even the memory of his own famous father, Commodore Matt Decker, could change the fact that Kirk was likely the finest ship commander in Starfleet’s history.

It's official. He's that Decker.

But he found it difficult to be philosophical and ecstatic at the same time.

OK, that's funny.

Short and sweet.

I love the back and forth of orders and confirmations. Obviously Roddenberry knew those patterns. I wish there were actors not named Tom Hanks who could figure out how amazing this kind of laid back concentration can play on screen. I mean, I think. Others might find it as dull as dishwater. What do I know? I like Star Trek: The Motion Picture!

 

[Avro Arrow]

I thought it was Sonak, he was a full commander (presumably Scotty is too busy with his Chief Engineer duties), so outranks the rest of the bridge crew.

I had always been under the impression that Sonak was only assigned to Enterprise because Kirk pulled some strings after he learned about the intruder, and he wouldn't have been part of Decker's crew if the ship had launched under normal circumstances. I guess that was just an impression, though. I don't know if the book specifically says anything about that.

 

[Tallguy]

I had always been under the impression that Sonak was only assigned to Enterprise because Kirk pulled some strings after he learned about the intruder, and he wouldn't have been part of Decker's crew if the ship had launched under normal circumstances. I guess that was just an impression, though. I don't know if the book specifically says anything about that.

There would not have been time. Kirk hadn't even spoken with Nogura yet.

 

[Christopher]

I had always been under the impression that Sonak was only assigned to Enterprise because Kirk pulled some strings after he learned about the intruder, and he wouldn't have been part of Decker's crew if the ship had launched under normal circumstances. I guess that was just an impression, though. I don't know if the book specifically says anything about that.

I see why you think that, since Sonak said he'd been appointed science officer on Kirk's recommendation. But presumably he meant he'd been appointed Decker's science officer on Kirk's recommendation, the same as Decker himself had been made the captain on Kirk's recommendation. The idea was that Kirk seizing command back from a command crew he himself had approved was a petty and selfish move.

 

[Commander Troi]

Chapter 11:

I love McCoy grumbling around sickbay. I love getting into his and Chapel's heads. This whole section is great, but I especially adore Chapel saying, "Yes, Leonard."

"The so-called mutant-farm civilizations of pre-history..." Does this refer to something that my brain isn't connecting to? It stopped me cold for a moment and took me out of the story. Then there's the bit about our moon being a base for unknown space travelers. I suppose this could just be world-building.

Then Kirk does Teh Stoopid, ignoring both Decker AND Scotty and we get the wormhole. I like this description: "...the hyperspace spiraling of stars and fluid light suddenly narrowed into a vortex as if a plug had been pulled and the universe was being sucked spiraling down a cosmic sink drain."

Then we end the chapter on a cliffhanger!

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Here's the scene in question - Chapter Four Pages 41-42

“Commander Sonak!”

Sonak turned, startled to have his name called in public – on Vulcan it would have been a shameful breach of privacy. The Vulcan fleet scientist was still more startled to see that it was Kirk, who certainly knew and respected Vulcan tastes. He knew that some extraordinary urgency could be responsible for such discourtesy.

“Have you received your appointment as Enterprise Science Officer?”

The Vulcan nodded. “Based, I am told, on your recommendation, Admiral. Thank you.”

The “thank you” was unnecessary, but Sonak added it, nevertheless. This human, Kirk, had many times demonstrated himself worthy of respect.

“Then why aren’t you on board?”

Sonak closed his mind to this offensive directness. “Captain Decker requested I complete final science debriefing here before. . .”

Kirk interrupted. “Here at Starfleet? The Enterprise is in final preparations to leave dock. . .”

“Which will require at least twenty more hours at minimum, Admiral.”

“She’ll leave in twelve hours,” corrected Kirk. “Report to me aboard as soon as possible.”

“To you, sir?”

Kirk nodded firmly. “I intend to have a brief meeting with Nogura, after which I will go directly to the Enterprise.”

Then Kirk turned and strode away, hurrying towards the turbolifts. The Vulcan gazed after him, lifting an eyebrow quizzically. Had this seemed a slightly different Kirk from the one Sonak had known previously? He wished that humans were not such an enigma.

So, it appears that Sonak was only just Enterprise's Science Officer, not First Officer as well. There also has been a previous meeting between Kirk and Sonak. Kirk probably interviewed Sonak for the Science Officer position onboard Enterprise. Then Decker had a follow-up interview with Sonak, based on Kirk's recommendation; and Decker approved Sonak as Enterprise's Science Officer.​

 

[David cgc]

Then there's the bit about our moon being a base for unknown space travelers.

I've heard that was a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[Tallguy]

I've heard that was a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It absolutely is.

 

[DonIago]

Chapter 11:

I love McCoy grumbling around sickbay. I love getting into his and Chapel's heads. This whole section is great, but I especially adore Chapel saying, "Yes, Leonard."

When I was very young and reading the novelizations it used to sometimes confuse me that there was a character named Leonard, but also an actor named Leonard. I don't think I necessarily remembered McCoy's first name from the series, or I'd never seen the episodes where it came up.

 

[drt]

Chapter Ten: I always found it intesting here that Roddenberry has the impulse drive powered by the M/AM reactor in the novelization, instead of the completely separate fusion drive of TOS/TMP+.

Oh, but that's the whole point -- that it would've been so overwhelming for a human that it would've changed him forever. The only reason he was able to walk away at all was that they hadn't taken that irreversible step.

But I guess none of that came across in the G-rated theatrical version.

Pretty much what I was getting at, and something I didn't really notice in the novel before this read. It definitely puts a different spin on things.

Or maybe it was because Roddenberry and Wise were trying to be more scientifically accurate than TOS, bringing on consultants like Isaac Asimov, NASA rocket scientist Jesco von Puttkamer, and astronaut Rusty Schweickart (for the spacewalk scenes).

The use of those scientific consultants is also something I had in the back of my mind for my TMP Transporter Theory™ above, because I’m sure they would have said, “this kind of technology really needs a machine on both ends.”