I appreciate Wise's better edit and the glorious finished sound mix.
Star Trek TMP: First Viewing Opinion and Queries
- Thread starter SurfingtheInterweb
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I appreciate Wise's better edit and the glorious finished sound mix.
The sound mix is one of the things that drives me nuts in the DE. It is so much more bland and less interesting than the theatrical sound mix, IMHO. I also don't like how they did stuff just for the sake of doing it. The mantra was supposedly that they were just finishing the film the way it would have been done in 1979 if they'd had the time. No one in 1979 was looking to insert a TOS shuttlecraft into the film.
Hehe. The 4K edition took things a step further by including the Star Trek V's Galileo style shuttlecraft in the Starfleet headquarters landing area on the bottom left of the San Francisco establishing shot.
Also, no more intrusive male computer voices. I'll always prefer Chekov calling down to engineering asking for reports. Let the crew do the talking!
By chance, is there an image of that somewhere? I think I missed that entirely.
I missed it so much that when I went to look I didn't see it.
It's theoretically been added to the 4K version of the DE, but IMHO it's not actually visible.
It is when they do the panoramic view of San Francisco and see the newly CGI-added Federation Council building on the lefthand side of the screen. There are Galileo-class shuttlecraft docked there, which you can kinda see if you look at the original artist's rendering, but in the actual shot used in the film, they are basically just little dots on the screen. It really is quite a stretch.
You can see photos of both in the "Background Information" section of this Memory Alpha article:
Galileo type shuttlecraft
The Galileo-type shuttlecraft was a shuttlecraft type operated by Starfleet in the 23rd and 24th centuries. This type of shuttlecraft had two nacelles, attached to the sides near the ventral hull with two pylons each, and two impulse thrusters facing aft. These thrusters were above and to the...
memory-alpha.fandom.com
I remember being moved by it in 1979.
TFF is the most Trek. The banter with the Trio, Action Adventure romp on Nimbus, the ship being taken over by aliens, Kirk facing down a God-entity.
Each of the movies is a different facet of TOS.
I decided to have a look as well, calling the 4k up on P+ and didn't see it. I saw the TOS version lifting off from it's pad and heading out into SF Bay (which was in the original DE from 2000) but no sign of a shuttle from TFF.
TFF also gets grief because of the way the supporting characters are used, or not used, sort of being living, breathing props that just help move the main trio's story along. Well, guess what, that's very TOS as well. TVH having been an actual ensemble film where everyone got to do something important was actually the anomaly in that regard.
It may not be popular, but they all had scenes that stood out, that would have worked very well when they were younger on TOS - Sulu and Chekov getting lost in the woods,when they are the navigators; Scotty breaking them out of the brig; Uhura's distracting the natives, which would have been a lot more acceptable when she was younger / in the 60s; the whole "Captain Chekov" bit, and the attempt at giving Scotty and Uhura a romance (which actually, in retrospect, may have started in the final scene of TVH on the shuttlecraft, they seem very close, its very subtle) .... small bit parts, but endearing - like you said, very much in the vein of TOS. Shatner achieved exactly what he set out to do, what he was familiar with - the original style. (big fan of the movie, it was the first one I saw in the theater as a kid. Can never hate it.)
There was a post made on this forum by an artist who worked on the 4K version and he posted a lot of images of his work, including the shuttles. Sadly he was forced to take down the post since he was technically still in his NDA. Wish I had grabbed the images when I had the chance.
Some people do, but for me it's not an option. It's an adventure with the original cast, so it's not skippable. And I love it. All of the versions.
Gotta sell those action figures! Which would be the perfect explanation if Mego's line of TMP figures actually succeeded. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a consideration seeing how well the Star Wars line was selling for Kenner. It is a lot of uniform changes for such a short amount of time though. Kirk I can almost understand. Admiral uniform to Captain was necessary. But going to the short sleeved shirt wasn't needed. However, I could understand if he did that after the spacewalk. And then to the long sleeved because he was going outside the ship.
At least they kept the general design of the ranks on the sleeves close to the TV show so I knew what the hell I was looking at. To this day, I can't differentiate the ranks on the jewelry from TWOK to TUC.
I loved it as a kid in 1979, even though I remember falling asleep in the theater in the middle. Star Wars made the splash but four big budget SF films following were really slow: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, The Black Hole and Star Trek The Motion Picture (throw Moonraker in there as well - a very languid Bond film with space action). The original emphasis seemed to be more about effects than pacing. But that's without drilling down into the lower budget ripoffs. On TV though, space dogfights were the thing on Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers.
Welcome! Excellent first post!First post, go easy on me,
I know none of this is probably new to any of you on here, but I hope you'll indulge this post
All 6 of them are very Trek. Just some of them appeal differently to what people like most in their Trek.
They totally could have left the lounge scene with Kirk, Spock and McCoy alone. I'd vastly prefer the wrong view outside to the very poor composite work they put in the final product. Also some of the new FX shots are too sharp and computery. I really thought the first pass in 2001 got it right and matched the original effects really well.
Agreed, the sound mix is to DIE for. The integration of the TOS sound effects is subtle. Unlike the really loud door swoosh in TUC that sounds like someone used a 1975 tape recorder in front of their TV.
Although, TBH, I prefer the all-new sound effects in the first few movies. Technology changes, so do the sounds they make. TMP felt like logical advancements.
Top be fair, other than Chekov, who in the Gang of Four had a lot of substantial work to do in TWOK? Scotty in the DE, but otherwise nobody. They got a little more business in TSFS (other than Chekov which is fair) but, as you said, they were spoiled by TVH. The first true ensemble film. Still, TFF gave them all more to do than Nick Meyer or Robert Wise did. When TUC came around, only Takei was well served. Everyone else got some pretty cringeworthy bits. Chekov came off particularly dense, Uhura had that scene with the books and Scotty....well he did okay. The DE gave him the awful "Klingon bitch" line.
I had assumed that they were showing the passage of time, but recently thought it through, and only one of Kirk's costume changes is unmotivated, and it's also one with a definite timeframe that's too little for him to have caught some sleep (though maybe he had a sonic shower and shave).
Kirk goes from Admiral's dress to the blue two-piece between the briefing and the launch, then goes from the blue two-piece to the white t-shirt while Spock is fixing the engines (less than three hours gap), then goes from the t-shirt to a spacesuit, then a spacesuit back to the blue two-piece, then finally from the blue two-piece to the blue jumpsuit (with landing party jacket) for the walk to the V'Ger core.
Depends. I came to TMP a week after its Sydney gala preview in 1979, having seen only random first-run episodes of TAS in b/w, about six TOS (to celebrate colour TV in Australia in 1975). My interest was piqued by a friend's review from the theatre event at my 21st birthday party. I picked up the soundtrack LP -- and the novelization to start reading -- while waiting for the cinema release. I had no intention of reading the whole book in one weekend. Couldn't put it down!
I had chosen not to see "Star Wars". Not sure why? I had become very wary of overhyped SF movies, such as "Logan's Run", which had left me so disappointed.
TMP changed my life!
I think I heard TMP in utero.
