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TMP: Kirk's Journey to the Ship

Not everything is meant to be experienced in haste. You don't go to a museum and spend 20 seconds looking at each exhibit. TMP is a movie meant for savoring, not rushing through.
 
The travel-pod sequence in TMP was as much about Kirk's love affair with the Enterprise as it was about showing her off to the audience.

While it does come from a (patriarchal) tradition, my eyebrow always raises when comparisons are made between brides/women, grooms/men and ships and their captains respectively.

*shudder*

Well, yeah, if you take these comparisons literally. But we're not talking objectum sexuality here. We're talking symbolism, metaphors, etc.
 
Or the Sistine Chapel for that matter. Thank god I haven't got 500 sweaty people trying to muscle me out of the way of my TV when I'm trying to soak up The Motion Picture.

My recent rewatch of this movie has at a swoop got it competing for TWOK for the top of the Trek movie pile for me.

Great movie.
 
Or the Sistine Chapel for that matter. Thank god I haven't got 500 sweaty people trying to muscle me out of the way of my TV when I'm trying to soak up The Motion Picture.

My recent rewatch of this movie has at a swoop got it competing for TWOK for the top of the Trek movie pile for me.

Great movie.

Oddly like trying to take in the TOS Enterprise model in the bookstore of the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in DC. Most often, there are too many people around it during tourist season to seriously take it in and study it. This time of year though, a person can go down there and have a real Kirk and Scotty moment with it.

Now the question is, what is the difference between slowly savoring a movie and simply having the patience to sit through it? ;)
 
It's called 'horses for courses'

I was lukewarm about TMP when I saw it in the theater in 1979. I can't say I savor it yet, but as I've matured, I have grown to appreciate it more and more, and I'd give anything to see it on the big screen, now.
 
In a way TMP is almost relaxing, which might be the best reason to watch it. The scene in question, though, is probably one of the lengthiest tracking shots you'll see in a mainstream movie. Seeing as how it takes this movie literally 37 minutes or so to start (that's about when the ship finally pulls out in the 2001 remastered edition), I guess this scene does not bother me. I do find it interesting, though, that there have been several re-edits of this movie to quicken the pace, but there is no quickening the pace. It's an excruciatingly long scene in the kind of movie you'd expect to find it in.

TMP, Alien, 2001: ASO, and probably others had long tracking shots of the ship, and I suppose it was to show off the model that had been constructed.

What amazes me about the first 35-40 minutes of this movie is the dialogue. Intermix chamber ratios, inertial drag, redline on the flow sensors, and so on for literally a half hour. Hyper realistic.

I ended up liking the contrast in personalities between Decker and Kirk, though. In all it's a 1970s movie very much.
 
While it does come from a (patriarchal) tradition, my eyebrow always raises when comparisons are made between brides/women, grooms/men and ships and their captains respectively.

*shudder*

Well, yeah, if you take these comparisons literally. But we're not talking objectum sexuality here. We're talking symbolism, metaphors, etc.

Yeah, I've never taken it to mean "women are objects and possessions," but rather to mean "A ship must be treated with great respect and understanding, as one would treat a spouse, rather than merely as a possession."

Although, of course, it does contain the underlying assumption that all captains and crewmembers are male. Though that was literally the case for most of history.


Oddly like trying to take in the TOS Enterprise model in the bookstore of the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in DC. Most often, there are too many people around it during tourist season to seriously take it in and study it. This time of year though, a person can go down there and have a real Kirk and Scotty moment with it.

Not anymore, though, since it's been removed for restoration and will be on display elsewhere once it's restored.


Now the question is, what is the difference between slowly savoring a movie and simply having the patience to sit through it? ;)

One's enjoyment of the experience, presumably.
 
Not everything is meant to be experienced in haste. You don't go to a museum and spend 20 seconds looking at each exhibit. TMP is a movie meant for savoring, not rushing through.

I've never had trouble savoring it. Though I must admit that once while in the ``Images of Singapore'' museum on Sentosa Island I was so wrapped up in walking around the exhibits and wax figures and reconstructed streets and all that that I guess I noticed the crowds thinning out to nothing, until finally a docent came up to me and apologized for the interruption but pointed out the museum had, technically, closed forty minutes ago so it would be appreciated if I were to hurry a bit. I did, and I bought some stuff I didn't really care for at the gift shop because I felt like I owed rent.
 
The sub-sub-sublight speed Klingon attack on V'Ger, the near endless shots of Epsilon 9, Kirk's long journey around the Enterprise, the monotonous views of V'Ger....they all symbolize the sloooooooow pace of TMP. Hell, even when Spock nerve pinches the transporter technician, it takes forever for the dude to collapse. It's no wonder I fell asleep half way through this flick.


Odd as it might sound, most of those V'Ger passes and the battle the Klingons have with it are at warp speed. There is no reason to believe V'Ger would slow down for the Klingons or Enterprise while in its way to Earth. It preobably didn't even slow down for Epsilon 9, and did a drive by to digitally record it for later. The Cloud originally was I think 82 AU in diameter and later 2 AU in diameter. That much moving at warp speed would still take a tiny while to completely pass the station.

Assume less than warp 7 for the cloud as Enterprise was able to come up on in from behind as an intercept at warp 7.

As for the drydock scenes...we are being introduced to a main character. USS Enterprise in these films and the original series is just as much a character as Kirk or Spock. Later series and films lose that aspect most of the time, but in this series and set of films, Enterprise is a character in its own right.

I still fell asleep halfway through TMP, not so with TWOK.
 
Not everything is meant to be experienced in haste. You don't go to a museum and spend 20 seconds looking at each exhibit. TMP is a movie meant for savoring, not rushing through.

I savor a New York Steak. If a movie has a slow pace, I start to daydream. My favorite movie critic review of TMP labeled it Star Trek:The Motionless Picture.:lol:
 
Personally, I'm more bored by The Wrath of Khan than I am by TMP. I find most space battles tedious, and TWOK's space battles are surprisingly sluggish to boot.
 
Oddly like trying to take in the TOS Enterprise model in the bookstore of the Air and Space Museum on the Mall in DC. Most often, there are too many people around it during tourist season to seriously take it in and study it. This time of year though, a person can go down there and have a real Kirk and Scotty moment with it.

Not anymore, though, since it's been removed for restoration and will be on display elsewhere once it's restored.

This is off topic, but I had read some time back that it was in need of it, largely because it was never built to be displayed as it has been, and its structure was showing the strain.

So, I did a little reading a minute ago, and found it was recently moved out to the Udvar Hazy center near Dulles for its restoration. It's expected to be there eighteen months. A large part of the area where they do restorations at Udvar Hazy has a public viewing area. Since I don't live far away, I'm going to have to go over there off and on and see if one can view any of the work being done on it.

Too bad they aren't keeping it there when it's finished. The model of the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is on display next to the space shuttle. Especially when the Enterprise was the shuttle on display there, I always thought it would've been neat to move the Enterprise from the bookstore downtown to a display next to the shuttle. It's going back downtown to be displayed in the Milestones of Flight wing.

Again, this is waaay off topic, but here's the Air and Space Smithsonian article about the restoration, dated September 11, 2014:

http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/star-treks-uss-enterprise-boldly-go-back-workshop-180952633/
 
It be an in joke if the Smithsonian replaced the orignial Enterprise with a same scale model of the refit Enterprise after 18 months of restoration.

Than put the historical model back in its place after a few days.
 
To me, TWOK proved space battles don't have to be fast paced, in your face or fx heavy for them to be intense. I was on the edge of my seat.
 
That was probably the music that caused that effect. Horner's pieces make it rather intense during the battles.
 
And the jump-cutting between the two ships - 'lock phasers on target' - 'they're locking phasers' 'raise shields' - 'FIRE' I love that sequence, the music is superb the scenes are just so tight and tense, and Montalban almost gives us a teaser of the evilgasm when he shouts the order to fire, he really looks like he's loving it. Brilliant.
 
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