Brutal Strudel said:
How's this: because V'Ger did not recognize carbon units as life forms and because V'Ger had no idea that its creator was a carbon unit, it over-looked those qualities. Indeed, I think those qualities became a kind a virus within V'Ger, sneaking up on him and allowing him to accept Decker as God. Notice how central the image of Ilia is during the Spock Walk and how her image and that of the Voyager probe are what flashes on Spock's face plate during the meld. It seems V'Ger "instinctively" chose Ilia, a representative of a species both more mathematically advanced and more sexually advanced than humans, because it knew she had the key to what he himself was in denial about. Notice how he takes her but leaves her tricorder behind, one of the most effective shots in the movie.
All due respect to Timo the movie is much more well-thought out and layered than it appears on first, second and even third glance. It's the only true science fiction film in the movie series.
I agree with a lot of this. Especially the great ironic notion of V'ger overlooking the very thing it seeks. That can be the very danger of belief sometimes.
However, I've always assumed that V'ger went for Ilia because of what it observed on the bridge of the Enterprise. I don't know how Ilia's mathematical or sexual propensities factored into the probe's decision to snatch her, though because she was navigator and a Deltan, they were clearly part of the package. But I always noticed how quickly the probe took an interest in her the
moment she reached down to aid the recently zapped Spock.
Spock was a carbon unit, but he was also a logical darn-close-to-Kolinahr Vulcan. V'Ger may have recognized something similar in him that, although inferior, was "been there, done that." Everyone had been ordered not to interfere with the probe, and it seemed content for a brief period. But then the probe went for the records, Spock went for the hand bash (like a logical, little, Vulcan-firewall) and the probe zapped him aside. It may have intended to scan him
further, but Ilia went to aid this little, logical, nanite disease. Although not a "true life form," Spock was Something V'ger may have recognized as a mirror essence of itself. Longing to touch the creator, Ilia's instinctual empathic response to reach out to this simple unit, might have been what caught V'ger's attention. A shiny little sparkle that stood out in a place where no such thing should be. V'ger didn't have to understand what it was; it was simply the mystery that hooked it.
Hope this makes any sense, but that's how I've always seen it.
