Star Trek movie retrospective Part 1: Star Trek the Motion Picture
Like I said yesterday, while going through images for a ton of new Star Trek T shirts I came across shirts for every Star Trek movie made to date, including Generations. It seems to me as time and movies progress they are less like true Star Trek movies and more like lame Hollywood crap marginally inspired by Star Trek. The last few movies managed to both suck and blow, which is such a strong contrast to the Wrath of Khan it’s almost as if the more recent films were made by (non Federation) aliens of some kind.
I thought I would put my feelings down on this blog by doing a modest retrospective of each movie and what was going on at the time. These are not formal review, as I haven’t seen most of these recently enough to give them any kind of fair treatment. This is a simple overview.
So, Star Trek the Motion Picture. The year is 1979 and Star Trek has been retired for 10 years. Paramount was working on a new TV series called Phase II (given that the majority of weak stories from the first series were in season 3 (cough cough Abe Lincoln in space cough cough) I don’t know if trying to continue the stories with the same cast would have done much). Roddenberry had campaigned for a movie, but the studio was convinced lightning would strike twice with TV. Then E.T. made a ton of money and all of a sudden the brainless apes known worldwide as studio executives decided it might be worth trying.
The script was actually a rewrite of the pilot script for Phase II, which kind of explains a lot. Also, the special effects weren’t done in what could be termed a timely manner and the final cut left the editors studio just a few days before the debut.
So it’s 1979. Margaret Thatcher is elected prime minister of Great Britain. Sony releases the Walkman to massive success. The first snowboard is invented. The staff of the American embassy is Tehran is taken hostage. The USSR invaded Afghanistan, where they would eventually get their ass kicked. The Who has a concert in Cincinnati and 11 people are killed in the ensuing riot. Saddam Hussain takes power in Iraq. France is hit by a tsunami. Sid Vicious died. The YMCA sued the Village People for obvious reasons. And the Bee Gees hit number 1 with Love You Inside Out.
Also, at this time I was grinding my way through Mrs. Lovemark’s 5th grade class and slowly coming to the realization that my social life was probably going to suck compared to most of my “peers”. As you can see there was a moral and cultural hole in American culture and my personal life, and we all needed something to fill it.Star Trek attempted to fill that gap with this film but, in my opinion, failed.
Let’s talk about what Star Trek the Motion Picture had:
William Shatnar in a body stocking. Spock. A super hot bald chick. A horrific transporter accident. The original cast. Some decent 1979 era special effects. The Enterprise. Did I mention the super hot bald chick?
Here is what it didn’t have:
Action of any kind. A coherent plot. An understanding of astrophysics (Voyager 6, in the couple hundred years since it’s launch until the aliens found it, would have a best been ten light years from Earth). A decent costume designer (what part of Shatnar in a body stocking sounds like a good idea on any level?). Emotion of any kind, except, ironically enough, Spock (Decker and Kirk arguing about command of the Enterprise does not count). Any real sense of story or accomplishment.
Yes, this was mediocre. However, it grossed enough worldwide to justify a sequel, which is of course the fabulous TWOK. I will talk about that in the next post.
This movie was important as a stepping stone towards the continuation of the franchise. I don’t think any of the TV shows would have arisen had this movie not paved the road to some of the good films. In that regard, I like this movie a lot. Just not in a hurry to see it again.
Ugh, I just found out something depressing. That super hot bald chick was an Indian actress named Persis Khambatta. If you think she was hot bald, check her out with hair. Anyway, I just discovered she died in 1998 at the age of 50. Ironic that she was 17 years younger than Shatnar and he is still going strong. Now I’m depressed.
As a weird side note, I remember reading the book adaptation of this movie. The one thing that struck me was that the hot bald chick (her screen name was Ilia) was a Deltan. That race generated sexual pheromones that were supposed to drive human males crazy, so the subplot was all the humans trying to not lose it. Given that they were all wearing body stockings it seems like the chance of an embarrassing uniform accident would be considerable.
By the way, I have made friends with some of the people at TheStream.TV. They do original internet TV with a definite nerd bent, and are having a big release event coming up. Check it out. I have seen some of their geek shows and it is pretty good. If you look carefully enough you might see actual footage of me expressing my opinion on some popular comic book characters at one of the comic cons I did earlier this year. I haven’t watched much lately as my sound card has died again and I can only stream stuff in my iPhone.
On a completely related topic, I am getting my new iMac tomorrow. I am so excited. Talk to you soon.
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