Should all the varying factions of nerd and geek culture ever go to war, the final battle would be waged by two groups: Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. And in the event of this ultimate confrontation, I'm going to side with Star Trek. I've never been one of those "dress in a Starfleet uniform and learn Klingon" type of hardcore Trekkers, but I've proudly enjoyed Star Trek since I was a kid. It started with Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was five years old and it's stuck with me ever since.
But long before any of the TV spinoffs and J.J. Abrams's blockbusters, there were only the original adventures of Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise. Despite the pop culture impact it's had over the last several decades, the classic series aired on CBS for a mere three seasons between 1966 and 1969. Despite its short life span, it developed a devoted following even back then. It found new life in syndication, and inspired a similarly short-lived Saturday morning cartoon that ran for only 22 episodes during the early '70s. But it didn't come back in a truly big way until the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. The Star Trek franchise would grow by leaps and bounds in the years afterwards, but its initial foray into the cinematic realm would be more of a stumble on the road of bigger and better things. If I may be frank, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is just plain dull.
A massive cloud of energy is heading directly for Earth, destroying everything in its path. The Enterprise is tasked with intercepting and investigating this cloud, despite its crew not having worked out all the kinks from its recent refitting. Seeing the opportunity to break away from his boring desk job, Admiral James Kirk (William Shatner) asserts his authority and takes command of the vessel, forcing the Enterprise's new captain, William Decker (Stephen Collins), into the secondary role of "executive officer." Reunited with his ship and much of his old crew, Admiral Kirk sets out to determine just what the hell this cloud is. But the crew of the Enterprise finds itself unprepared when it encounters the being controlling the cloud, a mysterious entity calling itself "V'Ger."
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is one of those movies that, on paper, look like it could turn out very well. And there are some elements of it that I enjoyed quite a bit. But on the whole, the movie could have been a lot better. You know that whole stigma about the odd-numbered Star Trek movies being lame? That all starts right here. While it's not outright terrible, it suffers from a potential for greatness that simply went untapped.
Helming this initial cinematic voyage of the Enterprise is the late Robert Wise, directing one of the last movies of his long and storied career. Wise's direction is solid, but the movie suffers from having spent too little time in the editing room. No matter whether you watch the original theatrical version or the extended "director's cut," Star Trek: The Motion Picture is an overlong chore of a movie that spends more time spinning its wheels than anything else. It desperately wants to be some kind of bold, almost operatic epic. But it just lurches along with not a lot of excitement or reason to care. The problem is that a lot of the movie is boring. You could honestly cut ten or fifteen minutes out of the movie and absolutely nothing would be lost. I know this movie has its fans and defenders, but I honestly don't get it. There are some honestly cool, intriguing moments, don't get me wrong, but they're so few and far between that I often found myself losing interest.
The movie's script doesn't help anything either, but there's a heck of a story behind that. It was announced in 1977 that Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry began developing Star Trek: Phase II, a continuation of the original series that would have aired on a new network called the Paramount Television Service. Neither Phase II nor the Paramount Television Service ever saw the light of day, but after the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the script that Alan Dean Foster had written for Phase II's pilot was rewritten by Harold Livingston and became the script for the movie. And you can definitely tell this is a TV script that had been extended to feature length, because there's what feels like an awful lot of padding.
The movie has some plot threads that are either underdeveloped or simply go nowhere. For example, the Kirk/Deckard rivalry and Deckard's relationship with Ilia could have both been further elaborated upon. The script doesn't do much with either and until the movie's climax, they aren't even wholly relevant to the plot. It honestly feels like something that could have covered over several episodes or even an entire season of a TV show. But we end up with this hot mess instead.
Even the cast isn't given a whole lot to do. Most of the actors remain in the background and are unimportant, while Stephen Collins is just kinda there. Meanwhile, Persis Khambatta is boring and lifeless. Her character is transformed from a flesh-and-blood person into an emotionless synthetic duplicate halfway through the movie, and there's absolutely no change in her acting style. They could have swapped her out with a mannequin and nobody would have noticed.
But the actors returning from the TV show all provide fun performances. Nobody has or ever will accuse William Shatner of being a master thespian, but I've always enjoyed his portrayals of Captain Kirk. He doesn't have the best material to work with here, but he still does a damn good job. The same can be said for Leonard Nimoy as Spock, while DeForest Kelley is fun as always as the irascible Bones McCoy.
There's a great Star Trek story lying beneath the surface of this movie. It's just handled in a way that makes the movie ungodly boring. As much as I like Star Trek, I spent the entire movie wondering if there was anything else I could be doing instead. It does have the occasional flash brilliance, and you can see that there's something deep in here. But it's not approached in the best way. I'm no sci-fi expect and I'm not the guy to ask how to improve it. And besides, after thirty-four years, what can you do? I mean, at least the Star Trek movies would get better from here, right?
Final Rating: **
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