Star Trek: A Motion Picture (Paramount Pictures, 1979; see likewise 1979 in film) is the first feature film based on the popular Star Trek science fiction television series. These are typically known as ST:TMP or even TMP. These are widely regarded as a dissatisfactory film due to its leaden pace & emphasis in special effects over story & characterization, and is considered by numerous when one of a lesser films in the series. Its like slow plot hwhen led a select few fans to label it as A Motionless Picture. But, there are as well numbers of fans world health organization assume this film to exist as a right of a series & the 1 film that virtually all accurately reflected Trek author Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future.

Cast
|- bgcolor="#CCCCCC" ! Actor !! Role |- | William Shatner || Admiral James T. Kirk |- | Leonard Nimoy || Commander Spock |- | DeForest Kelley || Dr. Leonard McCoy |- | James Doohan || Commander Montgomery Scott |- | George Takei || Lt. Commander Hikaru Sulu |- | Walter Koenig || Lt. Pavel Chekov |- | Nichelle Nichols || Lt. Commander Uhura |- | Majel Barrett || Dr. Christine Chapel |- | Grace Lee Whitney || Chief Petty Officer Janice Rand |- | Persis Khambatta || Lieutenant Ilia |- | Stephen Collins || Captain/Commander Willard Decker |- | Mark Lenard || Klingon Captain |}

Plot summary

In the late 23rd century, ca. stardate 7412.6, the right alien force - inside the shape of a massive energy cloud - is found in Klingon space and is believed to become running for Earth. A cloud destroys starships & more objects it encounters en route. Starfleet decides to dispatch a starship USS Enterprise to intercept the "thing", requiring that its lengthy refit process be quickly finished and tested while in transit.

When section of this project, Admiral James T. Kirk assumes his old command of the ship, angering Commander Willard Decker, who had been overseeing its refit as its new captain. By owning numerous of a previous crewman of the ship aboard, the Enterprise commence its journeying, however touching of its recently systems goes ill, following within farther stress between Kirk & Decker. Several problems come resolved per addition of science officer Commander Spock, who had been on his homeworld of Vulcan undergoing the kolinahr ritual. His failure to complete kolinahr led him to conclude that his destiny lay sustaining humanity & Starfleet.

A Enterprise intercepts a alien cloud, lives its initial assault, & journeys in a cloud, searching for a huge alien vessel, which the crew learns is known as V'ger. A ship bit by bit journeys to the center of 5'ger, suffering a bit of casualties along a way, likewise when getting a unknown transformation of navigator Lieutenant Ilia into a robotic probe. It totally leads to a transcendent finale at the center of Five'ger.

5'ger is revealed to become a remote-controlled scientific probe Voyager 6, which was part of the Voyager program, and (fictitiously) launched in the 1980s or 1990s. A damaged probe wwhen encountered by an alien race of dwelling machines that interpreted its programming as videos from either God to "learn all that is learnable" & go to that references to its author. These machines manufactured Five'ger into something capable of fulfilling that missiin, & "on its journey back it gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness itself!" Even so, Spock realises that what V'ger lacks is the self-awareness residing beings possess. In the climax of the film, Five'ger (in a human of the Ilithe probe) merges using Commander Decker & so vanishes into a higher realm of existence totally, and so the Globe is economised per crew of the Enterprise.

Themes

TMP exhibits the pair of themes familiar to viewers of Star Trek (TOS) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). Foremost is the notion of "Kirk as destroyer of malevolent machines". Captain Kirk typically found & destroyed computers which stand turn into as well mighty for the mechanical man around the children. TMP will require the slightly different tack, when 5'ger is non actually destroyed.

2nd is the notion of the existence transcending the material plane to turn into something greater, unremarkably delineated as a existence of weak. Animals like a Organians from either a original series episode "Errand of Mercy" develop this characteristic, when wash many beings from either TNG. Star Trek virtually universally portrays this transformation around the caring weak, something to which humanity potty aspire, & Five'ger's transformation on this button sure is therein mold.

A theme of rebirth occurs as minor of these in the film that applies to the characters. Decker & Ilia come flushed from either a stage across their have rebirth, when Kirk comes to command a Enterprise once again as a rather rebirth. Spock is re-converted when his old self, giving to duty.

A film is short in drama or even excitement; more than Kirk's conflicts by owning Decker & a visible threat of Five'ger, there exists preciously little conflict in the film, & each one elements come resolved per deus-ex-machina nature and severity of the ending. A story, effectively, occurs as comparatively straightforward puzzle for the characters to solve, &, getting done soh, their more problems evaporate.

Origins of Star Trek: The Motion Picture

In the wake up of ''Star Trek's popularity in the early 1970s as a result of newborn Trek fandom and syndication, there were several failing tries to make the Trek feature. Starting within 1974, the total of ideas were seriously pitched for a film to become entitled Star Trek II''. These involved "The God Thing" by Gene Roddenberry all about the vessel camping Earth claiming to be God, the story by Harlan Ellison about alien reptiles changing Globe's past to produce snakes evolutionarily dominant, & "The Planet of the Titans."

"The Planet of the Titans" wwhen about produced as a 1st Star Trek motion picture. Written by Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, a script required the crew of the Enterprise rescuing a spaceship Da Vinci from either the disaster. When you took the delivery Kirk suffers a shock to the brain inducing him to last mad & disappear. Years late, a Enterprise, nowadays under Captain Gregory Westlake, is dispatched to the planet touching in which Kirk disappeared. This planet is slowly existence sucked into the black hole, and contains a wealth of data that the Klingons (world health organization keep close at hand too dispatched ships) need as well. Kirk is observed, however a planet & a Enterprise come pulled, via a black hole, into Globe's past, in which it get a Titans of Greek mythology. It was to become directed by Philip Kaufman. Ralph McQuarrie did pre-production art (including a super Star Destroyer-like Enterprise) & Ken Adam storyboarded the script. A pic was abandoned inside late 1976 when Paramount finally rejected Scott & Bryant's script.

Instead, around 1977, attention was turned away from the film & towards another television series, to exist as entitled Star Trek: Phase II, as section of the 4th television network to exist as created by Paramount. Despite already-extant casting, costuming & placed production, Michael Eisner, then-head of Paramount, known as the landmark studio meeting. Eisner has been known to declare "we've been looking for a Star Trek motion picture...and this is it!", so a newly Paramount network would get postponed (it would in time become a UPN network), and a Phase II pilot episode Within Thy Image would exist when rewritten as Star Trek: A Motion Picture.

Altogether this couldn't keep around are at the further opportune moment. Per prevent of 1977, Star Wars had become the vast pack-professional profits, & Paramount put A Motion Picture into pre-production. Like than watch a space opera feel of Star Wars, TMP instead emulated the mood & format of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which Douglas Trumbull also supervised special results.

A film follows a story of "In Thy Image" exclusively usually, when multiple disputes between film writer Harold Livingston and producer Gene Roddenberry (when well as many changes requested by Paramount Executives & a actors) led to extensive & potentially every day revision of a motion-picture show best as much as the prevent of motion-picture photography.

Major changes from either a Phase II pilot episode include: Scenes of Kirk trying to recruit McCoy around the park inside San Francisco, a conference of admirals discussing a interloper, Lieutenant Xon's entire role, a destruction of the cruiser Aswan, an invasion of the Enterprise by mechanical probes, scenes of the Ilia-probe attempting to seduce Kirk & Sulu, & scenes of Kirk & Ilia beaming down to San Francisco to show her footage of NASA's Voyager program at Starfleet Command. A director of the pilot episode, Bob Collins, was briefly set to become a director of the motion picture.

Notes

A film was directed by Robert Wise, after the studio decided it wanted a large title director tied to the property, & freed Phase II pilot director Bob Collins. It displays state-of-a-art (for the period) favorite results, placed project & utilize of system. Despite this, a film wwhen regarded by critics as ponderous & slow, especially in the 2nd half, which involved drawn-out scenes of the Enterprise flying through a interior of the cloud, by owning the awful responses of the crew. Critics besides complained that a story is clearly little to a higher degree an hour-long TV episode full-clad to 2 hours (a criticism that would get standard using the release of each first Trek film). Despite this, a 1st hour of the film contains a few witty & interesting moments - potentially by owning Kirk's hanker, drawn-out shuttlepod flight to the refitted Enterprise.

A long cut of the film in videotape and network television released inside 1983 included a total of little character moments that experienced been trimmed, a select few slightly informative, a select few embarrassingly performed. This was one of a number one occasions where a long version of a film was created for television & the so-future page videos market. a extra footage involved of these glaring error within this a scene showing Kirk purportedly swimming in space was added, nevertheless a scene experienced non experienced favorite results added, thus viewers were clearly breaa to look at the staging & ceiling of the soundstage where the sequence was filmed.

Within 2001, a ''Director's Edition'' of the film was freed in VHS & DVD. Robert Caring was given a chance to re-edit a film to better match his original vision, & too to utilize computer-generated imagery to complete sequences which had been curtailed due to short deadlines. A newly results were according to storyboards from either a original production & produced to pop up when whenever done using the results technology of the period. Many continuity errors were likewise corrected, however a bit of were also added. Edits to improve a film's pacing were processed. This ''Director's Edition'' of the film besides has the proper sound mix, which was lacking in the theatrical presentation. This version of a film is typically considered the important improvement across the original film.

A entire section of Spock typing 5'Ger alone was filmed at a eleventh hour by Douglas Trumbull, who wrote & directed a sequence. A original sequence, showing Spock & Kirk typing 5'Ger's memory core experienced been inside production however abandoned whilst it was determined that a sequence brought a motion-picture show to a prevent & that the costs of the wire-removal & more results would consume very much of the entire results budget for the film.

Artist Andrew Probert proposed a climactic sequence involving a Enterprise existence attacked per Klingon ships from either a beginning of the flick, world health organization would rematerialize when Five'ger moved to its recently plane of being, however this sequence was non filmed.

A film's Oscar nominated score was by Jerry Goldsmith. His theme to a film wwhen in the future reworked as the theme for the Television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and was also reused around the total of late Trek films. More elements of a film were too preserved around TNG, like a dashing immature executive officer, world health organization it used to be that experienced a personal relation using the empathetic alien woman, & the a single-piece Starfleet uniforms.

It has been theorized that Might Decker is the boy of Commodore Matt Decker from the original series episode "The Doomsday Machine": that was indeed a project for Phase II. These are periodically mistakenly stated that this relationship is canonical, however when these are never mentioned around TMP or even elsewhere, these are does'nt.

A film's plot line is strongly redolent of the Original Series episode "The Changeling", which features an Globe-born probe enhanced by alien technology & looking for to go to to its "point of origin". A probe, therein experience Nomad, mistakenly believes Kirk to become its author, & possesses the hard cause to sterilize entirely "imperfect" life forms.

inside the novelisation of this pic, credited to Gene Roddenberry, & published by Pocket edition in paperbacked format, Five'Ger is spelled "Vejur" across to about a prevent of a novel, & the 2nd single world health organization perishes in the Enterprise transporter accident is known as as a Starfleet Admiral known as "Lori Ciana". the novelisation states that Lori Ciana wwhen a Starfleet vice admiral assigned as Rearward Admiral James T. Kirk's commanding officer around his post when chief of Starfleet Operations (besides when his ex-lover, for occasionally of the both-&-the-half years since he relinquished captainship). A female character world health organization perished in the transporter was played in the film by Susan Sullivan.

Roddenberry's novelisation is the merely Star Trek novel credited to the owner of the franchise, although there were hearsay in the Eighties that it was actually ghost written by Alan Dean Foster. (This equivalent hearsay persists on a novelisation of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope which was credited to creator George Lucas but widely believed to have been written by Stephen collins foster.)

Within William Shatner's novel, "The Return", where a Romulans & a Borg team to revive Kirk & kill a Federation, Spock was about assimilated per Borg, however was economized per fact that he mind-melded using 5'ger. This is because, based on data from Shatner's novel, a alien race that uncovered 5'ger was an earliest form of the Borg. Spock was economised from either assimilation because he got a share of the Borg Collective inside his mind whilst he mind-melded by having 5'ger.

This is the foremost moment within Star Trek whilst Klingons come seen by having their trademark 'rocky forehead' look like than a hooked brow & twirled mustache seen within TOS. This is jokingly referred to in the DS9 episode Lawsuits & Tribble-ations.

There are many reported inconsistencies in the film:

In a original 1979 cut of the film, the planet Vulcan is depicted when getting ii moons. Even so in the original series episode The Man Trap, Spock notes that Vulcan has no moon. This has been corrected in the director's cut.

A 5'Ger cloud is reported to become all over Lxxx astronomical units in diameter. This is Lxxx days a few feet away between Globe & a Sun, which seems inconsistent by owning 5'Ger managing for into Globe orbit. An explanation is that a 5'Ger cloud consists of flatulence & dust particles that dissipate when it enters a solar rules until a go of the cloud vanishes equally seen in the director's cut version. In the director's cut version, a line describing a cloud is edited to review "two AUs in diameter".

After Kirk endeavors to have a phasers to kill a asteroid in the wormhole, Decker overrides his orders, instead opting for the photon torpedoes. He gives his understanding afterwards whilst because a phasers choose their power directly from either a warp engines, when a engines went into imbalance, a phasers were cut off, hence he utilized a photons. This is actually irrelevant, when a ship was travelling at warp speed at a instance. Phasers, when recorded around TNG, don't act at warp speed, because it is according to phased lightly energy, we.e. exclusively act at sublight speeds. A fact that it were cut off was irrelevant - potentially whenever it were powered, it however would non develop worked. (There come odd occurrences around TNG, DS9 & Voyager in which phasers are utilized in the period of warp. Which are actually in all probability just canonical slips.)