Part of Star Trek - The Project

Cast

William Shatner

Leonard Nimoy

DeForest Kelley

James Doohan

George Takei

Majel Barrett

Walter Koenig

Nichelle Nicholls

Persis Khambatta as Ilia

Stephen Collins as Decker


Director: Robert Wise (The Day The Earth Stood Still)

Producer: Gene Roddenbury

Plot

A giant cloud over 80 Au¹ in diameter is heading straight for Earth, having destroyed three Klingon K'Tinga cruisers and guess which ship is the only one in interception range?

Recently promoted Admiral Kirk's refitted Enterprise is far from ready. The transporter is broken, the warp drive hasn't been tested, and the crew are inexperienced.

Kirk discovers that the cloud is being generated by a huge living machine called V'GER that was originally Voyager 6, a lost Earth probe from the 20^th century. It was found by an alien machine race, who gave it the power to digitise people, ships, whole planets and complete its original programming; know all that is knowable and return the data to the creator². Having travelled back to Earth, V'GER expects its god to be a machine and is naturally annoyed to find the planet infested with humans. V'GER needs to find the creator because it knows everything and needs to proceed to higher planes of existence, but because it is a machine, it cannot believe in them.

Kirk and co succeed in convincing V'GER that humans are its creator where upon it buggers off to another dimention, taking Decker and Ilia with it. That's about it.

Production

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP, pronounced "stimp") started life as a second television series of the original series (TOS). Named Star trek: Phase II, it was to have Persis Khambatta as the navigator Ilia but Spock was to be in only two out of every eleven episodes. Leonard Nimoy didn't want a part time job, so another actor was hired to play a new Vulcan science officer.

This probably would have ended up as a second series, except in 1979 something amazing, unbeleiveable and mind blowing happened; Star Wars. George Lucas had proven that sci-fi could work in the cinema and could make money. Lots of money.

Paramount immediately ordered the production to be switched to a film production. The sets had already been constructed and many of the crew had been selected.

Legal Difficulties

With production started, the shooting schedule being worked out, one vital member of the crew had yet to sign on; Leonard Nimoy. He was cought in a legal wrangle with Paramount over a billboard advert campaign in the UK for Heineken beer. The upshoot was the advert used Nimoy's face (as Spock) but they hadn't paid him for it. In his own words;

We hadn't received a single [royalty] check in five years. The checks prior to that had been so neglibible, we hadn't paid any attention when they stopped coming.

Second Star The The Right, And Straight On 'Till Morning

The film release was greeted with great enthusiasm from the fans. Paramount had been deluged with fan mail demanding Star Trek be brought back. That fan mail had ensured that there was an third series of the original series (TOS) and had eventually secured Phase II. In a touching tribute, one of the scenes in the film features Kirk addressing the entire crew in the recreation hall³. Some four hundred fans were invited to be extras. It still remains the scene with the most extras in Star Trek film history.

The Problems

Despite being successful in the cinema, it wasn't a Star Wars. It was known that the film suffered script problems and many fans argued that this was evident in the final film.

The Ship

A whole new Enterprise model was built for the film. In the Trek universe it was a refit of the original ship, making it ten to fiftenn years old by this stage. However, as the release date loomed, Robert Wise discovered that the special effects comany that had been hired had not done as good as job as was expected. They had been paid five million dollars and their work could not be used. In the emergency, two other companies were hired and did the finished job.

As a result, when it came time to edit the film, it became difficult to justify cutting any of the special effect shots. They had simply cost too much to end up on the cutting room floor. That's why the film has incredibly long shots of the Enterprise, doing not very much in space dock⁴.

The Black Cloud

AKA Spock, who sweeps onto the ship in a black poncho in a foul mood and never really cheers up. Naturally he's an unemotional Vulcan, but he is half human. The chemistry between the characters never really delevops and ultimately the fans renamed the film: The Motionless Picture. This is perhaps justified.