When Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in December 1979, the modern idea of franchise fandom didn’t exist. But bringing a defunct TV series back as a theatrical feature film was an even more unprecedented prospect. By the time the movie made it to theaters, Paramount and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry had already spent several years developing various iterations of a Star Trek follow-up, including one much earlier film concept, plus, a planned TV series that was, eventually repurposed into The Motion Picture.
It’s the kind of risky experiment that could easily have done away with the idea of Star Trek as a long-running media property, despite its fervent fan following. The relative success of The Motion Picture, which is out in a new 45th-anniversary limited edition 4K/Blu-ray this week, paved the way for the entirety of the thriving Star Trek franchise today. Without The Motion Picture, Star Trek as we know it wouldn’t exist.
That’s not to say that The Motion Picture is the best that Star Trek has to offer. In part because of its jumbled production history, it resembles a distended, enhanced episode of the original TV series, without the exhilarating spectacle of most subsequent Star Trek movies. It hit theaters in the wake of the massive success of Star Wars, but it draws more from the cerebral science fiction of movies like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris. It’s slow and ponderous, but it looks gorgeous, and it presents the characters from the TV series as serious seekers into the mysteries of the universe.
The entire core Star Trek cast returns, led by William Shatner as Capt. James T. Kirk. The first act of the movie involves bringing those characters together, as many of them have left the Starship Enterprise in the time since the end of the TV series. Now an admiral, Kirk has spent two and a half years as a Starfleet bureaucrat, but in his typical bullheaded fashion, he appoints himself captain of the refurbished Enterprise, displacing the previously commissioned Capt. Willard Decker (Stephen Collins).
While crew members Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), Montgomery Scott (James Doohan), and Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) are already onboard, Kirk has to exercise further blunt authority to get Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) out of retirement. Eventually, they’re joined by Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who returns to Starfleet following a failed ritual on his home planet of Vulcan. Simply seeing these characters back together would have been thrilling for an audience that had been anticipating their return for a decade, and their chemistry and camaraderie remain in place, even if most of the supporting characters don’t get much to do.
Instead, director Robert Wise and the various credited and uncredited writers — including Harold Livingston, and genre legend Alan Dean Foster — place much of the focus on Decker and fellow new character Lt. Ilia (Persis Khambatta), who get an unconvincing romantic arc that ties in with the movie’s main threat. Keep in mind, this script was based on a pilot episode for a TV series that never happened, so in some univesre, Ilia and Decker would have lived on as recurring characters. (And in our universe, served as the template for Will Riker and Deanna Troi in The Next Generation.)
The bigger plot of The Motion Picture was largely a reworking of the 1977 script “In Thy Image,” written by Harold Livingston, and concerns a mysterious alien entity known as V’Ger that is slowly making its way toward Earth, destroying everything in its path, and only the Enterprise stands in its way.
Although V’Ger makes Ilia into its avatar, The Motion Picture lacks the kind of dynamic villain that has defined the best Star Trek movies, from Ricardo Montalbán in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to Christopher Plummer in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country to Alice Krige in Star Trek: First Contact. Defeating V’Ger mostly involves dry philosophical debates, which can be fascinating in an hour-long TV episode, but end up dragging in a movie that runs 132 minutes.
Wise expends every effort to make The Motion Picture a true epic — to fully embrace its status as a motion picture in the old-fashioned sense, including by opening with a 90-second overture. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is one of the best in sci-fi cinema history, and his indelible theme music is recognizable from its later use in the opening credits of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The special effects, from a team including the legendary Douglas Trumbull, still look stunning, and the characters’ journeys into the heart of V’Ger’s energy cloud are masterpieces of psychedelic wonder.
The Motion Picture is also known — and often mocked, including on Star Trek: Lower Decks — for its lengthy, luxurious shots of majestic spacecraft, including a nearly six-minute, mostly wordless sequence of Kirk and Scott approaching the new Enterprise. It’s hokey, but it also captures the characters’ sheer love for the ship that has been their home. Just like the fans, they’re overjoyed to be back.
Given how much was riding on The Motion Picture for the Star Trek community, it’s easy now to forgive its excesses. It’s a glorious return for what is essentially the first fan-driven franchise, and it opened up a world that continues to expand in creative and exciting ways. The current 45th anniversary SteelBook includes the latest special edition of the film, which includes tastefully upgraded special effects, that fit perfectly in line with the aesthetic of the film, but also ensure that it still looks relevant and fantastic. And, anyone who’s enjoyed any later Star Trek movie or TV series has The Motion Picture to thank.
