Starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols Majesty Khambatta. Written by Harold Livingston, directed by Robert Wise. Special effects shout outs to: Douglas Trumbull, John Dystra, Syd Mead and the thousands of others involved. Running time 132 minutes. Budget $44 million. Originally released in 1979.
Something big, I mean really big, I mean bigger than the biggest thing you could ever imagine, its power is off the frickin' chart, 12 something to the power of whatnot, or something, look science was never my thing. ANYWAY, it's heading towards Earth and so far it's destroyed three Klingon cruisers and a space station and we're next!
The trouble is, Star Fleet has only gone and sent ALL, and I do mean EVERY SINGLE other star ship it has to other galaxies, far far away (but not a long time ago) and none of those other intergalactic star ships with warp drive can get back in time. Luckily, sitting in dry dock far above the Earth, is, wait for it, the Enterprise! It's just about finished a very long refit and beyond a malfunctioning teleporter and an unbalanced warp core, is the only ship capable of reaching the big cloud before it reaches us. Que Admiral James T. Kirk jumping back into the captain's seat and setting off to put the band back together so they can stop this big baddy dead in its tracks!
And that's about it, plot wise, except for the very lengthy special effects shots that pad out the running time to well beyond the 2 hour mark. You can see why critics called it Star Trek: The Slow Motion picture.
Look, this isn't a very good film, it's ponderous, rather dull and far too serious for its own good. It forgets what Star Trek was about and tries to show that new upstart on the scene, Star Wars, that it's daddy!
It's a film that over time has mellowed, and there are things it does that are deeply poignant, the reveal of the new look Enterprise in space dock is the star, as too is Spock's re-emerging humanity, the majesty of the V'y'ger and the look of joy on the faces of the old cast at having a job again.
But the over reliance on special effects is still its undoing. There is simply not enough incident, it's populated with lots of people standing around looking at stuff happening. And as with the fact that the red coats were going to get it in the TV series, the fact that there are new faces onboard the Enterprise doesn't bode well for their survival.
This came out after Star Wars and Alien, and both of those made it seem very old fashioned. It feels as if ST:TMP learned no lessons from the new boys, and seemed determined to stick to old ways, which is weird because the Star Trek TV show, wasn't old school, it was fresh and cutting edge, it was a trail blazer. This is old school. There was such an explosion of sf movies in the wake of Star Wars so it's obvious why Paramount wanted to bring back Star Trek back, but the world wasn't in the mood for a feature length Wagon Train in space, not where there's the likes of STAR WARS and ALIEN to be had!
1979 was a bumper year for science fiction films, there's Black Hole, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Shape of Things to Come, Star Crash, Humanoid (see told you bumper year!).
Anyway, seeing this again on the big screen after many, many decades was a delight, it does look good up on a big screen and I didn't mind the length, ooh er!
And seriously, that scene with dry dock as the new look Enterprise is revealed, with that spectacular music is worth the admission cost alone, the rest of it, Meh.
And least it be forgotten, if it wasn't for this we wouldn't have had that classic Star Trek film, Wrath of Khan.
Still, at least Star Trek The Motion Picture wasn't the worst science fiction film of 1979, that honour lies with METEOR.
7/10
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