Starship Nomadic, Northern Ireland STARSHIP NOMADICA NORTHERN IRELAND STAR TREK FAN GROUP
FILM 1 OF 14 · 197901
STAR TREK

The Motion Picture

NOMADIC PICK · BIG SCREEN SPECTACLESlow, but grand and thoughtful.
US RELEASE
7 December 1979
UK RELEASE
21 December 1979
RUNTIME
132 minutes
UK CERTIFICATE
U
DIRECTED BY
Robert Wise
MUSIC
Jerry Goldsmith
BUDGET
$44 million
BOX OFFICE (WORLDWIDE)
$139 million
FIRST STARDATE
7412.6

WRITTEN BYScreenplay by Harold Livingston; story by Alan Dean Foster

PRODUCED BYGene Roddenberry

IN BRIEF

SPOILER-FREE

A vast, unstoppable cloud is heading for Earth, and Admiral Kirk takes back the newly refitted Enterprise to find out what lies at its heart.

SYNOPSIS

SPOILERS
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSISHIDE SYNOPSIS

A colossal energy cloud destroys a group of Klingon warships, then wipes out Starfleet's Epsilon 9 monitoring station as it heads directly for Earth. The only ship in range is the Enterprise, which is just finishing a major refit. Admiral James T. Kirk uses the emergency to reclaim command, pushing aside the young Captain Willard Decker, who is demoted to executive officer and makes no secret of his resentment. Kirk also drafts a reluctant Dr McCoy back into service. The rushed launch goes badly: a transporter malfunction kills two crew members, including the new science officer, and an engine fault almost destroys the ship. Then Spock arrives. He has abandoned the Vulcan Kolinahr ritual, which would have purged all his emotions, after sensing a powerful mind calling from within the cloud.

Inside the cloud lies an immense alien vessel. A probe appears on the bridge and takes the navigator, Lt Ilia, who was once close to Decker. She returns as a machine replica with her memories intact, sent to study the crew. Spock makes an unauthorised spacewalk into the vessel and, through a mind meld, learns that the whole craft is a living machine called V'Ger, full of knowledge but empty of purpose. As V'Ger reaches Earth and prepares to wipe out its life, the crew reaches its core and finds Voyager 6, a NASA probe launched in the 20th century. A machine civilisation had found it and built V'Ger around it so that it could fulfil its programming: learn all it can and return that knowledge to its creator. That creator turns out to be humanity. V'Ger now wants to join with its creator, and Decker volunteers. He merges with V'Ger and the Ilia probe, and together they become a new form of life that vanishes in a blaze of light. Earth is saved, and Kirk sends the Enterprise out to explore once more.

BEHIND THE CAMERA

After the original series ended in 1969, Gene Roddenberry spent years trying to bring Star Trek back. Paramount turned down several film scripts, then planned a new television series, Star Trek: Phase II. Following the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the studio dropped the series and turned its pilot script, “In Thy Image”, into a feature film directed by Robert Wise. The first effects company, Robert Abel and Associates, was let go in 1979, and Douglas Trumbull's team worked around the clock to finish the effects in time for the December release. The final cost rose to about $44 million. The film earned $139 million worldwide, less than Paramount hoped, and reviews were mixed, with many critics finding it short on action.

DID YOU KNOW?

  1. 01Persis Khambatta shaved her head to play Ilia, the Deltan navigator.
  2. 02The Klingon dialogue grew out of words made up by James Doohan. Linguist Marc Okrand later developed it into a full constructed language.
  3. 03Robert Wise rejected Jerry Goldsmith's first main theme. The replacement march was later reused as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  4. 04The production consulted NASA and other experts, among them former astronaut Rusty Schweickart and science fiction author Isaac Asimov.

CONNECTIONS

  • The story began life as “In Thy Image”, the planned pilot episode for the abandoned television series Star Trek: Phase II.
  • A probe that misunderstands its purpose and its creator echoes Nomad in the original series episode “The Changeling” (1967).
  • Mark Lenard, the Klingon captain here, played Spock's father Sarek in “Journey to Babel” (1967) and returned as Sarek in later films.

AWARDS

Three Academy Award nominations (art direction, visual effects, original score); Saturn Award for Best Special Effects; Hugo Award nominee

SOURCES WE CHECKED