Talking About 'Star Trek': Is 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' a good film?

Reviewing Star Trek: The Motion Picture is one of those “some say the glass is half-empty, some say it’s half-full” conundrums. Robert Wise’s final science-fiction film is a decent film in some respects, but a dull, even cold and soulless one in others.

Greenlit by Paramount Pictures in a bid to compete with 20th Century Fox’s Star Wars, the film was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s second and last theatrical production. He didn’t write the screen story (Alan Dean Foster’s ‘In Thy Image,” the treatment for a pilot episode to a canceled TV series titled Star Trek: Phase Two was the movie’s starting point), nor did he write the screenplay (Harold Livingston wrote a partial script that was added on to during filming). But he sure loaded it with many of his favorite Star Trek tropes and saddled it with an unnecessary amount of pretentiousness and a cold, sterile look that is the antithesis of the television show that begat Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

In brief, here are the Pros and Cons of Star Trek: The Motion Picture:

Pros

• The redesigned U.S.S. Enterprise.
• Jerry Goldsmith’s majestic score
• The first act of the film (reuniting the crew; Kirk’s return as Captain)
• The look of the updated Klingons (although it did create problems with in-universe continuity) and the new Klingon language
• The special effects

Cons

• The second and third acts of the film are S-L-O-W
• The cold and sterile look of the ship’s interiors and the new Starfleet uniforms
• The story is a rehash of various Roddenberry tropes, such as Kirk Must Outwit Artificial Intelligence to Save the Enterprise and/or Earth and Old Earth Space Probe Returns to Earth With New and Deadly Capabilities In Search of Its Creator
• Too much reliance on the special effects

I understand - all too well - what Roddenberry tried to do with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He was trying to (a) encapsulate his philosophy that humans have a bright future in store for them, (b) tell a science-fiction story that did not rely on Star Wars-like space battles and ray guns, and (c) make a movie that was worthy of the Star Trek brand.

But his insistence that Star Trek: The Motion Picture should be more aesthetically like 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than either Star Trek: The Original Series or the film Paramount Pictures was trying to catch up to at the box office…that didn’t help the film much. The fact that Wise had to start filming without a completed script was a huge problem; Paramount’s insistence that the movie had to be a special effects extravaganza was also not a good thing.

Paramount spent $46 million in the making of what some wags call Spockalypse Now or Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. It got its seed money back when the movie earned $130 million at the box office, but the studio executives were not thrilled with the mixed reviews and somewhat lukewarm reception from fans.

Still, Paramount understood that the Star Trek franchise could be mined for more profits if it was handled right, so instead of killing the film series, it kicked Roddenberry upstairs and gave him a ceremonial title (Executive Consultant) but no real creative power. Then Michael Eisner hired Harve Bennett (who worked at Paramount Television) to take over as producer of the next movie.

The rest, as they say, is history.