Now watching, Star Trek, The Motion Picture Blu Ray

Star Trek is a good franchise and Gene Roddenberry created something big, but his scripts were too innocent for the late 70's, the 80's and needless to say, the 90's. He created Star Trek and in sole case of Star Trek The Motion Picture, being scripted and directed by Robert Wise turned it into something bigger and epic than Roddenberry could pulled off.
The same happened with Star Trek The Next Generation, the first two seasons are acceptable to say the least, it wasn't until Rick Bergman and Ronald D. Moore took over when Star Trek TNG really took off.

 

Its pretty fascinating to read about the conflicts that Roddenberry had with writer Harold Livingston. Roddenberry would rewrite Livingston in a seeming endless cycle. Roddenberry got his revenge. He wrote the novelization and got solo credit for that.

 

Seems like the "TNG" people complained most about Gene's insistence that the Starfleet folks never have any interpersonal conflict. He wanted them to all get along all the time. and that made it tough to generate much drama.

I get Gene's desire to depict a utopian society, but that doesn't make for very interesting TV. And it doesn't make much sense - the notion of a world in which no one ever conflicts with anyone else is utterly impossible to imagine. I don't care how much society evolves - people will always annoy other people!

 

David Gerrold and Dorothy Fontana, who were both story editors on the first season of Next Generation, said the exact same thing. Roddenberry had it in his mind that by the time established in the show, Star Fleet and the associated planets were effectively a utopia, so all the conflict had to be generated by new planets and new aliens they encountered. This caused a lot of strife, because the people on the Enterprise were so perfect and rarely had any flaws. Once new producers and writers came in and introduced the Borg and all that stuff, it shook things up quite a bit.

 

Wikipedia disagrees.

 

Somebody else already pointed this out. I then mentioned that they were right but that it feels shorter.

 

I guess I'll have to go back and watch this one again. I remember being very bored while I was watching it in the theater when it was released.

 

The fly-by of the Enterprise is nice at least. The ship design appearing in the first six films (1701 Refit & 1701-A) is my favourite out of all of the films and series.

 

Courtesy of the late Mike Minor. Beautiful redesign.

 

What blew me away seeing TMP opening night was the revelation of what V'ger was. To intertwine a recent current event with this mystery unfolding before our eyes on the silver screen was mind boggling to say the least.

 

My "computer widow" wife will never forgive you if I tell her you just steered me here...

 

Technical Specs
Runtime:
132 min | 136 min (director's cut) | 143 min (TV)
Sound Mix:
Dolby Digital EX (director's cut)| Dolby | 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints)| 6-Track Stereo (as Dolby)
Color:
Color (Metrocolor)
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1
I'd love a DVD of the TV version...

 

The extended TV cut was only available as a Pan & Scan VHS. When they released the widescreen versions on VHS (a couple years prior to DVDs being introduced) they only made the theatrical cut available. I don't think they have all the elements needed to release the TV version in widescreen (and it would make some of the scenes with missing special effects footage look even worse).

 

I'll have to check, I'm pretty sure I still have the TV cut on VHS.

 

I thought it was a great movie when I saw it. I've seen it once or twice and was impressed.

 

Just remembered that I got the movie from iTunes as a free download.

 

Beautiful shots of the Enterprise that lasted as long as the wedding in The Deer Hunter. Recycled plot from the NOMAD episode. Cute bald chick. Great McCoy line "'Your revered Admiral Nogura invoked a little-known seldom-used 'reserve activation clause'. In simpler language, Captain, they DRAFTED me."

Better Star Trek films came later but it was an oasis after a decade of no films or tv of real actors.

 

I saw it in theaters and was disappointed with the recycled storyline. The pacing was glacial. My dad took my mom to go see it. She fell asleep.

 

Opening weekend, we went to see either Star Trek or Disney's The Black Hole (opening the same day) at the BIG Century Theatres in San Jose, Ca. We couldn't get into one, so walked over and saw the other. I can't remember which one! Waited to see the other later and haven't seen either in their entirety since. I do remember Star Trek was rather slow, but very "reverential". Heck, they were finally on The Big Screen!

 

"The Black Hole" made "St:TMP" seem like "Citizen Kane" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still" by comparison. It's an awful movie. I just couldn't believe Disney could release something that bad and think it would do well (of course quality has never prevented huge blockbusters before).Anthony Perkins, as I recall, asked to have his character killed off earlier in the script be ause he realized how bad it was going to be. Some nice matte paintings but really but, even for its time, the compositing is amazingly bad with matte lines. For its flaws, the visual effects for St:TmP (even for their rushed quality) more imaginative and the film is about something.

 

To tell you the truth, all I can remember about "The Black Hole" was thinking you could see the wires holding the floating robots.

 

I think editing out some of corny scenes from Black Hole could make it an ok B flick, it does have it's promising moments.

 

It looks like it was made in the 50's in the very, very bad sense.

 

Wikipedia is wrong. I transferred Robert Wise's version in early 1980 for Paramount, and it was shorter. I'm guessing it was about 110-115 minutes, tops. Definitely, positively under 2 hours. This version was never released in any form -- it was just an archival copy for the director and the studio.

Note that the term "director's cut" gets tossed around an awful lot, but the truth is that it often means very little. "Longer Version" may sound stupider, but it's closer to the truth. In the edit room, they generally refer to different versions as "First Cut, Second Cut," or "V1, V2," or something like that. I know of a major Hollywood superhero film that had eight different cuts that they were arguing about 2 weeks before release: the director's original version, the director's revised version, the editor's version, the second editor's version, the VP of marketing's version, the producer's version, the executive producer's version, and the studio chief's version. I couldn't tell you which one hit theaters -- but they all sucked and the movie bombed.

I have seen it very recently and it's still absolutely awful. The good news is: the effects scenes now look better and the color is pretty good.

 

If the cut you're talking about wasn't released then we're not talking about the same thing. The theatrical cut is the shortest of any version available.