Movies - Star Trek: The Motion Picture

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	Movies - Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Paramount Pictures, 1979) is the first feature film based on the popular Star Trek science fiction television series. It is often referred to as ST:TMP or TMP. The film is often regarded as a disappointing one because of it's plodding pace and emphasis on special effects over story and characterization, and is considered by many as one of the lesser films in the series. It's rather slow plot has led some fans to label it as The Motionless Picture. However, there are also many fans who consider this film to be the best of the series and the one film that most accurately reflected Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future.

Cast

Plot summary

In the late 23rd century, ca. stardate 7412.6, a powerful alien force - in the shape of a massive energy cloud - is detected in Klingon space and is believed to be heading for Earth. The cloud destroys the Klingon starships and a Starfleet monitoring station it encounters en route. Starfleet decides to dispatch the starship USS Enterprise to intercept the "thing", requiring that its lengthy refit process be quickly finished and tested while in transit.

As part of this plan, Admiral James T. Kirk assumes his old command of the ship, angering Commander Willard Decker, who had been overseeing its refit as its new captain. With many of the former crew members of the ship aboard, the Enterprise embarks on its journey, but testing of its new systems goes poorly, resulting in further stress between Kirk and Decker. Many problems are resolved by the addition of science officer Commander Spock, who had been on his homeworld of Vulcan undergoing the kolinahr ritual. His failure to complete kolinahr and purge his emotions has led him to seek his answers on the Enterprise, explaining, "On Vulcan I began sensing a consciousness. Thought patterns of exactingly perfect order. I believe they emanate from the intruder. I believe it may hold my answers."

The Enterprise intercepts the alien cloud, survives its initial assault, and journeys inside the cloud, finding a vast alien vessel, which draws the starship inside. An alien probe appears on the bridge and abducts navigator Lieutenant Ilia, who is replaced by a robotic probe, who reveals that she/it has been sent to study the "carbon units" (humans) by something called V'ger. Decker is distraught over the loss of Ilia, with whom he had a history, and is troubled to be assigned to get information from the mechnical doppelgänger, which he discovers has Ilia's memories and feelings buried within. Meanwhile, Spock takes a suicidal spacewalk into the alien vessel, and attempts to telepathically mind meld with it. He learns that the vessel IS V'ger itself; a living machine! He also comes to terms with his emotions, realizing that the pure logic V'ger represents is "barren...cold."

The ship gradually journeys to the center of V'ger, where V'ger is itself revealed to be the unmanned scientific probe Voyager 6, which was part of the Voyager program, and (fictitiously) launched in the "twentieth century". The damaged probe was found by an alien race of living machines that interpreted its programming as instructions from God to "learn all that is learnable" and return that information to its creator. These machines made V'ger into something capable of fulfilling that mission, and "on its journey back it gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness itself!" However, Spock realizes that what V'ger lacks is the ability to give itself a purpose other than its original mission to “learn all that is learnable.” Having learned all that is learnable on its journey home, which took V'ger across the Universe, V'ger finds itself empty and without a purpose. Only through the creator can V’ger begin to explore illogical things, such as God, other dimensions, or higher planes of being. In the climax of the film, V'ger (in the person of the Ilia probe) merges with Commander Decker and then vanishes into a higher realm of being, and thus the Earth is saved by the crew of the Enterprise.

Themes

TMP exhibits numerous themes familiar to viewers of Star Trek (TOS) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). One is the notion of "Kirk as destroyer of malevolent machines". Captain Kirk often encountered and destroyed computers which have become too powerful for the humanoids around them. TMP takes a slightly different tack, as V'ger is not actually destroyed.

Another theme is the notion of a being transcending the material plane to become something greater and enter another level of existence, usually represented as a being of light. Creatures such as the Organians from the original series episode "Errand of Mercy" have this characteristic, as do several beings from TNG. Star Trek almost always portrays this transformation in a positive light, something to which humanity can aspire, and V'ger's transformation here certainly is in this mold.

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