Print Page - The Star Trek movies...

The ST movies have taken their lumps over the years. In some cases, rightfully so.

It took me awhile to "enjoy" the ST movies. I was weened on Star Wars, so when I first saw "Star Trek: the Motion Picture" on HBO many, many eons ago, I thought it prefect remedy for sleeplessness. I was so used to the action packed laser battles of Star Wars, I thought Trek was so uninvolving and tedious. I didn't know better.

I never watched a single episode (that I can remember) of the original series, or any of its spinoffs.

But now that I'm older I can accept Star Trek for what it is. It's a much different space opera than Star Wars. Wrath of Kahn, Voyage Home and First Contact will probably be my favorite of the series. Those movies had HEART. I've almost come to like the first movie (though some people have likened it to watching paint dry).

The Final Frontier was a pretty weak movie. Even, the last, unfortunate one from a few years back wasn't very good. I'm pretty sure that was the final nail in the coffin for the Star Trek movie series.

I guess, my biggest problem with the ST movies is that they seemed slight, Or a better way of putting it, a big budget version of any one of the episodes. They almost come across made-for-television movies with bigger effects.

Nonetheless, I'm not a Trekkie or Trekker. But I have a certain amount of sympathy for the moribund Star Trek movie franchise.

I agree with many of your points. The "Star Trek" movies, at least the ones that were adapting the original series, often feel like longer episodes. I sort of like them, however, specially episodes III and VI. They both have neat space sequences, but characters are never left aside, even if they often overdo the comedy.

I have problems with the "Next Generation" movies, though. The series was very good, but the movies are very dull, with the exception of the ones directed by Jonathan Frakes, which are "First Contact" and "Insurrection". Even the second one is a bit bland, but it has a decent climax.

The first Star Trek movie actually was the first movie that ever put me to sleep when I was a kid...in the theater no less. Going to the movies was a big deal for us and usually we were pumped up. The problem was that sitting through this 17 hour boring and dragged out movie was torture. It almost ruined all of Star Trek for me. A few years later, I got Wrath of Kahn on VHS for Christmas. Apparently someone took the opportunity to buy a new VHS tape for the super low price that they were offering it (recall that tapes were selling for $60 or more at the time and this one was released at about $20). Anyway, I was less than thrilled when I got it but I did decide to watch it...WOW! What a difference between that one and the first. I loved the movie. This movie got me interested in Star Trek again. Since then, over the years, they released quite a few more and some I liked, some I didn't but I'll always like Wrath of Kahn the best just because of the memories attached to it.

Star Trek was different than anything that had been on TV. Most science fiction shows of the 50's and 60's were aimed at kids. TOS was the first show that billed itself as scifi for adults. Roddenberry had figured out how to get stories relevent to the current political and social conditions by the network by telling them in a scifi setting. He got a lot by the censors.

ST:TMP had the distinction of being the most expensive film ever made($45 million) when it was first released. Most ot this was because they were three weeks away from filming the Star Trek Phase II TV series which would have launched Paramounts first stab at creating a new network. The cost of the series pre-production was writtern off in the movies budget.

Michael Eisner who was the head of Paramount at the time saw the money Star Wars was making and decided they needed to do something to cash in on this, so they expanded the pilot episode into a feature film. There were a lot of problems durinig the production especially with the effects. They were on a strict deadline and prints were only made the day before opening and were still wet when they were shipped to theaters.

After all the problems on TMP, every Star Trek movie starting with The Wrath of Khan has been made by the TV division of Paramount. They also replaced Roddenberry as the producer because they didn't trust him.

Here is my list from best to worst:

The Wrath of Khan
The Voyage Home
The Undiscovered Country
The Search for Spock
First Contact
The Motion Picture
Generations
Nemesis
The Final Frontier
Insurrection (or Infarction as I call it)

Star Trek is Paramounts cash cow and even though the current series has been cancelled there is a possible movie in the works(which features no characters from any of the series).

I like TMP, in fact when it first came out I saw it 7 times in different theaters. I never cared for the TV extended version. They cut in part of the memory wall sequence that was abandoned. You know the part where they actuall show Kirk suiting up to go after Spock. If you have watched it you will notice that when he leaves the Enterprise Kirk is wearing a different space suit than the one he has on when Spock comes tumbling back out of V'ger.

The special edition DVD has a much tighter cut of the movie and they were able to spruce up the effects quite a bit.

Speaking as someone who's only seen a handful of the old episodes, a few of the new ones, and most of the movies, I always found Star Trek to be preachy, boring, and predictable...

...with one exception: Wrath of Khan. That stands out, for me, as the best thing Roddenberry ever had his name attached to.

Also, as for PCness of the original series, the show was only extrapolating the future from the present. With the Civil Rights movement still ongoing and the military already fully integrated, it would have seemed totally illogical not to have blacks and east Asians on the crew of a ship from more than a hundred years in the future. I do understand that the Russian guy was a late addition added after the Kremlin actually complained to the network. Not sure if that's true or an urban legend, but I can believe it. Communists are generally pretty humorless.

I'm amazed at how many people didn't like FINAL FRONTIER, but I've heard it before. Myself I really liked the whole film with Spocks half-brother Cybock and his search for God. By the way the final scene in FINAL FRONTIER was shot at Trona Pinnacles National Landmark in California. Kirk's question was really great. He ask this powerful being that they find in this far off place if he is really God. Great stuff.

This film could easily have been made into one of the original hour long TV shows with the same idea. Nobody I've ever known seems to have liked this film.

Post Edited (04-17-05 20:45)

AndyC wrote:

> I do have a soft spot for the first movie for
> various reasons, mostly nostalgic.

Same here; ST:TMP was probably the ONLY movie my Dad and I went to see at the theatre, just him and me. He was a bit of a Trek fan, which is to say that he caught a syndicated episode on tv when he could. (I think he must have really liked it when it was orginally on, but I was quite young then).

Later, he made a VHS with TMP, the episode of TOS with Kahn and The Wrath of Khan all on one tape. It's pretty cool to watch that episode of TOS and the Wrath of Khan back-to-back.

In general, I've been quite disappointed by most of the movies based on TNG crew, ESPECIALLY Generations.

Generations.
The first part, where Kirk does his thing on the Enterprias-B, is great. THATS how Kirk should have gone out to that big Starfleet in the sky...uh..badly worded Metaphore..never mind...
I wanted to see Kirk interact with the Next Gen crew! The Eph. "Relics" was cool, cause they brought back Scotty. Can you imagin how maby Fleet Engeneers used him a a hero figure? With good reason they called him the Miracal Worker.

(Grumble...)....Man, i'd like to slap around the screenwriter....

Scott wrote:
> I'm amazed at how many people didn't like FINAL FRONTIER.

I didn't mind it myself. It was bad, sure, and kind of ridiculous in places, but it was fun. I really liked the Klingons in this one, and loved the way they were introduced by using the old Pioneer probe for target practice. And I agree, Kirk talking back to "God" was fun, and reminiscent of the old series. I'd take this movie over Nemesis or Insurrection any day.

It also has a special place in that I went to see it on the evening of my last day of high school. A buddy and I went to the local drive-in, as we used to do regularly in the summer before it became a housing development. Guns and Roses were very popular at the time, and I can still remember when we were introduced to Paradise City, we both looked at each other and started singing "take me down to the Paradise City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty." Ah, memories.

Yes Eirik and Dave, they needed a hip young guy with long hair like Davey so the made him a Russian. If you will notice the for first few episodes he appeared in Chekov wore a really Beatle wig. They were actually looking for someone to fill in for Sulu who was off making the Green Berets with John Wayne.

Scott and Andy C, true worshippers of the Holy Bloated One know that The Final Frontier is actually the #4 reason Kirk is the best Enterprise Captain.

"4. Kirk traveled through the Great Barrier, met God, and wasn't even impressed."

You can check out the other 114 reasons at The First Church of Shatnerology (http://www.shatnerology.com/kirk.html)

Flangepart - My favorite part of Generations was Jean-Luc getting his ass kicked by Soran, then later he brings back the ham-fisted Kirk who proceeds to pound Soran's ass so bad he runs away from him.

The Kirk death scene was pretty crappy even after they reshot it. When they showed the original version to test audiences they got an earful about it. In the original Soran just shoots him in the back when he is going across the bridge.

Relics- I really didn't like the way Geordi dissed Scotty. The guy would have been a living legend, especially after the unique way he kept himself alive for 75 years.

The TNG producers never seemed to want to pay any homage to TOS, even though the original crew would have been some of the biggest legends in the Federation.

trek_geezer wrote:
> Relics- I really didn't like the way Geordi dissed Scotty. The
> guy would have been a living legend, especially after the
> unique way he kept himself alive for 75 years.

Yeah, that was one thing I didn't like about that episode. It seemed out of character the way everybody treated Scotty. They ignored him and treated him like a nuisance, because it was what the story demanded. They were never that rude to anyone else, no matter how busy they were, and this guy is one of their heroes. And Scotty behaved like a twit himself at times, just to give them some justification. Really badly handled by the writers.

The other thing I didn't like was that they wasted probably one of the best story ideas, a frigging Dyson sphere, as a mere backdrop for a story about something else. That idea could have made a two or three part episode. Heck, it's big enough to build a movie around, but nooo, they just used it as a plot device to account for Scotty's disappearance, and provide some danger so he could be useful. Scotty's guest appearance was a big deal, don't get me wrong, but they could have created that situation with something a lot less spectacular. Big discovery like that, and we saw nothing of it, learned nothing about it, nobody even seemed especially excited about it, and they buggered off at the end of the episode and never mentioned it again.

Again, what the hell were the writers thinking? You can imagine them thinking "It's a relic and Scotty's a relic. It was once great, but now its time is passed. Cool."

But this would be one of the greatest discoveries of all time. It would have far-reaching effects, and would capture the attention of the entire Federation. It also offers virtually unlimited story possibilities. They wouldn't even need to stop at one episode. They could keep going back for new adventures, maybe once a season. But these people used it as a gimmick.

There were things I liked about the episode, the appearance of the old bridge being one of them, but overall, it was one of the most badly botched TNG episodes.

Post Edited (04-18-05 18:32)

This could have been a two-parter just on the Scotty story. Did you notice how Troi treated him at the end? They were not in a single scene together before that one, except the sequence that got cut. There was a scene where Picard sent her to see Scotty and they evidently had a talk.

This episode is bad for the ST universe continuity, because they don't explain where Kirk is. We know McCoy is still alive and Spock is on Romulus. Then they make Generations and Scotty knows that Kirk is dead, so why didn't he remember in the 24th century?

I hate to admit it but I own the novelization of this episode. They did expand the story about the sphere. If I remember correctly they beamed Riker and an away team down to a building close to where the door they came through was. I don't remember much else about it.

I actually have a couple of big boxes full of Star Trek novels. Some of them are pretty good and some are pretty close to terrible. At the time I bought most of them I was going through some health problems and they were an easy read.

Good points, Trek and AndyC.
I did find the dissing of Scotty weird. Its the Mirical Worker! If a gun maker could talk to John Browning, who had a natural engeneering genius, they would be floored. And an Architect meeting Frank Lloyd Wright...come on!
Even though the Technical details changed, the storys of how he kept the Enterprise going would be taught at StarFleet Academy Starship Engeneering.
Ya know....its more proof of the ego thing when someone writes in another writers universe. They Have to make "Their" mark on things....
I tells ya...it is to weep...

Flangepart wrote:

> Even though the Technical details changed, the storys of how he
> kept the Enterprise going would be taught at StarFleet Academy
> Starship Engeneering.
>

This reminds me of a question/observation about "Trek" that I have often pondered. I get the impression that the Enterprise and crew (ToS) were really the only ones of the original mission to actually complete their "5 year mission." I mean, if all the starships were getting into the same kinds of scrapes, there could not have been a lot to survive. And sometimes, they survived by the skin of their teeth, or Kirk's balls, or Spocks logic, or Scotty's...well, you get the idea.

In other words, how many other crews would have had just this right combination of expertise/luck across the board? TNG borrowed heavily on this, as well (how many tight spot survivals were the result happening to have DATA on board?).

Maybe the Enterprise was not the ONLY one to survive, but they certainly were top dogs when it came to real exploration experience. So yes, it is my most humble opinion that any member of that crew, ESPECIALLY Mr. Scott, would have been nothing shy of legend at SFA, and probably held higher than that.

I can understand why Geordi was so peeved at Scotty. Keep in mind he's never had a girlfriend (even Data gets more trim than Geordi), he lives on a ship where all they serve is synthahol, and as if that's not enough he's got Wesley running around all day every day. And then there's Picard always ordering him to run the engines up 500% past their safety limit, it's not like the explosion is going to kill us up here on the bridge. You guys in engineering, well...

I'd probably take a phaser rifle rifle and go on a rampage if I was that guy.

I must be in the majority when I say that the first Star Trek movie is my favourite. I loved the concept and was enthralled by that movie, although the first time I saw it was when it came on TV. Star Wars was around the same time and had I seen it then, the contrast would have been too great, to Star Trek's detriment. I even watched the first movie last year and still thought it was great. I have comic books from that time that have the 'Star Trek - The Motion Picture' ads on the back. Oooh, fun days...

I've hardly watched the other ones, and the only memorable one for me was 'The Wrath of Khan' (or 'Con', as Kirk pronounced it). I saw that one in the cinema, and the memory of those weird brain-controlling worms entering the ears of those men still gives me the willies.

Did anyone notice that this really hot blonde lady who turned up from time to time in the original Trek series came back as a doctor in one of the later series or spin-offs?

And there was a gay porn actor who had a bit-part as an ensign in Next Gen. Don't know where I heard that from!

Ulthar: "Saved by the skin of Kirk's balls." Going to have to remember that one. :D

~Archivist~

As far as the blonde, which one?

Majel Barrett, who was a brunette in the first pilot (The Cage) and played the first officer. At the time she was Gene Roddenberry's girlfriend. When NBC called The Cage too cerebral and ordered a second pilot (Where No Man Has Gone Before), they told him to lose the guy with pointed ears and the woman first officer (who by the way only went by Number One). He kept Spock and then brought Majel back as the blonde Nurse Chapel (who had a crush on Spock).

In the first 13 episodes there was a yeoman named Janice Rand (played by Grace Lee Whitney). She was blonde and had a big beehive hairdo. She was canned for drinking on the job. She had lots of substance abuse problems and ended up living in a car on a Safeway parking lot in LA. I think having little parts in the movies probably helped her turn her life around.

Does anybody have any doubts left about my geekiness?

Post Edited (04-20-05 06:52)

Archivist wrote:
"Did anyone notice that this really hot blonde lady who turned up from time to time in the original Trek series came back as a doctor in one of the later series or spin-offs?"

Diana Muldar who played Dr. Pulaski in TNG Season 2 was in a couple of the old TOS episodes.
She was quite a dish back in the 60's!

(http://www.startrek.com/imageuploads/200303/tos-051-the-long-lived-sargon/120x90.jpg)

Post Edited (04-19-05 20:02)

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