STAR TREK: The Motion Picture — The Director’s Edition / The Complete Adventure / Review
“You mean this machine wants to physically join with a human? Is that possible?”
The recently released five-disc ‘The Complete Adventure’ collectors’ set featuring the 4K restoration of director Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture — the Director’s Edition offers a spectacular and redemptive climax to the film’s history, its mixed fortunes and multiple revisions.
It brings together three versions of Wise’s film: Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s (TMP) 1979 theatrical release, the amusingly titled ‘Special Longer Version’ from 1983 and his ‘Director’s Edition’, originally released on DVD in 2001 and now given a welcome 2021 4K UHD refurbishment. It also provides a bevvy of contextual new and legacy special features. No question, this is an automatic purchase for fans of TMP.
Despite its commercial success TMP’s release in 1979 received a mixed critical reception, perhaps in recognition that it was a compromised endeavour, with five years of chaotic development resulting in a rushed, incomplete, horrendously over budget film. In Maiden Voyage, one of the documentaries on the set’s bonus disc, Paramount executive Tom Parry puts the cost close to $46 million, then the most expensive feature film ever made, and underlines that Paramount were also very pessimistic about its success. Imagine the collective relief when the film grossed $139,000,000 globally.
“it literally is the foundation on which this entire enterprise is built”
The film, which sees Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), Science Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and the crew reunited aboard an untried, untested and totally revamped Enterprise to rendezvous with a colossal alien intruder heading for Earth, was born out of false starts, Paramount’s insecurity about making a feature film version of a popular television series, and the studio’s failure to read the room as science fiction blockbusters started to dominate the box office. The alien intruder’s identity, as a living machine intelligence returning to its creator, is as embedded in TMP’s DNA as much as the film’s visual legacy and aspects of its narrative and character. They are now ingrained in almost every subsequent incarnation of Star Trek. The ‘Star Trek Universe’ of Paramount’s tent-pole film and television franchise today would not be quite what it is without TMP. As former Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg reflected in 2001 on the film’s success and the importance of Star Trek to the studio: “it literally is the foundation on which this entire enterprise is built.”
By 1970, Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS — NBC, 1966–69) was no longer in production. All 79 episodes were sold into syndication to re-run across local stations and, rather than diminishing into obscurity, Star Trek’s appeal and its fan base dramatically expanded. Fan appreciation became an essential element of Star Trek’s revival in the 1970s after an effective letter writing campaign saved the show when rumours about its cancellation circulated after its second season. The series was doing excellent business and scoring phenomenal ratings in syndication, and its increasing fan demographic gave Paramount pause to consider the value of its slumbering franchise.
The story of the Enterprise’s encounter with the living machine V’ger had its roots in one of Star Trek creator/producer Gene Roddenberry’s other television projects. His pilot Genesis II (CBS, 1973) came very close to a series commission and featured Dylan Hunt, a NASA scientist from 1979 who wakes to find himself in the post-apocalyptic Earth of 2133 because of an accident during experiments with suspended animation. One of several storylines prepared for Genesis II’s planned series pick-up influenced the development of TMP. ‘Robot’s Return’ saw Dylan and his team confronted by advanced robot probes, that had evolved from a former unmanned expedition to Jupiter, returning to Earth seeking their creator, NASA. This episode and TMP also shared similar themes to ‘The Changeling’, a TOS second season story written by John Meredyth Lucas, about a destructive space probe originating from a past Earth. In fact, TMP’s associate producer Jon Povill had flagged how similar the film’s story was to ‘The Changeling’ during the scripting process.
In response to the impressive syndication performance of TOS and the requests for more episodes from stations, advertisers and a growing, insistent fan base, animation studio Filmation, together with Roddenberry and TOS writer Dorothy Fontana, produced the Emmy award-winning Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS NBC, 1973–74), which ran on Saturday mornings for two seasons, featuring the voices of the original cast. Its scripts were eventually novelised in the Star Trek Logs books between 1974 and 1978 by science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster. Foster would later be invited to develop a story treatment for a proposed new series of Star Trek in 1977, developed by Paramount after several frustrating attempts to produce a feature film. Those false starts and Foster’s treatment would also have an impact on the story at the heart of TMP.
In May 1975 Paramount finally asked Roddenberry to write a Star Trek film script. Known as The God Thing, it was a putative, $5 million low budget feature due to shoot in July 1976. As Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens note, like TMP, it set up the crew having “returned from their original five-year mission, been promoted, and taken on other assignments in Starfleet.” McCoy has become a veterinarian, Spock is on Vulcan to purge his human emotions, presumably through the same Kolinahr ritual depicted in the opening of TMP. With the threat of an unknown force heading to Earth, Kirk, now an Admiral, brings the crew back together to face… God. What they encounter is actually a malfunctioning alien entity from another dimension, one that has influenced the development of religious beliefs and laws on many planets, including Earth. To prove its function to Kirk it briefly takes on the guise of Christ. Not only did this prefigure the narrative framework of TMP but it also eventually reemerged, particularly Kirk’s beef with a similar alien purporting to be God, in a later sequel, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1986).
Paramount considered the religious themes and philosophy of The God Thing too ‘heavy’ and controversial for a Star Trek film and rejected the script. Roddenberry’s development deal was ended. Jon Povill, Roddenberry’s then assistant, also took a shot at writing a number of concepts. One took the Enterprise back in time to the last days of Vulcan’s ancient civil wars so that Spock could restore Vulcan’s future, another involved the crew travelling back to 1937 to undo Scotty’s introduction of advanced technology in his bid to restore the future after the Enterprise has been destroyed by a black hole. Alas, his meddling alters the timeline and the Federation ceases to exist. It also featured the death of JFK, an element that would resurface in Roddenberry’s concepts for a sequel to TMP featuring Klingons and the Guardian of Forever.
Neither Povill’s concepts nor the work of other writers, including John D. F. Black and Theodore Sturgeon, both of whom had written for TOS, and noted SF author Robert Silverberg, went any further. Silverberg’s treatment The Billion Year Voyage saw the Enterprise exploring the ruins of an ancient civilisation, called The Great Ones, and battling other races for control of their advanced technology. Even Harlan Ellison, still disgruntled about the treatment of his much-lauded TOS script, ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’, pitched a story about a race of reptilians using time travel to ensure that a race similar to their own evolved from their dinosaur ancestors on Earth. Understandably, Ellison walked when Paramount’s producer Barry Trabulus insisted he shoehorn in the Aztec and Mayan civilisations as an homage to Erich von Däniken’s 1968 tome Chariots of the Gods? While these stories and scripts were all to no avail, writers were paid $10,000 each for their work. When TMP got the green light, it eventually picked up this bill.
“distinctly adult and challenging thriller”
A film, budgeted at $8 million, was in active development by 1976. Produced by Jerry Isenberg, Planet of the Titans was also looking to reduce costs by making the film in England. British writers Allan Scott and Chris Bryant, writers of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), developed a script for director Philip Kaufman (who helmed the superb Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake in 1978 and The Right Stuff in 1983). Celebrated Bond films designer Ken Adam was the production designer and worked with concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, fresh from working on a little number called Star Wars (1977), on Enterprise redesign concepts and other elements, including shuttle craft, Federation bases and the surface of Vulcan. Their Enterprise concepts later influenced John Eaves’ and Scott Schneider’s design of USS Discovery in the titular television series that began in 2017. Derek Meddings, the visual effects supervisor on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s television shows and on the Bond films, also completed some pre-production design as the film’s effects supervisor.
It was a “distinctly adult and challenging thriller”, a space epic with “elements of horror, and even eroticism” but Scott and Bryant’s script and Kaufman’s own rewrite were both rejected amid differences of opinion over what Paramount, Roddenberry and Kaufman understood a Star Trek feature film to be. At the core of the story, the Enterprise is pulled through a black hole, flung back thousands of years to Earth where, after introducing primitive man to fire, the crew realise they’ve become the so-called Titans of legend. Kaufman wanted his rewrite to focus on Spock and a Klingon nemesis (he had Toshiro Mifune in mind for the latter role) and to make “more of an adult movie, dealing with sexuality and wonders rather than oddness; a big science-fiction movie, filled with all kinds of questions” and specifically about Spock’s “humanity and what humanness was. To have Spock and Mifune’s character tripping out in outer space. I’m sure the fans would have been upset, but I felt it could really open up a new type of science fiction.”
Yet, even in its rewritten form it suggested TMP’s similar path to the philosophical science fiction of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). As noted by Jeff Bond and Gene Kozicki, the strange, complex script contained what would become familiar elements: the Enterprise’s refit in dry dock, a space battle with Klingon cruisers, Spock’s return to Vulcan to undertake Kolinahr, bio-mechanical spider creatures, a central brain complex controlling a black hole that is heading to Earth, a spectacular “special effects light show as the Enterprise enters a black hole” and the merging of bio-mechanical creatures with Spock and new character Dr Riva, a female empath, to facilitate “the reinvention of humanity”.
However, it was halted in May 1977, just two weeks before the release of Star Wars. Actors had been contracted on a pay or play basis and these costs were eventually transferred to TMP’s budget. Kaufman suggested Paramount, getting cold feet over an ambitious if distinctly philosophical script, also questioned the viability of releasing another major science fiction film so soon after Star Wars. Roddenberry, quoted by the Associated Press after the project was officially cancelled, believed “they felt Star Wars was too similar and had taken the bloom off the subsequent Star Trek movie…” The boom in science fiction cinema wasn’t on Paramount’s radar until later that year when Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) opened in November to impressive box office. However, the studio had other plans.
“almost everything in life is sex-oriented”
Paramount, which thought the Titans script “was a little pretentious” (according to executive Barry Diller), was convinced that the franchise should return to television. Star Trek: Phase II was announced in June 1977 as the flagship series for what would eventually develop into a revenue-generating fourth television network. The initial idea was to sell a single Saturday night’s programming, featuring a weekly episode of Star Trek: Phase II and one of a number of thirty television films. A two-hour pilot, budgeted at just over $3 million, would be followed by 13 episodes. Roddenberry, given total control of the series, hired producers Harold Livingston and Robert Goodwin. Goodwin, due to oversee the slate of television movies for the schedule, was persuaded by Roddenberry to produce the Phase II series itself, taking on technical responsibilities along side novelist and screenwriter Livingston, who would handle contracting the writers and developing the characters and stories.
While original cast members negotiated their return to a television series, Nimoy rejected Roddenberry’s offer to feature in a handful of episodes, mindful of the actor’s reluctance to return to a gruelling television schedule. Nimoy later explained neither this, his fee nor the ongoing bugbear of licensing his likeness prevented his acceptance. He already had a six-month contract on Equus, starting on Broadway in June 1977 and simply wasn’t available for the start of the series’ production in November. Filling Spock’s shoes necessitated the creation of Vulcan officer Xon (David Gautreaux). Paramount’s growing concern over whether it would be able to afford William Shatner for the entire run prompted speculation that he would appear in the pilot, in the following three episodes, and then make several cameo appearances in the remainder of the series. First officer Commander Will Decker (played by Stephen Collins in TMP) was created and proposed as Kirk’s possible replacement.
Joining Decker on the bridge would be empathic Deltan navigator Ilia (Persis Khambatta was cast after screen tests on the Phase II sets). Not only did Decker and Ilia become integral to TMP but all three new characters formed a bridge to Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–94). Xon anticipated Data’s own “attempts to replicate human behaviour without being able to understand it”, and Ilia’s empathic qualities, her eventual role as ship’s counsellor and her former romantic relationship with Decker would transfer to the Will Riker and Deanna Troi backstory. Her lines about her “oath of celibacy” in TMP first appeared in the draft script for Phase II’s pilot, reflecting her Deltan heritage where “almost everything in life is sex-oriented; it is a part of every friendship, every social engagement, every profession. It is simply the normal way to relate with others there.” However, she possibly developed from the Dr Riva character that had an emotional relationship with Spock in the Titans script.
Script development had already begun in July 1977 when Alan Dean Foster was assigned by Roddenberry to write an outline based partly on the ‘Robot’s Return’ premise from Genesis II. His treatment ‘In Thy Image’ incorporated elements of ‘Robot’s Return’ as well as Goodwin’s suggestion “of doing something that had never been done before — threaten Earth”. Foster’s document of 31 July featured placeholder characters for Decker and Spock/Xon. Ilia did not not feature at all. Livingston was not entirely happy about Roddenberry’s offer to Foster. Noting Jon Povill’s abilities in story meetings, Livingston was insistent that he be promoted to become story editor, much to Roddenberry’s chagrin. These were differences of opinion that would blight Livingston and Roddenberry’s relationship, later exacerbated by disagreements over rewriting ‘In Thy Image’ and developing it into the script for TMP.
“We’ve been looking for the feature for five years and this is it”
In Foster’s treatment, the Enterprise is on “routine patrol” when it intercepts an enormous mysterious object heading to Earth. Foster describes it as a “gigantic chrome-and-silver construction of multiple spires” looking like “some monstrous cathedral lying on its side”. The object declares that it is “a servant of the great god N’sa” and it is heading to Earth to remove “the festering disease N’sa indicated was poisoning its surface.” The unnamed Vulcan officer speculates the ship is referring to humanoid life forms. The Enterprise is trapped and eventually infiltrated by simulated animal mechanisms (shades of the Titans script’s bio-mechanical creatures) and duplicates of the crew, including Scotty. Gradually, Kirk and his crew realise they are dealing with a machine intelligence. Reflecting the themes of ‘Robot’s Return’, it explains that, after the “great god N’sa came down” to its planet and “told them of the universe beyond”, it was constructed to “return the body of N’sa to its home” and to destroy the organic lifeforms enslaving the machines on Earth.
Kirk, the unnamed Vulcan and his first officer are transported to the alien ship after demanding proof of N’sa’s existence. In “a huge vaulted chamber” (again, akin to the brain complex in the Titans script and preempting TMP’s V’ger) they find the remains of NASA’s Pioneer 10 space probe. They discover the plate on the side of the Pioneer 10, giving the Earth’s location, has its representations of humankind scored off and the alien machine intelligence has misinterpreted it “as a machine refugee from humankind” and refuses to believe that the human beings that built N’sa are superior. However, the Vulcan accompanying Kirk is not all he seems. He is in fact a machine facsimile, prepared and converted into a bomb by the real Vulcan still on the Enterprise. Outwitted by organic intelligence, the alien admits defeat and withdraws from Earth to return to its home planet.
Clearly, TMP’s central debates about AI sentience, machine and human convergence, logic versus emotion derived from Foster’s treatment. ‘In Thy Image’ was pitched in detail by Goodwin to Paramount’s studio head Michael Eisner in early August 1977, with all on the production keen that it should be the basis for the two-hour pilot. An enthusiastic Eisner responded: “We’ve been looking for the feature for five years and this is it.” In Reeves-Stevens’ account of the meeting, the decision to switch from television to feature-film production originated here.
Eisner was already aware that attempts to persuade advertisers to support Paramount’s fourth network had collapsed. Without the income, the ship had sunk and Phase II had gone down with it. Paramount didn’t officially cancel the network until March 1978 and in the meantime played down rumours by moving back its launch date. Back at the studio, writers and actors were still being contracted, sets were being built, the Enterprise was being redesigned in consultation with original TOS production designer Matt Jeffries, costumes made, models constructed at Paramount’s Magicam effects facility. Half a million dollars had been spent on false starts since 1975 and more millions would be spent on Phase II. All costs picked up by TMP’s budget. ‘In Thy Image’ would become a feature film but not until Paramount completed re-negotiations with the cast, including Eisner’s demand for Nimoy’s return, reshaped the production, replaced contracted director Robert Collins and determined a suitable budget for the film.
Phase II production entered limbo and missed several restart dates thereafter. By December everyone, except the writers who were still working on scripts for Phase II episodes, realised that whatever was going into production it was not the television series they had started working on. Harold Livingston, like the other other writers, was unsure of what was actually happening to Phase II and its ‘In Thy Image’ treatment when he sought a writer to turn it into a script. Struggling to find other writers up to the task and with a deadline looming, he opted to write the script himself. Livingston’s problems were only just beginning.
His draft script, dated 20 October 1977, funneled all Foster’s material together with many earlier film concepts and opened with the Klingons’ encounter with an unseen adversary capable of wiping them out with whiplashes of energy. It also included a more comprehensive introduction for Kirk at Starfleet, being given captaincy of the Enterprise in response to this intruder heading for Earth. Decker was not the captain of the Enterprise at this stage, he was first officer. Kirk replaces another captain who was unable to return to the ship in time to rendezvous with the alien. The script features Xon, Decker and Ilia and, as this was still a television pilot, their characters survive the encounter with what is called Ve-jur in the script to continue into the Phase II series. The third act simply resolves Ve-jur’s determination to destroy the humans on Earth and aboard the Enterprise. Kirk and his crew prove that humanity is Ve-jur’s creator by presenting its history of scientific and cultural achievements. The general consensus was that this ending was also anti-climactic.
With 1977 drawing to a close, Livingston and Roddenberry continued to lock horns over the pilot script. Roddenberry rewrote the first draft and put his own name on it above Livingston’s. Livingston, Povill, Goodwin and director Robert Collins disliked Roddenberry’s rewrite. Naturally, he disagreed with them and decided that the only way to resolve this was to send both versions of the script to Michael Eisner. In their meeting Eisner immediately demarcated the scripts: Roddenberry’s was a television script whereas Livingston’s was a feature film and all the better for it. Collins agreed to undertake a third rewrite to blend together the best elements of both scripts. This continued until Livingston’s contract ended.
… two major problems would turn the production into a chaotic and punishing slog
December 1978 and the cat was out of the bag. Hollywood gossip columnist Rona Barrett revealed the Paramount network was a non-starter and Star Trek was now a feature film. Paramount, desperate to avoid embarrassing publicity, went into denial. This lasted well into 1978 with suggestions that the network would launch later that year and the Star Trek film might act as a precursor for an expanded Phase II series. Livingston left the production in December just as the transition of ‘In Thy Image’ to TMP began in earnest and Paramount opened negotiations with director Robert Wise to replace Collins.
Wise officially became the director and producer of the film in March 1978, bumping Roddenberry to executive producer. Goodwin, sensing that he was surplus to requirements now that the series and television movies he had been hired to make were gone, also left the project. Wise, a very experienced Hollywood director, producer and editor, took stock. His immediate concerns were that the sets under construction would either have to be substantially upgraded, such as the standing sets for the Enterprise bridge, or completely scrapped and rebuilt to a standard suitable for a widescreen feature film. His wife and father-in-law also advised him that he could not make a Star Trek film without the character of Spock. Jeffrey Katzenberg, a young, go-getting Paramount executive, was despatched to New York to greet Nimoy with the current script and an open cheque book. The rest, as witnessed at Paramount’s huge March 1978 press conference, was history as Nimoy and Wise joined all the returning actors and Persis Khambatta to announce Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Wise took on a project that had already spent $10 million in development costs. Harold Michelson became the film’s production designer and he revised and upgraded many of the existing sets and then designed and built entirely new sets, such as the recreation deck and the V’ger chamber. Many of his revamped Enterprise sets enjoyed a longevity well into other films and television shows in the franchise. Further to this, two major problems would turn the production into a chaotic and punishing slog to reach the imposed December 1979 release date. Firstly, the script was still unfinished, despite a further uncredited rewrite by Dennis Lynton Clark, and its third act, the climax of the film, was yet to be resolved, and, secondly, the effects work undertaken by Magicam was no longer of the standard and detail required to withstand the scrutiny of theatrical exhibition.
Livingston was asked to return to work on the script and his battles with Roddenberry continued, leading to new pages turning up on the set each day as they both rewrote each other’s work. The film started its shoot with an incomplete script, and as the rewrites continued throughout production, Nimoy and Shatner contributed work after a clause in their contracts, giving them script approval, was activated. Jon Povill, now the film’s associate producer, realised the troublesome third act, where the film “had to have a big special effects ending”, could be resolved by having the characters of Decker and Ilia, no longer continuing into the television series, fulfill V’ger’s need “to go on to the next plane of existence, that it was transcending this dimension and going on to the next. It then became logical that the machine would need that human element to combine with.” Apparently, Paramount’s executives scoffed at the idea of V’ger being a living machine but were reassured by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, acting as one of the consultants to the film, that it was entirely feasible that such sentient entities could develop.
The go-to effects houses, such as Douglas Trumbull’s Future General and John Dykstra’s Apogee, were unavailable when Paramount opted in October 1977 to find a new VFX house that could rise to the challenge when ‘In Thy Image’ became TMP. After assessing Magicam’s Phase II work and making some test shots on the sets, Robert Abel of Abel and Associates, a cutting-edge, award-winning commercials company that had never worked on a feature film, successfully pitched to the studio. Abel and Associates then spent a lot of time and money building a state-of-the art effects unit but many months into the production they had shot very little material. Richard Edlund also notes, in the Maiden Voyage feature, that it had created an over complicated, time consuming set up to shoot effects on 65mm that ultimately would have generated huge problems for the film. Douglas Trumbull, as a favour to his friend Wise, agreed to act as consultant and work with Abel to move things forward. However, several months later Paramount and Trumbull considered the problems were irredeemable and Abel’s company were dismissed from the project in February 1979.
It should be recognised, in retrospect, that some of Abel and Associates’ effects made it into the film — the live action wormhole effects, the V’ger probe on the bridge — and a vast amount of its storyboarding and pre-production design influenced the look of the film, particularly the work undertaken by Richard Taylor who re-designed many of the miniatures, including the Enterprise and V’ger concepts. However, its dismissal was a major problem because only a nine-month window was left to complete around 600 visual effects shots, amounting to two year’s worth of work for the film. When Trumbull and Dykstra began their arduous race to complete the work, Wise had finished principal photography and they had had very little input into what live action was being shot. Cinematographer Richard Kline recalled: “As it was, Robert Wise, Harold Michelson and I, along with a production sketch artist and several other talented concept individuals had to constantly put our heads together and try to plan ahead.”
“a striking-looking film. It is very stark and the characters are very bold visually”
With great deal of the action taking place on the Enterprise bridge set, which had been built in tiers with many immovable seats and consoles, Kline was faced with problems because when “every time someone wanted to move the camera the dolly track had to be elevated and shored up, or there would be some sort of obstacle in the way of what otherwise would have been an easily accessible dolly movement or camera position.” He also had to come up with a solution to both photograph the monitor screens on the bridge and incorporate Wise’s request for a rich depth of field. The screens had custom designed displays, usually rear-projected 16mm loops, playing on them and only worked in low light level conditions. Photographing these and providing a depth of field, he “used split-diopters on, I would say, 80 percent of the scenes — sometimes as many as three. I feel that these did an excellent job for us and we were able to slide them on and off as we panned the camera; we weren’t confined to stationary shots. The main consideration was always to hide the blend line with a shadow, a hot spot or a vertical line in the set.” The lenses meant Kline could compose scenes with two subjects at different distances in frame simultaneously. Hence, TMP has a very distinctive look compared to the films that followed and was, Kline concluded, “a striking-looking film. It is very stark and the characters are very bold visually” and it was a look very carefully considered by Wise, without whom “I don’t know where this picture would have been.”
While many continue to denigrate TMP (it was too slow, spent too much time showcasing the effects, etc.), Wise’s approach to the film is a sensible one given his place in film making history. The film straddles a period, the end of the 1970s, in which science fiction cinema was about to change, abandoning much of its pessimistic collective social commentaries about environment, over-population, identity and the threat of technology in favour of the escapism of Star Wars and its fantasy, action and distinct lack of pretension. This was a period of New Hollywood assimilation, where young directors like George Lucas were beginning to reshape Hollywood genres and take film making forward, using new technologies in visual effects. But Star Trek remained at heart a social commentary using science fiction to debate the issues of the day and, even though much of its subject matter focused on the potential good or ill in human and alien relationships, the place of religious belief, the darker side of technology, the politics of the Cold War and Vietnam, it was a platform for Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic view of humanity’s place in the universe. Many of these concerns did underpin TMP despite the over abundance of visual effects and it certainly has a dystopian edge with V’ger’s threat to Earth.
The festishising of technology is to the fore in TMP but it forsakes the distanced, clinical Kubrickian view of the unknowable universe.
How then to marry those ideals and the characters that embodied them within a New Hollywood idiom? In retrospect, Phase II appeared to hark back to the primary colours and aesthetics of the 1960s television series and when Wise reviewed the abandoned production he saw the necessity for an epic, cinematic tone, as serious and realistic as his approach to the battle between science and a virulent alien virus depicted in The Andromeda Strain (1971). He was seasoned Old Hollywood but was equipped with the experience to get a science fiction parable onto the big screen and, ironically, had representatives of New Hollywood, Dykstra and Trumbull, making that eleventh hour rescue mission with him. Those that feel TMP also retrod the mix of spectacle and philosophy in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) may have a moot point. Indeed, a reissue of the teaser poster for TMP came with the byline: ‘A 23rd Century Odyssey Now’.
In both films, humanity is in space to better itself, to know the unknowable. Space is dark and threatening, the final frontier is hostile and alien but TMP remains resolutely optimistic about human exploration and working with the tools and machines at its command. The festishising of technology is to the fore in TMP but it forsakes the distanced, clinical Kubrickian view of the unknowable universe for something more humanistic. While Kubrick’s vehicles glide silently by and his computer has a nervous breakdown, the Enterprise roars through space, gliding along to Goldsmith’s fanfare, the camera literally in awe at its pearlescent opulence as it confronts an existentially confused machine intelligence. TMP’s a beautiful film where its utopian world looks ravishing and its humanistic approach is to understand V’ger and connect with it rather than giving it the equivalent of a lobotomy.
Central to Star Trek: The Motion Picture is our relationship with technology, artificial intelligence, religion, the human condition and a future society dominated by machines. The scale of the film is of huge importance. The San Francisco of the future depicts a multi-species, multi-cultural world where humankind is at ease with the trappings of technology. The beautiful shots of the orbiting office complex, the dry dock, the Enterprise and V’ger overwhelm us and the characters. Human beings are seen as infinitesimal within these places and we often see small figures in spacesuits placed in direct contrast to space ships. The Enterprise is one ship we think of with affection, a love even, that Kirk also demonstrates in that indulgent but highly appropriate travel pod waltz around her in dry dock. As Kirk’s eyes almost brim with tears, it’s Jerry Goldsmith’s romantic music that indicates the deep connection between a Captain and his trusty vessel of exploration. At the start of the film this relationship is about mastering the new technologies of the refitted Enterprise. That the engines and the transporters don’t work yet is an ironic comment on the fallibility of machines and humans and their hidden, fatal dangers. V’ger cannot fathom this relationship between the Enterprise and the carbon-based lifeforms infesting her corridors, engine rooms and bridge. It is V’ger’s lack, as a living machine that has achieved sentience, that powers the narrative. It is the component it does not yet know it needs in order to evolve.
“Why am I here? What was I meant to be?”
V’ger is at first unknowable. A thunderous storm cloud beating a path to Earth. Even the instinctive, violent but honorable Klingons are swatted aside in that terrific opening encounter. But the death and destruction in V’ger’s whiplashes of energy, disassembling both the Klingon warships and the Epsilon station, hide its true purpose. It must collect data, know all that is knowable. It is searching for more than the sum of its data and wants answers to questions its logic is unable to answer. These are familiar questions in Star Trek’s exploration of theism but the twist in TMP is that rather than finding an all powerful machine creator, V’ger instead is faced with the truth that it was the mortal, emotional, illogical humans that made it. It’s machine sentience is challenged by existential anxiety and as Spock eloquently puts it: “Each of us… at some time in our lives, turns to someone — a father, a brother, a God… and asks… Why am I here? What was I meant to be?”
Spock and V’ger are one and the same at the beginning of the film. Both are searching beyond their logical selves for answers. Spock’s purge of his human half in the ritual on Vulcan is meant to grant him the status of a purely logical being, unaffected by the trite emotions of his half-human origins. However, he has heard V’ger beckoning from space and his human curiosity has been rekindled and has sent hm looking for answers about his logical purpose. When he enters V’ger and mind-melds with the machine intelligence he does not find those particular answers. Returning to the Enterprise he is a changed man and, grasping Kirk’s arm, he realises V’ger is barren and that common humanity, “this… simple feeling is beyond V’ger’s comprehension.”
We see this question of humanity’s relationship with machines repeated as a motif throughout, firstly in Kirk’s love for the Enterprise, then especially in Decker’s attempt to communicate with V’ger via the Ilia probe it sends to the ship to interact with the carbon-based lifeforms. This attempt is founded on the memories of the time he and Ilia shared together on her home planet. Momentarily those stored feelings blossom as the Ilia probe taps into them and, briefly, human and machine tentatively merge in emotional nostalgia. The probe and V’ger clearly find this illogical and its function as a device to survey the Enterprise and its crew snaps back into focus. However, this very feeling, this imagination and memory is what Kirk realises is “the human quality. Our capacity to leap beyond logic” that V’ger needs in order to evolve to higher dimensions of being that, as Spock understands, “cannot be proven logically.” Hence, the climax of the film is the fusing of Decker, the Ilia probe and V’ger to achieve this leap of faith, this spiritual quest.
This naturally throws up many questions about how far we are willing as a species to accept machine intelligence gaining sentience and, presumably, dominance. The concept of the antagonistic artificial intelligence was something Alan Turing theorised about. Our fears about technology are couched in the threat from V’ger but it is an intelligence that is asking the same existential questions that we are. V’ger needs hope, meaning and answers. The Ilia probe nods towards Donna Harraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ of 1985 and its concept of the cyborg “as a creature that defies any simple attempts at classifying it as ‘human’, ‘animal’ or ‘machine’.” Kevin Decker also considers Harraway as a founder of cultural posthumanism “and TMP’s optimistic view of human-machine synthesis deserves to be treated as an early popular cultural expression of that stance.”
Like V’ger, TMP evolved. Wise went back to the film in 2001, wanting to restore or underline many of these themes. As he had always planned to do in 1979, he trimmed down the long effects sequences, added in some relevant new exposition from Spock and shorter moments that injected recognisable character traits back into the Kirk, Spock and McCoy triumvirate, the individual components of logic, intuition, humanism. He was also able to fix and add in a number of effects. What emerged was a Director’s Edition that he felt best represented the film he had intended to make. “I thought it was a damn good picture and one that I’m more proud of with the final changes we made to it,” he said in 2001. Quite right and he must be thrilled, in whichever dimension he now exists, to see how that work has made such a glorious return.
Sources: Bond, Jeff, and Gene Kozicki, Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Inside the Art and Visual Effects, (Titan, 2020) • Decker, Kevin S., ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ in The Routledge Handbook of Star Trek, edited by Leimar Garcia-Siino, Sabrina Mittermeier, Stefan Rabitsch (Taylor and Francis, 2022) • Gross, Edward, and Mark A. Altman, Captain’s Logs: The Complete Trek Voyages (Boxtree, 1993) • Gross, Edward, and Mark A. Altman, The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek — The First 25 Years, (Macmillan, 2016) • Greenberger, Robert, Star Trek: The Complete Unauthorized History, (Voyageur Press, 2012) • Jones, Preston Neal, Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Creature Features Publishing, 2020) • Kline, Richard, ‘Star Trek 50 — Part II Shooting the Motion Picture’, American Cinematographer (Volume 61, Number 2 originally published February 1980, collected online October 2016) • Reeves-Stevens, Judith, and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek: Phase II — The Lost Series, (Pocket Books, 1997) • Porter, Jennifer E., Darcee L. McLaren, Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture (State University of New York Press, 2016)
Note: All screen captures are from the Blu-ray of the Director’s Edition.
About the presentations and Special Features (discs are ALL REGION)
Disc 1 — Star Trek: TMP Director’s Edition 4K UHD / Dolby Vision / Dolby Atmos / 2.39: 1 aspect ratio / 137 mins
Disc 2 — Star Trek: TMP Director’s Edition Blu-Ray / Dolby Atmos / 2.39: 1 aspect ratio / 137 mins
The new 4K restoration is certainly, to date, the best presentation of this film. It’s a grand, romantic space epic that benefits from the attention given it by Dochterman, Matessino, Fein and the archivists, researchers and technicians who have transformed the versions we’re so familiar with. It often seemed a rather cold film in terms of colour, with flesh tones, costumes and sets lacking in warmth on previous SD outings. The palette and lighting was clearly a choice made by Richard Kline, the cinematographer, production designer Harold Michelson, costume designer Bob Fletcher and director Bob Wise. The UHD grade allows these elements to bloom back into life and some of the lighting on sets, such as the Enterprise interior, the Klingon ship and V’ger, glows with primary hues.
Faces, skin complexions, costumes are more detailed and vibrant. The work on the miniatures and matte painting is often astonishing. Kirk’s shuttle arriving at Starfleet pops off the screen, the Klingon cruisers bristle with busy detail, the Enterprise’s opalescent livery really stands out as she prepares to leave dry dock. The impressive detail, brightness, contrast and colour correction also ramp up the depth in the layers of animation used to depict the access to V’ger’s interior, the spectacular ‘Spock Walk’ that culminates in his mind-meld with the alien machine.
It’s not entirely perfect, some of the matte compositing remains problematic on a few miniature effects shots and there is a softness to a handful of live action scenes that suggest the restoration team possibly had to work from inferior sources in some instances. The most egregious of these is Kirk’s conference with Spock and McCoy in the lounge overlooking the ship’s engines. There is something awry in the compositing of the view outside the lounge with the interior live action and the resulting scene is decidedly rough in comparison with the rest of the film. However, these minor issues do not detract from a transfer full of depth, detail and colour. It’s a visual treat.
The new Dolby Atmos sound stage is completely immersive, filling satellite speakers with background chatter, the definitive sound of the Enterprise bridge, the hum of engines. Dialogue is clear and crisp whilst weapons fire and explosions, the Enterprise’s leap into warp, the unintelligible voice of V’ger pack a wallop. Weaving its way throughout, holding this film together, is the sublime Goldsmith score and its eclectic use of instrumentation. It’s beautifully assimilated within the fabric of the film and sounds gorgeous in Atmos.
Discs 1 and 2— Special Features
- Commentary: David Fein, Mike Matessino & Daren Dochterman (2021)
Commentary: Robert Wise, Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, Jerry Goldsmith, and Stephen Collins (2001)
Needless to say, any or all of these commentaries provide a vast amount of background information about the film and all come highly recommended. Fein, Matessino and Dochterman know this film like the back of their hands and certainly had an intimate insight into what Wise wanted to fix when he first worked with them on the 2001 edition. Plenty of detail here about the changes that were made and the exhaustive work carried out on the 2021 edition. The 2001 Director’s Edition DVD commentary is equally informative with Wise and Collins chipping in with their anecdotes about the production during Trumbull and Dykstra’s more technical discussion about the visual effects. - Text Commentary: Michael & Denise Okuda (2001), and Isolated Score Finally, other options include more trivia and minutiae about the film from celebrated Trek historians Mike and Denise Okuda in the form of their original text commentary and there’s an isolated score mode, if Jerry Goldsmith’s majestic score, spectacularly romantic and audaciously avant-garde in equal measure, is your preference.
Disc 3 — Star Trek: TMP ‘Special Longer Version’ 4K UHD / English 2.0 Dolby Digital / 2.35: 1 aspect ratio / 144 mins &
Star Trek: TMP Theatrical Version 4K UHD / English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD / 2.35: 1 aspect ratio / 132 mins
Two versions of the film available via seamless branching on one 4K UHD disc. This disc includes the original theatrical edition along with an exclusive to this set, a 2.35 widescreen edition of the ‘Special Longer Version’, originally prepared in 1.33 ratio for television broadcast in 1983. There are no visual effects or audio upgrades on these versions save for the insertion of a digital matte on the ‘Special Longer Version’ to replace the sound stage originally visible in its use of the ‘Kirk Follows Spock’ scene.
Disc 3 — Special Features
- Commentary by Michael & Denise Okuda, Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, and Daren Dochterman (Theatrical Version only and also on Disc 4). Can’t get enough Trek experts talking about TMP? Here’s a 2010 commentary with arguably the leading exponents in their field. Packed with anecdotes and trivia about the making of the film.
- ‘Kirk Follows Spock’ (Special Longer Version only). For completion’s sake this is the original scene, complete with light stands, scaffolding and sound stage in 2.35 ratio and 4K HDR.
Disc 4 — Star Trek: TMP Theatrical Version Blu-ray / English 7.1 Dolby TrueHD / 2.35: 1 aspect ratio / 132 mins
This is the same disc released in 2021's Star Trek four-film 4K/Blu-ray box set. Similarly, there are no effects fixes or audio upgrades. Its special features replicate some found on Disc 1 (the isolated score), Disc 3 (the Okuda, Reeves-Stevens and Dochterman commentary), and the Bonus disc (see below). One special feature Library Computer is unique to Disc 4, offering an interactive database of characters, races, ships, places and objects as the film plays.
Disc 5 — Bonus Blu-ray
New features
(this disc only)
- The Human Adventure
Eight-part documentary covering all aspects of the production, using new and archive interviews, raw camera dailies, behind the scenes footage, test footage and effects plates, stills, artwork and isolated sound tracks. It’s a rich collection of material that fans will appreciate. Some interview material is re-used from the features on previous releases and collected in this disc’s Legacy Features section. Understandable given that Wise, Trumbull and Goldsmith and many others are no longer with us.
In ‘Preparing for the Future’ hosts Daren Dochterman, David C. Fein and Michael Matessino, who worked on the 2001 and 2021 Director’s Edition, outline Wise’s unhappiness with the incomplete theatrical version of TMP and how, in 2001, with Wise’s collaboration they finished the film, adding effects, a new sound mix and restoring scenes to realise his intentions.
‘A Wise Choice’ explains how Wise came to direct TMP after its evolution from Phase II’s ‘In Thy Image’ and ended up working on a film with an unfinished script. Interviewees include Wise, effects maestro Douglas Trumbull and Paramount exec Jeffrey Katzenberg.
‘Refitting the Enterprise’ takes us through the ship’s big screen transformation, based on Matt Jeffries’ and Magicam’s design. Interviewees include production design illustrator Andrew Probert, miniature effects technician Jim Dow, and Trumbull. Dochterman and Fein also detail how they created the digital Enterprise for the 2001 and 2021 editions.
‘Sounding Off’ has Matessino looking back to the incomplete sound effects mix of the 1979 release, with input from sound designer Alan Howarth. We’re taken through the process of turning the original mix into 2021’s stunning Dolby Atmos sound stage with Atmos mixer Michael Babcock, using the original effects and ADR library and including many unused elements created for the 1979 theatrical release.
‘V’ger’ explores the development of the alien intruder. Wise and Trumbull recall how, without effects, on the live action shoot Wise used lighting and descriptions for the cast to react to V’ger. V’ger’s development is traced via Syd Mead’s stunning concept art and the layered animation effects plates. Effects supervisor John Dykstra recalls the long, hard work shooting the enormous model of V’ger. Finally, there is a look at the abandoned ‘Memory Wall’ sequence, including test footage on the set. When it failed to come together, Trumbull helped create Spock’s astonishing, abstract journey into V’ger. Finally, Dochterman talks about showing V’ger in perspective with the Earth and the Enterprise and how the 2001 digital effects were upgraded and improved.
‘Return to Tomorrow’ explores the “mad dash to the finish line” as Trumbull and Dykstra organised a hard eight-month production slate of day and night shifts to complete the effects and meet the guaranteed December release date. Given this was the analogue effects realm, it was an amazing accomplishment. Effects film elements were retrieved from Paramount’s archive to assemble 2021’s new negative. Dochterman and Fein and their team re-composited over 70 effects shots and shot-by-shot the film was re-graded in HDR. Dochterman concludes, “it’s like it’s a different movie.”
‘A Grand Theme’ pays tribute to Jerry Goldsmith’s magnificent score, which, Dochterman believes, “gives the mass, the wonder and the adventure,” to the film. Interviewees include Wise and Goldsmith on composing to very little available footage and filling the gaps with symphonic and avant-garde compositions. Bruce Botnick, responsible for the Atmos music mix, is on hand to take us back to those ‘scene missing’ days of recording and Craig Huxley’s ‘Blaster Beam’ instrument as the ‘voice’ of V’ger in contrast to Goldsmith’s orchestral flourishes. The score, now in Atmos, would become “the musical voice of Star Trek” in subsequent films and television shows.
‘The Grand Vision’ respects how the iconic Bob Peak poster art illustrated the dynamics and themes of the film. All conclude that many elements of TMP — the effects, the sets and characters — became an enduring legacy and took on a future life in other Star Trek film and television productions.
- Deleted scenes
With subtitles covering some missing dialogue, ‘Ilia and Decker in Engineering’ is an intriguing moment after Spock’s meld with V’ger. Kirk’s announcement about V’ger being a living machine prompts Decker’s discussion with the Ilia probe about V’ger’s function and why the Enterprise is manned by carbon-based life forms.
‘Security Guard’ is a missing section from the probe’s invasion of the bridge where one of the arriving guards is vapourised. ‘Three casualties’ is again missing some dialogue. Kirk lists the security guard as one of the ‘casualties’, who along with Ilia and Decker, that he then decides to list as ‘missing’.
- Effects tests, Costume Tests and Computer Display Graphics
A collection of ephemeral treasures pulled together by the team on the 2021 edition. Gene Kozicki, who dug deep into the archives to identify all the elements to improve the film, hosts the effects footage. The Klingon attack includes unused footage showing the engine pod of one of the ships being destroyed. There is some early Robert Abel test footage from the wormhole scene on the bridge, the elements of the transporter malfunction shot, behind the scenes on the Vulcan shuttle effects, the development of the probe’s invasion of the bridge. Using test footage and stills, archivist Rob Klein, Fein and Matessino discuss costume designer Bob Fletcher’s wide variety of alien costumes and Starfleet uniforms. There’s an intriguing glimpse at Spock’s unused cave-man costume for his unseen Vulcan desert retreat. Finally, a collection of the 65mm and 16mm footage, much of it animated, that was synced to the bridge displays, including Ilia’s sick bay medical scan, and on the Enterprise’s main screen.
Legacy Features
(from 2001 Director’s Edition DVD, 2009 theatrical edition Blu-ray and 2016's 50th Anniversary edition Blu-ray)
- The Lost Enterprise: Star Trek — Phase II (2001 — Bonus disc only)
Majel Barrett-Roddenberry and Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens talk about the success of TOS in syndication. Recalling Paramount’s production of Phase II for their new network, Jon Povill and Harold Livingston reflect on the genesis of the series and the writing of the pilot ‘In Thy Image’. This includes an interview with David Gautreaux, his Phase II test footage as Xon, plus Khambatta’s costume test material and a brief glimpse of the Engineering section.
- A Bold New Enterprise — The Making of Star Trek: TMP (2001 — Bonus disc only)
Director Wise, effects supervisor Trumbull, editor Todd Ramsay, actors William Shatner, Walter Koenig, Stephen Collins, and former exec Jeffrey Katzenberg are interviewed about Trek’s journey to the big screen. They discuss writing and casting, starting the shoot with an incomplete script and the actors’ changes to the script on the hoof, including Nimoy’s significant input into Spock’s development. Trumbull mentions the special lenses utilised for close ups of the miniatures and the lighting schemes he developed to give them scale. Harold Michelson explains aspects of production design and Richard Kline covers the specifics of cinematography, lighting and blue screen. Shatner, inevitably, provides a masterclass on “acting in a science fiction film” and he and Jon Povill recall how the problematic third act came into focus. It concludes with Katzenberg rallying to the finish, with Wise in the editing room, Trumbull and Dykstra left to complete over 500 shots and Goldsmith putting together his symphonic themes.
- Re-directing the Future — The Making of Star Trek: TMP (2001 — Bonus disc only)
Director Robert Wise worked on his 2001 Director’s Edition with the original team of Daren Dochterman, David C. Fein and Michael Matessino. Bringing original materials and models out of the archive, the late Ron Thornton and Foundation Imaging devised new digital effects sequences and updated incomplete sequences. A fascinating exploration of the challenging groundwork created in 2001 for the current 4K restoration.
- The Longest Trek: Writing TMP (2009 — also on Disc 4)
From Roddenberry’s first mention of it at an SF convention as early as 1968 to the eventual production of TMP in 1977, this traces the film’s development with Trek historians Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens, actor Walter Koenig, writers Harold Livingston and associate producer Jon Povill. This covers The God Thing and Planet of the Titans scripts and Alan Dean Foster’s ‘In Thy Image’ treatment for Phase II. Povill describes the “hellish” process of turning the latter, as Livingston and Roddenberry competed over the script, into the film we now recognise.
- A Special Star Trek Reunion (2009 — also on Disc 4)
Fans Fred Bronson, Jo Ann Nolan, and Bjo Trimble, writer David Gerrold and Christopher Doohan (son of James Doohan) reminisce about their cameo appearances as crew members on the recreation deck of the Enterprise and working with Wise on TMP.
- Starfleet Academy Scisec Brief 001: Mystery Behind V’ger (2009 — also on Disc 4)
One of a series of mock Starfleet briefings that were created for the 2009 Blu-ray releases of the feature films.
- The New Frontier — Resurrecting Star Trek (2016 — Bonus disc only)
Fans John and Bjo Trimble, original series writer Dorothy Fontana, writers and historians Mark A. Altman and Ed Gross, and Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens focus on the impact of fandom and how it supported the return of Star Trek. Altman and author Michael Jan Friedman summarise The God Thing, through script extracts, as “Kirk dukes it out with Jesus… on the bridge of the Enterprise.” Susan Sackett and Larry Nemecek comment on other scripts, including Planet of the Titans. Finally, Phase II‘s ‘In Thy Image’ script is discussed by Alan Dean Foster and Harold Livingston.
- Maiden Voyage — Making Star Trek: TMP (2016 — Bonus disc only)
A clear assessment of the whole journey from Wise’s recruitment to the still wet prints of the film he had to take to the premiere. Altman and Gross return to catalogue the troubled production as it lumbered towards an unmovable December release date. Executives Tom Parry and Jeffrey Katzenberg don’t pull any punches about its chances back then after it made the release date by the skin of its teeth. ILM’s Richard Edlund and Tom Barron (from Abel’s company Astra) assess Abel and Associates’ work.
- Storyboards (2001 — also on Disc 4)
Three sequences: ‘Vulcan’, ‘Enterprise Departure’ and ‘V’ger Revealed’.
- Additional Scenes 1979 Theatrical Version (2001 — Bonus disc only)
Six minutes of scenes reworked for, or trimmed from, the Director’s Edition, either being shortened, re-edited or revised with new visual effects. Outtake: ‘Memory Wall’ is brief footage/camera tests completed for a scene that was replaced with Trumbull’s spectacular ‘Spock Walk’ into the heart of V’ger.
- Deleted Scenes 1983 TV Version aka ‘Special Longer Version’ (2001 — also on Disc 4)
Eleven sequences, approximately eight minutes, that were added to the version that Paramount prepared for the film’s US network television screening in 1983. It displeased Wise as it was done without his involvement or blessing. He retained certain sequences for his Director’s Edition. The ‘Kirk follows Spock’ scene, a remnant of the ‘Memory Wall’, was a jarring addition, generating continuity errors and revealing, in its incomplete state, the background of the set as a mass of studio scaffolding.
- Teaser and Theatrical Trailers, TV Spots. (2001 — trailers with seven of the eight TV spots also on Disc 4)
Orson Welles intones a roll call of the cast for the teaser, the human adventure begins in the trailer and eight TV spots see Welles return to inform you that the film will “challenge your intellect.”
STAR TREK: The Motion Picture — Director’s Edition, The Complete Adventure
Paramount Pictures 1979, 2001 and 2021
UK Edition — five discs (the US edition is three discs). Cardboard outer sleeve housing a fold-out inner featuring cross-section artwork of the Enterprise with pouches to hold four discs. A large section of the fold-out inner holds the fifth bonus disc in its own separate pouch, plus a landscape booklet filled with pre-production art, designs, production photographs in black and white and colour, a set of four reproduction lobby cards, retro bumper stickers and decals, and a poster of new Director’s Edition promotional artwork.
Paramount Home Entertainment / The Complete Adventure 4K UHD-Blu-ray edition released 5 September 2022 / Catalogue 5320300 / Cert: PG
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