‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ (1979)
4K UHD HDR Director’s Cut Review
Introduction
Secretly, I’ve always liked The Motion Picture ever since I first saw it as an older child. I like hard sci-fi generally — 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Abyss, Annihilation, both of the 1960's Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing, classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World. I enjoy fun sci-fi, silly sci-fi and action sci-fi, but there’s a special place in my heart for slow, big concept, serious sci-fi.
It actually seems to be a common thread amongst we transes: because hard sci-fi often questions who we are, the nature of humanity and the reality of the universe we inhabit; it draws in those of us who are naturally exploring those questions of identity. If that sci-fi should also includes themes of transformation, then so much the better.
These are the questions that cut through Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Trek has always erred on the Humanist, philosophical side — even with its intermittent detours into action or big space battles — it’s written into the DNA of the concept. The famous opening narration, delivered by Captains Kirk, Picard, Archer (once) and Pike, states clearly the concept: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no-one has gone before. Set-piece action may happen, it may even underwrite entire movies, but eventually Trek will always end up back at that log line.
Developing the Motion Picture
The creation of The Motion Picture was a torturous process. Star Trek: The Original Series was cancelled in 1969 after three series — the third series owing its existence to a massive fan campaign to renew the show. Once it did eventually wrap, the studio, Paramount, had a serious conundrum. They knew Star Trek was a hit, but not with everybody, and they did not know why.
That latter point has plagued Trek for decades since. Studios exist to make money, and the suits that run them aren’t artists or directors, so when something strikes a note with an audience the studio will scramble to do more of that thing. In Trek’s case, however, Paramount have never gotten what it is about Trek that the fans love.
They canned the original series because it was expensive and, despite a very vocal fanbase, it was not a ratings success. But Paramount knew it had a product and an audience, so they revived Star Trek for an unofficial fourth and fifth series through a partnership with Filmation Studios. Filmation, now sadly long-since gone, managed to do three things consistently well across all their properties. From Masters of the Universe through to their last cartoon Bravestarr (the latter of which starred my mentor and friend Pat Fraley as the titular marshal), Filmation were able to turn in cheap work from which they had managed to create an unmistakable signature style and they cast excellent voiceover talent.
For Star Trek: The Animated Series, that included bringing most of the cast back, except for poor Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov, of “nuclear wessels” fame). The rest of the cast were reunited to reprise their roles as the Enterprise continued her adventures across the galaxy.
ST:TAS (as it is abbreviated) was a bit of an oddity, and until fairly recently was mostly forgotten, but it kept Trek on the television. In the real world, fans were organising newsletters, conventions, meet-ups and other events. Trekkies were turning up in homemade Starfleet uniforms or Klingon armour. Merchandise, particularly merchandise around the show’s breakout character Mr. Spock, was flying off the shelves like boot polish at a butt-kicking contest.
The studio knew there was something going on here, and they had a whole new TV station called Paramount Television Service with a lot of airtime to fill.
A sequel series was pitched: Star Trek: Phase II. Paramount bought into it. Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, wrote scripts. Sets were built, with the show being set aboard a new, refitted USS Enterprise. Actors were auditioned and cast.
Leonard Nimoy, who originated the iconic Mr. Spock, had fallen out with Paramount when they used his likeness without permission on a ridiculous amount of Trek merchandise. Understandably, he was not interested in working with them again and made his feelings clear. This meant a new Vulcan character was created: Lieutenant Xon, played by David Gautreaux. Other additions included First Officer Willard Decker and, adding to the cast of female characters, navigator Lieutenant Ilia (played by Indian actress Persis Khambatta). Even fan-favourite Grace Lee Whitney, sacked from the original series after being sexually assaulted by a producer, was to return as Yeoman Janice Rand.
Paramount changed course after the success of Star Wars (1977) brought a slew of sci-fi movies into cinemas. Sci-fi film was back in vogue, and so the first episode of Phase II was rewritten into a feature length movie. The entire concept was retooled into Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Filming
The studio wanted a home-run, and they spared no expense. Extensive, enormous models were built. Huge sets created. All-new costumes and designs for all the equipment. Leonard Nimoy was coaxed back as Mr. Spock, relegating David Gautreaux to a small role at the start of the film. Filming began, and then the problems started.
It’s hard to identify one specific issue, but generally speaking everything just took longer than everyone thought it should. Robert Wise, the director, quite reasonably would not work more than twelve hours a day. On-set effects took long periods of time to prepare and reset, even if the effect itself only lasted a moment. High vision concepts, like the climax, were painstaking to film — for example, in the finale, the bright lights highlighted otherwise unseen dust particles and left Stephen Collins (Decker) and Persis Khambatta looking like they were standing in a snow globe.
The redesigned Starfleet uniforms were “one piece”, a sort of onesie top-and-bottom with a tunic over the top, meaning any time an actor needed a bathroom break they had to be taken out of costume, then put back into costume. The visual effects were grand, but expensive and flawed — for example, the filming model of the Enterprise was finished with a beautiful, iridescent paint that looked stunning… and made filming it incredibly difficult due to its reflectivity.
Scenes were filmed, reviewed, then re-written. Several times, the actors were given new scripts on the day of filming a scene because plans had changed; with the biggest of these vacillations being around the film’s climax. Should it be a mano a mano fight? Or a big space battle? Or should it be a more nuanced end, possibly with Kirk talking his way out of trouble as he had done many times before?
Vast sets and models had to be maintained as the extra days rolled on. Difficult scenes were puzzled out, sections of script were finalised, complex effects were completed… and the film, already expensive, ran wildly over budget.
The Release
The premier date was repeatedly set back, whilst specialist artists rushed to complete the enormous special effects sequences. By the end, Paramount just said “enough” and ordered what was done was good enough.
When it finally did get to cinemas, it was disappointing for both fans and general moviegoers.
The effects were still only half-finished, and Wise described the editing as a rough draft: still only half-completed, under pressure to get the film out. The colours were muted, the music was glorious but misaligned to the beats of each scene. The story itself bore strong resemblances to some Original Series episodes, specifically The Changeling. The pacing was slow, much like 2001, and the film ended on a philosophical note that was decidedly lacking in Star Wars-esque space battles.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture did make money, but nothing like expectations, especially given its painful creation and enormous budget. For a while, fans thought Trek had been buried and that The Motion Picture was the one with the spade.
Fans dubbed it “The Motionless Picture” and “Where Nomad Has Gone Before”, a reference to the afforementioned episode The Changeling.
The Director’s Edition
In the ensuing decades, a couple of different and extended cuts of the film were aired. They used some slightly different scenes and included some alternate takes — all from the large back-catalogue of footage shot. For the film’s DVD release, Robert Wise revisited this material and re-edited the entire film to create The Director’s Edition.
This new version is barely longer than the original film — just four minutes — but it dramatically changes the shape of the story. Obviously the main beats are the same, but the stakes between the characters feel higher; the story seems to move much faster and the interplay between the actors’ performances is much clearer. The individual characters’ arcs are much better signalled. There is a clear, impending threat and the characters’ process of discovering and dealing with that threat is much better telegraphed.
There are thousands of little changes: scenes cutting away quicker, or lingering on a character for a beat more, as well as additional scenes like Spock weeping for V’Ger (bringing his own arc into a clarity that is missing from the original release) and Kirk ordering the Enterprise to self-destruct if they’re unable to stop the intruder. The whole thing is so much more cohesive and clear.
On top of this new re-editing of the film, Paramount paid to complete the special effects. The team were now able to use CGI to fill in the missing pieces that were either never started or never finished, and to tidy-up what was already there. Great care was taken to ensure that the new effects still matched to the old in style.
Jerry Goldsmith, the genius film score composer, revisited his soundtrack and now, with the finished movie to work against, he was able to re-engineer his incredible musical score and match the emotional beats of each scene.
The Director’s Edition of The Motion Picture was a triumph, and upon its DVD release many film-buffs and Trek fans agreed that the film had gone from being one of the weakest Trek films to being a serious contender for one of the best. A wonderful addition to the franchise and a fabulous sci-fi film in its own right.
The 4K UHD HDR Release
For the film’s 45th anniversary, Paramount remastered The Motion Picture. This release not only uses the Director’s Cut, but also re-scanned and mastered the film stock. This brings with it some stunning visual improvements!
Firstly the colours are bright, vivid and glorious. In its original release, due to cinema technical constraints, choices in film stock and how the film was colour-graded, the Enterprise interior shots and crew uniforms look bland — various pastel shades of washed-out nothing. With the colour-grading reworked and realised in HDR, we can now see what everything was supposed to look like.
The interiors and costumes haven’t changed colour, but now we can properly see the qualities that the colours have. Now the pastels are distinct, discrete colours with tone and warmth — Dr. McCoy’s tunic isn’t a dull eggshell blue, it’s actually a metallic blue. Skin tones are much more realistic.
With the remastering of the video also comes a remastering of both the original effects, and those that were added to the DVD Director’s Cut release. What flew under the radar on DVD would be all-too visible in 4K, so all of the effects were painstakingly tightened-up; cleaned; brought into HDR and rendered in 4K.
The visual effects are also still true. It doesn’t look like the entire film has been reshot against a green-screen, the effects were created to fit so it all still runs like it did in 1979… just now the result matches the vision.
The music was also remastered, improving upon the DVD release with better sound quality and Dolby TrueHD.
We finally got the film that Robert Wise wanted to deliver, all those years ago.
The Bad
Unfortunately nothing can really save the innate hilarity of the Enterprise going into the wormhole/engine imbalance. It causes a time dilation effect and everything starts to slow… down… and so all… the… characters… talk… slow…ly. Slow-mo is almost always hilarious, I’m afraid.
From Decker booming “Noooo… belay that phaser orderrrr…!” to Chekov’s “Photon… torpedoes… … … aaaaaaaaaaaaaarmed!” it’s hard to keep a straight face.
In addition, a few of the effects are still a little broken. The energy beam probe that abducts/kills Ilia uses intense flashing and bright lights that leave the scene looking overexposed and unprofessional. There are also still a few matting defects but, understandably, the objective is to clean up what was unfinished, not to reshoot the film. These are most noticeable when everything else is otherwise faultless, for example the roof of the dry-dock when the Enterprise leaves has a different contrast to the space behind it; or when Kirk and McCoy speak with Spock in the Officer’s Lounge and McCoy is badly super-imposed on a new background.
Finally, which should go without saying, the basic premise of The Motion Picture is unchanged. If you like your sci-fi to be shooty-shooty-zoom-pew-pew then this is not for you. Whilst nowhere near as leaden as the original release, this is still a slowly burning, thoughtful, philosophical film. It invites you to sample its visuals, music and ideas rather than munch popcorn whilst waiting for the next thing to go bang.
There is, additionally, one more rankle… likeable and relatable as the character and his arc is, it’s hard to separate Captain Decker from Stephen Collins and his self-confessed multiple sexual assaults against minors. It’s like seeing Jeffrey Jones in Ferris Bueller or Beetlejuice: whatever character he might be playing, they have to compete for the viewer’s attention against a glaring, neon sign that says “pædophile”.
The Good
This film is visually unmatched. Notwithstanding the few criticisms earlier, The Motion Picture is a jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring visual feast. In UHD and HDR, it is a sensory experience very few other sci-fi films have come close to. The updated, upscaled visual effects are just stunning.
The model work is incredible. Starfleet personnel can be seen inside windows as we pan past orbital stations and the refitted Enterprise is nothing short of breathtakingly beautiful. The ships and craft don’t whiz around like fighter jets, they glide and swoop like sail ships on the sea or ballet dancers on the stage.
Jerry Goldsmith is one of my all-time favourite composers, and this is one of his best scores. I have the remastered edition soundtrack in my music library and I love listening to it. From the “blaster beam” instrument he created, to the Star Trek march that would go on to be the theme to Star Trek: The Next Generation, Goldsmith delivers a perfect score of sweeping strings, beautiful orchestrations and heroic brass.
Whilst derivative of The Changeling, the plot is interesting, thought-provoking and neatly ties in to Star Trek’s Humanist outlook: the idea that, for all our many failings, humans have something good and special to offer the universe. It also reaffirms Star Trek’s core belief that tomorrow can be and will be better than today, a sentiment we need now more than ever.
Finally the acting performances are all very positive. Nichols, Takei and Koenig don’t have much to do but they all turn in fine work. Shatner correctly leaves behind his more stage-oriented impulses, which dominated The Original Series, and delivers a more muted and thoughtful Kirk. Leonard Nimoy is terrific — a truly great actor who was able to bring so much to a role that, in the hands of just about any of the rest of us, would have turned into an emotionless bore.
🌌 Visuals: 9/10
📀 Visual Technology: 9/10
🎼 Sound: 10/10
🔈 Sound Technology: 10/10 (Dolby Atmos)
📖 Story: 8/10
🎭 Acting: 8/10
∑ Overall: 9/10
