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Let's check in now on some of the stars of TNG and see how time has treated them...

Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard)
Then


Now



Jonathan Frakes (Riker)
Then


Now



Brent Spiner (Data)
Then


Now



Marina Sirtis (Troi)
Then


Now

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Coming soon to Star Trek Month: the battle everyone wants to see!

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"Jim, cancel those Orion Slave Girls! I've just sorted the entertainment for the Christmas party!"

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As mentioned some time ago, the first movies I want to review are all of the Star Trek ones, so obviously much of that was going to happen here, this month. I've no chance of getting through them all, but I can tell you I've done the first four. Whether I manage any more before the end of the month is debatable but we'll see.

For now, sit back, enjoy the view of space from the viewscreen, pop your quantum headphones on and enjoy the ride!

Title: Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Released: 1979
Writer(s): Alan Dean Foster/ Harold Livingston
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: All the usual Star Trek crew plus: Stephen Collins as Willard Decker, Persis Khambhatta as Ilia
Runtime: 132 minutes
Budget: USD 46 million
Boxoffice: USD 134 million
Critical acclaim: Very low
Fan acclaim: Very low
Legacy: First in the franchise, but quickly forgotten about.
Enterprise: NCC-1701

Finally convinced they had killed the goose that laid the golden egg when they had cancelled the original Star Trek series in 1969, and having seen its phenomenal success in syndication all over the world, Paramount decided to cash in on this and began plans to revive the series, but changed their minds in 1978 and went for a movie release instead. This is not hard to understand. The late seventies had seen movies such as Alien, Star Wars and Close Encounters coin it in, and make a mockery of the belief that sci-fi was just for geeks and losers. Smashing box-offices all over the world, it seemed science-fiction and space opera was here to stay, and you could buy your next beachfront property if you hedged your bets in that area. And so in 1978 filming began on what would be the first live-action reincarnation of Star Trek since the original series was cancelled.

What resulted, sadly, was a critical and creative failure, although it did pull in the box-office receipts. It does have to be stressed though that most of those who went to see the film more than likely did so because it was after all the first Star Trek movie. There are no records for film-goers who went to see it and were disappointed: you couldn't demand your money back at the end. Not that it was that bad. But it was. Listen to this:

A huge alien energy cloud is headed for Earth, and is surprisingly immune to the photon torpedoes three Klingon warships throw at it, destroying them all in the process, and also taking out one of the Federation's monitoring stations on the way. Spock, on pilgrimage to Vulcan, is about to reach Kolinahr, the state prized by his people in which total control of their emotions is achieved, but just as the culmination of his labours arrives and he is about to be presented with the symbol of total logic, something distracts him. He hears a call from out in space, and the high priestess realises he is listening to his human emotions, and that he is not yet ready. Back on Earth, at Starfleet Headquarters an older but perhaps not necessarily wiser Admiral James Kirk demands to take command of his old ship, which is being refitted and will soon be ready to be launched on its first mission. There is one problem though: the USS Enterprise already has a captain, one Willard Decker, and he is not happy about handing over the captain's chair.

There are many new crew members, but when Lieutenant Ilia, a Deltan, boards, it is clear that she and Decker have history, although she mentions a vow of celibacy. En route, another crewmember joins them. It is Spock, but if they expected a tearful reunion the crew are to be disappointed, as the Vulcan is, if possible, even less friendly and more aloof than before. He is however able to help Scotty repair and recalibrate the engines, after Kirk had foolishly demanded warp speed too soon, taking them into a wormhole and nearly destroying the ship, certainly damaging the engines. Spock tells Kirk and McCoy that he began sensing a powerful intelligence while on Vulcan, an exceedingly logical being, and believes that his answers, which he was unable to find while on his home planet, may lie within the entity they are approaching.

With his help, the Enterprise makes it to the cloud while it is still one day away from Earth, whereupon they are scanned, and Spock says he believes there is an object at the heart of the cloud. He also detects a feeling of surprise, that they have not responded, having been contacted. Kirk refrains from assuming a defensive posture, in case this is misinterpreted by the cloud (or whatever is at its heart) as a hostile act, but when they are attacked he has no choice. Spock manages to modify their communications to allow them to send messages of friendship the entity can understand and interpret, and the attack is broken off. For now. Needing to make contact with whatever is inside the cloud, Kirk has little alternative but to order the ship to enter the cloud, despite the danger and the uncertainty. On doing so, they do indeed find an object inside; seems to be some sort of alien spacecraft. As they hold position over the craft they are suddenly probed. Spock tries to shut off the ship's computer, as the probe is running their databanks, but the probe attacks him. Next it goes for Ilia, vapourising her and then disappearing. The Enterprise is drawn inside the alien craft.

Suddenly there is a security alert and they rush to find that Liuetenant Ilia has returned. Or not quite. Her form is that of the Deltan, but the voice speaks with a mechanical monotone, and McCoy and Spock confirm it is a probe from the alien vessel, merely taking the form of Ilia, the better to communicate with them. It says it is from V'ger, and wishes to study “the carbon-based lifeforms infesting the Enterprise.” That's them: Kirk, Spock, Scotty, the whole crew. Carbon-based lifeforms. That's us. The probe tells them it is heading towards Earth in order to merge with “the Creator”, but when Kirk tries to dig deeper he gets no further explanation. He sets Decker to chaperone the probe, as he was involved with Ilia, and the probe tells him that once it has completed its examination it will “reduce all carbon units to data packets.” Doesn't sound too good for the crew of NCC-1701! Meanwhile, Spock goes out of the ship to penetrate into the inner chamber of the vessel, a risky manoeuvre but he finds inside some sort of digital holographic record of all the planets and places this V'Ger has visited. He believes it is not a vessel after all now, but a living being.

He finds a pulsing sensor at the centre of the chamber and believing it to be some sort of conduit for the intelligence driving the alien, tries to mind-meld with it, but it literally blows his mind and he floats, unconscious, until Kirk, who has gone out after him, finds him and brings him back to the ship. He tells Kirk that the alien, V'ger, is a probe from a world populated by living machines, is incapable of understanding emotion, and is going through what can only be described as an existential crisis, as it seeks to discover if this is all there is to its existence? The cloud is now almost within reach of Earth, and V'ger begins sending an old-style radio signal --- a message to its creator, which it expects to be answered. When no reply is forthcoming, the vessel, entity or whatever it is sets up powerful weapons arrays above the planet, after having knocked out all defensive systems, as it prepares to scour the Earth of life.

In a desperate ploy to save his home planet (and his own life; they're next obviously) Kirk tells the probe that he knows why the signal has not been responded to, why the creator has not replied, but he will only disclose this information on two conditions: one, the orbiting devices must be removed from around the planet, and two, he must give the information directly to V'ger. He and Spock have realised that if the probe takes them to the central processor unit of the vessel, they should be able to deactivate the devices. The probe agrees, but the devices will only be removed after Kirk has disclosed the required information. V'ger learns fast! And so they are taken into the machine, where with the benefit of an oxygen atmosphere being provided we are treated to the first ever instance of the crew walking on the saucer section of the Enterprise outside.

What they find solves the mystery. A huge alien probe, and at its heart an old Earth one, Voyager VI. V'Ger is Voyager, and it is trying to transmit its collected data back to Earth, its creator. It was launched three hundred years ago, but now has been sent back by the inhabitants of the machine world, and is trying to fulfil its mission. But it can't, as there is nobody left on Earth who knows the transmission code that will allow it to send its data. Kirk has Uhura look it up and they send the code, but V'Ger does not receive it, having intentionally (apparently) burned out the wires that make the connection with its receiver. It wants to literally join with the creator, whom it now sees as Decker, with Ilia the probe. So Decker will after all get his end away and Ilia's vow of celibacy is about to be broken in the most spectacular fashion!

Decker puts in the transmission sequence manually and he and Ilia the probe are surrounded by light as they join and science goes out the window under total Star Trek technobabble. The cloud, the probe, the orbiting devices all disappear and the day is saved as the Enterprise comes out triumphantly, having once again saved the day.

QUOTES
Kirk (on taking over the captaincy): “I'm sorry Will.”
Decker: “No, sir, I don't believe you are. I don't believe you're sorry one bit, Admiral. I remember when I took command of the Enterprise you told me how envious you were, and how you hoped to get a command yourself. Well, sir, it looks like you found a way.”
(Considering he has not asked for permission to speak freely, this could go down on Decker's record as insubordination. He is, after all, talking to a superior officer in a very belligerent and familiar way).

McCoy: “The admiral invoked a little-known, seldom-used clause called a reactivation order. In simpler language, they drafted me.”
Kirk: “They didn't.”
McCoy: “This was your idea?”
Kirk: “Bones, there's a ... thing out there ...”
McCoy: “Why is any object we don't understand always called a thing?”
Kirk: “It's headed this way. I need you. Damn it Bones: I need you! Badly!”
(You'd have to wonder at the validity of this. After all, McCoy is a doctor, this is a cloud measuring tens of atmospheric units across. What's he gonna do? Diagnose it?)

Decker: “Permission to speak freely sir?”
Kirk: “Granted.”
Decker: “You haven't logged a star hour in over two and a half years, sir. That, plus your unfamiliarity with this ship and its redesign, in my opinion sir, seriously jeopardises this mission.”

Kirk: “Full sensor scan, Mr. Spock. They can't expect us not to look them over now.”
Decker: “Not now we're looking right down their throats.”
Kirk: “Right. Now that we have them just where they want us.”

Kirk: “Where's Lieutenant Ilia?”
Probe: “That unit no longer functions.”
(Oh. What an epitaph for the Deltan officer: Here lies Lt. Ilia, of the USS Enterprise. She no longer functions.)

Kirk: “Who is the creator?”
Probe: “The creator is that which created V'ger.”
Kirk: “And who is V'ger?”
Probe: “V'ger is that which was made by the creator .”
(Circular logic at its best!)

Decker: “Within that shell are the memories of ... a certain carbon unit. If I could help you to revive those memories it might help you understand our function better.”
Probe: “That is logical. You may proceed.”
(Howay ya lad ya! )

Spock: “Captain, V'ger is a child. I suggest you treat it as such.”
Kirk: “A child?”
Spock: “Yes captain. A child. Learning, evolving, searching. Instinctively needing.”
Decker: “Needing what?”
McCoy: “Spock, this child is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth! What do you suggest we do: spank it?”

Kirk (as Decker prepares to manually input the signal): “Decker, don't!”
(It's such a sincere request; Kirk obvously sees his main competitor for the command of Enterprise about to be removed from the game, and he can't wait. He might as well have said “Yeah go on, do it.”)

Kirk: “Mister Sulu, ahead, warp one.”
Sulu: “Warp one, captain. Heading?”
Kirk: “Out there. Thataway.”
(I don't think you'll find this in the Starfleet manual of operations, Kirk me old chum!)

Questions?

Why does at least one of the Klingon warships not hit warp and get the fuck out of there when they see how powerful the alien cloud is? I know, I know: Klingons never run, but have they never read Sir John Falstaff? I mean, come on! They are clearly up against a vastly superior power, and as any commander worth his salt knows, it is no shame to retreat in the face of either overwhelming odds or from an enemy who has you completely outmatched. Besides, won't the Klingon High Command, to say nothing of the homeworld itself, need to be warned, apprised of the danger? Isn't this one time where a bit of brains should triumph over chest-beating brawn? But no: they instead fire --- with one of the ships already vapourised in seconds before their eyes --- three photon torpedoes at an entity which has already proven immune to such weapons. Are these guys idiots?

Kirk mentions that “the only starship in range of the cloud is the Enterprise”. But they're at Starfleet fucking headquarters! Are we supposed to believe that there is no other warship, starship or cruiser docked there, that the only ship moored there of consequence is NCC-1701? Seems at best unlikely.

Why does Kirk demand to be in command? Sure, we need it for the movie, but in reality, is there any justification for this? Decker knows the ship inside out, he's a competent captain. Why does Kirk think he is the only one who can complete the mission? Is he that arrogant? Don't answer. Seems to me he may just have grabbed at his only chance to get his own command again, particularly the one ship he would have wanted. A little petty? The needs of the one outweighing the needs of the many?

Spock mentions that, while inside V'ger, he saw the alien's home planet, a “planet populated by living machines”. He refers to them as “cold”, using “pure logic”. An early template for that later scourge of the galaxy, the Borg?

Memorable scenes and effects
The energy cloud is done well, but basically it's, well, a cloud with a lot of colours and things floating in it. My main plaudits have to go to the initial approach as Kirk and Scotty see the Enterprise for the first time in the movie --- I remember the lump in my throat when I saw that the first time too. After all, remember, this was the very first glimpse for us of a ship we had see carry Kirk and his crew through three seasons of television adventure, and we thought we would never see it again. A special moment. The sequence is perhaps overextended and a little indulgent, but you can forgive them for that. The scene where they leave spacedock is also very impressive.

Kirk's hubris
Never a man to listen to others when his mind is made up, Kirk is well known for pushing the limits and taking often unnecessary risks. Here, I'll be charting the moments when his overconfidence is his undoing, putting his crew and others in potential danger.

As they leave Earth, Kirk demands warp power immediately, even though everyone from Decker to Scotty advise against it: more simulation time is needed. The ship is untested, having just undergone a complete refit, and they should not be pushing things. Kirk, however, as usual listens to nobody, with the result that they nearly end up colliding with a wormhole in space and ending their mission before it has even begun. He is forced into an embarrassing climbdown, and it won't be the last time he has to admit he was wrong, or at least too hasty in ordering something. Also, while in the wormhole they encounter an object in their path. With helm unresponsive, they can't avoid it and Kirk orders phasers to fire, but Decker, knowing the new ship better, countermands the order and uses the photon torpedoes instead.

Themes and motifs
Certainly the theme of homecomings is evident here, and not surprisingly so. This is, after all, the return of Star Trek to the screen, albeit the big one too. But apart from that, it's a sort of homecoming for Kirk, who has been flying a desk for some years now and has almost forcibly changed that to ensure he has returned to the captain's chair. V'ger has its own sort of homecoming, returning to the planet from which it was launched, although certainly it comes back a changed probe, with a somewhat skewed idea of its mission! It's also a return for Decker and Ilia, as they meet again after an unspecified but not hard to guess at liaison on her home planet.

There's a theme too, though, I feel, of helplessness. Kirk feels helpless as an admiral, unable to take command of a starship as he has been used to, until he forces Starfleet's hand and convinces them to give him his old ship back. Helpless describes Decker, relieved of command and now subservient to a man he does not like, and whom, he knows, is angling for permanent command of the Enterprise. The Earth is helpless before the attack of V'Ger, and even V'ger is, to some extent, helpless, as it tries to work out what it is supposed to be doing, and how it is to do it.

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Parallels
The plotline follows basically the same as a TOS episode called “The changeling”, in which an Earth probe returns, having collided with an alien probe, and, well, goes a bit loopy. Essentially, Kirk does the same here as he did there (or tries to): pretends he is the one the probe is seeking.

The relationship between Decker and Ilia, or at least their initial reunion, is mirrored almost exactly by the same scene in TNG when Riker and Troi meet on the Enterprise.

And isn’t that…?
Two cameos at the beginning of the movie for Grace Lee Whitney, returning as Janice Rand, promoted after all this time from Yeoman to Commander, who handles the disastrous transport of Sovak and another crewman, the fault in the teleporter resulting in their grisly deaths. The commander of Epsilon 9 monitoring station is none other than the late Mark Lenard, who played the Romulan commander in “Balance of terror” but is best known for playing Spock’s father, Sarek, in both TOS and TNG. He later returns as Sarek in the third movie.

Does this movie deserve its reputation?
Here I'll be looking at what is generally thought of the movie, good bad or indifferent. Does it deserve the plaudits, or indeed the derision it has earned over the years? Having watched it fresh, perhaps for the first time in a very long time, is my mind altered on how I originally received it, or does it still rock/suck, or is it still meh, or even a case of the jury being out?

The basic reputation this movie has is perhaps best encapsulated in a title my brother once jeeringly gave it, calling it “Star Trek: The Slow Motion Picture”. And he's not wrong. It's a terribly plodding, dull, uneventful movie. When you look at the later ones in the franchise, you can see how they must have agreed. There's very little action here, and no space battles at all. The only other vessels we see really, other than V'Ger, are the Klingons and they're gone within the first three minutes of the movie's opening. There's little too of the famed easy friendship between the main characters: Kirk is stilted and uptight, knowing he has overstepped his authority at least morally, in taking command of the ship and secretly unsure if he's still up to the job. Spock is even less human, having been on pilgrimage to Vulcan, and McCoy is, well, McCoy, but he's worried about Kirk. Scotty is fine, but then Scotty will always be Scotty.

The plot is wafer-thin. As I said above, it's basically cobbled from ideas taken from “The Changeling” and what was to have been the pilot for the new series, which was cancelled. It also has some elements of “2001” about it, but the resolution is ridiculous, and jumps right off the science-fiction trail into the woods of magic and sorcery. There is no scientific explanation as to why Decker suddenly becomes one with V'Ger after inputting the code, and why a new lifeform results. It might as well be magic, and it's a stupid, lazy ending. Had it ended as it should have, with V'Ger transmitting its message and Earth being saved, that would have been okay, but this pseudo-psychological mumbo-jumbo about creatures joining because someone fuses two wires.... bah!

The thing is that up to then there's very little that happens, and like a certain point in later “Generations”, when a friend at work confessed to me that she fell asleep during the scene that explained what was going on, the whole thing is very boring. It survives on one real pretext only, and that is that it was the first of the Trek movies. Everyone wanted to see the gang again, everyone was eager to see the Enterprise in action, and because of that it got what can only be described as a pass. I'd venture to bet that a very large percentage of those who went to see it came out bewildered and disappointed. In the “Questions?” section I laughed at the contention that there were no other starships in the vicinity of their fucking home base (!) but now have to ask what the hell were Starfleet doing while Kirk and Co rode to save the day? When the Enterprise, within the V'Ger cloud, gets back to Earth they still haven't launched any ships, called any back to assist in the defence of the homeworld? They're pinning all their hopes on NCC-1701, just waiting?

I'm also quite disappointed in the soundtrack. I didn't know it at the time of course, but it's basically the theme for TNG, note for note, with the odd nod back to the original theme and a few heavy bass or guitar notes when V'ger comes on the scene. Very poor. If I had to pick out things that could have saved the movie, or at least areas that impressed me, the launch of the Enterprise, the transporter accident and maybe the trip through the wormhole. That's about it. Not much in a movie that's over two hours long.

So yeah, at the end, I feel this does deserve its poor reputation. It's almost like the writers weren't trying, or maybe were trying to hard, and fell somewhere in between. The movie was overall quite boring, no real action, too wordy and without question, if she fell asleep during “Generations” then Helen would have been snoozing about ten minutes after this began. Thankfully it was the last such poor movie, and they totally upped their game for the next one. But as a debut for the film franchise it leaves a whole lot to be desired.

Therefore, having taken everything into account and approaching this both from a fresher and more informed perspective, all I can award this first Star Trek movie is a poor

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Cardassians

Class: Humanoid, warlike
Home planet: Cardassia Prime
Values: Stealth, cunning, treachery, strategy, betrayal, brutality, lack of mercy
Cardassians of note: Gul Dukat, Elim Garak, Enabran Tain, Tret Akleen, Gul Damar
Featured in: DS9

A warrior race like the Klingons, the Cardassians are more brutal in that they do not prize honour. In fact, in their society the most underhand and treacherous rise to the top, and in that they are probably comparable to Nazis. They wear full body armour at all times, and have just recently been defeated (they would say decided to pull out) after the fifty-year-long occupation of Bajor, whose citizens they treated as subhuman slaves. They are a military society, ruled by the Cardassian Central Command but more accurately by their intelligence arm, the shadowy and feared Obsidian Order. Cardassia is a police and military state, where even the slightest hint of disaffection is greeted with instant arrest and possible subsequent disappearance. No Cardassian trusts another, and this constant air of paranoia helps the Order to keep control of and over its people, as well as affording it the opportunity to remove any elements it deems “inappropriate”, which is to say, threatening its power.

Cardassians are not happy about their retreat from Bajor, but like the Centauri in Babylon 5, the guerilla war against them by the indigenous population became too costly to support, and anyway they had strip-mined the planet to the point of exhaustion and starvation so there was little left for them to occupy. When the Federation went to war with the Dominion, the Cardassian Empire joined the latter, fighting against Starfleet. With a small rebel force building among the Cardassians, the tide was turned and the Cardassians turned on their former allies (a typically Cardassian thing to do!). However, although they prevailed, they paid a high price and were never again the proud, conquering arrogant race they had been. Cardassians are possibly unique in being the only race that feature in only one series, Deep Space 9. They are mentioned in passing in Voyager, and I don’t care about Enterprise but I doubt it as it’s set way before anyone encountered them. Actually they’re not the only ones, but even so it’s a little odd that they are so inextricably tied into DS9.

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Every hero needs his nemesis, every goody needs his baddy and although in the Trekverse there is little in the way of arch-enemies, there are a few who crop up more than once. Star Trek as a franchise though is built more around evolving storylines than your average superhero movies, which tend to bring back in the same opponents time and again, or even the likes of Doctor Who, where you cant move without bumping into a shipfull of daleks or a Cyberman army hidden away.

Nevertheless, when Star Trek has bad guys, or girls, they're usually pretty damn good. So to speak.


Kai Winn Adami, played by Louise Fletcher
Originally a lowly vedek, Winn ascended to power after the death of Kai Opaka and by manipulating a series of half-truths that discredited the other candidate. Once in power (and even before she gains the seat) Winn proves to be an arrogant, militant leader who wants nothing to do with the Federation. She is jealous that an alien (Sisko) has received visions from her Prophets and become their emissary, a situation that leads her into constant conflict with Sisko, both as the Emissary and as commander and later captain of Deep Space 9. In her desire for power she unwittingly allies herself with a Cardassian-funded separatist movement, and later with the Cardassians themselves, through the disguise effected by Gul Dukat. She is instrumental in his almost taking power in Bajor and releasing the evil spirits known as the Pah-Wraiths, but eventually atones somewhat for her misdeeds by trying to stop Dukat, before he disintegrates her.

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The Batlord

So, Romulans vs. Cardassians. Which is the most evil?

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Cardassians I think. They're brutal, whereas Romulans are more kind of casually cruel. Based on the Romans, obviously, they're not actually sadistic, whereas the Cardassians, more based as I said on the Nazis, are. So the Cardassians would get my vote every time. Interesting question though? Anyone else any thoughts?

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Chula Vista

It's obvious isn't it.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”