Word: star
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...second part of The Motion Picture describes the Enterprise crew's interception and final solution to the problem. The first half seems aimlessly tacked on. The writer and producer thought it necessary to explain the ten year gap between the last episode of the Star Trek television series and The Motion Picture. The resulting footage is not only unwieldy and expensive (a five-minute sequence involving the Starfleet's San Francisco headquarters must have cost at least $2 million) but also damages the rest of the show--the half-hour wasted on James T. Kirk's procession to the Enterprise...
Kirk isn't the only figure who doesn't do anything--the Enterprise doesn't show itself to be capable of doing anything breathtakingly spectacular. The Enterprise is traditionally as much of a character as the people in the show, and like the people, the most famous of Star Ships never develops a personality...
Gene Roddenberry, who produced both the series and The Motion Picture, promised that the optical effects in the movie would not overwhelm the idealism that made Star Trek popular as a television show. Roddenberry apparently reneged on his promise. The special effects are not particularly wondrous, although publicity materials for the film claim that special effects wizards Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and John Dykstra (Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica) created the effects with the most sophisticated equipment ever devised for such work...
Special effects seem to be what movie studios think science fiction is all about these days. No doubt, Star Wars impressed a good many people because it depicted outer space with realism and "flash." But since the "creators" of The Motion Picture wanted to get away from the rough 'em up cowboys and laser beams action of Star Wars, they decided to put their special effects money into non-military opticals of the Enterprise's travel through an alien "cloud." It is quite possible that Dykstra and Trumbull decided that since anyone can create the illusion of space travel--they...
This metallic quality is also evident in the actors' performances. Although Star Trek fans are already familiar with the characters, even they will wonder at the absence of definition in the roles played out in The Motion Picture. And, needless to say, those unfamiliar with Star Trek will be utterly lost...