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I just watched all but the first ten minutes Of ST:TMP on BBC 3 and while i wasn't expect much after reading this board i was still appualed by the sheer pointlessness. There was no tension, no suspense barely a plot. Every was extend so it took thrice the length of time it could have.
In short:: wtf? How can this even be called a film?
And a question to round off my nice rant. The vger's energy cloud was supposed to 82 au in diametre yet when it was in orbit of earth there was no cloud to be seen. What happened to it?

That movie scared me when I watched it for the first time when I was younger because of the music when Enterprise entered the cloud. It is a... not a decent movie but a step below that.

The cloud maybe disspitated as V'ger turned down Earth defenses, didn't need it any longer for protection.

And I think best part of the movie is the first 10 minutes. And when Enterprise goes through the cloud itself to its center.

Crazedwraith wrote:I just watched all but the first ten minutes Of ST:TMP on BBC 3 and while i wasn't expect much after reading this board i was still appualed by the sheer pointlessness. There was no tension, no suspense barely a plot. Every was extend so it took thrice the length of time it could have.

TMP is one of the worst examples of the TV-series made in to a movie curse. The movies invariably and up being just extra long episodes, rather then actual movies. Many ST movies suffer from this, as do some B5 movies.

Crazedwraith wrote:In short:: wtf? How can this even be called a film?

It's too long to be an ordinary episode and probably too expensive as well.

Crazedwraith wrote:And a question to round off my nice rant. The vger's energy cloud was supposed to 82 au in diametre yet when it was in orbit of earth there was no cloud to be seen. What happened to it?

It obviously dissapated the cloud before entering the star system. IIRC they even said something about this in the movie.

IMHO ST:TMP is a pretty good episode of Star Trek, if you fast forward all the scenes about the Enterprise drifting inside the cloud.

ST:TMP starts off pretty well ... until we switch from Klingon space to Earth. At that point (which occurs very early on in the film) it starts rapidly going to shit.

Darth Wong wrote:ST:TMP starts off pretty well ... until we switch from Klingon space to Earth. At that point (which occurs very early on in the film) it starts rapidly going to shit.

Exactly. After that the only thing that is cool that it's a Star Trek movie that actually looks like a movie. Look how big the interior of the ship was. At least the look of the movie said movie. Now the plot, recycled from a tv episode just really dragged on. It's clear the director was shooting for a more pure science fiction feal to the film but it's just so boring. The recent upgrades/finishing touches make it better but there's still not enough going on and too many beauty shots.

I wish they'd saved some of the cash spent on that film and used it on some of the others so they looked a bit more like movies and less like pumped up tv shows.

Dark Primus wrote:And I think best part of the movie is the first 10 minutes. And when Enterprise goes through the cloud itself to its center.

Dam it. I KNEW someone was gonna say that, the best bit is the bit i missed

I guess I am in the minority here, but I like ST:TMP. I find this movie to be the only trek movie to really capture the spirit of the series in that it focused more on exploration and discovery rather then space battles, phasers fights and especially the mind numbing technobable that plauge the recent movies.

I never did see why it was that they made TMP simply a retread of the
Nomad episode of TOS. I once heard that an idea that I thought was
good: They could have made the plot having an old Vulcan probe coming
back to Vulcan after a few centuries. Then, Spock could have defeated
it, and in doing so would earn his pure logic badge.

Everyone likes the Klingon battlecruiser scene at the start. It was really well done. The rest of the movie sucks ass. End of story.

Worst moments:

- The inspection of the Enterprise wankfest.
- The wierd, nauseating and bizarre 'warp drive stuff up scene' where everyone starts getting thrown around (and talking) in slow motion complete with cheesy optical effects.
- The famous incredibly long, tedious, silent shots of the Enterprise just drifting through V'Ger, with everyone doing absolutely nothing- unless you count being amazed as doing something.

Worst miscellaneous:

- The uniforms? What the fuck? Leisure suits in space.
- The inane name 'V'Ger'- the machines have constructed this awesome spacecraft to allow Voyager 6 to fulfil it's mission, yet they don't think to clean the fucking probe's nameplate. Furthermore, it seems that Voyager 6 can't remember what the hell it is, and seems to be limited to a scrummy nameplate as well
- Decker. I hate 7th Heaven and I hate him. The character was a waste of space and was obviously tacked on to be the ultimate red shirt.
- The warp speed effect. Incredibly overdone- it took TWOK to give us the effect that served us so well in the subsequent movies, and which I like far better than that TNG-onward gay stretch and flash effect.

There's a lot to hate about TMP in its execution (costumes and lighting and set coloring especially), but if you can let it get under your skin (took me a decade or so), you can actually really enjoy it a helluva lot more than the Nimoy directed flicks. There's at least some attempt to represent space and spaceflight in a credible manner, and the film avoids those ugly ILM designs that mar later films, like the dumbass mushroom spacedock that looks like a blimp hangar vomited up off the earth.

EDIT ADD-ON: TMP's warp fx are a little overdone in terms of 70s animaiton, but still miles ahead of that stupid airbrushed streak in the ILM films, which makes it look like the ship is pissing a rainbow, and would be better used for ships like the one in ET.

I always loved the inspection scene and all the big credible looking ship stuff in TMP, but very little else ever grabbed me until I finally was able to look at the movie w/o thinking of my watch. That was never a problem for me with 2001 (best of the best, in 68 and still today), but you expect an up-tempo with Trek, especially since TOS shows moved along at a pretty good pace.

The series had a compelling use of contrast and color, which is totally absent in TMP's live-action (when it came out, I commisserated with friends after that first screening - for which we stood in line over 4 hours - that they should call the acting in the film dead-action instead of live-action.)

Obviously I have a real love/hate thing with this movie ... but except for ST 2 KHAN and ST5 FINAL FRONTIER, this is the one I've seen the most, both theatrically and on widescreen laserdisc.