#sttmp

This movie is great thematically, visually, and musically, and a disaster in terms of plot and character and pacing and especially pacing.  Way too many scenes of actors trying to react to special effects that don’t exist yet.  Two new characters, who are largely wasted.

So what is the theme of STTTMP?  It’s the question ‘Is this all there is?’  It’s the classic mid-life crisis question and that’s where the cast is when the movie starts - the Enterprise finished its mission, they moved up the ladder, but they’re not satisfied.  It’s that feeling there ought to be *more*.  Even V’ger has this and so this has to be a movie about the quest to find meaning in life when you have achieved your original goals... and now you don’t have a direction.  This also functions as a cosmic question - does the universe have any higher meaning or are we just an accident?  Why do we exist?  Is this all there is?

So we open with Scotty dropping by Kirk’s office to ask about some parts they need for the engine refit on the Enterprise.  Kirk is now Admiral Kirk and we learn the Enterprise did a successful five year mission and now there’s a refit and a new commander for it, Matt Decker; we get a brief mention of the Doomsday machine here and the first mention of Will Decker.  They also mention that Uhura has been working for Starfleet intelligence, mostly deciphering Klingon transmissions.  

 Then Uhura enters, dropping a report on Kirk’s desk.  “Look at this,” she says.

Cue footage of the Klingons vs  huge glowing energy field which zaps them with a beam that methodically erases them.  We learn this field destroyed three Klingon outposts and that it came from beyond the Empire.  

Uhura says, “It’s on a direct course for Gamma Iotis, near the border of the Federation.”

Scotty says, “That sounds familiar.”

“It’s where Bones is part of a research facility.”  Kirk said.  “I will get you those parts, Scotty, and brief Captain Decker.  It’s the only ship that can get there in time and even then, it’s going to be a close shave.”

Kirk has a message sent to evacuate, but it’s too far for a direct connection.  But given the limits on how fast ships can move, it will get there before V’Ger can, right?

Cut to Gamma Iotis, where McCoy is having an argument with David Marcus over whether terraforming technology is a good idea.  David’s ideas involve the use of technology based off the transporter and who still hates transporters?  Bones, that’s who.

Carol steps in to get them both to backdown and approves David doing some testing on a small scale.  Then V’Ger attacks and they’re running for the ships when everything evaporates.

Cut to a shot where the entire moon is gone and V’Ger moves on.

Then we roll the opening credits.

We see Spock, meditating in a Vulcan facility.  He has achieved his goal, Kolin’ar, but he is clearly not satisfied.  The peace he was promised is not there.

And then he feels the attack on McCoy and all the souls on Gamma Iotis vanishing.  He does something (to be explained later) and then tells the head monk he must leave.

“If you return to the world of attachments, there is no turning back,” the monk warns him.

“The needs of others is more important than the needs of the one,” he tells the monk, who cannot argue.

Cut to Kirk, who is riding to the martian shipyards where the refit is underway, taking Uhura and Scotty with him.  The VIP ship is commanded by Sulu, accompanied by Chekov, who are both bored out of their minds.  Kirk tells him the reason he ended up here was that they all did so well that Starfleet was afraid to risk them.  They had become too big of heroes, and he mentions what happened to John Glenn.

Here we get the ‘Look at how sexy the Enterprise is’ shot but cut down to reasonable length.

We now meet Decker and Ilia.  The Deltans are a race of telepaths.  Most never leave their homeworld, but if they must, they shave their heads, because their hair acts as telepathic antennas and around people with no mental defenses, they would be overwhelmed; Ilia can still do telepathy by touch.  Deltans have a reputation for being incredible at sex but are not obsessed with it, unlike Roddenberry’s version.  Decker and Ilia were once lovers but he left to enter Starfleet.  She became discontent with the limits of her homeworld, having learned more of the universe from him and joined Starfleet to see other, different places, but now they’re assigned together and it’s awkward.  Especially as he is her commanding officer now.

Scotty runs off to install the parts.

As Kirk is briefing Decker on what’s going on, two things happen: They get a report that the mysterious cloud is headed towards Earth at ludicrous speed, and that it destroyed Gamma Iotis with no survivors.

Kirk decides they have to go NOW.  No waiting.  They take off and Chekov and Sulu are along for the ride.

Decker isn’t happy to have his boss riding him.  The hasty departure leads to the wormhole problem, which Decker and Ilia and Scotty solve as they’re the only ones briefed on the new equipment.

Then Spock joins them and tells them McCoy is somehow alive and dead at the same time, his katra is inside V’Ger.  All the katras of the dead are.

Cut to McCoy, who finds himself in a weirdly frozen version of Gamma Iotis III.  He can’t figure out what’s going on but has this feeling like Spock’s looking at him.

His efforts to figure out what the hell is going on leads to V’Ger talking to him through Carol Marcus, who was up to this point one of the frozen.  We find out V’Ger’s mission is to go out, collect samples and information, to learn all that is learnable and bring this information to the Creator.  McCoy is now data in V’Ger’s banks, only he can still act of his own will.  

V’Ger then ‘activates’ various of the other people, making them act strangely and explaining that he has spent a lot of time playing out various scenarios to understand how carbon-based lifeforms think.

McCoy is really angry over that and tries to do the Kirk Manuever (use illogic to make the computer blow out, but it doesn’t work).  He refuses to play along, and V’Ger becomes both angrier and intrigued.

They reach V’Ger.  It remembers the feuding between Klingons and Federation, learned from its scan, and sends out the Klingons, reconstituted but still under its control.  Sulu and Chekov get to show their stuff here and the Enterprise wins, but Spock realizes they are just puppets, reconstituted from data about them.

He also feels V’Ger’s loneliness and discontent.  This is where Spock goes in, with Ilia flying him in, to try to make mental contact; he talks to McCoy and senses V’Ger’s state of mind.  The world is nothing but a plaything and the playing means little; it knows all that is knowable, or thinks it does, and now it seeks to report to its Creator, hoping to feel fulfilled.  Ilia tells Spock about how she left Delta because she didn’t feel fulfilled there.  She wanted more but didn’t know what she wanted.

Uhura now figures out how to communicate with V’Ger in a way it can understand and it responds by sending Carol Marcus as its ‘probe’ and tells them they must tell it where to find the Creator.  This shakes up Kirk.  It believes the Creator is on Earth, according to its oldest records.

Kirk comes up with a plan on how to destroy V’Ger with the Enterprise; he and Decker have a big argument over whether Kirk is freaking out like Decker’s father did.  Cue flashback.  Then Spock tells them that V’Ger would barely even feel it.  They cannot defeat it by force.

Their only hope is to try to reason with it.  Spock feels V’Ger is lost and seeks a purpose.  He has too much knowledge and power and nothing fruitful to do with it.  He seeks a purpose.  Ilia agrees and feels terrible for it.

They enter V’Ger and confront it, discovering its origins.  It demands of Spock to know how McCoy stillhas his own will, and Spock indicates he has been in contact with him sufficiently to sustain him, a power born of his search for Kolin’ar, but one that also meant he could not be content with it, for he could not renounce his connections to others.

But V’Ger has no others to connect to.  It has mastered this plane but does not know how to rise above it.

And now we get the Decker and Ilia joining with V’Ger, to help it to ascend and to learn how to connect with others.  V’Ger restores everything he turned into data.  Then they ascend.

This is pretty barebones, but that’s how I would do it, to give everyone more stuff to do and try to also build links to exploit for the later movies.

The Genesis Device is adapted from V’Ger tech information David gained to refine his ideas.

Carol and David will return in movie two.

We can blame the devastation of Khan’s world on V’Ger :)

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

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