Rewatching the Star Trek movies! What’s the point of blogging about Trek when every bit of trivia minutiae has already been explored at length? I’m rewatching these in terms of characters, and hopefully sorting out the characters’ arcs over the course of these movies. Beyond that, we’ll just see what we see. Up first, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).

Here’s what happens: An alien cloud of sorts approaches Earth, forcing the crew of the Enterprise to reunite and head back into action. As the Enterprise gets closer and closer to the cloud, things get stranger and stranger.

Captains courageous: Kirk is Admiral Kirk now, serving as “head of Starfleet operations,” whatever that means. His main motivation in this film is not just to solve the mystery within the cloud, but to get back in command of the Enterprise. This puts him in conflict with the current captain, Decker. While there is tension between Kirk and Decker, Decker ends up having a lot of other business to deal with.

I find it amusing that, only a minute after the story’s big finale, Kirk just sits down in the captain’s chair and sets course for unexplored space. Shouldn’t Starfleet be informed about this epic event that just occurred?

Ol’ pointy ears: This story would seem to be a big turning point for Spock. We catch up with him as he’s rejected by his fellow Vulcans for not properly purging all emotion from himself. By the end of the film, there’s the famous shot of Spock shedding a tear after everything he’s seen. This suggests that Spock has accepted his half-human, more emotional side. Spock still has some ups and downs to go through before these movies conclude, however.

Welcome aboard: Decker and hot alien babe Ilia reconcile with their romantic past. Their background is only hinted at, but it drives the emotional stakes of the plot. This is further complicated once Ilia is possessed (reprogrammed?) by the intelligence inside the cloud. Actress Persis Khambatta is a striking figure as Ilia, one of the movie’s most well-remembered visuals.

Continuity café: Who is that caveman-looking crewman who expresses concerns to Kirk at one point? He’s an unnamed Rhaandarite. According to the exhaustingly thorough Memory Alpha, the Rhaandarites are a long-lived yet childlike alien species who were regulars among the Federation. One writer described them as being Trek’s equivalent of “rednecks.” Make of that what you will. (UPDATE: The Marvel Comics adaptation of the movie gave this character a name. He’s “Mr. Amaar.”)

What you leave behind: A lot of people dislike this movie for how slow-paced and (let’s face it) dry it is. But I do enjoy the far-out spectacle of it all. As for character, I recently read through a collection of James Blish’s adaptations of the original series episodes. In those, I was struck with how Kirk is less of a gun totin’ cowboy, and more of a humanist figure. He responds to all the strangeness the Enterprise comes across by standing up for his natural humanity. That’s much the same Kirk of The Motion Picture. The gigantic world-ending threat is resolved via matters of the heart.

Next: All wrath, no grapes.

* * * *

Want more? Check out my novel MOM, I’M BULLETPROOF. It’s a comedic/romantic/dramatic superhero epic! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XPXBK14.