My dad took me and my brother to see this film after it opened in December 1979. We were big Trek fans and it was a thrill to see the cast reunited for a major movie.
Even as a child seeing this movie, knowing the Klingons were not idiots because watching Star Trek was part of how I was raised, I asked my dad why they would just shoot at a cloud as big as our solar system. That's one of the first times he told me to stop over-analyzing things, shut up, and just watch it. It's been decades and I'm an old man now, but I feel like child me just got redeemed here.
The Klingons were attacking, because V'Ger had crossed part of their space and 'attacked' them in some form, probably deconstructed some ships or bases into data. edit: It might only be mention in the novel of the film that this had happened but I seem to recall them saying it early in the film.
@@Thurgosh_OG Thanks for your input, my friend... but as a Star Trek fan, can you ever imagine Klingons sending a vendetta squad of 3 D7 attack cruisers to take out a solar-system sized juggernaut cloud of superior firepower with no known weaknesses when they wouldn't send that small of a set of ships to just take out the planets of a solar system that can't even defend against them. Well, other than being in a movie that shows how seriously OP that godlike monster cloud moving through space is to the people watching the movie.
One thing that I really find funny in this scene. (And I do think it's a great action packed introductory scene, by the way) but... The Klingons in this Trek film compared to the later films,, looked like they were part of a Bee Gee's convention with those overbites.
I distinctly remember seeing this in the theater as a 15 year old and thinking "Wait, a planet of super-smart robots that couldn't figure out how to remove a bit of grime?"
Robots with a sense of humour? Oh look the Earth sent us another one of these. Let's send this one back. Reprogram it a bit, put in a new battery, throw some mud on it so they think it's been through heck and back. Those carbon based units won't know what to do with it.
In an earlier revision of ST:TMP the V'Ger message is actually decoded. In the August 9th revision (1) Spock does NOT smash the Science Console when Ilia is kidnapped. (2) The ship is held for 12 hours alongside VGer after Ilia is taken away and before being pulled into the ship (3) In the 12 hours, Spock has decoded the message: V'Ger (revealing the name) is asking for the the Enterprise's place of origin and intentions. (4) Spock programs the computer to talk with V'Ger, and actually communicate directly with it where they find out that it's headed for Earth, the home of the creator. (5) Suddenly the Enterprise computer begins communicating directly with V'Ger without crew's prompting, causing Spock to smash the science console. The earlier May 17th draft goes a little further having Spock realize V'Ger is a living machine when it refers to itself as "I" and "My." By October 2nd, the scene is no longers in the script.
@@gateauxq4604 - I got the idea that they whittled the scene down. The Enterprise computer basically starts communicating the "Earth Defenses...Starfleet Strengths" in the early drafts in the decoding scene, which they moved to the probe scene. My feeling is that they trying to keep the movie moving by removing a "12 hour wait."
You missed the actual dumbest thing. Two people get sploded in the transporter, and seemingly moments later McCoy beams in while the crew banters about his well-known distrust of the technology.
McCoy is pretty upset about the whole thing, it's not like he beams in like it's no big deal He was initially refusing He was also pretty upset about being pulled out of retirement, it was a whole scene
It's quite a while later. The transporter is fixed. The reason for McCoy not entering the transporter is is scepticism about how successful the repair was. It all makes sense. Films don't happen in real time usually. If they did 2001 would actually be millions of years long.
So, what you're saying is that all movies should depict things in real time... there's no room for theatrical license to keep things moving. What is a few minutes in real time may have been several hours in the movies universe.
But really, I remember sitting in the theater on opening night and was just psyched that Star Trek was back and on the big screen. Nothing else mattered. I didn’t sit there making jokes like MST3K, this was Star Trek, and it was back!
Had the same experience with Star Wars. Took a while to realize how bad the writig of The Force Awakens acutually is (didn't happen with TLJ - that one felt bad right away) :D
@@StYxXx 🤣🤣 I understand but that may be a poor example. But then again, SW movie quality has been like the proverbial frog in a pot with the heat slowly being turned up.
@@trhansen3244 if you like the force awakens you’re not a true Star Wars fan. It literally shat all over the expanded lore that “true” Star Wars fans considered canon and they didn’t even bother to plan out the trilogy before they made it, so the sequels directly contradict it. Rogue one is the only good Disney made Star Wars movie.
I had just turned 16 and gotten my drivers license. This was my first outing in driving a car without adults. I drove to my fellow Star Trek nerd friend's house and picked him up and we went to the mall to see this on opening day, December 7th 1979, a date that will live in infamy... After it was over we walked out into the mall in silence. Finally my friend says, "That movie gave me a headache!" and I chuckled at the ice breaker and agreed, it did kind of suck.
Kirk has a thruster pack. He uses it to direct Spock's limp and unconscious body back into the ship. He doesn't follow Spock because he disagrees with the risk Spock is taking. Spock doesn't expect to return from his voyage into Vger. That's why he is narrating his findings so the log launched from his suit would be recovered by the ship.
@@kkcombs622 I doubt if Spock would have put to much weight on that possibility as he was physically entering the chamber because signals were being bounced back. The teleported beam is a signal. Heck even when V'ger grants an audience it makes them walk there and back from the saucer section.
I think kkcombs is saying (and I agree) that Kirk didn’t need to go out in an EVA suit at all and there was no point in doing so. Just tell the transporter room to beam Spock back in as soon as they could get a lock. It’s a bit like if, on a real ship, somebody jumps overboard and, rather than throwing a life preserver and ropes, the captain jumped in the water, too. Even just sending out a shuttlecraft would have made more sense.
I don't care how many plot holes it has - I love this film . Why is it necessary to pick things apart. All film/tv can be looked at this way, or they can just be enjoyed as a bit of escapism. I, for one, will continue to watch this film with affection.
(10) Uh, we're talking about Voyager SIX here ... which presumably was faster than Voyagers 1 and 2, so it could have gone further than 17.2 billion kilometers. (7) Persis Khambatta was a former Miss India (although she usually has hair). (1) 14:22 "We can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" (oops, wrong series) And you forgot ... those **** uniforms.
Ilea's sensors are localized to her skin and private areas. These need to be exposed for full probe readings. Plus, stripper heels magnify the accuracy. Roddenberry and Berman told me so
My favorite stupid moment is a small one. At one point McCoy walks on to the bridge, looks around, and leaves. No one says anything to him, he doesn't say anything, he wasn't called there. Just really there to show McCoy still exisits.
Not a topic of the video, but it occurs to me that if they had just worn black or charcoal trousers that the uniforms would look pretty good. Kirk's contrasting gray and white admiral's uniform is actually really nice. Just no one piece jumpsuits in the future, please.
Firstly, I want to make it clear I know Brie didn't write the article, so none of what I'm about to say has any focus on her. This is just such a negative, pessimistic article. Imagine going through an entire movie and just writing down things that you find to be "dumb", and the writer did this at least 6 times for WhatCulture. If you compare this to let's say, Sean Ferrick's Ups and Downs series, he confronts some of the downs with still a sense of positivity and optimism which I feel is the way Trek is meant to be taken. I really subscribed to Trek Culture only because of Sean and his enthusiasm for Star Trek, and since then have discovered some other great presenters here, but this kind of stuff really just makes me feel like this is just one long recorded Reddit thread. Maybe it's just me.
It also directly led to Spock's death scene. Nimoy did not want to do another Star Trek film after this, but was back on board after Harve Bennett said he was going to write it.
Yes, it is quite normal for people to meet on a posting early in their career, then not see each other until they're posted to the same base/ship/squadron at some distant future time.
It very much is normal. I was in the Army for 18 years. I've run into multiple people I served with years later. Or working with them again in another unit. Ended up actually working with one of my drill sergeants from basic training when I became a one myself. And on the bit about Dr. McCoy knowing Ensign Perez after only two days is obviously very possible. I mean, come on. If you work near or with a person in the same place, you're obviously going to know them very quickly
So no one is going to consider that with McCoy being reinstated as CMO that he wouldn't go through and do a quick review of personnel and at least gander at the new people's file?
The final edit (by the director) occurred just hours before the release of the film the next day. The first prints were rushed to theaters by express air freight at a major cost to the studio. I was lucky to find a small theater in Manhattan that still had first-day tickets at 12 noon.
What they had is called a "working print" usually put together to show to executives and test audiences before editing is finalized and last minute tweaks are ironed out. They hadn't even created an opening title sequence for it yet and had to use simple, black and white title cards for the opening. The film needed about another month or two of post production work to get into shape for theaters but unfortunately they were locked into a release date they could not get out of.
There's a photo of hundreds of cases of the film the night before (Dec. 6, 1979) in a hangar at Santa Monica Airport waiting for the final reel to be dropped in every one of those cases. And the film in those cases was still wet.
The black hole issue can be somewhat fixed. Let's presume we detected a gravitational anomaly at a time we were launching additional Voyagers after Voyager 2. We'd probably assume it was a black hole, and send Voyager 6 to investigate, and was intended to impact the presumed black hole. However, it turned out to be an unstable wormhole that changed its endpoint near Earth when Voyager 6 entered. The dialogue as given is still awkward exposition for the audience but a minimal rewrite can reduce the awkwardness.
I remember coming out of the theater from seeing this on opening day, and my group of "nerdy" friends and I did a lot of discussing and pulling apart the movie, and frankly I don't remember the things we cringed at and appreciated. However, I think it might be true that you're raising a bunch of different things. As always thank you so very much for the video. I think the biggest point of contention, for us, at the time, was they just did a expanded version of "Star Trek: The Original Series • The Changeling".
Not only was it just a remake of "The Changeling", that first movie didn't need to be longer than a 47 minute television episode! I've been saying for at least 20 years now that Star Trek is NOT suited to movies. You can't tell the stories of these characters during a movie. You have to tell it over time, and by 47 minutes at a time. A 90 minute movie is a one-off representation, and that's not nearly enough time to create the characters AND THEN tell the stories. You can't deal with a topic as heavy as Data's rights when you're also dealing with baddies who want to shoot your ship out of orbit, enslave your crew, and gloat over their conquest. I recently discovered Star Trek Continues, which is 11 episodes with Vic Mignogna as Captain Kirk. I've watched the first 7 episodes, and I have to say, they did a top-notch job with that work. Their Kirk has grown from William Shatner's portrayal. Their Spock may be better than the original, as great as Leonard Nimoy was. Their McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Checkov, and the new characters are already richer and more "human" than the original. It was a labor of love for sure, but they told some really good stories and expanded a little bit on the TOS universe. Just in these first seven episodes that I've seen, they dealt with topics of slavery, discrimination (race, ethnicity, gender, and more), mental health, disability, violent parental abuse, abandonment, guilt, war, bravery, cowardice, and everything in between. And a race of people coming to not only begin to realize that they are bigoted, but actually going so far as to trying to change their ways. Man, oh man, if you can get a Tellarite to just become somewhat self-aware at what jerks their race is composed of, you've done more than you realize. That's character growth. I look forward to seeing the remaining 4 episodes this weekend.
Yes, they were "dumb, dead Klingons", but it's consistent with later canon. In Discovery, Burnham suggests that the weapons officer fire at the Klingons with full phases and torpedoes, because the Vulcans did it and it worked. The aKlingons in TMP were doing what they do, but they didn't expect the elephant to step on them.
They had said that V'Ger had crossed part of Klingon space early in the film and this was just the Klingons, shooting back for earlier damage from V'Ger.
"right side up".. hah.. as if there is such a thing in space. That said, whichever orientation it was originally intended, im willing to bet later show runners all thought the same thing.. "it looks better the other way". But then thats a staple isnt it? The Enterprise is upside down the entire time. It was originally intended to be flipped. Either way, we can chalk it up to their stations being modular and configurable.
That's the wonderful thing about that type of space station: it's flexible and it can be oriented however Starfleet needs it to be. In the apex (TWOK) orientation without the smaller office modules, it's a space lab. In the nadir (TMP) orientation, it's an orbiting office building. Cygnus-x1/Star Trek has some pretty comprehensive full-color deck plans of it. 🖖😎👍
I don't recall seeing a starbase in TMP, just a floating space office and drydock ("cage" surrounding the Enterprise). If you're referring to that big Spacedock orbiting Earth in Star Treks III-VI, that the Enterprise docks *into* via "space doors", that's a whole other thing. As for anything being "upside down", only the space office I mentioned is flipped around to become Space Station Regula One in The Wrath of Khan. That was a production cost-saving measure.
1:03 Decker's statement seemed to imply that it was something like like a wormhole that earlier scientists mistakenly thought was just a blackhole. This is what always made the most sense to me.
What word-idioticy? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use an actual word? Like, maybe, idiocy? Do you not have a dictionary or maybe google? And you used it more than once. That just hurts on so many levels.
Similar to what you said, I think it woulda suggested there was some sort of tear in the fabric of space. A folding of spacetime. A tesseract. And Voyager is the first thing to fall in and come back.
Correct. The phraseology is “what was KNOWN as a black hole,” meaning it wasn’t an actual black hole, but theorized as such at the time. Admittedly, it would’ve been easier to call it a wormhole or tesseract instead of this awkward turn-of-phrase, but my guess is that one of the screenwriters wanted to distinguish it from the wormhole created by the engine imbalance earlier in the film.
There are such things as rogue stars and black holes. Meaning that they are not stationary but moving through space at very rapid speeds in comparison with any spacecraft we ever launched. So, your idea that a voyager could not be captured by a black hole is preposterous. Said black hole could be near 200 or more light years away depending on time and place of actual capture. That would make it much harder to find in relation to our solar system. Also black holes would be very hard to find without a very substantial source of matter falling into it. Gravitational lensing would therefore be the only way to find it. That also is very difficult on lower mass black holes, which would be the most likely candidate for being a traveling rogue (easier to be kicked out/sling shotted by a much larger black hole or merger of black holes. There would definitely be many reasons for people including Starfleet to be unable to detect a black hole.
@@royhorn2782 Decker did say "What they Used to call a black hole" meaning it wasn't a black hole. I still Saya moving wormhole. Like the Barzan wormhole did
It seems I must say this once again! Sulu had good reason to be shocked at Spock's pronouncement that the V'ger cloud was a twelth-power energy field. Decker put it well when he said that it was a power level that thousands of starships couldn't generate. Just to put the matter into perspective, our sun is a ninth-power energy field.
McCoy & the ensign plus Chapel & Ilea being acquainted...absolutely possible due to crew rotations...military personnel on new assignments know lots of folks at their new base...very common.
But why should we, the audience, care that his name was Perez if he's a throwaway character that has nothing to do with any other part of the movie? The dialogue would have worked just fine if McCoy had just said, "Humans, Ensign. Us." (He could have still said "Ensign" since everyone has insignia on their uniforms.)
I was recalled during the GWOT after 10 years went to FT Bliss and ran into someone I had served with who had also been recalled. During the Gulf War, I was in an Assembly Area in the KSA during Desert Shield and someone tapped me on the shoulder to ask directions, it was a guy from the Armor Battalion I had supported as a FIST and Battalion FSO in Germany 3-5 yeras before. Military Organizations tend to be a small world.
I remember seeing the costume design art on those security armor suits in some book a long time ago, and supposedly they DO have the name of the person on them, either on the head under the emblem or on the upper part of the chest. I have forgotten where I saw that, however.
As dumb as the Klingons taking potshots at a mysterious energy cloud was, it was still the best scene in the movie. Great pacing, great effects, great score. And Stephen Collins was nowhere to be seen. And really, given how some Klingon commanders react in other situations, it wasn't out-of-character at all.
The scene on the rec deck was added because the entire crew was never scene on screen before. And they haven't been seen together since that was the 430s big scene.
I much prefer Shatner to that pompous Picard. I was thinking of another word starting with 'p' to get some interesting alliteration going but nothing came to mind.
What is that floating in Kirk's toilet? Oh that's the Captain's Log. I''ll give it to the Groom of the Stool to decode it. Damn Astrologers don't know sh*t.
They clearly spent 20 hours flying round and round and round and round and round and round the Enterprise listening to epic music. You can see those 20 hours in realtime in the unedited Director's Cut.
A lot of the dumb things in the movie were addressed in the decent novelization by Alan Dean Foster (same guy who wrote the awesome original Star Wars novelization). When Uhura announced to the bridge that Lt Illia was Deltan, both Sulu and Chekov turn around making strange faces. When she arrives on the bridge she explains to Kirk that her oath of celibacy is on record. This makes absolutely zero sense in the movie, but the novel explains that the Deltans are an humanoid alien race that put off extremely powerful pheromones that make human males insane with arousal. This included Decker who almost went insane with sexual desire while they dated, which is why he broke it off (their relationship not his...) and left her home planet in the first place. The bizarre part was they left those stupid and disposable lines in the movie without any context to explain it. Ironic, Star Trek got a G rating when Disney's The Black Hole which also came out in Christmas of 1979, got their first PG rating ever.
Yeah, the rating system is inconsistent and not always accurate IMO. ST:TMP should have gotten a PG rating, not only for the slight sexual references, but just because little kids would have found the interior of V'Ger pretty scary. The Black Hole was PG (and maybe it would have been PG-13 if it existed back then) because of the depiction of re-animated corpses and robots that literally sawed up a crew member. Pretty intense stuff for a Disney movie back then.
I believe Voyager 6’s computer was damaged scrambled enough that whomever found it and put it into that massive ship didn’t bother to clean off that name plate (because what aliens speak English) and just said, “your name appears to be these symbols: V-G-E-R”.
I always just assumed Kirk just hurriedly, and largely without thinking deeper about it, pressed a button or two to summon something to wear that was already in Illia's dress ensemble (we don't exactly see the man just shuffling through a dress catalog after all). So the scantness of her attire at least somewhat checks out in the little lore we have on the Deltan species. Who are far more liberal in their sexuality than humans are. I actually really liked TMP, aside from the ship's muted white and gray interior color palette. The newly remastered 4k version is absolutely STUNNING.
I saw this movie in the Chinese Mann theater when it came out and I was 13. The special effects were epic, but it seemed to be lacking -- something. Fast forward almost 20 years and it is 1996. I am in a crappy motel room in Ohio and it is on the cable. Watching it as an adult, they could have cut the entire first 45 minutes of the movie out and it would have been a lot better. Kirk needed to have some kind of pissing contest with Decker for the plot to work, but everything else could have been cut. We really didn't need to see a 20 minute tour of the Enterprise in dock, nor the gory details of a transporter malfunction for the plot to work.
Obviously, many points that weren’t brought up… 1. You’d think that something as massive as V’ger, travelling at warp speed, would have been easily detected months, if not years ago instead of the three day warning. 2. If V’ger was lost to a ‘black hole’, survived, and was found by who knows, at some place, how did it ‘know’ what direction to use to come back! It’s a mighty big coincidence that it went the right way, the universe is immense! 3. Surely when V’ger accessed the ship’s computer that it would have found reference to itself 4. Following the V’ger incident, it seems the whole thing was dropped! No research into the aliens that took care of V’ger, nothing from those aliens and nothing from the V’ger/Decker merger. 5. Surely the path that V’ger followed to reach Earth could have been calculated… 6. If V’ger was this massive, wouldn’t this affect everything in its path, even our solar system, planets, perhaps the Sun?
I'm gonna blow your mind here, but maybe McCoy and Chapel heard other people call the ensign and Ilea by name at some point during the 2 days. Or maybe they just familiarized themselves with the crew roster beforehand.
Nothing like looking at a 43 year old movie through a 2022 lens. Yeah makes perfect sense to me. Well we all like to poke some fun at Star trek, I'm a major major trekker, some of the comments just seemed to forget that things were not as well known about space as they are today. Most people didn't notice all this in 1979. I remember seeing it in theaters and I was thrilled at the special effects. I know I'm in the minority but I really like this movie, mistakes and all. And the new version is fantastic to watch. 🖖🏼
Shooting at something that's ridiculously powerful is actually VERY Klingon. LOL But that cloud is as big as our solar system. Shooting blind inside that hoping to hit something is dumb.
Yes, the Klingons shooting torpedoes at the cloud was beyond stupid. Even assuming the torps each had a power equal to a 100 megaton explosion, that would have been like shooting a BB gun at an approaching hurricane. A better action would have been for the Klingons been launching probes. Heck you could fix that error by changing the subtitles.
The Klingon's actions *are* dumb but they aren't out of character. They're a warrior race. Can you imagine the glory and honour that'd be bestowed upon that crew if, by some random, Nat-20s-All-The-Way chance they managed to destroy The Intruder?
Don't say the photosonic scan, it's LIDAR people, predicted decades early. Great film I remember be taken to see this film by my oldest brother, who died in 2007. I remember being blown away by the opening with the Klingon battle. It is still one of my favourite opening of any film. I know it has flaws but still a great film. Re-watched after my wife said that it was one of her favourite Star Trek films and my love for it returned.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the ridiculous uniforms that they wear in this movie, which are only worn in this movie, and the fact that kirk and probably others are wearing different uniforms at different times throughout the movie
Kirk's short sleeved uniform made him look more like a dentist than a Starlet Admiral. That's what he was doing in the time it took them to get to V'Ger, freelance dental work on crew members
I've seen or read interviews with Star Trek actors who said they'd come back for future movies as long as they *never* have to wear those uniforms / costumes again.
They’re also rarely seen in Star Trek after this point. You see the sequel and TOS uniforms all the time in other Star Trek Media but TMP uniforms are like a forgotten relic never to be seen again
I saw the movie when it came out!, good movie, had to kinda tie everything together as they couldn't get into a lot of detail, otherwise it would have been a 4 hour movie !, as for Ilia, the actress who played her, ( I forget her name) passed away from cancer a few years ago from what I saw on a Hollywood documentary about what happened to past Hollywood actors and actresses, I think she had her hair shaved for this movie, but she was a great actress along with the rest of the cast
I can totally believe a crew pf Klingons taking on a system scale enemy for the shits and giggles, but you spot on about leaving it a lone while it makes a b-line to your enemies stronghold.
7 days leading up to the Friday release of ST:8 - First Contact, the local theater did a week long marathon showing all the other movies, one each night at a 10pm showing. As a person who worked 1st shift this was tough for me and I dozed off at the first movie somewhere during the long special effects tunnels near the end. I still have my laminated pass to see all 8 movies. I was the only person to show up for all 8 movies.
Wow I only did Star Trek movies 2-4 back-to-back in one day at a local theatre. They also did Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi back-to-back, on a different day.
@@mattbartley2843 It was really cool seeing I through IV on the big screen for the first time. ST:V was the first one I went to when it was released and I was one of the few that actually liked that film. I went to the cinema to see each movie after that. Generations was meh but 1st Contact was phenomenal.
I don't think people disliked The Motion Picture it is just a slow movie, today people seem to not have the attention span and get bored quite easily, as film's now a days are alot faster pace.
@@TheKeithterry Must a met I never fully understood why critics love 2001 Space Odyssey but say Star Trek The Motion Picture is boring. Both films are a slow paced and there is only roughly 10yrs difference between them.
5:20 Deltans are not completely hairless. The women emit pheromones which are extremely strong, almost irresistible to human males. Also sexual intercourse between Deltans is not just a physical joining, but also telepathic. This is why Decker and Ilia have such a strong bond, and when he joins with V'Ger she joins him in the merge. It is shows several times that the emotional bond they have is able to surface in the probe form of her for a few brief seconds. This became the basis for the Riker/Troi story line and what Decker and Ilia would have been in Phase II. As a result, Ilia swore an oath of celibacy and shaved her head as a symbol of it.
I view Gene Rodenberry and George Lucas in a very similar vein - both were visionaries early in their careers but stuck around long after their best years were behind them. Rodenberry was perfect for TV based sci-fi in the early to mid 60's. But ten years later, attempting to write a screenplay and produce a feature length film in the late 70's he was way out of his element and depth. IMHO this movie and TNG were made and thrived despite his best efforts
Well, TNG started doing way better when Roddenberry was cast aside and given a symbolic title. Pretty much the same that happened with the movie franchise.
There's a long youtube "Inside Star Trek The Real Story Herbert Solow Robert Justman" that really reframes the Roddenberry myth and a lot of things about Trek. I can't recommend it enough
You could say the same thing about George Lucas. Sorry, but as a filmmaker, he's weak in the writing, especially the dialogue. When he got help from other writers (e.g., Lawrence Kasdan) and directors (e.g., Irvin Kirshner), that's when Star Wars thrived and was at its most intelligent, which is probably why The Empire Strikes Back is widely considered the best film in the franchise. Lucas really shines in technological advancement of film rather than filmmaking itself.
I was a little younger, but yes, it was ! Sat right at the front and the Enterprise looked so damn real and - yeah, beautiful - in the spacedock !! Loved it.
you are dead wrong about the Bones Chapel thing. Them knowing the names of the crew IS LITERALLY the only thing they would be doing once on board. Thier entire job depends on that.
Over the course of a longer mission, sure, but it's going to take more than the day or two that McCoy had been on board to learn the name of every crewman.
@@danieloneal7137 considering that Scotty almost imediately tells us the crew is the same from the original Enterprise it would only require he learn the new ones. Which he could easily do in a day. Oh and again THATS HIS DAMN JOB.
@@danieloneal7137 well since you have found someone with experience with naval ships, let me explain this again. Was there a medical emergency during that time? no then yes they do need to learn the names and medical requirements of the crew. Also rather then RL Navy go with Starfleet regulations. Oh that right Starfleet regs dictate that yes the CMO is required to know that information.
You need to factor in the Director's Edition, i.e., the finished film. For instance, they reduced the size of Vger's energy cloud, via a simple edit, down to a slightly more reasonable 2 AU. Re: Ensign Perez, presumably the Enterprise has largely the same crew as she did during TOS (one of those time references that slip on by tells us that it's only been a few years since the end of the five year mission, and Scotty grouses about how the crew haven't nearly enough time with the new equipment, implying old crew). As for Ilia and Chapel, yeah, that's some pretty fast bonding.
How likely would it have been in real life, for a crew that served on a five-year mission, then add 18 months to that (the time Scotty says was needed to refit the Enterprise) for all the same crew (or maybe let's say most of the original crew) to be assigned to the same ship in the same roles? In that time, even the captain got replaced (initially by Decker) and Captain Kirk was promoted to Admiral - Chief of Starfleet Operations, in fact.
@@ebinrock It had only been a few years, not everyone is getting reassigned, and there's a good chance much of the crew stuck around to assist in the refit of their particular area. IRL, the crew of the USS Eldridge actually took part in the construction of the ship from the get-go.
Some good points made,however not all of these have to be "dumb". Not all that odd that the Ilia replacement materializes nude; it was given Ilia's form to more directly communicate with the Enterprise crew. V'Ger likely had very little concern about clothing for it. Also, its ridiculous to assume the outfit she/it has on after exiting the shower is something Kirk dreamed up; obviously its what the real Ilia had on rotation as lounge wear in her own cabin, regardless how short or long you think it is. Those clear pumps could be made of materials that don't even exist on Earth. Or maybe Ilia just LIKED wearing shoes like that. Instead of trying to paint Kirk as a perv, keep in mind this is centuries in the future, these are alien beings who have their own cultures, beliefs and social values. As far as McCoy knowing Ensign Perez's name, who's to say Perez didn't come to sickbay for a medical issue before this exchange in the cabin? Same thing for Chapel. She could have met Ilia anytime previous to her being assigned.
Also Deltians are sexual by nature. Her attire matched that. Plus I think it goes further to go with the theme and plot. Vger was trying to lure it's creator out to come to it.
I agree about the heels on Ilyia's outfit, but outfit, and costumes in general, were 1970s, based on Logan's Run type of films. Different times, and not at all prudish compared to today.
My take from what I read of the costume designer and the notes on the Deltians was they dressed her to match the culture. There is a reference about Kirk saw her constantly nude even though she wore a uniform. I always took it that the heels and outfit was meant to show the sexual power of her species. Since they could not make her nude that why she was dressed that way. Also vger made her nude on purpose most likely because she was deltian after all. I also always saw that vger was trying to seduce it's creator in some fashion to come to it.
Bah! Kor probably ordered the captain of the Klingon task force to go on his suicide mission. Pissed him off some how. Perhaps by drinking the last of Kor's bloodwine. You know what? That's my head canon now. Kor sent the order for those three ships to engage V'ger because their commander drank the last of Kor's bloodwine. Lesson learned? Don't leave a Dahar master on empty.
McCoy knew who Sulu, Uhura, Checkov, etc. were. Because a lot of the ship's crew from his days aboard during the 5-year mission had stayed with her during her refit. So Perez might have been one of them. I mean, that's dumb; the refit took 18 months, so Perez should have been a Lieutenant JG by then, but maybe he wasn't a great officer and didn't earn a promotion. I always hated that the cloud was 82AU in diameter. It's basically the size of a small solar system, being generated by a ship that looks like it's a few hundred km long (I've seen estimates that it was between 100km and 200km long). But at least Bob Wise made that a little more believable in the Director's Edition - he edited Xon, er, Branch's dialogue down to say "Over two AUs in diameter!" Still unbelievable, but less so than 82AU. The Ilia probe's appearance naked in a shower was stupid, as was the outfit she wore for the rest of the film. As a kid I didn't notice - I was ten when the movie premiered - but over time I've come to realize that it was probably either Gene Roddenberry or Bob Wise's decision to put that stupid outfit on Persis Khambatta to show off her beautiful legs. A better decision would have been to have the probe appear back on the bridge, in the same uniform that Ilia was wearing when she was killed, but to have put the real Ilia in an updated version of the sexist miniskirt uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols and all other female cast throughout the original series run. I mean, it would still have been misogynistic as hell, but at least it would have been consistent within the show's fictional reality. Also, why did the probe that killed Ilia focus on her at all? It was already throwing Spock around the bridge like a rag doll to punish him for cutting off its access to the ship's computer - logically, Spock should have been the one digitized to death, not Ilia. A simple change, having the probe connect to the ships systems through the nav console and letting the info appear on the main screen, then having Ilia smash the console, would have explained the digital assassination far better. Lots of other dumb stuff in this film, along with boring stuff and awful production design choices, but that's a Star Fleet uniform of a different color...
@@watts111 Looking at a woman because you're attracted to her isn't misogynistic, but specifically designing a female character's costume to be revealing and skimpy when it doesn't fit the story is. I mean, if Ilia had been digitized while she was in the shower, then the probe could have appeared naked in the shower. But Ilia was digitized in uniform on the bridge, so the probe should have appeared in uniform. Even the smallest body functions were precisely duplicated, even eye moisture - so why not her damn uniform? I mean, it ain't even subtle.
Oh, Ilia's lack of clothing was definitely Roddenberry's idea. All you have to do is look at TOS outfits all "hot alien of the week" chicks wore. He was a Kennedy era progressive but got the whole sexual revolution thing wrong. Just look at how many times he cheated on Majel Roddenberry. Not an uncommon thing when you look at Logan's Run, Buck Rogers and a few other fantastical sci fi of the 70s. There was no way the producers were going to have Spock killed by the probe. There would blood on the streets from all the pissed off Trekkies. That and Decker's fate was their way of getting rid of the last vestiges of the Phase 2 to save on casting costs.
This is the same v'ger that gets angry whenever communications are attempted so, directing big energy beams like the transporter is risky. My only issue since I saw it in the theatre is why didn't they just send a shuttle. Would take less time for that crew to get in one than it would for Kirk to suit up.
True, there were many 'holes' in the movie, but as many others thought at the time. "It's Star Trek and it's back!" Also, the book "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture" reveals how some things had actually been stollen from the sets, among other issues.
It makes sense that McCoy would know the ensign. Drafted back or not, recently back on the ship or not, he's the CMO. He would immediately review the crew manifest. Also, the V'ger cloud is 2AU, not 82. Still enormous, but not 82AU enormous.
it was originally 82AUs, but in later cuts of the movie, they revised it down to 2AUs. So depending on which version you watch, both are correct. But I agree that 2AUs in size is more reasonable given what was shown on screen.
I agree that there may be logical reasons why McCoy would/could have known the ensign's name, but your point on the size of V'ger is both correct and incorrect. In the original theatrical release Commander Branch, played by David Gautreaux, who was on the Epsilon Nine station observed the cloud to be 82AU in diameter. Later editions of the movie were edited to omit the "eighty" portion of his dialogue in order to make V'ger's size seem somewhat more reasonable, though as you said, still enormous. As an old timer who saw this movie in the theater, I tend to hold "original" material as canon, so I go with 82AU in my own mind. LLAP
My dad took me and my brother to see this film after it opened in December 1979. We were big Trek fans and it was a thrill to see the cast reunited for a major movie.
Surprised you missed out McCoy being mocked for not wanting to use the transporter when it literally barbecued Sunak a few minutes earlier.
What!!!! Not another Prime minster gone, I didn't even know Rishi was in Starfleet … were doomed😉😉😉
@@BeakersAreCool
How long you got Sumak lasting?
You reckon he can beat Truss' record? Maybe get the sack in less than 44 days?
*Sonak, bro
@@AndrewD8Red *Sunak, bro
@@1978rharris
Yeah, I noticed the typo after I'd done it.
I'm not changing it 😡
Even as a child seeing this movie, knowing the Klingons were not idiots because watching Star Trek was part of how I was raised, I asked my dad why they would just shoot at a cloud as big as our solar system. That's one of the first times he told me to stop over-analyzing things, shut up, and just watch it. It's been decades and I'm an old man now, but I feel like child me just got redeemed here.
The Klingons were attacking, because V'Ger had crossed part of their space and 'attacked' them in some form, probably deconstructed some ships or bases into data. edit: It might only be mention in the novel of the film that this had happened but I seem to recall them saying it early in the film.
@@Thurgosh_OG Thanks for your input, my friend... but as a Star Trek fan, can you ever imagine Klingons sending a vendetta squad of 3 D7 attack cruisers to take out a solar-system sized juggernaut cloud of superior firepower with no known weaknesses when they wouldn't send that small of a set of ships to just take out the planets of a solar system that can't even defend against them. Well, other than being in a movie that shows how seriously OP that godlike monster cloud moving through space is to the people watching the movie.
Nah, your dad was right.
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Then repeat to yourself, 'It's just a show,
I should really just relax.'"
One thing that I really find funny in this scene. (And I do think it's a great action packed introductory scene, by the way) but... The Klingons in this Trek film compared to the later films,, looked like they were part of a Bee Gee's convention with those overbites.
I distinctly remember seeing this in the theater as a 15 year old and thinking "Wait, a planet of super-smart robots that couldn't figure out how to remove a bit of grime?"
Robots with a sense of humour? Oh look the Earth sent us another one of these. Let's send this one back. Reprogram it a bit, put in a new battery, throw some mud on it so they think it's been through heck and back. Those carbon based units won't know what to do with it.
In an earlier revision of ST:TMP the V'Ger message is actually decoded. In the August 9th revision (1) Spock does NOT smash the Science Console when Ilia is kidnapped. (2) The ship is held for 12 hours alongside VGer after Ilia is taken away and before being pulled into the ship (3) In the 12 hours, Spock has decoded the message: V'Ger (revealing the name) is asking for the the Enterprise's place of origin and intentions. (4) Spock programs the computer to talk with V'Ger, and actually communicate directly with it where they find out that it's headed for Earth, the home of the creator. (5) Suddenly the Enterprise computer begins communicating directly with V'Ger without crew's prompting, causing Spock to smash the science console. The earlier May 17th draft goes a little further having Spock realize V'Ger is a living machine when it refers to itself as "I" and "My." By October 2nd, the scene is no longers in the script.
Fascinating
All that and the only thing they keep in is Spock smashing the console?? Dumb.
Sounds like that director's cut they put out a few months ago wasn't extensive enough.
@@gateauxq4604 - I got the idea that they whittled the scene down. The Enterprise computer basically starts communicating the "Earth Defenses...Starfleet Strengths" in the early drafts in the decoding scene, which they moved to the probe scene. My feeling is that they trying to keep the movie moving by removing a "12 hour wait."
@@CrimsonRevenant666- the decoding scene was never filmed. It was removed from the script before they filmed it.
You missed the actual dumbest thing. Two people get sploded in the transporter, and seemingly moments later McCoy beams in while the crew banters about his well-known distrust of the technology.
McCoy is pretty upset about the whole thing, it's not like he beams in like it's no big deal
He was initially refusing
He was also pretty upset about being pulled out of retirement, it was a whole scene
It's quite a while later. The transporter is fixed. The reason for McCoy not entering the transporter is is scepticism about how successful the repair was. It all makes sense. Films don't happen in real time usually. If they did 2001 would actually be millions of years long.
@@Concreteowl or maybe a different transporter? Do we know that there is only one??
@@rebeccarebeccaa2515 the problem with the transporter seems to be across all of the ship. Its why Kirk takes the shuttle over from the space office.
So, what you're saying is that all movies should depict things in real time... there's no room for theatrical license to keep things moving. What is a few minutes in real time may have been several hours in the movies universe.
But really, I remember sitting in the theater on opening night and was just psyched that Star Trek was back and on the big screen. Nothing else mattered. I didn’t sit there making jokes like MST3K, this was Star Trek, and it was back!
Had the same experience with Star Wars. Took a while to realize how bad the writig of The Force Awakens acutually is (didn't happen with TLJ - that one felt bad right away) :D
@@StYxXx 🤣🤣 I understand but that may be a poor example. But then again, SW movie quality has been like the proverbial frog in a pot with the heat slowly being turned up.
@@StYxXx If you don't love TFA, you are not a true Star Wars fan.
@@trhansen3244 if you like the force awakens you’re not a true Star Wars fan. It literally shat all over the expanded lore that “true” Star Wars fans considered canon and they didn’t even bother to plan out the trilogy before they made it, so the sequels directly contradict it. Rogue one is the only good Disney made Star Wars movie.
I had just turned 16 and gotten my drivers license. This was my first outing in driving a car without adults. I drove to my fellow Star Trek nerd friend's house and picked him up and we went to the mall to see this on opening day, December 7th 1979, a date that will live in infamy...
After it was over we walked out into the mall in silence. Finally my friend says, "That movie gave me a headache!" and I chuckled at the ice breaker and agreed, it did kind of suck.
1:22 “That’s peanuts to space”
A superbly executed tribute to “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
Kirk has a thruster pack. He uses it to direct Spock's limp and unconscious body back into the ship. He doesn't follow Spock because he disagrees with the risk Spock is taking. Spock doesn't expect to return from his voyage into Vger. That's why he is narrating his findings so the log launched from his suit would be recovered by the ship.
yep. most all these "dumb" things listed are stupid and very nitpicking or have a very flawed basis
@@ShadowArtist extremely nitpicky, I mean sure it's still the motionless picture. This video makes it out to be way worse than it is
They also could have transported them back
@@kkcombs622 I doubt if Spock would have put to much weight on that possibility as he was physically entering the chamber because signals were being bounced back. The teleported beam is a signal. Heck even when V'ger grants an audience it makes them walk there and back from the saucer section.
I think kkcombs is saying (and I agree) that Kirk didn’t need to go out in an EVA suit at all and there was no point in doing so. Just tell the transporter room to beam Spock back in as soon as they could get a lock.
It’s a bit like if, on a real ship, somebody jumps overboard and, rather than throwing a life preserver and ropes, the captain jumped in the water, too.
Even just sending out a shuttlecraft would have made more sense.
I don't care how many plot holes it has - I love this film . Why is it necessary to pick things apart. All film/tv can be looked at this way, or they can just be enjoyed as a bit of escapism. I, for one, will continue to watch this film with affection.
Agreed! I NEVER understood the hate for this movie. Same people will probably pick Ghost in the Shell to bits as well. :(
Well, I like it too. But tearing it apart is an American pastime!
(10) Uh, we're talking about Voyager SIX here ... which presumably was faster than Voyagers 1 and 2, so it could have gone further than 17.2 billion kilometers.
(7) Persis Khambatta was a former Miss India (although she usually has hair).
(1) 14:22 "We can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" (oops, wrong series)
And you forgot ... those **** uniforms.
Ilea's sensors are localized to her skin and private areas. These need to be exposed for full probe readings. Plus, stripper heels magnify the accuracy. Roddenberry and Berman told me so
My favorite stupid moment is a small one. At one point McCoy walks on to the bridge, looks around, and leaves. No one says anything to him, he doesn't say anything, he wasn't called there. Just really there to show McCoy still exisits.
He appeared regularly on the bridge in the original series, usually as an excuse to get down Spock's ear because "Jim" wasn't on the ship.
@@Makeyourselfbig yes but in the scene he just walks on the bridge, looks around, doesn't say anything, and leaves.
Not a topic of the video, but it occurs to me that if they had just worn black or charcoal trousers that the uniforms would look pretty good. Kirk's contrasting gray and white admiral's uniform is actually really nice. Just no one piece jumpsuits in the future, please.
Exactly!! Black pants would've looked much better. Leave their jammies at home and spare us the junk 😒
Seriously, I've always hated those drab "onesies" from TMP. Worst. Uniforms. Ever.
@@robynzelickson6164 what's wrong with Decker showing his "Captain's Log"? LOL
@James Whitfield lol it's just a bit rude is all. Not something I can unsee 😂
@@HylianFox3 That's why they got rid of them after season one and we got the 2nd 'Picard Manoeuvre' - stand up pull top down at waist.
Firstly, I want to make it clear I know Brie didn't write the article, so none of what I'm about to say has any focus on her. This is just such a negative, pessimistic article. Imagine going through an entire movie and just writing down things that you find to be "dumb", and the writer did this at least 6 times for WhatCulture. If you compare this to let's say, Sean Ferrick's Ups and Downs series, he confronts some of the downs with still a sense of positivity and optimism which I feel is the way Trek is meant to be taken. I really subscribed to Trek Culture only because of Sean and his enthusiasm for Star Trek, and since then have discovered some other great presenters here, but this kind of stuff really just makes me feel like this is just one long recorded Reddit thread. Maybe it's just me.
Best thing about the motion picture is that it paved the way for the Wrath of Khan
It also directly led to Spock's death scene. Nimoy did not want to do another Star Trek film after this, but was back on board after Harve Bennett said he was going to write it.
This movie bored my arse off, but absolute mad love and respect to anyone who counts this one as a favourite.
Me too
I just watch it as a really beautiful work of visual art.
Yes, it is quite normal for people to meet on a posting early in their career, then not see each other until they're posted to the same base/ship/squadron at some distant future time.
plus Chapel might have taken her physical exam upon joining
It very much is normal. I was in the Army for 18 years. I've run into multiple people I served with years later. Or working with them again in another unit. Ended up actually working with one of my drill sergeants from basic training when I became a one myself. And on the bit about Dr. McCoy knowing Ensign Perez after only two days is obviously very possible. I mean, come on. If you work near or with a person in the same place, you're obviously going to know them very quickly
@@jameswhitfield6220 Perez could even have gone to Sickbay during those 2 days and spoken to Bones
So no one is going to consider that with McCoy being reinstated as CMO that he wouldn't go through and do a quick review of personnel and at least gander at the new people's file?
The final edit (by the director) occurred just hours before the release of the film the next day. The first prints were rushed to theaters by express air freight at a major cost to the studio. I was lucky to find a small theater in Manhattan that still had first-day tickets at 12 noon.
What they had is called a "working print" usually put together to show to executives and test audiences before editing is finalized and last minute tweaks are ironed out. They hadn't even created an opening title sequence for it yet and had to use simple, black and white title cards for the opening. The film needed about another month or two of post production work to get into shape for theaters but unfortunately they were locked into a release date they could not get out of.
@@Lethgar_Smith Back in the days when films were released in the US months before they were out in the UK, so we got the finished version over here.
There's a photo of hundreds of cases of the film the night before (Dec. 6, 1979) in a hangar at Santa Monica Airport waiting for the final reel to be dropped in every one of those cases. And the film in those cases was still wet.
The black hole issue can be somewhat fixed. Let's presume we detected a gravitational anomaly at a time we were launching additional Voyagers after Voyager 2. We'd probably assume it was a black hole, and send Voyager 6 to investigate, and was intended to impact the presumed black hole. However, it turned out to be an unstable wormhole that changed its endpoint near Earth when Voyager 6 entered.
The dialogue as given is still awkward exposition for the audience but a minimal rewrite can reduce the awkwardness.
This is a good point. Often a single sentence of dialogue would have fixed a plot hole.
I remember coming out of the theater from seeing this on opening day, and my group of "nerdy" friends and I did a lot of discussing and pulling apart the movie, and frankly I don't remember the things we cringed at and appreciated. However, I think it might be true that you're raising a bunch of different things.
As always thank you so very much for the video.
I think the biggest point of contention, for us, at the time, was they just did a expanded version of "Star Trek: The Original Series • The Changeling".
LOL! Error! Error! Error! yea, it was kinda the same episode but a movie.
Like you, I enjoyed it in the big screen, but we agreed it was just a remake of “The Changeling”.
"I AM NOMAD!!"
Not only was it just a remake of "The Changeling", that first movie didn't need to be longer than a 47 minute television episode!
I've been saying for at least 20 years now that Star Trek is NOT suited to movies. You can't tell the stories of these characters during a movie. You have to tell it over time, and by 47 minutes at a time. A 90 minute movie is a one-off representation, and that's not nearly enough time to create the characters AND THEN tell the stories. You can't deal with a topic as heavy as Data's rights when you're also dealing with baddies who want to shoot your ship out of orbit, enslave your crew, and gloat over their conquest.
I recently discovered Star Trek Continues, which is 11 episodes with Vic Mignogna as Captain Kirk. I've watched the first 7 episodes, and I have to say, they did a top-notch job with that work. Their Kirk has grown from William Shatner's portrayal. Their Spock may be better than the original, as great as Leonard Nimoy was. Their McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Checkov, and the new characters are already richer and more "human" than the original.
It was a labor of love for sure, but they told some really good stories and expanded a little bit on the TOS universe. Just in these first seven episodes that I've seen, they dealt with topics of slavery, discrimination (race, ethnicity, gender, and more), mental health, disability, violent parental abuse, abandonment, guilt, war, bravery, cowardice, and everything in between. And a race of people coming to not only begin to realize that they are bigoted, but actually going so far as to trying to change their ways.
Man, oh man, if you can get a Tellarite to just become somewhat self-aware at what jerks their race is composed of, you've done more than you realize. That's character growth. I look forward to seeing the remaining 4 episodes this weekend.
Yes, they were "dumb, dead Klingons", but it's consistent with later canon. In Discovery, Burnham suggests that the weapons officer fire at the Klingons with full phases and torpedoes, because the Vulcans did it and it worked. The aKlingons in TMP were doing what they do, but they didn't expect the elephant to step on them.
A Klingons gotta Klingon.
They had said that V'Ger had crossed part of Klingon space early in the film and this was just the Klingons, shooting back for earlier damage from V'Ger.
It's always so weird seeing the starbase the right side up, rather than upside down as it is in every other appearance.
"right side up".. hah.. as if there is such a thing in space. That said, whichever orientation it was originally intended, im willing to bet later show runners all thought the same thing.. "it looks better the other way". But then thats a staple isnt it? The Enterprise is upside down the entire time. It was originally intended to be flipped. Either way, we can chalk it up to their stations being modular and configurable.
My brain is so wired to view the "upside down" orientation from the latter films that I now see the TMP version as being the upside down one.
@@jamesdietz29 also I'm not sure if I think the later orientation is actually better, of if I'm just used to seeing that one.
That's the wonderful thing about that type of space station: it's flexible and it can be oriented however Starfleet needs it to be. In the apex (TWOK) orientation without the smaller office modules, it's a space lab. In the nadir (TMP) orientation, it's an orbiting office building. Cygnus-x1/Star Trek has some pretty comprehensive full-color deck plans of it. 🖖😎👍
I don't recall seeing a starbase in TMP, just a floating space office and drydock ("cage" surrounding the Enterprise). If you're referring to that big Spacedock orbiting Earth in Star Treks III-VI, that the Enterprise docks *into* via "space doors", that's a whole other thing. As for anything being "upside down", only the space office I mentioned is flipped around to become Space Station Regula One in The Wrath of Khan. That was a production cost-saving measure.
1:03 Decker's statement seemed to imply that it was something like like a wormhole that earlier scientists mistakenly thought was just a blackhole. This is what always made the most sense to me.
What word-idioticy? Wouldn’t it make more sense to use an actual word? Like, maybe, idiocy? Do you not have a dictionary or maybe google? And you used it more than once. That just hurts on so many levels.
You said "penetrate the orifice" more times than necessary, and I love it 🤣🤣
With thrusters
The fan theory is that Voyaget 6 actually went through a temporary wormhole. Similar to the Barzan wormhole.
Similar to what you said, I think it woulda suggested there was some sort of tear in the fabric of space. A folding of spacetime. A tesseract. And Voyager is the first thing to fall in and come back.
Correct. The phraseology is “what was KNOWN as a black hole,” meaning it wasn’t an actual black hole, but theorized as such at the time. Admittedly, it would’ve been easier to call it a wormhole or tesseract instead of this awkward turn-of-phrase, but my guess is that one of the screenwriters wanted to distinguish it from the wormhole created by the engine imbalance earlier in the film.
Wormholes are moving all around the galaxy much faster than the speed of light. One actually passed through the Earth in Siberia in 1909.
There are such things as rogue stars and black holes. Meaning that they are not stationary but moving through space at very rapid speeds in comparison with any spacecraft we ever launched. So, your idea that a voyager could not be captured by a black hole is preposterous. Said black hole could be near 200 or more light years away depending on time and place of actual capture. That would make it much harder to find in relation to our solar system. Also black holes would be very hard to find without a very substantial source of matter falling into it. Gravitational lensing would therefore be the only way to find it. That also is very difficult on lower mass black holes, which would be the most likely candidate for being a traveling rogue (easier to be kicked out/sling shotted by a much larger black hole or merger of black holes. There would definitely be many reasons for people including Starfleet to be unable to detect a black hole.
@@royhorn2782 Decker did say "What they Used to call a black hole" meaning it wasn't a black hole. I still Saya moving wormhole. Like the Barzan wormhole did
It seems I must say this once again! Sulu had good reason to be shocked at Spock's pronouncement that the V'ger cloud was a twelth-power energy field. Decker put it well when he said that it was a power level that thousands of starships couldn't generate. Just to put the matter into perspective, our sun is a ninth-power energy field.
Then a little later he advocates shooting the ships phasers at it.
The new 4K directors edition fixes a lot of the problems from previous versions.
Doesn't fix the lack of diversity. Or the lack of inclusion.
Might be worth buying then.
@@trhansen3244 I cant even tell if you are serious. Reality has become to silly at this point.
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax" -MST3K
Loved it when I saw it in the theatre as an 11 year old, and still love it today.
McCoy & the ensign plus Chapel & Ilea being acquainted...absolutely possible due to crew rotations...military personnel on new assignments know lots of folks at their new base...very common.
But why should we, the audience, care that his name was Perez if he's a throwaway character that has nothing to do with any other part of the movie? The dialogue would have worked just fine if McCoy had just said, "Humans, Ensign. Us." (He could have still said "Ensign" since everyone has insignia on their uniforms.)
I was recalled during the GWOT after 10 years went to FT Bliss and ran into someone I had served with who had also been recalled.
During the Gulf War, I was in an Assembly Area in the KSA during Desert Shield and someone tapped me on the shoulder to ask directions, it was a guy from the Armor Battalion I had supported as a FIST and Battalion FSO in Germany 3-5 yeras before.
Military Organizations tend to be a small world.
Ensign Perez could have been posted to the Enterprise during McCoy’s tenure during the five year mission.
Two years later and still an Ensign? Harry Kim would be proud. lol
@@Linerunner99 Harry Kim would scoff, and say something about "rookie numbers".
Maybe he pulled a Tom Paris and saved a waterworld, getting busted back down to ensign in the process.
Simpler solution: Perez could have shown up for a medical check-up shortly before. McCoy is still the doctor …
Yeah, convenient, but possible.
I remember seeing the costume design art on those security armor suits in some book a long time ago, and supposedly they DO have the name of the person on them, either on the head under the emblem or on the upper part of the chest. I have forgotten where I saw that, however.
As dumb as the Klingons taking potshots at a mysterious energy cloud was, it was still the best scene in the movie. Great pacing, great effects, great score. And Stephen Collins was nowhere to be seen.
And really, given how some Klingon commanders react in other situations, it wasn't out-of-character at all.
This movie is in my top five for Star Trek movies. Highly underrated.
Mine too. I love the slower pace.
This is my least favourite Trek movie.
But my favourite is Insurrection, so what the heck do *I* know?
@@AndrewD8Red I used to call it "Indigestion", but since then it's grown on me.
To be fair, the Klingons attack wasn´t that dumb, since it perfectly suits the Klingons: "Attack first, ask questions later" 🤭
"Hey, this giant ominous cloud is as big as all outdoors! Let's fire our teeny-weeny torpedoes at it! That'll learn it some gorram respect!!!"
@@AndrewD8Red "Gorram?"
Hey, if yer gonna be dumb in outer space, there's no better role model than Jayne Cobb!
@@willmfrank
Why do you think Klingons respect the chain of command so much?
@@AndrewD8Red That would be the
"Chain I go get and beat you with 'til you understand who's in ruttin' command here!" 😁
The Klingons are just like the Russians.
The scene on the rec deck was added because the entire crew was never scene on screen before. And they haven't been seen together since that was the 430s big scene.
It was also a way to give a nod to the fans who kept the show alive
It's hilarious how you read the Captain's logs, even imitating Shatner's voice overacting. :)
Great job on that video, too!
I much prefer Shatner to that pompous Picard. I was thinking of another word starting with 'p' to get some interesting alliteration going but nothing came to mind.
Pretentious, professorial, ponderous, patronizing, pedantic
What is that floating in Kirk's toilet?
Oh that's the Captain's Log.
I''ll give it to the Groom of the Stool to decode it.
Damn Astrologers don't know sh*t.
the director's cut does eliminate a few of these including the size of the cloud down to 2 au's
I always wondered by someone like Isaac Asimov, a man who wrote volumes on science, would make the cloud so huge.
They clearly spent 20 hours flying round and round and round and round and round and round the Enterprise listening to epic music. You can see those 20 hours in realtime in the unedited Director's Cut.
A lot of the dumb things in the movie were addressed in the decent novelization by Alan Dean Foster (same guy who wrote the awesome original Star Wars novelization). When Uhura announced to the bridge that Lt Illia was Deltan, both Sulu and Chekov turn around making strange faces. When she arrives on the bridge she explains to Kirk that her oath of celibacy is on record. This makes absolutely zero sense in the movie, but the novel explains that the Deltans are an humanoid alien race that put off extremely powerful pheromones that make human males insane with arousal. This included Decker who almost went insane with sexual desire while they dated, which is why he broke it off (their relationship not his...) and left her home planet in the first place. The bizarre part was they left those stupid and disposable lines in the movie without any context to explain it. Ironic, Star Trek got a G rating when Disney's The Black Hole which also came out in Christmas of 1979, got their first PG rating ever.
Yeah, the rating system is inconsistent and not always accurate IMO. ST:TMP should have gotten a PG rating, not only for the slight sexual references, but just because little kids would have found the interior of V'Ger pretty scary. The Black Hole was PG (and maybe it would have been PG-13 if it existed back then) because of the depiction of re-animated corpses and robots that literally sawed up a crew member. Pretty intense stuff for a Disney movie back then.
Ilia being 'taken' does not mean she's vaporized nor dead. These guys are moving with a bit of cautious optimism now, but they're not burying her yet.
That's what i wanted to write. It looked like she just have beamed away, why should they assume she's dead?
It's clearly stated in the movie that she's been reduced to a code for storage.
The Klingons only shot at things in Startrek lore. They don’t have a friendly mode even to their enemies, enemies!!!!
I believe Voyager 6’s computer was damaged scrambled enough that whomever found it and put it into that massive ship didn’t bother to clean off that name plate (because what aliens speak English) and just said, “your name appears to be these symbols: V-G-E-R”.
Bones ran into Perez in the Mess Hall. And dropped some Spanish on him. That's how he remembers him.
I always just assumed Kirk just hurriedly, and largely without thinking deeper about it, pressed a button or two to summon something to wear that was already in Illia's dress ensemble (we don't exactly see the man just shuffling through a dress catalog after all). So the scantness of her attire at least somewhat checks out in the little lore we have on the Deltan species. Who are far more liberal in their sexuality than humans are.
I actually really liked TMP, aside from the ship's muted white and gray interior color palette. The newly remastered 4k version is absolutely STUNNING.
To be fair he does look a bit poleaxed when she steps out. And I totally agree, still my favorite movie.
I saw this movie in the Chinese Mann theater when it came out and I was 13. The special effects were epic, but it seemed to be lacking -- something.
Fast forward almost 20 years and it is 1996. I am in a crappy motel room in Ohio and it is on the cable. Watching it as an adult, they could have cut the entire first 45 minutes of the movie out and it would have been a lot better. Kirk needed to have some kind of pissing contest with Decker for the plot to work, but everything else could have been cut. We really didn't need to see a 20 minute tour of the Enterprise in dock, nor the gory details of a transporter malfunction for the plot to work.
The whole movie was stupid, but it was Star Trek. I saw it 8 times in the theatre.
Well said.
Having lived through the 1970s, I remember how starved we were for anything Star Trek.
Yes. To see a Star Trek movie was like seeing the Beetles come back together after so many years apart.
I do like the old "deliberate mispronunciation" tactic. Really encourages interactions 😁
Gets em every time 😎
@@TrekkieBrie
Kudos, you sneaky rascal!
@@TrekkieBrie as does misspelling Kirk ("Krik" lol) 😉
yah, was going to day that the dumbest thing in this post was the repeated use of the word "idiodacy" rather than idiocy, but ya beat me to it.
@@sinsofmemphisto7809 thank you. This is the whole reason I went to the comments.
Obviously, many points that weren’t brought up…
1. You’d think that something as massive as V’ger, travelling at warp speed, would have been easily detected months, if not years ago instead of the three day warning.
2. If V’ger was lost to a ‘black hole’, survived, and was found by who knows, at some place, how did it ‘know’ what direction to use to come back! It’s a mighty big coincidence that it went the right way, the universe is immense!
3. Surely when V’ger accessed the ship’s computer that it would have found reference to itself
4. Following the V’ger incident, it seems the whole thing was dropped! No research into the aliens that took care of V’ger, nothing from those aliens and nothing from the V’ger/Decker merger.
5. Surely the path that V’ger followed to reach Earth could have been calculated…
6. If V’ger was this massive, wouldn’t this affect everything in its path, even our solar system, planets, perhaps the Sun?
>>2. If V’ger was lost to a ‘black hole’, survived, and was found by who knows, at some place, how did it ‘know’ what direction to use to come back!
1. Unless it came out of a wormhole ("black hole"?) suddenly at a place that was only 3 days from Earth.
It was found by the Borg
Think i read that the "black hole" was one that was like a "rogue planet" travelling around the galaxy, passing by the Sol System.
I'm gonna blow your mind here, but maybe McCoy and Chapel heard other people call the ensign and Ilea by name at some point during the 2 days. Or maybe they just familiarized themselves with the crew roster beforehand.
Nothing like looking at a 43 year old movie through a 2022 lens.
Yeah makes perfect sense to me.
Well we all like to poke some fun at Star trek, I'm a major major trekker, some of the comments just seemed to forget that things were not as well known about space as they are today. Most people didn't notice all this in 1979. I remember seeing it in theaters and I was thrilled at the special effects. I know I'm in the minority but I really like this movie, mistakes and all. And the new version is fantastic to watch.
🖖🏼
Shooting at something that's ridiculously powerful is actually VERY Klingon. LOL
But that cloud is as big as our solar system. Shooting blind inside that hoping to hit something is dumb.
They were hitting it where they thought it was most vulnerable. As it clearly states in the novel.
It's "idiocy".
Yes, the Klingons shooting torpedoes at the cloud was beyond stupid. Even assuming the torps each had a power equal to a 100 megaton explosion, that would have been like shooting a BB gun at an approaching hurricane. A better action would have been for the Klingons been launching probes. Heck you could fix that error by changing the subtitles.
Of course, Klingons would never do this, but facing something that looked like THAT, the BEST course of action would have been to RETREAT!
Everything in the movie is incidental to Spock's character development.
Well, at least we got a kickass battle theme out of the Klingon's idiocy.
Ilea's robe was outstanding! Women recreated this design for themselves!
She looks like a 70s-80s era action figure, complete with vinyl cape!
"Newly Boneheaded Klingons." LOL!
Canon after the Motion Picture states that VGer’s cloud was actually 2au wide.
Also just 300 000 000 kms... Much better 🤦♂
To be fair, Klingons shooting at the unknown is entirely in their character; so while it's not a smart decision, it certainly makes sense.
The Klingon's actions *are* dumb but they aren't out of character. They're a warrior race. Can you imagine the glory and honour that'd be bestowed upon that crew if, by some random, Nat-20s-All-The-Way chance they managed to destroy The Intruder?
Especially after V'Ger had 'attacked' (probably reduced bases etc. to data) their border.
>>if, by some random, Nat-20s-All-The-Way chance they managed to destroy The Intruder?
12:04 and 12:33 I found a few typos. Kirk's name. The elusive krik is back
Don't say the photosonic scan, it's LIDAR people, predicted decades early. Great film I remember be taken to see this film by my oldest brother, who died in 2007. I remember being blown away by the opening with the Klingon battle. It is still one of my favourite opening of any film. I know it has flaws but still a great film. Re-watched after my wife said that it was one of her favourite Star Trek films and my love for it returned.
I'm surprised that you didn't mention the ridiculous uniforms that they wear in this movie, which are only worn in this movie, and the fact that kirk and probably others are wearing different uniforms at different times throughout the movie
Kirk's short sleeved uniform made him look more like a dentist than a Starlet Admiral. That's what he was doing in the time it took them to get to V'Ger, freelance dental work on crew members
I used to hate these uniforms. Now I like them most of all.
I've seen or read interviews with Star Trek actors who said they'd come back for future movies as long as they *never* have to wear those uniforms / costumes again.
They’re also rarely seen in Star Trek after this point. You see the sequel and TOS uniforms all the time in other Star Trek Media but TMP uniforms are like a forgotten relic never to be seen again
Space Navy feel, I'd imagine. Nicholas Meyer agrees with you to the point of giving that militaristic appearance in the next movie.
I like this channel but this just seems like nitpicking to me.
Bad writing is bad writing.
Ilia's outfit is probably why a huge percentage of the audience didn't get up and leave before the movie ended.
I saw the movie when it came out!, good movie, had to kinda tie everything together as they couldn't get into a lot of detail, otherwise it would have been a 4 hour movie !, as for Ilia, the actress who played her, ( I forget her name) passed away from cancer a few years ago from what I saw on a Hollywood documentary about what happened to past Hollywood actors and actresses, I think she had her hair shaved for this movie, but she was a great actress along with the rest of the cast
@@b.powell3480 Peris Khambatta died of a heart attack.
@@wadebarnett2542 thanks for your answer 🙏
1:20 Today I learned that Pluto is 17 kilometres away from Earth
Give or take yeah - You'd see it in the sky but it's rather shy
@@JohnnyWednesday You would be aswell if a species than can´t even decide what a male or female is had rewoked your status as a true planet
@@NashmanNash
Random transphobic comment is random. And disappointing.
@@NashmanNash Because of the distance it's taking Pluto a while to learn this fact, but once the news reaches it, Pluto is coming here to smash.
Surprised at the Klingons response? Come on, they are KLINGONS! They always shoot first and don't bother asking questions! 😆
I almost choked on my hot dog at the “outright dumb”. 😂😂😂
Sure it was a hot dog?
Phrasing
Eating hotdogs and watching TH-cam? Dangerous.
I can totally believe a crew pf Klingons taking on a system scale enemy for the shits and giggles, but you spot on about leaving it a lone while it makes a b-line to your enemies stronghold.
7 days leading up to the Friday release of ST:8 - First Contact, the local theater did a week long marathon showing all the other movies, one each night at a 10pm showing. As a person who worked 1st shift this was tough for me and I dozed off at the first movie somewhere during the long special effects tunnels near the end. I still have my laminated pass to see all 8 movies. I was the only person to show up for all 8 movies.
Wow I only did Star Trek movies 2-4 back-to-back in one day at a local theatre. They also did Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi back-to-back, on a different day.
@@mattbartley2843 It was really cool seeing I through IV on the big screen for the first time. ST:V was the first one I went to when it was released and I was one of the few that actually liked that film. I went to the cinema to see each movie after that. Generations was meh but 1st Contact was phenomenal.
I don't understand why The Motion Picture is disliked, I always loved this movie from around 10 years old.
I don't think people disliked The Motion Picture it is just a slow movie, today people seem to not have the attention span and get bored quite easily, as film's now a days are alot faster pace.
@@Chloe1sylvester1234 I love the slow intellectual Star Trek but it seems most youtubers do not.
@@TheKeithterry Must a met I never fully understood why critics love 2001 Space Odyssey but say Star Trek The Motion Picture is boring. Both films are a slow paced and there is only roughly 10yrs difference between them.
Bashing this movie is getting to be very boring!
Where did those four hours go? Like Commander Ransom said, "Just keeeeep circling..."
Love Trekculture videos. But did anyone else pick up on the irony of her replacing the word idiocy with the made up word “idiotocy”? 😂
HA I'm with you ... wondering if it was a joke
5:20 Deltans are not completely hairless. The women emit pheromones which are extremely strong, almost irresistible to human males. Also sexual intercourse between Deltans is not just a physical joining, but also telepathic. This is why Decker and Ilia have such a strong bond, and when he joins with V'Ger she joins him in the merge. It is shows several times that the emotional bond they have is able to surface in the probe form of her for a few brief seconds. This became the basis for the Riker/Troi story line and what Decker and Ilia would have been in Phase II. As a result, Ilia swore an oath of celibacy and shaved her head as a symbol of it.
I view Gene Rodenberry and George Lucas in a very similar vein - both were visionaries early in their careers but stuck around long after their best years were behind them. Rodenberry was perfect for TV based sci-fi in the early to mid 60's. But ten years later, attempting to write a screenplay and produce a feature length film in the late 70's he was way out of his element and depth. IMHO this movie and TNG were made and thrived despite his best efforts
Well, TNG started doing way better when Roddenberry was cast aside and given a symbolic title. Pretty much the same that happened with the movie franchise.
There's a long youtube "Inside Star Trek The Real Story Herbert Solow Robert Justman" that really reframes the Roddenberry myth and a lot of things about Trek. I can't recommend it enough
Roddenberry created TOS and TNG. No spinoff has even remotely matched the popularity of either show.
You could say the same thing about George Lucas. Sorry, but as a filmmaker, he's weak in the writing, especially the dialogue. When he got help from other writers (e.g., Lawrence Kasdan) and directors (e.g., Irvin Kirshner), that's when Star Wars thrived and was at its most intelligent, which is probably why The Empire Strikes Back is widely considered the best film in the franchise. Lucas really shines in technological advancement of film rather than filmmaking itself.
Tomorrow is Yesterday (TOS): "Black star" close enough to Earth to throw the Enterprise back in time and back into Earth's atmosphere.
Kirk: "Let's put some clothes on her"
*Puts clothes on*
Kirk: "Nice"
It was actually a wormhole. It is impossible to go through a black hole.
I was 18 when the movie came out. In '79, it was perfect.
I was a little younger, but yes, it was !
Sat right at the front and the Enterprise looked so damn real and - yeah, beautiful - in the spacedock !!
Loved it.
Call Star Trek V "dumb" if you will, but it's still the best Star Trek movie.
you are dead wrong about the Bones Chapel thing. Them knowing the names of the crew IS LITERALLY the only thing they would be doing once on board. Thier entire job depends on that.
Over the course of a longer mission, sure, but it's going to take more than the day or two that McCoy had been on board to learn the name of every crewman.
@@danieloneal7137 considering that Scotty almost imediately tells us the crew is the same from the original Enterprise it would only require he learn the new ones. Which he could easily do in a day. Oh and again THATS HIS DAMN JOB.
@@danieloneal7137 The novel clearly reveals they are implanted with all crew information when they board.
@@tazman2253 I’ll have to find a navy doctor and find out if their DAMN JOB is really just learning the names of everyone on their ship.
@@danieloneal7137 well since you have found someone with experience with naval ships, let me explain this again. Was there a medical emergency during that time? no then yes they do need to learn the names and medical requirements of the crew. Also rather then RL Navy go with Starfleet regulations. Oh that right Starfleet regs dictate that yes the CMO is required to know that information.
I see lots of quotes from "KRIK" - so, when does Watson get a mention?
You need to factor in the Director's Edition, i.e., the finished film. For instance, they reduced the size of Vger's energy cloud, via a simple edit, down to a slightly more reasonable 2 AU.
Re: Ensign Perez, presumably the Enterprise has largely the same crew as she did during TOS (one of those time references that slip on by tells us that it's only been a few years since the end of the five year mission, and Scotty grouses about how the crew haven't nearly enough time with the new equipment, implying old crew).
As for Ilia and Chapel, yeah, that's some pretty fast bonding.
Yeah, as EAS points out at 82 AU V'Ger's gravitational force would have fucked up our solar system long before it got close to Earth
How likely would it have been in real life, for a crew that served on a five-year mission, then add 18 months to that (the time Scotty says was needed to refit the Enterprise) for all the same crew (or maybe let's say most of the original crew) to be assigned to the same ship in the same roles? In that time, even the captain got replaced (initially by Decker) and Captain Kirk was promoted to Admiral - Chief of Starfleet Operations, in fact.
@@ebinrock It had only been a few years, not everyone is getting reassigned, and there's a good chance much of the crew stuck around to assist in the refit of their particular area. IRL, the crew of the USS Eldridge actually took part in the construction of the ship from the get-go.
Some good points made,however not all of these have to be "dumb". Not all that odd that the Ilia replacement materializes nude; it was given Ilia's form to more directly communicate with the Enterprise crew. V'Ger likely had very little concern about clothing for it.
Also, its ridiculous to assume the outfit she/it has on after exiting the shower is something Kirk dreamed up; obviously its what the real Ilia had on rotation as lounge wear in her own cabin, regardless how short or long you think it is. Those clear pumps could be made of materials that don't even exist on Earth. Or maybe Ilia just LIKED wearing shoes like that. Instead of trying to paint Kirk as a perv, keep in mind this is centuries in the future, these are alien beings who have their own cultures, beliefs and social values.
As far as McCoy knowing Ensign Perez's name, who's to say Perez didn't come to sickbay for a medical issue before this exchange in the cabin? Same thing for Chapel. She could have met Ilia anytime previous to her being assigned.
Also Deltians are sexual by nature. Her attire matched that. Plus I think it goes further to go with the theme and plot. Vger was trying to lure it's creator out to come to it.
I agree about the heels on Ilyia's outfit, but outfit, and costumes in general, were 1970s, based on Logan's Run type of films. Different times, and not at all prudish compared to today.
McCoy got called from treating an outbreak of Saturday Night Fever.
My take from what I read of the costume designer and the notes on the Deltians was they dressed her to match the culture. There is a reference about Kirk saw her constantly nude even though she wore a uniform. I always took it that the heels and outfit was meant to show the sexual power of her species. Since they could not make her nude that why she was dressed that way. Also vger made her nude on purpose most likely because she was deltian after all. I also always saw that vger was trying to seduce it's creator in some fashion to come to it.
Bah! Kor probably ordered the captain of the Klingon task force to go on his suicide mission. Pissed him off some how. Perhaps by drinking the last of Kor's bloodwine. You know what? That's my head canon now. Kor sent the order for those three ships to engage V'ger because their commander drank the last of Kor's bloodwine. Lesson learned? Don't leave a Dahar master on empty.
McCoy knew who Sulu, Uhura, Checkov, etc. were. Because a lot of the ship's crew from his days aboard during the 5-year mission had stayed with her during her refit. So Perez might have been one of them. I mean, that's dumb; the refit took 18 months, so Perez should have been a Lieutenant JG by then, but maybe he wasn't a great officer and didn't earn a promotion.
I always hated that the cloud was 82AU in diameter. It's basically the size of a small solar system, being generated by a ship that looks like it's a few hundred km long (I've seen estimates that it was between 100km and 200km long). But at least Bob Wise made that a little more believable in the Director's Edition - he edited Xon, er, Branch's dialogue down to say "Over two AUs in diameter!" Still unbelievable, but less so than 82AU.
The Ilia probe's appearance naked in a shower was stupid, as was the outfit she wore for the rest of the film. As a kid I didn't notice - I was ten when the movie premiered - but over time I've come to realize that it was probably either Gene Roddenberry or Bob Wise's decision to put that stupid outfit on Persis Khambatta to show off her beautiful legs. A better decision would have been to have the probe appear back on the bridge, in the same uniform that Ilia was wearing when she was killed, but to have put the real Ilia in an updated version of the sexist miniskirt uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols and all other female cast throughout the original series run. I mean, it would still have been misogynistic as hell, but at least it would have been consistent within the show's fictional reality.
Also, why did the probe that killed Ilia focus on her at all? It was already throwing Spock around the bridge like a rag doll to punish him for cutting off its access to the ship's computer - logically, Spock should have been the one digitized to death, not Ilia. A simple change, having the probe connect to the ships systems through the nav console and letting the info appear on the main screen, then having Ilia smash the console, would have explained the digital assassination far better.
Lots of other dumb stuff in this film, along with boring stuff and awful production design choices, but that's a Star Fleet uniform of a different color...
I'm not sure that wanting to look at a woman's legs is "misogynistic," but I understand you anyway.
@@watts111 Looking at a woman because you're attracted to her isn't misogynistic, but specifically designing a female character's costume to be revealing and skimpy when it doesn't fit the story is.
I mean, if Ilia had been digitized while she was in the shower, then the probe could have appeared naked in the shower. But Ilia was digitized in uniform on the bridge, so the probe should have appeared in uniform. Even the smallest body functions were precisely duplicated, even eye moisture - so why not her damn uniform? I mean, it ain't even subtle.
Oh, Ilia's lack of clothing was definitely Roddenberry's idea. All you have to do is look at TOS outfits all "hot alien of the week" chicks wore. He was a Kennedy era progressive but got the whole sexual revolution thing wrong. Just look at how many times he cheated on Majel Roddenberry. Not an uncommon thing when you look at Logan's Run, Buck Rogers and a few other fantastical sci fi of the 70s. There was no way the producers were going to have Spock killed by the probe. There would blood on the streets from all the pissed off Trekkies. That and Decker's fate was their way of getting rid of the last vestiges of the Phase 2 to save on casting costs.
>>that's dumb; the refit took 18 months, so Perez should have been a Lieutenant JG by then
I still get bit by mosquitoes despite their size difference. It's in their nature. So too Klingons
Spock was on a one-way mission to V'Gers innards, but the transporter could have been used to retrieve Spock and or Kirk.
This is the same v'ger that gets angry whenever communications are attempted so, directing big energy beams like the transporter is risky. My only issue since I saw it in the theatre is why didn't they just send a shuttle. Would take less time for that crew to get in one than it would for Kirk to suit up.
@@gotindrachenhart Well, we don't know what all is involved in shuttle prep time vs. spacesuit prep time.
'Perez'? You mean his name isn't really 'Thrust Barcode'?
I've seen another version of the movie where the probe zaps a security officer before it zaps Ilia!
True, there were many 'holes' in the movie, but as many others thought at the time. "It's Star Trek and it's back!" Also, the book "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture" reveals how some things had actually been stollen from the sets, among other issues.
It makes sense that McCoy would know the ensign. Drafted back or not, recently back on the ship or not, he's the CMO. He would immediately review the crew manifest. Also, the V'ger cloud is 2AU, not 82. Still enormous, but not 82AU enormous.
it was originally 82AUs, but in later cuts of the movie, they revised it down to 2AUs. So depending on which version you watch, both are correct. But I agree that 2AUs in size is more reasonable given what was shown on screen.
I agree that there may be logical reasons why McCoy would/could have known the ensign's name, but your point on the size of V'ger is both correct and incorrect. In the original theatrical release Commander Branch, played by David Gautreaux, who was on the Epsilon Nine station observed the cloud to be 82AU in diameter. Later editions of the movie were edited to omit the "eighty" portion of his dialogue in order to make V'ger's size seem somewhat more reasonable, though as you said, still enormous. As an old timer who saw this movie in the theater, I tend to hold "original" material as canon, so I go with 82AU in my own mind. LLAP
You missed the fact Kirk's spacesuit was different when he grabbed Spock. Most expensive continuity error in movie history?