Star Trek. The Motion Picture

I recently decided to watch the Star Trek movies again. I watched them very long ago and thought it would be a bit of ‘brainless’ fun to watch them all in a short period of time. What better time to do so than a typical dreary Belgian summer. The first movie of the series came out in 1979. It was a long time in the making after the original tv series ended in 1969. That was followed by 2 seasons of the animated series in 1973 and 1974. 5 years later the first movie came out. The original series didn’t get very positive ratings and was cancelled after 3 seasons. The series developed a cult following with reruns in the seventies. The original series finally got rebooted with a 6 movie series starting in 1979 and ending in 1991. 4 additional later movies are based on the The Next Generation tv series which started in 1987. Similar to the original series the Star Trek Motion Picture is from a time where special effects were still in their infancy. The solution was not to rely on special effects and keep them to a minimum. The story focuses in true TOS fashion on the crew of the Enterprise facing the unknown and overcoming an unknown threat by combining the power of emotion (Kirk) and logic (Spock). In the movie the crew of the Enterprise is sent out to intercept an ‘entity’ named VGer on route to Earth destroying everything in its path. Special effects are quite primitive according to current standards but the movie doesn’t rely on them. The main action is between the crew of the Enterprise and how they are reacting to the unknown. The movie builds its tension on this unknown threat as well. This is really a very very long episode of TOS and that is both its strength and weakness. All the ingredients of a good original series episode are there but with 2h12m it is simply too long. Some shots seem to take forever without adding anything to the story. This movie could easily have and should have been 30 minutes shorter. Apart from that it is nice but with its current length I am not inclined to watch it again.