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#21

Agree with your first point, not with your last. The movie that almost killed the franchise? Puh-leeze. Like it or not, that is your perogative… but the thing did make millions of dollars at the box office and certainly enough to convince them to make ST II. Without TMP, you got nothing else. TMP was, at that point, the franchise’s last chance at life – and, even if you don’t think it’s a good movie (and it does have its flaws), it succeeded in the most important thing: letting Star Trek live on. Here we are, 30 years exactly after TMP premieried, still discussing it.

So a little less hatin’ on TMP is in order, imo. Doesn’t have to be your all-time favorite Trek film, but… credit where credit is due.

#22

I saw ST:TMP when it was first released in the theaters. As someone who had watched the original Star Trek on TV as a kid it was incredibly exciting to us Star Trek fans at the time that the show we loved was not just back, it was back on the big screen! So we forgave it a lot of its problems. Yeah, some of the scenes go on forever (the initial flyover of the Enterprise and the entry into the cloud and flyover of the V’Ger come to mind) but we still loved it. (I swear that there were some fans in the theater who needed a tissue after that Enterprise flyover).

But yeah, it had problems.

I have a bad problem of calling it “Where Nomad has Gone Before” (TOS fans will get that) but to me for some reason the absolute worst scene is where the new science officer is beaming on board and the transporter malfunctions. Transporter operator Rand goes “Oh no! They’re forming!” which actually led me to say “Um… Isn’t that what the transporter is supposed to do?”

Sorry, for some reason the delivery of that line is just so bad that I can’t hear it without laughing.

At the time the biggest complaint the fan community had about it was the change to the Klingons. (I saw James Doohan at a convention once say that the change was an allergic reaction caused by the tribbles he beamed over to the Klingon ship in “The Trouble with Tribbles”.)

Oh yeah, trivia alert. When V’Ger recreates Illia she materializes inside the bathroom of her cabin. They deliberately did that to show that, yes, the Enterprise had bathrooms. For some reason that was another thing the fan community had been going on for a while about the original series.

Yeah, it was a much different time in fandom back in those days.

#23

And, fwiw, the Director’s Cut chose to trim the V’Ger flyovers but not the Enterprise fly-by. If nothing else, it is worth it in its entirety for that glorious 7 mintues or so of Goldsmith’s music.

I will admit, though, the docking of the travel pod with the Enterprise is a little – ok, a lot – uncomfortably fraught with, um, disturbing sexual undertones. What was it Kirk said in “The Naked Time,” “Now I know why they call ships she…” Ahem.

Transporter operator Rand goes “Oh no! They’re forming!” which actually led me to say “Um… Isn’t that what the transporter is supposed to do?”

I think the delivery is perfect. The point is not that they’re materializing, but that they are materializing in that condition. Rand knows she is in for a horrific show, and she feels it’s her fault. It’s the only accidental transporter-related death we ever see in Trek, I think (we’re not talking intentional “widest posible dispersions” here), and as such is a pretty Big Frakking Deal. I think it’s a good moment. YMMV.

I saw James Doohan at a convention once say that the change was an allergic reaction caused by the tribbles he beamed over to the Klingon ship in “The Trouble with Tribbles”.

LOL! I love that!

#24

Couldn’t have put it better myself, tanstaafl.

#25

I’m especially glad to hear that anecdote from Doohan because my major memory of the time I saw him live, at my college campus (circa 1993 or 94) , was his semi-inappropriate flirting with the female students and his comment on Gates McFadden: “She’s a fine piece of meat, isn’t she?”

To be fair, he also told some impressive stories about his days with the Canadian Air Force (I think?) in WWII – did you know he lost a fingertip in action? But the McFadden remark is what has stuck with me lo these many years.

#26

I loved that guy. Got his autograph when I was like eleven, and was too dumbfounded to speak. He was very gracious and tried several times to draw me out as he was signing. (Didn’t work, but I always appreciated the attempt.)

His best convention bit was him recounting the different accents he tried out when they were trying to figure out the character (who wasn’t settled as a Scott yet.) He’d do classic “Scotty” lines with, e.g, a french accent, etc.

#27

That is a fair point… it did do “well enough.” However, they gave them about a tenth of the money to make STII because of how poorly it did. If you look closely to Star Trek II, you can see all the shots it recycled. Sets, special effect shots, the uniforms for the enlisted and cadets were the old uniforms from the first film that they colored, even some of the sets were just model size and were camera tricks to make it look like Kirk and Spock were in them. The special edition 2 disc set talks about all of this.

So, on that note I don’t think the movie was as successful as one may think.

#28

Cavatar – Granted. And I will always argue that ST II is the best film of the franchise. But nothing you mention means TMP “failed.” It successfully relaunched the franchise. It successfully (I think) brought the characters back together – for all the gripes I’ve heard about the various reunions, I think everyone is perfectly in character given that Kirk took a desk job he didn’t want, Spock was trying to become uberVulcan and failed, McCoy was enjoying a nice and more-than-well-deserved retirement. And it made boatloads of money. So, I’m just sayin’. :slight_smile:

#29

Do you think the creative types sat down and said “OK - let’s come up with the worst uniforms imaginable. So awful, that some will turn away in horror.”

#30

LOL! No. I think, like the original series, the 70s costumes reflected the current culture. NASA was moving toward shirt-sleeve environments in space (Skylab, the Space Shuttle), so Roddenberry et al. took that a step further. “Casual uniforms,” I guess. And, arguably, more on an evolutionary line from the original uniforms than the “beefeater” uniforms of the other films (although those beefeater uniforms are infinitely cooler and I will always prefer them <g>)

#31

We should all be thankful that NASA did not move towards uniforms that required the male astronauts to wear cod pieces.

#32

In The Star Trek Compendium ( a cannon documentry book book that was reprinted every time a movie came out from TMP thru Star Trek Vi)

Costumes:
The 4 color look of the TOS costumes and ships look hidious on a bigscreen. Bright colors and ship interiors look bright and washed out as well ( also why TNG had to dim the lights on generations, change their uniforms to dark with color at the shoulders, and destroy the 1701-D as soon as possible. Everyone who had read ST:Compenium knew that the D wasn’t making out of that movie)

So the look of the movie wasn’t just modernizing it… it was a neccissity ( damn i need spellcheck)

and as for the success of TMP. According to the book it was profitable ( which means little in hollywood) it didn’t meet their expectations of profit… which means that the next time they would go to make a movie… it wouldn’t be the sure thing that they were investing in. PLUS many of their post release focus groups told them “sure I wanted to see what happend to Kirk and the gang, I would pay to see it… but I’m going tell my friends to not bother”

The studio wanted a Star wars. Then the plan was made for the next movie they said ( your useing the props and sets from TMP. We’re giving you a limited budget. and I don’t want any crazy alien story. I want to see the movie that we should have seen last time.

The commpendium 5th printing ( the one with ST IV in it) states that the studio, critics, and fans hated TMP so much there was talk of haveing it stricken from cannon. The deciding fator in not doing that was that the studio owned it as a property and showed it yearly on ABC to decent rateings and it’s VHS did sell ( althou mostly to video stores) and that striking it from cannon could jeprodize this profit.

The bigest evidence of TMP’s failure is that after TMP, Roddenberry wasn’t allowed to publish or print ANYTHING trek related without studio permission untill TNG promotions. Only ST IV’s sucess (which roddenberry had nothing to do with) made the studio rethink about launching a TV show for St.

Rodenberry wasn’t their choice to helm the show, he just still had a contrat that said that if they made a show… he had to be bought out. He came to them and said “I know I f’d up TMP… but here are some Ideas I have for TNG.” The studio picked out what they liked… paired him with some overseers… and LET him do it. Gene wasn’t a good Tv producer and they knew it. Coon produced EVERY good episode of TOS. Gene produced Spock’s Brain.

TNG sucked balls till he died,

I am always reminded that Roddenberry approached tha studio before every movie and pitched a " kennedy assaination, time traveel story for kirk and the gang". Every Fricken time till he died. That’s great trek.

#33

I will admit that TMP was a total failure (and I do enjoy watching move now and again) if you admit it wasn’t great success of the franchise.

Roosterpfunk69 makes good points that show how Gene screwed up TMP.

I would make this longer but been up all night and it is time for bet. later.

#34

Profit means little in Hollywood? I would think not.

The commpendium 5th printing ( the one with ST IV in it) states that the studio, critics, and fans hated TMP so much there was talk of haveing it stricken from cannon.

What, every single critic and fan hated the film? This is what gets me, people talking about “the fans” as though they/we are some monolithic entity. If you go back and read those Best of Trek fan essay (non-fiction) volumes published between 1979-82, you will read essay after essay that, while admitting TMP has its faults, nevertheless explores the movie in great depth, with respect and a lot of affection. So I don’t know where Allan Asherman is getting that “the fans hated it so much,” etc.

And, look, again, I’m not arguing it’s the best of the films. But the bottom, unarguable line is that, without it, “Star Trek” would be dead (though probably not forgotten) like so many other 60s TV shows, maybe still waiting for a big-screen reboot. There would be no ST II-Nemesis, no TNG, DS9, VOY, or ENTERPRISE.

I guess we are arguing about the definition of “success.”

The deciding fator in not doing that was that the studio owned it as a property and showed it yearly on ABC to decent rateings and it’s VHS did sell ( althou mostly to video stores) and that striking it from cannon could jeprodize this profit.

Proving, I guess, that for all that “the fans hated it,” they still watched and rented it. Repeatedly. :slight_smile:

Coon produced EVERY good episode of TOS. Gene produced Spock’s Brain.

Frak, man, that’s harsh. :slight_smile: Gene Coon was only with the series from mid-first season to mid-second, and, as Lee Cronin, he wrote “Spock’s Brain” (granted, it underwent severe rewrites, and I think he used his pen name out of embarassment). I’m not discounting Coon’s many important contributions to Trek, but frak it all, for all of his flaws, Rodenberry created the darned thing and everyone else was just playing around in his sandbox. And, btw, Roddenberry effectively left the show in the third season and was “executive producer,” and many if not most fans would argue that the series’ best episodes all aired in the first two seasons when Roddenberry was more actively involved in a hands-on way. Also, lots of fans consider some of those third season episodes to be classics: “The Enterprise Incident,” “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” for two examples. So, if you’re going to make a statement like the above – hey, them’s fightin words. Be ready to defend it. :wink:

#35

If you meant to write, “was not a total failure,” then, yes, I will agree, and all is well that ends well. :slight_smile:

#36

Look at it this way - no TMP, no Wrath of Khan. The problems with TMP caused the mission to get it right the next time - and the perfect ST story was created. (Really, would you change anything in Kahn without just being petty? Except for recasting Kirk’s son, of course.)

#37

Aw, I thought Merritt Buttrick did a fine job, in both of his outings as David. I guess he does have sort of a “Toschi station” moment in TWOK – “This is just to give us something to do, isn’t it?” – but, y’know, he’s been through a lot and he’s still young. Cut the guy some slack. :slight_smile:

I do think it is a shame that, irl, the actor is dead; and also that [spoiler] his character didn’t survive ST III. [/spoiler] I can’t think of any new characters from the films who have successfully stuck around. The Borg Queen, maybe. But not in TOS continuity.

#38

You know - you’re right. It really was his stupid outfit that bugged me. Must have been a wardrobe leftover from TMP.

#39

Yes, I think they recycled several TMP costumes in TWOK and TSFS. Carol Marcus, e.g., seems to be wearing a “perscan” belt buckle device.

#40

I’m not sure about that. I think most of the changes from TNG-TV to TNG-movie happened because sets, costumes, and other production design elements for TV shows aren’t typically as detailed as those for movies–they’re showing on a smaller screen, so who can tell, right? In ST:G, they upgraded to the new gray-shouldered uniforms that had a bit of texture to them instead of blank slabs of color. Gave the look some depth to it. Also, in the new Trek movie (ST:JJ?), the colors look phenomenally bright. Look closely, and you’ll see texuring in the fabric of the uniforms. They’re not just colored T-shirts anymore.

Speaking of spellcheck, everybody: It’s “canon”–not “cannon”–when referring to whether material is “real” or not. Just the spelling geek in me, going a little crazy.