Star Trek Fest - Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979) - Midnight Viewing

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome back, midnight viewers. Oh what theme was that? What
show did you tune into? Is it a new fest?
You're goddamn right, it is. Welcome to Star Trek Fest HP,
my Fest, pal, my fst friend and I have decided
to take the crazy path of reviewing the Star Trek

(00:45):
motion pictures in their entirety. We're not going to be
talking about the TV shows, the multitude of TV shows,
or the cross over tie in books, well a little.
I mean, you kind of can't not when it gets
comes to Star Trek. All of the lore is so
inextricably linked in all of the different media. Hell, we're
going to talk about the blooper reels at some point,

(01:07):
but we're going to start it all off. Well, first
of all, I have a co host. I mentioned him, HB.
How you doing, buddy, I'm great.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
The Human Adventure Father Malone is just beginning. I'm so excited.
I think we have thirteen movies and all that we're
going to be covering in this fest.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Hopefully they'll be fourteen by the time we finish.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
We'll see, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Here's the trailer.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
The Human Adventure is just beginning. William Shatner take us
Out is Captain James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy is mister Spuck.
Deforus Kelly is doctor Leonard bones Coy, James Douhan is

(02:03):
Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, George Takay is Lieutenant Commander Zulu.
Rachel Barrett is doctor Christine Chaplin. Walter Kinig is Lieutenant
Pavel Chekhov, Michelle Nichols is Lieutenant Commander Hura. Stephen Collins

(02:26):
is Commander Willard Decker. Percis Cambata is Lieutenant Iria Sta

(03:08):
Trek the motion picture Geane Roders Brede's production of a
Robert Wise film, Aha.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
The French Oh Man, I got Orson Wells pulled him
out of off bulls to do that trailer, so you
know it means business. By the way, why did they
mention Michelle Barrett as fucking nurse Chapel get out of here?
Nobody remembered her? Oh right, Gene Roddenberry HP, this was
your first time watching Star Trek the motion picture, wasn't it? No?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
It was not. It was definitely not. Because we've talked
about this in the past. I know we have another
episode's Father alone, but this so I got cable probably
somewhere around seven or eight years old, and this was
one of the big prestige premieres on cable at that time.

(04:01):
I remember the Cable Guide. Oh yes, the Cable Guide
had that month's Cable Guide had the movie poster for
the motion picture. So this was a big deal when
this So I saw it. Here's the thing, I don't
think I actually watched the movie in its entirety as
a movie as a single experience for a while, because

(04:22):
I was when I'm a kid. I would just turn
on the TV and there's a scene from Star Trek,
and let's be honest, we'll get into this, but there's
a lot of nothing that happens in this movie. It's
kind of hard to ask a seven or eight year
old to sit through what a two hour plus movie
with not a lot of action happening for a lot
of stretches of this movie. But so, yeah, i'd seen

(04:45):
it more recently than that, but certainly not with this
level of focus.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Now, what was your prior to watching the movie? Now,
clearly that's early times, But had you been a aware
of Star Trek? Were you a fan of Star Trek?
Did you watch the show before that?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
It was Star Trek was one of those things that
was always kind of in the firmament at that time. Like,
I can't remember a time that Star Trek wasn't around.
I knew who William Shatner was. The show was on.
It was probably on in Channel thirty eight in the
Boston area at night, the reruns. Because we're old, but
we're not that old. It was on reruns. I caught

(05:27):
the odd episode bits and pieces my older brothers.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
The show went off there in nineteen seventy. You and
I were born in seventy three. We were watching reruns, right,
Star Trek.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
I just want I don't want to any I want
to be clear on that we're old. But we did
watch this in reruns, but mainly for me, it was
my older brothers probably that we're watching it, and I
would just watch it with them passively, not really thinking
about it. But certainly the theme has never been anything
but totally familiar to me. Everybody knows the theme, even

(05:59):
if you're not a fan. But let me ask you,
because you didn't you had older siblings, but not older
brothers like I did to that degree, when did you
become aware of Star Trek Originally?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
I can't think of a time I don't remember Star Trek.
I've been obsessed with Star Trek as far as I
can remember. By the time. Before this movie, I remember
being so goddamned proud of a red shirt Starfleet shirt
that my mother had gotten for me. Automatically, Scottie became
my favorite member of the crew because we had the

(06:31):
same shirt. So when Star Trek the motion picture was
released on December seventh of nineteen seventy nine, which I
haven't given the stance for, but I'll get to it.
When that I was, I was there opening weekend. I
was there that opening night to see it really with
my parents. Yes, wow, Okay, So I remember vividly the

(06:54):
opening of the movie, almost formative in a way because
it will look this is We're going to get to
all of the history in this and everything. But this
is the first time a television series really had made
the jump to movies. I know there had been strung
together episodes in the past, and they did that stupid
Batman movie in sixty six, which was just like I said,

(07:15):
a couple of episodes of the series effectively strung together
to feature length, which that show already was doing that
every episode was a cliffanger. Anyway, it struck me how
different you can make something and how you can rewrite it,
because they do that immediately with the Klingons. So that
struck me. And then it struck me that you can
also ruin something that you love by making changes to

(07:40):
things that seemingly made no sense whatsoever. I think ultimately
I watched it like you did on cable a bunch,
because we that's what we did as a generation. We
watched television and if there was a fucking movie on,
all the better, and if there's a movie on uninterrupted
by commercial and you get the full import of it.

(08:02):
So I watched the movie probably more than I should
have as a youngster, but it was in a starved
for content kind of a way, more than I'm really
enjoying this. I wouldn't really start enjoying Star Trek movies
like the rest of the world until Wrath of God.
This was just which was which was not that long

(08:23):
honestly to wait.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Sure, and this was again beggars couldn't be choosers. This
was just on TV and us being seven eight years old,
what have you. I wasn't necessarily in control of the
television most of the time, so if my dad was
watching Star Trek, then I was watching Star Trek. And

(08:46):
one of the things I was really struck by I
was rewatching it this time. The first thing, in fact,
was that, as you said, it was a novelty at
the time to have a fairly simple stick TV show
kind of graduate to the cinematic experience, and this did
feel like a prestige bid. This is a movie that

(09:10):
started with a three minute overture with nothing but scrolling
starfields as Jerry Goldsmith's music plays underneath it. This is
something that I was used to seeing in movies like
The Ten Commandments. This was not something that I would
have expected from Star Trek the motion picture. This is
before even the paramount logo is shown on the screen,

(09:32):
so clearly they were aiming big with this.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
It's super bizarre. Let me just tell you and I
watched the director's cut, which probably the blu ray of
the director's cut, and when the overture comes up, you
have the starfield playing right in previous iterations on video
and DVD, there is no starfield for a good minute
and a half of the three minute overture, so you're

(09:55):
just looking at a blank screen and then eventually a
stars fade up and you go, oh, okay, see I
agree with you. It announces itself as a prestige picture,
as a throwback to a grand event of a movie release,
but it didn't really take into consideration the fact that
those movies usually said overture, so you knew what the

(10:17):
fuck was going on. Because this is nineteen seventy nine.
This doesn't meet me in Saint Louis, you know what
I mean? Now? Having said that, I think it's awesome
that they did it, and the more Jerry Goldsmith music
you get to hear in the world, the better. But
it's still weird that they did it this.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
It's very weird.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
But in a movie that's going to be over long anyway,
let's tack on three minutes of Sit Here and listen
to the score as if it's going to pay off later.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
It was crazy. But since we're talking about Jerry Goldsmith's score,
well let's get into it a little bit before we
dig into Now. I adore his score here. I think
it's fabulous. I think it feels it's got all of
the bouncy, sort of daring do themes cues but one
of the things that kind of announces that there's a

(11:05):
darkness to this movie is that there's this harsh drone
sound that intrudes every so often. And I didn't, I never,
I didn't know what this was until I started doing
research for this episode. Father alone, Oh you mean this, Yes,

(11:25):
that's exactly it. It's what I learned, and what I'm
sure you have there in front of you is that
this is an instrument developed and played by a fellow
named Craig Huxley, called the blaster beam. It's basically a
twelve foot beam strung with long cables strings and played
by striking the strings and using this crazy sort of

(11:47):
metal slide to go up and down the beam. The
funny part is I had a sense memory. I didn't
I haven't seen this movie many years, but I had
a sense memory of that same sound when I was
watching Attack of the Clones the second episode two the
Star Wars movie, because that's the sound. There's a scene
where Django Fett is setting off these seismic charges and

(12:11):
pursuing Obi Wan Kenobi. The seismic charge is the sound
of the blaster beam, and in this picture, the blaster
beam is meant to give this sort of discordant, scary,
outer spacey tone to the main sort of villain of
the piece, which we'll find out is this living machine

(12:34):
called Vedure. But the sound of that, those cables vibrating,
it felt outer spacey in a scary way. It feels remote,
it feels alien. It totally matches the vibe that I
think Robert Wise is going for, the director is going for,
and it gave the movie this, like I said, this

(12:56):
darkness that was never really present in the original and
I love that about the sound. It's almost People love
to point to a soundtrack like Tron Wendy Carlos combining
synth sounds with orchestral sounds, and this is a great advancement.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
To me.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
This is almost on that level because it's this beautiful,
sweeping score that's matched up with this crazy, giant, alien
sounding instrument and it all works and it's a wonderful score.
So a gush for a little bit.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
It is by far the best thing that came out
of Star Trek the motion picture is Jerry Goldsmith's score.
It sets the bar high for the entire series musically.
It also delineates where we're gonna go not only look. Obviously,
Next Generation just gacked the main title and that became

(13:51):
the theme. So when I hear that theme now, I
do think Next Generation above all? How can we too?

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah? Me too. Yeah, But it's important for people who
are familiar with the original motion picture and maybe only
familiar with the Next Generation. You got to check out
this movie in this score because this is where it
was introduced and it works so well, and because the
original Star Trek theme is so iconic and indelible, but

(14:17):
it would not have worked for this picture. This picture
is so much darker and more just deeper than those
original how could it not be than the original sixties show?
So for me that this is a big tick. In
the plus column is Jerry Goldsmith's score.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Jerry Goldsmith in nineteen sixty five was approached by fledgling
executive producer Gene Roddenberry to score the pilot for his
new series Star Trek, but Goldsmith was previously engaged at
that moment and could not do the work. So this
is in a way kind of a fulfillment and kind
of points to the way that it could have been

(14:55):
fucking awesome. Bank then too, I'm glad he didn't. I'm
glad we got to wait because the Alexander Urage music
is perfect for that show. But this knows where this
film series knows more than the fucking filmmakers does.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
It's true, this elevates it in the way that the
best soundtracks can elevate a picture, make a picture feel great.
And this does so much heavy lifting for this movie
it's impossible to really, we can't oversell it.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
And the use of interesting instruments and discordant sounds were
par for the course for Jerry Goldsmith. Remember, back in
the late sixties he did the theme for Planet of
the Apes, which is as weirdo and bizarre soundtracks. It's
experimental really, and that was Goldsmith wanting to make a

(15:44):
soundtrack as if it had come from an alien world.
And here when he took the job, now he had
worked with Robert Wise back in the sixties they did
The Sand Pebbles together. That's a Steve McQueen Navy movie.
So when Goldsmith takes the job here, his attitude was, oh,
this is like a naval picture as well. And more
than that, science fiction is like a Western. It's they're

(16:08):
going out in there, they're Calistoga wagons and out into
the great unknown. And in fact, if you listen to
the initial score he did for Star Trek the motion picture,
Robert Wise criticized him as saying, this sounds like a
wagon train score. It needs to be science fiction y.
And then Goldsmith came up with the score that we got,

(16:30):
which is, as I said, magnificent. But the darkness that
you were talking about with Vgre, with those with that
weirdo sound effect, the flangy guitar sound, that's the sound
that I took away from the movie. It's when I
think of when I think of the movie, and when
I think of Vegure. And now I spent the last
week or so listening to the soundtrack on a loop basically,

(16:50):
and that is the sound of Vigure when Vegre exists
in the distance and as a threat. The closer you
get to Vegure. There is in a church pipe organ
sound underneath it all, and that was so exciting to
hear for the first time I heard instruments i'd never
heard before. I heard I heard a glockenspiel at some point,

(17:13):
and more than anything, the point I want to make
about the music above all, and they've tried to replicate it,
but they've never done as good a job is. He
not only gives us this magnificent score for the enterprise,
because that's the music that Fanfare has written for the
reveal of the enterprise, we might as well call that
the enterprises theme. The other major score that he set,

(17:35):
that he sets in stone is the Klingon theme. I
can hear it in my head right now. You can
hear it at home right now. If you can't hear
it is it's fucking incredible.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Man, that's great. So so we've talked a little bit
about the plot and broad strokes, but ultimately, what is
the plot of this movie?

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Father Below, I'm not going to answer that. You're going
to answer that, but I'll tell you I'm gonna. I'm gonna, Okay,
I might this episode might go a little long, everybody,
because I do want to get to this movie, like
it or hate it does, in fact sent the template
for what's going to come. For everything they do right,
that gets included for everything they do wrong. That's it's

(18:55):
all important. And how we get to there, I think
is as interesting as the movie, actually more interesting than
the movie. This is not an apocalypse now, hearts of
darkness situation. But this is a Werner Herzog Fitzcaraldo sort
of situation. I think the story behind the making of
the movie is actually more interesting than the movie itself.

(19:17):
Now agreed, Okay. So Star Trek goes off the air
in nineteen seventy and immediately it causes the birth of
fan conventions. There had been a very famous letter writing
campaign to keep Star Trek on the air, which worked,
so fans of Star Trek felt emboldened. Now Gene Roddenberry

(19:37):
himself didn't understand how powerful those fans were, nor did
he understand their makeup. He thought there were a bunch
of twitching nerds in the dark and didn't realize they
were from like all walks of life, people who were
actually interested in the space program and the in futurism
and science fiction and anyway. So he attempts a couple
of different series with Genesis two and and there's another

(20:01):
serious he tries to get out there. Nothing is working,
and then he goes to a Star Trek convention, sees
what the big deal is, embraces it fully start selling
those blooper reels, which causes a huge fukaroo with Leonard Nimoy,
who's already pissed that they're using his likeness to sell bullshit.
Now in that case, there's nothing you can do about that.

(20:21):
He sold this likeness for Spock. If they want to
put it on underwear, they can put it on underwear.
But selling the bloopers, that's a whole other thing. But
he never agreed to have that footage sold. He appeared
on a television anyway. So based on the popularity of
the conventions and a recent Saturday Night Live sketch parodying

(20:43):
Star Trek, he's given the greenlight to write a treatment
for a feature film, a three million dollar feature film,
and that movie that screenplay is The God Thing, where
a creature from deep space is making its way toward
our solar system and claims to be our God and
he is returning to take what's his. And as he

(21:05):
gets to our solar system, Kirk who cares, They go
out to meet the thing and it turns out not
to be God, or it is, but it's no longer
relevant because Roddenberry was a think piece guy overall. Guess what.
Paramount didn't want to do that. So he then turns
to his assistant Ron Povel who comes up with another

(21:28):
screenplay idea and he presents that to Roddenberry, who Roddenberry
dismisses it as good enough for TV. But this is
what we're talking features now, right, Okay Rodenberry. At this
point Paramount kind of steps in and says, maybe what
you want to do is go to another writer. So

(21:49):
they start interviewing writers independent of Rodenberry and with Roddenberry.
So this is the time when Ray Bradberry and Robert
Silverberg get called in and mister Harlan Ellison, now this
story is rather famous, and I'm going to read it
to you in its entirety. These are in Harlan's words
from a letter he wrote to Stephen King who was

(22:10):
inquiring about it. Because where on the street was There
was a big meeting and they had all the writers
in one room and they said, give us the biggest idea.
And they keep geting bigger and bigger ideas, and they
keep going bigger, we want bigger ideas. And then finally
Harlan Elison gives them the biggest idea of all time.
They tell him bigger than that. He flips them off
and walks out. That's the story everyone was told here's Harlan.

(22:32):
In Harlan's words, pardon me that I'm going to read this,
and it's lengthy. Paramount had been trying to get a
Star Trek film in the works for some time. Roddenberry
was determined that his name would be on the writing
credits somehow. The trouble is he can't write for sour
Owl Poop. He has his one idea done six or
seven times in the series and again in the future film,
is that the crew of the Enterprise goes into deepest space,

(22:55):
finds God, and God turns out to be insane or
a child or both. I'd been called in twice prior
to nineteen seventy five to discuss the story. Other writers
had also been milked. Paramount couldn't make up their minds
and had even kicked Gene off the project a few
times until he brought in lawyers. Then the palace guard
changed again at Paramount and Dillar and Eisner came over

(23:16):
from ABC and brought a cadre of their buddies, one
of them an ex scent designer named Mark Trabulus. Roddenberry
suggested me as the centairist for the film. With this
Trabulist the latest of They Know Nothing Duds, Paramount had
assigned to the Troublesome project. I had a talk with
Gene about a storyline. He told me that they kept
wanting bigger and bigger stories, and no matter what was suggested,

(23:39):
it wasn't big enough. I devised a storyline and Gene
liked it and set up a meeting with Tribulus for
December eleventh, nineteen seventy five. That meeting was canceled, but
we finally got together on December fifteenth. It was just
Gene and Trabulus in me in Jean's office on the
Paramount lot. I told them the story. It involved going
to the end of the known universe to slip back

(24:00):
through time to the plasticne era when man first emerged.
I postulated a parallel development of reptile life that might
have developed into the dominant species on Earth had mammals
not prevailed. I postulated an alien intelligence from a far
away galaxy where the snakes had become the dominant life form,
and a snake creature had come to Earth in the

(24:20):
star Trek future, had seen its ancestors wiped out, had
gone back to the far distant pastive Earth to set
up distortions in the time flow so reptiles could beat
the humans. The enterprise goes back in time to set
it right, finds the snake alien, and the human crew
is confronted with the moral dilemma of whether it had
the right to wipe out an entire life form just

(24:40):
to ensure its own territorial imperative in our prison and future.
The story in short to spand all of time and
all of space with a moral and ethical problem. Tribulus
listened to all of this and sat silently for a
few minutes. Then he said, I was reading this book
by a guy named von Danikin, and he proved that
the my calendar was exactly like ours, so it must

(25:02):
have come from Aliens. Could you put in some Mayans?
I looked at Gene. Gene looked at me. He said nothing.
I looked at Tribulus and said, there weren't any Mayans
at the dawn of time. And he said, well, who's
to know the difference, And I said, I'm to know
the difference. It's a dumb suggestion. So Tribulus got very
uptight and said he liked Mayans a lot, and why

(25:25):
didn't I do it? If I wanted to write this picture,
so I said, I'm a writer. I don't know what
the fuck you are, and I got up and walked out,
and that was the end of my association with the
Star Trek movie.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Let's not forget, by the way, that Ellison was responsible
for probably the single greatest episode of the original series
that was ever produced, the original story of City on
the Edge of Forever, which I know was rewritten, and
there's a story behind that as well. But the man
knew how to write for Star Trek. It's crazy that
people are second guessing him.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
It's crazy that the regime with Katzenberg underneath him, let
their designer friend in charge of a crown jewel of paramount.
I guess they just hadn't figured out that it was yet,
so it was just something to be done. So anyway,
they can't settle on any of those guys. They bring

(26:18):
in another fella and he's in charge of now finding
a decent script and writers, which he does, and he
hires two British authors who had never written science fiction
before to write the Planet of the Titans. This is
the script that almost gets made. Everyone's on board for this.
The story here is Kirk and crew, at the end

(26:40):
of the five year mission go out to answer a
distress call. They're hit by an energy wave. Kirk goes crazy,
commandeers a shuttle, saying he has to get to the planet,
goes off into deep space and disappears. Three years later,
the Enterprise returns. It's a whole new crew and they
because a plan has appeared where there had been none before.

(27:03):
This is the Planet of the Titans. The Titans of
some ancient race, so the Federation is interested. They get
out of the planet, they find that Kirk is there.
The Klingons are on their way because they want a
piece of the Titans. They find out that there's an
alien race that wiped out the Titans. It's a three
way brawl. They end up going back in time. Blah
blah blah. They almost made this movie, and then this

(27:23):
is great. Everyone will tell you that Star Trek the
motion picture was made on the heels of Star Wars.
That paramount saw Star Wars and when we need a
Star Wars, get us a Star Trek picture. Actually not
the case. What happened was they're ready to make that
movie Planet of the Titans, and then Star Wars comes out.

(27:44):
And Paramount thinks that success can't ever be replicated. No
one will go see a second sci fi movie. And
we've been toying with the idea of a television network.
Let's make this the flagship of our new television network.
Instead canceled. Now it's time to do a TV series,
which is phase two. Man oh man, I'm talking a lot.

(28:07):
So they got this television series that they're gonna do.
They hire Alan Dean Foster to write the pilot. It's
called in Thy Image. It's about a machine returning to
Earth to meet its creator. It's this, it's Star Trek.
It's the movie basically right, but of course it's all
based on Jane's idea that, as Harlan Ellison so eloquently said,
he has one fucking idea, which is you got to

(28:28):
meet God, and God's either insane or a child. And
here it is again, just like season two, episode three,
The Changeling. Anyway, the series almost gets going, Paramount finds
out no advertiser going to support a new network, and
now the movie's back on because Eisner goes to see
Close Encounters of the Third Kind realizes sci fi is

(28:49):
now the rage and says that could have been us
Get Me a Star Trek movie, and thus begins a
battle of screenwriting between Gene Roddenberry and Harold Livingston in
the credited screenwriter on this with story by Alan Dean Foster,
even though it technically wasn't even Foster's, like they gave
him that script. But roden Berry and Livingstone just keep

(29:11):
rewriting each other back and forth. It's like magicians papering
over each other's posters, this confused, stupid, crazy thing. And
then at which point, like the actors are now involved,
so they have notes. They want their characters front and center.
It's Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner giving notes to this screenwriter.

(29:31):
Oh my god, what a mess. Let's make the movie
and we have to have it in theaters on December seventh,
nineteen seventy nine, because Michael Eisner has already pre sold
the movie to movie theaters in order to help offset
the cost of this movie, which initially was budgeted at
eighteen million and now is forty five.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
And even as they're filming, I my research, a lot
of these actors, Walter kaneg all these people, Michelle Nichols,
they all talk about the fact that the third act
of this movie was still not completed by the time
they're filming it. This was basically a three act picture
with no third act, so a lot of this. They're

(30:11):
marching towards this date, like you said, in December. They
have to get it done. And then all these complications
with the shooting mean that the special effects are taking longer.
They've got to compress that. They bring back Doug Trumbull
to try and finish the effects.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Basically a story about that, right, So they when they're
putting the movie together, they go out to all of
the houses. They go to Doug Trumbull, they go to Ilm,
they go to Don John Dykstra, and everyone is really
busy because science fiction is all the rage at this moment.
And they go with a company called Abel Films or
able company, and they spend the next year doing nothing

(30:49):
because they've never had all the equipment that say, Doug
Trumbull has pioneered, like the optical printers and such. So
they're just spending their time building a studio to handle
the effects for a major motion picture when they needed
to have been making the shots for a major motion picture.
They finished filming in January and then found out before

(31:11):
they found out they needed to start from scratch for
their effects, and the movie was due in December. They
had eleven months to do all of the shots in them.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
And it's insane. So what ends up happening is Doug
Trumbell does come back essentially, and he finishes the picture.
But Robert Wise from that point on up until the
early two thousands never considered He always thought of this
movie as basically being the rough cut because they had
to make this date in December. So the effects were
what they were. They're very good for the time. But

(31:41):
if you watch them with modern eyes, the original theatrical cut,
it doesn't look it looks unfinished in a lot of places. Eventually,
Robert Wise and company get the opportunity to revisit the
motion picture as a director's cut, and they finished effects.
Some scenes were change, they added some sparkling new scenes

(32:03):
of shuttles, and you don't see the Matt lines and
everything because a lot of this was done with Matt
paintings and so forth. So anyway, this is a long
way of saying, that's the version that Father Malone and
I watched. We watched the director's cut because I feel
very strongly in this case that if the director's saying, look,
my movie wasn't finished until now, I want to see

(32:25):
the picture in its most complete form. That's important to
me on this not to say that the theatrical version
doesn't have merit, but for the purposes of this episode,
I sought out the director's cut, as I know Father
Malone did.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
It's the one available on streaming. It's the one you
should watch. I don't know why you would go watch
the old theatrical version. It was the movie that Robert
Wise said, it's the only picture that I didn't get
to preview before we put it out. He didn't get
a chance to gauge an audience's reaction to the movie
at all, because they basically locked the whole thing on
December first for a December seventh release.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
This is a Star Wars the Special Edition scenario where
George Lucas is going in and mucking with things that
cherished bits of the movie. This isn't a han shot
Grido first situation. This is merely taking a film and
making it better. In my opinion, such.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
As it is, they are finishing effects that were hastily done.
There's some five hundred effects shots in this movie. That's
more than Star Wars and Close Encounters combined, and on
a very limited amount of time to do it. Now,
it must be said that the models were already made
at least, and those are magnificent. But the Enterprise refit
and the Klingon cruisers, those were all completed and ready,

(33:40):
as was the Little Vulcan Shuttle.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
So it look it's not going to compete with a
major blockbuster from this era, but for a movie from
nineteen seventy nine finished in the early two thousands, looks
pretty good. I didn't really have much of a problem
with the effects.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
I remember, even as a young person, being wildly disappointed
with the version of Vulcan that we got. It just
seemed like more cardboard set bullshit from the television series.
I was like, oh no, there was a sinking feeling.
So yes, definitely watch this. See the giant statues and
the lava fields on Vulcan.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
By the way, I've been watching the been going back
and watching the original series on stream, and it's the
remastered versions where they've gone in and they've redone the effects.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, same idea.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, Yeah, And I know people go crazy about that
because they want the original thing that they remember from childhood,
and I would counter that this is the way I
remember it from childhood. I remember it looking this good.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
They've preserved that sense of wonder when you see the
ship going across a planet and you're not looking for
the cables holding the ship up, it looks like Because
here's the thing with the original series, Rema, they took
great care not to make it look like it was
produced in the early two thousands. It still looks like

(35:08):
of its time. It just looks better I can describe it.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
The spaceships still have like a plastic equality to them.
They look like their models, but they look really good now. Yeah,
and they added blinking to the Gorn's eyes in Arena,
and I really like that. That was really good.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
I will have to check that out. I don't think
I haven't seen those in a long time, but you're
making me want to go revisit them.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Oh my god, Arena is so good and Piece of
the Action. Piece of the Action is my absolute favorite
Star Trek episode of all time. I think City on
the Edge of Forever is probably the best Star Trek
original series episode. Yeah, but oh my god, give me Gangsters, Baby.
You know that was going to be the basis of
the Tarantino movie, right.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
I think I read that that's one of the vic
tay back, right, one of the mobsters. Yeah, there's a ay.
But there's been many Trek comic books, but most recently
there was one called Star Trek Year five, which is
a series that took place in the final year of
their five year mission, and I think the second or
third issue they end up going back to that planet

(36:10):
from a piece of the action. So it's kind of neat.
You get to see what happened.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
After all that, What happened? What did they do?

Speaker 2 (36:16):
I'm not gonna run it for You're gonna go read it.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Damn it, go read it. It's It's the one episode
that I always wished in any of the other iterations
of the show that they were gonna go back to
because they had this complete society based on mimicry, and
then they left a phaser there. I'm like, oh my god,
they could just recreate sixties Starfleet. Now they don't have
to because they're doing it every fucking week with strange

(36:40):
new worlds and all this shit. Everything is retro everything,
But at the time, it would have been really novel.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah. Yeah, well they take a similar tack. I think
somebody else read there's some other thing. I think maybe
doctor McCoy lee has left something else behind on the
planet and that becomes the thing that they basically that
forms the next phase of their society. But it's really good.
I do appreciate those that they're non cannon. But it's

(37:04):
fun to revisit the original series because we're never going
to see this original cast ever again at this point,
so it's kind of cool to go back and see
this stuff read about it.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
That's the story HP.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Well. Funny I mentioned that though the story is not
the most original story, and in fact, within the context
of Star Trek movies, this spoiler alert, this won't be
the last time we have a story with the same
type of beats. Essentially, what happens is there's this cloud

(37:37):
with some kind of ship something in the middle of
it that is has a it's heading towards Earth and
everything that encounter it, that encounters it, everything that goes
into this cloud, they're basic, they're destroyed. They're basically deres
for lack of a better term, nothing can absorbed. There's

(37:59):
this clouds ends out these lightning plasma balls, and once
they hit your ship, it basically just wipes it from existence.
I guess in your I think you're right. It's absorbed
into the organic ship in the middle of all of
this that we learn about. So this thing is on
an intercept court course with Earth, and talk about.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
That scene before we grow any further, because this movie
begins so magnificently, right, okay.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
The Klingons you mean, yes, yeah, it starts.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
This movie begins after the magnificent fucking credit sequence with
the fucking thrilling Jerry Goldsmith's score. We immediately cut to,
or we don't cut to. We pan over to and
then above, and then around and then behind a trio
of Klingon cruisers KATINGA class. In case you were.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Wondering, these aren't birds birds of prey.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
No, this is the new KATINGA Class, buddy.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Okay, okay, mister Trekky over there by the way. Fun fact,
I did not know this. So they cut inside and
the Klingons are in this cloud and that they're shooting
a torpedoes that have no effect. The commander of the
Klingon fleet is played by Mark Leonard.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Mark Leonard Sarah himself.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Fucking Sarah. One of my favorite characters of all of
the Star Trek movies was I couldn't believe it when
I found that out. Anyway, go ahead, Sorry.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
He's also a Romulin, remember on the original series.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
In the original series, that's true.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
So he's been a Romulin, a Vulcan, and a Klingon.
And yes, here's the reveal of the Klingons. Here's where
it's good to have Robert Wise, I guess, and I
guess Sid Mead and a whole bunch of really talented
people doing the designing. Because Klingons are now aliens. They're
not just people in brown face with whiskers who punch

(39:51):
Federation people. Yeah, willy nilly, these are aliens with their
own language, in their own customs, and what the fuck
is going on? I don't know. It's crazy, but they've
got a great theme here it is again. Oh it's

(40:31):
so good, very dark, very dark. So yeah, it wipes
the Klingons. So they give us the Klingons, they show
how fucking formidable they are, and then they're just wiped
off the map immediately.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
They're just gone. In the midst of this spock, we
see him. He's on Vulcan. He's going through the Coolinar ritual,
which is the objective is to renownce and shed all emotion.
And as he's about to graduate, he stops the priestess
from bestowing this symbolic necklace on his around his neck,

(41:01):
because this force that's heading towards Earth has is affecting
him and he can hear it, thoughts. He can hear it.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Cost you hear the twang in the distance, and you
know that Vitre is here, So.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
It's affecting his human side. And the priestess realizes that
he has not yet attained Coulinar and he must seek
his answers elsewhere. So Spock is going to figure into
the story, but basically on Earth.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
But you know what, she's got this beautiful necklace and
she just tosses it like the ground, like you're no
longer worthy of Colinari, like nah, and she tosses ah. Man,
it's so disrespectful.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
But it's there's the look, like you said, a Vulcan.
Now with this director's cut, it's it's epic. It's this
sort of arid, deserty looking planet with like you said,
lava and these giant statues. It looks great. It's hard
to imagine we watched it and the other way.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
I know a lot of people love the Vulcans. I
hate the Vulcans.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Man, I was like, I would love I'm one of
those people that love the Vulcans.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I love one Vulcan, but he's half Vulcan. Thank you. Well,
that's the thing I learn my Valcan Science Academy. Right now, man, Okay,
I attended. They're not good people.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
It goes without saying that Leonard Nimoy is really the
heart and soul of this whole thing. It's hard to
imagine any other actor in such an indelible role as his.
It was really truly the role. Not that he probably
appreciated the fact that he was always going to be
known as Spock after all he did. He wrote. His

(42:39):
first biography was called I Am Not Spock, followed decades
later by I Am Spock. But it's impossible to look
at Leonard Nimoy and not think of Spock. First. I
love Colombo, the TV show Columbo. I'm sure you do too,
fallom Alone, and he played one of the villains. I
loved it. I'm not a I love I fucking love

(43:01):
Colombo anyway, Niemoy was one of the villains of the week.
He was a surgeon that comes up with this crazy
plot to kill this doctor that is holding back this anyway.
I'm not gonna go into details, but he's great in it,
but you can't. It's kind of tragic in a way
because he was such a great actor. But you look
at him and you're wondering where the pointy ears and

(43:24):
the arched eyebrows and the funny haircut because he is
spuck and it's we're gonna go through this whole exercise
of going through all of these movies, all of the
original movies and all of the and it's gonna be
such a treat to follow Leonard Nimoy, especially because he
is the heart and soul, like I said, of these movies.

(43:46):
And I cannot imagine. I know that there was all
this conflict behind the scenes about his likeness being used
and he had to renegotiate his contract before he'd agree
to do it. I don't blame him at all for that,
because the man deserved to get paid, because you can't
have that original series without Spock. Anyway.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Well, let me just say about that. If there's a
hero behind the scenes of this movie, it's Jeffrey Katzenberg
who actually made the effort to fly to New York
where Leonard Nimoy was appearing on stage to see the play,
to go talk to him afterwards and to say, what
is the problem with you and Paramount Pictures? How can

(44:29):
we solve that? And saying to him effectively, you do
know that even if you're involved in a lawsuit with
the company, you could still come work for the company.
And Nimoy basically, basically Cassenberg said, what's the problem, Let
me go back, I'll take care of that, and then
will you read the screenplay? And he says, yes, if
you give me the money the day that I received

(44:51):
the check, I will read the script. And that's exactly
what happened, and good for him.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
It was a smart business decision.

Speaker 1 (44:57):
And let me speak to the other thing you said
about Nimoy, which is he is so indelibly spock. He
had to write that book and let everyone know there
were more sides to him, hobbit. Fans know that. But
but here's the thing, HV. Now we were talking about.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
I'm such a fan of his music. By the way
that Bilbo Baggins is just one aspect of it. But
anyway proceeds.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Sorry, now I mentioned that we were effectively watching reruns
of Star Trek. It had only been on the off
the air for a few years before we were born.
So that's where my primary that's where I was getting
my Star Trek was from syndicated television. But at the
same time I know we were getting we were getting

(45:39):
In Search of Demoy. So to me, when I think
of Leonardimoy, I think of that guy first. Honestly, it's
it that I'm I know that's ninety nine percent of
people out there. Is not the case you saw him
first as Spock. We all did. However, to me, that
was so formative by the way podcasters, paranormal podcasters, if

(46:02):
you want to have me on your show, and you should,
I am going to talk about In Search of because
it's not only the basis for all of my paranormal lore,
but it is the image I think of when I
think of Leonard Dama, I think of that guy, and
I think of how scary and serious he was.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Oh yeah, and that show covered the whole gamut of
the paranormal and the super normal. Everything from these you
talked about, the ancient astronauts, all that bullshit, the von
Danik and stuff they covered that. They covered, Amelia Earhart,
they covered the Bermuda Triangle. They covered like.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Their Amityville horror episode is scarier than the film The
Amity War.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Well, now we know the truth of what actually took place.
They didn't know that back then.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
No, anyway, that's what's great about it is. Yes, it's
still all of their theories are still locked in the seventies.
You're just like, what what are you guys even talking about?
For most of them, but some of them are still like, yeah,
that's still a fucking mystery.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah. So anyway, I agree, like seek out if you
want something. I don't know if like an adult watching
In Search Of would have the same reaction as we
did it. What we just saw it at the right time.
Fa them alone, because we were so impressionable, and when
you're seeing grainy UFO photos or the Lockness Monster, I
was predisposed to believe all of that shit. So even

(47:21):
now it gives me a little bit of trepidation to
think about In Search Of because it was so creepy
and scary and interesting at the same time.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
I don't think people today watching it for the first
time would have any sort of reaction the way we did,
because they have the other Spock with the other in
search of Zachary Quinto. He hosted the remake of the show.
Plus we had Command of Cheese there with Factor Fiction Forever.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Oh freakes, freaks, Yeah, yeah, that's true. So getting back
to the movie. At the same time as all this
is happening.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
Let's get to Starfleet headquarters. Everybody, what's been going on
in San Francisco?

Speaker 2 (47:57):
In San Francisco and on a first.

Speaker 1 (47:59):
In this movie we get a lot of first Honestly,
do you know what we find out in this movie
that it's James T. Kirk. We find out his name
is Tiberius.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Now we never found that out in the original series.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
It's made cannon here and it's not even in the movie.
It's in the novelization. And now let me talk about
the novelization for one second, because I read it now.
I my whole life have been a fan of novelizations.
I have stacks and snacks of them everywhere. I have
the Taxi Driver novelization. Everybody, Oh boy, you want to
read that one anyway, The Star Trek, the motion picture
novelization is the only novelisation or novel of Star Trek

(48:34):
fiction written by Gene Roddenberry himself. It's not great, it
is what it is, and it's based on earlier drafts
in the script. It might even be based on Gene
Roddenberry's drafts of the script. How would I know this
well because the novel. Don't read it. It's terrible, But
do read the preface, written by Admiral James T. Kirk himself,

(48:55):
talking about how he realizes his legend precedes him and
a much has been made about his exploits, and all
of it has been blown out of proportion. And he
knows that his five year mission was very well documented
and that most of it was untrue. And here the
book you're reading he has commissioned. So don't believe any

(49:16):
other version. Just this. In other words, Gene Roddenberry is
saying this was the script that they should have made figures.
Where were we? Who knows?

Speaker 2 (49:26):
I don't know, but I will say this as a
side note Starfleet. A bunch of years ago they put
out a fictionalized, obviously autobiography of James Kirk. It's very
worthwhile to read it because you get a lot of
it fills in a lot of the gaps and connects
a lot of the dots that maybe weren't so obvious
in the series and in the movies. But anyway, we're

(49:47):
talking about now Kirk. In this movie, he's been promoted
to admiral, and he has been he's been notified of
this crisis that the Earth is facing. So what he
effectively is does is the Enterprise is undergoing refit, it's
being modernized. He effectively commandeers the Enterprise on Starfleet orders,

(50:10):
which much to the chagrin of the existing Captain Decker,
played by the troublesome, say the least Stephen Collins.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
Okay, Stephen Collins scandal noted. All right, yeah, everybody don't
really going watching this movie. He's really good in it.
First of all, I think, honestly, if Stephen Collins had
existed in nineteen sixty five, then Gene Rodenbury would have
cast him as Captain Kirk.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
I agree with you to a point. I think he's
really good in this from the perspective of acting in
that style of Star Trek the original series. I'm not
suggesting that it's grounded dramatic performance. I think he plays
to the heightened reality of Star Trek.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
There are no grounded, realistic performances in this film. This
movie is a fairy tale. This movie is the sequel
of the series.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
Sure, he's playing to the tone of the movie, and
by that standard, I yes, it is a good performance.
So anyway, Kirk has to take the Star Trek out
to intercept this force that's heading towards Earth Decker. Reluctantly,
he has no choice but to let him do it.
But initially he's effectively first officer and the science officer.

(51:26):
Because what happens, and this is actually rather horrific, I forgot.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
I let's talk about this, okay. When they were going
to make Phase two, which is the sequel series, when
they were going to launch the Paramount Network, they basically
it was just Star Trek again. It was another five
year mission, Kirk and everybody on the Enterprise going out.
But they knew even then they weren't going to get
Leonard naymoy. So instead they thought, let's cast a full

(51:52):
Vulcan and Zon was going to be very curious about
human behavior, and through Spock, who is missing somehow, and
basically it's data, okay, because right they have the data
character would eventually show up. The Decker character is Riiker

(52:12):
eventually in fact that he was a character on the
series as well, Commander Decker who was basically there just
in case Shatner wasn't going to work out and they
could jettison him and have a new captain. And the
character of Ilia was part of the new crew of
the Starship Enterprise. An mpath Deanna Troy Rodon Berry never

(52:33):
threw one fucking ideal way, did he?

Speaker 2 (52:35):
No, not at all, but the horrific part of.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Well, yeah, anyway, My point there was I'm sorry I
didn't keep interrupting you.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
That's okay?

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Is that? So the guy who was going to play
Zon is in this movie on the space station calling
to let Starfleet know about what happened to the Klingons.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
That's the guy. Yeah, Because when Kirk is at Starfleet
he talks to the science officer. This guy, I don't
is his name is on in this The.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Guy on the station was the one who was going
to plays On And they said, sorry, we don't need you.
We've got Leonard Nimoy now here. Do you want to
play this Vulcan science officer, and he said, no, I
don't want to be a Vulcan, and they gave him
a cameo as the guy running the station that gets
eventually eaten by vegir Okay.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Oh, I got you, I got you.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Okay. So the character who is basically going to be
on we get from the science officer he meets at Starfleet,
who he says, meet me in an hour on the Enterprise.
Kirk in that moment dooms that man to death, and
they only kill him so that they can get Leonard
Nimoy on the ship. And it makes sense as a

(53:41):
science officer, it's crazy, it is.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
It's like around the Mulberry Bush just to get to
the point where they can have Spock on the on
the Enterprise. So he Scotty is going over. He takes
Kirk on a shuttle to the Enterprise because he says,
the transporter there's a malfunction and they're working through some
issue with the transporter. So meanwhile this gives us the

(54:05):
opportunity to basically as they're flying up to the Enterprise,
it's a literal four and a half minute pretty much
wordless approach to the Enterprise. It's filmed lovingly from all
these different angles as you get reaction shot after reaction
shot of Scottie and Kirk gawking over.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Its constellation class porn.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
It is, and this isn't the last time we're going
to see a bunch of reaction shots.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
This entire sequence was directed by Douglas Trumbull. Robert Wise
basically said just give us what we need here, so
it was trumble Yeah, And I know there were like
lots of storyboards and everything, but Trumbull was responsible for
adding like the little guys floating around doing tasks and
other shuttles and stuff going to and like filling the
scene with life, so it's not just static shots of

(54:54):
the enterprise, which, by the way, the enterprise is fucking gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
Now, yeah, make no mistake, I'm joking that it takes
forever to get there because this being a movie, I
kind of want to cut to the chase and get
to the action. But having said that, it does look amazing,
and those little guys doing little tasks and stuff, that
all does make it feel alive. So if I'm talking.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
About this movie, they say this is the scene that
goes on too long, and I say, there is so
much of this movie that I would cut out before
I touched one frame of this sequence.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Yeah, there's an approach into Vidre which we'll get to,
which takes even longer and it's even more ponderous.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
But you know who my favorite character is in Star
Trek of the whole series, No, who, the Enterprise.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
That's a good point because that's really the only constant
through every one of these iterations.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Right, blow it up, fucking up, doesn't matter, it's coming back.
The Enterprise will always be there.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
It will always come back. So they get onto the Enterprise,
Scotty and Kirk, and they're trying to beam up this
Vulcanis officer that he talked to in San Francisco, and
there's a malfunction and they end up first of all,
the people in the transporter pad. As they're coming in,
they're screaming in agony, and then they have to reverse

(56:12):
the transporter and they and.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
Then Transporter Chief Rand, she's no longer a Yeoman's that's
Transporter Chief Ran from the original series says, Oh God,
they're forming, which means they're deforming, which means that in
this pattern, this energy pattern, their bodies are now starting
to twist in on themselves, and then they send them

(56:35):
back where we are told what we received didn't live
long mercifully, which.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Just sounds It reminds me of The Fly, the Cronenberg
The Fly, when you know there's a malfunction and things
are coming out all twisted up and just disgusting. It's horrifying.
And this is Star Trek. This is a beloved sixties
TV show, and this is so dark the way.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
He's seven years old. This was a fucking nightmare.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
It is. And it's not the last time that they.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Didn't know what to do with myself. I honestly don't
remember the next portion of the movie because I was
so I knew what was happening.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
It's death. It's right there, and it's a horrifying page.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
And this is right after we watched the Klingons get
their asses kicked.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Right, So there's already been a lot of death for
a Star Trek property. So Kirk basically tells the crew
and everybody on the enterprise what the deal is. They
have about fifty three hours to intercept this force before
it reaches Earth, so they've got to intercept, investigate, take
any action that's necessary. But At the same time, he

(57:43):
gets a priority signal from another Federation outpost that suffers
the same exact fate as the Klingons. They are attacked
by this cloud. It sends a plasma ball that disintegrates
the whole. It's awful because this all happens.

Speaker 1 (57:58):
That's that one guy in a spacewalk to trying to
get away from everything, and like even if he got away,
what was he gonna do.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
He's like trying to high tail it away from That's
it's scary. It's a scary proposition anyway, to be walking
in space, but then you've got this catastrophe happening behind
it basically trips right, and then that's it. It's curtains.
So the new the new navigator comes on board. This
Aliyah you mentioned her earlier that what's odd is they

(58:25):
announced I think Hora says, oh, and Captain she's Dalton,
and that seems to delight everybody, like even to cut
to Chekhov, who smiles so broadly, like we're supposed to
understand what Dealton means.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
This is left over from an earlier draft in the
script where it was going to be more of the plot,
but Dalton's apparently are the most sensual creatures in the Federation,
which is why when she meets Kirk, she immediately says,
I have a vow of celibacy because she's Kirk's reputation
has preceded him, right.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
We find out that Aileiah and Decker have some romantic
history together because he spent time on her home world.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Where have we seen that? Oh hello, Deanna Troy and
William Riker and a counter at far point.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Never throw anything away, oh Jeane. So then there, the
whole crew is there. They're ready to board, except for
there's one one character who refuses to use the transporter.
And of course this is another favorite. It's bones. It's bones, McCoy,
And why don't you describe what he looks like when
he comes off that transporter pack.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
I'm going to use a joke by Mike White on
his show The Projection Booth, which is, Jim, we just
came back from destroying disco. He's in basically a leisure
suit with a fucking open collar to his navel and
a fucking medallion and a rounded weirdo beard. A rounded

(59:53):
weirdo beard. It's so fucking unusual. It's like you want
to when you start something and you haven't seen characters
for a while, like you want to find out what
they've been up to. I don't want to know what
he was up to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Like the other part of the suit is it is
a leisure suit, but it's made of what appears to
be terry cloth, which was a very popular material back then.
It's just the whole package is just wonderful. And of
course it's the forest Kelly. Who doesn't like the forest Kelly.
He's another one who anytime I would see him pop

(01:00:27):
in to some Western or some other part, I look
at him, I go, that's McCoy, Like what, You're not
fooling me. This is another It's just like Leonard and
ee boy. He was shoehorned into that part and most
of the actors were.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Earlier today, I was watching Assignment Earth from the the
second season episode twenty six, and that's the one when
they go back in time to the Cape Kennedy or
Cape Canaveral at the time where the space launch. Remember
they go back to sixties Earth and Terry gar is there.
Oh yeah, remember that one.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Today, for the first time, I notice one of the
texts at NASA is Don Lormer, who was one of
the jurors and Twelve Angry Men. But I know him
mainly and you might know him mainly as Mike, the
janitor from Creep Show who gets eaten by Fluffy out
of the crate.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Wait, which juror was he in Twelve Angry Men? Was
it the original or was it the Playhouse production?

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
No? I think it was the original. I think it's
the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
It is Don lorm I don't have to look it
up anyway, because I love that movie. So it turns
out that basically Kirk essentially drafted Bones to be on
the ship for this mission, because of course he's gonna
need bone Yice, I need.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
You weird a bunch of we Look, this is Shatner
full Season three. I'm a total fucking ham in this movie.
And he just keeps making weirder and weirder things. When
we first meet him, it's that he's meeting Scotty and
Scotty's ferrying him over there, and Scotty's complaining about how
the Enterprise isn't ready and her captain is untested, and
he's like, well, I don't consider myself untested, And then

(01:02:01):
and he's like what what do you mean? And he's like,
they gave her back to me. He's such a lunatic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Yeah, it is weird because we'll see throughout the series
that he vacillates between Admiral Kirk and Captain Kirk. He's
always angling to get back onto the Enterprise, and of
course that's where he's destined to go. But it is
a little when you look at the balance of the
whole arc of this series, it is a little weird
that he, like his career is forever vacillating between the

(01:02:30):
two states. Like someone somewhere should finally say, you know what,
this man has an unhealthy obsession with staying on this ship.
Maybe we should have a doctor, not bones, but somebody
actually talked to this guy and figure out what's his deal,
Like he should get over this already. But anyway, well,
in this case.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
It's the thrust of the entire series though, with what
you're describing HB as this man who can't decide whether
he wants this or that, and ultimately sure, ultimately hopping
around the universe is the only thing he's good at.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
True, as much as he tries to get away from it,
he just can't. He can't quit the enterprise. That's fine,
so they're on Finally everybody's on board, and they take
the enterprise out and they engage warp speed. But because
they haven't shaken all the glitches.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
In this case, they're not supposed to be doing it
in a solar system. They're still in our solar system.
You're not supposed to be engage in works. Because of that,
they get a piece of space debris in their warp tunnel,
which turns into a wormhole.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
So they end up and this kind of becomes a
ridiculous scene because what happens is they're in this wormhole
and an asteroid has materialized in front of them, and
not only do they have to get out of the wormhole,
but they have to do it before they collide with
this asteroid. But the longer they're in the wormhole, the
slower time is apparently running, and the slower they start talking.

(01:03:54):
So by the time they get to the point where
Chekhov is told by Decker to fire proton torpedoes at
this asteroid, they're talking like this proton torpede. So this,
by the way, it's very annoyxious. And by the way,

(01:04:18):
Decker has actually countermanded one of Kirk's orders because Kirk
orders them to shoot phasers at the thing, but Decker
says no, and he goes on, I'm not gonna do
the whole thing. Don't worry. He says, we can't shoot
phasers because it'll do something with the something, and they
have to shoot proton torpedo.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
It'll draw energy from the from the engine. The phasers
are now rooted through the engine used they used to
be independent. If they do that, they're gonna they're gonna
fall out a warp and fucking be pulled apart. What
are you talking about, HB.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
All right, tricky whatever. Anyway, they blow up thisstroid with
the and that knocks them out of the wormhole and
everything's okay. And basically, I think.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
Kirk I like the point of the scene, which is
you're not as fucking great as you think you are.
You're still out classed. You have some things to learn here.
And it shows his humility because he fucking comes clean
with that with Decker. Can I just ask is there
a rank between captain and admiral because it seems like
the five years or so that we're supposed to believe

(01:05:20):
has passed between the end of the five year mission
for three years betwend the end of the five year mission.
In this he became an admirable admiral straight from fucking captain.
What about rear admiral?

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
I think rear admirals higher than admiral, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
What about commodore, I know, Commodore or Elvis. Speaking of commodores,
do you remember the Doomsday device? Do you remember the
Doomsday machine with Commodore Matt Decker okay, played by William Windham,
the crazy one who fucking goes he fucking flies the
ship into it? Remember, Yeah, yeah, that's Decker's dad.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
Really, yeah, that's canon. Yes, I never knew that interesting
because they don't mention that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
So maybe quit making fun of me and my knowledge
of Star trek. Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
Well there you go, learn something new every day follom alone.
So after all this happens and they talk about what happened,
and Kirk basically makes Decker promise like he's going to
keep him in check, because again Kirk shows some humility
here and says, you're right, I'm not I'm rusty, I'm
not as sharp as I was X amount of years ago.

(01:06:27):
But at that point, a shuttle requests requested docking with
the Enterprise, and who's on the shuttle. It's our boy, Spock.
Spock has made his way to the Enterprise.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
He I'm curious how he found them, considering they just
went to warp, got caught in the wormhole and ended
up they don't even know where they are, so that's interesting.
But anyway, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:47):
But the problem is that everybody of the original crew,
they're all delighted that Spock is on board, but Spock
is still dealing with the after effects of the culinar
ritual and he's very cold. He doesn't he's not presenting
any type of emotion. He doesn't even seem to be
happy to be there to see all his friends.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
I'm telling you, he's it's and can you imagine that
Spock's mother is married to a Vulcan? Have you watched
that episode recently? The's Sarah and Amanda show up for
the first time and She's like, yeah, it's really hard,
but it's worth it. I'm like, it's not worth it.
They are terrible, Like if you're crying about something, they're

(01:07:29):
gonna be like, what it's wrong with you? You've weirdo
human like I can't take them.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
It did seem a little odd, and they do address
that a little bit in the Abrams reboot, which we'll
talk about when we talk about it, But that is
that always seemed to be a little odd, Like there's
no warmth with a vulcan. So what would a kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Human being falls in love with a vulcan?

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Ultimately, like I get the appeal. They're cool and they
know a lot of shit. But at the same time,
like they cuddle, they must cuddle. They understand your needs, right,
they have to as long as they're acting in some
manner toward your emotions. I suppose it would be.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
Okay, well, let me ask this before we move off
to the subject. Does every Vulcan go through culinar? No,
that's their emotions.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
No, that's for masters that you're part of, the following
the religion.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
At that point, I got it. So it's likely that
Spock that Sarah has not gone through culinar. He's still
a regular old Vulcan with emotions that are mostly buried
and subsumed. Okay, that makes more sense because he is,
and that part of it I think is the way
Mark Leonard plays him, but he has played with a

(01:08:43):
lot of warmth for a Vulcan. In fact, I would
say that he probably plays him with more warmth than
Leonard Nimoy typically does.

Speaker 1 (01:08:52):
Oh, I don't know. I've seen those blooper reels.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
What's presented as performance I think is much warmer. Anyway,
now Spock's on board. Spock makes it clear that he's
looking for answers about this thing that he's picked up from,
this this anomaly that's heading towards it space cloud, this cloud.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
So he's thinks the stage for every Marvel and DC
movie from the past twenty years. The space cloud is coming.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
Right and he at a certain point he talks with
McCoy and Kirk about why he didn't complete Colinar. What
Spock feels like I think, Spock says, he feels a
perfectly ordered consciousness that he's never felt before, and maybe
this has the answers that he's seeking. So the ship

(01:09:41):
finally reaches this anomaly and here's where things get. Now,
here's the thing. I forgot about this until I watch
this father alone. I remember kid No. I remember it
as a child saying to my mom that I wanted
to see Star trek the motion picture, and I very
distinctly remember my mother saying something to the effect of
I've heard it's just mostly just people looking up at

(01:10:03):
the screen and reacting to things. It doesn't sound it
sounds boring to me, and I didn't really think about
that until I rewatched this scene. So it reaches the
anomaly and they're actually, I don't think we've gotten to
this part yet, but eventually they head into the cloud
and they get deeper and deeper and deeper into it.
And what we're presented with is another three or four

(01:10:26):
minutes of wordless reactions and very much in the style
of two thousand and one, a space odyssey, like space psychedelics, scanning,
passing by the viewscreen. That's what we get. That's what
my mother was cautioning me against, because it's just a
bunch of reaction shots.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Anyway, well, they let me speak to the two thousand
and one angle, which Douglas Trumbull won an Academy Award
for his effects work on two thousand and one. It's
what made him and allowed him to go out and
make his own company. And it should also be noted
that just like that, unlike these sequence at the end

(01:11:04):
of two thousand and one, which is thrilling. This is
really muddy and boring, and this is another Douglas Trumble sequence.
The scene where we really explore Vjur's interior is when
Spock goes off on his own, and that's really the
trip portion of the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Yeah, so eventually they figure out her. Spock figures out
that this thing actually has been trying to communicate with them,
but it's at such a high rate of speed that
it's too fast. So he figures out a way to
communicate back that there are no threat just as this
thing is spent sending one of the plasma balls right
at the enterprise. He gets through to it in the

(01:11:43):
nick of time and the plasma ball dissolves, and that's
when they go deeper into this cloud and they're gawking
at everything. But eventually what happens is they And by
the way, this is all a very good showcase for
Jerry Goldsmith's music because as they're passing through all the
psychedelic imagery, the score underneath it has these notes of excitement,

(01:12:07):
but also strikes that somber metallic tone that works beautifully
with the space photography and gives you the coldness of
space and excitement of the adventure that they're on. So
eventually they get probed again. And this is another part
that kind of scarred me a little bit as a child.
This probe that takes the form of essentially a lightning bolt,

(01:12:30):
a slow moving column of light that's passing through the
bridge that Kirk says, don't do anything, it's just probing us,
don't whatever. It eventually tries to take control of the
computer and they realize it's gathering all this data. Spock
destroys the console and he's blown back. Then what happens

(01:12:51):
is I still think it's horrifying. This probe takes a
hold of Eileena, who is completely innocent. She's all she's
doing is just on the bridge, frozen in place. It
takes a hold of her, shakes her around a little bit,
and vaporizes her right before their eyes. She's gone spoiler alert,
she doesn't come back. She's dead, just deadly. Yeah, she's dead.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Vija has murdered another.

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):
Innocent Yeah, completely innocent, And she's even more innocent than
everybody else because she's supposed to be this pure Delton
that has all of these kind of what we will
later associate with Deanna Troy from Next Generation. She's an
EmPATH and she has these abilities to put make people
feel good. Chekhov gets burned when his station explodes, and

(01:13:41):
she's able to like calm him and make him feel
no pain while the medics arrive. So it's incredibly sad
that this member of the crew is killed for no
good reason. But what's even scarier is after this happens,
eventually they get a signal from her her quarters there's
a life form in there. I'm jumping ahead a little bit,

(01:14:04):
and they go there and Eileena is there. But it's
not Eileena. It's this It's another manifestation of a probe
from this cloud thing which we which she will term Vegre.
She's nothing more than a complex robot that Vegre has
sent over to do more probing and more studying of

(01:14:26):
this ship. So not only is Eileena gone, but she's
been replaced with this weird robot like simulacrum of her.
I just I found that incredibly cruel. Fotom alone couldn't
shake it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
Well. It's one of the interesting things going on in
this movie, one of the few in Star Trek. The
motionless picture, because here's where we're at our most motionless.
We're just traveling through the cloud. Now, right, is there
a villain? I don't know. Maybe something at the end,
at the center of this cloud, I guess is the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
So she's she's our only me means of trying to
understand what this anomaly is after because she calls it
vegre like vi apostrophe ger. I think is how it's spelled.
I think that's in the closed.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Captions the creator.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
Right, So this anomaly, this this living ship is searching
for its creator. We don't know why, we don't know
what the purpose is. But she is on the ship
now to study them. And then of course Deckerd, because
he has a history of Eilena, is he's trying to
almost like trying to get an anesiac to restore their memory.

(01:15:37):
He's trying to walk her through all these familiar places
and the hopes that maybe Aileena is in there somewhere,
and there's clues that maybe there is some vestige of
her in there. But I will say this, At one
point they go into what amounts to a rec room
in the Enterprise and he's showing her, Hey, we used

(01:15:58):
to play this game, and you know, it would always
beat me. This room that they're in. I don't know
about you, fatherm Alone. We talk a lot about set
design and things we like in other podcasts Night Mister Walters,
for one, This it's mammoth. It looks like I would
imagine a wreck room would look in a giant starship

(01:16:18):
in space in the twenty third century or whenever that is.
I was entranced by it. I thought it was great.

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
It is it's the second time we've seen it. It's
the same room where they've gathered the entire crew to
let them know what their mission is again right by
that the crew is mainly in that scene peopled with
fan club members and other like people who were fans
of Star Trek who had like contacted the production, which.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
Would explain the fact that at one of the reaction
shots there's someone who's clearly like somebody who has like
bad skin, like a lot of pimples, And I'm like,
wouldn't they have cured pimples in the twenty third century?
But it makes sense now that's probably someone who was
just a big, a young fan of the show who
is just going through puberty, probably at that point and

(01:17:05):
had bad skin. I don't know. I thought it was funny.
So as this is all happening, eventually Spock steals away
from his station and he steals I think they call
it a thruster suit. It's one of these spacewalk things
where he's decided he's they've gone all the way to
this part of the ship, this living organism, this Vegre

(01:17:27):
that has this aperture that opens and closes at regular intervals,
and he wants to try and get to the center
of this being.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
Finally needs in his mind, he needs to make physical
contact with Vegre in order to mind meld with it.
Only then will he know Veger's true purpose, to which
I would say, she's standing beside you.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
He can just talk.

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Lie, are you getting in a fucking spacesuit and flying
through the cloud when Vegre is on the ship already
with you if you want to mind meld.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
This is Spock at his most rebellious. I don't remember
him ever really taking matters into his hands to this degree.
At some point he neck pinches somebody in that area
where they have the suits so he can steal one.
So he steals the suit and he times it so
that he can hit the thruster and get through the
aperture before it closes, and he succeeds. He's in this

(01:18:22):
thing and he's going through another psychedelic light show, and
he's seeing like inside of vgre or all these like
reproductions of solar systems and all these things that it's
seen and all the data that it's collected, and it's
all rather striking to see.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
I have the living machine and we haven't really gotten
one of those on the big screen. So yeah, this
is fascinating stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
It's cool. And he makes his way eventually at the
very center and this is rather inexplicable. It's a giant
size version of Eileena with like this little sensor in
her neck. And he decides, I'm going to mind mel
with that thing and figure out what's going on here.
So he tries to mind meld, and of course it's
too much data, too much information, and it'll it kind

(01:19:07):
of short circuits him and he is blown back back
towards where he came. And coincidentally, now Kirk, who's figured
out well, Spock, he probably he got outside. I think
they've told him that there's a suit missing, and he
figures out in Spock. He's approaching this aperture. Just as
Spock gets spit out effectively by the creature. He brings

(01:19:28):
Spock back, and actually, I think this is probably the
best Spock scene in the movie, because they bring him
to sick Bay and they're talking to him and he's
Spock is explaining what he felt and what it was like,
and this is really one of the few times you
see finally Spock is showing some emotion because he comes
out of this kind of coma that he was in,

(01:19:52):
and he says, when he mind melded, he saw it
was all pure logic. There was no beauty, no nothing.
He says, even as simple gesture like he takes Kirk's
hand in his and he says, even this simple gesture
has no meaning to Vgre There's no hope and there's
no answers. And finally it seems like Spock has learned

(01:20:13):
to reappreciate his emotional side. And it's beautiful to see
this performance from Nimoy, because he's had to be so
reserved through the movie up to this point, and it's
amazing to see.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
We like, give us back our Spok already, come on, man,
don't be vulcan. Be vulcan half human.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
We need to see both sides of it for it
to really feel like Spock, because everyone wants to judge
him solely on the logic, but we got both. That's
the whole point. He's half human. We need to see
those emotions come to the surface.

Speaker 1 (01:20:48):
I remember his reaction after pon Far when he realized
that Kirk was still alive.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Jim, He's excited. Yeah, I remember that. Good call. So
now the cloud has approached Earth finally, and Spock figures
out that this signal that it's been sending out is
actually a radio signal. Decker tells Kirk that Veiger is

(01:21:15):
expecting an answer, but he doesn't know the question. So
another series of balls go out that effectively render the
Earth defenseless. It shuts down all of the fence systems
on the Earth. It's a big it's a scary moment
because you feel like the Earth is hanging in the
balance here.

Speaker 1 (01:21:32):
So f first time in Star Trek that this has.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
Happened, that the Earth is in such jeopardy. Yeah, wow,
that's surprising. After three years, they never had something to
this degree.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
No, not like this. They've clearly had living machines seeking
their creators in the past, but they have not had
Earth in as the object of peril like this before.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
Interesting, well, very high stakes, and at least at this
point because it's so like because we will see the
Earth and the universe and whatever in jeopardy in many
of these movies as we go along, but to actually
raise those stakes in the first movie, it's actually pretty
pretty cool. So there's some back and forth between the

(01:22:16):
Aileena the probe it. Kirk tries to play hardball, thinking
that well, Viger is acting like a child, so I
will treat it as a child, so he refuses. He
says he has the answers to give to Vigre, but
only if they remove the plasma balls that are holding
the Earth and check they're effectively at a stalemate. So

(01:22:37):
finally they decide they're gonna. They're gonna. He wants to
give the information to Viga directly, so they walk out.
There's there's an oxygen pockets formed around the enterprise, so
they can effectively walk right out the hall to the
very heart of Vegre.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Finally, and vi has been so kind to layout little
tiles for everyone to step on right.

Speaker 2 (01:23:02):
But and this is actually I thought this was a
good touch. I forgot about this is As they're leaving,
Kirk covertly tells mister Scott, hey, there's prepare a self
destruct on my mark. If I can't come back from this,
it's up to you to destroy the ship and hopefully
Veger at the same time. So he's got a little

(01:23:24):
bit of insurance in case things go south with Viger.
So they go out. They walk out Spock, Kirk, Eileena,
and Decker. They walk out to Viger to find out
what is going on here? What does this actually all mean?
And I gotta say, I still think this is a
wonderful twist. I'm sure that it was probably done better

(01:23:45):
in some episode of Star Trek previously, but I, as
a child, I thought this was really a cool twist.
So they get out to Vegre and it's like, in
the middle of all of this sort of living machinery
is all to a satellite, a man made satellite that
all this is formed from the center outwards and they're

(01:24:07):
looking at it and it's Vegre. It turns out Vegre
is actually a voyager satellite, Voyager six in fact, that
was sent out more than three hundred years ago. Now
we all grew up, I know, Father Malone. Maybe you
remember when the Voyager satellites were sent out into the
Solar System to gather data.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Transmitter one and Voyager two. Now, initially it was the
Mariner program. Those are the names of the satellites they
were sending out. And then I forget the name of
the technician who figured out that you can use gravity assist.
And it just so happened that in the nineteen seventies
that our planets were going to align so that you

(01:24:50):
could use the gravity of a planet to slingshot your
satellite off to the next one and on. Just so
happens that this is going on while Star Trek is happening.

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
It sounds like science fiction what you're describing, but this
is real people, right.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
They sent out actually they sent out two. Now one
was a backup technically, but really they had already programmed
it to go on its own separate mission because they
wanted two missions out of this, because they wanted to
hit every single planet. So Voyager one, Voyager two. Voyager
two is the famous one with the the record gold record. Yeah,
with greetings from Earth and all of Carl Sagan's Carl

(01:25:26):
Sagan put that whole thing together, got paid twenty five
thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
By the way, which is a lot of money back then.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
A lot of fucking money. It was like nineteen seventy
he was doing that shit anyway. So, yes, Voyager fever
is in the air. Now, we only sent two, but
this is Voyager six that we claim was sent in
nineteen ninety nine, So this is a further iteration of
what we were already doing. And it also should be
noted that in nineteen seventy nine, all of nineteen seventy

(01:25:53):
nine is when we started getting pictures back of Jupiter
and Saturn from Voyager. You couldn't ask for a better
fucking commercial if they had named the Voyager Probe Enterprise
was the only way they could have advertised the movie, right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:08):
But it's and by the way, the Voyager two, I
think is still I think it's actually gone as far
out into the soul system as any other any man
made object ever has and it's still sending data back
as recently as like I think, ten years ago, So
this is still happenings. It sounds unbelievable, but it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
With those solum power stores, so as long as the
equipment remains good, it'll still transmit. But you would just.

Speaker 2 (01:26:37):
Figure, like what the odds that it could be hit
by some kind of celestial object or something. But it's
just like there's a famous picture. I think it's called
the Little Blue Dot, and I think Carl Sagan has
spoken about this. I'm sure people have seen this. It's
this picture of this. It looks like a beam of light,
beams of light coming down in a little tiny blue

(01:26:57):
speck that's smaller than a mode of dust. That's Earth.
It had gotten so far out into the vast reaches
of space and took a picture back at our planet
to show how infinitesimal in the grand scheme of the universe.
It's amazing, and it's again it's not science fiction. This
actually was developed and launched.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
So that is called family portrait.

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
By the way, is that what it's called? Okay, But
it's striking.

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Because everyone you have ever known, everything you have ever thought,
everything that has ever been is in that photograph.

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
Is in that photograph. It's crazy. It's just it makes you.
It puts things into perspective, a little too much fucking perspective.
Maybe but perspective.

Speaker 1 (01:27:42):
I think everyone should be fucking strapped into a rocket,
put into orbit and made to look at the Earth
and go holy shit, and then return to us and
then maybe we'll be all cool with each other.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
Well that's what they say. I'm not suggesting people pony
up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever it
costs to go up with that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
No, that's a sexting to them.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
I know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
Shatner went up in one of those things. Is it
blew something or other and it was death? No? He
well yet, well he cried, because how can you not
When you see the earth such as it is, it
gives you an amazing new perspective on things. Anyway, the
reason why it kept calling itself Vegre is because the

(01:28:24):
brass nameplate that said Voyager had smudging. It had dirt
over the oya, so it thought its name was Vegre.
It missed THEA. I just thought that was such a
brilliant twist. This is a man made object that we
were all semi familiar with because of the Voyager one
and two probes that essentially it went out the Voyager

(01:28:47):
six in the movie. It fell into a black hole,
and they theorized that it emerged on the far end
of the galaxy and it fell into this gravity of
this machine planet, this living machine plant it and this
thing took the creed of learn all that is learnable
and take it back to the creator, because that's what
Voyager was designed to do, transmit information back to Earth.

(01:29:12):
This living planet absorbed the Voyager probe and took that
as a literal meaning that became bigger and more monstrous
as it got bigger bigger.

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
The lore is Voyager six ended up on a machine
planet that went, Okay, we understand what they were trying
to do with this, but let's give it life and
let its complete its mission to its fullest extent. And
then Vegre just started absorbing everything. But every time it
was calling back to Earth was not getting a return.

(01:29:45):
So now an answer, So now it's coming back. Okay, Now,
Star Trek lore will have you think that the planet
that it landed on was the Borg planet. I've heard that, Yeah,
that the Borg created Vigure. Okay. Now, the reason people
think that is because William Shatner in his novel The
Return kind of offhandedly mentions that as a possibility. So

(01:30:09):
since then people have been taking it as cannon, but
it's actually the opposite. Do you know what happens to Vjre?
Eventually Vegre creates.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
The board at the end of this movie.

Speaker 1 (01:30:19):
No, not at the end of this movie, and it's
further travels, Vegre ends up creating the board.

Speaker 2 (01:30:24):
Interesting. Where was that spelled out?

Speaker 1 (01:30:27):
It's in the comic books. Look, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
I thought you were gonna say, oh something to such
wrote about it or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Speaking of which, you're familiar with the concept of the
mirror universe in Star Trek, right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
Of course, who isn't stock with a go tea?

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
Yeah, right, somewhere there's an evil to me with a
goatee somewhere. So in the mirror universe there's a mirror
version of Vegure named Seeker.

Speaker 2 (01:30:54):
You get out of here.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):
No, I'm not kidding, man. Get this. Seeker was sent
out by the Terran Empire. Its name is Conqueror Seeker,
and when it gets to where it's absorbed all of
its knowledge and realizes it's just been used by the
Terran Empire, it returns for vengeance, not to give it knowledge.

(01:31:18):
I love Seeker, I love Vegure.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
See I want to see that movie that where you're
describing that sounds pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
Well, it should be noted that Vegre has not made
a return to any of the Star Trek properties. How
many fucking Star Trek properties have been there since this
movie came out? Next Generation Voyager, Deep Space nine, Enterprise,
fucking Strange New World, fucking Discovery, fucking Outpost thirty one,
and nobody no talk of Vegre, no twanging guitar sound.

(01:31:49):
What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (01:31:50):
That's the thing? Because this was a grave threat to
the Earth as we know it, and we never hear
about it ever again after this you're absolutely correc fallom alone.
It's pretty pretty weird kind of an oversight, I would.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
Think, considering how many fucking iterations of Star Trek are
out there, nobody's decided like, hey, let's go back and
look at Vidure. Now, how many times have they gone
to the goddamn Genesis planet?

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
True? And that was only what in the matter of
the two or three movies they kept going back to Genesis. Yeah, man,
come on now, crazy. So anyway, they figure out that
Vegure's got to finally offload its payload of data to
complete its mission, but then they try to set this up,
but it refuses because now Aileena, the probe all right,

(01:32:37):
I guess we'll just call Aileena says that Vegre wants
to join with the Creator, and Deckard I think, perhaps
blinded by his love for Aileena, decides that he's going
to be the one to sacrifice himself to join with
Vegre and prevent this catastrophe from happening. This is again,
this is kind of another I can't help but think

(01:32:59):
this was influenced by two thousand and one, because what
we're effectively seeing is the creation of a new form
of life, a new stage of life, I should say,
so he and Eileena and quotes embrace they There's all
sorts of star dust and things that swirl around them.
There's they grow brighter and brighter until they finally merge

(01:33:21):
with the stars and they absorb vegure, and they effectively
become a new form of creature. We don't really know
what or how or where they go, but now the
danger is over. Earth is spared the thread of these
veger coming to destroy it, and everything is good. Thumbs

(01:33:43):
up Kirk and Spock and company save the day. And
that's pretty and that's pretty much it. So they go
back on to the Enterprise, they pat themselves on the back,
they talk about what happened, and then they just decide
we're going to go that way, and the final credit
role begin with the words the Human Adventure is just beginning.
It's kind of like their version of the Seven will return.

(01:34:06):
It's hey, get ready, we're gonna kick off a whole
bunch of new movies and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
Doctor Detroit will be back in Doctor to the Wrath
of Mom.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
Doctor Detroit. You just compared Star Trek to Doctor Detroit.

Speaker 1 (01:34:22):
Hey man, they compared themselves when they compared the potential
sequel as Wrath of Mom. Okay, let's talk the good
things about this movie. I think we've mentioned some of them.
First and foremost. It's Jerry Goldsmith's score.

Speaker 2 (01:34:35):
It's music.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
It's just amazing. I think the effects still stand up
for the most part. There's a lot of dodgy shit
once they get inside feature where there's a shot where
they're like like, go forward, and then the Enterprise just
sort of it looks like a cut and paste like
jpeg of it, like moving kind of up and to
the left. I'm like, what is that shit?

Speaker 2 (01:34:58):
There's a lot of dodgyness. Whens goes to mind meld
with Vgre before he gets spat back out. The matt
lines around his hands, around his gloves is so thick
it almost looks like a deliberate artistic choice. But I
know that it's just how they had to do things
back then. We didn't talk much about the uniforms that

(01:35:18):
they changed. Ye, okay, we'll get to that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):
What else is good?

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
What else is good? Well, you said you mentioned the effects.
I thought that Nimoy's performance as Spock was really good.
I think by and large, the cast does a pretty
good job of carrying through that Star Trek feel through
the acting. Here's the thing. Ultimately, before we even get
to the good and bad, let me just say this,
it's a long ass movie. But the bottom line is

(01:35:49):
this plot, if taken down to its essentials and pared
down to an hour long episode or what have you,
is very much It feels like a Star Trek episode.
That's probably the best thing I can say about it
is if you streamlined it, it would be right at
home in the sixties.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
I completely agree with that this is a Star Trek episode.
The thing I admire I think the most about it
might be is that, like the original Star Trek, a
climax isn't dependent upon blowing something up or punching somebody
really hard. Star Trek was always the more cerebral and
a little more sci fi than the rest, and always

(01:36:29):
based more on thought. I know, Kirk betted a lot
of women and punched a lot of dudes, but he
also was a deep thinker and of like a brilliant strategist.
And I like that they came up with that solution here,
even though it's not their solution at all. It's just
Decker sacrificing himself and joining and becoming a new entity.

(01:36:50):
But even that's an interesting idea. That's interesting sci fi concept.
The idea of a voyager probe looking for its post
and not settling for anything less.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
That part of it, that aspect of it, like I said,
really captivated me. And I still think it's a pretty
smart way of because we all knew Voyager and the
fact that it's just living out its programming to the
best of its ability, but on a large scale, because
now it's sentient. But at the end of the day,
it's just trying to get back to Earth, to offload

(01:37:22):
its data payload. I just think that's so smart. It's
not some creature that is trying to take over for
any reason other than that's what it's programmed to do.
It's a robot, a smart robot, as sentient robot, but
a robot.

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
Let's talk about the bad first and foremost. I'll go first, Sure,
go for it. This should have been ninety minutes. What
the fuck are they doing? Man, what the fuck are
they doing? It's more than two hours. It's insanity. As
I said, I would cut the overture. I would cut
half of this shit here like it just goes on
and on. I will accept the four minute fetish shots

(01:37:59):
of the Enterprise for the first time. We haven't seen
it in ten years. It's a major component of what
we love about Star Trek. Give it its due, that's fine,
But what they're just flying around a cloud? What the
hell is happening?

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
Well, let me allow me to quote from Wikipedia in
the reaction to this movie, I want to quote this.
The quote is this is from Wikipedia. The slow pacing,
extended reaction shots, and lack of action scenes led fans
and critics to give the film a variety of nicknames,
including the Slow Motion Picture, the motion Sickness, and where

(01:38:38):
Nomad which was the probe and the changeling has gone before.
So the fact that and those are all direct quotes
from the time, from reviews of the time, and it's
all you can look. It's all annotated in Wikipedia.

Speaker 1 (01:38:53):
But I got one. Yeah, yeah, you want to hear one. Sure,
And television began rotten and Roddenberry begat Star Trek, and
Star Trek began Treky's, and Treky's begot clamor and clamor
begets Star Trek Animated Cartoon, and the cartoon began. More
clamor and more clamor begat Star Trek conventions. In Trek
conventions began even more clamor, and even more clamor began

(01:39:15):
The Myth, and the myth began Star Trek the Motion Picture,
and the Behemoth labored mightily and began a mouse fired
by a decade of devoted, dedicated, often fanatical Hue and Cry.
Paramount and producer Gene Roddenberry have given fans of the
long syndicated series precisely and exactly what they have been
asking for, and therein lies an awesome tragedy. Harlan Ellison,

(01:39:39):
It's true.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
Look, the worst thing about this movie is the slowness.
I totally agree with you. You could and I think
you might have mentioned that somebody somewhere has tried to
create an edit that is a ninety minute movie as
opposed to a two hour plus movie. And as pretty as.

Speaker 1 (01:39:58):
Some of the visuals are brilliant, It begins in flight,
they're already on the mission. They do get do away
with the fetish reveal of the enterprise. It starts they're
already on the way, Spock arrives, and then Spock tells
them what's up, and we get a flashback to Vulcan
and then the movie continues.

Speaker 2 (01:40:16):
Yeah, wow, yeah that would work. That would work really well.
They for we've already talked about the confluence of events
behind the scenes that led them to release the picture
in the stated that it's in and how the effects
worked and whatever. But yeah, it's just too slow. It
just doesn't move as fast as it needs to. And

(01:40:36):
that's something that I think they took to heart, because
when you think about it, we're going to get to
Star Trek two. That movie fucking moves and it doesn't stop.
This is the exact opposite of.

Speaker 1 (01:40:47):
That, this one starts awesome. You know what I would
contend Honestly, the first act of this movie is unassailable
up until they leave space Doc. It's great, and then
it slows to a crawl that it never recovers any
momentum for which is crazy because it's about a creature
hurtling towards Earth where we're all going to be doomed.

Speaker 2 (01:41:08):
It's almost too cerebral because even yes, there's a lot
of reaction shots and effects shots, but there's an awful
lot of talking here too, a lot of debating about
the meaning of what's happening. And maybe that's fine, maybe,
but in the service of a more streamlined picture, I
think it would have been much more effective. It just

(01:41:28):
feels like it crawls and never gets out of the muck.

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
And if you're going to have the movie this long,
and you're going to introduce two characters that we've never
met before and make them central to the entire plot,
then how about some time for the rest of the crew?

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
Yeah? Yeah, are you usiting me?

Speaker 1 (01:41:45):
They bring back Uhura and she's basically hailing frequencies open again.

Speaker 2 (01:41:51):
Yeah, I know for a fact, Walter Kinnig hated. He
basically looked at his part as essentially a cameo. And
I can't blame him because he doesn't do much from
getting burned at his station and having Aileena calm him,
he doesn't really do anything. So I do think the
rest of the cast gets real short shrift here. That's
a shame because we see them in the next few

(01:42:14):
movies and they really they're so charming as an ensemble,
and you don't get none of that here.

Speaker 1 (01:42:20):
It's unfortunate. But they don't really get the fact that
we love all of the characters until JJ Abrams because
people had swallowed this notion of the id ego super
ego triumvirate of Kirk and Bones and McCoy. And we
do love that, Yes, of course we do. But I
love Chekhov too. I love Sulu. I want to know

(01:42:42):
what he's up to. Remember Evil Sulu. Remember when when
he turned into a fencing master.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
The fencing guy.

Speaker 1 (01:42:48):
Yeah, oh man, oh man, give me more Sulu, everybody,
And he gets nothing here.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
No, but they do make it up to him in
the subsequent movies. We'll get to that. But yeah, that
counts as big negative. Is that we don't are not
afforded the chance to appreciate the whole cast and see
them interact. That's a shame. That's a real shame here,
it's a missed opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
We're flying around figure for five minutes and we can't
know what like Uhura has been up to for the
past five years.

Speaker 2 (01:43:16):
Come on, yeah, these are all good actors. It's not
as if they're not. Like I said, they're charming and
thankfully with hindsight we can see how good they are
in subsequent movies. But here that that's a real Like
I said, it's a real shame turner. Of course, with
the Isaac Hayes.

Speaker 1 (01:43:36):
He makes a healthy living, making living unhealthy.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
Nicholas is in the Ted Lang had did quite a
few movies around that time, popped up in the credit.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
My man, that's your deal, talking star Trek, get your tent.
I'm off my federation right now.

Speaker 2 (01:43:53):
So let's another negative we already kind of mentioned this
is the costuming is real drab and real bad. It's
my understanding. Part of it was they were reluctant to
use deep blue uniforms because they were fearful that it
would get in the way of the mats that they used, like,
let me call.

Speaker 1 (01:44:12):
Some horse blue screen. Here's what happened. Initially, they were
going to do updated versions of the original series, and
Robert Wise came on and said, oh, they used primary
colors on TV in the sixties because it popped and
it really caught your attention. But we don't want to
do that here. We want to make everything a little
more functional, which I can understand. And that's what they

(01:44:32):
ended up doing on Next Generation when everyone got a unitard,
and which is what they kind of give them here,
everyone's wearing pajamas. Okay, that's it. They're not great, but
they could have been saved because when we first meet Kirk,
he's wearing the same exact outfit, but he's wearing the
admiral version and it's two tones like white and gray

(01:44:53):
and with little eenpulets and stuff. It's awesome. It looks great.
And then the rest of them are just wearing pajamas
in all these earth tone pastels that are fucking horrible.

Speaker 2 (01:45:03):
Yeah, very drap. Let me ask you a question kind
of related to kind of a side note, baam belone,
what era of Star Trek do you think had the
best uniforms.

Speaker 1 (01:45:14):
It's coming. We're gonna talk about it next and the
next episode.

Speaker 2 (01:45:17):
Okay, see, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
I loved what Nicholas Meyer brought to the Star Trek
universe would which was, hey, aren't they the Navy? And
then they the sort of admiralty look of the red,
the crimson red with the epaulets and the button up thing. Yeah,
and then you can pull that down and it's white
with a blood smear on it and stuff. Oh, those
are the uniforms for.

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):
Me, man, those are the most practical. But for me,
my favorite will always be Next Generation. Once they got
away from the unitard and they started having sets, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
But once a card got a jacket, you were like,
oh shit, oh that's even better.

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
That's even better, And that kind of led you into like,
like like cisco A Deep Space nine took that look
to its logical extreme and it became even more like layered.
I agree, but no, for me, it's that because I
think they had to get away from the unitards because
they were so uncomfortable for the actors to wear, and
they think they they were just not very fun to

(01:46:20):
have on. But once they went to separates, everything kind
of got better and they also had I didn't realize.
As another side note, next generation, they often had muscle
pads underneath their their costumes to make them look bigger
and more muscular. Do you know that?

Speaker 1 (01:46:36):
I did not know that. That's the thing is the
unitard as an idea is a workable idea if you
were working with fabrics from the twenty third century. But
instead it's like nylon and you're like up somebody's crotch
every time they sit down. What an idiotic notion. How
they didn't start with separates is beyond me. Those first

(01:46:58):
two seasons is like seasons where they were in the unit.

Speaker 2 (01:47:01):
Yeah, if they had to learn what worked better.

Speaker 1 (01:47:04):
Practiced rough Man.

Speaker 2 (01:47:06):
Anyway, don't mean to sidetrack.

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
I just was Genuo sidetracking and star trek. This is
a wide ranging topic.

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
Sure, so all right, So the costumes are bad, the
length is bad, The lack of crew members is bad.
Lack of crew members is bad.

Speaker 1 (01:47:21):
Depending of an antagonist is bad.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
True, And I guess in hindsight, you need.

Speaker 1 (01:47:27):
To meet about halfway through, and they've been panicking about
what vegure like, I get the fucking dramatic reveal. The
dramatic reveal would have been just as dramatic halfway through.

Speaker 2 (01:47:38):
But that's but that goes hand in hand with the
excessive length, because we go through all of this endless
reaction shots, endless shots of them walk flying through the cloud.
All of that should have not been there. It should
have been much more efficient. Like like you're this ninety
minute cut that you talked about, I think that would

(01:47:58):
have been I don't know. I'd love to see it
and see how different the experiences I would imagine, because
it's obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
Not official at oh, that doesn't have it anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:48:08):
So so all right, so not perfect, But as an
opening salvo for the Star Trek movies, do you think
this was a success or a failure?

Speaker 1 (01:48:18):
You know what, as the last episode of the television
series Star Trek as a transition to feature films. I
think it's a pretty good movie.

Speaker 2 (01:48:31):
But you kind of had to. There was no there's
no getting to like con if you don't at least
try to plant a flag and say, okay, we're going
to commit to the cinematic version of Star Trek.

Speaker 1 (01:48:44):
Here's the thing. You weren't going to get good Star
Trek until they shook off. I'm sorry to say this
everybody until they shook off Gene Roddenberry, and they shake
him off here. He's such a pain in the ass
during the production of this movie and continue used to
be in the future that they paramount basically severs ties

(01:49:05):
with him over this movie. He's still the executive or
creative consultant and executive producer and created by Gene roden
berrying whatever, But from here on out his involvement is
as about as much as Rod Serling's involvement in the second
season of Night Gallery.

Speaker 2 (01:49:20):
Hey, midnight viewers, this is no disrespect. I mean, there
would be no Star Trek if it wasn't for Roddenberry.
No one is saying that he wasn't instrumental into integral
to Star Trek becoming anything at all. There wouldn't be
one without him. But having said that, I agree with
you there because and we'll talk about this, but Star

(01:49:43):
Trek two everything changes it to your point. It shakes
off the baggage of the wagon train to the Stars
that we had with the original series into the motion
picture and it made all the diference in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:50:01):
And it does what this movie doesn't, which is this
pays lip service to the idea that we're picking up
these people's lives later on, it isn't. It's like you're
an admiral, okay, but you're really still the captain and
here's your ship and we're off on adventures again. In
the next one, Nicholas Meyer like confronts head on the

(01:50:21):
fact that these characters are older and moving on. He
makes it actually central anyway, we're going to get there.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
We'll get to there. But anyway, I agree with you
that we had this was a necessary step to get
us to a place where it became its own thing.
The cinematic version of Star Trek. We had to get.
We had to start somewhere to get there. So in
my mind, this is a success. Like I said, this
is still this still stacks up against the original series,

(01:50:47):
but it had a way to go before it became
its own cinematic experience. So there you go.

Speaker 1 (01:50:55):
The last thing I'll say is Jerry Goldsmith brought in
Alexander courage. Do the portions of the score that were
echoes of his original Star Trek score, which there are many, sure, but.

Speaker 2 (01:51:07):
It's it all works. I mean, if there's one again,
if there's one thing we point to that is an
unqualified success with this movie. It is the music and
I can't say enough good things about it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:18):
So and they're gonna they're gonna kick Jerry Goldsmith loose
for the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):
And it is a doozy. You can't wait to get
to that.

Speaker 1 (01:51:27):
Oh until then, where can people find you?

Speaker 2 (01:51:28):
HP?

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):
I don't know when this is coming out or where
whatever it's coming out eventually, so.

Speaker 2 (01:51:33):
It's gonna come out. Keep it in reserve. I co
host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside midnight viewings
follow below. Hey, he happens to be right here. That's me,
that's him, and I host the Noise Junkies music podcast.
And last but not least, I have a band campsite
hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:51:55):
Go there, listen to his music. It's really fucking good.
What's wrong with you? He does all of our music.
That star Trek's score you heard at the beginning, that
religious experience. That's HP. Now as for me, you're listening
here midnight viewers, patrons, Hello, patrons, you're hearing this months
in advance. Thank you all for your patronage. And if
you don't patronage, then give us a like and a

(01:52:17):
subscribe and a positive review. It helps with the algorithms
and confronts Vegre on his own terms. Until next time
here on Star trek Fest, you cann't chase a.

Speaker 2 (01:52:29):
Lots of physics, loss of physics. We can shoop to
kill Shoop, to kill Shoop, to kill we come it,
beat Shoop, kill Scott up.

Speaker 1 (01:52:39):
It's worse than that.

Speaker 2 (01:52:40):
He can't Jim, catch Jim. It's worse Catchim cat You well,
it's life gym, but not as we know it, not
as we know it, not as we know it.

Speaker 1 (01:52:47):
It's life gym, but.

Speaker 2 (01:52:48):
Not as we know it, not as we know it.

Speaker 3 (01:52:49):
Can't us christy

Speaker 2 (01:53:00):
At whatever is st

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Star Trek Fest - Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Star Trek Fest - Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)