STAR TREK—THE MOTIONLESS PICTURE
And Television begat Roddenberry, and Roddenberry begat Star Trek, and Star Trek begat Trekkies, and Trekkies begat Clamor, and Clamor begat a Star Trek animated cartoon, and the Cartoon begat More Clamor, and More Clamor begat Trek Conventions, and Trek Conventions begat Even More Clamor, and Even More Clamor begat T*H*E M*Y*T*H, and T*H*E M*Y*T*H begat Star Trek—The Motion Picture, and the behemoth labored mightily and begat . . . 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.
It is not that Star Trek—The Motion Picture is a bad film; it isn't. Clearly, it is also not a good film. The saddening reality is simply that it is a dull film: an often boring film, a stultifyingly predictable film, a tragically average film. With a two-million-dollar production pricetag one could do no other than applaud it. Bearing a freightload cost of something in excess of forty-four million dollars (not counting how many millions will be spent on prints and sweep advertising) and the unbounded expectations held for it, the timid creation that crawled across premiere movie screens on December 7th, 1979—somehow appropriately on the thirty-eighth anniversary of another great tragedy—deserves little more than regrets and a weary shake of the head.
Nothing more need be said to buttress that view than to point out that Star Trek—TMP bears a MPAA censorship code rating of G. General audiences, all ages admitted. The same code can be found on Mary Poppins, Bambi and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Our motto: We Take No Chances.
Why should this have come to pass? Certainly no other film in the history of cinema has been looked forward to with such willing suspension of critical reservations. Few films receive the joyous elevation, prerelease, to the status of event. No, strike that: to the status of Second Coming. Even those of us who had their reservations about the series were predisposed to like this film, to greet it with positive attitude, to review it evenhandedly, faithfully, as allies. So: take risks, be bold!
Yet after the Hollywood press screening I attended last night at the Motion Picture Academy's theater, I saw disappointment that slopped well over into animosity on the part of those who could only benefit from the film doing well. One young person was heard to say, "I waited ten years for this?" And on the late newscasts, when those who had seen the film were interviewed coming out of the theaters around Los Angeles, a most woebegone ambience could be perceived. These same sorts of filmgoers who had jumped up and down after Star Wars, who were confronted by a television camera on the sidewalk and who raved about Lucas's movie, who bounced off the walls exalting the first major sf flick of the decade, these same sorts of people stood quietly and said, "It's a swell film, very good." They were obviously rationalizing their disappointment. No insane delirium, no wild enthusiasm, just a subdued kind of polite, quiet, let's-not-do-the-movie-any-harm comment. It was obvious this was not the dream they'd expected.
But that's just the point, and cuts directly to the heart of the tragedy. It is what they expected! They got no better and no worse than what they deserved. For years the Trekkies have exerted an almost vampiric control over Roddenberry and the spirit of Star Trek. The benefits devolved from their support, that kept the idea alive; but the drawbacks now reveal themselves in all their invidious potency; because in Paramount's and Roddenberry's fealty to "maintaining the essence of the television series that fans adored," they have played it too safe.
Star Trek—TMP is nothing more than a gussied-up two-hour television segment.
It thereby retains most of the crippling flaws attendant on all television episodic series: the shallow, unchanging characterizations; the need to hammer home points already made; the banal dialogue; the illogical and sophomoric "messages"; the posturing of second-rate actors; the slavish subjugation of plot and humanity to special effects.
They were afraid of losing that quality of familiarity generated by the TV series . . . and the tragedy is that they retained in fullest measure that which they should have dispensed with. A major film should be more than a predictable television episode; and no amount of special effects can dim that failure. There is simply no growth between the final segment of Star Trek and this hyperthyroid motion picture.
The fans have had their way and Paramount may have to pay the terrible price. But one cannot really pillory the fans. It is no crime, however destructive, to care deeply. The blame for this film's mediocrity must be heavily laid on the shoulders of Gene Roddenberry and the imitative tiny minds of the Paramount hierarchy. The latter probably more than the former: one cannot condemn Roddenberry too much because this was his chance to revive the dream. But the studio heads, confronted with the opportunity to capitalize—without substantial risk—on the goodwill and affection of a ready audience, to bring forth a production that would have expanded and enriched the original Star Trek concept, to go where no studio has gone before, chose to play the game of close-to-the-vest, to mimic Star Wars and all its subsequent clone-children.
But audiences have now seen Close Encounters and Buck Rogers and Battlestar Ponderosa and Alien and Starcrash and even lesser efforts. They are reaching their surface tension with films that offer nothing more than cunningly-cobbled starship models zooming through space. That cheap thrill is already a dead issue; and no matter how much they delude themselves that "latest state of the art" will bring in repeat business, audiences have come more and more to hunger for human emotion, involvement and identification with the problems of interesting people, not square-jawed cowboys in stretch pants and plastic booties.
Yes, there is more machinery in this film per inch of footage than one could find in a True Value hardware commercial, but even the models look cheesy, lacking both the gritty naturalism of Alien's Nostromo or the boggling cyclopean presence of Close Encounters' mother ship. And when we are confronted by a close shot on the principals, standing near a bulkhead that is intended to be stainless steel, when it is obviously a painted flat, all verisimilitude vanishes for the viewer.
Further, the direction in these scenes of great ships in space is slovenly. The point of view is frequently absent; we are left floating in a cinematic deep that confuses the eye and gives the attentive viewer no sense of correct spatial relationships. One would expect at least professional expertise in such a crucial area when a film has opted for machines over humans.
But Robert Wise, at least in this venture, has seemingly turned a deaf ear to the morphology of filming science fiction. It is bewildering. Wise learned at the knee of Val Lewton, and his credentials prior to this film are unassailable: Curse of the Cat People, the 1945 Lugosi Body Snatcher, The Day the Earth Stood Still, I Want to Live, West Side Story, the brilliant adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel in The Haunting, The Sand Pebbles, The Andromeda Strain—not to mention that he was an editor on three undeniable classics, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons and All That Money Can Buy.
Perhaps having directed The Sound of Music has caught up with him, belatedly. Certainly nothing in the Wise canon but that saccharine perennial casts an ominous shadow that solidifies in his otiose handling of Star Trek—TMP.
One has the niggling suspicion that Wise did not take this chore seriously, that he did it with his left hand, that it did not bulk large in his conception of "important" work. Static medium shots, persistent loss of p.o.v., a perplexing disregard for the overacting and mugging of almost everyone among the featured players, and a singular lack of freshness overall in selection of camera angles supports such a supposition.
Even common attention to detail, de rigueur for the most amateurish B flicks, is missing here. In one scene, as Shatner moves through the turbolift doors exiting the bridge, the woman sitting to my right (a total stranger) said (audibly enough to generate laughter around us), "Look, his toupee doesn't fit right!" Fortunately the mother of ex-Paramount President Frank Yablans didn't notice it: four seats to my left she had fallen asleep. In another scene, when a plaited headband is placed over the cueball baldness of the highly-touted Ms. Persis Khambatta—about whom more in a moment—a dangling ornament hangs on the left side. Instants later, after a cutaway shot, the ornament is hanging over the right side. Editorial matchup, a first-year film-school necessity, was beyond a production crew so multitudinous they could have been deployed as relief team against Xerxes's ravening hordes.
But this fumblefooted, hamhanded amateurishness is not confined to Wise or the editors. It appears throughout, as if the millions chalked off to studio overhead concealed the employment of a squad of gremlins, sent in to wreak havoc on the production.
Even the special effects photography was slipshod. In the opening sequence we see three Klingon battle cruisers skimming through space. The matte lines are jarringly evident. So recurrent is this ineptitude that the editor of a prominent magazine said, "I was so busy looking for the matte fissures, I lost track of the plot. There was a plot, wasn't there?"
Well, yes, there was. But I'll deal with that in a while because it contains the burning core of the film's ultimate mediocrity.
But first, as I touched on it above, let me deal with the acting. What little there was.
The first human being who speaks in the film (Klingons not being homo sapiens) is a female communications technician in a Starfleet outpost. She speaks her lines so stiltedly, so embarrassingly sophomorically, that I had the uncomfortable feeling I was looking at somebody's daughter, girlfriend or secretary who had been given a bit part. It was common practice on the TV series, but I could not believe that in a major studio production of this magnitude such nepotism could be countenanced. I have since learned that that was precisely the case. The "actress" in question was Michele Billy, production secretary to the scenarist, Harold Livingston.
To have our first exposure to thespic technique in a film this big fall on the clearly nonexistent talent of an amateur is shocking. Further, it is symptomatic of the inbred Old Boys' Network thinking that permeates Star Trek—TMP.
Pork-barrel jobs such as filling the rec room scene with fans and associates like Roddenberry's secretary Susan Sackett, novelist David Gerrold, Trekker Denny Arnold and the fannish loon who legally changed his name to James T. Kirk are acceptable, because they were only walk-ons. But putting such lames as Ms. Billy and Jon Rashad Kamal (Lt. Commander Sonak) in positions of even passing prominence speaks to a loss of rationality on the part of Wise and Roddenberry that beggars pejorative description.
Yet these casting gaffes seem minuscule compared to the sins of the principals. With the exceptions of Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley, the cast is (why does this word keep springing to mind!?) embarrassing.
Doohan's Scotty is no different from what we saw in the series, no smarter, no kinkier, no older, no more lovable. It is a standard television performance, competent but instantly forgettable. Barrett, Koenig, Takei and Nichols have such brief moments it is impossible to tell if they have the stuff to transcend their stale material. They are thrown scraps from the table: "Warp five, Captain," "Hailing frequency open, Captain," "Negative, Captain," "We're being scanned, Captain." The kind of verbal make-work larded into the script to keep the series' regulars around as furniture, but wholly insufficient to let them practice the craft they have spent their adult lives developing. Uhura remains a glorified switchboard operator, Chekov is the same button-pusher with a raise in rank, Sulu flies the jalopy and is denied the space to exude even a scintilla of George Takei's enormous personal charm, Doctor Chapel carries bedpans. And if Transporter Chief Grace Lee Whitney had a line during the molecular dissolution sequence, it was drowned out by the embarrassed laughter provoked by Shatner's "Oh, my God!" condolence that stands out in a farrago of moments in which one covers one's face wishing one were elsewhere, as the Mt. Everest of inappropriate, awkward readings.
As said, only Nimoy and Kelley came off interestingly. I've been told that Nimoy wrote most of his own part but that in-depth sessions wound up—along with considerable footage of Koenig, Takei, Barrett and others—on the cutting room floor. But even before that stage of post-production, the Enterprise crew found their parts being whittled to nothing. During the course of shooting I had occasion to speak to three or four of the crew regulars who have remained my friends from the old series days. Each of them said, in almost exactly the same words and tone of voice, "Every day when I come in I find my lines a little shorter, my scenes a little more cut."
And to whom were those stolen moments given? To Shatner, Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta.
Collins is a drone. His part could have been played by any rock-ribbed, lantern-jawed actor. He is totally unmemorable. I will pillory him no further. He did the best he could, and that's comment sufficiently pathetic for even John Simon.
Persis Khambatta. Oh dear.
After all the prerelease hype, one would have thought the emergence of a new Ingrid Bergman, or at very least a new Sigourney Weaver, was about to manifest itself.
Such is not the case.
This young woman is quite lovely to look at—but if shaving an esthetically-pleasing head is Makeup's idea of creating a "Vegan" alien then I fear Hal Clement will never work in films—and as for acting ability, well, the poor thing simply has none. I will pillory her no further. She did the best she could, and it is to Wise's credit that he turned her into a machine as quickly as possible, thereby permitting her to function at peak efficiency.
Which leaves us with William Shatner.
He dominates, as usual. Stuffy when he isn't being arch and coy; hamming and mugging when he isn't being lachrymose; playing Kirk as if he actually thinks he is Kirk, overbearing and pompous. Yet occasionally appealing, don't ask me why.
Perhaps it is that I remember Shatner from George C. Scott's production of The Andersonville Trial, in which he was no less than staggeringly brilliant. Perhaps it is that I wanted to like the new, resurgent Kirk. Perhaps it is that I am—despite the catalogue of horrors dealt with herein—hopeful that this film will not bury Star Trek.
Nonetheless, it is common knowledge that Shatner tried to dominate every segment of the series and that he has permitted his actor's ego to drag him down to the level of actually line-counting scenes in which another actor, even Nimoy, might have the limelight a trifle longer. I have no knowledge that such was the case with the film, though I've been told there were extensive "story-conferences" among Shatner, Wise and the scenarist; yet there is no mistaking Shatner's pushiness in the lead role. He is there, for better or worse, and if the pivotal scenes where emotionalism was necessary do not come off, the responsibility is surely his.
Nimoy remains a marvel, even in the truncated sections where he is permitted to flex his talent. His Spock is a character several degrees more interesting than when last we saw him in the series. Nimoy has aged, and so has Spock. There is compassion and a touching wistfulness just beneath the stoic surface. And in terms of advancement of the original Star Trek format, his is the only alteration. At the end of this movie we have seen the two new characters done away with (for sequel purposes) and we're left exactly where we were when the series was canceled. No change, no growth. But Spock has found there is a reason not to be ashamed of his humanity, his feelings; there is a positive note here—attributable to the sensibility of Nimoy, we must assume—that uplifts and enriches.
But for my money, it is DeForest Kelley who sparkles most wondrously. His Dr. McCoy is big, curmudgeonly, interesting and damned fine. Of all the people in this film, McCoy is the only one I'd care to spend an evening with. I will praise him no further. He did better than his previous best and that's praise of a high order in consideration of a film where almost everyone else is ponderously portentous, hammy or overblown, added like raisin afterthoughts to a soggy plot pudding in which the most startling aspect is an almost hysterical series of costume changes more numerous than those to be found in the most overclothed Ross Hunter tearjerker.
Bringing me, at last, and with trembling, to the script.
(This part is difficult. For years there was rancor between Gene Roddenberry and me. Now, for years, there has been amiability. The conclusions I will now draw about the quality of the film deal with Gene's talent as a writer, and with Gene as a human being involved in a project that has dominated nearly twenty years of his life. He cannot love me for these observations; nonetheless I am compelled to be candid and critically honest. I can do no other. Gene knows I'm thus trapped by my love of writing. Enthusiasts of Star Trek and of the film may suspect otherwise. I ask those who proceed with the reading of this essay to accept my assurance that I write what follows with difficulty, but with "clean hands and composure." There is no meanness in me.)
The mark of Gene Roddenberry's limits as a creator of stories is heavily, indelibly, inescapably on this production. No matter whose name is on the screenplay, no matter who is credited onscreen for the basic story, this is the work of Gene Roddenberry. Yes, I know that in the years between 1975 and 1979 there was a parade of writers through Paramount's gates whose abilities were sought for a Star Trek film. Yes, I know, because twice I was one of them. Yes, I know that runs were made at the screen treatment or script by John D. F. Black, Robert Silverberg, John Povill, Chris Bryant and Allen Scott, by director Phil Kaufman, by Alan Dean Foster, and by Gene himself. Yes, I know that Gene's name was removed from screen credit five times, and finally he was taken to Writers Guild arbitration by Harold Livingston, who wound up with the credit. Yes, I know all of that; nonetheless, this is Gene Roddenberry's story. And he has to be the one pinned to the wall.
This script has all the same dumb flaws that were perpetuated in the series . . . with bigger, prettier pictures.
It is a synthesis of at least four segments of the Star Trek series: "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Changeling," "The Immunity Syndrome," and Norman Spinrad's "The Doomsday Machine."
The ending—what one of the Star Trek novelists has called "a $44 million f—k"—is a direct ripoff of the ending from the film The Last Days of Man on Earth, a strange translation to the screen of Michael Moorcock's The Final Programme.
The characterizations are monodimensional with the ghastly addition of endless winking, eyebrow-arching, nudging and mugging on the part of almost every player, so that at moments in the film we feel we're watching a parody of the Monty Python routine—"Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more, say no more."
The basic story, for all its "latest state of the art" and its tricked-up trekkiness, is Gene's standard idea, done so often in the series: we go into space, we find God, and God is (pick one) malevolent, crazy, or a child. Not a bad idea, once or twice. Used it myself from time to time.
But even though Alan Dean Foster is given screen credit for the story, he was handed the basic story outline by Gene. It was a treatment intended as a segment of Genesis II back in 1973 when that Roddenberry film-for-tv was being considered as a continuing series. The title of the segment was "Robots' Return."
Thus it is ironic and no doubt painful to Gene that the realized dream is blighted by his name being absent from the writing credits. Because more than as creator, producer or guiding spirit of this project, Gene wanted to be known as the writer. And thus it was that he wrote the novel based on the screenplay. Salvation in print.
Notwithstanding the nobility of Gene's hunger for final recognition as a serious writer, it is clearly his heavy hand on the shoulders of all those who tried to beat this script that crushes any hope of originality. The critical assessment is this: for all his uncommon abilities as producer and developer of science fictional ideas for television, Gene Roddenberry is not a very good writer. And he should have accepted that knowledge, and left the writers alone.
Because Star Trek—TMP throws together weary and simplistic concepts that are ultimately boring because they are banal.
The plot is woebegone and predictable. It is also riddled with holes that let one perceive the vacuum lying beyond.
I will offer only one example. But not even the most rabid Star Trek fan can ignore it.
We are presented with an alien machine intelligence so vast and omniscient and powerful that it can wipe out entire worlds. It is clever enough to build for itself a ship that makes Arthur C. Clarke's Rama look like a Tinker Toy. Yet it isn't smart enough to wipe the dirt off a probe from Earth so that it knows the name is VOYAGER, not VGER.
This is the quality of cheat that obtains in television, but cannot be condoned in a forty-four million dollar epic.
The script . . .
No. I'd rather not go on. This has become too personal, and too painful. I had meant at the outset only to say a film of acceptable mediocrity had been produced. But as the writing emerged I found myself pulled on farther and farther into more damning criticism. I did not want that to happen.
I wanted to end on an upbeat note, to say that one aspect of this film gladdened me. The unswerveable dedication to the concept that the youthful human race is intrinsically noble and capable of living with equanimity in the universe. It is an important thought, and one that is denied in both Star Wars and Close Encounters. Unlike these previously adored "sci-fi" simplicities, Star Trek—TMP does not tell us that we are too base, too dull and too venal to save ourselves and to prevail in an uncaring universe without the help of some kind of bogus Jesus-Saves "Force" or a Pillsbury Doughboy in a galactic chandelier. It says we are the children of Creation and if we are courageous, ethical and steadfast we can achieve our place in the light of many suns.
I take that to be a worthy message.
And that message, in plenty, is here, in this film.
I wanted to say I was delighted that Gene employed the proper authorities who watched the physics and who kept the filmmakers from acceding to studio and dumb audience desires to hear explosions in the vacuum of space. I wanted to say that I was glad the film finally got made.
And I suppose I've said all that. But this, too, must be said: Though the film has reportedly already started doing land-office business, one cannot judge these superspectacular money-eaters from their takeoff, DC-10s do crash. King Kong and Superman and Alien all took off impressively. They have not earned back their costs. While I wish it well, for personal if not artistic reasons, I hope Star Trek—TMP succeeds beyond anyone's wildest dreams. But I think the cost of the film makes it a no-win situation. And that means Paramount will have to recoup.
A series would be foolishness. But the final moment of the film, in which we are shown a black frame with the words THE HUMAN ADVENTURE IS JUST BEGINNING, points a direction for Paramount, for Gene Roddenberry, and for all those who truly respect the idea of what Star Trek might be.
An annual Star Trek film, enabling the studio to amortize the cost of the construction of those sets. An annual film almost like the James Bond thrillers (but one hopes with greater intelligence behind them). An annual festival of Star Trek that would permit the actors to practice their craft at decent wages, that would dare to do the stories television and the fears attendant on this film put beyond consideration, that would finally live up to the vision Gene Roddenberry had at the outset.
In short, and finally, this dollar-guzzling mediocrity should be a first step, and a bitter lesson. And let those who caused this tiresome thing to be born take heed to their own words. If there is a sequel, or many sequels . . . finally and at last . . . let the human adventure begin.
Starlog / April 1980