As a child if you had asked me if I wanted to watch this film over Star Trek II or IV I always would have said no. To my younger self it seemed so sterile and long, with not enough action or humor. Don't get me wrong, it is still those things but as I've gotten older I appreciate this one more and more. In this day and age of rabid fandom most people's opinions on the new Star Trek is that it is too much action adventure and not enough introspective story. Now this film admittedly skewers a lot towards the introspective and it did it at the cost of some of the characterizations we were so familiar with from the original show. I always feel though people who complain a lot about the current state of Star Trek still don't like this one that much either, which is odd since for the most part it does what the naysayers say they want in Trek. But I digress.
I first really started appreciating this movie when I bought the 6 movie DVD set a few years back. That set has the remastered (for DVD) Director's Cut. It trimmed the fat some and added some updated effects to make it look a bit more polished. I am still waiting for them to do a true remastering for HD, I won't buy the original 6 movies again until that get's done.
After the success of Star Wars Paramount decided to ramp up the current plans of making a new Star Trek TV show, called Phase II, into a full blown motion picture directed by Robert Wise. I think that it was a wise decision to not make it like Star Wars and instead to make it more like 2001: A Space Odyssey. By this point Star Trek only had the original show and a handful of episodes as a cartoon series by Filmation, thus they relied on (mostly) good story telling with a small budget for effects and not a ton of action. If they had tried to make it like Star Wars it would probably have been seen as a ripoff and it could have damaged the franchise.
As for the things that stand out as great: First off, the new refit ship model does look great, I understand why the film wanted to show it off because it is my absolute favorite of all the Star Trek ships to this day. Also the new sets are great. This film is the one that showed off the interior the most, they finally had the budget to show it off and they did. The effects are very good too, maybe slightly dated but they give the movie an air of mystery with that ominous cloud and great model work. I also do enjoy the overall plot, it asks the big questions as the ship learns more and more of what is going on, very sci-fi, very Star Trek. To the acting, Dr. McCoy is about the same, Kirk is wrestling with being back in command, but the real performance comes from Spock (Leonard Nimoy). His character is on the same journey as the antagonist, he is questioning himself and his place in the world and it makes for a couple of really great scenes with Spock. Finally, the soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith is superb and the basis for the sounds of most all of modern Trek.
On to what didn't work: The characters, they are mostly the same, and I understand that a couple of years have passed since they've been together on the original voyage, but a lot of it doesn't ring true. For the most part they are all fairly sidelined except for our main three characters and the two new ones Ilia (Persis Khambatta) and Decker (Stephen Collins). I think this is mostly because of Spock's aforementioned journey through this film. He is seeking out answers of his own and has thus distanced himself from his former crew and comes back giving them the cold shoulder for the most part. This one change throws off the dynamic of the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy a bit. Since Spock finds his answers, however, it does work as some character growth and can be overlooked. Next, we move on to the overall look of the sets and costumes. They are now a bit dated and very 70s looking. I get that the bright color ones from the TV show might not have worked but Kirk's admiral uniform looked pretty good, the rest looked like intergalactic pajamas. All the muted tones of the sets coupled with the uniform choices does make it more like a science lab from 1970 than giving it a feel of a future in space, luckily the sets were redone in later films to look more futuristic in tone.
Last year I finally got to see this in the theater, and even though it wasn't the director's cut, I understood why it was such a sight to see when it came out, and although it is not as well favored today it still did make a lot of money from the Trekkies who were ready to finally see more Star Trek after a decade of reruns. Something about those shots of V'Ger and its cloud dwarfing the Enterprise makes space seem so vast and full of wonders and the unknown. It reminds me of what Dr. McCoy says in the new film, "Space is disease and danger, wrapped in darkness and silence." That is so very true in this film and our heroes go out and face the unknown as the true explorers they are.
I will always enjoy some of the other films more, but this one deserves a top spot for trying to be something different then the rest, it stumbled a bit but its still a really good hard sci-fi film and it just happens to be Star Trek. If you haven't given this one a chance, or haven't tried to watch it since you were younger give it another watch.
The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning.
