Persistence and Hope in Science Fiction Films Pt. 5 (Star Trek the Motion Picture)

Star Trek the Motion Picture is an enigma. It was born from overlapping frequencies within pop culture that, when they combined in this film, produced a dissonance that almost destroyed a franchise. The demand for it among viewers arose from a then-new phenomenon, the television re-run. The money for it was provided thanks to the post-Star Wars craze for all things Science Fiction. And the film its self was the victim of numerous overlapping ideas about how the subject should be handled.

The tone that surrounded the discussion of Star Trek in the 1970s, after the series but before its revival in the films, tended toward the ponderous and overly reverent. In interviews and think pieces the fans and former cast would wax philosophical about its resonances, and perhaps that confused those who undertook the first movie, thinking it should tend towards a Kubrick-like seriousness. Things likely got further muddled because it had begun to be written as a television series and was only redirected late in the game toward being a film. Thus large-arc story pieces may have been shrunk down and forced to drive a film trying to live up to a mythology that had little to do with the charm of the original series.
             
Star Trek’s draw had been its lively characters and inventive short burst adventures that packed a lot of ideas into short running times. The movie however unfolds at 2001: A Space Odyssey speed, featuring characters we are used to seeing interact briskly instead looking ponderously at special effects and talking in hushed serious tones about morality and consequences. Yet it lacks the sort of sweeping philosophical considerations that made 2001 what it is. The resulting film is nearly devoid of characters and almost barren of ideas.

Almost barren of ideas but not quite, because its plot is driven by the interesting conceit that a piece of human technology might returns to us enhanced, leading to a leap in evolution. As a franchise Star Trek was always sanguine about humanity’s future. Its central concept is that humanity has overcome enough of its own problems to become a space faring civilization that presents a united front to a universe teeming with adventure, discovery, and peril. Star Trek the Motion Picture takes this a step further by tying it all concretely to accomplishments contemporary with its viewers.
              
In the film Earth is menaced by an alien force that when confronted and explored turns out to be motivated by a sentient machine, specifically the Voyager probe launched by NASA in the 1970s. What happens then is less important than the idea that we are on the same historic track as the people in Star Trek who hop around the galaxy and still live on a peaceful and viable earth, hundreds of years in the future. A broad optimism about human nature is one thing, but a specific and assertive sanguinity based on accomplishments already made is something more personal and more memorable.