I'm back baby! Not watching and writing about Trek for a few days felt really odd, and it is good to be back! Some time in the mountains is good for anybody and I think it has prepared me for what I saw tonight pretty well. I was probably in 5th grade or so the last time I saw TMP and I am pretty sure I fell asleep for a few minutes of the Enterprise flying into V'ger, but upon rewatching, I don't think I missed anything. I don't remember all the antics at the beginning at all, maybe because the pace of the movie totally changes when they encounter V'ger and by changes I mean stops. Not that it was going at all that great a clip before, but wow, those shots of the inside of V'ger are minutes long with nothing happening except the occasional Kirk or Sulu reacting or Spock not reacting shot.
TMP opens with three Klingon ships encountering a strange blue cloud. Their first reaction is of course to open fire. Before we move on I want to point out two things, first they spend way to long showing slow motion shots of the Klingon ships, and second wow, the transitional Klingon makeup doesn't look great. We cut to a Federation listening post which can apparently see what is happening both on the Klingon bridges and outside their ships somehow. The Klingons are destroyed and we cut to Spock on Vulcan. After walking towards a bad matte painting he is greeted by three Klingons who offer him a token of his rejection of emotions, be he rejects it.
The action moves to San Francisco where Kirk is greeting his new Vulcan science officer who doesn't seem pleased to be working with him. Kirk is now an admiral and has somehow regained control of the newly retrofitted Enterprise. He tells the science officer to meet him on the ship in an hour and meets up with a very mustachioed Scotty. They get on pod and spend at least an hour flying around the Enterprise in awe. Scotty rushes to engineering to work on the engines and Kirk starts wandering around. It turns out the Enterprise had another captain who Kirk is pushing aside. His name is Decker and since I didn't remember him I correctly assumed he didn't make it through the episode I mean movie. Decker is kept on as second in command. The is a transporter accident that for some reason Kirk thinks he can fix even though Scotty is there and the new science officer dies.
Despite the ship not being ready they fly out and go to warp and immediately get sucked into what the call a wormhole that doesn't seem like any wormhole from actual physics or the rest of Trek. Of course they escape but in the process Decker shows he knows the ship better than Kirk. For some reason the run into Spock who takes over as science officer despite having left Starfleet. And off they go to meet the cloud thing. Kirk ignores Decker and goes in without shields which of course works. The bald navigator Ilia is taken by the alien thing and returned as a maybe evil robot to watch them. There is lots of flying inside until the come to a narrow opening to small for the ship. Spock sneaks off and enters it using a space suit and manages to mindmeld with it but it learns nothing.
The thing has arrive at earth and is sending out extra probes to remove the carbon based infestation from the planet. Kirk manages to bluff the robot Ilia into letting him meet V'ger itself and it opens the door and fills itself with oxygen. The go inside and find that it is a probe from Earth that met with robots or something. After a lot of messing around they discover it wants to merge with a human and Decker volunteers since he used to love Ilia. There a light show and V'ger disappears into a higher reality or something.
Review: I had forgotten that the first half of this movie does have more than just glamour shots of the Enterprise, but it doesn't have a lot more. The summary of this is only a bit longer than your average TOS episode and there is a reason, there are way to many effects shots of both the Enterprise and the insides of V'ger. Also damn the uniforms suck in this movie. I am very glad it was successful enough to warrant a bunch of sequels at least.
4 out of 10
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