Speaker 1: Welcome back, midnight viewers. Oh what theme was that? What
Speaker 1: show did you tune into? Is it a new fest?
Speaker 1: You're goddamn right, it is. Welcome to Star Trek Fest HP,
Speaker 1: my Fest, pal, my fst friend and I have decided
Speaker 1: to take the crazy path of reviewing the Star Trek
Speaker 1: motion pictures in their entirety. We're not going to be
Speaker 1: talking about the TV shows, the multitude of TV shows,
Speaker 1: or the cross over tie in books, well a little.
Speaker 1: I mean, you kind of can't not when it gets
Speaker 1: comes to Star Trek. All of the lore is so
Speaker 1: inextricably linked in all of the different media. Hell, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the blooper reels at some point,
Speaker 1: but we're going to start it all off. Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I have a co host. I mentioned him, HB.
Speaker 1: How you doing, buddy, I'm great.
Speaker 2: The Human Adventure Father Malone is just beginning. I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: I think we have thirteen movies and all that we're
Speaker 2: going to be covering in this fest.
Speaker 1: Hopefully they'll be fourteen by the time we finish.
Speaker 2: We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1: Here's the trailer.
Speaker 3: The Human Adventure is just beginning. William Shatner take us
Speaker 3: Out is Captain James T. Kirk, Leonard Nimoy is mister Spuck.
Speaker 3: Deforus Kelly is doctor Leonard bones Coy, James Douhan is
Speaker 3: Lieutenant Commander Montgomery Scott, George Takay is Lieutenant Commander Zulu.
Speaker 3: Rachel Barrett is doctor Christine Chaplin. Walter Kinig is Lieutenant
Speaker 3: Pavel Chekhov, Michelle Nichols is Lieutenant Commander Hura. Stephen Collins
Speaker 3: is Commander Willard Decker. Percis Cambata is Lieutenant Iria Sta
Speaker 3: Trek the motion picture Geane Roders Brede's production of a
Speaker 3: Robert Wise film, Aha.
Speaker 1: The French Oh Man, I got Orson Wells pulled him
Speaker 1: out of off bulls to do that trailer, so you
Speaker 1: know it means business. By the way, why did they
Speaker 1: mention Michelle Barrett as fucking nurse Chapel get out of here?
Speaker 1: Nobody remembered her? Oh right, Gene Roddenberry HP, this was
Speaker 1: your first time watching Star Trek the motion picture, wasn't it? No?
Speaker 2: It was not. It was definitely not. Because we've talked
Speaker 2: about this in the past. I know we have another
Speaker 2: episode's Father alone, but this so I got cable probably
Speaker 2: somewhere around seven or eight years old, and this was
Speaker 2: one of the big prestige premieres on cable at that time.
Speaker 2: I remember the Cable Guide. Oh yes, the Cable Guide
Speaker 2: had that month's Cable Guide had the movie poster for
Speaker 2: the motion picture. So this was a big deal when
Speaker 2: this So I saw it. Here's the thing, I don't
Speaker 2: think I actually watched the movie in its entirety as
Speaker 2: a movie as a single experience for a while, because
Speaker 2: I was when I'm a kid. I would just turn
Speaker 2: on the TV and there's a scene from Star Trek,
Speaker 2: and let's be honest, we'll get into this, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot of nothing that happens in this movie. It's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to ask a seven or eight year
Speaker 2: old to sit through what a two hour plus movie
Speaker 2: with not a lot of action happening for a lot
Speaker 2: of stretches of this movie. But so, yeah, i'd seen
Speaker 2: it more recently than that, but certainly not with this
Speaker 2: level of focus.
Speaker 1: Now, what was your prior to watching the movie? Now,
Speaker 1: clearly that's early times, But had you been a aware
Speaker 1: of Star Trek? Were you a fan of Star Trek?
Speaker 1: Did you watch the show before that?
Speaker 2: It was Star Trek was one of those things that
Speaker 2: was always kind of in the firmament at that time. Like,
Speaker 2: I can't remember a time that Star Trek wasn't around.
Speaker 2: I knew who William Shatner was. The show was on.
Speaker 2: It was probably on in Channel thirty eight in the
Speaker 2: Boston area at night, the reruns. Because we're old, but
Speaker 2: we're not that old. It was on reruns. I caught
Speaker 2: the odd episode bits and pieces my older brothers.
Speaker 1: The show went off there in nineteen seventy. You and
Speaker 1: I were born in seventy three. We were watching reruns, right,
Speaker 1: Star Trek.
Speaker 2: I just want I don't want to any I want
Speaker 2: to be clear on that we're old. But we did
Speaker 2: watch this in reruns, but mainly for me, it was
Speaker 2: my older brothers probably that we're watching it, and I
Speaker 2: would just watch it with them passively, not really thinking
Speaker 2: about it. But certainly the theme has never been anything
Speaker 2: but totally familiar to me. Everybody knows the theme, even
Speaker 2: if you're not a fan. But let me ask you,
Speaker 2: because you didn't you had older siblings, but not older
Speaker 2: brothers like I did to that degree, when did you
Speaker 2: become aware of Star Trek Originally?
Speaker 1: I can't think of a time I don't remember Star Trek.
Speaker 1: I've been obsessed with Star Trek as far as I
Speaker 1: can remember. By the time. Before this movie, I remember
Speaker 1: being so goddamned proud of a red shirt Starfleet shirt
Speaker 1: that my mother had gotten for me. Automatically, Scottie became
Speaker 1: my favorite member of the crew because we had the
Speaker 1: same shirt. So when Star Trek the motion picture was
Speaker 1: released on December seventh of nineteen seventy nine, which I
Speaker 1: haven't given the stance for, but I'll get to it.
Speaker 1: When that I was, I was there opening weekend. I
Speaker 1: was there that opening night to see it really with
Speaker 1: my parents. Yes, wow, Okay, So I remember vividly the
Speaker 1: opening of the movie, almost formative in a way because
Speaker 1: it will look this is We're going to get to
Speaker 1: all of the history in this and everything. But this
Speaker 1: is the first time a television series really had made
Speaker 1: the jump to movies. I know there had been strung
Speaker 1: together episodes in the past, and they did that stupid
Speaker 1: Batman movie in sixty six, which was just like I said,
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes of the series effectively strung together
Speaker 1: to feature length, which that show already was doing that
Speaker 1: every episode was a cliffanger. Anyway, it struck me how
Speaker 1: different you can make something and how you can rewrite it,
Speaker 1: because they do that immediately with the Klingons. So that
Speaker 1: struck me. And then it struck me that you can
Speaker 1: also ruin something that you love by making changes to
Speaker 1: things that seemingly made no sense whatsoever. I think ultimately
Speaker 1: I watched it like you did on cable a bunch,
Speaker 1: because we that's what we did as a generation. We
Speaker 1: watched television and if there was a fucking movie on,
Speaker 1: all the better, and if there's a movie on uninterrupted
Speaker 1: by commercial and you get the full import of it.
Speaker 1: So I watched the movie probably more than I should
Speaker 1: have as a youngster, but it was in a starved
Speaker 1: for content kind of a way, more than I'm really
Speaker 1: enjoying this. I wouldn't really start enjoying Star Trek movies
Speaker 1: like the rest of the world until Wrath of God.
Speaker 1: This was just which was which was not that long
Speaker 1: honestly to wait.
Speaker 2: Sure, and this was again beggars couldn't be choosers. This
Speaker 2: was just on TV and us being seven eight years old,
Speaker 2: what have you. I wasn't necessarily in control of the
Speaker 2: television most of the time, so if my dad was
Speaker 2: watching Star Trek, then I was watching Star Trek. And
Speaker 2: one of the things I was really struck by I
Speaker 2: was rewatching it this time. The first thing, in fact,
Speaker 2: was that, as you said, it was a novelty at
Speaker 2: the time to have a fairly simple stick TV show
Speaker 2: kind of graduate to the cinematic experience, and this did
Speaker 2: feel like a prestige bid. This is a movie that
Speaker 2: started with a three minute overture with nothing but scrolling
Speaker 2: starfields as Jerry Goldsmith's music plays underneath it. This is
Speaker 2: something that I was used to seeing in movies like
Speaker 2: The Ten Commandments. This was not something that I would
Speaker 2: have expected from Star Trek the motion picture. This is
Speaker 2: before even the paramount logo is shown on the screen,
Speaker 2: so clearly they were aiming big with this.
Speaker 1: It's super bizarre. Let me just tell you and I
Speaker 1: watched the director's cut, which probably the blu ray of
Speaker 1: the director's cut, and when the overture comes up, you
Speaker 1: have the starfield playing right in previous iterations on video
Speaker 1: and DVD, there is no starfield for a good minute
Speaker 1: and a half of the three minute overture, so you're
Speaker 1: just looking at a blank screen and then eventually a
Speaker 1: stars fade up and you go, oh, okay, see I
Speaker 1: agree with you. It announces itself as a prestige picture,
Speaker 1: as a throwback to a grand event of a movie release,
Speaker 1: but it didn't really take into consideration the fact that
Speaker 1: those movies usually said overture, so you knew what the
Speaker 1: fuck was going on. Because this is nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: This doesn't meet me in Saint Louis, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Now? Having said that, I think it's awesome
Speaker 1: that they did it, and the more Jerry Goldsmith music
Speaker 1: you get to hear in the world, the better. But
Speaker 1: it's still weird that they did it this.
Speaker 2: It's very weird.
Speaker 1: But in a movie that's going to be over long anyway,
Speaker 1: let's tack on three minutes of Sit Here and listen
Speaker 1: to the score as if it's going to pay off later.
Speaker 2: It was crazy. But since we're talking about Jerry Goldsmith's score,
Speaker 2: well let's get into it a little bit before we
Speaker 2: dig into Now. I adore his score here. I think
Speaker 2: it's fabulous. I think it feels it's got all of
Speaker 2: the bouncy, sort of daring do themes cues but one
Speaker 2: of the things that kind of announces that there's a
Speaker 2: darkness to this movie is that there's this harsh drone
Speaker 2: sound that intrudes every so often. And I didn't, I never,
Speaker 2: I didn't know what this was until I started doing
Speaker 2: research for this episode. Father alone, Oh you mean this, Yes,
Speaker 2: that's exactly it. It's what I learned, and what I'm
Speaker 2: sure you have there in front of you is that
Speaker 2: this is an instrument developed and played by a fellow
Speaker 2: named Craig Huxley, called the blaster beam. It's basically a
Speaker 2: twelve foot beam strung with long cables strings and played
Speaker 2: by striking the strings and using this crazy sort of
Speaker 2: metal slide to go up and down the beam. The
Speaker 2: funny part is I had a sense memory. I didn't
Speaker 2: I haven't seen this movie many years, but I had
Speaker 2: a sense memory of that same sound when I was
Speaker 2: watching Attack of the Clones the second episode two the
Speaker 2: Star Wars movie, because that's the sound. There's a scene
Speaker 2: where Django Fett is setting off these seismic charges and
Speaker 2: pursuing Obi Wan Kenobi. The seismic charge is the sound
Speaker 2: of the blaster beam, and in this picture, the blaster
Speaker 2: beam is meant to give this sort of discordant, scary,
Speaker 2: outer spacey tone to the main sort of villain of
Speaker 2: the piece, which we'll find out is this living machine
Speaker 2: called Vedure. But the sound of that, those cables vibrating,
Speaker 2: it felt outer spacey in a scary way. It feels remote,
Speaker 2: it feels alien. It totally matches the vibe that I
Speaker 2: think Robert Wise is going for, the director is going for,
Speaker 2: and it gave the movie this, like I said, this
Speaker 2: darkness that was never really present in the original and
Speaker 2: I love that about the sound. It's almost People love
Speaker 2: to point to a soundtrack like Tron Wendy Carlos combining
Speaker 2: synth sounds with orchestral sounds, and this is a great advancement.
Speaker 1: To me.
Speaker 2: This is almost on that level because it's this beautiful,
Speaker 2: sweeping score that's matched up with this crazy, giant, alien
Speaker 2: sounding instrument and it all works and it's a wonderful score.
Speaker 2: So a gush for a little bit.
Speaker 1: It is by far the best thing that came out
Speaker 1: of Star Trek the motion picture is Jerry Goldsmith's score.
Speaker 1: It sets the bar high for the entire series musically.
Speaker 1: It also delineates where we're gonna go not only look. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Next Generation just gacked the main title and that became
Speaker 1: the theme. So when I hear that theme now, I
Speaker 1: do think Next Generation above all? How can we too?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Me too. Yeah, But it's important for people who
Speaker 2: are familiar with the original motion picture and maybe only
Speaker 2: familiar with the Next Generation. You got to check out
Speaker 2: this movie in this score because this is where it
Speaker 2: was introduced and it works so well, and because the
Speaker 2: original Star Trek theme is so iconic and indelible, but
Speaker 2: it would not have worked for this picture. This picture
Speaker 2: is so much darker and more just deeper than those
Speaker 2: original how could it not be than the original sixties show?
Speaker 2: So for me that this is a big tick. In
Speaker 2: the plus column is Jerry Goldsmith's score.
Speaker 1: Jerry Goldsmith in nineteen sixty five was approached by fledgling
Speaker 1: executive producer Gene Roddenberry to score the pilot for his
Speaker 1: new series Star Trek, but Goldsmith was previously engaged at
Speaker 1: that moment and could not do the work. So this
Speaker 1: is in a way kind of a fulfillment and kind
Speaker 1: of points to the way that it could have been
Speaker 1: fucking awesome. Bank then too, I'm glad he didn't. I'm
Speaker 1: glad we got to wait because the Alexander Urage music
Speaker 1: is perfect for that show. But this knows where this
Speaker 1: film series knows more than the fucking filmmakers does.
Speaker 2: It's true, this elevates it in the way that the
Speaker 2: best soundtracks can elevate a picture, make a picture feel great.
Speaker 2: And this does so much heavy lifting for this movie
Speaker 2: it's impossible to really, we can't oversell it.
Speaker 1: And the use of interesting instruments and discordant sounds were
Speaker 1: par for the course for Jerry Goldsmith. Remember, back in
Speaker 1: the late sixties he did the theme for Planet of
Speaker 1: the Apes, which is as weirdo and bizarre soundtracks. It's
Speaker 1: experimental really, and that was Goldsmith wanting to make a
Speaker 1: soundtrack as if it had come from an alien world.
Speaker 1: And here when he took the job, now he had
Speaker 1: worked with Robert Wise back in the sixties they did
Speaker 1: The Sand Pebbles together. That's a Steve McQueen Navy movie.
Speaker 1: So when Goldsmith takes the job here, his attitude was, oh,
Speaker 1: this is like a naval picture as well. And more
Speaker 1: than that, science fiction is like a Western. It's they're
Speaker 1: going out in there, they're Calistoga wagons and out into
Speaker 1: the great unknown. And in fact, if you listen to
Speaker 1: the initial score he did for Star Trek the motion picture,
Speaker 1: Robert Wise criticized him as saying, this sounds like a
Speaker 1: wagon train score. It needs to be science fiction y.
Speaker 1: And then Goldsmith came up with the score that we got,
Speaker 1: which is, as I said, magnificent. But the darkness that
Speaker 1: you were talking about with Vgre, with those with that
Speaker 1: weirdo sound effect, the flangy guitar sound, that's the sound
Speaker 1: that I took away from the movie. It's when I
Speaker 1: think of when I think of the movie, and when
Speaker 1: I think of Vegure. And now I spent the last
Speaker 1: week or so listening to the soundtrack on a loop basically,
Speaker 1: and that is the sound of Vigure when Vegre exists
Speaker 1: in the distance and as a threat. The closer you
Speaker 1: get to Vegure. There is in a church pipe organ
Speaker 1: sound underneath it all, and that was so exciting to
Speaker 1: hear for the first time I heard instruments i'd never
Speaker 1: heard before. I heard I heard a glockenspiel at some point,
Speaker 1: and more than anything, the point I want to make
Speaker 1: about the music above all, and they've tried to replicate it,
Speaker 1: but they've never done as good a job is. He
Speaker 1: not only gives us this magnificent score for the enterprise,
Speaker 1: because that's the music that Fanfare has written for the
Speaker 1: reveal of the enterprise, we might as well call that
Speaker 1: the enterprises theme. The other major score that he set,
Speaker 1: that he sets in stone is the Klingon theme. I
Speaker 1: can hear it in my head right now. You can
Speaker 1: hear it at home right now. If you can't hear
Speaker 1: it is it's fucking incredible.
Speaker 2: Man, that's great. So so we've talked a little bit
Speaker 2: about the plot and broad strokes, but ultimately, what is
Speaker 2: the plot of this movie?
Speaker 1: Father Below, I'm not going to answer that. You're going
Speaker 1: to answer that, but I'll tell you I'm gonna. I'm gonna, Okay,
Speaker 1: I might this episode might go a little long, everybody,
Speaker 1: because I do want to get to this movie, like
Speaker 1: it or hate it does, in fact sent the template
Speaker 1: for what's going to come. For everything they do right,
Speaker 1: that gets included for everything they do wrong. That's it's
Speaker 1: all important. And how we get to there, I think
Speaker 1: is as interesting as the movie, actually more interesting than
Speaker 1: the movie. This is not an apocalypse now, hearts of
Speaker 1: darkness situation. But this is a Werner Herzog Fitzcaraldo sort
Speaker 1: of situation. I think the story behind the making of
Speaker 1: the movie is actually more interesting than the movie itself.
Speaker 1: Now agreed, Okay. So Star Trek goes off the air
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and immediately it causes the birth of
Speaker 1: fan conventions. There had been a very famous letter writing
Speaker 1: campaign to keep Star Trek on the air, which worked,
Speaker 1: so fans of Star Trek felt emboldened. Now Gene Roddenberry
Speaker 1: himself didn't understand how powerful those fans were, nor did
Speaker 1: he understand their makeup. He thought there were a bunch
Speaker 1: of twitching nerds in the dark and didn't realize they
Speaker 1: were from like all walks of life, people who were
Speaker 1: actually interested in the space program and the in futurism
Speaker 1: and science fiction and anyway. So he attempts a couple
Speaker 1: of different series with Genesis two and and there's another
Speaker 1: serious he tries to get out there. Nothing is working,
Speaker 1: and then he goes to a Star Trek convention, sees
Speaker 1: what the big deal is, embraces it fully start selling
Speaker 1: those blooper reels, which causes a huge fukaroo with Leonard Nimoy,
Speaker 1: who's already pissed that they're using his likeness to sell bullshit.
Speaker 1: Now in that case, there's nothing you can do about that.
Speaker 1: He sold this likeness for Spock. If they want to
Speaker 1: put it on underwear, they can put it on underwear.
Speaker 1: But selling the bloopers, that's a whole other thing. But
Speaker 1: he never agreed to have that footage sold. He appeared
Speaker 1: on a television anyway. So based on the popularity of
Speaker 1: the conventions and a recent Saturday Night Live sketch parodying
Speaker 1: Star Trek, he's given the greenlight to write a treatment
Speaker 1: for a feature film, a three million dollar feature film,
Speaker 1: and that movie that screenplay is The God Thing, where
Speaker 1: a creature from deep space is making its way toward
Speaker 1: our solar system and claims to be our God and
Speaker 1: he is returning to take what's his. And as he
Speaker 1: gets to our solar system, Kirk who cares, They go
Speaker 1: out to meet the thing and it turns out not
Speaker 1: to be God, or it is, but it's no longer
Speaker 1: relevant because Roddenberry was a think piece guy overall. Guess what.
Speaker 1: Paramount didn't want to do that. So he then turns
Speaker 1: to his assistant Ron Povel who comes up with another
Speaker 1: screenplay idea and he presents that to Roddenberry, who Roddenberry
Speaker 1: dismisses it as good enough for TV. But this is
Speaker 1: what we're talking features now, right, Okay Rodenberry. At this
Speaker 1: point Paramount kind of steps in and says, maybe what
Speaker 1: you want to do is go to another writer. So
Speaker 1: they start interviewing writers independent of Rodenberry and with Roddenberry.
Speaker 1: So this is the time when Ray Bradberry and Robert
Speaker 1: Silverberg get called in and mister Harlan Ellison, now this
Speaker 1: story is rather famous, and I'm going to read it
Speaker 1: to you in its entirety. These are in Harlan's words
Speaker 1: from a letter he wrote to Stephen King who was
Speaker 1: inquiring about it. Because where on the street was There
Speaker 1: was a big meeting and they had all the writers
Speaker 1: in one room and they said, give us the biggest idea.
Speaker 1: And they keep geting bigger and bigger ideas, and they
Speaker 1: keep going bigger, we want bigger ideas. And then finally
Speaker 1: Harlan Elison gives them the biggest idea of all time.
Speaker 1: They tell him bigger than that. He flips them off
Speaker 1: and walks out. That's the story everyone was told here's Harlan.
Speaker 1: In Harlan's words, pardon me that I'm going to read this,
Speaker 1: and it's lengthy. Paramount had been trying to get a
Speaker 1: Star Trek film in the works for some time. Roddenberry
Speaker 1: was determined that his name would be on the writing
Speaker 1: credits somehow. The trouble is he can't write for sour
Speaker 1: Owl Poop. He has his one idea done six or
Speaker 1: seven times in the series and again in the future film,
Speaker 1: is that the crew of the Enterprise goes into deepest space,
Speaker 1: finds God, and God turns out to be insane or
Speaker 1: a child or both. I'd been called in twice prior
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy five to discuss the story. Other writers
Speaker 1: had also been milked. Paramount couldn't make up their minds
Speaker 1: and had even kicked Gene off the project a few
Speaker 1: times until he brought in lawyers. Then the palace guard
Speaker 1: changed again at Paramount and Dillar and Eisner came over
Speaker 1: from ABC and brought a cadre of their buddies, one
Speaker 1: of them an ex scent designer named Mark Trabulus. Roddenberry
Speaker 1: suggested me as the centairist for the film. With this
Speaker 1: Trabulist the latest of They Know Nothing Duds, Paramount had
Speaker 1: assigned to the Troublesome project. I had a talk with
Speaker 1: Gene about a storyline. He told me that they kept
Speaker 1: wanting bigger and bigger stories, and no matter what was suggested,
Speaker 1: it wasn't big enough. I devised a storyline and Gene
Speaker 1: liked it and set up a meeting with Tribulus for
Speaker 1: December eleventh, nineteen seventy five. That meeting was canceled, but
Speaker 1: we finally got together on December fifteenth. It was just
Speaker 1: Gene and Trabulus in me in Jean's office on the
Speaker 1: Paramount lot. I told them the story. It involved going
Speaker 1: to the end of the known universe to slip back
Speaker 1: through time to the plasticne era when man first emerged.
Speaker 1: I postulated a parallel development of reptile life that might
Speaker 1: have developed into the dominant species on Earth had mammals
Speaker 1: not prevailed. I postulated an alien intelligence from a far
Speaker 1: away galaxy where the snakes had become the dominant life form,
Speaker 1: and a snake creature had come to Earth in the
Speaker 1: star Trek future, had seen its ancestors wiped out, had
Speaker 1: gone back to the far distant pastive Earth to set
Speaker 1: up distortions in the time flow so reptiles could beat
Speaker 1: the humans. The enterprise goes back in time to set
Speaker 1: it right, finds the snake alien, and the human crew
Speaker 1: is confronted with the moral dilemma of whether it had
Speaker 1: the right to wipe out an entire life form just
Speaker 1: to ensure its own territorial imperative in our prison and future.
Speaker 1: The story in short to spand all of time and
Speaker 1: all of space with a moral and ethical problem. Tribulus
Speaker 1: listened to all of this and sat silently for a
Speaker 1: few minutes. Then he said, I was reading this book
Speaker 1: by a guy named von Danikin, and he proved that
Speaker 1: the my calendar was exactly like ours, so it must
Speaker 1: have come from Aliens. Could you put in some Mayans?
Speaker 1: I looked at Gene. Gene looked at me. He said nothing.
Speaker 1: I looked at Tribulus and said, there weren't any Mayans
Speaker 1: at the dawn of time. And he said, well, who's
Speaker 1: to know the difference, And I said, I'm to know
Speaker 1: the difference. It's a dumb suggestion. So Tribulus got very
Speaker 1: uptight and said he liked Mayans a lot, and why
Speaker 1: didn't I do it? If I wanted to write this picture,
Speaker 1: so I said, I'm a writer. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the fuck you are, and I got up and walked out,
Speaker 1: and that was the end of my association with the
Speaker 1: Star Trek movie.
Speaker 2: Let's not forget, by the way, that Ellison was responsible
Speaker 2: for probably the single greatest episode of the original series
Speaker 2: that was ever produced, the original story of City on
Speaker 2: the Edge of Forever, which I know was rewritten, and
Speaker 2: there's a story behind that as well. But the man
Speaker 2: knew how to write for Star Trek. It's crazy that
Speaker 2: people are second guessing him.
Speaker 1: It's crazy that the regime with Katzenberg underneath him, let
Speaker 1: their designer friend in charge of a crown jewel of paramount.
Speaker 1: I guess they just hadn't figured out that it was yet,
Speaker 1: so it was just something to be done. So anyway,
Speaker 1: they can't settle on any of those guys. They bring
Speaker 1: in another fella and he's in charge of now finding
Speaker 1: a decent script and writers, which he does, and he
Speaker 1: hires two British authors who had never written science fiction
Speaker 1: before to write the Planet of the Titans. This is
Speaker 1: the script that almost gets made. Everyone's on board for this.
Speaker 1: The story here is Kirk and crew, at the end
Speaker 1: of the five year mission go out to answer a
Speaker 1: distress call. They're hit by an energy wave. Kirk goes crazy,
Speaker 1: commandeers a shuttle, saying he has to get to the planet,
Speaker 1: goes off into deep space and disappears. Three years later,
Speaker 1: the Enterprise returns. It's a whole new crew and they
Speaker 1: because a plan has appeared where there had been none before.
Speaker 1: This is the Planet of the Titans. The Titans of
Speaker 1: some ancient race, so the Federation is interested. They get
Speaker 1: out of the planet, they find that Kirk is there.
Speaker 1: The Klingons are on their way because they want a
Speaker 1: piece of the Titans. They find out that there's an
Speaker 1: alien race that wiped out the Titans. It's a three
Speaker 1: way brawl. They end up going back in time. Blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. They almost made this movie, and then this
Speaker 1: is great. Everyone will tell you that Star Trek the
Speaker 1: motion picture was made on the heels of Star Wars.
Speaker 1: That paramount saw Star Wars and when we need a
Speaker 1: Star Wars, get us a Star Trek picture. Actually not
Speaker 1: the case. What happened was they're ready to make that
Speaker 1: movie Planet of the Titans, and then Star Wars comes out.
Speaker 1: And Paramount thinks that success can't ever be replicated. No
Speaker 1: one will go see a second sci fi movie. And
Speaker 1: we've been toying with the idea of a television network.
Speaker 1: Let's make this the flagship of our new television network.
Speaker 1: Instead canceled. Now it's time to do a TV series,
Speaker 1: which is phase two. Man oh man, I'm talking a lot.
Speaker 1: So they got this television series that they're gonna do.
Speaker 1: They hire Alan Dean Foster to write the pilot. It's
Speaker 1: called in Thy Image. It's about a machine returning to
Speaker 1: Earth to meet its creator. It's this, it's Star Trek.
Speaker 1: It's the movie basically right, but of course it's all
Speaker 1: based on Jane's idea that, as Harlan Ellison so eloquently said,
Speaker 1: he has one fucking idea, which is you got to
Speaker 1: meet God, and God's either insane or a child. And
Speaker 1: here it is again, just like season two, episode three,
Speaker 1: The Changeling. Anyway, the series almost gets going, Paramount finds
Speaker 1: out no advertiser going to support a new network, and
Speaker 1: now the movie's back on because Eisner goes to see
Speaker 1: Close Encounters of the Third Kind realizes sci fi is
Speaker 1: now the rage and says that could have been us
Speaker 1: Get Me a Star Trek movie, and thus begins a
Speaker 1: battle of screenwriting between Gene Roddenberry and Harold Livingston in
Speaker 1: the credited screenwriter on this with story by Alan Dean Foster,
Speaker 1: even though it technically wasn't even Foster's, like they gave
Speaker 1: him that script. But roden Berry and Livingstone just keep
Speaker 1: rewriting each other back and forth. It's like magicians papering
Speaker 1: over each other's posters, this confused, stupid, crazy thing. And
Speaker 1: then at which point, like the actors are now involved,
Speaker 1: so they have notes. They want their characters front and center.
Speaker 1: It's Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner giving notes to this screenwriter.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what a mess. Let's make the movie
Speaker 1: and we have to have it in theaters on December seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, because Michael Eisner has already pre sold
Speaker 1: the movie to movie theaters in order to help offset
Speaker 1: the cost of this movie, which initially was budgeted at
Speaker 1: eighteen million and now is forty five.
Speaker 2: And even as they're filming, I my research, a lot
Speaker 2: of these actors, Walter kaneg all these people, Michelle Nichols,
Speaker 2: they all talk about the fact that the third act
Speaker 2: of this movie was still not completed by the time
Speaker 2: they're filming it. This was basically a three act picture
Speaker 2: with no third act, so a lot of this. They're
Speaker 2: marching towards this date, like you said, in December. They
Speaker 2: have to get it done. And then all these complications
Speaker 2: with the shooting mean that the special effects are taking longer.
Speaker 2: They've got to compress that. They bring back Doug Trumbull
Speaker 2: to try and finish the effects.
Speaker 1: Basically a story about that, right, So they when they're
Speaker 1: putting the movie together, they go out to all of
Speaker 1: the houses. They go to Doug Trumbull, they go to Ilm,
Speaker 1: they go to Don John Dykstra, and everyone is really
Speaker 1: busy because science fiction is all the rage at this moment.
Speaker 1: And they go with a company called Abel Films or
Speaker 1: able company, and they spend the next year doing nothing
Speaker 1: because they've never had all the equipment that say, Doug
Speaker 1: Trumbull has pioneered, like the optical printers and such. So
Speaker 1: they're just spending their time building a studio to handle
Speaker 1: the effects for a major motion picture when they needed
Speaker 1: to have been making the shots for a major motion picture.
Speaker 1: They finished filming in January and then found out before
Speaker 1: they found out they needed to start from scratch for
Speaker 1: their effects, and the movie was due in December. They
Speaker 1: had eleven months to do all of the shots in them.
Speaker 2: And it's insane. So what ends up happening is Doug
Speaker 2: Trumbell does come back essentially, and he finishes the picture.
Speaker 2: But Robert Wise from that point on up until the
Speaker 2: early two thousands never considered He always thought of this
Speaker 2: movie as basically being the rough cut because they had
Speaker 2: to make this date in December. So the effects were
Speaker 2: what they were. They're very good for the time. But
Speaker 2: if you watch them with modern eyes, the original theatrical cut,
Speaker 2: it doesn't look it looks unfinished in a lot of places. Eventually,
Speaker 2: Robert Wise and company get the opportunity to revisit the
Speaker 2: motion picture as a director's cut, and they finished effects.
Speaker 2: Some scenes were change, they added some sparkling new scenes
Speaker 2: of shuttles, and you don't see the Matt lines and
Speaker 2: everything because a lot of this was done with Matt
Speaker 2: paintings and so forth. So anyway, this is a long
Speaker 2: way of saying, that's the version that Father Malone and
Speaker 2: I watched. We watched the director's cut because I feel
Speaker 2: very strongly in this case that if the director's saying, look,
Speaker 2: my movie wasn't finished until now, I want to see
Speaker 2: the picture in its most complete form. That's important to
Speaker 2: me on this not to say that the theatrical version
Speaker 2: doesn't have merit, but for the purposes of this episode,
Speaker 2: I sought out the director's cut, as I know Father
Speaker 2: Malone did.
Speaker 1: It's the one available on streaming. It's the one you
Speaker 1: should watch. I don't know why you would go watch
Speaker 1: the old theatrical version. It was the movie that Robert
Speaker 1: Wise said, it's the only picture that I didn't get
Speaker 1: to preview before we put it out. He didn't get
Speaker 1: a chance to gauge an audience's reaction to the movie
Speaker 1: at all, because they basically locked the whole thing on
Speaker 1: December first for a December seventh release.
Speaker 2: This is a Star Wars the Special Edition scenario where
Speaker 2: George Lucas is going in and mucking with things that
Speaker 2: cherished bits of the movie. This isn't a han shot
Speaker 2: Grido first situation. This is merely taking a film and
Speaker 2: making it better. In my opinion, such.
Speaker 1: As it is, they are finishing effects that were hastily done.
Speaker 1: There's some five hundred effects shots in this movie. That's
Speaker 1: more than Star Wars and Close Encounters combined, and on
Speaker 1: a very limited amount of time to do it. Now,
Speaker 1: it must be said that the models were already made
Speaker 1: at least, and those are magnificent. But the Enterprise refit
Speaker 1: and the Klingon cruisers, those were all completed and ready,
Speaker 1: as was the Little Vulcan Shuttle.
Speaker 2: So it look it's not going to compete with a
Speaker 2: major blockbuster from this era, but for a movie from
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine finished in the early two thousands, looks
Speaker 2: pretty good. I didn't really have much of a problem
Speaker 2: with the effects.
Speaker 1: I remember, even as a young person, being wildly disappointed
Speaker 1: with the version of Vulcan that we got. It just
Speaker 1: seemed like more cardboard set bullshit from the television series.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh no, there was a sinking feeling.
Speaker 1: So yes, definitely watch this. See the giant statues and
Speaker 1: the lava fields on Vulcan.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the way, I've been watching the been going back
Speaker 1: and watching the original series on stream, and it's the
Speaker 1: remastered versions where they've gone in and they've redone the effects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, same idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And I know people go crazy about that
Speaker 1: because they want the original thing that they remember from childhood,
Speaker 1: and I would counter that this is the way I
Speaker 1: remember it from childhood. I remember it looking this good.
Speaker 2: They've preserved that sense of wonder when you see the
Speaker 2: ship going across a planet and you're not looking for
Speaker 2: the cables holding the ship up, it looks like Because
Speaker 2: here's the thing with the original series, Rema, they took
Speaker 2: great care not to make it look like it was
Speaker 2: produced in the early two thousands. It still looks like
Speaker 2: of its time. It just looks better I can describe it.
Speaker 1: The spaceships still have like a plastic equality to them.
Speaker 1: They look like their models, but they look really good now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they added blinking to the Gorn's eyes in Arena,
Speaker 1: and I really like that. That was really good.
Speaker 2: I will have to check that out. I don't think
Speaker 2: I haven't seen those in a long time, but you're
Speaker 2: making me want to go revisit them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Arena is so good and Piece of
Speaker 1: the Action. Piece of the Action is my absolute favorite
Speaker 1: Star Trek episode of all time. I think City on
Speaker 1: the Edge of Forever is probably the best Star Trek
Speaker 1: original series episode. Yeah, but oh my god, give me Gangsters, Baby.
Speaker 1: You know that was going to be the basis of
Speaker 1: the Tarantino movie, right.
Speaker 2: I think I read that that's one of the vic
Speaker 2: tay back, right, one of the mobsters. Yeah, there's a ay.
Speaker 2: But there's been many Trek comic books, but most recently
Speaker 2: there was one called Star Trek Year five, which is
Speaker 2: a series that took place in the final year of
Speaker 2: their five year mission, and I think the second or
Speaker 2: third issue they end up going back to that planet
Speaker 2: from a piece of the action. So it's kind of neat.
Speaker 2: You get to see what happened.
Speaker 1: After all that, What happened? What did they do?
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna run it for You're gonna go read it.
Speaker 1: Damn it, go read it. It's It's the one episode
Speaker 1: that I always wished in any of the other iterations
Speaker 1: of the show that they were gonna go back to
Speaker 1: because they had this complete society based on mimicry, and
Speaker 1: then they left a phaser there. I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: they could just recreate sixties Starfleet. Now they don't have
Speaker 1: to because they're doing it every fucking week with strange
Speaker 1: new worlds and all this shit. Everything is retro everything,
Speaker 1: But at the time, it would have been really novel.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well they take a similar tack. I think
Speaker 2: somebody else read there's some other thing. I think maybe
Speaker 2: doctor McCoy lee has left something else behind on the
Speaker 2: planet and that becomes the thing that they basically that
Speaker 2: forms the next phase of their society. But it's really good.
Speaker 2: I do appreciate those that they're non cannon. But it's
Speaker 2: fun to revisit the original series because we're never going
Speaker 2: to see this original cast ever again at this point,
Speaker 2: so it's kind of cool to go back and see
Speaker 2: this stuff read about it.
Speaker 1: That's the story HP.
Speaker 2: Well. Funny I mentioned that though the story is not
Speaker 2: the most original story, and in fact, within the context
Speaker 2: of Star Trek movies, this spoiler alert, this won't be
Speaker 2: the last time we have a story with the same
Speaker 2: type of beats. Essentially, what happens is there's this cloud
Speaker 2: with some kind of ship something in the middle of
Speaker 2: it that is has a it's heading towards Earth and
Speaker 2: everything that encounter it, that encounters it, everything that goes
Speaker 2: into this cloud, they're basic, they're destroyed. They're basically deres
Speaker 2: for lack of a better term, nothing can absorbed. There's
Speaker 2: this clouds ends out these lightning plasma balls, and once
Speaker 2: they hit your ship, it basically just wipes it from existence.
Speaker 2: I guess in your I think you're right. It's absorbed
Speaker 2: into the organic ship in the middle of all of
Speaker 2: this that we learn about. So this thing is on
Speaker 2: an intercept court course with Earth, and talk about.
Speaker 1: That scene before we grow any further, because this movie
Speaker 1: begins so magnificently, right, okay.
Speaker 2: The Klingons you mean, yes, yeah, it starts.
Speaker 1: This movie begins after the magnificent fucking credit sequence with
Speaker 1: the fucking thrilling Jerry Goldsmith's score. We immediately cut to,
Speaker 1: or we don't cut to. We pan over to and
Speaker 1: then above, and then around and then behind a trio
Speaker 1: of Klingon cruisers KATINGA class. In case you were.
Speaker 2: Wondering, these aren't birds birds of prey.
Speaker 1: No, this is the new KATINGA Class, buddy.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, mister Trekky over there by the way. Fun fact,
Speaker 2: I did not know this. So they cut inside and
Speaker 2: the Klingons are in this cloud and that they're shooting
Speaker 2: a torpedoes that have no effect. The commander of the
Speaker 2: Klingon fleet is played by Mark Leonard.
Speaker 1: Mark Leonard Sarah himself.
Speaker 2: Fucking Sarah. One of my favorite characters of all of
Speaker 2: the Star Trek movies was I couldn't believe it when
Speaker 2: I found that out. Anyway, go ahead, Sorry.
Speaker 1: He's also a Romulin, remember on the original series.
Speaker 2: In the original series, that's true.
Speaker 1: So he's been a Romulin, a Vulcan, and a Klingon.
Speaker 1: And yes, here's the reveal of the Klingons. Here's where
Speaker 1: it's good to have Robert Wise, I guess, and I
Speaker 1: guess Sid Mead and a whole bunch of really talented
Speaker 1: people doing the designing. Because Klingons are now aliens. They're
Speaker 1: not just people in brown face with whiskers who punch
Speaker 1: Federation people. Yeah, willy nilly, these are aliens with their
Speaker 1: own language, in their own customs, and what the fuck
Speaker 1: is going on? I don't know. It's crazy, but they've
Speaker 1: got a great theme here it is again. Oh it's
Speaker 1: so good, very dark, very dark. So yeah, it wipes
Speaker 1: the Klingons. So they give us the Klingons, they show
Speaker 1: how fucking formidable they are, and then they're just wiped
Speaker 1: off the map immediately.
Speaker 2: They're just gone. In the midst of this spock, we
Speaker 2: see him. He's on Vulcan. He's going through the Coolinar ritual,
Speaker 2: which is the objective is to renownce and shed all emotion.
Speaker 2: And as he's about to graduate, he stops the priestess
Speaker 2: from bestowing this symbolic necklace on his around his neck,
Speaker 2: because this force that's heading towards Earth has is affecting
Speaker 2: him and he can hear it, thoughts. He can hear it.
Speaker 1: Cost you hear the twang in the distance, and you
Speaker 1: know that Vitre is here, So.
Speaker 2: It's affecting his human side. And the priestess realizes that
Speaker 2: he has not yet attained Coulinar and he must seek
Speaker 2: his answers elsewhere. So Spock is going to figure into
Speaker 2: the story, but basically on Earth.
Speaker 1: But you know what, she's got this beautiful necklace and
Speaker 1: she just tosses it like the ground, like you're no
Speaker 1: longer worthy of Colinari, like nah, and she tosses ah. Man,
Speaker 1: it's so disrespectful.
Speaker 2: But it's there's the look, like you said, a Vulcan.
Speaker 2: Now with this director's cut, it's it's epic. It's this
Speaker 2: sort of arid, deserty looking planet with like you said,
Speaker 2: lava and these giant statues. It looks great. It's hard
Speaker 2: to imagine we watched it and the other way.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people love the Vulcans. I
Speaker 1: hate the Vulcans.
Speaker 2: Man, I was like, I would love I'm one of
Speaker 2: those people that love the Vulcans.
Speaker 1: I love one Vulcan, but he's half Vulcan. Thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing I learn my Valcan Science Academy. Right now, man, Okay,
Speaker 1: I attended. They're not good people.
Speaker 2: It goes without saying that Leonard Nimoy is really the
Speaker 2: heart and soul of this whole thing. It's hard to
Speaker 2: imagine any other actor in such an indelible role as his.
Speaker 2: It was really truly the role. Not that he probably
Speaker 2: appreciated the fact that he was always going to be
Speaker 2: known as Spock after all he did. He wrote. His
Speaker 2: first biography was called I Am Not Spock, followed decades
Speaker 2: later by I Am Spock. But it's impossible to look
Speaker 2: at Leonard Nimoy and not think of Spock. First. I
Speaker 2: love Colombo, the TV show Columbo. I'm sure you do too,
Speaker 2: fallom Alone, and he played one of the villains. I
Speaker 2: loved it. I'm not a I love I fucking love
Speaker 2: Colombo anyway, Niemoy was one of the villains of the week.
Speaker 2: He was a surgeon that comes up with this crazy
Speaker 2: plot to kill this doctor that is holding back this anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna go into details, but he's great in it,
Speaker 2: but you can't. It's kind of tragic in a way
Speaker 2: because he was such a great actor. But you look
Speaker 2: at him and you're wondering where the pointy ears and
Speaker 2: the arched eyebrows and the funny haircut because he is
Speaker 2: spuck and it's we're gonna go through this whole exercise
Speaker 2: of going through all of these movies, all of the
Speaker 2: original movies and all of the and it's gonna be
Speaker 2: such a treat to follow Leonard Nimoy, especially because he
Speaker 2: is the heart and soul, like I said, of these movies.
Speaker 2: And I cannot imagine. I know that there was all
Speaker 2: this conflict behind the scenes about his likeness being used
Speaker 2: and he had to renegotiate his contract before he'd agree
Speaker 2: to do it. I don't blame him at all for that,
Speaker 2: because the man deserved to get paid, because you can't
Speaker 2: have that original series without Spock. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just say about that. If there's a
Speaker 1: hero behind the scenes of this movie, it's Jeffrey Katzenberg
Speaker 1: who actually made the effort to fly to New York
Speaker 1: where Leonard Nimoy was appearing on stage to see the play,
Speaker 1: to go talk to him afterwards and to say, what
Speaker 1: is the problem with you and Paramount Pictures? How can
Speaker 1: we solve that? And saying to him effectively, you do
Speaker 1: know that even if you're involved in a lawsuit with
Speaker 1: the company, you could still come work for the company.
Speaker 1: And Nimoy basically, basically Cassenberg said, what's the problem, Let
Speaker 1: me go back, I'll take care of that, and then
Speaker 1: will you read the screenplay? And he says, yes, if
Speaker 1: you give me the money the day that I received
Speaker 1: the check, I will read the script. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened, and good for him.
Speaker 2: It was a smart business decision.
Speaker 1: And let me speak to the other thing you said
Speaker 1: about Nimoy, which is he is so indelibly spock. He
Speaker 1: had to write that book and let everyone know there
Speaker 1: were more sides to him, hobbit. Fans know that. But
Speaker 1: but here's the thing, HV. Now we were talking about.
Speaker 2: I'm such a fan of his music. By the way
Speaker 2: that Bilbo Baggins is just one aspect of it. But
Speaker 2: anyway proceeds.
Speaker 1: Sorry, now I mentioned that we were effectively watching reruns
Speaker 1: of Star Trek. It had only been on the off
Speaker 1: the air for a few years before we were born.
Speaker 1: So that's where my primary that's where I was getting
Speaker 1: my Star Trek was from syndicated television. But at the
Speaker 1: same time I know we were getting we were getting
Speaker 1: In Search of Demoy. So to me, when I think
Speaker 1: of Leonardimoy, I think of that guy first. Honestly, it's
Speaker 1: it that I'm I know that's ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: people out there. Is not the case you saw him
Speaker 1: first as Spock. We all did. However, to me, that
Speaker 1: was so formative by the way podcasters, paranormal podcasters, if
Speaker 1: you want to have me on your show, and you should,
Speaker 1: I am going to talk about In Search of because
Speaker 1: it's not only the basis for all of my paranormal lore,
Speaker 1: but it is the image I think of when I
Speaker 1: think of Leonard Dama, I think of that guy, and
Speaker 1: I think of how scary and serious he was.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and that show covered the whole gamut of
Speaker 2: the paranormal and the super normal. Everything from these you
Speaker 2: talked about, the ancient astronauts, all that bullshit, the von
Speaker 2: Danik and stuff they covered that. They covered, Amelia Earhart,
Speaker 2: they covered the Bermuda Triangle. They covered like.
Speaker 1: Their Amityville horror episode is scarier than the film The
Speaker 1: Amity War.
Speaker 2: Well, now we know the truth of what actually took place.
Speaker 2: They didn't know that back then.
Speaker 1: No, anyway, that's what's great about it is. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: still all of their theories are still locked in the seventies.
Speaker 1: You're just like, what what are you guys even talking about?
Speaker 1: For most of them, but some of them are still like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's still a fucking mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, I agree, like seek out if you
Speaker 2: want something. I don't know if like an adult watching
Speaker 2: In Search Of would have the same reaction as we
Speaker 2: did it. What we just saw it at the right time.
Speaker 2: Fa them alone, because we were so impressionable, and when
Speaker 2: you're seeing grainy UFO photos or the Lockness Monster, I
Speaker 2: was predisposed to believe all of that shit. So even
Speaker 2: now it gives me a little bit of trepidation to
Speaker 2: think about In Search Of because it was so creepy
Speaker 2: and scary and interesting at the same time.
Speaker 1: I don't think people today watching it for the first
Speaker 1: time would have any sort of reaction the way we did,
Speaker 1: because they have the other Spock with the other in
Speaker 1: search of Zachary Quinto. He hosted the remake of the show.
Speaker 1: Plus we had Command of Cheese there with Factor Fiction Forever.
Speaker 2: Oh freakes, freaks, Yeah, yeah, that's true. So getting back
Speaker 2: to the movie. At the same time as all this
Speaker 2: is happening.
Speaker 1: Let's get to Starfleet headquarters. Everybody, what's been going on
Speaker 1: in San Francisco?
Speaker 2: In San Francisco and on a first.
Speaker 1: In this movie we get a lot of first Honestly,
Speaker 1: do you know what we find out in this movie
Speaker 1: that it's James T. Kirk. We find out his name
Speaker 1: is Tiberius.
Speaker 2: Now we never found that out in the original series.
Speaker 1: It's made cannon here and it's not even in the movie.
Speaker 1: It's in the novelization. And now let me talk about
Speaker 1: the novelization for one second, because I read it now.
Speaker 1: I my whole life have been a fan of novelizations.
Speaker 1: I have stacks and snacks of them everywhere. I have
Speaker 1: the Taxi Driver novelization. Everybody, Oh boy, you want to
Speaker 1: read that one anyway, The Star Trek, the motion picture
Speaker 1: novelization is the only novelisation or novel of Star Trek
Speaker 1: fiction written by Gene Roddenberry himself. It's not great, it
Speaker 1: is what it is, and it's based on earlier drafts
Speaker 1: in the script. It might even be based on Gene
Speaker 1: Roddenberry's drafts of the script. How would I know this
Speaker 1: well because the novel. Don't read it. It's terrible, But
Speaker 1: do read the preface, written by Admiral James T. Kirk himself,
Speaker 1: talking about how he realizes his legend precedes him and
Speaker 1: a much has been made about his exploits, and all
Speaker 1: of it has been blown out of proportion. And he
Speaker 1: knows that his five year mission was very well documented
Speaker 1: and that most of it was untrue. And here the
Speaker 1: book you're reading he has commissioned. So don't believe any
Speaker 1: other version. Just this. In other words, Gene Roddenberry is
Speaker 1: saying this was the script that they should have made figures.
Speaker 1: Where were we? Who knows?
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I will say this as a
Speaker 2: side note Starfleet. A bunch of years ago they put
Speaker 2: out a fictionalized, obviously autobiography of James Kirk. It's very
Speaker 2: worthwhile to read it because you get a lot of
Speaker 2: it fills in a lot of the gaps and connects
Speaker 2: a lot of the dots that maybe weren't so obvious
Speaker 2: in the series and in the movies. But anyway, we're
Speaker 2: talking about now Kirk. In this movie, he's been promoted
Speaker 2: to admiral, and he has been he's been notified of
Speaker 2: this crisis that the Earth is facing. So what he
Speaker 2: effectively is does is the Enterprise is undergoing refit, it's
Speaker 2: being modernized. He effectively commandeers the Enterprise on Starfleet orders,
Speaker 2: which much to the chagrin of the existing Captain Decker,
Speaker 2: played by the troublesome, say the least Stephen Collins.
Speaker 1: Okay, Stephen Collins scandal noted. All right, yeah, everybody don't
Speaker 1: really going watching this movie. He's really good in it.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think, honestly, if Stephen Collins had
Speaker 1: existed in nineteen sixty five, then Gene Rodenbury would have
Speaker 1: cast him as Captain Kirk.
Speaker 2: I agree with you to a point. I think he's
Speaker 2: really good in this from the perspective of acting in
Speaker 2: that style of Star Trek the original series. I'm not
Speaker 2: suggesting that it's grounded dramatic performance. I think he plays
Speaker 2: to the heightened reality of Star Trek.
Speaker 1: There are no grounded, realistic performances in this film. This
Speaker 1: movie is a fairy tale. This movie is the sequel
Speaker 1: of the series.
Speaker 2: Sure, he's playing to the tone of the movie, and
Speaker 2: by that standard, I yes, it is a good performance.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Kirk has to take the Star Trek out
Speaker 2: to intercept this force that's heading towards Earth Decker. Reluctantly,
Speaker 2: he has no choice but to let him do it.
Speaker 2: But initially he's effectively first officer and the science officer.
Speaker 2: Because what happens, and this is actually rather horrific, I forgot.
Speaker 1: I let's talk about this, okay. When they were going
Speaker 1: to make Phase two, which is the sequel series, when
Speaker 1: they were going to launch the Paramount Network, they basically
Speaker 1: it was just Star Trek again. It was another five
Speaker 1: year mission, Kirk and everybody on the Enterprise going out.
Speaker 1: But they knew even then they weren't going to get
Speaker 1: Leonard naymoy. So instead they thought, let's cast a full
Speaker 1: Vulcan and Zon was going to be very curious about
Speaker 1: human behavior, and through Spock, who is missing somehow, and
Speaker 1: basically it's data, okay, because right they have the data
Speaker 1: character would eventually show up. The Decker character is Riiker
Speaker 1: eventually in fact that he was a character on the
Speaker 1: series as well, Commander Decker who was basically there just
Speaker 1: in case Shatner wasn't going to work out and they
Speaker 1: could jettison him and have a new captain. And the
Speaker 1: character of Ilia was part of the new crew of
Speaker 1: the Starship Enterprise. An mpath Deanna Troy Rodon Berry never
Speaker 1: threw one fucking ideal way, did he?
Speaker 2: No, not at all, but the horrific part of.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, anyway, My point there was I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: didn't keep interrupting you.
Speaker 2: That's okay?
Speaker 1: Is that? So the guy who was going to play
Speaker 1: Zon is in this movie on the space station calling
Speaker 1: to let Starfleet know about what happened to the Klingons.
Speaker 2: That's the guy. Yeah, Because when Kirk is at Starfleet
Speaker 2: he talks to the science officer. This guy, I don't
Speaker 2: is his name is on in this The.
Speaker 1: Guy on the station was the one who was going
Speaker 1: to plays On And they said, sorry, we don't need you.
Speaker 1: We've got Leonard Nimoy now here. Do you want to
Speaker 1: play this Vulcan science officer, and he said, no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be a Vulcan, and they gave him
Speaker 1: a cameo as the guy running the station that gets
Speaker 1: eventually eaten by vegir Okay.
Speaker 2: Oh, I got you, I got you.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the character who is basically going to be
Speaker 1: on we get from the science officer he meets at Starfleet,
Speaker 1: who he says, meet me in an hour on the Enterprise.
Speaker 1: Kirk in that moment dooms that man to death, and
Speaker 1: they only kill him so that they can get Leonard
Speaker 1: Nimoy on the ship. And it makes sense as a
Speaker 1: science officer, it's crazy, it is.
Speaker 2: It's like around the Mulberry Bush just to get to
Speaker 2: the point where they can have Spock on the on
Speaker 2: the Enterprise. So he Scotty is going over. He takes
Speaker 2: Kirk on a shuttle to the Enterprise because he says,
Speaker 2: the transporter there's a malfunction and they're working through some
Speaker 2: issue with the transporter. So meanwhile this gives us the
Speaker 2: opportunity to basically as they're flying up to the Enterprise,
Speaker 2: it's a literal four and a half minute pretty much
Speaker 2: wordless approach to the Enterprise. It's filmed lovingly from all
Speaker 2: these different angles as you get reaction shot after reaction
Speaker 2: shot of Scottie and Kirk gawking over.
Speaker 1: Its constellation class porn.
Speaker 2: It is, and this isn't the last time we're going
Speaker 2: to see a bunch of reaction shots.
Speaker 1: This entire sequence was directed by Douglas Trumbull. Robert Wise
Speaker 1: basically said just give us what we need here, so
Speaker 1: it was trumble Yeah, And I know there were like
Speaker 1: lots of storyboards and everything, but Trumbull was responsible for
Speaker 1: adding like the little guys floating around doing tasks and
Speaker 1: other shuttles and stuff going to and like filling the
Speaker 1: scene with life, so it's not just static shots of
Speaker 1: the enterprise, which, by the way, the enterprise is fucking gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, make no mistake, I'm joking that it takes
Speaker 2: forever to get there because this being a movie, I
Speaker 2: kind of want to cut to the chase and get
Speaker 2: to the action. But having said that, it does look amazing,
Speaker 2: and those little guys doing little tasks and stuff, that
Speaker 2: all does make it feel alive. So if I'm talking.
Speaker 1: About this movie, they say this is the scene that
Speaker 1: goes on too long, and I say, there is so
Speaker 1: much of this movie that I would cut out before
Speaker 1: I touched one frame of this sequence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an approach into Vidre which we'll get to,
Speaker 2: which takes even longer and it's even more ponderous.
Speaker 1: But you know who my favorite character is in Star
Speaker 1: Trek of the whole series, No, who, the Enterprise.
Speaker 2: That's a good point because that's really the only constant
Speaker 2: through every one of these iterations.
Speaker 1: Right, blow it up, fucking up, doesn't matter, it's coming back.
Speaker 1: The Enterprise will always be there.
Speaker 2: It will always come back. So they get onto the Enterprise,
Speaker 2: Scotty and Kirk, and they're trying to beam up this
Speaker 2: Vulcanis officer that he talked to in San Francisco, and
Speaker 2: there's a malfunction and they end up first of all,
Speaker 2: the people in the transporter pad. As they're coming in,
Speaker 2: they're screaming in agony, and then they have to reverse
Speaker 2: the transporter and they and.
Speaker 1: Then Transporter Chief Rand, she's no longer a Yeoman's that's
Speaker 1: Transporter Chief Ran from the original series says, Oh God,
Speaker 1: they're forming, which means they're deforming, which means that in
Speaker 1: this pattern, this energy pattern, their bodies are now starting
Speaker 1: to twist in on themselves, and then they send them
Speaker 1: back where we are told what we received didn't live
Speaker 1: long mercifully, which.
Speaker 2: Just sounds It reminds me of The Fly, the Cronenberg
Speaker 2: The Fly, when you know there's a malfunction and things
Speaker 2: are coming out all twisted up and just disgusting. It's horrifying.
Speaker 2: And this is Star Trek. This is a beloved sixties
Speaker 2: TV show, and this is so dark the way.
Speaker 1: He's seven years old. This was a fucking nightmare.
Speaker 2: It is. And it's not the last time that they.
Speaker 1: Didn't know what to do with myself. I honestly don't
Speaker 1: remember the next portion of the movie because I was
Speaker 1: so I knew what was happening.
Speaker 2: It's death. It's right there, and it's a horrifying page.
Speaker 1: And this is right after we watched the Klingons get
Speaker 1: their asses kicked.
Speaker 2: Right, So there's already been a lot of death for
Speaker 2: a Star Trek property. So Kirk basically tells the crew
Speaker 2: and everybody on the enterprise what the deal is. They
Speaker 2: have about fifty three hours to intercept this force before
Speaker 2: it reaches Earth, so they've got to intercept, investigate, take
Speaker 2: any action that's necessary. But At the same time, he
Speaker 2: gets a priority signal from another Federation outpost that suffers
Speaker 2: the same exact fate as the Klingons. They are attacked
Speaker 2: by this cloud. It sends a plasma ball that disintegrates
Speaker 2: the whole. It's awful because this all happens.
Speaker 1: That's that one guy in a spacewalk to trying to
Speaker 1: get away from everything, and like even if he got away,
Speaker 1: what was he gonna do.
Speaker 2: He's like trying to high tail it away from That's
Speaker 2: it's scary. It's a scary proposition anyway, to be walking
Speaker 2: in space, but then you've got this catastrophe happening behind
Speaker 2: it basically trips right, and then that's it. It's curtains.
Speaker 2: So the new the new navigator comes on board. This
Speaker 2: Aliyah you mentioned her earlier that what's odd is they
Speaker 2: announced I think Hora says, oh, and Captain she's Dalton,
Speaker 2: and that seems to delight everybody, like even to cut
Speaker 2: to Chekhov, who smiles so broadly, like we're supposed to
Speaker 2: understand what Dealton means.
Speaker 1: This is left over from an earlier draft in the
Speaker 1: script where it was going to be more of the plot,
Speaker 1: but Dalton's apparently are the most sensual creatures in the Federation,
Speaker 1: which is why when she meets Kirk, she immediately says,
Speaker 1: I have a vow of celibacy because she's Kirk's reputation
Speaker 1: has preceded him, right.
Speaker 2: We find out that Aileiah and Decker have some romantic
Speaker 2: history together because he spent time on her home world.
Speaker 1: Where have we seen that? Oh hello, Deanna Troy and
Speaker 1: William Riker and a counter at far point.
Speaker 2: Never throw anything away, oh Jeane. So then there, the
Speaker 2: whole crew is there. They're ready to board, except for
Speaker 2: there's one one character who refuses to use the transporter.
Speaker 2: And of course this is another favorite. It's bones. It's bones, McCoy,
Speaker 2: And why don't you describe what he looks like when
Speaker 2: he comes off that transporter pack.
Speaker 1: I'm going to use a joke by Mike White on
Speaker 1: his show The Projection Booth, which is, Jim, we just
Speaker 1: came back from destroying disco. He's in basically a leisure
Speaker 1: suit with a fucking open collar to his navel and
Speaker 1: a fucking medallion and a rounded weirdo beard. A rounded
Speaker 1: weirdo beard. It's so fucking unusual. It's like you want
Speaker 1: to when you start something and you haven't seen characters
Speaker 1: for a while, like you want to find out what
Speaker 1: they've been up to. I don't want to know what
Speaker 1: he was up to.
Speaker 2: Like the other part of the suit is it is
Speaker 2: a leisure suit, but it's made of what appears to
Speaker 2: be terry cloth, which was a very popular material back then.
Speaker 2: It's just the whole package is just wonderful. And of
Speaker 2: course it's the forest Kelly. Who doesn't like the forest Kelly.
Speaker 2: He's another one who anytime I would see him pop
Speaker 2: in to some Western or some other part, I look
Speaker 2: at him, I go, that's McCoy, Like what, You're not
Speaker 2: fooling me. This is another It's just like Leonard and
Speaker 2: ee boy. He was shoehorned into that part and most
Speaker 2: of the actors were.
Speaker 1: Earlier today, I was watching Assignment Earth from the the
Speaker 1: second season episode twenty six, and that's the one when
Speaker 1: they go back in time to the Cape Kennedy or
Speaker 1: Cape Canaveral at the time where the space launch. Remember
Speaker 1: they go back to sixties Earth and Terry gar is there.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, remember that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Today, for the first time, I notice one of the
Speaker 1: texts at NASA is Don Lormer, who was one of
Speaker 1: the jurors and Twelve Angry Men. But I know him
Speaker 1: mainly and you might know him mainly as Mike, the
Speaker 1: janitor from Creep Show who gets eaten by Fluffy out
Speaker 1: of the crate.
Speaker 2: Wait, which juror was he in Twelve Angry Men? Was
Speaker 2: it the original or was it the Playhouse production?
Speaker 1: No? I think it was the original. I think it's
Speaker 1: the movie.
Speaker 2: It is Don lorm I don't have to look it
Speaker 2: up anyway, because I love that movie. So it turns
Speaker 2: out that basically Kirk essentially drafted Bones to be on
Speaker 2: the ship for this mission, because of course he's gonna
Speaker 2: need bone Yice, I need.
Speaker 1: You weird a bunch of we Look, this is Shatner
Speaker 1: full Season three. I'm a total fucking ham in this movie.
Speaker 1: And he just keeps making weirder and weirder things. When
Speaker 1: we first meet him, it's that he's meeting Scotty and
Speaker 1: Scotty's ferrying him over there, and Scotty's complaining about how
Speaker 1: the Enterprise isn't ready and her captain is untested, and
Speaker 1: he's like, well, I don't consider myself untested, And then
Speaker 1: and he's like what what do you mean? And he's like,
Speaker 1: they gave her back to me. He's such a lunatic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is weird because we'll see throughout the series
Speaker 2: that he vacillates between Admiral Kirk and Captain Kirk. He's
Speaker 2: always angling to get back onto the Enterprise, and of
Speaker 2: course that's where he's destined to go. But it is
Speaker 2: a little when you look at the balance of the
Speaker 2: whole arc of this series, it is a little weird
Speaker 2: that he, like his career is forever vacillating between the
Speaker 2: two states. Like someone somewhere should finally say, you know what,
Speaker 2: this man has an unhealthy obsession with staying on this ship.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should have a doctor, not bones, but somebody
Speaker 2: actually talked to this guy and figure out what's his deal,
Speaker 2: Like he should get over this already. But anyway, well,
Speaker 2: in this case.
Speaker 1: It's the thrust of the entire series though, with what
Speaker 1: you're describing HB as this man who can't decide whether
Speaker 1: he wants this or that, and ultimately sure, ultimately hopping
Speaker 1: around the universe is the only thing he's good at.
Speaker 2: True, as much as he tries to get away from it,
Speaker 2: he just can't. He can't quit the enterprise. That's fine,
Speaker 2: so they're on Finally everybody's on board, and they take
Speaker 2: the enterprise out and they engage warp speed. But because
Speaker 2: they haven't shaken all the glitches.
Speaker 1: In this case, they're not supposed to be doing it
Speaker 1: in a solar system. They're still in our solar system.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to be engage in works. Because of that,
Speaker 1: they get a piece of space debris in their warp tunnel,
Speaker 1: which turns into a wormhole.
Speaker 2: So they end up and this kind of becomes a
Speaker 2: ridiculous scene because what happens is they're in this wormhole
Speaker 2: and an asteroid has materialized in front of them, and
Speaker 2: not only do they have to get out of the wormhole,
Speaker 2: but they have to do it before they collide with
Speaker 2: this asteroid. But the longer they're in the wormhole, the
Speaker 2: slower time is apparently running, and the slower they start talking.
Speaker 2: So by the time they get to the point where
Speaker 2: Chekhov is told by Decker to fire proton torpedoes at
Speaker 2: this asteroid, they're talking like this proton torpede. So this,
Speaker 2: by the way, it's very annoyxious. And by the way,
Speaker 2: Decker has actually countermanded one of Kirk's orders because Kirk
Speaker 2: orders them to shoot phasers at the thing, but Decker
Speaker 2: says no, and he goes on, I'm not gonna do
Speaker 2: the whole thing. Don't worry. He says, we can't shoot
Speaker 2: phasers because it'll do something with the something, and they
Speaker 2: have to shoot proton torpedo.
Speaker 1: It'll draw energy from the from the engine. The phasers
Speaker 1: are now rooted through the engine used they used to
Speaker 1: be independent. If they do that, they're gonna they're gonna
Speaker 1: fall out a warp and fucking be pulled apart. What
Speaker 1: are you talking about, HB.
Speaker 2: All right, tricky whatever. Anyway, they blow up thisstroid with
Speaker 2: the and that knocks them out of the wormhole and
Speaker 2: everything's okay. And basically, I think.
Speaker 1: Kirk I like the point of the scene, which is
Speaker 1: you're not as fucking great as you think you are.
Speaker 1: You're still out classed. You have some things to learn here.
Speaker 1: And it shows his humility because he fucking comes clean
Speaker 1: with that with Decker. Can I just ask is there
Speaker 1: a rank between captain and admiral because it seems like
Speaker 1: the five years or so that we're supposed to believe
Speaker 1: has passed between the end of the five year mission
Speaker 1: for three years betwend the end of the five year mission.
Speaker 1: In this he became an admirable admiral straight from fucking captain.
Speaker 1: What about rear admiral?
Speaker 2: I think rear admirals higher than admiral, isn't it.
Speaker 1: What about commodore, I know, Commodore or Elvis. Speaking of commodores,
Speaker 1: do you remember the Doomsday device? Do you remember the
Speaker 1: Doomsday machine with Commodore Matt Decker okay, played by William Windham,
Speaker 1: the crazy one who fucking goes he fucking flies the
Speaker 1: ship into it? Remember, Yeah, yeah, that's Decker's dad.
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, that's canon. Yes, I never knew that interesting
Speaker 2: because they don't mention that.
Speaker 1: So maybe quit making fun of me and my knowledge
Speaker 1: of Star trek. Huh.
Speaker 2: Well there you go, learn something new every day follom alone.
Speaker 2: So after all this happens and they talk about what happened,
Speaker 2: and Kirk basically makes Decker promise like he's going to
Speaker 2: keep him in check, because again Kirk shows some humility
Speaker 2: here and says, you're right, I'm not I'm rusty, I'm
Speaker 2: not as sharp as I was X amount of years ago.
Speaker 2: But at that point, a shuttle requests requested docking with
Speaker 2: the Enterprise, and who's on the shuttle. It's our boy, Spock.
Speaker 2: Spock has made his way to the Enterprise.
Speaker 1: He I'm curious how he found them, considering they just
Speaker 1: went to warp, got caught in the wormhole and ended
Speaker 1: up they don't even know where they are, so that's interesting.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But the problem is that everybody of the original crew,
Speaker 2: they're all delighted that Spock is on board, but Spock
Speaker 2: is still dealing with the after effects of the culinar
Speaker 2: ritual and he's very cold. He doesn't he's not presenting
Speaker 2: any type of emotion. He doesn't even seem to be
Speaker 2: happy to be there to see all his friends.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, he's it's and can you imagine that
Speaker 1: Spock's mother is married to a Vulcan? Have you watched
Speaker 1: that episode recently? The's Sarah and Amanda show up for
Speaker 1: the first time and She's like, yeah, it's really hard,
Speaker 1: but it's worth it. I'm like, it's not worth it.
Speaker 1: They are terrible, Like if you're crying about something, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, what it's wrong with you? You've weirdo
Speaker 1: human like I can't take them.
Speaker 2: It did seem a little odd, and they do address
Speaker 2: that a little bit in the Abrams reboot, which we'll
Speaker 2: talk about when we talk about it, But that is
Speaker 2: that always seemed to be a little odd, Like there's
Speaker 2: no warmth with a vulcan. So what would a kind of.
Speaker 1: Human being falls in love with a vulcan?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Ultimately, like I get the appeal. They're cool and they
Speaker 1: know a lot of shit. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: like they cuddle, they must cuddle. They understand your needs, right,
Speaker 1: they have to as long as they're acting in some
Speaker 1: manner toward your emotions. I suppose it would be.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, let me ask this before we move off
Speaker 2: to the subject. Does every Vulcan go through culinar? No,
Speaker 2: that's their emotions.
Speaker 1: No, that's for masters that you're part of, the following
Speaker 1: the religion.
Speaker 2: At that point, I got it. So it's likely that
Speaker 2: Spock that Sarah has not gone through culinar. He's still
Speaker 2: a regular old Vulcan with emotions that are mostly buried
Speaker 2: and subsumed. Okay, that makes more sense because he is,
Speaker 2: and that part of it I think is the way
Speaker 2: Mark Leonard plays him, but he has played with a
Speaker 2: lot of warmth for a Vulcan. In fact, I would
Speaker 2: say that he probably plays him with more warmth than
Speaker 2: Leonard Nimoy typically does.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. I've seen those blooper reels.
Speaker 2: What's presented as performance I think is much warmer. Anyway,
Speaker 2: now Spock's on board. Spock makes it clear that he's
Speaker 2: looking for answers about this thing that he's picked up from,
Speaker 2: this this anomaly that's heading towards it space cloud, this cloud.
Speaker 1: So he's thinks the stage for every Marvel and DC
Speaker 1: movie from the past twenty years. The space cloud is coming.
Speaker 2: Right and he at a certain point he talks with
Speaker 2: McCoy and Kirk about why he didn't complete Colinar. What
Speaker 2: Spock feels like I think, Spock says, he feels a
Speaker 2: perfectly ordered consciousness that he's never felt before, and maybe
Speaker 2: this has the answers that he's seeking. So the ship
Speaker 2: finally reaches this anomaly and here's where things get. Now,
Speaker 2: here's the thing. I forgot about this until I watch
Speaker 2: this father alone. I remember kid No. I remember it
Speaker 2: as a child saying to my mom that I wanted
Speaker 2: to see Star trek the motion picture, and I very
Speaker 2: distinctly remember my mother saying something to the effect of
Speaker 2: I've heard it's just mostly just people looking up at
Speaker 2: the screen and reacting to things. It doesn't sound it
Speaker 2: sounds boring to me, and I didn't really think about
Speaker 2: that until I rewatched this scene. So it reaches the
Speaker 2: anomaly and they're actually, I don't think we've gotten to
Speaker 2: this part yet, but eventually they head into the cloud
Speaker 2: and they get deeper and deeper and deeper into it.
Speaker 2: And what we're presented with is another three or four
Speaker 2: minutes of wordless reactions and very much in the style
Speaker 2: of two thousand and one, a space odyssey, like space psychedelics, scanning,
Speaker 2: passing by the viewscreen. That's what we get. That's what
Speaker 2: my mother was cautioning me against, because it's just a
Speaker 2: bunch of reaction shots.
Speaker 1: Anyway, well, they let me speak to the two thousand
Speaker 1: and one angle, which Douglas Trumbull won an Academy Award
Speaker 1: for his effects work on two thousand and one. It's
Speaker 1: what made him and allowed him to go out and
Speaker 1: make his own company. And it should also be noted
Speaker 1: that just like that, unlike these sequence at the end
Speaker 1: of two thousand and one, which is thrilling. This is
Speaker 1: really muddy and boring, and this is another Douglas Trumble sequence.
Speaker 1: The scene where we really explore Vjur's interior is when
Speaker 1: Spock goes off on his own, and that's really the
Speaker 1: trip portion of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so eventually they figure out her. Spock figures out
Speaker 2: that this thing actually has been trying to communicate with them,
Speaker 2: but it's at such a high rate of speed that
Speaker 2: it's too fast. So he figures out a way to
Speaker 2: communicate back that there are no threat just as this
Speaker 2: thing is spent sending one of the plasma balls right
Speaker 2: at the enterprise. He gets through to it in the
Speaker 2: nick of time and the plasma ball dissolves, and that's
Speaker 2: when they go deeper into this cloud and they're gawking
Speaker 2: at everything. But eventually what happens is they And by
Speaker 2: the way, this is all a very good showcase for
Speaker 2: Jerry Goldsmith's music because as they're passing through all the
Speaker 2: psychedelic imagery, the score underneath it has these notes of excitement,
Speaker 2: but also strikes that somber metallic tone that works beautifully
Speaker 2: with the space photography and gives you the coldness of
Speaker 2: space and excitement of the adventure that they're on. So
Speaker 2: eventually they get probed again. And this is another part
Speaker 2: that kind of scarred me a little bit as a child.
Speaker 2: This probe that takes the form of essentially a lightning bolt,
Speaker 2: a slow moving column of light that's passing through the
Speaker 2: bridge that Kirk says, don't do anything, it's just probing us,
Speaker 2: don't whatever. It eventually tries to take control of the
Speaker 2: computer and they realize it's gathering all this data. Spock
Speaker 2: destroys the console and he's blown back. Then what happens
Speaker 2: is I still think it's horrifying. This probe takes a
Speaker 2: hold of Eileena, who is completely innocent. She's all she's
Speaker 2: doing is just on the bridge, frozen in place. It
Speaker 2: takes a hold of her, shakes her around a little bit,
Speaker 2: and vaporizes her right before their eyes. She's gone spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: she doesn't come back. She's dead, just deadly. Yeah, she's dead.
Speaker 1: Vija has murdered another.
Speaker 2: Innocent Yeah, completely innocent, And she's even more innocent than
Speaker 2: everybody else because she's supposed to be this pure Delton
Speaker 2: that has all of these kind of what we will
Speaker 2: later associate with Deanna Troy from Next Generation. She's an
Speaker 2: EmPATH and she has these abilities to put make people
Speaker 2: feel good. Chekhov gets burned when his station explodes, and
Speaker 2: she's able to like calm him and make him feel
Speaker 2: no pain while the medics arrive. So it's incredibly sad
Speaker 2: that this member of the crew is killed for no
Speaker 2: good reason. But what's even scarier is after this happens,
Speaker 2: eventually they get a signal from her her quarters there's
Speaker 2: a life form in there. I'm jumping ahead a little bit,
Speaker 2: and they go there and Eileena is there. But it's
Speaker 2: not Eileena. It's this It's another manifestation of a probe
Speaker 2: from this cloud thing which we which she will term Vegre.
Speaker 2: She's nothing more than a complex robot that Vegre has
Speaker 2: sent over to do more probing and more studying of
Speaker 2: this ship. So not only is Eileena gone, but she's
Speaker 2: been replaced with this weird robot like simulacrum of her.
Speaker 2: I just I found that incredibly cruel. Fotom alone couldn't
Speaker 2: shake it.
Speaker 1: Well. It's one of the interesting things going on in
Speaker 1: this movie, one of the few in Star Trek. The
Speaker 1: motionless picture, because here's where we're at our most motionless.
Speaker 1: We're just traveling through the cloud. Now, right, is there
Speaker 1: a villain? I don't know. Maybe something at the end,
Speaker 1: at the center of this cloud, I guess is the problem.
Speaker 2: So she's she's our only me means of trying to
Speaker 2: understand what this anomaly is after because she calls it
Speaker 2: vegre like vi apostrophe ger. I think is how it's spelled.
Speaker 2: I think that's in the closed.
Speaker 1: Captions the creator.
Speaker 2: Right, So this anomaly, this this living ship is searching
Speaker 2: for its creator. We don't know why, we don't know
Speaker 2: what the purpose is. But she is on the ship
Speaker 2: now to study them. And then of course Deckerd, because
Speaker 2: he has a history of Eilena, is he's trying to
Speaker 2: almost like trying to get an anesiac to restore their memory.
Speaker 2: He's trying to walk her through all these familiar places
Speaker 2: and the hopes that maybe Aileena is in there somewhere,
Speaker 2: and there's clues that maybe there is some vestige of
Speaker 2: her in there. But I will say this, At one
Speaker 2: point they go into what amounts to a rec room
Speaker 2: in the Enterprise and he's showing her, Hey, we used
Speaker 2: to play this game, and you know, it would always
Speaker 2: beat me. This room that they're in. I don't know
Speaker 2: about you, fatherm Alone. We talk a lot about set
Speaker 2: design and things we like in other podcasts Night Mister Walters,
Speaker 2: for one, This it's mammoth. It looks like I would
Speaker 2: imagine a wreck room would look in a giant starship
Speaker 2: in space in the twenty third century or whenever that is.
Speaker 2: I was entranced by it. I thought it was great.
Speaker 1: It is it's the second time we've seen it. It's
Speaker 1: the same room where they've gathered the entire crew to
Speaker 1: let them know what their mission is again right by
Speaker 1: that the crew is mainly in that scene peopled with
Speaker 1: fan club members and other like people who were fans
Speaker 1: of Star Trek who had like contacted the production, which.
Speaker 2: Would explain the fact that at one of the reaction
Speaker 2: shots there's someone who's clearly like somebody who has like
Speaker 2: bad skin, like a lot of pimples, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: wouldn't they have cured pimples in the twenty third century?
Speaker 2: But it makes sense now that's probably someone who was
Speaker 2: just a big, a young fan of the show who
Speaker 2: is just going through puberty, probably at that point and
Speaker 2: had bad skin. I don't know. I thought it was funny.
Speaker 2: So as this is all happening, eventually Spock steals away
Speaker 2: from his station and he steals I think they call
Speaker 2: it a thruster suit. It's one of these spacewalk things
Speaker 2: where he's decided he's they've gone all the way to
Speaker 2: this part of the ship, this living organism, this Vegre
Speaker 2: that has this aperture that opens and closes at regular intervals,
Speaker 2: and he wants to try and get to the center
Speaker 2: of this being.
Speaker 1: Finally needs in his mind, he needs to make physical
Speaker 1: contact with Vegre in order to mind meld with it.
Speaker 1: Only then will he know Veger's true purpose, to which
Speaker 1: I would say, she's standing beside you.
Speaker 2: He can just talk.
Speaker 1: Lie, are you getting in a fucking spacesuit and flying
Speaker 1: through the cloud when Vegre is on the ship already
Speaker 1: with you if you want to mind meld.
Speaker 2: This is Spock at his most rebellious. I don't remember
Speaker 2: him ever really taking matters into his hands to this degree.
Speaker 2: At some point he neck pinches somebody in that area
Speaker 2: where they have the suits so he can steal one.
Speaker 2: So he steals the suit and he times it so
Speaker 2: that he can hit the thruster and get through the
Speaker 2: aperture before it closes, and he succeeds. He's in this
Speaker 2: thing and he's going through another psychedelic light show, and
Speaker 2: he's seeing like inside of vgre or all these like
Speaker 2: reproductions of solar systems and all these things that it's
Speaker 2: seen and all the data that it's collected, and it's
Speaker 2: all rather striking to see.
Speaker 1: I have the living machine and we haven't really gotten
Speaker 1: one of those on the big screen. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: is fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: It's cool. And he makes his way eventually at the
Speaker 2: very center and this is rather inexplicable. It's a giant
Speaker 2: size version of Eileena with like this little sensor in
Speaker 2: her neck. And he decides, I'm going to mind mel
Speaker 2: with that thing and figure out what's going on here.
Speaker 2: So he tries to mind meld, and of course it's
Speaker 2: too much data, too much information, and it'll it kind
Speaker 2: of short circuits him and he is blown back back
Speaker 2: towards where he came. And coincidentally, now Kirk, who's figured
Speaker 2: out well, Spock, he probably he got outside. I think
Speaker 2: they've told him that there's a suit missing, and he
Speaker 2: figures out in Spock. He's approaching this aperture. Just as
Speaker 2: Spock gets spit out effectively by the creature. He brings
Speaker 2: Spock back, and actually, I think this is probably the
Speaker 2: best Spock scene in the movie, because they bring him
Speaker 2: to sick Bay and they're talking to him and he's
Speaker 2: Spock is explaining what he felt and what it was like,
Speaker 2: and this is really one of the few times you
Speaker 2: see finally Spock is showing some emotion because he comes
Speaker 2: out of this kind of coma that he was in,
Speaker 2: and he says, when he mind melded, he saw it
Speaker 2: was all pure logic. There was no beauty, no nothing.
Speaker 2: He says, even as simple gesture like he takes Kirk's
Speaker 2: hand in his and he says, even this simple gesture
Speaker 2: has no meaning to Vgre There's no hope and there's
Speaker 2: no answers. And finally it seems like Spock has learned
Speaker 2: to reappreciate his emotional side. And it's beautiful to see
Speaker 2: this performance from Nimoy, because he's had to be so
Speaker 2: reserved through the movie up to this point, and it's
Speaker 2: amazing to see.
Speaker 1: We like, give us back our Spok already, come on, man,
Speaker 1: don't be vulcan. Be vulcan half human.
Speaker 2: We need to see both sides of it for it
Speaker 2: to really feel like Spock, because everyone wants to judge
Speaker 2: him solely on the logic, but we got both. That's
Speaker 2: the whole point. He's half human. We need to see
Speaker 2: those emotions come to the surface.
Speaker 1: I remember his reaction after pon Far when he realized
Speaker 1: that Kirk was still alive.
Speaker 2: Jim, He's excited. Yeah, I remember that. Good call. So
Speaker 2: now the cloud has approached Earth finally, and Spock figures
Speaker 2: out that this signal that it's been sending out is
Speaker 2: actually a radio signal. Decker tells Kirk that Veiger is
Speaker 2: expecting an answer, but he doesn't know the question. So
Speaker 2: another series of balls go out that effectively render the
Speaker 2: Earth defenseless. It shuts down all of the fence systems
Speaker 2: on the Earth. It's a big it's a scary moment
Speaker 2: because you feel like the Earth is hanging in the
Speaker 2: balance here.
Speaker 1: So f first time in Star Trek that this has.
Speaker 2: Happened, that the Earth is in such jeopardy. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 2: that's surprising. After three years, they never had something to
Speaker 2: this degree.
Speaker 1: No, not like this. They've clearly had living machines seeking
Speaker 1: their creators in the past, but they have not had
Speaker 1: Earth in as the object of peril like this before.
Speaker 2: Interesting, well, very high stakes, and at least at this
Speaker 2: point because it's so like because we will see the
Speaker 2: Earth and the universe and whatever in jeopardy in many
Speaker 2: of these movies as we go along, but to actually
Speaker 2: raise those stakes in the first movie, it's actually pretty
Speaker 2: pretty cool. So there's some back and forth between the
Speaker 2: Aileena the probe it. Kirk tries to play hardball, thinking
Speaker 2: that well, Viger is acting like a child, so I
Speaker 2: will treat it as a child, so he refuses. He
Speaker 2: says he has the answers to give to Vigre, but
Speaker 2: only if they remove the plasma balls that are holding
Speaker 2: the Earth and check they're effectively at a stalemate. So
Speaker 2: finally they decide they're gonna. They're gonna. He wants to
Speaker 2: give the information to Viga directly, so they walk out.
Speaker 2: There's there's an oxygen pockets formed around the enterprise, so
Speaker 2: they can effectively walk right out the hall to the
Speaker 2: very heart of Vegre.
Speaker 1: Finally, and vi has been so kind to layout little
Speaker 1: tiles for everyone to step on right.
Speaker 2: But and this is actually I thought this was a
Speaker 2: good touch. I forgot about this is As they're leaving,
Speaker 2: Kirk covertly tells mister Scott, hey, there's prepare a self
Speaker 2: destruct on my mark. If I can't come back from this,
Speaker 2: it's up to you to destroy the ship and hopefully
Speaker 2: Veger at the same time. So he's got a little
Speaker 2: bit of insurance in case things go south with Viger.
Speaker 2: So they go out. They walk out Spock, Kirk, Eileena,
Speaker 2: and Decker. They walk out to Viger to find out
Speaker 2: what is going on here? What does this actually all mean?
Speaker 2: And I gotta say, I still think this is a
Speaker 2: wonderful twist. I'm sure that it was probably done better
Speaker 2: in some episode of Star Trek previously, but I, as
Speaker 2: a child, I thought this was really a cool twist.
Speaker 2: So they get out to Vegre and it's like, in
Speaker 2: the middle of all of this sort of living machinery
Speaker 2: is all to a satellite, a man made satellite that
Speaker 2: all this is formed from the center outwards and they're
Speaker 2: looking at it and it's Vegre. It turns out Vegre
Speaker 2: is actually a voyager satellite, Voyager six in fact, that
Speaker 2: was sent out more than three hundred years ago. Now
Speaker 2: we all grew up, I know, Father Malone. Maybe you
Speaker 2: remember when the Voyager satellites were sent out into the
Speaker 2: Solar System to gather data.
Speaker 1: Transmitter one and Voyager two. Now, initially it was the
Speaker 1: Mariner program. Those are the names of the satellites they
Speaker 1: were sending out. And then I forget the name of
Speaker 1: the technician who figured out that you can use gravity assist.
Speaker 1: And it just so happened that in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: that our planets were going to align so that you
Speaker 1: could use the gravity of a planet to slingshot your
Speaker 1: satellite off to the next one and on. Just so
Speaker 1: happens that this is going on while Star Trek is happening.
Speaker 2: It sounds like science fiction what you're describing, but this
Speaker 2: is real people, right.
Speaker 1: They sent out actually they sent out two. Now one
Speaker 1: was a backup technically, but really they had already programmed
Speaker 1: it to go on its own separate mission because they
Speaker 1: wanted two missions out of this, because they wanted to
Speaker 1: hit every single planet. So Voyager one, Voyager two. Voyager
Speaker 1: two is the famous one with the the record gold record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with greetings from Earth and all of Carl Sagan's Carl
Speaker 1: Sagan put that whole thing together, got paid twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: By the way, which is a lot of money back then.
Speaker 1: A lot of fucking money. It was like nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: he was doing that shit anyway. So, yes, Voyager fever
Speaker 1: is in the air. Now, we only sent two, but
Speaker 1: this is Voyager six that we claim was sent in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, So this is a further iteration of
Speaker 1: what we were already doing. And it also should be
Speaker 1: noted that in nineteen seventy nine, all of nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine is when we started getting pictures back of Jupiter
Speaker 1: and Saturn from Voyager. You couldn't ask for a better
Speaker 1: fucking commercial if they had named the Voyager Probe Enterprise
Speaker 1: was the only way they could have advertised the movie, right.
Speaker 2: But it's and by the way, the Voyager two, I
Speaker 2: think is still I think it's actually gone as far
Speaker 2: out into the soul system as any other any man
Speaker 2: made object ever has and it's still sending data back
Speaker 2: as recently as like I think, ten years ago, So
Speaker 2: this is still happenings. It sounds unbelievable, but it's true.
Speaker 1: With those solum power stores, so as long as the
Speaker 1: equipment remains good, it'll still transmit. But you would just.
Speaker 2: Figure, like what the odds that it could be hit
Speaker 2: by some kind of celestial object or something. But it's
Speaker 2: just like there's a famous picture. I think it's called
Speaker 2: the Little Blue Dot, and I think Carl Sagan has
Speaker 2: spoken about this. I'm sure people have seen this. It's
Speaker 2: this picture of this. It looks like a beam of light,
Speaker 2: beams of light coming down in a little tiny blue
Speaker 2: speck that's smaller than a mode of dust. That's Earth.
Speaker 2: It had gotten so far out into the vast reaches
Speaker 2: of space and took a picture back at our planet
Speaker 2: to show how infinitesimal in the grand scheme of the universe.
Speaker 2: It's amazing, and it's again it's not science fiction. This
Speaker 2: actually was developed and launched.
Speaker 1: So that is called family portrait.
Speaker 2: By the way, is that what it's called? Okay, But
Speaker 2: it's striking.
Speaker 1: Because everyone you have ever known, everything you have ever thought,
Speaker 1: everything that has ever been is in that photograph.
Speaker 2: Is in that photograph. It's crazy. It's just it makes you.
Speaker 2: It puts things into perspective, a little too much fucking perspective.
Speaker 2: Maybe but perspective.
Speaker 1: I think everyone should be fucking strapped into a rocket,
Speaker 1: put into orbit and made to look at the Earth
Speaker 1: and go holy shit, and then return to us and
Speaker 1: then maybe we'll be all cool with each other.
Speaker 2: Well that's what they say. I'm not suggesting people pony
Speaker 2: up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever it
Speaker 2: costs to go up with that.
Speaker 1: No, that's a sexting to them.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Shatner went up in one of those things. Is it
Speaker 2: blew something or other and it was death? No? He
Speaker 2: well yet, well he cried, because how can you not
Speaker 2: When you see the earth such as it is, it
Speaker 2: gives you an amazing new perspective on things. Anyway, the
Speaker 2: reason why it kept calling itself Vegre is because the
Speaker 2: brass nameplate that said Voyager had smudging. It had dirt
Speaker 2: over the oya, so it thought its name was Vegre.
Speaker 2: It missed THEA. I just thought that was such a
Speaker 2: brilliant twist. This is a man made object that we
Speaker 2: were all semi familiar with because of the Voyager one
Speaker 2: and two probes that essentially it went out the Voyager
Speaker 2: six in the movie. It fell into a black hole,
Speaker 2: and they theorized that it emerged on the far end
Speaker 2: of the galaxy and it fell into this gravity of
Speaker 2: this machine planet, this living machine plant it and this
Speaker 2: thing took the creed of learn all that is learnable
Speaker 2: and take it back to the creator, because that's what
Speaker 2: Voyager was designed to do, transmit information back to Earth.
Speaker 2: This living planet absorbed the Voyager probe and took that
Speaker 2: as a literal meaning that became bigger and more monstrous
Speaker 2: as it got bigger bigger.
Speaker 1: The lore is Voyager six ended up on a machine
Speaker 1: planet that went, Okay, we understand what they were trying
Speaker 1: to do with this, but let's give it life and
Speaker 1: let its complete its mission to its fullest extent. And
Speaker 1: then Vegre just started absorbing everything. But every time it
Speaker 1: was calling back to Earth was not getting a return.
Speaker 1: So now an answer, So now it's coming back. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: Star Trek lore will have you think that the planet
Speaker 1: that it landed on was the Borg planet. I've heard that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the Borg created Vigure. Okay. Now, the reason people
Speaker 1: think that is because William Shatner in his novel The
Speaker 1: Return kind of offhandedly mentions that as a possibility. So
Speaker 1: since then people have been taking it as cannon, but
Speaker 1: it's actually the opposite. Do you know what happens to Vjre?
Speaker 1: Eventually Vegre creates.
Speaker 2: The board at the end of this movie.
Speaker 1: No, not at the end of this movie, and it's
Speaker 1: further travels, Vegre ends up creating the board.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Where was that spelled out?
Speaker 1: It's in the comic books. Look, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I thought you were gonna say, oh something to such
Speaker 2: wrote about it or whatever.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, you're familiar with the concept of the
Speaker 1: mirror universe in Star Trek, right.
Speaker 2: Of course, who isn't stock with a go tea?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, somewhere there's an evil to me with a
Speaker 1: goatee somewhere. So in the mirror universe there's a mirror
Speaker 1: version of Vegure named Seeker.
Speaker 2: You get out of here.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not kidding, man. Get this. Seeker was sent
Speaker 1: out by the Terran Empire. Its name is Conqueror Seeker,
Speaker 1: and when it gets to where it's absorbed all of
Speaker 1: its knowledge and realizes it's just been used by the
Speaker 1: Terran Empire, it returns for vengeance, not to give it knowledge.
Speaker 1: I love Seeker, I love Vegure.
Speaker 2: See I want to see that movie that where you're
Speaker 2: describing that sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Well, it should be noted that Vegre has not made
Speaker 1: a return to any of the Star Trek properties. How
Speaker 1: many fucking Star Trek properties have been there since this
Speaker 1: movie came out? Next Generation Voyager, Deep Space nine, Enterprise,
Speaker 1: fucking Strange New World, fucking Discovery, fucking Outpost thirty one,
Speaker 1: and nobody no talk of Vegre, no twanging guitar sound.
Speaker 1: What the fuck?
Speaker 2: That's the thing? Because this was a grave threat to
Speaker 2: the Earth as we know it, and we never hear
Speaker 2: about it ever again after this you're absolutely correc fallom alone.
Speaker 2: It's pretty pretty weird kind of an oversight, I would.
Speaker 1: Think, considering how many fucking iterations of Star Trek are
Speaker 1: out there, nobody's decided like, hey, let's go back and
Speaker 1: look at Vidure. Now, how many times have they gone
Speaker 1: to the goddamn Genesis planet?
Speaker 2: True? And that was only what in the matter of
Speaker 2: the two or three movies they kept going back to Genesis. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: come on now, crazy. So anyway, they figure out that
Speaker 2: Vegure's got to finally offload its payload of data to
Speaker 2: complete its mission, but then they try to set this up,
Speaker 2: but it refuses because now Aileena, the probe all right,
Speaker 2: I guess we'll just call Aileena says that Vegre wants
Speaker 2: to join with the Creator, and Deckard I think, perhaps
Speaker 2: blinded by his love for Aileena, decides that he's going
Speaker 2: to be the one to sacrifice himself to join with
Speaker 2: Vegre and prevent this catastrophe from happening. This is again,
Speaker 2: this is kind of another I can't help but think
Speaker 2: this was influenced by two thousand and one, because what
Speaker 2: we're effectively seeing is the creation of a new form
Speaker 2: of life, a new stage of life, I should say,
Speaker 2: so he and Eileena and quotes embrace they There's all
Speaker 2: sorts of star dust and things that swirl around them.
Speaker 2: There's they grow brighter and brighter until they finally merge
Speaker 2: with the stars and they absorb vegure, and they effectively
Speaker 2: become a new form of creature. We don't really know
Speaker 2: what or how or where they go, but now the
Speaker 2: danger is over. Earth is spared the thread of these
Speaker 2: veger coming to destroy it, and everything is good. Thumbs
Speaker 2: up Kirk and Spock and company save the day. And
Speaker 2: that's pretty and that's pretty much it. So they go
Speaker 2: back on to the Enterprise, they pat themselves on the back,
Speaker 2: they talk about what happened, and then they just decide
Speaker 2: we're going to go that way, and the final credit
Speaker 2: role begin with the words the Human Adventure is just beginning.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like their version of the Seven will return.
Speaker 2: It's hey, get ready, we're gonna kick off a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of new movies and that's it.
Speaker 1: Doctor Detroit will be back in Doctor to the Wrath
Speaker 1: of Mom.
Speaker 2: Doctor Detroit. You just compared Star Trek to Doctor Detroit.
Speaker 1: Hey man, they compared themselves when they compared the potential
Speaker 1: sequel as Wrath of Mom. Okay, let's talk the good
Speaker 1: things about this movie. I think we've mentioned some of them.
Speaker 1: First and foremost. It's Jerry Goldsmith's score.
Speaker 2: It's music.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. I think the effects still stand up
Speaker 1: for the most part. There's a lot of dodgy shit
Speaker 1: once they get inside feature where there's a shot where
Speaker 1: they're like like, go forward, and then the Enterprise just
Speaker 1: sort of it looks like a cut and paste like
Speaker 1: jpeg of it, like moving kind of up and to
Speaker 1: the left. I'm like, what is that shit?
Speaker 2: There's a lot of dodgyness. Whens goes to mind meld
Speaker 2: with Vgre before he gets spat back out. The matt
Speaker 2: lines around his hands, around his gloves is so thick
Speaker 2: it almost looks like a deliberate artistic choice. But I
Speaker 2: know that it's just how they had to do things
Speaker 2: back then. We didn't talk much about the uniforms that
Speaker 2: they changed. Ye, okay, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: What else is good?
Speaker 2: What else is good? Well, you said you mentioned the effects.
Speaker 2: I thought that Nimoy's performance as Spock was really good.
Speaker 2: I think by and large, the cast does a pretty
Speaker 2: good job of carrying through that Star Trek feel through
Speaker 2: the acting. Here's the thing. Ultimately, before we even get
Speaker 2: to the good and bad, let me just say this,
Speaker 2: it's a long ass movie. But the bottom line is
Speaker 2: this plot, if taken down to its essentials and pared
Speaker 2: down to an hour long episode or what have you,
Speaker 2: is very much It feels like a Star Trek episode.
Speaker 2: That's probably the best thing I can say about it
Speaker 2: is if you streamlined it, it would be right at
Speaker 2: home in the sixties.
Speaker 1: I completely agree with that this is a Star Trek episode.
Speaker 1: The thing I admire I think the most about it
Speaker 1: might be is that, like the original Star Trek, a
Speaker 1: climax isn't dependent upon blowing something up or punching somebody
Speaker 1: really hard. Star Trek was always the more cerebral and
Speaker 1: a little more sci fi than the rest, and always
Speaker 1: based more on thought. I know, Kirk betted a lot
Speaker 1: of women and punched a lot of dudes, but he
Speaker 1: also was a deep thinker and of like a brilliant strategist.
Speaker 1: And I like that they came up with that solution here,
Speaker 1: even though it's not their solution at all. It's just
Speaker 1: Decker sacrificing himself and joining and becoming a new entity.
Speaker 1: But even that's an interesting idea. That's interesting sci fi concept.
Speaker 1: The idea of a voyager probe looking for its post
Speaker 1: and not settling for anything less.
Speaker 2: That part of it, that aspect of it, like I said,
Speaker 2: really captivated me. And I still think it's a pretty
Speaker 2: smart way of because we all knew Voyager and the
Speaker 2: fact that it's just living out its programming to the
Speaker 2: best of its ability, but on a large scale, because
Speaker 2: now it's sentient. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: it's just trying to get back to Earth, to offload
Speaker 2: its data payload. I just think that's so smart. It's
Speaker 2: not some creature that is trying to take over for
Speaker 2: any reason other than that's what it's programmed to do.
Speaker 2: It's a robot, a smart robot, as sentient robot, but
Speaker 2: a robot.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the bad first and foremost. I'll go first, Sure,
Speaker 1: go for it. This should have been ninety minutes. What
Speaker 1: the fuck are they doing? Man, what the fuck are
Speaker 1: they doing? It's more than two hours. It's insanity. As
Speaker 1: I said, I would cut the overture. I would cut
Speaker 1: half of this shit here like it just goes on
Speaker 1: and on. I will accept the four minute fetish shots
Speaker 1: of the Enterprise for the first time. We haven't seen
Speaker 1: it in ten years. It's a major component of what
Speaker 1: we love about Star Trek. Give it its due, that's fine,
Speaker 1: But what they're just flying around a cloud? What the
Speaker 1: hell is happening?
Speaker 2: Well, let me allow me to quote from Wikipedia in
Speaker 2: the reaction to this movie, I want to quote this.
Speaker 2: The quote is this is from Wikipedia. The slow pacing,
Speaker 2: extended reaction shots, and lack of action scenes led fans
Speaker 2: and critics to give the film a variety of nicknames,
Speaker 2: including the Slow Motion Picture, the motion Sickness, and where
Speaker 2: Nomad which was the probe and the changeling has gone before.
Speaker 2: So the fact that and those are all direct quotes
Speaker 2: from the time, from reviews of the time, and it's
Speaker 2: all you can look. It's all annotated in Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: But I got one. Yeah, yeah, you want to hear one. Sure,
Speaker 1: And television began rotten and Roddenberry begat Star Trek, and
Speaker 1: Star Trek began Treky's, and Treky's begot clamor and clamor
Speaker 1: begets Star Trek Animated Cartoon, and the cartoon began. More
Speaker 1: clamor and more clamor begat Star Trek conventions. In Trek
Speaker 1: conventions began even more clamor, and even more clamor began
Speaker 1: The Myth, and the myth began Star Trek the Motion Picture,
Speaker 1: and the Behemoth labored mightily and began a mouse fired
Speaker 1: by a decade of devoted, dedicated, often fanatical Hue and Cry.
Speaker 1: Paramount and producer Gene Roddenberry have given fans of the
Speaker 1: long syndicated series precisely and exactly what they have been
Speaker 1: asking for, and therein lies an awesome tragedy. Harlan Ellison,
Speaker 1: It's true.
Speaker 2: Look, the worst thing about this movie is the slowness.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you. You could and I think
Speaker 2: you might have mentioned that somebody somewhere has tried to
Speaker 2: create an edit that is a ninety minute movie as
Speaker 2: opposed to a two hour plus movie. And as pretty as.
Speaker 1: Some of the visuals are brilliant, It begins in flight,
Speaker 1: they're already on the mission. They do get do away
Speaker 1: with the fetish reveal of the enterprise. It starts they're
Speaker 1: already on the way, Spock arrives, and then Spock tells
Speaker 1: them what's up, and we get a flashback to Vulcan
Speaker 1: and then the movie continues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, yeah that would work. That would work really well.
Speaker 2: They for we've already talked about the confluence of events
Speaker 2: behind the scenes that led them to release the picture
Speaker 2: in the stated that it's in and how the effects
Speaker 2: worked and whatever. But yeah, it's just too slow. It
Speaker 2: just doesn't move as fast as it needs to. And
Speaker 2: that's something that I think they took to heart, because
Speaker 2: when you think about it, we're going to get to
Speaker 2: Star Trek two. That movie fucking moves and it doesn't stop.
Speaker 2: This is the exact opposite of.
Speaker 1: That, this one starts awesome. You know what I would
Speaker 1: contend Honestly, the first act of this movie is unassailable
Speaker 1: up until they leave space Doc. It's great, and then
Speaker 1: it slows to a crawl that it never recovers any
Speaker 1: momentum for which is crazy because it's about a creature
Speaker 1: hurtling towards Earth where we're all going to be doomed.
Speaker 2: It's almost too cerebral because even yes, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of reaction shots and effects shots, but there's an awful
Speaker 2: lot of talking here too, a lot of debating about
Speaker 2: the meaning of what's happening. And maybe that's fine, maybe,
Speaker 2: but in the service of a more streamlined picture, I
Speaker 2: think it would have been much more effective. It just
Speaker 2: feels like it crawls and never gets out of the muck.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to have the movie this long,
Speaker 1: and you're going to introduce two characters that we've never
Speaker 1: met before and make them central to the entire plot,
Speaker 1: then how about some time for the rest of the crew?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, are you usiting me?
Speaker 1: They bring back Uhura and she's basically hailing frequencies open again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know for a fact, Walter Kinnig hated. He
Speaker 2: basically looked at his part as essentially a cameo. And
Speaker 2: I can't blame him because he doesn't do much from
Speaker 2: getting burned at his station and having Aileena calm him,
Speaker 2: he doesn't really do anything. So I do think the
Speaker 2: rest of the cast gets real short shrift here. That's
Speaker 2: a shame because we see them in the next few
Speaker 2: movies and they really they're so charming as an ensemble,
Speaker 2: and you don't get none of that here.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate. But they don't really get the fact that
Speaker 1: we love all of the characters until JJ Abrams because
Speaker 1: people had swallowed this notion of the id ego super
Speaker 1: ego triumvirate of Kirk and Bones and McCoy. And we
Speaker 1: do love that, Yes, of course we do. But I
Speaker 1: love Chekhov too. I love Sulu. I want to know
Speaker 1: what he's up to. Remember Evil Sulu. Remember when when
Speaker 1: he turned into a fencing master.
Speaker 2: The fencing guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, oh man, give me more Sulu, everybody,
Speaker 1: And he gets nothing here.
Speaker 2: No, but they do make it up to him in
Speaker 2: the subsequent movies. We'll get to that. But yeah, that
Speaker 2: counts as big negative. Is that we don't are not
Speaker 2: afforded the chance to appreciate the whole cast and see
Speaker 2: them interact. That's a shame. That's a real shame here,
Speaker 2: it's a missed opportunity.
Speaker 1: We're flying around figure for five minutes and we can't
Speaker 1: know what like Uhura has been up to for the
Speaker 1: past five years.
Speaker 2: Come on, yeah, these are all good actors. It's not
Speaker 2: as if they're not. Like I said, they're charming and
Speaker 2: thankfully with hindsight we can see how good they are
Speaker 2: in subsequent movies. But here that that's a real Like
Speaker 2: I said, it's a real shame turner. Of course, with
Speaker 2: the Isaac Hayes.
Speaker 1: He makes a healthy living, making living unhealthy.
Speaker 2: Nicholas is in the Ted Lang had did quite a
Speaker 2: few movies around that time, popped up in the credit.
Speaker 1: My man, that's your deal, talking star Trek, get your tent.
Speaker 1: I'm off my federation right now.
Speaker 2: So let's another negative we already kind of mentioned this
Speaker 2: is the costuming is real drab and real bad. It's
Speaker 2: my understanding. Part of it was they were reluctant to
Speaker 2: use deep blue uniforms because they were fearful that it
Speaker 2: would get in the way of the mats that they used, like,
Speaker 2: let me call.
Speaker 1: Some horse blue screen. Here's what happened. Initially, they were
Speaker 1: going to do updated versions of the original series, and
Speaker 1: Robert Wise came on and said, oh, they used primary
Speaker 1: colors on TV in the sixties because it popped and
Speaker 1: it really caught your attention. But we don't want to
Speaker 1: do that here. We want to make everything a little
Speaker 1: more functional, which I can understand. And that's what they
Speaker 1: ended up doing on Next Generation when everyone got a unitard,
Speaker 1: and which is what they kind of give them here,
Speaker 1: everyone's wearing pajamas. Okay, that's it. They're not great, but
Speaker 1: they could have been saved because when we first meet Kirk,
Speaker 1: he's wearing the same exact outfit, but he's wearing the
Speaker 1: admiral version and it's two tones like white and gray
Speaker 1: and with little eenpulets and stuff. It's awesome. It looks great.
Speaker 1: And then the rest of them are just wearing pajamas
Speaker 1: in all these earth tone pastels that are fucking horrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very drap. Let me ask you a question kind
Speaker 2: of related to kind of a side note, baam belone,
Speaker 2: what era of Star Trek do you think had the
Speaker 2: best uniforms.
Speaker 1: It's coming. We're gonna talk about it next and the
Speaker 1: next episode.
Speaker 2: Okay, see, okay.
Speaker 1: I loved what Nicholas Meyer brought to the Star Trek
Speaker 1: universe would which was, hey, aren't they the Navy? And
Speaker 1: then they the sort of admiralty look of the red,
Speaker 1: the crimson red with the epaulets and the button up thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you can pull that down and it's white
Speaker 1: with a blood smear on it and stuff. Oh, those
Speaker 1: are the uniforms for.
Speaker 2: Me, man, those are the most practical. But for me,
Speaker 2: my favorite will always be Next Generation. Once they got
Speaker 2: away from the unitard and they started having sets, yeah.
Speaker 1: But once a card got a jacket, you were like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, oh that's even better.
Speaker 2: That's even better, And that kind of led you into like,
Speaker 2: like like cisco A Deep Space nine took that look
Speaker 2: to its logical extreme and it became even more like layered.
Speaker 2: I agree, but no, for me, it's that because I
Speaker 2: think they had to get away from the unitards because
Speaker 2: they were so uncomfortable for the actors to wear, and
Speaker 2: they think they they were just not very fun to
Speaker 2: have on. But once they went to separates, everything kind
Speaker 2: of got better and they also had I didn't realize.
Speaker 2: As another side note, next generation, they often had muscle
Speaker 2: pads underneath their their costumes to make them look bigger
Speaker 2: and more muscular. Do you know that?
Speaker 1: I did not know that. That's the thing is the
Speaker 1: unitard as an idea is a workable idea if you
Speaker 1: were working with fabrics from the twenty third century. But
Speaker 1: instead it's like nylon and you're like up somebody's crotch
Speaker 1: every time they sit down. What an idiotic notion. How
Speaker 1: they didn't start with separates is beyond me. Those first
Speaker 1: two seasons is like seasons where they were in the unit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if they had to learn what worked better.
Speaker 1: Practiced rough Man.
Speaker 2: Anyway, don't mean to sidetrack.
Speaker 1: I just was Genuo sidetracking and star trek. This is
Speaker 1: a wide ranging topic.
Speaker 2: Sure, so all right, So the costumes are bad, the
Speaker 2: length is bad, The lack of crew members is bad.
Speaker 2: Lack of crew members is bad.
Speaker 1: Depending of an antagonist is bad.
Speaker 2: True, And I guess in hindsight, you need.
Speaker 1: To meet about halfway through, and they've been panicking about
Speaker 1: what vegure like, I get the fucking dramatic reveal. The
Speaker 1: dramatic reveal would have been just as dramatic halfway through.
Speaker 2: But that's but that goes hand in hand with the
Speaker 2: excessive length, because we go through all of this endless
Speaker 2: reaction shots, endless shots of them walk flying through the cloud.
Speaker 2: All of that should have not been there. It should
Speaker 2: have been much more efficient. Like like you're this ninety
Speaker 2: minute cut that you talked about, I think that would
Speaker 2: have been I don't know. I'd love to see it
Speaker 2: and see how different the experiences I would imagine, because
Speaker 2: it's obviously.
Speaker 1: Not official at oh, that doesn't have it anymore.
Speaker 2: So so all right, so not perfect, But as an
Speaker 2: opening salvo for the Star Trek movies, do you think
Speaker 2: this was a success or a failure?
Speaker 1: You know what, as the last episode of the television
Speaker 1: series Star Trek as a transition to feature films. I
Speaker 1: think it's a pretty good movie.
Speaker 2: But you kind of had to. There was no there's
Speaker 2: no getting to like con if you don't at least
Speaker 2: try to plant a flag and say, okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to commit to the cinematic version of Star Trek.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. You weren't going to get good Star
Speaker 1: Trek until they shook off. I'm sorry to say this
Speaker 1: everybody until they shook off Gene Roddenberry, and they shake
Speaker 1: him off here. He's such a pain in the ass
Speaker 1: during the production of this movie and continue used to
Speaker 1: be in the future that they paramount basically severs ties
Speaker 1: with him over this movie. He's still the executive or
Speaker 1: creative consultant and executive producer and created by Gene roden
Speaker 1: berrying whatever, But from here on out his involvement is
Speaker 1: as about as much as Rod Serling's involvement in the second
Speaker 1: season of Night Gallery.
Speaker 2: Hey, midnight viewers, this is no disrespect. I mean, there
Speaker 2: would be no Star Trek if it wasn't for Roddenberry.
Speaker 2: No one is saying that he wasn't instrumental into integral
Speaker 2: to Star Trek becoming anything at all. There wouldn't be
Speaker 2: one without him. But having said that, I agree with
Speaker 2: you there because and we'll talk about this, but Star
Speaker 2: Trek two everything changes it to your point. It shakes
Speaker 2: off the baggage of the wagon train to the Stars
Speaker 2: that we had with the original series into the motion
Speaker 2: picture and it made all the diference in the world.
Speaker 1: And it does what this movie doesn't, which is this
Speaker 1: pays lip service to the idea that we're picking up
Speaker 1: these people's lives later on, it isn't. It's like you're
Speaker 1: an admiral, okay, but you're really still the captain and
Speaker 1: here's your ship and we're off on adventures again. In
Speaker 1: the next one, Nicholas Meyer like confronts head on the
Speaker 1: fact that these characters are older and moving on. He
Speaker 1: makes it actually central anyway, we're going to get there.
Speaker 2: We'll get to there. But anyway, I agree with you
Speaker 2: that we had this was a necessary step to get
Speaker 2: us to a place where it became its own thing.
Speaker 2: The cinematic version of Star Trek. We had to get.
Speaker 2: We had to start somewhere to get there. So in
Speaker 2: my mind, this is a success. Like I said, this
Speaker 2: is still this still stacks up against the original series,
Speaker 2: but it had a way to go before it became
Speaker 2: its own cinematic experience. So there you go.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll say is Jerry Goldsmith brought in
Speaker 1: Alexander courage. Do the portions of the score that were
Speaker 1: echoes of his original Star Trek score, which there are many, sure, but.
Speaker 2: It's it all works. I mean, if there's one again,
Speaker 2: if there's one thing we point to that is an
Speaker 2: unqualified success with this movie. It is the music and
Speaker 2: I can't say enough good things about it.
Speaker 1: So and they're gonna they're gonna kick Jerry Goldsmith loose
Speaker 1: for the next one.
Speaker 2: And it is a doozy. You can't wait to get
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 1: Oh until then, where can people find you?
Speaker 2: HP?
Speaker 1: I don't know when this is coming out or where
Speaker 1: whatever it's coming out eventually, so.
Speaker 2: It's gonna come out. Keep it in reserve. I co
Speaker 2: host the Night Mister Walters Taxi podcast alongside midnight viewings
Speaker 2: follow below. Hey, he happens to be right here. That's me,
Speaker 2: that's him, and I host the Noise Junkies music podcast.
Speaker 2: And last but not least, I have a band campsite
Speaker 2: hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.
Speaker 1: Go there, listen to his music. It's really fucking good.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with you? He does all of our music.
Speaker 1: That star Trek's score you heard at the beginning, that
Speaker 1: religious experience. That's HP. Now as for me, you're listening
Speaker 1: here midnight viewers, patrons, Hello, patrons, you're hearing this months
Speaker 1: in advance. Thank you all for your patronage. And if
Speaker 1: you don't patronage, then give us a like and a
Speaker 1: subscribe and a positive review. It helps with the algorithms
Speaker 1: and confronts Vegre on his own terms. Until next time
Speaker 1: here on Star trek Fest, you cann't chase a.
Speaker 2: Lots of physics, loss of physics. We can shoop to
Speaker 2: kill Shoop, to kill Shoop, to kill we come it,
Speaker 2: beat Shoop, kill Scott up.
Speaker 1: It's worse than that.
Speaker 2: He can't Jim, catch Jim. It's worse Catchim cat You well,
Speaker 2: it's life gym, but not as we know it, not
Speaker 2: as we know it, not as we know it.
Speaker 1: It's life gym, but.
Speaker 2: Not as we know it, not as we know it.
Speaker 3: Can't us christy
Speaker 2: At whatever is st