Speaker 1: Hey guys, Bill Benton, Jason Massik here from the All
Eighties Movies Podcast. When we're cruising into Ming's Palace on
our Hawkman rocket cycles, we turned down the Queen and
turn up the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcast. Long
live Jason and d They'll save every one of us.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley you Can't
Be Serious Podcast. We are here for another special episode.
This one is a little different. We kind of approached
this as a what the heck happened, but we decided
to take it in a different way. We're dealing with
a couple of movies today. The question is is it
worth the rewatch? So we're not gonna boldly go where
no man has on before. We're deciding whether to go
back where we've already been and see if it's a
better experience the second time around.
Speaker 3: So we're comparing Star Trek Demotion picture from nineteen seventy nine,
which is reaching its forty fifth anniversary this year, against
Star Wars The Phantom Menace which came out ninety nine,
which is reaching its twenty fifth anniversary this year.
Speaker 4: Hard to believe, And.
Speaker 3: We're going to compare these two, we're gonna ask the
question are they rewatchable? We're also going to say, you know,
what works, what doesn't, how do we change it?
Speaker 4: How would we improve it?
Speaker 3: And so today we've also invited a couple of friends
to come on and talk about Star Trek demotion picture.
We've got our old stand by Jeff Johnson of the
filmed By podcast and the Star Trek podcast Phasers Set
for Stunt.
Speaker 4: Jeff, how you doing man? Jason?
Speaker 5: I am doing great, And like Kirk, my orders are
to intercept, investigate, and take whatever action is necessary or possible.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 3: Nice, Hey, before we introduce Chuck, tell us a little
bit about Phaser Set for Stun.
Speaker 5: So a couple of years ago on the film By podcast,
we started doing some recaps and a couple of the
guys are huge Star Trek fans, and we recap couple
shows and it got wildly popular, so much that we
just we realized, like, hey, we can't just recap Star
Trek shows.
Speaker 4: We got to have a Star Trek pod going.
Speaker 5: So Phaser's Set to stun has been up and going
for the past year now, and every Wednesday, you know,
film buy us Every Tuesday, Phaser set to stun. Every
Wednesday you can hear Wayne Whited, David Burns, and Scott
Hoffman talk all things.
Speaker 3: Trek, and we've got mister Chuck Bryan who has come
on to bring expertise on Star Trek the Motion Picture.
Speaker 4: Chuck, how you doing man?
Speaker 6: Hey guys, I am doing well, and I would like
to make it plain that my oath of celibacy is
on record. But thank thanks for having me on, Jason
and d and nice to meet you, Jeff.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Chuck, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 2: So so. Chuck has been a fan for a little while,
and after our Beverly Hills Cop three episode, he sent
us an email entitled the Motion Picture versus the Phantom Menace. Bye.
By the way, the mere fact that this is Star
Wars and Star Trek causes me to stumble over my
words enough, but the fact that the abbreviations for the
two movies are TMP and TPM makes it even harder.
But Check sends me this email about these two contenders,
if you will, and his opening line is, oh, you
guys are going to step on my toes with this one.
Speaker 4: He tells it.
Speaker 2: He goes on to say that we're not wrong about
the Phantom Menace, but he is a strong advocate not
just for Star Trek the Motion Picture, but specifically the
new cut that was done in twenty twenty two as.
Speaker 5: Rust as a head necessary take us out.
Speaker 6: Star Trek the Motion Picture for me, has been one
of those films that kind of the older I get
and the more I watch it, the more it begins
to mean a little something different for me. On Facebook,
there is a group called the Star Trek the Motion
Picture Appreciation Society. It's a private group and if you
ever sign up for it, you're gonna get to meet
a lot of the people who actually worked on the
films and on the twenty two remastering, David Fine, Mike Mathesino,
Jin because I'm saying her name's totally wrong, but these
are all guys who had worked with Bob Wise in
two thousand and one when he had the opportunity to
go back and finally complete his vision of what Star
Trek the Motion Picture was supposed to be. And so
the twenty two version came out a couple of summers ago.
One of the main goals of getting this version of
the film was to actually get it back on film stock.
A negative that could be printed and could be projected.
The two thousand and one version was just DVD video
only and could not be upscaled, And so Star Trek
Demotion Picture got yet another release, and it was glorious
to see it once again in the movie theaters.
Speaker 2: One of the key features as you're watching the new movie,
the one that came out in twent two, which is
available streaming on Max right now for everybody listening, is
there are lines that are kind of the key point
of the whole idea behind the whole movie that got
cut from the original theatrical release. And so if you
watch that original theatrical release and you were bored or
you said, well, I don't really understand what the point
of all of that was. The good news is that
people who were asking the same questions, who were in
the know, took this film and made it what it
was supposed to be. And you can see that now.
Now the question is given the new cut, is it
worth the rewatch, which we'll address at the end of
our show.
Speaker 7: This simple feeling is beyond features comprehension.
Speaker 2: Okay, guys, I've got a story to tell you. I
dare to say movie worthy on its own if you
will indulge me for just a second before we get
into star trek, can I talk to you about a constellation?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, please do.
Speaker 2: Okay, if Chuck knows this story, I won't be surprised. Jason,
if you and Jeff know this story, you will I
will bow at your feet. Okay, eat my shoes? Yes, okay.
So are you guys familiar with the Lockheed l DASH
zero four nine constellation? Okay? The thing is, it is
not a group of stars. It is a plane. And
in nineteen forty seven June, to be exact, that plane
took off. The captain of the plane was named Captain Short.
There was a first officer named McCoy. There was a
third officer named Wesley. Not making this up, This is
all true story. And they left at about three point
thirty from Karachi on the first leg of a trip
back to New York City. The third officer was just
there as a deadhead. But then about five hours into
the trip, Captain Short was a little tired. Third officer
comes up and gives him relief by taking the yoke
for a little while. And while he's flying the plane,
engine number one goes out, so of course, Captain Short
comes back up. He takes the yoke back again. He decides,
the other engines, I think will get us to where
we're going, and so he makes the decision to keep
on going. This was the wrong decision because what happens
is those other engines were using so much power that
they overheated, they caught on fire, and one of the
engines fell off, which means the plane was no longer airworthy.
At that point, they knew they were going to crash,
and it was just a matter of when the third
officer leaves the cockpit, goes back and assures the passengers
that everything is under control. He orders the flight attendants
to get in their seats and say seated. He goes
to the back plane. He takes his seat. As he's
sitting there, a woman starts screaming because she's so scared,
and so he gets up and he goes to comfort
her just before the plane crashes. So as the plane
hits the ground, he is not buckled in. He breaks
three of his ribs. The plane is torn in two
seven of the crew are killed, eight of the passengers
are killed, and they're in the middle of the day.
He leaves the plane and begins as now the lead officer.
Since both the captain and McCoy are both dead, he
begins rescue efforts to get all of the surviving passengers
off the plane. The plane is on fire, he makes
the decision, I'm going to get one last person and
takes them off as the plane is engulfed in flames.
That person that he thought he was saving ended up
dying because it was such a treacherous situation. Now they're
in a plane that's in the middle of the desert,
in the middle of the nights. Three in the morning,
he's taking control and trying to do everything he can.
He sets up the inflatable slide as shelter for people.
He begins looking around, and then nomads in the desert come.
He has to convince them to only rob the dead
people instead of robbing the living. By the time the
sun comes up, he has to make a journey to
try to see if he can see any signs of life.
He sees some telegraph wires, so as he's headed back, though,
another group of rotters comes by and actually robs the living,
but they don't kill anybody. He sends two groups out
to follow the telegraph lines in either direction. One of
those groups sees that it's connected to the city. He
makes his way to the city, calls in the plane crash,
and eventually everyone is rescued. After this, six months later,
he's absolved of any wrongdoing and is credited as a
hero for this crash and how he treated it. But
he decides, based on this and some other issues he's
had with flying in the past, including his time in
World War Two, I don't want to fly anymore. And
he decides, I'm going to do what my dad did,
and so he joins the LAPD. I said his name
was Officer Wesley. It was Officer Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, whose dad,
Officer Roddenberry, was a member of the LAPD. So this
hero is now a traffic cop. But he's a good writer,
and so he becomes a speech writer for the Chief
of police. That leads him to participating in a new
TV S series based on real life is dramas called Dragnets,
which leads him to write episodes for that series, which
leads him to create series that we now know as
Star Trek.
Speaker 4: Brilliant.
Speaker 2: That was unbelievable that I'm putting microphone down and I'm
gonna be quiet for the rest of the podcast, indulging
me for that crazy but.
Speaker 4: That is awesome.
Speaker 5: Hey, I have been around long enough to know that
when d starts one of these intense stories, it's we're
going to go down a rabbit hole and somehow he's
going to tie it into what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: I was like, what, how is this? Where are we going?
Speaker 5: That was fantastic, and yeah, you're right, I'm ready to
watch this movie now.
Speaker 4: Fascinating. Yeah, fascinating, Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 6: I kind of wonder though, you know, you think about
everything that that Roddenberry went through. He obviously he has
a definite philosophy of life. He has a philosophy for
how he wants to see the few sure, and it's
a future where we as a human race have gotten
past the things that are holding us down now, the
way in which we go to war with each other
and all, and it sets up this bigger, brighter future.
And I just I wonder how much of that was
influenced by that story you told.
Speaker 2: Right there, I heard him talking. He was talking about
why he decided to develop a sci fi program. He said,
you know, I had things that I wanted to say,
and I had to figure out a way to say them.
He said, you know, I'm not trying to compare myself
to Jonathan Swift, But Jonathan Swift had things to say
about London, and so he decided to write Gulliver's Travels.
He goes, I have things to say about a lot
of things, Vietnam War, for example. It seemed to me
that space travel was an opportunity to be able to
say what I wanted to say in a television format. Beautiful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So before we start, do you remember when
you saw Star Trek the most picture for the first time.
Speaker 4: The spock Every minute brings that object closer to Earth.
Speaker 2: I meet you.
Speaker 7: I am convinced we are inside a living machine. Shall
I go to battle space and sent insatiable, curiosity, spuck.
Speaker 8: You haven't changed a bit. You're just as warm and
sociable as ever. I hope we got this one off
to a good start. I hope so too.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was I mean, I I'd seen all of
the others, had Wrath of Khan was the first one
that I saw. You know, I was born in seventy five,
and so when this came out in seventy nine. It's
possible that I saw it and I have no memory
of it. I did, but my first time that I
remember watching it, I was like, I should go back
and watch that original and I was a teenager and
I was bored. I was I was way bored.
Speaker 4: Right right.
Speaker 3: What about you, Chuck, When was the first time you
saw this?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I saw it actually on the original release. I can
tell you the name of the theater that I saw at,
and I can tell you the name of the auditorium
that I saw it in. And I can tell you
that a few years later, as when I was in college,
that same theater was where I went and went and
worked my part time job while I was working through college.
And that's how I kind of remember a lot of things.
I think someone once said, I don't remember birthdays and
wedding anniversaries and stuff like that, but I can tell
you when a movie was released, and I relate everything
kind of back to that. So yeah, I definitely remember
seeing it for the first time.
Speaker 4: All right, Jeff, what about you?
Speaker 5: My story would probably echo D's. I remember a friend
in my youth, A friend was using Wrath of Khan
to show me that star Trek could be as.
Speaker 4: Entertaining as Star Wars.
Speaker 5: Loved Wratha Khan was ready to for more, and I
wasn't old enough to respect the canon at that time,
so I felt really bored with the motion picture.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I saw it in the theater just like Chuck,
except I'm a few years younger. I was born in
nineteen seventy three, so I'm six, and I remember my
uncle was like, you know, hey, we're gonna go see
this movie. I'm like, great, what are we seeing. It's
Star Trek. I'm like, what is that. He's like, well,
it's kind of like Star Wars. So when I went
to the theater, I'm expecting laser battles and lightsabers, and
what I got was a lot of you know, looking
and thinking. So I was bored initially too. Now that
movie was not made for a six year old, you know,
it was made for a forty five or fifty year old.
And now I'm forty five and fifty, so my perspective
has changed a little bit. But at the time, I
was like, this is not Star Wars. Okay, So let's
talk a little bit about the history, not so much
of Star Trek, but of Star Trek the Motion Picture.
Speaker 8: Buck, you haven't changed a bit. You're just as warm
and sociable as ever.
Speaker 7: No have you, Doctor, as your continued bred election for
irrelevancy demonstrates.
Speaker 3: As early as nineteen sixty eight, Geene Roddenberry addresses a
crowd in Oakland at a convention and says, hey, guys,
I think we're gonna do a motion picture of Star Trek.
And people are like, heck, yeah, let's see this at
the movies. Well, in nineteen sixty nine they cancel the series, right,
and so at that point everything's kind of dead. But
as early as nineteen seventy five, Paramount comes to him
they start to kind of dream up the idea of
a Star Trek movie, and so he begins to work
on it. Well, as we all know, in nineteen seventy seven,
Star Wars completely changes the game. So Paramount ramps up
their efforts at that point and says, what sci fi
action franchise do we have in our closet that we
can ramp up to be with Star Wars? And actually
I found it interesting. Close Encounters was a kind of
catalyst for Star Trek the Motion Picture, because people viewed
Star Wars as a fluke, and Close Encounters proved that
it wasn't a fluke and that science fiction could be
a viable money maker. And so at that point they
go back to Gene Rodenberry and that's when we start
in Earnest or Star Trek the motion picture.
Speaker 4: That's a great point.
Speaker 5: You got to remember sci fi had a good life
two thousand, you know, Kubrick's two thousand and one, and
I think it's like nineteen sixty eight, Logan's run in
seventy six.
Speaker 4: It's bankable.
Speaker 5: So it's a great time to bring this this franchise back.
What I find fascinating is that after several failed attempts
with the scripts and directors, they said, you know what,
let's just do TV and Star Trek Phase two was
supposed to happen, and then that got canceled. You know,
in pre production they're like, no, let's we got to
have the movie. Let's let's go let's go big.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the interesting thing about Star Trek Phase two, as
I understand it, check you can help me with this,
but that's where the Decker and Ailiah character kind of
are born.
Speaker 4: Is Star Trek Phase two.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you have you have the Decker and Alia characters.
I'm not one hundred percent sure if they had the
same kind of relationship. But they were also missing one
particular character who they weren't going to get back. They
had no mister Spock. Leonard Nimoy was not going to
sign up for another series. Not only that, he was
a little bit, I don't know, angry about the way
the merchandising agreements had worked. So after Star Trek went
off the air, the residuals that he and the other
actors were getting basically after a year, they were done,
but Paramount was still making a lot of money selling
the likeness of their faces, their images, you know, just
in the characters of Spock and Kirk. And he was
a little more than upset about that, and that was
between the series, and it kind of felt he was
taking advantage of a little bit he wasn't too keen
to jump back on. So they had to get another
science officer on board, and they came up with the
character of Zoon, and Zon was a fully vulcan science
officer who was maybe twenty ish or so. Ended up
being cast by by rodden Berry and Company by an
actor named David Gutreaux, I believe is how you pronounce
his name, and David. He walks into Gene Rodden's office
and he says, congratulations, David, you are our zone. And
at the time, this is in one of those times
when is it going to be a TV show? Is
it going to be a movie, But at this point
it was looking more like it was going to be
a motion picture at that point, and I believe that
may have been around August of seventy seven. At that point,
I think is when Michael Eisner, you know, the guy
who went on to be mister Disney, he was actually
head a Paramount at that time. And this was around
the time when they said, what do we have in
our arsenal of shows that we could make? And they
looked at Star Trek and they were beginning to think
of that more as a motion picture at that point.
Speaker 3: So let's talk a little bit about Leonard Nimoy, because
Paramount got down on their hands and knees and begged
him to come back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: Somebody's daughter said, you can't have Star Trek without Spock.
Speaker 2: I saw him. I saw Leonard Nimoy talking about it specifically,
and that was what he said. He said, if I
was watching the movie, I wouldn't want to watch it
without Spock, and I wouldn't want anyone else to play Spock.
And so if you know the movie's going to get made,
what other choice do you have in that situation? Right?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Once they brought Robert Wise on, he was told
by his wife, by his family, they said, you cannot
have Star Trek without mister Spock. They were able to
get the licensing resolve to everybody's satisfaction.
Speaker 4: And then they wrote a check to Leonard Neimoy.
Speaker 6: They wrote a check.
Speaker 2: I feel like William Shatner was maybe less difficult to
convince from what I understand, talking about how badly their
contracts were with the TV show. After the cancelation of
the TV show, within a year, Shatner was homeless, like
he lost his house. He was and actually was living
in a truck, and by nineteen seventy he was living
in a truck. Wow. He watched the launch of one
of the space programs. I don't remember what it was,
but he was just saying to himself, It's just so
crazy that a year ago I was in space and
now I'm in a truck watching this space stuff happen,
and he didn't I mean he didn't do He did
just a handful of movies and TV spots in between
the Star Trek series and this one, including one of
Jason's favorite horror.
Speaker 4: Movies, Kingdom of the Spiders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to go back and look at
our best horror movies of the seventies, Jason pulled out
Kingdom of the Spiders. He had done some work with
Roger Korman, who's not you know who's fantastic. God rest
his sole he just passed, but also not known for
high paying his actors either, so he was in a
tough spot for that ten years.
Speaker 3: Wow, let's talk about Robert Wise for a second. Listen
to the list of films that Robert Wise directed before
Star Trek, The Motion Picture Okay, The Davier Stood Still,
The Haunting West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The
Sound of Music, The News Yes, and then he also
directed kind of I think, an underappreciated seventies sci fi
movie called The Andromeda Strain, which was by Michael Crichton.
Speaker 2: When I was looking at the IMDb on this that
one popped up, and the trailer, the preview for it
popped up and I was like, oh, dang, this looks
like a great story. Like suddenly, like a whole town
of people just drop dead in the middle of whatever
they're doing that day, and it all kind of seems
to get traced back to some sort of organism that
has come from the space rocks that they brought back.
Speaker 3: I saw somebody say that the Andromeda Strain and Star
Trek the motion picture are very similar because you spend
two and a half hours for people to go in
look at something accurate. But they land Robert Wise, the
guy who directed Sound of Music and The Day There
Stood Still and West Side Story. He's old Hollywood. He's
not familiar with Star Trek, or at least not super
familiar with Star Trek, but he ends up kind of
being the anchor on this movie. He's the guy that
kind of holds everything together. He's also one of the
reasons why they were behind schedule because he wouldn't shoot
over twelve hours per day. He was like, Nope, not
going to do it, not gonna work that hard. Chuck
what he got for us on Robert Wise.
Speaker 6: One of my favorite Robert Wise movies. And if you've
never seen this one, go back and watch it. It's
Run Silent, Run Deep. It's a little bit older World
War two submarine movie. Excellent film. But before he was
a director, he was an editor. And one of the
things that I was listening to David Fine, who is
the producer of the Director's Edition, listen to him when
he was talking about how when Robert Wise was editing
the de back in two thousand and one, he said
he would you'd see him kind of conducting with his
hands the beats of what was going on, and then
he knew right where to cut a film, and he
had incredible instinct about pacing and what it was that
made a good setup and a good scene.
Speaker 3: Okay, before we get into we're gonna talk about what works,
what doesn't work, what will we change, Let's just talk
briefly about what this movie is about. So, Jeff, you
want to give us breakdown on what the plot is
of this movie.
Speaker 5: Jason, and my most IMDb styled answer, I would I
would say it's when an alien spacecraft of enormous power
is spotted approaching Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk resumes command
of the overhauled USS Enterprise in order to intercept it.
Speaker 8: Spock. This child is about to wipe out every living
thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do, Spanky.
Speaker 2: The massive spacecraft, whatever it might be, is also destroying
things as they come into its path, including including a
Klingon vessel, which we see at the very beginning of
the movie. And this is the first time that we
see Klingons with their trademark head bunk whatever that stuff
is called. And I was listening to it was one
of those nineteen seventies Trekky conventions. And what's the actor
that plays Scotty, what's his name is Mouhan. So he's
talking to the crowd and he's mentioning He's like, they've
got these things on their head that look like warts,
which they've never had before. But what I attribute to
Scotty sending them a herd of troubles nice only dorky
trekky people.
Speaker 7: Job.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's right, all right? What do we think works
with this movie?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 2: I think that the I think the storyline on this
is very strong. Like, as I am watching this for
the second time, I'm thinking to myself, this is actually
a compelling thing, Like you've got this ominous death cloud
moving at amazing speed toward the planet. What are you
going to do? And the answer is, we're going to
go meet it before it gets here, and we're going
to try to figure out what it is and how
to stop it. That's a great That is a great
storyline if it sounds really exciting, and so if it was,
you know, handled in a different way, there might have
been more exciting features to it. But the other part
that I think that works for this is they take
time to appreciate the special effects in this movie. I
feel like, especially in twenty first century movies, we have
so many special effects that are absolutely crammed down our
throats in every scene of big action movies that you
don't have time to even notice most of it, let
alone like soak it in and kind of go, oh,
you know, they did a good job with this this one.
This movie might take it a little bit to the extreme,
but I actually was. I was pleased to have them go, Okay,
let's watch the spacecraft move through space. Let's see how
friggin' big the enterprise really is. I mean, I don't
think that's something that people really truly appreciated from the
television series. But he addresses the crew before they get
started and you're like, oh, dang, this is a huge
this is a huge group of people. There's a whole
army of people that are involved with running this ship.
And then you get this outside shot to go, oh, wow,
this thing is gigantic, which of course it would have
to be. You'd have to have a giant ship just
to be able to sustain life for that travel through space.
So those are the things that I think worked. And
then I just I mean, I love that they got
the original cast members back and that they were all
I mean, they weren't as characters where they were when
we left them, but they were still James T. Kirk,
mister Spock, and McCoy. I love it all.
Speaker 4: Right, Jack, what works for you in this one?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm going to start where Dee left off, and
that's with getting the characters back in all the original actors.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 6: I mean, if they could not have, if they didn't
get Leonard nimoy, would it just would not have been
the same movie. But I think what I really like
how they introduced, how they brought everyone in one by one.
He's introduced with Spock and he's he's going through the
final stages of the coolinar ritual, and then it introduces Kirk,
and Kirk is now going back to the Enterprise and
he's he. The next character that they introduced is the Enterprise,
because the Enterprise is a character of the show. And
then they bring back McCoy, you know, and McCoy honestly
does not need to be in this movie, but Kirk
needs him. Kirk needs him to be Kirk.
Speaker 7: Mc bones, I need you.
Speaker 2: Badly.
Speaker 6: And then finally, once they're on their way, the Enterprise
isn't working because it's still missing spot. And then once
Spock comes on board, the Enterprise is happy at that
point and everything begins to work and they're able to
go on their mission. So I thought the characters all worked.
I think the other thing that really worked is Jerry
Goldsmith's score. I can't begin to tell you the number
of times I have bought this score. It was the
first LP album that I had ever owned in my life,
and I still have it, and I have it on
various CDs and other digital platforms for it, and it's
just an amazing score. I don't know if you notice.
They call it the blaster Beam. So every time they
would show Vjure you'd hear this. Wow, that's an instrument
that they created for this particular recording, and I think
it gives that whole gravitas towards to the voice of
VDRE and it's just really good. And of course the
effects are amazing. And since you guys did watch it
on Max, could you tell whenever they were using the
Digital Enterprise versus the Model Enterprise? Because there were, But
like I mean, you ever like today you watch movies
and you kind of go, okay, I know, I'm kind
of looking at CGI. When they did this, their use
of it was so subtle, and a lot of times
it was there to fix problems that may have been
in the original negative or maybe in the compositions. But
there's different areas, especially later on when you were saying,
d how big the enterprise is, right, and they set
so much time up at the beginning about how big
the enterprise is, and then you see how much bigger
VGRE is, like Vger engulfs it to where the enterprise
is just this little speck, and that sense of scale
was just I just it blew me away.
Speaker 4: Jeff, what about you, Ben Well?
Speaker 5: I think Chuck and de have done a lot of
the heavy lifting there for me, because I'll i'll have
to talk about, obviously the story Harold Livingston, who was
a fame TV writer. It blows my mind that this
guy mostly known for Six Million Dollar Man and Mission Impossible,
he wrote Star Trek the motion picture. What a way
to make your mark. I think it does a great
job of giving the movie a lot of tension. It
almost gives it in the same way like a movie
like Wargames does, where you're up against something that you
cannot possibly defeat, so our protagonists have to rely on
their wits if they're going to save the day. And
that's one thing maybe my youth I didn't really appreciate,
But as an adult, the story here is just it's
one of the most intelligent Star Trek stories I think
has been out there.
Speaker 4: As far as the visual effects night and day. When
we're talking about the.
Speaker 5: Director's cut and it's gorgeous, you know, can't you can't
talk about these effects without talking about Douglas Trumbull. I
always think about the scene where Scotty and Kirk are
taxiing over to the Enterprise and it's just this long
drawn out moment where there's no dialogue and that's that's
something that Trumbull took straight from Kubrick and was like,
let's just get in the enterprise. Let's admire the enterprise
and see it for all it's grandeur. You know the
idea that this is. You know, Trumble's the first pick.
Obviously he turns him down because he wants to be
a director and he's committed to close encounters of the
third kind. And they had so much they had so
many problems with the visual effects team that they were
working on that they I think they spent like five
million dollars and went nowhere with what they had maybe
like one shot.
Speaker 4: Zero working shots. Yeah, yeah, zero working shots.
Speaker 6: Yeah, first of all. And it was Robert Abele and associates.
Go and look at the commercials that they did in
the seventies. They used a lot of that same slit
scan techniques that Trumbull did with the Stargate in two
thousand and one. It's just really really slick commercials, very
very famous. But yeah, they got they spent like I
thought the number was more like a million, but I mean,
what's a million or five million when your total budget
is forty And they had been working on it for
a year they had finished principal photography, like in January
seventy nine, Bob Wise goes and says, okay, I want
to see what you got, you know, show me something,
and they showed him maybe thirty seconds of some of
the work that they were doing on the probe scene
when it was on the bridge, and that was it.
Bob left that particular meeting. He said, I never want
to see that guy again. He's out of here. And
luckily at that point Trumbull was free, and Trumbull brought
in another person, John Dykstra, who worked on a little
show called Battlestar Galactica, but before that he cut his
teeth on this other movie, Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah, he
was the guy who did the dystra for all those
motion control cameras and everything.
Speaker 2: So he also did the motion control for the Gopher
on caddy Shack.
Speaker 4: There.
Speaker 2: Check out the Caddyshack episode.
Speaker 6: But they had more visual effect shots than Star Wars
and Close Encounters combined.
Speaker 4: That's hard to believe. Okay, that's amazing.
Speaker 6: Well, well, also remember this is January February of seventy nine.
This picture has to release on December seventh, deadline. Yeah,
that was a big deal, right, Yeah, they had contracts
with theaters. They were going to clear the slate for
December so that they could get this movie in And
this is going to be the next blockbuster, right, And
so there's like a thirty five million dollar guarantee the
film studio is going to get from the distribution of
this film. However, if they don't make it, it's not
only that thirty five million, but they got to pay
thirty five million out, so they stand to lose quite
a bit of money in penalties and lawsuits and other
such things.
Speaker 3: I heard Michael Eisner actually said if we have to
release it with the black thing, that says effect here
we're releasing.
Speaker 6: They got the teams to work three eight hour shifts
to get it going.
Speaker 2: Jeff, you're talking about the writing on this one, I mean,
which is fantastic and I've already put it on my
good list as far as things that are of high
quality about this movie. But I was just thinking about,
you know, the characters. You start with Spock on his
home planet with long hair, going through this ceremony to
rid himself of the what's left of his humanity. You
start with Kirk and he has lost the Enterprise and
now is trying to take it back basically by force.
And you're like, wow, okay, these you know, we're starting
with adventure at the beginning, and then with McCoy, he's
like involuntarily, you know, brought into the shanghaied, he was drafted.
I mean, he shows up like he just came out
of the Star Trek disco with his full beard. And
so finally with McCoy, we understand why he's angry all
the time, you know, like I didn't understand in the series.
Now I know he never wanted to be here in
the first place. That's why McCoy is always angry.
Speaker 3: McCoy looks like he's been living in Thailand. He's smoking potties,
hanging out with ladies on the street all the time.
Speaker 6: But you've got this, McCoy had become a veterinarian after
he left Starfleet, so he didn't want to operate on
people anymore. Now that wasn't the original stories.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic, Well, that was what I was going to say.
You've got a fantastic first act, You've got a fantastic
plot point. But you chuck. You said the script was
actually missing the third act, like they didn't know what
they were going to do with it.
Speaker 6: That was and that was that was. That was one
of the big problems even with Bob Wise, you know,
Bob Is used to like, hey, we've got everything laid out,
we know what we're doing, and they didn't have the
third act for it, and they had brought in everybody
to try to pitch ideas. They even got to William
Shatner and Leonard Nimoy pitching some of their ideas. And
it was one of the producers are he worked with
Roddenberry John Povel, who came up with this idea that
Veegre has grown as much as he's going to be
able to grow, and he must evolve to the next level.
And then that's where the concept of joining with the
Creator came into being.
Speaker 7: What Veja needs in order to evolve is a human quality,
our capacity to leap beyond logic.
Speaker 6: And so that's how that whole ending came about.
Speaker 3: Jason works for you man, Well, okay, so I just
kind of what you guys have already said. Number one,
I give this movie a lot of credit for getting
the gang back together, right. This gave us the rest
of the Star Trek movies and TV series that we
have basically because it got us kicked off with Kirk's
bach McCoy, you know, Scotty. It introduced me to Star Trek,
So thank you for that. I think the special effects
and score are amazing. The sense of wonder and discovery
with this movie, I think are very strong. I think
the director did a great job. I think the fact
that Veigre spoilers Beijer is Voyager.
Speaker 4: Six sent from Earth.
Speaker 3: Like when I first realized what that was, I was like, oh,
this is so cool. Right, this is our own creation
that is seeking us out to talk to the creator.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's talk about what doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Well, balls, do the.
Speaker 4: New medical facilities meet with your approval?
Speaker 7: They do not.
Speaker 6: It's like working in a damn computer center.
Speaker 4: D you're up?
Speaker 2: Okay? So I noticed something you got, you know, text
thread that we had when we started, you know, when
we decided we're going to do this. I love the
text threads because it's like, oh, hey, did you guys
hear about this? Oh hey, check this thing out. And
so in one of them, somebody sent the poster because
the poster is by the same artist who did the
poster for Apocalypse.
Speaker 6: Now, I think it's Bob peak.
Speaker 2: So in that poster, I noticed it because just because
we're looking at the poster and it's for the very
first time that it says there is no comparison, like
that's on the poster, and I was asking myself, well,
what does that mean? What are they what are they
talking about that they're saying there is no comparison because
it doesn't really have anything to do with the plot
of the movie. So then that begs the question is, well,
if it's not the movie that they're talking about, what
are they talking about? Well, does it mean that there's
no comparison to Star Wars.
Speaker 4: That's what I think they mean.
Speaker 2: Is that what we're talking about.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's a clever way to take a jab at
the at Lucas.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So my thought is then, I mean, they're right, there
is no comparison to Star Wars. It is a completely
different kind of movie. But I'm not going to I'm
not going to say that, well, I am going to
say Star Wars at Star Wars A New Hope is
a better movie than this movie.
Speaker 4: But you're having a limb right there.
Speaker 2: But they're different kinds of movies, and one of the
things we've talked about it already is the fact that
Kuber had come out in sixty eight or sixty nine,
whenever it was. With two thousand and one A Space Odyssey.
If I was saying to myself, did they try to
emulate Star Wars or did they try to emulate another movie?
I would say it was another movie, and it was
two thousand and one of Space obyssly because Cooper took
so much time doing the exact same things where he
lets you soak in the special effects and listen to
some awesome music, and so to me me, I probably
wouldn't have done that as much, because, quite frankly, the
special effects in this movie were not as good as
they were in two thousand and one A Space Odyssey,
even though it's ten years later and they should have
been significantly better at that point. They were good, but
they weren't Space Odyssey good. They weren't Star Wars good,
and so if you're going to make that decision, you
got to come stronger with your special effects somehow. What
also didn't work for me is that none of the
uniforms had cot pieces and all kinds of beans and
Franks up there that I was just not excited to see.
I heard Shatner drop weight. Oh wait, speaking of that,
speaking of the text thread, I have to read what
happened right before we started recording. Jeff Johnson is like, hey,
is there an invite? And Jason says, still still setting
up Hank tight guys, And then he said, also the
Star Trek podcast the search for Dee Graves because I
had not yet gotten here. Jeff says it is illogical
to proceed without d Graves, and then Jason says, the
Graves unit is almost here, and then Chuck says, why
doesn't the creator respond? And I said, if you think
I'm using the transporter after what happened to that first
group in the movie, you're out of your vulcan mind.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Can I say something about the transporter accident?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah?
Speaker 6: Was that not the most horrific thing ever? Yes?
Speaker 4: In a G movie?
Speaker 6: Yeah, in a G movie. Yeah. And that one always
gets me. And someone made a comment.
Speaker 9: About think about that, You're in the most agony that
you've ever been in and your mouth hasn't yet materialized
for you to scream, and.
Speaker 6: Then you get that it comes in and then they
try to put enterprise.
Speaker 2: What we got back didn't live long. Fortunately. Yeah, I
when I'm watching the series, I'm just thinking, Okay, well,
this technology is so sound that it's never concern. And
then they yanked the rug right out from underneath this
on the very first transporter trip of the movie, and
you're like, oh, so every time this happens, and it
happens all the time, you're at risk of becoming a
pile of carbon goo. Yeah, that's terrifying.
Speaker 5: It was terrifying when we thought the worst thing that
could happen was what we saw President scrub deal with
his asse was on backwards. This this movie movie shows
us more of like David Crodenberg's The Fly, where things
can go wrong. And I totally understand McCoy's disinterest in
ever wanting to beam after seeing Star.
Speaker 4: Trek the motion picture.
Speaker 5: Hey, before we get too far away from Bob Peek,
a little tidbit about Bob Peek.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the poster's gorgeous, it is, And.
Speaker 5: I just realized, I just realized I've got his artwork
hanging on my wall. He also did the one sheet
for Superman the movie, the famous You'll Believe a Man
can fly. Oh really, yeah, I mean I know when
you talk great poster work. You know, Drew Strewsy is
the first name out of most people's mouths, but Bob Peek,
he does gorgeous art.
Speaker 4: Aside from Star Trek and Superman.
Speaker 5: You know, he did The Dark Crystal, he did The
Spy Who Loved Me and uh, you know you mentioned
Apocalypse now, but uh, we'd be we'd be remiss.
Speaker 4: If we didn't mention he also did the.
Speaker 5: The dart work for any which way you can, Hey,
little little little throwback to.
Speaker 3: Yeah nice, okay, Jack, what did not work for you
in this movie?
Speaker 6: Wow?
Speaker 7: Anything?
Speaker 6: Pardon? Well, you know I'm a homer for it. So
it's uh, it's kind of gotten to the point. But
I I would say, if if there's anything, I still
feel that there are some sequences that could have been trimmed,
or you know, even some of the relationships could have
been explored a little bit more. One of the things
that I think a lot of a lot of folks
had complaints about it when it first came out, and
it's still there, but just because it's not in the story,
is that the major characters have a lot to do
or they have stuff to do, but Hohura really doesn't
have much to do in it. Sulu, most of his
interesting lines got cut in in the director's edition. And
you know, check Off and Scottie, they they they're very
relegated to what they do. There's not a lot of interaction.
This is a this is a travel movie. I think
those are my only things that I would have loved
to have seen as a fan.
Speaker 3: All right, Jeff, you're up what doesn't work.
Speaker 5: I will agree with Chuck that there are some serious
pacing issues in this film, and I understand long drawn
out shots to show off the visual effects.
Speaker 4: However, I would have loved to see them trimmed more so.
Speaker 5: We could have made better use of of George Takai
and Walter Koenig and Michelle Nichols who kind of just
showed up for like glorified cameos. So that that's a
problem for me. De mentioned the uniforms. I gotta say
these are the worst Star Trek uniforms for me. In
Star Trek, they just they felt more casual. I absolutely
don't like that. The colors signifying the rare Yeah, they're.
Speaker 4: Practically non existent.
Speaker 5: You know, if you you have to you kind of
have to queue into the delta on everyone's chest to
see like the color behind it, to find out like
who who's a science officer, Who's who's engineering? So I
really didn't I really didn't care for that.
Speaker 6: Would you agree, Jeff that those that have.
Speaker 5: Been very comfortable, Well yeah, I mean they're it's like
they're walking around wearing pajamas a lot of the times.
Until you get to Ilia at the end when she
comes back as the probe and what do we got for?
Can she just wear a guy's dress shirt? Because that's
that's all we got in the budget, you know. Yeah,
we spent eighteen million dollars on the on the Phase
two television show that we're adding into this budget.
Speaker 4: So we just grab a guy's shirt. That's so it.
Speaker 2: Please please add that to my what I like about
this movie category? Please. I forgot to mention that. And
then before John, I'll let you talk Jason, but before
before we go, I have to mention one other thing
that I didn't like. It didn't make any sense to me.
The other troubling thing is when they're at warp speed
they number one. When when things are going wrong, everybody
gets all fuzzy in dream sequency, right, That's that's problem
number one. But then problem number two. You know, it's
it's grabbing from Star Wars. We could, you know, end
up in the middle of an asteroid feel traveling through
space isn't But but then that actually happens in this one,
and they're like, oh, let's put an asteroid, but the
asteroid is there with them, Like, how's the asteroid traveling
at warp speed so that we are seeing the asteroid
in real time instead of as a blur or whatever the.
Speaker 4: Wormhole effects that the wormholes ses. I'm not going down.
Speaker 2: A wormhole after the asteroid, but it's in front of them. Still,
it didn't it didn't make any sense, and as far
as I can tell, nothing to do with the plot
like it didn't wasn't necessary. It was just a let's
put an asteroid in front of them and forget all
physics that are involved in this science really really science.
I mean, they want to do great explanation on some
stuff that I was just like, okay, if you say so,
but I couldn't tell if it was real science or
made up science or what. But they gave these stupid
science details and then they absolutely just go, oh, well,
let's put a rock in the way.
Speaker 4: A rock like a video game.
Speaker 3: It looks like it looked like battle Zone, it looked
like a giant a flying potato, look like a great
white shark coming closer to you.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you, Jason, the last thing.
Speaker 5: For you, for you before you talk about what doesn't work.
And I'm sure you're gonna you're gonna highlight this. There's
there's a significant lack of action. And that's not just me,
that's pretty much everyone in nineteen seventy nine. But I
think you've got a good fix, and I'll kick that
down the road so you can talk about it.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Okay, you know, Jeff and I have already talked about
things I would do to change this movie, and I'm
anxious to talk about that. So I'm not offering problems
without solutions here, but I do have some issues. I
don't think I'm really covering any new ground. There is
not very much action in this movie. There is is
almost no humor. There is not a lot of fun
to be had, right, and one of the biggest things
that's glaringly absent is the romance between Iliah and Decker.
If we could have had a little bit more of that,
that's what I We'll talk about that here in a minute,
when I will discuss what I would fix. But and
I think there are just some shots that were too long,
including the two minutes of flying space at the beginning
of the movie for no reason, before the paramount emblem is.
Speaker 4: Even on the tee.
Speaker 3: Just tighten things up, Let's trim it up a little bit.
I appreciate the beauty and the care and the style,
but it's just too long, and they need to beef
up the action a little bit.
Speaker 5: You know. You mentioned a lack of humor. I think
this movie has one of the more comedic moments in a.
Speaker 4: Star Trek film.
Speaker 5: I got I gotta point I gotta point out the insign,
the pure seventies insign with his mustache.
Speaker 4: Who Spot does the neck pinch on he.
Speaker 5: Does the greatest to the overacting award goes to this guy.
Speaker 4: He milks it for always always worth it.
Speaker 5: He just slowly like we've seen Spot do that like
a thousand times, and these guys drop like bags of dirt.
Speaker 4: He's in the war. Who you know. I love it.
Speaker 5: Every time I watched this, I love that guy's facial expression,
so he's fantastic.
Speaker 4: Shout out to that guy. I don't even know who
he is, but I texted you guys last night.
Speaker 3: I told you the spot in the movie where the
probe comes on board and starts zapp and Iileiah and
she keeps playing freeze tag and her face is making
those contorted That makes me laugh every time, and I
know I'm not supposed to laugh at that moment.
Speaker 6: So no real quickly about about that particular scene in general.
So when they did the director's edition, the amount of
original film negative that had not been comped or anything
that they were able to get is the reason why
that movie looks so good today, because they were able
to go in and redo things properly because they didn't
have the time in seventy nine to do it that way,
and even in two thousand and one they did not
have the original negative. So the angels of Paramount's Archives
were very gracious in giving them what they needed. The
one thing that they wanted to fix that they did
not have the negative for was that scene right there.
And if you go back and watch the original version
of it and then compare it to this you'll see
that the amount of cleanup and how it looks, it's
amazing what they were able to do. But I get
what you're saying about the contortions of her face. She
has that Oh crap, it's over boom.
Speaker 4: All right, d how did you fix this picture?
Speaker 2: Let me talk about what they did in the twenty
twenty two edition that absolutely worked to make this a
much better movie. I mentioned it before, is that the
a key aspect of this was that they had cut out,
like a long part of monologue. After he has had
his face to face experience with Veegure, right, he goes rogue,
He goes out on his own to confront Veger, and
he identifies with it on a deeper level and arrives
back at the ship, and a large part of that
dialogue got cut or that monologue got cut at when
they did the first release, but they bring it back
in this one, and he is tied to Veguer, like
his story and Veger's story are tied together, and that
is the story of why do we have humanity? Why
is it important that we have humanity? Because at the
beginning of this, he's ready to give his humanity up
to become a completely logical being because he feels like
that the emotions are unnecessary. But then he's called aboard
the ship. He feels like he needs to go on
this final journey and he confronts a being that is
completely logical, that lacks all emotion, and he appreciates the
danger and the coldness and the lack of something that
he realizes is truly important. And that's how he moves
from being the guy who's ready to give up to
his humanity to the guy who is embracing his humanity.
And so that whole why am I here? Is this
all there is? That's a question that Spock has at
the beginning that his experience with Veger helps him answer.
And so I got to give them credit for that
to go number one, terrible idea to cut it out
in the first place, but way to go on grabbing
that and bringing it back because that was gold.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Spock weeping in that moment is when he it
makes the movie for me.
Speaker 2: And then short answer because it went on so long
on that one on something I would fix in the
movie I until I rewatched it. This time, I thought
that the voyager was the voyager one, not a voyager
six that came out. You know, that's not a real
thing totally.
Speaker 4: I'm down for that, the.
Speaker 2: Idea that that thing that we sent out, that we
had that experience with. You know, that the Voyager going
out was a big deal, even you know, for a
little kid like me, that was an impressive thing. And
so so, you know, I understand that they didn't know
what was going to happen with the Voyager and there
was a lot of question in the air, and they
didn't want to screw that up. So okay, we'll make
one that got sent out, you know, as Voyager number
six twenty years later. But what's ironic about us recording
this and the timeline of things is that that original
Voyager one has kept on trucking on for the last
forty seven years until middle November last year, and for
the very first time, it sent back a message that
didn't make any sense. So the Voyager one is sending
back ones and zeros that mean different things, just like
all of the computerized digital systems that we still have
today in twenty twenty four. But what happens is after
forty seven years, it's it's out of our solar system
and it just starts sending one zero one zero, one zero,
one zero, Like it's a repeat it doesn't make any sense,
it doesn't tell us anything. It's not a code that
we don't understand. It's just a repeating code. And because
the technology is forty seven years old, like the lady
who runs the program literally said, there's more technology in
the remote you use to open your car than there
is in the voyager one right, wow. And so so
this is what's what's really going on, is they and
they have to wait like nearly two solid days, like
it's like a twenty two hours to send a message,
twenty two hours to get a message back, and so
it's a very long process that they're trying to fix
this archaic piece of machinery and they can't even tell
really what's wrong with it. And then just a few
months ago, it sends something else. It sends something other
than one zero one zero, one zero. It's not anything
that makes sense, but there's like hope that maybe we
finally have figured out what's wrong and this thing can
keep going. It's unlikely that it's going to make it
to fifty years, but my gosh, that little story right
there is enough for me to go well, maybe some
other life form had an interaction with this thing, and
maybe they were like, well, these are all ones and zeros.
What if we just repeat the ones in zeros. Well, okay,
that's upsetting them. Let's send them a mixed code and
see if that helped. Like, there could be life out
there communicating with Voyager and then using that as a
way to communicate with us. What if that was the possibility. Well,
these guys saw that as a possibility back in nineteen
seventy eight and said, what if some sentient computer took
control of one of the Voyagers and made its quest
to gain all knowledge in the universe? That should have
happened with Voyager one. It could have happened. It could
be happening. So there you go.
Speaker 6: You know they translated that right, the most recent code.
Speaker 2: Did they get it? Yeah? What is it?
Speaker 6: It says I went to the colonar ritual alongike opposis
lousey necklace.
Speaker 4: Yes, feeling right at all?
Speaker 2: Job?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Good one?
Speaker 3: Judge, All right, Chuck, is there anything you would change
about this movie?
Speaker 6: I'm looking at what would have made the movie we
got in seventy nine better, and I would have moved
a release date from Christmas to Easter. I would have
had them do screenings of it so they could get
it in front of test audiences and they could look
at what the issues were as far as we're pacing was,
and then let Bob Wise go back and address those
issues back then. It would have given the effects team
time to get in and to actually really go through
and do a proper finish up some of their shots.
It would have allowed for a proper sound mix. Something
that you guys don't hear in the twenty two version
is a bad sound mix. The sound mix in that
is incredible in Dolby atmost. The sound mix we got
in the original version is very horrible. The color grading.
They did color grading on that movie in four days.
It usually takes a month or so to do an
entire film on that. And so basically everything they said
is when in doubt, just go dark on it. And
so if you watch the theatrical cut, you'll see that
it's it. It looks blurry in some areas. It's it's
just it's just really flat looking, and it's it's it's lacking.
That time, I think that Bob Wise needed to really
get out test the film see or what didn't. As
it was, they were putting that film together up until
the last second. They had rented a stage in MGM
Studios where they had all the canisters, and they were
as they were developing the reels, they were putting them
in and you know they're in there, they're wet. And
then they got to get over to Washington, d C.
For the premiere on December sixth, and they basically given
Bob Wise the film and he's bringing it over on
the plane while the other planes are now going out
to distribute the films to the theaters for the following for
the December seventh premiere. They they had no time and
if I could go back and change one thing about it,
I would have them slip that date.
Speaker 4: All right, Jeff, what would you change if it please?
Speaker 5: Starfleet, I'd like to see my time answering this question
in lieu of what the Covin cut will be. I'm
excited about about the Covin cut.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you, well, thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So I am a red shirt.
Speaker 4: I'm not a trekky.
Speaker 3: I was brought up on Indiana Jones and James Bond
and so Jeff and I were talking today and my
thought is if you would just start this movie in
an act three of a different adventure where you have
Decker as the hero of the Enterprise. He is completing
some awesome mission where he has defeated the Romulins or whatever,
and he's the hero. Even if you said five years
earlier and you kind of set that up. I think
it would be great if you had a romance with him,
and I Leiah at that point. I told Jeff James
Bond that whole thing put her in bed with him.
They're in love, right, but she has to stop him
because of this celibacy thing that she's got.
Speaker 6: My oath of celibacy is Captain He's.
Speaker 2: Got to stop because he's got to go save the ship.
There you go, and then he loses his opportunity because
of the valve of celibacy.
Speaker 4: There you go, There you go.
Speaker 2: Love this idea, keep going, please.
Speaker 3: I love the idea of him being the hero of
the enterprise so that the audience loves Decker. We really
have no reason to like Decker at all in this movie.
And so when Captain Kirk shows up, you're like, yeah, Decker,
get out of here.
Speaker 4: This is Kirkship.
Speaker 3: But I'd like the idea of being conflicted about who
does the Enterprise belong to? Is it the old guy,
is that the new guy? You know they're both good.
And then I even told Jeff, like for me, pursus
Kabata had to shave her head for this movie because
they wanted her to stand out and look different on whatever.
If they could have built that in as somehow part
of her celibacy ritual in some way, I think that
that would have been really cool. You could have seen
her quote unquote beautiful and then sacrifice and then later
she and Decker come together. I think that that would
have made that storyline a bit more satisfying.
Speaker 2: I just want this to be a whole other movie.
I just wanted to be a prequel to the movie.
Speaker 6: Jim, I want this as much as you wanted The Enterprise.
Speaker 5: I want this Seeing Decker as a as a number
one and then promote up and get his first first
command as.
Speaker 4: Captain of the Enterprise.
Speaker 5: That would have been so much more fulfilling at the
beginning of this movie than the two or five minutes
of just Stars that we got. And Jason's absolutely right,
like we would have cared about Decker and it would
have created this Crimson tide effect. Where are we with
Decker or are we with Kirk? Like who's who's really
right here? Because Decker makes some really solid points. When
when he you know, permission to speak freely, he he
kind of tells Kirk like it is I'm still like, well, sorry,
we don't care about you.
Speaker 4: You're not Kirk, Thank you, thank you? All right? D
is this movie rewatchable?
Speaker 2: Feature expects an answer? Okay, So I just want to say,
after William Shatner saw this movie for the first time,
William Shatner, star of the movie, saw this movie for
the first time, he said, well, that's it. We gave
it a rest shot. It wasn't good and it will
never happen again. Thinkingness, he was wrong, he was, he
was wrong. But I understand his perspective because they didn't
mess up the theatrical cut. They took out some important
pieces and they were going on the heels of Star
Wars and it was anything but that. And so yes,
I understand. But fifteen years later he said, JOSHU, what
I know? And after the revisit number one, revisiting the
initial story, I was very impressed being able to watch
what's streaming on Max now this new edition. I'm definitely
two thumbs up. Go watch this movie. If you're under
the age of eighteen, probably not. This is probably going
to be not your pace of a movie. And unless
you're a special kid, you don't. You're just not gonna
get it. But if you're a grown person who's you know,
watched movies like Schindler's List, you can watch this movie
and go, wow, this is actually a very good movie.
So yes, worth of rewatch all.
Speaker 3: Right, Chuck, do we even need aska rewatchable?
Speaker 6: Definitely, one hundred percent. The even number films are always
the cursed films. But for me, I really love Star
Trek three a lot. And then right after that is
Star Trek the Motion Picture. One of the things that's
neat about Star Trek the Motion Picture is that it
is a product of seventies sci fi. It's not Star Wars.
Star Wars is more space opera. It's a different beast.
As we've talked about, it has a certain look in
terms of, you know, the uniforms, like it looks very
similar to Space nineteen ninety nine vibe. Some of the
ways that the ship looks. If you ever go to
Space Mountain in Orlando. The same look and feel is
in there. That's that's a very definite seventies feel to it.
For me. There's just something very nice about having one
of these movies that is different from the others, and
it's just very special. It's like a bottle up so
and then we get all the fun ones after that. So, yes,
very watchable.
Speaker 5: Okay, Jeff, I'm gonna have to say absolutely, it's rewatchable.
But kind of like where d was going with it,
I think a younger person might not be their cup
of tea or their cup of Earl Gray if they're
young Patrick Stewart, I kind of feel like, if you're
introducing someone to Star Trek, I wouldn't start them out
on the motion picture. I would go with something more popular,
something better, better paced.
Speaker 4: And if you say, okay, if you like it, if.
Speaker 5: You're really getting into it now, now go back and
see how it all began.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So I guess as to me, is this movie rewatchable?
Yes it is?
Speaker 4: Is it even good?
Speaker 3: Yes it's good, but it's not what I'm going to
revisit all the time. I'm going to watch Ratacon Search,
Respock Voyage, home three times for every one time I
watch this one.
Speaker 4: This is long. It's a bit slow. Yes, if you
haven't seen it in forty years, should you watch it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You should.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, that is going to do it for
Star Trek the Motion Picture. Next week we're going to
talk about Star Wars The Phantom Menace and find out
if that one is rewatchable.
Speaker 4: So come back here, Chuck. Thank you for being with us.
Speaker 3: We enjoyed having you on and thanks for bringing your
expertise on all things Star Trek man.
Speaker 6: Thanks thanks for having me on. It's a great time.
Speaker 3: Jeff, thanks for being on. What we got coming up
from you? Man Well Jackson.
Speaker 5: Outside of our normal normal formatted show on Tuesday, we
are continuing on Fridays with our film at forty five
limited series and our nineteen ninety six limited series. I
mentioned at the beginning of the show, we have We've
got our phaser set of Stun Star Trek podcast that
happens on Wednesdays now, and.
Speaker 4: It's it's a little bit down the road, but I'm
gonna go ahead and tell you.
Speaker 5: Just like Veigre and the the Carbon Units needing to
become one, our phaser sets of Stun series and our
film at forty five series are in fact going to
become one when we crossover and we cover Star Trek
the Motion Picture on Friday December sixth, which is actually
the forty fifth, the true forty.
Speaker 4: Fifth anniversary of the film's release.
Speaker 2: It's awesome. I thought you were going to say you're
going to have an AI host or something.
Speaker 5: I'm working on it. You know, we'll see you know,
I might get one in there.
Speaker 4: All right, everybody, thanks for being here. We will see
you next week.
Speaker 2: So ninth, December thirty first, nineteen ninety six, I am
two days into a three day party in the Auxtrian Alps. Okay,
I'm with a bunch of people who speak German. We've
been partying and partying, and me and this major party
animal are finally having a little bit of quiet time
out on the balcony of this lodge that we're at,
and his English is only slightly better than my German.
And he says to me, D D this name? What
is this D? And I was like, well, it's my
middle name. My first name is James. Actually He's like, oh, oh,
James D. James Kirk, and so yeah, it is the
universal language.
Speaker 6: It turns out, did you ever hear the story that
Shatner told about the Vietnam veteran? Okay, so the story
was he was on his way to that premiere in DC, right,
and so the limo driver who was driving him, I
just said, you know, he, mister Shatner, I really wanted
to be the one who drove you because I wanted
to tell you this. He said, I was in the
Vietnam War and I was captured. And then he proceeds
to describe the ways in which he was tortured, when
he was when he was captured, and then when they
would take him out of the box or whatever they
were doing, and he was there in a in a
room with ten other guys. They were all the other
guys who were in the same situation, and they only
thing that they could really talk about. They realized the
way that they kept their sanity was that they started
to retell Star Trek episodes to each other, and so
they would like, one person would be Kirk, one person
would be Spock, and they would you know, mess it
all up in all that because they wouldn't remember how
something goes. But Shatner has told that story about about
trek He's and how much that it has meant to them,
even you know, in the worst of times.
Speaker 2: It's a great story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll tell you what I think is fascinating about
Shatner is a couple of weeks ago he announced that
given the right story, he would come back and play
Kirk again, whether it's a TV show or a movie.
And I think a lot of people are quick to
dismiss that because they know he's ninety three years old.
But I'll tell you, when we met him last year,
he first off, he does not look ninety three. He
looks maybe like he's sixty three, and he sounds like
he's fifty three.
Speaker 4: He is, He's Kirk. He's still Kirk.
Speaker 5: And if they brought him back for even if it
was a guest spot on like you know, Strange New
Worlds or something like that, I would be all for
it because the guy can still do it.
Speaker 4: He's incredible.
Speaker 6: One of the things that I really like though, just
thinking about like friendships and stuff like that. You know,
I've got a great bunch of guys that I've been
friends with since high school. We still get together. I'm
originally from South Carolina. We still get together talk about this.
And one night I'm out for a run and I
get a call or something from one of my friends
and he says, you know, I was just listening to
the Shirley you Can't Be Serious podcasts and I heard
you do an introduction.
Speaker 4: Really, and I'm like, what, you actually listen to.
Speaker 3: This show?
Speaker 5: I got.
Speaker 6: So there's a bunch of guys there that are yeah, yeah, hey, yeah,
I just want to say hi to my to Alan Green,
I know you're going to be listening to this. Thank
you for encouraging me to come on and do this,
and yeah, so love your brother.
Speaker 4: That's cool.
Speaker 2: That was fantastic beat. Thanks thanks Alan. Yeah,