It’s AG Monday!
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
In 1979, Star Trek fans eagerly awaited the premiere of the first Star Trek movies, after Star Trek slid into reruns for several years. The movie had a big budget, a topnotch director, all the original cast, and the promise of a very Trek-ish story.
How did we feel about the movie, when it premiered? Did it seem like Star Trek had an ever brighter future after this film? Did we want to sport our own version of the pajama-like uniforms from this movie? Tune into this episode of Ancient Geeks to find out! And also hear about Phase II, the Star Trek series that Paramount almost made in the 1970s, and we didn’t even know was gearing up for production at the time.
Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of culture. We were geeks before it was chic!
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I was very young when I saw it (I think in a theater), and had little clue what Star Trek was or who the characters were. I’d seen eps of TOS, in syndication, but not enough of them to have much of a clue.
Past that, it felt long and boring. Not to mention the Enterprise seemed to be a death trap: first two crew are gruesomely killed by the transporter, then the ship seems to break spacetime through some sort of malfunction.
There’s a lot more to criticize about it, starting with the title*, but I won’t get into that. I eventually saw it again in the 90s on DVD. By then I’d seen TNG and TOS and DS9, as well as the other movies. It didn’t help the experience at all. Still long and boring.
I even wondered how in the world this movie did not kill Star Trek. IMO, it benefitted from a large fan base and lack of much competition. According to some hasty internet searches, the movie made around $82 million in theaters. Adjusted for inflation, if online inflation calculators are to be believed, that’s around $360 million today. Hardly a blockbuster by today’s billion dollar box office receipts, but not bad. Ergo a franchise.
The box office is vague and mysterious. Another movie from that era is Close Encounters, which made over $130 million at the time. Why? I ripped off the genie in Aladdin for my one line review of it: Phenomenal cosmic buildup, itty-bitty payoff.
*Seriously, it sounds like The Washington Football Team, or Ethnic Mismatch Comedy #644
Posted this on the TAS page last night, but obviously quite late, so copy and pasting here! Hopefully will listen to the TMP podcast sooner…
I still have several thoughts on your TOS and Batman 66 episodes and maybe someday I’ll get them down.. meanwhile at least this is more current (still a week late..).
You didn’t mention Alan Dean Fosters novelizations of the TAS episodes (the Log series)… greatly fleshed out and really well written. While James Blish’s TOS adaptations put a 45 minute episode into 15-20 pages, here we had a 25 minute episode in a 70-80 page adaptation (the last 2 or 3 adapted them into full length novels). Not necessarily canon material in 2025, but excellent reads.
Peter David.. Vendetta was a novel I read and reread, and it was surreal a few years back when he unexpectedly joined me and a couple of other people for a panel on ST novels at Convergence in Minneapolis (a fantastic convention you should check out if you get a chance).
Keep geekin’!
The crew of the Enterprise at the rollout of the Enterprise.
BTW, I’ve been meaning to post a link to the Spock vs Q audio plays.
They’re also on Everand, but you need a subscription for that.
They’re as funny as you’d think.
@Assad K: I meant to mention those Foster’s adapations and forgot to do so.
And yes, Vendetta is a great David novel and so very cool you got to be on a panel with him!
@Kathy: I need to check those out.
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s likely you can find Spock vs Q on Youtube. I haven’t searched.
I usually don’t mention merch, but I recall having had a Commander Decker doll (“action figure”) for some reason. I don’t recall how we came to have it. We had lots of Star Wars ones, but Decker was the only Trek one.