[Nerdspresso] I Have Seen The Future - It's Very Beige

Star Trek premiered on TV in 1966 and disappeared from the airwaves just three years later. It found a second life in reruns and as we all know, the rest is history. Star Trek became an iconic franchise, giving birth to a dedicated fanbase and a multimedia legacy that includes TV shows, movies, cartoons, comic books, novels, videogames and so much more. I met Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and the rest of the crew of the USS Enterprise as a kid watching their interstellar adventures every day after school. 

I didn’t know I was watching reruns nor did I know anything about the crusade for new stories led by a growing collective known as “Trekkies” filling hotel banquet halls with fan conventions. Little kid me was just digging the cool sci-fi vibe and those crazy flying kicks that Kirk would unleash on the bad guys. A few years later, another space saga captured my attention and became my true obsession. In 1977, Star Wars took over my brain. Apparently, it was all Hollywood could think about, too. 

The massive success of Star Wars lit a fire under every studio executive as they searched for sci-fi stories for their own blockbusters. And now as a diehard devotee of laser guns and spaceships, I couldn’t have been happier. I was eagerly devouring repeat screenings of Star Wars at my neighborhood movie house and searching out related content to feed the wookiee on my back. There was Starcrash, Battlestar Galactica, The Black Hole, and my first love, Star Trek. 

Paramount Pictures ordered up a new adventure for the Enterprise crew 10 years after NBC cancelled their first mission. The entire original cast was returning to reward fans with a big screen version. Star Trek was getting a major upgrade. The flick would be produced by its creator, Gene Roddenberry and directed by Oscar winner Robert Wise, the guy behind the classic flying saucer flick, The Day the Earth Stood Still. 

It would have special effects by Douglas Trumbull, the maestro behind the visual feasts of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. No more styrofoam rocks on cheeseball sets. This flick would be top shelf all the way. The studio was hoping Kirk and Spock could give Luke Skywalker and Han Solo a run for their money so they weren’t scrimping on any details. When Star Trek: The Motion Picture arrived in theaters on December 7, 1979, it was at a cost of $44 million, a hefty price tag considering the budget was originally $15 million. 

But all that money ended up on the screen, delivering a refurbished USS Enterprise in all its shiny glory. One of the hallmarks of this movie is that it gives us spectacular views of one of the most beautiful spaceships in film history. When the Enterprise is first revealed, the camera lovingly caresses it during a six-minute drydock sequence that plays like starship porn. Every shot is a slow majestic pan while Jerry Goldsmith’s luscious score plays in the background. 

For fans, it’s a glorious reunion. For everyone else, it’s a snoozefest. But to be honest, storytelling is not really why anyone is here. These moments definitely send the message that no one’s in a hurry to get things moving. The movie is a reintroduction to these beloved characters, which is a higher priority than plot and pacing. This flick clocks in at 136 minutes, which is a bloated running time for a story that feels like an extended episode of the original series. Kirk returns to command after several years as a Starfleet bigwig to lead the Enterprise into the heart of a massive space cloud that is threatening Earth.  

But none of that mattered to little kid me. I saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture in the theater soon after it premiered, right before school let out for winter break. My family spent the holidays that year visiting my grandparents in Iowa. I remember having Star Trek on the brain for that entire trip. McDonald’s unveiled the very first Happy Meal in conjunction with the movie so I made my folks make multiple stops along the way so I could get all the Star Trek-themed goodies. I’m still not sure how I got away with that one, but it did make our meal breaks quick and cheap. 

I do remember a few other things about that holiday trip. It was the first time I ever saw snow. My grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I got to stay up late to welcome in a new decade. And I turned my grandparents’ living room into the bridge of the USS Enterprise and played Star Trek with my imaginary crewmembers. Most of those scenarios were better than the actual movie. 

I give them props for kicking off Star Trek’s cinematic legacy, but other than that, not much happens. There are lots of beauty shots of the Enterprise, which is delicious eye candy, but things move along at a somnolent pace. The movie is fan service before there was such a phrase with sequences developed just to give hardcore Trekkers a thrill. Look, it’s Klingons! Hey, they’re on Vulcan! Check it out, Spock’s in a spacesuit with a jetpack!

Most of the crew doesn’t get to do much. Kirk obsesses over being back in the Captain’s Chair. Spock has his own existential crisis. McCoy dresses like a swinger with a funky gold medallion. Scotty gets to say the engines can’t take much more. Uhuru, Chekov, and Sulu just look happy to be getting a paycheck. Plus, everybody wears these zippy unitards in very soothing colors with clunky belt buckles that serve no purpose other than looking futuristic. There’s also this sexy bald chick that turns into a robot.

Halfway through the flick, the ship gets sucked into that cloud and we get a lot of montages of the ship flying through one ethereal space after another. I know it’s supposed to create the sensation that this cloud is wicked huge, but these bits just feel more like a VFX sizzle reel than a bonafide space adventure. I’m thinking director Wise was overwhelmed by this subject matter because his vision seems limited to just keeping things in focus. You get the vibe that he wished he was back with Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still when everything was in black and white. 

Speaking of colors, this set design has a pretty limited palette. Everything is either white, powder blue, or beige. So much beige. It’s like the Enterprise has the color scheme of your dentist’s office. Personally, I want the look of the 23rd century to be more vivid than my mom’s dream kitchen. And I still can’t get over those unisex jumpsuits that everybody wears. It’s like the filmmakers dreamed of a future with no pockets.

The crew finds their answers at the source of the cloud, which leads to a lot of philosophical musings about what it means to be human (typical Star Trek mumbo jumbo) and more special effects. As a kid in 1979 looking for my next sci-fi fix in the throes of Star Wars withdrawal, I thought this flick was pretty boss. These days, I put Star Trek: The Motion Picture on late at night when I’m having trouble sleeping. It’s calming like one of those machines that makes ocean sounds. I just let all the beige wash over me. 

They released a director’s cut for the 40th anniversary of the movie that improved the story, quickened the pace, and cleaned up some of the more dated effects. This new version holds up better than the original, in my opinion, and is worth checking out. You can find it streaming now on Paramount+. Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s most significant contribution to pop culture is that without it, we wouldn’t have had Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The success of the first film ensured this sequel, which arrived in the summer of 1982. That’s the flick that really gave this franchise legs. 

Star Trek II is undoubtedly the best film in this franchise and certainly one of the best sci-fi flicks ever made. For that reason, I pay my respects to this first Trek movie that came out 45 years ago this month. It gets credit for putting Star Trek back on the cinematic map after a decade-long hiatus. When all is said and done, this movie does ultimately deliver on the promise of its epic tagline: “The human adventure is just beginning.” However, a good chunk of that adventure is probably dedicated to finding clothes that don’t look like jammies. And aren’t beige.