When I were a lad, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the business. Kirk and Spock were back and there were Klingons, spaceships 'n' stuff. In my teens I felt Star Wars had got it right; no lingering spaceship shots. Just show the universe as dirty, everyday and normal...and give the spaceships the attention you might give a beaten-up Chevy in a US car chase. I bought in on the first Trek movie as 'The Slow-Motion Picture'.
In retrospect I was very wrong. Both the Star Wars way and the Motion Picture way have their merits.
Since new, live-action Trek had been off the airwaves for 10 years by the time ST:TMP came along in 1979, the movie had to reintroduce the Trek universe to the forgetful and the unfamliar (something I'd never really noticed in great detail). And so the two primary character arcs of Captain Kirk and Mr Spock are reintroduced; Spocks desire to embrace his Vulcan heritage, against that of his human side, and Kirk's love of Starship command. The obsession both men possess bounces neatly off the main story of massive alien space ship V'ger's search to find it's creator on Earth. All are searching for emotional completeness and spiritual enlightenment. Kirk needs the Enterprise. Spock needs Kirk's friendship. And V'ger/Ilia needs human emotion/Decker. By the second half we have the classic trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy in play; the junior officers feeding the Captain with info while he formulates a plan. We even see Kirk try to bluff the computer adversary, something he was skilled at on TV.
We also have the reintroduction of the Star Trek universe itself; a near utopian world where war is obsolete, everybody has a high living standard, everybody seeks to better themselves and science is God. The production is appealingly sleek, clean, spacious, uncluttered and modernist. The spaceships feel real and are elegant re-designs of the TV originals.
Being the (official) most expensive film of all time for nearly a decade shows on screen, because it's the only Trek movie (to date) that has a genuinely epic feel. The Recreation Lounge is an Enterprise set unrivaled in size in the sequel while the intruder cloud exterior is awe inspiring.
But it's those lumbering/slow special effects shots that really benefit, not detract from, the movie. The sequences of the space-station and spacedock shout "Hey! Isn't humanity clever? That we can achieve this wonderous technological constructions in this breath-takingly beautiful environment of outer space!" It present this world on a pedastal for all to behold and show that humans can achieve great things. It also sells us of of the opposite, with the V'ger cloud, malfunctioning transporters and wormholes, showing that space can be simultaneously spectacularly vast and dangerous beyond comprehension. The two long V'ger fly-bys ask us to look at the universe with awe and humility as we are just ants to other beings, which may be out there. The other major effects sequence is the Spacedock fly-by which not only reintroduces a major character, the Enterprise, put also demonstrates Kirk's love for his ship.
All of this is done in a powerfully cinematic way with minimal dialogue. Jerry Goldsmiths score is majestic (so good in fact, they give the Ilia theme a blast before the studio logo appears). It's powerful and lyrical themes tap into the celebration of humanity's spirit of exploration and adventure.
When the sequel was release in 1982, it's many fans (including myself) proclaimed The Wrath of Khan had better captured the spirit of Star Trek. While that film is much better (well, it's practically perfect) The Motion Picture better encapsulates the universe Gene Roddenbery had intended to represent as humanity's future.
The human adventure is just beginning...
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