star trek film 1970

Screen Rant

Every star trek movie in chronological order.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Star Trek 2009 Cast & Character Guide

Star trek confirms doctor phlox's fate centuries after enterprise, star trek reveals one of the 21st century's biggest scientific breakthroughs is illegal in the future.

• Learn how to watch all 13 Star Trek movies in chronological order by following their theatrical release timeline.
• Dive deeper into the Star Trek universe by watching the films in their in-universe timeline order instead.
• Keep an eye out for new Star Trek movies - one on Paramount+ focusing on Section 31 and potential future theatrical releases.

Here's how to watch the 13 Star Trek movies in chronological order in a couple of ways. Starring William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock, Star Trek: The Original Series ' 3 seasons aired on NBC from 1966-1969, but the show exploded in popularity in syndication. After the blockbuster success of Star Wars in 1977, Paramount refashioned a planned TV series revival titled Star Trek: Phase II into a feature film: 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Star Trek officially became a movie franchise.

Since the 1970s, every decade up to the 2020s thus far has seen a Star Trek movie produced. Star Trek: The Original Series ' cast starred in 6 films from 1979-1991. The torch was then passed to the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation , who starred in 4 films from 1994-2002. Producer and director J.J. Abrams then rebooted Star Trek: The Original Series , casting stars such as Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban to play younger, alternate reality versions of Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in a trilogy of Star Trek movies from 2009-2016. Whether you want to watch them in order of theatrical release or in order of when the films stand in the Star Trek timeline , here's how to watch the 13 Star Trek movies.

J.J. Abrams' Star Trek relaunched the movie franchise and reintroduced audiences to Captain Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise.

How To Watch The Star Trek Movies Chronologically In Theatrical Release Order

The first 6 star trek movies are helpfully numbered.

Watching the Star Trek movies in their theatrical release order is the simplest way to go . The 13 films are broken up into easy-to-digest blocks: the 6 Star Trek: The Original Series films, the 4 Star Trek: The Next Generation films, and the three Star Trek movies produced by J.J. Abrams that are set in the alternate Kelvin timeline. Here are the 13 Star Trek movies in theatrical release order:

How To Watch The Star Trek Movies By In-Universe Timeline Order

From 1986 to 2379 in two different star trek timelines.

A more interesting, and challenging, way to watch the Star Trek movies is by in-universe timeline order. Although the 'present day' of the Star Trek movies is either The Original Series ' 23rd century or The Next Generation 's 24th century, some of the Star Trek movies involve time travel and flashbacks, while the J.J. Abrams films are actually before the events of Star Trek: The Original Series.

In J.J. Abrams' Star Trek 2009 , the destruction of the USS Kelvin in 2033 by time-traveling Romulans, which led to the death of James T. Kirk's father, Lt. George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth), spawned an alternate reality where numerous major events happened in an accelerated pace. Factoring in time travel and alternate universes, here's how to watch the Star Trek movies by in-universe timeline order.

What Is The Next Star Trek Movie?

The next star trek movie won't be released in theaters.

The next Star Trek movie won't be a theatrical release, but it will be a made-for-streaming film on Paramount+. Star Trek: Section 31 starring Academy Award-winner Michelle Yeoh is the first Star Trek movie made for Paramount+ . Section 31 is written by Craig Sweeney and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. A spinoff of Star Trek: Discovery , Section 31 will detail what happened to Yeoh's popular anti-heroine, Emperor Phillippa Georgiou after she left Discovery in season 3, and the film will purportedly explore Georgiou's ties to and the history of Section 31, Starfleet's infamous black ops organization.

Star Trek: Section 31 introduces a new cast of characters joining Michelle Yeoh's Emperor Georgiou. Section 31 began filming in January 2024 in Toronto and is expected to wrap in March. Although no release date has been announced yet, Star Trek: Section 31 could be released on the streamer in late 2024 if not in 2025.

Depending on Star Trek: Section 31 's success, a new Star Trek movie could be released on Paramount+ every 2 years.

Will There Be A Star Trek 4 From J.J. Abrams?

Two star trek theatrical movies are reportedly in development.

8 years after Star Trek Beyond hit movie theaters, there is still no Star Trek 4 produced by J.J. Abrams . Star Trek 4 (AKA Star Trek 14 ) was scheduled for a December 2023 release date after audience polling by Paramount Pictures determined there was audience interest in seeing another Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine and the cast Abrams assembled. However, high-profile filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Noah Hawley, S.J. Clarkson, and Matt Shakman were unable to overcome the "creative differences" to get Star Trek 4 in front of cameras.

Star Trek 4 is said to be the "final chapter" of the voyages of the USS Enterprise commanded by Chris Pine's Captain James T. Kirk and his crew.

Following the resolution of the WGA writers' strike, a new report indicated two Star Trek movies are in development at Paramount. Star Trek 4 is said to be the "final chapter" of the voyages of the USS Enterprise commanded by Chris Pine's Captain James T. Kirk and his crew. Meanwhile, a Star Trek origin film set "decades before" Star Trek (2009) is being developed by director Toby Haynes ( Star Wars: Andor ) and writer Seth Grahame-Smith ( Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunte r). While it seems inevitable that a new Star Trek movie will return to the big screen one day, it looks like the long wait will continue into the foreseeable future.

Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation movies are available to stream on Max.

Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness , and Star Trek Generations are available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek movies in order: Chronological and release

Untangle the different timelines and get the popcorn: Here are the Star Trek movies in order — both chronological and release.

• Chronological order
• Prime Timeline

The Original Series movies

The next generation movies.

• Kelvin Timeline
• Release order

Upcoming Star Trek movies

We've got a guide to watching the Star Trek movies in order, decloaking off our starboard side!

So long as movies stick numbers on the ends of their titles, it’s easy to watch them in order. Once they start branching out, however, things can get a little muddled, especially when reboots come along and start the whole process over from scratch. 

You may have heard that the even-numbered ones are good and the odd-numbered ones are not. That’s spot on for the films starring the cast of The Original Series (aka Kirk and friends) falls apart once you reach the tenth entry in the series. It would probably be worth your while to have this list of the Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best around to steer clear of the clunkers. Look, we’re not going to pretend everything here is worth two hours of your day, we’re just letting you know which came out after which.

Should your Trek appetite remain unsatiated after your movie watchathon, feel free to pull from either our list of the best Star Trek: The Original series episode s or best Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes . Either one will set you up for a weekend jam-packed with great Trek moments. Consult our Star Trek streaming guide for all the details on where to watch the movies and shows online 

Star Trek movies: Chronological order

Below is the quick version of our list if you just need to check something to win an argument, but it comes with a lot of in-universe time travel-related caveats that we'll explain below.

• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
• Star Trek: Generations
• Star Trek: First Contact
• Star Trek: Insurrection
• Star Trek: Nemesis
• Star Trek Into Darkness
• Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek: Prime Timeline

The first thing you need to know about the Star Trek films is that while they travel back and forth in time, they also diverge into two (for now) different timelines. The films of the original crew (well, the first iteration of them, anyway – more on that later) are all in what is known as the Prime Timeline. 

Within the Prime Timeline, the movies are then split between The Original Series movies and The Next Generation movies.

1. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

• Release date: December 8, 1979
• Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley

This is the film that brought the voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise to the big screen. An energy cloud is making its way toward Earth, destroying everything in its path. Kirk and crew intercept it and discover an ancient NASA probe at the heart of the cloud. Voyager – known as V’ger now – encountered a planet of living machines, learned all it could, and returned home to report its findings, only to find no one who knew how to answer. It’s a slow-paced film, and the costumes are about as 70s as they come, but there’s classic Star Trek at the heart of this film.

2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

• Release date: June 4, 1982
• Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Ricardo Montalban

Ask a Star Trek fan what the best Star Trek movie is and more often than not, you’ll get Khan as your answer. A sequel to the events of the “Space Seed” episode of The Original Series, Khan is a retelling of Moby Dick with Khan throwing reason to the wind as he hunts his nemesis, James T. Kirk. Montalban delivers a pitch-perfect performance, giving us a Khan with charisma and obsession in equal parts.

3. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

• Release date: June 1, 1984

Spock might have died in The Wrath of Khan, but this third entry set up the premise for his return, with the creation of the Genesis planet. Essentially a heist movie in reverse, Search for Spock has the crew defying orders from Starfleet in an attempt to reunite Spock’s consciousness with his newly-rejuvenated body. It’s not a great movie, but it does include two very important events: the rebirth of Spock and the death of Kirk’s son at the hands of the Klingons. That’ll be important a few flicks from now.   

4. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

• Release date: November 26, 1986
• Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Catherine Hicks

If Star Trek fans don’t say Khan is the best Star Trek movie, odds are very high they say Voyage Home is. It’s a funny film where the mission isn’t destruction, but creation – or more accurately, repairing the devastating effects of humankind’s ecological short-sightedness. 

A probe arrives at Earth, knocking out the power of everything in its path as it looks for someone to respond to its message (yeah, it happens a lot). This time, however, the intended recipient is the long-extinct blue whale. To save Earth, Kirk and co. go back in time to 1980s San Francisco to snag some blue whales. The eco-messaging isn’t exactly subtle, but it doesn’t get in the way of a highly enjoyable movie.

5. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

• Release date: June 9, 1989

A writers’ strike and Shatner’s directorial skills (or lack thereof) doomed this film before a single scene was shot. The core plot is actually pretty good: Spock’s half-brother hijacks the Enterprise so that he can meet God, which he believes to be… himself. Some Star Trek fans have an odd fondness for this movie, as it showcases the camaraderie of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy when they’re off-duty.

6. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

• Release date: December 6, 1991
• Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Plummer

Right, so if that Star Trek fan you’ve been talking to doesn’t choose either Khan or Voyage Home as the best Star Trek movie ever, they almost certainly name Undiscovered Country (and if they don’t, they have highly questionable taste, frankly). The Klingon moon of Praxis explodes, putting the entire Klingon race at risk. The Enterprise hosts a diplomatic entourage of Klingons, much to Kirk’s discomfort. 

Remember how Klingons murdered Kirk’s son? Well, he certainly hasn’t forgotten. Kirk’s lingering rage makes him the perfect patsy for the murder of the Klingon Chancellor, sending him and McCoy to a prison planet and setting the stage for war. Christopher Plummer is perfection as a Shakespeare-quoting Klingon general with no taste for peace.

7. Star Trek: Generations

• Release date: November 18, 1994
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner

And thus the torch is passed from the crew of The Original Series to that of The Next Generation. It’s a bit of a fumble, to be honest, but they all did their best to get Kirk and Picard into the same film and have it make sense. Malcolm McDowell plays Soran, a scientist who will stop at nothing to control the Nexus, a giant space rainbow that exists outside of space-time. 

Soran lost his family when his home world was destroyed and he wants to re-join them (or at least an illusion of them) in the Nexus. He’s not so much a villain as a tragic figure, but the Nexus makes a meeting between Kirk and Picard possible. Not all that sensible, but possible.

8. Star Trek: First Contact

• Release date: November 22, 1996
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Alice Krige

Okay, no, for real, if your Star Trek pal didn’t pick Khan or Voyage Home or… oh, nevermind. Cueing off the iconic two-part episode “Best of Both Worlds,” in which Picard is assimilated by the Borg, First Contact sees the collective traveling back in time in order to disrupt First Contact, the day Earth’s first foray into space attracted the attention of the Vulcans, kicking off the events that would eventually lead to Starfleet’s victory over the Borg. The Borg Queen torments Picard with visions of the past and tempts Data with humanity, going so far as to give him some human skin. 

The fight with the Borg aboard the Enterprise is thrilling, and the work on the surface to get first contact back on track is fun. Plus, there’s just nothing like Patrick Stewart turning it up to 11 as he lashes out at the enemy that haunts his dreams.

9. Star Trek: Insurrection

• Release date: December 11, 1998
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, F. Murray Abraham

Essentially an episode inflated for the big screen, Insurrection is about the Federation conspiring to displace a planet’s population in order to harvest the planet’s unique resource – super healing metaphasic particles. In addition to the rejuvenating natural resource, the Ba’ku also have access to exceptional technology, which they shun in favor of a more simple lifestyle. 

Data malfunctions, the villains are Federation allies (and former Ba’ku!), Picard gets to knock boots with a local – Insurrection is the very definition of “fine.” Chronologically, Insurrection is relevant for rekindling the romance between Riker and Troi, but not much else.

10. Star Trek: Nemesis

• Release date: December 13, 2002
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Tom Hardy

Before he mumbled his way into our hearts as Bane, Tom Hardy was Shinzon, a clone of Picard the Romulans created in an eventually abandoned attempt to infiltrate Starfleet. Shinzon is dying, and all that will save him is a transfusion of Picard’s blood. Unfortunately, Shinzon also happens to be a megalomaniac who happens to want to destroy all life on Earth and maybe a few other planets, too, if he’s feeling saucy. 

Nemesis is notable mostly for killing Data with a noble sacrifice, only to resurrect him moments later in a duplicate body found earlier by the Enterprise crew.

Star Trek: Kelvin Timeline

The last of the Prime Timeline movies failed to impress at the box office, so it was a few years before anyone tried to bring the Enterprise back to the big screen. Rather than lean on any of the TV crews, this new slate of movies would serve as a reboot, welcoming new audiences while honoring long-time fans. Welcome to the Kelvin Timeline. (For all the ins and outs, check out our Star Trek: Kelvin Timeline explained article).

11. Star Trek

• Release date: May 8, 2009
• Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban

Back to the beginning! Star Trek introduces us to James T. Kirk, Spock, and “Bones” McCoy as they meet and join the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Though the plot is a relatively straightforward affair of a Romulan named Nero trying to destroy the Earth. His anger borne out of grief, what matters most is how it all came to be. In the future, Spock – the Prime Timeline version – tries to save Romulus from being destroyed by a supernova, but fails. Both his ship and Nero’s are kicked back in time, setting off a chain of events that diverge from the original, “true” timeline. 

The name “Kelvin” refers to the U.S.S. Kelvin, the ship heroically captained by Kirk’s father, which is destroyed in the opening moments of the movie.

12. Star Trek Into Darkness

• Release date: May 16, 2013
• Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch

The benefit of the Kelvin Timeline is that it not only allows Star Trek to explore canon material – such as Khan (he of the Wrath) – but to do something completely new with it. Khan features heavily in Into Darkness, but he has no beef with Kirk. Instead, a Starfleet Admiral is threatening the lives of Khan’s crew, forcing them to craft weapons of mass destruction. 

Khan inevitably eludes captivity and strikes out against Starfleet, killing Captain Pike (and a bunch of others) in the process. Kirk and company eventually take Khan down, but not before Kirk sacrifices himself to save his crew. Don’t worry, these things don’t last in either Star Trek timeline, as Kirk gets better moments later thanks to *checks notes* Khan's super blood.

13. Star Trek Beyond

• Release date: July 22, 2016
• Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Idris Elba

Beyond leans into the camaraderie of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy now that they’ve had some time together, much to the movie’s benefit. The Enterprise is lured to Altamid under false pretenses, leading to much of the crew being marooned on the planet. The architect of the deception was Krall, who wants an opportunity to return to a galaxy where war is the order of the day. 

Beyond is a significant point in the timeline for two reasons. First, it sadly marked the death of Spock Prime due to the passing of Leonard Nimoy. Second, it culminates in the Enterprise embarking on the five-year-mission that started everything back in 1966.

Star Trek movies: Release order

If you can't be bothered remembering two different orders for the Star Trek movies then we've got good news for you — the release order is identical to the chronological order that we've shown above (accounting for the Kelvin timeline as it's own entity anyway).

The full run of Star Trek films currently tops out at 13 entries; the fate of the 14th was hidden within a nebula of conflicting information. “Star Trek 4” was slated for December 22, 2023, but given that filming had yet to begin as of July 2022, it seems inevitable that date will change. Back in February 2022, Paramount that the principal cast would be returning for the fourth installment of the Kelvin timeline, a claim quickly disputed by the agents of those selfsame actors. Awkward.

Soon after, however, Chris Pine eventually signed on the dotted line, and his shipmates reached their own agreements. As of right now, Kirk (Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban, assuming he can make it work around filming of The Boys), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldaña), and Sulu (John Cho) are all ready to beam up and get filming. Sadly, this will be the first of the Kelvin films to not feature Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov. Yelchin died in an accident at his home in 2016. It’s currently unclear if Chekov will be recast or if a different character will take his place on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Though the Kelvin timeline is often referred to as “J.J. Abrams Trek,” he won’t be directing Star Trek 4; Matt Shakman will take on that responsibility, leaving Abrams to produce. As for what it will be about, that’s anyone’s guess, but Chris Pine told Deadline he hopes this one tells a smaller story that appeals to the core Trek audience. “Let’s make the movie for the people that love this group of people, that love this story, that love Star Trek,” he said. “Let’s make it for them and then, if people want to come to the party, great.” It’s a strategy that makes sense; the disappointment with recent Trek films hasn’t been their content so much as their box office. A Trek film with a smaller scope (and budget) would almost certainly have a very healthy profit margin while also resonating with the fanbase.   

With no new announcements coming from San Diego Comic-Con 2022, it seems that we’ll have to wait for any more insight into the next Star Trek film. Sill, recent comments from Paramount CEO Brian Robbins have us cautiously optimistic: “We’re deep into [Star Trek 4] with J.J. Abrams, and it feels like we’re getting close to the starting line and excited about where we’re going creatively,” he told Variety . 

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Susan Arendt is a freelance writer, editor, and consultant living in Burleson, TX. She's a huge sci-fi TV and movie buff, and will talk your Vulcan ears off about Star Trek. You can find more of her work at Wired, IGN, Polygon, or look for her on Twitter: @SusanArendt. Be prepared to see too many pictures of her dogs.

'Star Wars: The Acolyte' episodes 1 & 2: Who's really behind the Jedi murder mystery?

Terrifying new 'Alien: Romulus' trailer unleashes the facehuggers (video)

Boeing Starliner astronauts wave off 1st ISS docking attempt amid thruster issues

Most Popular

• 2 New moon of June 2024 tonight lets Saturn, Mars and Jupiter shine
• 3 Everything we know about 'Destiny 2: The Final Shape'
• 4 SpaceX Starship launches nail-biting Flight 4 test of the world's most powerful rocket (video, photos)
• 5 More people Googled 'northern lights' in May 2024 than in any other month in history

• More to Explore
• Series & Movies

Published Dec 7, 2021

Discovering the First Star Trek Movie, the Second Time Around

How one fan's journey into Star Trek's past resulted in a new appreciation for its present.

StarTrek.com

This article was originally published on December 5th, 2019.

After my first work of scholarly sparkliness, Ponyville Confidential: The History and Culture of My Little Pony, 1981-2016 , was published in March 2017, an old itch returned: a desire to write a book about Robert Wise's Star Trek —The Motion Picture . (No, not Star Trek: The Motion Picture . I’ll get to that.)

The next book I was under contract to write was about the history of film credits, a seemingly banal subject which had fascinated me ever since I watched Robert Altman's M*A*S*H on VHS for the umpteenth time as an 8 year-old in 1981. Aside from the occasional age-appropriate Peanuts movie or Michael Schultz's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , the only tape I asked my parents to rent from our neighborhood video store more than the M*A*S*H movie was the first Star Trek movie. This was the theatrical cut, mind you, two years before the Special Longer Version and two decades before the Director’s Edition .

In 2014, I began but never completed a proposal about Star Trek—The Motion Picture for the BFI Film Classics series, knowing damn well that nobody but me considered it a classic. But in 2017, my publisher proved willing to push back the deadline of the screen credits book and allow me to scratch that old itch, and it was published in October 2019 as The First Star Trek Movie: Bringing the Franchise to the Big Screen, 1969-1980 .

I decided to tell the story of Star Trek ’s resurrection from the ground up using primary sources, meaning that with very few exceptions The First Star Trek Movie is based on the facts as they were recorded at the time, not how they were remembered offhand decades later. As existing books go, this meant “yay” to using Preston Neal Jones’ 2014 oral history Return to Tomorrow: The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , since the interviews were conducted by Jones with people who worked on the film from mid-1979 through early 1980.

This also meant “nay” to Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman’s The Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years , because the timeframe of a given quote is unknown, and the book is full of secondhand rumors and anecdotes. Don’t get me wrong, The Fifty-Year Mission is a great read if you enjoy Trek -related snark and acrimonious axe-grinding — and don’t we all? — but as a history book? Not so much.

The majority of The First Star Trek Movie ’s sources turned out to be digitized periodicals from the 1970s such as Variety , Starlog , non-fiction fanzines , and countless local newspapers . I must also give a shout-out to Star Trektennial News , the newsletter edited by Gene Roddenberry’s right-hand woman (and my own personal hero) Susan Sackett for twelve issues from 1976 through 1977. It’s the second-best $40 I’ve ever spent on eBay!

My journey through Trek ’s past coincided with an unexpected renaissance in the present, beginning with Justin Lin’s 2016 Star Trek Beyond . Rewatching The Motion Picture was the first time since the Voyager finale that I’d watched something which felt like Star Trek , and since I’ve always considered the third film of the original movies to be the first to get Star Trek right, I hoped it meant history was repeating itself. While it didn’t end up tantalizing me in the way I’d expected, Rihanna’s “Sledgehammer” was my jam that summer (with all due respect to Beyoncé’s “All Night” ), and the poster which paid homage to The Motion Picture was a nice touch.

Excited to take home this #LimitedEdition poster #StarTrek #StarTekBeyond #StarTrekFan pic.twitter.com/z8q1qFaVf3

By halfway through the first season of Discovery in November 2017, the impossible had happened: Star Trek wanted me to like it again! The First Star Trek Movie is full of Discovery references as a result (for all things on the mycelial network are connected) and in an act of unmitigated gall I refer to myself in the book as “this wayward Burnham.” (But Worf admires gall, so that’s okay.)

Something I noticed early on during my research was that Paramount’s official title for the film was not Star Trek: The Motion Picture with a colon, but Star Trek—The Motion Picture with an em-dash, as demonstrated in this college of 1979 press materials. It was little things like this which made me realize how much of the true story has been forgotten.

Star Wars and Jaws are often considered the beginning of the blockbuster era, but after researching and writing The First Star Trek Movie , I now believe it truly kicked off with the release of The Motion Picture .

It’s well-known that the unalterable December 7, 1979 release date resulted in a rushed post-production period and what can be charitably described as the “uneven” final product. What is less discussed is that the product which premiered that day across the United States and Canada did not unspool in American states which had passed anti blind-bidding legislation. I didn’t have space to properly discuss the mess that is ‘ Blind-Bidding ’ (selling multiple films from the same studio, often unseen by the theatre owners, to a single theatre as a unit, outlawed via supreme court decision in the 1930s) in The First Star Trek Movie , let alone here, but what matters for our purposes is that the movie did not open in Alabama, Ohio, Louisiana, South Carolina, or Virginia until December 21. Further, I’ve found no evidence that it opened in Alaska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or West Virginia at all in 1979.

This means that of the 850-odd prints which opened on Pearl Harbor Day, at least 13 of them were in Canada, and the rest were spread out among 39 American states in mostly single-screen theaters. That doesn’t sound like much now, but this sort of massive nationwide, same-day release for a movie based on long-canceled television show was big news.

Part of what made the film news irresistible was that Star Trek fans were a source of near-morbid curiosity in 1979, often discussed in terms reserved for religious cults. It had been a little over a year since the Jonestown tragedy ; Gene Roddenberry had said “I'm not a guru and I don't want to be” in a 1976 AP article about “the near-fanatical cult that continues to follow the series”; and as seen in Amy Rose and Ryan Estrada’s wonderful comic “ My First Contact: Connected to the Truth ” on this very site, at least one capital-C Cult really did form around the franchise.

The point is, if The Motion Picture had been just a huge day-and-date release, or if it was just a film based on a television show which conventional wisdom said was only enjoyed by children and weirdos, it might not have gotten so much coverage. In my research, I found about 45 locally-sourced articles about the film’s opening from newspapers in 18 different states. For example, there were articles in five different papers in New Jersey, another five in Minnesota, four in New York state, three each in California, Kentucky, Florida, and so on.

I’m glad local newspapers were on the job, because many of them printed pictures of the lines, and those images of fans standing outside movie theaters from forty years ago this week fill me with joy. Again, lines outside of movie theaters for big premieres were nothing new in 1979.  There was media coverage of such things as recently as the unexpected hit Star Wars in 1977 , but it had more often been for expected-hit pictures such as Robert Wise’s own The Sound of Music in 1965 , Mary Poppins in 1964 , The Ten Commandments in 1956 , and at least as far as back as The Wizard of Oz in 1939 .

Those crowds tended to be red-carpet affairs in major markets, however. But, Battle Creek, Michigan, was not a major market.

Nor was East Lansing, Michigan, where the long-shuttered Campus Theater has my undying respect for putting Nichelle Nichols on the marquee where she belongs.

There were lines in Binghamton, New York…

…and Poughkeepsie, too.

In Santa Maria, California, the audience didn’t have to worry about whether the film would have the Original Crew—and, hey, someone brought an Omicron Ceti III spore plant ! That’s very neighborly.

Ponder your cosmic insignificance outside the monolithic, neon-lit Showcase Cinemas in Louisville, Kentucky, where some people were turned away due to lack of seating.

The first showing at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud, Minnesota, was at 7 p.m., but which time the temperature was below 20F . As a lifelong Californian, I cannot even imagine.

The biomass often got closer to its Schwarzschild Radius once inside, such as these lines in the Southtown Theater in Minneapolis…

…or the West Mall Theater in Sioux Falls, South Dakota…

…or this claustrophobia-inducing huddle at the Somerville Circle Theater in Somerville, New Jersey, in front a lobby standee which makes the Original Crew look like Your Action News Team. This is the joy of primary-source research: I had no idea these existed until I started scouring newspapers.

A closer look at one of those lobby standees at the nearby Cherry Hill Cinema. I always imagine Walter Koenig saying, “Really? That’s the picture you went with?”

If I could hop through the Guardian of Forever to attend any of these premieres, it would be Miami. First of all, unlike most of the rest of the country, the weather didn’t suck . Secondly, I so want to attend the Star Trek Party at the Longshot disco in Hialeah that night.

Sealing the deal is the picture from the party run in the Miami News .

The headline “Trekkies in their Glory” was probably sarcastic, but it all looks like so much fun, y’know? On the one hand, I have no truck with long lines and packed theaters; as I write this I’ve already reserved my favorite seat at my favorite theater for the 9 a.m. showing of The Rise of Skywalker on Christmas morning, which I’m hoping will be relatively under-attended. On the other hand, my brother and I camped out overnight for the premieres of the fifth and sixth Star Trek movies in 1989 and 1992 as an excuse to hang out with dozens of other fans, and the process of writing The First Star Trek Movie has brought back that old familiar glow.

Sherilyn Connelly (she/her) is a writer and a youth librarian from San Francisco, and was the head film critic for SF Weekly from 2013 through 2019. She's on Twitter at @sherilyn, and her books Ponyville Confidential: The History and Culture of My Little Pony, 1981-2016 and The First Star Trek Movie: Bringing the Franchise to the Big Screen, 1969-1980 would have had even lengthier titles if she could have gotten away with it.

Get Updates By Email

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, star trek: the motion picture.

Now streaming on:

Epic science-fiction stories, with their cosmic themes and fast truths about the nature of mankind, somehow work best when the actors are unknown to us. The presence of the Star Trek characters and actors who have become so familiar to us on television tends in a strange way to undermine this movie. The audience walks in with a possessive, even patronizing attitude toward Kirk and Spock and Bones, and that interferes with the creation of the "sense of wonder" that science fiction is all about.

Let's begin with the toy for the eyes. The Star Trek movie is fairly predictable in its plot. We more or less expected that two of the frequent ingredients in the television episodes would be here, and they are: a confrontation between Starship Enterprise and some sort of alien entity, and a conclusion in which basic human values are affirmed in a hostile universe. In "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", the alien entity is an unimaginably vast alien spaceship from somewhere out at the edge of the galaxy. The movie opens as it's discovered racing directly toward Earth, and it seems to be hostile. Where has it come from, and what does it want?

The Starship Enterprise, elaborately rebuilt, is assigned to go out to intercept it, with Admiral Kirk, of course, in charge. And scenes dealing with the Enterprise and the other ship will make up most of the movie if the special effects aren't good, the movie's not going to work. But they are good, as, indeed, they should be: The first special-effects team on this movie was fired, and the film's release was delayed a year while these new effects were devised and photographed. (The effects get better, by the way, as the movie progresses. The alien ship looks great but the spaceports and futuristic cities near the film's beginning loom fairly phony.)

The Enterprise, perhaps deliberately, looks a lot like other spaceships we've seen in " 2001: A Space Odyssey ," " Silent Running ," "Star Wars," and " Alien ." Kubrick's space odyssey set a visual style for the genre that still seems to be serviceable. But the look of the other spaceship in " Star Trek " is more awesome and original. It seems to reach indefinitely in all directions, the Enterprise is a mere speck inside of it, and the contents of the alien vessel include images of the stars and planets it has passed en route, as well as enormous rooms or spaces that seem to be states of a computer-mind. This is terrific stuff.

But now we get to the human level (or the half-human level, in the case of Mr. Spock). The characters in this movie are part of our cultural folklore; the Star Trek television episodes have been rerun time and time again. Trekkies may be unhappy with me for saying this, but there are ways in which our familiarity with the series works against the effectiveness of this movie. On the one hand we have incomprehensible alien forces and a plot that reaches out to the edge of the galaxy.

On the other hand, confronting these vast forces, we have television pop heroes. It's great to enjoy the in-jokes involving the relationships of the Enterprise crew members and it's great that Trekkies can pick up references meant for them, but the extreme familiarity of the Star Trek characters somehow tends to break the illusion in the big scenes involving the alien ship.

Such reservations aside, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is probably about as good as we could have expected. It lacks the dazzling brilliance and originality of 2001 (which was an extraordinary one-of-a-kind film). But on its own terms it's a very well-made piece of work, with an interesting premise. The alien spaceship turns out to come from a mechanical or computer civilization, one produced by artificial intelligence and yet poignantly "human" in the sense that it has come all this way to seek out the secrets of its own origins, as we might.

There is, I suspect, a sense in which you can be too sophisticated for your own good when you see a movie like this. Some of the early reviews seemed pretty blase, as if the critics didn't allow themselves to relish the film before racing out to pigeonhole it. My inclination, as I slid down in my seat and the stereo sound surrounded me, was to relax and let the movie give me a good time. I did and it did.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Now playing

Christy Lemire

Clint Worthington

Unsung Hero

Art College 1994

Simon abrams.

Evil Does Not Exist

Glenn kenny.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Film credits.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

132 minutes

William Shatner as Kirk

Leonard Nimoy as Spock

James Doohan as Scotty

George Takei as Sulu

Walter Koenig as Chekov

Directed by

• Robert Wise

Produced by

• Gene Roddenberry

Screenplay by

• Harold Livingston

Latest blog posts

The Language of Horror: Ishana Night Shyamalan on The Watchers

Everybody Wants Some!! Told Us Everything We Needed to Know About Glen Powell

Cannes 2024 Video #9: Festival Wrapup

The Future of the Movies, Part 3

131 episodes

70s Trek is a fan show that explores Star Trek in the 1970s. We discuss the cast, crew, writers, the major influences and the wider culture surrounding it. Though cancelled by NBC in 1969, Star Trek was never far from the public's consciousness. It was never allowed to be! We explore how it stayed alive after cancellation and how it was resurrected to become a major motion picture in 1979.

70s Trek: Star Trek in the 1970s Bob Turner & Kelly Casto

• TV & Film
• 4.9 • 28 Ratings
• APR 11, 2022

TMP in Ultra HD - Ep 152

Welcome to the first new 70s Trek episode in 3 years! The release of the 4K, Ultra HD version of Star Trek The Motion Picture, The Director’s Edition, is such big news that co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto felt it deserved a new episode of 70s Trek. Star Trek The Motion Picture was originally released in theaters in 1979. It culminated ten years of hard work, false starts and frustrations. The movie ran 132 minutes and it brought live action Star Trek back. But because of problems during production, the film was little more that a rough-cut. The version we saw in theaters was never intended to be the final edit. But because of marketing commitments, director Robert Wise ran out of time. Flash forward to 2001. Paramount agreed to let Wise and his team re-edit the folm so it would be closer to his original vision. The result was Star Trek The Motion Picture, The Director's Edition. The team tightened the editing and inserted new, updated CGI special effects. However, this version of the film was only released in standard definition on DVD. Blu Ray had not yet been invented. So fans never got to see this verison of the film in high definition. Until now. Members of Wise's 2001 team have gotten access to the Paramount vaults and have gone back to the orignal camera negatives to restore The Director's Edition in 4K Ultra HD. Theyhave also updated the special effects, bringing them up to 4K, as well. The result is a stunning film with more color, detail and dynamic sound.

• MAR 29, 2022

Journey to Babel - Bonus Trek 10, Ep 151

The Original Series episode Journey to Babel is considered by many to be one of the best. It featured several "firsts" for the show. Among them was seeing Spock's parents and several alien species that would play a major role in the franchise in the decades to come. Co-hosts Kelly Casto and Bob Turner explore Journey to Babel and ask the question, was it the most important Star Trek episode of the 1960s? ***

• MAR 22, 2022

Vazquez Rocks - Bonus Trek 9, Ep 150

It’s a place here on Earth that feels like it's an alien landscape. That’s probably why we’ve seen it used as another world so many times in TV and film.  Including Star Trek. Vasquez Rocks, located just north of Los Angeles, has been used many, many times for “on location” shooting for the franchise. The craggy, rocky landscape has been seen in 10 Star Trek episodes from various series and 3 films. But how did this stunning landscape become what it is today? Co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto explore Vasquez Rocks and share what they discovered with you in this episode of The Unofficial Trek Podcast. *** In The Unofficial Trek Podcast, hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto give their "Unofficial" take on the Star Trek universe.  From 2019 through 2019, Bob and Kelly hosted the show 70s Trek. It was a look at the events that brought a cancelled, 1960s TV show back from the dead to become a blockbuster movie in 1979. It was a decade that created a multi-million dollar franchise. Now Bob and Kelly will look at the minutia, the concepts, the people and the news pertaining to the Star Trek Universe. It's a fascinating time for Star Trek, with a flood of content about it on the internet. Bob and Kelly will give their "Unofficial" take. Why unofficial? Because their views are just that, they are theirs and are, therefore, "unofficial." It's a fresh look at Star Trek from two lifelong fans who have been talking Trek for over 35 years! We hope you'll join Bob and Kelly for their next venture, The Unofficial Trek Podcast. Visit us at these sites: Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/UnofficialTrek TuneIn:  https://tunein.com/podcasts/Fantasy--Science-Fiction-Podcasts/The-Unofficial-Trek-Podcast-p1546279/ Stitcher:  https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-unofficial-trek-podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6IrNzaWSzKyf1T7b4ngZX2 Website: https://theunofficialstartrekpodcast.libsyn.com/

• MAR 8, 2022

Strange New Worlds - Bonus Trek 8, Ep 149

One of the Star Trek productions coming in 2022 is Strange New Worlds. It will be the story of Captain Pike and the Enterprise crew before Captain Kirk commanded the ship. Since the show hasn’t premiered yet, we don’t know much about it. But co-hosts Kelly Casto and Bob Turner take a look at what we do know so far, and run through the cast. It’s the perfect topic for some "Unofficial" takes and a Trek Chat. *** In The Unofficial Trek Podcast, hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto give their "Unofficial" take on the Star Trek universe.  From 2019 through 2019, Bob and Kelly hosted the show 70s Trek. It was a look at the events that brought a cancelled, 1960s TV show back from the dead to become a blockbuster movie in 1979. It was a decade that created a multi-million dollar franchise. Now Bob and Kelly will look at the minutia, the concepts, the people and the news pertaining to the Star Trek Universe. It's a fascinating time for Star Trek, with a flood of content about it on the internet. Bob and Kelly will give their "Unofficial" take. Why unofficial? Because their views are just that, they are theirs and are, therefore, "unofficial." It's a fresh look at Star Trek from two lifelong fans who have been talking Trek for over 35 years! We hope you'll join Bob and Kelly for their next venture, The Unofficial Trek Podcast. Visit us at these sites: Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/UnofficialTrek TuneIn:  https://tunein.com/podcasts/Fantasy--Science-Fiction-Podcasts/The-Unofficial-Trek-Podcast-p1546279/ Stitcher:  https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-unofficial-trek-podcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6IrNzaWSzKyf1T7b4ngZX2 Website: https://theunofficialstartrekpodcast.libsyn.com/

• FEB 28, 2022

Old Trek vs New Trek - Bonus Trek 7, Ep 148

In July of 2021, the YouTube channel "The Popcast” posted a video entitled "This is how STRANGE NEW WORLDS will bring OLD TREK and NEW TREK Together!" The video discussed the divide between fans of Old Trek, Star Trek episodes and movies produced between 1966 and 2005, and fans of New Trek that began with J.J. Abrams 2009 Star Trek film. The video told us of a recent survey that took place across YouTube, Reddit and Twitter. 2000 Trek fans were asked how they identified with 3 statements.  Here they are: New Star Trek is good, I wish people would just accept the changes. I’m watching because it’s Star Trek, but I really hope it gets better. It’s a dumpster fire! I hate it and I’ll never watch new Star Trek. Here are the results: -28% said New Trek is good, and people should accept the changes. -32% said they were watching because it’s Trek, but they hoped it would get better. -40% said it’s a dumpster fire and they won’t watch. That 40% number by itself is alarming. But it’s really staggering to see that 72% don’t think it’s good or won’t watch it at all! Co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto have some opinions about why this might be happening...And of course, it’s all unofficial.

• FEB 8, 2022

James Bond - Bonus Trek 6, Ep 147

With the release of the film No Time to Die in the fall of 2021, James Bond is back in the popular culture again. It’s the 25th Bond film, and co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto of The Unofficial Trek Podcast thought it might be fun to have a chat about their favorite British spy. What does Bond have to do with Trek, you might ask? Well, the two franchises, Star Trek and James Bond, have a lot of crossover when it comes to their audiences. So for that reason, a Trek chat seems appropriate.

• © Copyright 2017 Social Flair Marketing

Customer Reviews

A truly fabulous show.

I’m a child of the 70s so Star Trek the original series is my favorite flavor of Trek ❤️Bob and Kelly have created an awesome body of work that covers the history of 70s Star Trek with genuine love and respect. They go into such great detail that you’ll learn fascinating things about Star Trek that you never before imagined. A truly fabulous show!!!

Hits a Sweet Spot

Bob and Kelly hit a sweet spot with 70s Trek—they clearly love the whole franchise, they do their homework and have interesting stories and details to share. What sets this show apart is how they put the original series into context, which makes it seem all the more remarkable. And they do it with an easy, positive spin at all times. These are a couple of guys you want to hang out for awhile.

Detailed, Informative, and Fun!

Been enjoying a bunch of these podcasts on a binge since I stumbled across them ... Star Trek in the 1970s is amazing time period, where the show was not only kept alive by things like the animated series and toys, but the conventions, and later on, the various attempts at revival that culminated in the first film. It is more than enough material to talk about - and these guys do it in a show that is equal parts informative and a good time - highly recommended!

Top Podcasts In TV & Film

You might also like.

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Star Trek,’ the Forgotten Frontier: 1970s Animation

• Share full article

By Thomas Vinciguerra

• Dec. 3, 2006

PART of the mythology that has grown up around "Star Trek" is that the 1970s were the show's lost decade. Canceled in 1969, the series didn't yield its first feature film, "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," until 10 years later. In between, the legend goes, Trekkies had to content themselves with conventions where they could swap trivia, splurge on merchandise and otherwise fail to get a life.

But here's the surprise: From 1973 to 1974, the inescapable science-fiction franchise spawned an all-but-forgotten Saturday morning cartoon series that more closely resembled its parent show than any of the prime-time spinoffs or theatrical releases that followed.

Known today as "Star Trek: The Animated Series" ("ST: TAS" for short) and just out on DVD, this incarnation's 22 half-hour episodes are manna for Trek purists. Here is the old U.S.S. Enterprise, still plodding along on its first five-year mission. Here are those trademark pajama-top uniforms, feyly flared trousers and black go-go boots. Most important, here is the familiar lineup of Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, et al., their voices supplied by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and most of the show's other original actors.

Produced by Filmation, "ST: TAS" was able to go where no inexpensive live-action TV series could afford to go before. Freed from the constraints of tiny sound stages and even tinier budgets, Filmation's artists could conjure up outlandish aliens, epic space battles, exotic civilizations and other fantastic scenarios. For the most part the quality of the stories matched the visuals. A critic for The Los Angeles Times declared that the show was "as out of place in the Saturday morning kiddie ghetto as a Mercedes is in a soapbox derby."

By popular acclaim, the best episode was "Yesteryear" by D. C. Fontana, a story editor on the original series and associate producer of its cartoon version. A time-travel yarn that returned Mr. Spock to his Vulcan childhood, "Yesteryear" depicted the pointy-eared science officer enduring a traumatic coming-of-age survival ritual, capped by the death of a beloved pet. This was pretty bracing stuff for preteenagers, and one reason "ST: TAS" won an Emmy for best children's series.

One of the perverse fascinations of "ST: TAS" is its use of limited animation. To save money and time Filmation repeatedly used the same stock shots of the characters, many of them involving a minimum of motion. When new movements were called for, the results were frequently stiff or herky-jerky.

In some cases, to avoid the bother of sketching in lip movements, the characters were shown speaking while holding a hand over their mouths. In retrospect this stilted, handmade approach is suffused with a goofy charm, much like that found in the crude action of a "Peanuts" holiday special.

One small, sour footnote: In his later years the creator of "Star Trek," Gene Roddenberry, played down his animated offspring, and the studio, Paramount Pictures, did not consider it a full-fledged part of his fictional universe. Consequently "ST: TAS" has long been something of an orphan, disdained by some fans while celebrated by others.

The DVD set itself seems to be of both minds. Under the portentous headline "Animated Trek: Real or Not?" the liner notes solemnly state, "Whether the Animated Series can be accepted as canon is still an issue that is fiercely debated."

What was that about getting a life? THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

The director Pablo Berger broke down how he brought a New York street scene to life  in “Robot Dreams,” his Oscar-nominated animated film about the friendship between a dog and a robot.

Cleopatra Coleman’s versatility has allowed the actor to stay relatively anonymous, but that may change with “Clipped,”  her new docudrama about an N.B.A. scandal.

The documentary “Jim Henson Idea Man,” directed by Ron Howard, doesn’t ignore the Muppet mastermind’s faults, but the tribute has a lot to teach creators everywhere .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.

• Tickets & Showtimes
• Trending on RT

TAGGED AS: movies , Star Trek

(Photo by Paramount)

All Star Trek Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Star Trek (2009) celebrates its 15th anniversary!

We’re boldly ranking the Star Trek movies by Tomatometer, from the original film series (1979’s The Motion Picture to The Undiscovered Country ), into the handoff to films featuring the Next Generation cast ( Generations to Nemesis ), and through to the reboot series (2009’s Trek to Beyond ).

Star Trek (2009) 94%

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) 93%

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) 87%

Star Trek Beyond (2016) 86%

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) 84%

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) 83%

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) 82%

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) 78%

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) 55%

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) 53%

Star Trek Generations (1994) 48%

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) 38%

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) 21%

Related news.

Glen Powell Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Netflix’s 100 Best Movies Right Now (June 2024)

Vote For the Best Movie of 1999 – Round 4

More Countdown

Star Wars TV Shows Ranked by Tomatometer

The Bad Boys Movies Ranked by Tomatometer

Movie & TV News

Featured on rt.

June 7, 2024

Top Headlines

• Glen Powell Movies Ranked by Tomatometer –
• Star Wars TV Shows Ranked by Tomatometer –
• Netflix’s 100 Best Movies Right Now (June 2024) –
• The Bad Boys Movies Ranked by Tomatometer –
• All 73 Disney Animated Movies Ranked –
• 30 Most Popular Movies Right Now: What to Watch In Theaters and Streaming –

Search This Blog

Cinema essentials.

• 1970s films
• American films

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

Cancelled in 1969 after three seasons on television, Star Trek appeared to lay dormant in the late 1970s, until it was unexpectedly revived in a big screen version as Star Trek: The Motion Picture , the film that would transfer the Star Trek brand from the small screen to feature films and precede its 1980s television revival.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture sees the starship Enterprise thrown into action again to combat a new threat against Earth. A massive, mysterious energy cloud is heading towards the planet and devouring everything in its way. James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is now based on Earth as an Admiral at Star Fleet Headquarters and the Chief of Star Fleet Operations. But with the unprecedented nature of this threat against the planet, he quickly persuades Star Fleet to put him back in command of his old ship, the Enterprise . 

Kirk takes over from Captain Decker (Stephen Collins), who has to reluctantly cede command, despite his misgivings about Kirk's unfamiliarity with the changes that have been made to the ship. But compensation for Decker comes in the arrival on board ship of Ilia (Persis Khambatta), his former lover. 

Also on board are most of the familiar Enterprise crew, including chief engineer Scotty (James Doohan), helmsmen Sulu (George Takei) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) and communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). Also returning from the original series are Majel Barrett as Dr. Chappell, the ship's former nurse who is now a doctor, and Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand, who is now in charge of the ship's transporter. 

Two more of Kirk's old crew appear along the way. Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is technically a reservist, but is called back into service at Kirk's request. The Vulcan Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy) eventually catches up with the ship in a shuttle craft, before taking over as chief science officer. Spock has detected the energy cloud himself while on the planet Vulcan, and has his own ideas about how he might utilise it.

The unprecedented success of Star Wars in 1977 led to a boom in sci-fi films, each one eager to repeat the success of George Lucas's space opera. This vogue for all things outer space was aided by Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind , released the same year. By the time Star Trek: The Motion Picture appeared in 1979, even James Bond was being sent into space in  Moonraker , while a low budget horror concept called "Star Beast" was transformed into a sci-fi blockbuster as Alien , and Walt Disney released their own answer, the space epic  The Black Hole . Although if The Black Hole was the answer, then it's not entirely clear what the question was. According to Leonard Nimoy, he was appearing in Peter Schaffer's play Equus on Broadway, when he attended a matinee screening of Star Wars . Seeing the ecstatic reaction from the packed cinema audience, he judged that he would very soon be hearing from Paramount about reviving Star Trek .

Despite its cancellation a decade before, Star Trek still had a cult following and a cartoon series had appeared in 1973, with most of the original cast voicing their characters, something that had helped to keep the brand alive. In fact, by the late 1970s there were already plans for a new series, "Star Trek: Phase II", which was intended to be one of the show pieces of Paramount's planned new television network.

With the success of Star Wars , though, everyone was scrabbling around for similar concepts and Star Trek , with its outer space adventures, star ships and laser battles, seemed to be exactly the kind of thing that was needed. As a result, the projected television series was turned instead into the first Star Trek feature film. 

There's a reason why these criticisms are made so often and it's because they are, at least in part, fair ones. While  The Motion Picture  does have a degree of dignity and grandeur, it's ultimately a slow-moving, humourless, ponderous effort, its self-consciously grand title undermined by the inflated, but dramatically rather thin and empty film that bears it. 

The usual aim for a film version of a popular TV series is to make it bigger and grander than the TV incarnation, while retaining what made the original popular to begin with.  Star Trek: The Motion Picture 's problem is that, while it's bigger than the series that spawned it, it's also a lot smaller. 

The film is demonstrably bigger in terms of budget, with sets and effects work far grander and more impressive than anything seen in the TV series. But it's also obviously undernourished as a drama, with barely enough character, interest and action to fill its 132 minute running time. In fact, the storyline presented here is the kind of thing that the TV series would have dealt with, not only less solemnly and portentously, but a lot more entertainingly in the more appropriate 50 minutes.

The root of the film's problem is that the script, eventually credited to Harold Livingston, from a story by Alan Dean Foster, was derived from a story intended as the pilot for the TV series "Star Trek: Phase II". It was expanded when Paramount decided it wanted a Star Trek  film instead. Which is probably the main reason why there's not enough substance to the characters or the story to carry a two hours plus feature film. In fact, the film does not really have a story. What it has is a concept, one that needs to be fleshed out to fill 50 minutes. Instead, it's simply been stretched out to fill 132 minutes. 

The film reportedly went through numerous attempts at finding a storyline and a screenplay, and it seems hard to believe that this one is the best that anyone could do. No one involved appears to have been happy with the script anyway, as there were incessant re-writes as filming went along, with the actors sometimes left waiting for new scripts to be delivered to them on set. 

Although it's a bonus that the original TV cast have been rounded up, including Majel Barrett and Grace Lee Whitney, very few of the regular actors are given anything much to do in the film. In fact, even George Takei as Sulu, Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and Walter Koenig as Chekov appear to be there just to be there.

Harold Livingston's script doesn't really capture the characters or their interplay from the series and the film is noticeably lacking in human drama, the relations between the characters being as cold and distant as the film itself. 

Kirk is given some minor conflict with the new Captain of the Enterprise , Captain Decker, when he is given command of the ship because of his superior experience. There's also some friction with Spock early in the film, but that's mainly because Spock has been mischaracterised in this film as simply rude and unfeeling to his comrades, rather than carefully controlling and concealing of his emotions.

Kirk also does too much in the film for a ship's Captain, and certainly for an Admiral, even following Spock out into space in his own astronaut's suit when he investigates the energy cloud. This kind of thing is to the detriment of the other crew members, most of whom may as well not be present. 

Both Spock and McCoy join the ship once the mission is underway. DeForest Kelley's Dr. McCoy arrives sporting an ill-advised, bearded medallion man look, something that makes him look like the leader of some weird California disco cult. Perhaps McCoy's look is a deliberate nod to the original series time period, with the good doctor seemingly left stranded in the sixties counter-culture. He even complains to Kirk that "They drafted me!" - a phrase with obvious Vietnam War connotations.

Leonard Nimoy had been the most difficult actor to get onside, partly because of his love-hate relationship with the Spock character, but mainly because of his legal dispute with Paramount over the use of his image as Spock in advertising endorsements. This dispute had to be settled before he would sign up for the film. 

The only significant new characters are Captain Decker, played by Stephen Collins, and the alien woman Ilia. She is played by the Indian model and actress Persis Khambatta, who had to have her head shaved for the role, which certainly gives her character a distinctive appearance. Their roles in the film do make them feel very much like "guest stars" in an episodic TV show, which is no doubt a result of the story's origin as a television script. Mark Lenard, who is most familiar as Spock's father in the TV series and later films, also appears, albeit in a different role as the captain of a Klingon ship. 

Ilia is later taken over by the computer intelligence, but she's a little odd to begin with anyway. There's a particularly strange moment when she introduces herself to Kirk by immediately saying "My oath of celibacy is on record, Captain". Kirk's reputation has obviously preceded him. It feels as if screenwriter Harold Livingston intended this line as a joke and a nod to Kirk's romantic successes in the TV series. But, presumably, the director didn't get it, which is why the line is so off in the film and no one seems to know quite what to do with it.

The film's producer was the series creator Gene Roddenberry and it was directed by Robert Wise. Unusually, the two men share a title card in the opening credits, which seems to hint at some wrangling over billing. 

Robert Wise was a very successful Hollywood director with a variety of films behind him. In many ways he was one of the ultimate directors of the Michael Curtiz school of versatility, able to turn his hand to any subject. 

Wise's previous films had ranged from 'B' movie horrors The Curse of the Cat People  (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945) and war films The Desert Rats (1953) and Run Silent, Run Deep (1958) to haunted house thriller The Haunting (1963), disaster movie The Hindenburg (1975) and two Best Picture Oscar winning musicals, West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). More significantly, as far as Star Trek was concerned, he had some decent sci-fi credentials too, his most notable entry in the genre being the seminal 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still . 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture doesn't capture the style or tone of the TV series that spawned it, but maybe that was deliberate. Robert Wise was apparently unfamiliar with the series anyway, something that does come across in the film. The concept of a rogue probe that is searching for its creator is at least recognisably a Star Trek concept, with shades of some of the TV episodes, particularly "The Changeling" with its deadly NOMAD probe. 

But in both narrative and visual terms, Robert Wise and Gene Roddenberry appear to have been much more heavily influenced by Stanley Kubrick's classic  2001: A Space Odyssey , released just over a decade before in 1968. Like that film,  Star Trek: The Motion Picture  is a mostly humourless, existential space epic, with a focus on technical hardware and questions of creation and evolution - in this case through the melding of human and machine. But any comparison to  2001  is not to the  Star Trek  film's advantage, it not being quite on the same level as Kubrick's film visually and nowhere near it conceptually. And in attempting to ape 2001 , the film loses much of what made Star Trek a success.

Some scenes appear to have been directly inspired by the earlier film, including one where a space-suited Spock enters the mysterious energy cloud, a scene very reminiscent of the "Star Gate" sequence in 2001 . As with that film, some of these scenes feel decidedly trippy, and the film might well be best appreciated by those who have already indulged. There are also long stretches of the Enterprise travelling slowly through the energy cloud. The special effects are good here and the film induces the appropriate sense of wonder and grandeur, but there's simply too much of it.

When the Enterprise  penetrates the vast cloud and finds the intelligence within, a computer calling itself "V'ger" (pronounced "Veeger"), they discover that it is in fact ...

A 300 year old NASA probe, Voyager 6 , sent out beyond the Solar System to acquire knowledge and information. 

This was at least a topical story idea, as the real NASA probes  Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 had both been launched only two years before in 1977 to conduct studies of Jupiter and Saturn. Both made their closest approach to the former in 1979, the year Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released. 

In a didactic expository scene, the characters fill in the blanks of Voyager 6 's odyssey themselves, surmising that it disappeared into a black hole where it was found by a machine civilisation. They upgraded it and sent it back on its journey through the galaxy to continue its mission to collect data. Now it is returning home to Earth to report back to its creator. 

What V'ger lacks, though, is the human dimension, to take it beyond mere machine logic. Having taken over the body of Ilia, when V'ger discovers that its creator is man, it decides that it wants to, er, join with one. As she's the spitting image of his former lover, Decker agrees and man and woman (and therefore man and machine) are somehow united. This ending would probably be slightly disturbing, if it wasn't so soppy. In another of the film's 2001 echoes, the characters suggest that this union of man and machine may represent the next stage of evolutionary development. 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture  does seem a little like the  Voyager 6  probe itself. It's almost as if  Star Trek  had been discovered by a machine civilization and sent back to Earth, made bigger and shinier, but without its heart or soul.

Given the film's enthralment to hardware and general lack of human interest or emotion, it's only appropriate that the only real affectionate relationships in it are those between men and their technology. That is, between Decker and the mechanical replica of his lover Ilia and between Kirk and his starship the Enterprise . 

When a woman who appears to be a romantic prospect does appear, it's not long before she is replaced by a machine copy. Perhaps there's some unconscious message here, that the union between male and female would be a lot easier if women just weren't so emotional. Decker doesn't seem to find the robotic version of Ilia any less appealing than the real one. And with her skimpy new outfit and imploring look, the new Ilia arguably is sexier than the chaste original.

The film's extraordinary budget of around $44 million (compared to around $10 million for Star Wars two years before) does mean that it offers plenty of spectacle, even if the film is severely under-developed in the more critical areas of plot and character. 

In fact, the audience is given plenty of time to ponder and be impressed by the expensive special effects as they are showcased in the film at some length. The most egregious example is a five minute scene where Kirk and Scotty travel in a shuttle craft towards the Enterprise as it lies in space dock. They do this very very slowly, so that the audience can see and appreciate the big new expensive Enterprise model from every angle. This scene is not only slow and over extended, but self important and self-aggrandizing. But it does encapsulate the film's general substitution of spectacle and expensive special effects for story or character development. 

The three Klingon ships seen at the beginning of the film are similarly shown from multiple angles, some of them admittedly quite arresting; all the better to allow the audience to appreciate the model work. These include a 180 degree rotation around the head of one ship as it appears to pass beneath the audience, its long neck then extending into the distance as it recedes.

While some of the effects work is excellent, overall it isn't up to the standard of Star Wars or 2001 . That is despite drawing on the expertise of effects maestros Douglas Trumbull (of 2001 ) and John Dykstra ( Star Wars ). 

Problems with the costly special effects were the main reason why the film's budget was massively inflated from the original estimate of $15 million to around three times that amount. Robert Abel's company was contracted to provide the effects but, according to Douglas Trumball, little useable material had been produced and Paramount were getting close to their release date. Trumball's company Future General was under contract to Paramount and so he was very reluctantly drawn in to oversee the effects work. With only a few months remaining, the film still struggled to meet its release date and there were accompanying stories of wet prints being rushed to the cinemas waiting to show them.

The film's sets designed by Harold Michelson are obviously more detailed and expensive than anything seen in the series, although they do have a tendency towards corporate blandness. The least successful part of the film's visuals are the new Star Fleet uniforms. The familiar coloured jerseys of the original series were replaced for this film by all-new uniforms created by costume designer Bob Fletcher. These are not a success and their shapeless design and wishy-washy colours make the crew all look as if they are wearing their pyjamas. They also display very prominent belt buckles attached to barely visible belts. This makes it look as if the humans of the future have done away with belts but kept the buckles. The new costumes were no more comfortable to wear than they are to look at, so this film was their only outing. There would be a new uniform design from the next film onwards. 

The Klingons appear at the beginning of the film, it seems, mainly because they were a well known element of  Star Trek  and the series most familiar villains. The plot doesn't really require them, but they do add some welcome variety. The Klingons seen in The Motion Picture are significantly re-designed from those of the series, given more elaborate facial make-up with ridged foreheads. This look would be developed a little more and carried over to the subsequent films and TV series. 

The Klingons are now given subtitled dialogue for the first time, something that would be continued in later films. Just to add to this film's general air of solemnity and lack of fun, the opening scene of the subtitled Klingons is followed by another subtitled scene, this time of Vulcans. This does mean that you can use the film to pick up some elementary Klingon and Vulcan, with such useful Klingon phrases as "Tactical", "Evasive action" and "Stand by. Torpedo". 

The film's single most successful element is the excellent score by Jerry Goldsmith. This includes a warlike theme for the Klingons seen early in the film, awesome and menacing music for the V'ger cloud and a new main title theme. This is a strident march, quite different from the more spacey theme music of the TV series. 

The title theme was well regarded enough to be re-used as the title music for the  Star Trek: The Next Generation  TV series when  Star Trek  returned to television in 1987. Jerry Goldsmith would also score  Star Trek V: The Final Frontier  in 1989 and several of the  Next Generation  films, as well as providing the theme music for the '90s TV series  Star Trek: Voyager . 

A so-called "Director's Edition" of the film was prepared by Robert Wise for DVD release in 2001. Numerous relatively minor changes were made and the running time increased to 136 minutes. It seems that Robert Wise may not have learned all that much from his experience on the film, as he must be the only person who saw it and thought that it needed to be a bit longer. 

While Walter Koenig didn't get that much to do in the film, he did at least get a book out of it. His tale of the making of the film was published the following year as Chekov's Enterprise: A Personal Journal of the Making of Star Trek - The Motion Picture . 

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was not especially enthusiastically received when it was released in 1979. With only a few exceptions, including a positive review in trade paper Variety , the critics found it dull and over-stretched. Jerry Goldsmith's score was better thought of and was nominated for an Academy Award, as were the film's visual effects and art direction.

Although few people were that enthusiastic about it, including some of the actors and crew who made it, Star Trek: The Motion Picture  did fair business, making around $139 million worldwide at the box office. But the hugely inflated budget meant that it wasn't the money spinner that was hoped for.

Despite ultimately spawning a successful film series, meaning that  Star Trek  would run simultaneously on film and TV screens for the next twenty years or more, at the time it was assumed to be a one-off. Hence the definitive, singular title,  Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The receipts were decent enough, though, for Paramount to discern that a  Star Trek  sequel might be a worthwhile proposition - if it could be made for a lot less money. To be successful, such a sequel would also need more action and a stronger antagonist for Kirk to come up against; all issues that would be fixed in the second Star Trek film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Year: 1979 Genre: Sci-fi Country: USA Director: Robert Wise

Cast   William Shatner (Captain Kirk) , Leonard Nimoy (Spock) , DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy) , James Doohan (Scotty) , George Takei (Sulu) , Majel Barrett (Dr. Chapel) , Walter Koenig (Chekov) , Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) , Persis Khambatta (Ilia) , Stephen Collins (Decker) , Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand) , Mark Lenard (Klingon Captain) , Billy Van Zandt (Alien boy) , Roger Aaron Brown (Epsilon technician) , Gary Faga (Airlock technician) , David Gautreaux (Commander Branch) , John D. Gowans (Assistant to Rand) , Howard Itzkowitz (Cargo deck Ensign) , Jon Rashad Kamal (Lt. Commander Sonak) , Marcy Lafferty (Chief DiFalco) , Michele Ameen Billy (Lieutenant) , Jeri McBride (Technician) , Terrence O'Connor (Chief Ross) , Michael Rougas (Lt. Cleary) , Susan J. Sullivan (Woman) , Ralph Brannen, Ralph Byers, Paula Crist, Iva Lane, Franklyn Seales and Momo Yashima (Crew members) , Jimmie Booth, Joel Kramer, Bill McTosh, Dave Moordigian, Tom Morga, Tony Rocco, Joel Schultz and Craig Thomas (Klingon crewmen) , Edna Glover, Norman Stuart and Paul Weber (Vulcan Masters) , Joshua Gallegos (Security officer) , Leslie C. Howard (Yeoman) , Sayra Hummel and Junero Jennings (Technical assistants)

Screenplay Harold Livingston, story Alan Dean Foster, based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry  Producer Gene Roddenberry  Cinematography Richard H. Kline  Production designer Harold Michelson Art directors  Joe Jennings, Leon Harris, John Vallone   Editor  Todd Ramsay   Music  Jerry Goldsmith   Costume designer  Bob Fletcher  Special photographic effects director  Douglas Trumbull  Special photographic effects supervisor John Dykstra  Special photographic effects producer Richard Yuricich  Special animation effects Robert Swarthe 

Running time  132 mins / 136 mins  ("Director's Edition")  Colour Metrocolor  Widescreen Panavision  Production company Paramount Pictures / Century Associates  Distributor Paramount Pictures

I couldn't agree more with your review. This movie is just so boring. Really, the bland uniforms sum it up. All in all I always thought that Star Trek worked much better overall on the small screen than as full-length movie.

Generally it's much more successful on television, the films being very uneven. But there are a couple of good Star Trek films - Star Trek II more than makes up for this one.

Yes, Star Trek II is quite good, mainly because of a deliciously hammy performance by Khaaaaaaannnn.

I should probably warn you, there's likely to be more Star Trek in the future ...

I respectfully disagree. I love the film (the Director's Cut, 136 min., which is longer than the theatrical version and shorter than the Special Edition). You can tell that this is the only one produced by Gene Roddenberry (he deliberately downplays the militaristic aspects of Starfleet -- Wrath of Khan does the opposite). Anyhow, I think it is a "fascinating" movie that aims to resolve Spock's inner struggles (shocking that he was not supposed to be in the movie because STMP is all about Spock). It's at the very least about "something," which is more than I can say about J.J. Abrams's movies, which are about nothing but fan service.

If the story is meant to be about resolving Spock's inner struggles then I don't think it's very successful in doing that. The downplaying of the militarism is interesting and it's certainly a contrast with Star Trek II. Maybe it's a reaction to Vietnam, or maybe it's Roddenberry coming to believe his own publicity as a great visionary. This film is at least visually distinctive. The later ones, especially the Next Generation ones, tend to be a bit bland and forgettable. I'm not convinced the Abrams films really are Star Trek. Its not a surprise that he quickly moved on to Star Wars.

Sorry for the delayed response, I didn't realize you had replied to my comments. Anyhow, I do think that the film successfully ends Spock's identity crisis. V'ger makes him value his human side, effectively putting an end to the Vulcan's signature issue. Without STMP, I don't think you could have had the content Spock of STII (he is so calm, so serene). In STIV, Spock faces the same problem after he is reborn, and he has to relearn the lesson he had learned in STMP (STIV's ending mirrors STMP). One of the many reasons STV doesn't work is because it negates Spock's growth (the scene where Spock witnesses his birth makes absolutely no sense). Just my two cents.

I think that's an interesting perspective, although I'm not sure how much attention Nicholas Meyer and Harve Bennett actually paid to what happened in The Motion Picture or how much it filtered into Nimoys portrayal of Spock. As you say, there are many reasons why Star Trek V doesnt work. It's remarkable just how far they dropped the ball with that one.

Post a Comment

Popular posts.

Movie Quiz: On the Beat

Film and TV Inspired by The Great Train Robbery

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘star trek – the motion picture’: thr’s 1979 review.

On Dec. 7, 1979, the Paramount sci-fi film, directed by Robert Wise, hit theaters.

By Arthur Knight

Arthur Knight

• Share on Facebook
• Share to Flipboard
• Send an Email
• Show additional share options
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Pinterest
• Share on Reddit
• Share on Tumblr
• Share on Whats App
• Print the Article
• Post a Comment

On Dec. 7, 1979, Paramount’s Star Trek — The Motion Picture hit theaters and launched the franchise on the big screen. The film, which reunited the cast of the NBC series, went on to earn three Oscar nominations (for art direction, original score and visual effects) at the 52nd Academy Awards. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below: 

Related Stories

'survivor' season 1: thr's 2000 review, 'deadwood': thr's 2004 review.

What gave Star Trek its lasting appeal on the small screen was not its sense of endless exploration — not just of the vastness of outer space, but an exploration of those cosmic values that enrich and ennoble our own humanity. Star Trek — The Motion Pictur e also has this as its central purpose. Beyond its visual splendors and its screen-shattering catastrophes, the standard fare of today’s sci-fi epics, there is a theme that finds its culmination in a statement which, while hardly profound, surely bears repeating — that love combined with understanding can produce a universal harmony.

The evidence of the invader’s destructiveness is awesome. Enormous airships are engulfed in waves of blue, crackling energy, then disappear without a trace. It affects and reverses electrical systems aboard the Enterprise, can paralyze individuals or make them vanish. Aware of these overwhelming odds, Kirk decides not to fight what he can’t even see, but to try to make contact for the purpose of communication. And, as it turns out, that is precisely what the enemy was also trying to do (albeit a trifle crudely).

Obviously, this provides a field day for the special effects people; and while I’m not sure of the purchasing power of $40 million at today’s inflated prices, it’s money well spent. Star Trek may lack the magic weaponry of Star Wars or the awesome splendor of Close Encounters mammoth mother ship, but it shares their sense of wonder at the technological marvels that lie ahead and the vastness of universes yet to be explored. And its models are models of ingenuity.

But I’m not complaining. This Star Trek is truly an epic spectacular (or a truly spectacular epic), reflecting the highest degree of Hollywood’s vaunted professionalism in every department, from Jerry Goldsmith’s resounding score to Richard Kline’s wide-ranging photography to Harold Michelson’s eye-filling production design, which brilliantly solves the often sticky problem of making the full-scale sets look as if they might actually fit inside the many models. — Arthur Knight, originally published on Dec. 10, 1979.

THR Newsletters

Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day

More from The Hollywood Reporter

‘antidote’ review: unnerving doc profiles three anti-putin dissidents, oscar-nominated short ‘red, white and blue’ screenings to raise funds for abortion access, gender justice, idris elba says playing villainous characters can be a “bit of therapy”, julia butters in talks to join disney’s ‘freaky friday 2’, ‘quad gods’ review: hbo’s esports documentary upends one-size-fits-all disability storytelling, ‘a mistake’ review: elizabeth banks gives a tightly wound performance in christine jeffs’ somber medical drama.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Star Trek: The Animated Series

The further adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise, as they explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. The further adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise, as they explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets. The further adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise, as they explore the galaxy and defend the United Federation of Planets.

• Gene Roddenberry
• William Shatner
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 51 User reviews
• 21 Critic reviews
• 3 wins & 3 nominations

Episodes 22

Photos 1676.

• Captain James Tiberius Kirk

• Mister Spock …

• Nurse Chapel …

• Aquan Harvester …
• Orion ensign …

• Carter Winston …

• Cyrano Jones

• Harcourt Fenton Mudd

• Young Sepek
• Young Spock
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia According to Lou Scheimer there were never any ego problems between the cast members during recording sessions, although William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy had a tendency to count their characters' lines and complain when one of them had too many more than the other.
• Goofs Nurse Chapel's chest insignia is the standard oval-within-a-circle symbol for the Sciences division. However, in the live Star Trek (1966) , her uniform was unique in that she wore a red cross in place of that symbol.
• Connections Featured in The NBC Saturday Morning Preview Revue (1974)

User reviews 51

• grendelkhan
• May 10, 2004
• How many seasons does Star Trek: The Animated Series have? Powered by Alexa
• What year does this series take place in?
• September 8, 1973 (United States)
• United States
• StarTrek.com - Episode Guide
• Star Trek: TAS
• Filmation Associates
• Norway Productions
• Paramount Television
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 30 minutes

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed.

Suggested Searches

• Climate Change
• Expedition 64
• Mars perseverance
• SpaceX Crew-2
• International Space Station
• View All Topics A-Z

Humans in Space

Earth & climate, the solar system, the universe, aeronautics, learning resources, news & events.

NASA, Global Astronomers Await Rare Nova Explosion

NASA Scientists Take to the Seas to Study Air Quality

NASA to Change How It Points Hubble Space Telescope

• Search All NASA Missions
• A to Z List of Missions
• Upcoming Launches and Landings
• Spaceships and Rockets
• Communicating with Missions
• James Webb Space Telescope
• Hubble Space Telescope
• Why Go to Space
• Commercial Space
• Destinations
• Living in Space
• Explore Earth Science
• Earth, Our Planet
• Earth Science in Action
• Earth Multimedia
• Earth Science Researchers
• Pluto & Dwarf Planets
• Asteroids, Comets & Meteors
• The Kuiper Belt
• The Oort Cloud
• Skywatching
• The Search for Life in the Universe
• Black Holes
• The Big Bang
• Dark Energy & Dark Matter
• Earth Science
• Planetary Science
• Astrophysics & Space Science
• The Sun & Heliophysics
• Biological & Physical Sciences
• Lunar Science
• Citizen Science
• Astromaterials
• Aeronautics Research
• Human Space Travel Research
• Science in the Air
• NASA Aircraft
• Flight Innovation
• Supersonic Flight
• Air Traffic Solutions
• Green Aviation Tech
• Drones & You
• Technology Transfer & Spinoffs
• Space Travel Technology
• Technology Living in Space
• Manufacturing and Materials
• Science Instruments
• For Kids and Students
• For Educators
• For Colleges and Universities
• For Professionals
• Science for Everyone
• Requests for Exhibits, Artifacts, or Speakers
• STEM Engagement at NASA
• NASA's Impacts
• Centers and Facilities
• Directorates
• Organizations
• People of NASA
• Internships
• Our History
• Doing Business with NASA
• Get Involved
• Aeronáutica
• Ciencias Terrestres
• Sistema Solar
• All NASA News
• Video Series on NASA+
• Newsletters
• Social Media
• Media Resources
• Upcoming Launches & Landings
• Virtual Events
• Sounds and Ringtones
• Interactives
• STEM Multimedia

Amendment 19: D.18 Euclid General Investigator Program: Names must be omitted from References.

PACE Celebrates National Ocean Month With Colorful Views of the Planet

Hubble Examines a Barred Spiral’s Light

NASA Astronauts Practice Next Giant Leap for Artemis 

Former Astronaut David R. Scott

Space Station Research Advances NASA’s Plans to Explore the Moon, Mars

NASA Mission Flies Over Arctic to Study Sea Ice Melt Causes

Webb Finds Plethora of Carbon Molecules Around Young Star

Solid State Quantum Magnetometers—Seeking out water worlds from the quantum world

C.12 Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations POC Change

The Big Event, 2025

Black Hole Week

Amendment 20: F.20 MOSAICS Seed Funding formerly SMD Bridge Program Seed Funding Final Text.

ARMD Solicitations

Winners Announced in Gateways to Blue Skies Aeronautics Competition

NASA, Industry to Start Designing More Sustainable Jet Engine Core

B.10 Heliophysics Flight Opportunities Studies Correction

Tech Today: Measuring the Buzz, Hum, and Rattle

Artemis Generation Shines During NASA’s 2024 Lunabotics Challenge 

NASA Marshall Engineer Receives AIAA Honors Award

Meet the Simunauts: Ohio State Students to Test Space Food Solutions for NASA

Diez maneras en que los estudiantes pueden prepararse para ser astronautas

Astronauta de la NASA Marcos Berríos

Resultados científicos revolucionarios en la estación espacial de 2023

15 min read

55 Years Ago: Star Trek Final Episode Airs, Relationship with NASA Endures

Johnson space center.

The voyages of the Starship Enterprise came to a sudden and premature end on June 3, 1969, with the airing of the final episode of the Star Trek original television series. Ironically, the show’s cancellation came just six weeks before humanity embarked on its first voyage to land on another celestial body. Although the show ran for only three seasons, it generated a devoted fan base disappointed by the cancellation despite their write-in campaign to keep it on the air. But as things turned out, over the decades Star Trek evolved into a global phenomenon, first with the original episodes replayed in syndication, followed by a series of full-length motion pictures, and eventually a multitude of spin-off series. With its primary focus on space exploration, along with themes of diversity, inclusion, and innovation, the Star Trek fictional universe formed a natural association with NASA’s real life activities.

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first had the idea for a science fiction television series in 1964. He presented his idea, a show set in the 23 rd century aboard a starship with a crew dedicated to exploring the galaxy, to Desilu Productions, an independent television production company headed by Lucille Ball. They produced a pilot titled “The Cage,” selling it to the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) network that then bought a second pilot titled “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” NBC introduced the show to its fall 1966 lineup, with the first episode “The Man Trap” airing on Sep. 8. To put that date in perspective, NASA launched Gemini XI four days later, one of the missions that helped the agency achieve the Moon landing nearly three years later. Meanwhile, Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise continued its fictional five-year mission through the galaxy to “seek out new life and new civilizations.” The makeup of the Enterprise’s crew made the show particularly attractive to late 1960s television audiences. The major characters included an African American woman communications officer, an Asian American helmsman, and a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, later joined by a Russian-born ensign. While the show enjoyed good ratings during its first two seasons, cuts to its production budget resulted in lower quality episodes during its third season leading to lower ratings and, despite a concerted letter-writing campaign from its dedicated fans, eventual cancellation.

Despite the show’s cancellation, Star Trek lived on and prospered in syndication and attracted an ever-growing fan base, turning into a worldwide sensation. Often dubbed “trekkies,” these fans held the first of many Star Trek conventions in 1972. When in 1976 NASA announced that it would name its first space shuttle orbiter Constitution, in honor of its unveiling on the anniversary of the U. S. Constitution’s ratification, trekkies engaged in a dedicated letter writing campaign to have the orbiter named Enterprise, after the starship in the television series. This time the fans’ letter writing campaign succeeded. President Gerald R. Ford agreed with the trekkies and directed NASA to rechristen the first space shuttle. When on Sept. 17, 1976 , it rolled out of its manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California, appropriately accompanied by a band playing the show’s theme song, it bore the name Enterprise. Many of the original cast members of the show as well as its creator Rodenberry participated in the rollout ceremony, hosted by NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher . Thus began a lengthy relationship between the space agency and the Star Trek brand.

During the development of the space shuttle in the 1970s, the need arose to recruit a new group of astronauts to fly the vehicle, deploy the satellites, and perform the science experiments. When NASA released the call for the new astronaut selection on July 8, 1976, it specifically encouraged women and minorities to apply. To encourage those applicants, NASA chose Nichelle Nichols, who played communications officer Lt. Uhura on the Starship Enterprise, to record a recruiting video and speak to audiences nationwide. She came to NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston in March 1977, and accompanied by Apollo 12 and Skylab 3 astronaut Alan L. Bean , toured the center and filmed scenes for the video in Mission Control and other facilities. NASA hoped that her stature and popularity would encourage women and minorities to apply, and indeed they did. In January 1978, when NASA announced the selection of 35 new astronauts from more than 8,000 applicants, for the first time the astronaut class included women and minorities. All distinguished themselves as NASA astronauts and paved the way for others in subsequent astronaut selections. Nichols returned to JSC in September 2010 with the Traveling Space Museum, an organization that partners with schools to promote space studies. She toured Mission Control and the International Space Station trainer accompanied by NASA astronaut B. Alvin Drew . She also flew aboard NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) airborne telescope aircraft managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, in September 2015.

Meanwhile, the Star Trek brand renewed itself in 1979 as a full-length motion picture with the original TV series cast members reprising their roles. Over the years, several sequels followed this first film. And on the small screen, a reboot of sorts occurred in 1987 with the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a new series set in the 24 th century aboard the Enterprise-D, a next generation starship with a new crew. That series lasted seven seasons, followed by a near-bewildering array of spin-off series, all built on the Star Trek brand, that continue to this day.

James Doohan, the actor who played Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, the Starship Enterprise’s chief engineer, had early associations with NASA. In April 1967, Doohan visited NASA’s Dryden (now Armstrong) Flight Research Center in California, spending time with NASA test pilot Bruce A. Peterson. A month later, Peterson barely survived a horrific crash of the experimental M2-F2 lifting body aircraft. He inspired the 1970s TV series The Six-Million Dollar Man, and the show’s opening credits include film of the crash. Doohan narrated a documentary film about the space shuttle released shortly before Columbia made its first flight in April 1981. In January 1991, Doohan visited JSC and with NASA astronaut Mario Runco (who sometimes went by the nickname “Spock”) toured the shuttle trainers, Mission Control, and tried his hand at operating the shuttle’s robotic arm in the Manipulator Development Facility. In a unique tribute, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong , the first person to step on the lunar surface , spoke at Doohan’s retirement in 2004, addressing him as “one old engineer to another.”

George Takei, who played Enterprise helmsman Lt. Hikaru Sulu, and his husband Brad, visited JSC in May 2012. Invited by both Asian American and LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Groups, Takei spoke of leadership and inclusiveness, including overcoming challenges while in Japanese American internment camps during World War II and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. He noted that Star Trek remained ahead of its time in creating a future when all members of society could equally participate in great undertakings, at a time when the country struggled through the Civil Rights movement and the conflict in Southeast Asia. The inclusiveness that is part of NASA’s culture greatly inspired him. JSC Director Michael L. Coats presented Takei with a plaque including a U.S. flag flown aboard space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-135 mission. He also visited Mission Control and spent some time with Robonaut.

Leonard Nimoy played the science officer aboard the Starship Enterprise, the half-human, half-Vulcan Mr. Spock. The actor watched in September 2012 when space shuttle Enterprise arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, on the last leg of its journey to the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, where it currently resides. “This is a reunion for me,” observed Nimoy. “Thirty-five years ago, I met the Enterprise for the first time.” As noted earlier, the Star Trek cast attended the first space shuttle’s rollout in 1976. Following his death in 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti paid tribute to Nimoy aboard the International Space Station by wearing a Star Trek science officer uniform, giving the Vulcan greeting, and proclaiming, “Of all the souls I have encountered … his was the most human.”

Captain James T. Kirk, played by actor William Shatner, a life-long advocate of science and space exploration, served at the helm of the Starship Enterprise. His relationship with NASA began during the original series, with references to the space agency incorporated into several story lines. In 2011, Shatner hosted and narrated a NASA documentary celebrating the 30 th anniversary of the Space Shuttle program , and gave his time and voice to other NASA documentaries. NASA recognized Shatner’s contributions in 2014 with a Distinguished Public Service Medal , the highest award NASA bestows on non-government individuals. NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Communications Robert “Bob” N. Jacobs presented the medal to Shatner. The award’s citation read, “For outstanding generosity and dedication to inspiring new generations of explorers around the world, and for unwavering support for NASA and its missions of discovery.” In 2019, Shatner narrated the NASA video We Are Going , about NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the Moon. He has spoken at numerous NASA-themed events and moderated panels about NASA’s future plans. On Oct. 13, 2021, at the age of 90, Shatner reached the edge of space during the NS-18 suborbital flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle, experiencing three minutes of weightlessness.

Elements of the Star Trek universe have made their way not only into popular culture but also into NASA culture. As noted above, Star Trek fans had a hand in naming the first space shuttle Enterprise. NASA’s Earth observation facility aboard the space station that makes use of its optical quality window bears the name the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF). The connection between that acronym and the name of a Klingon officer aboard the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series seemed like an opportunity not to be missed – the facility’s official patch bears its name in English and in Klingon. Several astronaut crews have embraced Star Trek themes for their unofficial photographs. The STS-54 crew dressed in the uniforms of Starship Enterprise officers from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the second full-length feature motion picture of the series. Space shuttle and space station crews created Space Flight Awareness (SFA) posters for their missions, and more than one embraced Star Trek themes. The Expedition 21 crew dressed in uniforms from the original series, while the STS-134 crew chose as their motif the 2009 reboot motion picture Star Trek.

As much as Star Trek has influenced NASA, in turn the agency has left its mark on the franchise, from episodes referencing actual and future spaceflight events to NASA astronauts making cameo appearances on the show. The first-season episode “Court Martial” that aired in February 1967 featured a photograph of the December 1965 Gemini VI launch adorning a wall aboard a star base. In the second-season episode “Return to Tomorrow,” airing in February 1968, Captain Kirk in a dialogue about risk-taking remarks, “Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the Moon?” a prescient reference to the first Apollo mission to reach the Moon more than 10 months after the episode aired. Astronaut Mae C. Jemison , who credits Nichelle Nichols as her inspiration to become an astronaut, appeared in the 1993 episode “Second Chances” of Star Trek: The Next Generation , eight months after her actual spaceflight aboard space shuttle Endeavour. In May 2005, two other NASA astronauts, Terry W. Virts and E. Michael Fincke , appeared in “These are the Voyages…,” the final episode of the series Star Trek: Enterprise.

In the 2016 documentary “ NASA on the Edge of Forever: Science in Space ,” host NASA astronaut Victor J. Glover states, “Science and Star Trek go hand-in-hand.” The film explores how for 50 years, Star Trek influenced scientists, engineers, and even astronauts to reach beyond their potential. While the space station doesn’t speed through the galaxy like the Starship Enterprise, much of the research conducted aboard the orbiting facility can make the fiction of Star Trek come a little closer to reality. Several of the cast members from the original TV series share their viewpoints in the documentary, along with those of NASA managers and scientists. Over the years, NASA has created several videos highlighting the relationship between the agency and the Star Trek franchise. In 2016, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden led a video tribute to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of the first Star Trek episode.

In 2021, on the 100 th anniversary of Gene Roddenberry’s birth, his son Rod hosted a virtual panel discussion , introduced by NASA Administrator C. William “Bill” Nelson , about diversity and inspiration, two ideals the Star Trek creator infused into the series. Panelists included Star Trek actor Takei, Tracy D. Drain, flight systems engineer for the Europa Clipper spacecraft at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim , Swati Mohan, guidance and operations lead for the Mars 2020 rover at JPL, and Hortense B. Diggs, Director of the Office of Communication and Public Engagement at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mutual attraction between NASA and Star Trek stems from, to paraphrase the opening voiceover from the TV series, that both seek to explore and discover new worlds, and to boldly go where no one has gone before. The diversity, inclusion, and inspiration involved in these endeavors ensure that they will live long and prosper.

Explore More

25 Years Ago: STS-96 Resupplies the Space Station

15 Years Ago: First Time all Partners Represented aboard the International Space Station

40 Years Ago: NASA Selects its 10th Group of Astronauts

Alan Scarfe, 'Double Impact' and 'Lethal Weapon 3' Actor, Dead at 77

Alan Scarfe die on April 28 following a battle with colon cancer. He died at his home in Québec, Canada.

Alan Scarfe -- a classically-trained British-Canadian actor who starred opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Impact and Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 3 --  has died. He was 77.

Scarfe's family announced in an online obituary that the actor died peacefully on April 28 following a battle with colon cancer. The family also shared that Scarfe died at his home in Longueuil in the province of Québec, Canada. The online obituary listed many of his accolades as an actor, director and novelist.

For so long, Scarfe -- born in Harpenden, England but raised in Vancouver, Canada -- romanticized the idea of becoming a classically-trained actor.

"I wanted to be a great classical actor in the long tradition of Burbage, Garrick, Kean, Booth, Olivier," he gushed in an August 2007 interview . "45 years ago when I began, it was still possible to think in such a romantic, idealistic way."

He accomplished the feat after studying at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He'd go on to play a big role behind the scenes in the late 1960s as an associate director of the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, England.

Scarfe would eventually dedicate his professional career to stage theater, globetrotting and performing across Europe, the U.S. and Canada and performing more than 100 roles. And it was in Canada while performing eight seasons at the Stratford Festival when he began his ascend and landed a number of film roles, including The Bay Boy (1984), Deserters (1984), Overnight (1986), Street Justice (1987) and Iron Eagle II (1988), among others.

Scarfe once played coy when asked which films he was most proud of following a long career in Hollywood.

"I don't really think of film and television as the impressive part of my career," he said. "But of the films it is mostly the small, independent ones of which I am most proud. Films like Deserters and The Portrait and the recent Hamster Cage ."

In 1988, Scarfe made his way onto Broadway, portraying Macduff in  Macbeth opposite Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson. But fans will undoubtedly remember him from his sci-fi roles, including Dr. Bradley Talmadge from the National Security Agency in Seven Days . The UPN series aired 66 episodes across three seasons from 1998 to 2001.

Scarfe also appeared in  Star Trek: The Next Generation  and Star Trek: Voyager . He'd continue to endear himself with Trekkies during his numerous appearances at Star Trek conventions. Suffice it to say, he relished his sci-fi roles.

"Science fiction on film and television, especially if you are playing some kind of alien character with fantastic make-up, is great for actors with a strong stage background," he once shared. "The productions need that kind of size and intensity of performance. You can't really mumble if you're a Klingon."

Born Alan John Scarfe on June 8, 1946, the late actor emigrated to Canada with his parents and two brothers as his father pursued a career in academics. In fact, the Scarfe Building at the University of British Columbia is named after his father.

Scarfe, who wrote three novels including The Revelation of Jack the Ripper , was first married to Sara Botsford, but he would later meet his second wife, the actress Barbara March, when he was performing at the Stratford Festival in the mid 1970s. They remained married until her death in 2019. 

Scarfe is survived by his daughter, son, brother and two grandchildren.

RELATED CONTENT:

Tom Bower, 'The Waltons' and 'Die Hard 2' Actor, Dead at 86

Erich Anderson, 'Felicity' and 'Dallas' Actor, Dead at 67

Elizabeth MacRae, 'General Hospital' and 'Gomer Pyle' Star, Dead at 88

Updates on Celebrity News, TV, Fashion and More!

María Trénor Shares Debut Trailer for Her Annecy Main Competition Player ‘Rock Bottom’ (EXCLUSIVE)

By Jamie Lang

• How Catalonia Became One of Europe’s Fastest Growing Animation Hubs 14 hours ago
• Catalan Titles Set to Impress at Annecy 2024 14 hours ago
• Catalonia’s Adult Animation Scene Prospers as Artists Push to Tell Mature Stories 14 hours ago

Celebrated Spanish filmmaker María Trénor’s debut feature “ Rock Bottom ” will premiere in the main competition at this year’s Annecy Festival, and she has given Variety exclusive access to the film’s first trailer.

Related Stories

How content spending will grow in the post-peak tv era, nintendo switch oled is marked down to the cheapest price we’ve ever seen, popular on variety.

Variety: What was it about Robert Wyatt’s music that made animation the right medium for this story?

María Trénor: For two reasons: one economic and one artistic. The film is set in the early ’70s in Mallorca and New York, it would be very expensive in terms of budget to represent the spaces of that time in a live-action film. On the other hand, the film has many dreamlike scenes that represent the state of distorted reality that the characters experience when taking drugs and alcohol. Animation is the perfect medium since the only limit to representation is how far your imagination goes.

Congratulations on directing your first feature and having it go right into competition at Annecy. How long was the development process for this film, and then how long were you in production?

I wrote the script for Rock Bottom more than 10 years ago, just after meeting Robert Wyatt and getting the OK to make a musical film based on his album. From then until now, many adventures and ups and downs have happened until I met Alba Sotorra, a Catalan producer committed to films made by women who bets on different and original projects. It’s been exactly two years of production since I started working with her.

What references did you use for designing these characters, which were based on real people?

How did you divide up responsibilities during production? I see you wrote and directed. Did you handle any other responsibilities?

I’ve written and directed the actors on set, I’ve been the art director, I’ve done backgrounds, I’ve designed the main characters, I’ve done compositing and shadows for some sequences, I’ve sung in a song that plays in the film, and I’ve animated the experimental films that the main character makes. Except for the animation in Toon Boom and the editing, I’ve done everything in this film. This film has been my life for two years.

More from Variety

Variety to host inaugural indigenous storytelling in entertainment breakfast, understanding the slow rollout of nextgen tv, with queen catalog deal, sony would rule cooled music publishing market, more from our brands, daytime emmys 2024 livestream: how to watch the awards ceremony online for free, this revamped robert byrd-designed home in l.a. can be yours for $3.5 million, ua’s plank has four years to double stock price—and $325m to gain, the best loofahs and body scrubbers, according to dermatologists, 9-1-1: lone star shocker: sierra mcclain leaving as final season rumors swirl, verify it's you, please log in.