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V'Ger (with the alternate spelling of Vejur [4] ) was an extraordinary machine entity encountered by the Federation in 2273 . The entity's surrounding energy cloud was over two AUs in diameter and generated amounts of radiation rivalling the heliosphere of Sol . The luminescent cloud interior was measured to be a level of 12th power energy.

• 3 Aftermath
• 4 Alternate reality
• 5.1 Connections
• 5.2 External links

History [ ]

The size and power of V'Ger worried all in the Federation, when it was detected on a direct heading for Earth , at a sustained velocity of Warp factor 7. The interior of the spacecraft seemed to be capable of holding a crew of tens of thousands or a crew of a thousand-each ten miles tall.

With the entity being over 54.3 hours from Earth, Starfleet rushed the refit of the USS Enterprise , so that it could be launched in time to intercept V'Ger . After penetrating the huge entity and traveling to the center, Admiral James T. Kirk and his crew encountered V'Ger, who proceeded to send a probe that "absorbed" Enterprise navigator Ilia ; with all of her memories and personality. "She" returned in the form of the now-deceased Lieutenant : wearing her casual attire and equipped with a transmitter /receiver (or, tranceiver combination). Soon after, the Enterprise crew discovered that V'Ger was actually the NASA probe, Voyager 6 , which had been launched from Earth in 1999 , entered a black hole which transported the probe across time and space to another part of the universe, where it was encountered by an advanced civilization of living machines. These sentient machines turned Voyager 6 into a like member of their race, giving V'Ger sentience and sending it off to complete the mission which the once Voyager 6 was originally assigned to.

Decker joining with V'Ger

V'ger and C'qer in 2411 .

Over the hundreds of years it took to return home, V'Ger took its mission to heart and learn everything it could to extremes, as it absorbed everything it was exposed to, and having learned everything, wanted to return to Earth to impart its knowledge (by old-style radio waves) and join with its Creator . Realizing that the fate of Earth was in their hands, Commander Willard Decker joined with the entity and programmed the information it needed to transmit its data. Once the two were joined, the entity evolved onto another plane of existence and headed for the Andromeda Galaxy . ( TOS movie : Star Trek: The Motion Picture ; TOS - Star Trek II Short Stories short story : " To Wherever "; TOS novel : Ex Machina )

After encountering the Borg , it was believed that the planet V'Ger landed on was the Central Node and that V'Ger was simply another branch of the Borg Collective that assimilated through the use of energy. ( TOS novel : The Return )

V'Ger's core.

However, the Vulcan scientist T'Uerell , after deciphering the secrets of the Borg Collective , uncovered evidence that it was V'Ger who first created the Collective to serve as heralds in its search for its Creator. However, the Borg strayed from their original purpose as the Borg Queen assumed more power. ( ST video game : Legacy )

It is believed that Leviathan , another massive sentient machine, was related to V'Ger and possibly from the same machine planet. ( VOY comic : " Leviathan ")

Aftermath [ ]

Starfleet termed this crisis the V'Ger mission .

The evolution of V'Ger had some wide ranging effects on the rest of the Federation and beyond. On Daran IV , Dovraku and his "Faithful" viewed this as a Sign that the time had come to reinstate the Oracle of the People 's control over the Fabrini . ( TOS novel : Ex Machina )

On planet Mestiko , the defeat of this threat to Earth was used as proof that the Federation could have defended their world from the destructive effects of " the Pulse " and opted not to in order to subjugate the Payav race. ( TOS - Mere Anarchy eBook : The Darkness Drops Again )

The entity known as the Leviathan was believed to have had some connection with V'Ger. ( VOY comic : " Leviathan ")

Alternate reality [ ]

The Narada meets V'Ger .

In the Kelvin timeline , V'Ger detected the arrival of the Narada when it emerged in 2233 . Still in the Delta Quadrant as of 2258 , V'Ger, seeing the sentient Narada as a kindred spirit, made contact with the vessel when it was moored in orbit of Rura Penthe , summoning its kin to itself. As V'Ger communicated with the Narada , Nero exploited his own telepathic link with the Narada to commune with V'Ger. After scanning the Narada , V'Ger brought Nero to its core where the two learnt of the other's life. Though V'Ger attempted to assimilate Nero, it found itself unable to process his hatred. Nero however was able to exploit this connection in order to use V'Ger's powerful computers to calculate where and when Spock would emerge from the black hole. From V'Ger memory banks, he noted that the technology that the living machines had used to enhance Voyager 6 was related to the Borg in some way and that both were "children of an ancient, unknown civilization." ( TOS - Nero comic : " Number Three ")

Appendices [ ]

Connections [ ], external links [ ].

• V'Ger article at Memory Alpha , the wiki for canon Star Trek .
• List_of_Star_Trek_characters_(T–Z)#V'Ger article at Wikipedia , the free encyclopedia.
• ↑ TOS movie : The Motion Picture .
• ↑ ST reference : Star Trek Chronology .
• ↑ STO - Terran Gambit mission : " The Fujiwhara Effect ".
• ↑ TOS novelization : The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry .
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• 3 Constitution class

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May 5, 2022

Star Trek The Motion Picture-A Complete History of V'Ger Origins

 At over 97,000 meters in length, the entity known as V'Ger is not something any race can ignore. When it entered Federation space, it eliminated everything that scanned or approached it. Though, its origins would not be discovered until the climax of the movie.

Although did you know that further media would reveal more about this lifeform's strange creation? We have collated the information available about all the V'Ger origins and how they unfold into its story. Below, you can learn everything there is to know, so when you see it on-screen, you can do so with a full understanding of the events that led to its arrival.

V'Ger's Canon Origins

In the real world, the entity called V'Ger first appeared in the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A Director's Edition 4k streaming version of which is currently available on Paramount Plus.

By the end of this movie, you discover V'Ger's fictional origins. In the universe of Star Trek, the Voyager spacecraft missions did not end with Voyager 2. Instead, the probes continued for at least six iterations, with the last launching in 1999.

Voyager 6, the last of the probes, traveled as the others did through the solar system before Earth lost all contact. The Earth governments of the time did not realize that it was not destroyed. It had in fact, fallen through a black hole and re-emerged in another area of the universe.

Star Trek canon is unsure of where this area is. Speculation suggests that it could be anywhere from the other side of the galaxy to a different, extragalactic space.

First Contact

After emerging from the other side of the black hole, V'Ger encountered a planet of what it described as "living machines." These beings saw that Voyager was damaged and, seeing only the letters V, G, E, and R on its side, called it "V'Ger." The other letters were not visible due to damage to the spacecraft.

The living machines saw V'Ger as a primitive machine, but a member of their own kin. They also read Voyager's programming and understood that its creators had programmed it to learn everything that it could. These living machines took these instructions literally.

They rebuilt V'Ger, giving a sense of sentience as they understood it. They also reformed V'Ger's metal "body." This gave it highly advanced sensory equipment and data storage devices.

To protect it, these living machines also augmented V'Ger with the capability to defend itself. This would allow it to travel in relative safety.

As V'Ger began its long journey, it began to think for itself. As a machine, it could not think in terms of emotion, but only logic, and began to question its existence. It decided that it must find its creators to answer this question, and so started its journey back to Sector 001 , the Terran system, and Earth.

As V'Ger encountered the beings of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, it caused immense damage in its attempts to learn more. It considered carbon-based life to be an infestation. As such, it would remove it from its path as it continued inexorably towards the capital of the Federation.

Because of this, and not knowing what the entity was, Starfleet ordered the USS Enterprise to intercept and stop it. The Enterprise's V'Ger mission is cataloged in the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The Borg Theory

Several places in Star Trek lore suggest that V'Ger and the Borg share a connection. You should note that these sources are not the same as the canon of Star Trek movies or TV. As such, they may be contradicted elsewhere.

In the 90s and 00s, William Shatner penned a series of Star Trek novels alongside a team of other writers. These "Shatnerverse" stories depict events after Star Trek: Generations. Despite his death in that movie, they deal with the ongoing legacy of Captain James T. Kirk .

Within them, we learn that V'Ger landed on the Borg homeworld of the Delta Quadrant. Here, an early iteration of the Borg are the ones who create V'Ger and sent it back towards the Alpha Quadrant.

Star Trek: Legacy

While not an origin of V'Ger per se, this depiction does contradict other depictions of the Borg and V'Ger. In the video game "Star Trek: Legacy" - V'Ger created the Borg.

After Captain William Decker merged with V'Ger, it moved out into the galaxy. Here, it used this merging as a pattern for the creation of more cybernetic creatures.

As V'Ger's Borg expanded, they needed a single unifying voice to calm their collective consciousness. Out of that need, a Borg Queen was born who soon overruled V'Ger's demands.

Star Trek: Nero

Shortly before the movie "Star Trek" was released in 2009, several prequel comics emerged that talked about the character Nero. Nero, a Romulan, along with the help of the Tal Shiar, had retrofitted his mining vessel Narada with Borg nanoprobes.

While not specifically confirmed in the TV show, Star Trek: Picard did reveal that the Romulans had access to Borg technology. This was in the form of a disabled Borg cube that they performed research on.

After the Narada is upgraded, it takes Nero to V'Ger in this alternate timeline. V'Ger recognizes the Narada as kin , suggesting that the Borg connection is more than only due to being electronic in nature.

Many fans have taken this to mean that these apocryphal sources are accurate. Thus, they believe the Borg are the "living machines" that V'Ger encounters.

More on V'Ger Origins and Other Trek Facts

As a Star Trek fan, you should now have a much denser understanding of Star Trek theories and lore. Maybe now you are a big fan of V'Ger or the original Constitution-class Enterprise. Either way, you probably want to show off your love for the Trek universe.

We supply memorabilia from every corner of the world. You may even want your own V'Ger model now that you understand the V'Ger origins. If so, we have them available, so grab one today .

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What Was V’Ger: Star Trek’s Original Movie Villain Explained

• V'Ger, the unique villain in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, was a sentient machine seeking answers about humanity's purpose.
• The movie's cerebral tone and sluggish pace didn't resonate with audiences as well as the action-packed Wrath of Khan storyline.
• Kirk and Spock's cinematic adventure faced criticism but set the stage for future Star Trek villains to be more tangible and relatable.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture pitted Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the USS Enterprise against V'Ger, a unique villain in the history of the Star Trek: The Original Series movies. Released in 1979, The Motion Picture was the first live action adventure for Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in a decade, following the cancelation of TOS in 1969. Directed by The Andromeda Strain 's Robert Wise, with visual effects from 2001: A Space Odyssey 's Douglas Trumbull, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a suitably cinematic spectacle .

Despite the cinematic talent involved in its production, the first Star Trek movie was criticized for its sluggish pace and cerebral tone. William Shatner reflected in his book Star Trek Movie Memories that he thought The Motion Picture " wasn't good. " Arguably, Star Trek: The Motion Picture 's "villain", V'Ger contributed heavily to this slightly cold and cerebral tone that put off critics and cast members . Indeed, esteemed movie critic Roger Ebert , while generally positive about The Motion Picture , highlighted the movie's " incomprehensible alien forces ".

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What was v’ger in star trek: the motion picture.

V'Ger was a space probe that originated on Earth centuries before the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Shortly after leaving Earth's orbit, the Voyager 6 probe was pulled into an anomaly, and emerged into what it believed to be the furthest region of the galaxy. After falling into the gravitational pull of a planet inhabited by living machines, Voyager was renamed, repaired and augmented with vastly superior data retrieval and defensive technology to that of the 20th century. These aliens then sent V'Ger back to its creators, and on its long way home, the probe collected a vast wealth of knowledge about the galaxy, and gained sentience .

Michael and Denise Okuda's 1993 book Star Trek Chronology suggests that Gene Roddenberry later joked that the machine planet visited by V'Ger was the home of Star Trek: The Next Generation 's Borg Collective.

The USS Enterprise intercepted V'Ger on its return to Earth's solar system, to discover a being desperate for answers to the deep philosophical question of " is that all there is? " It was V'Ger's quest for answers that brought it back to Earth, to seek an audience with its creator. If its request was not granted, V'Ger would destroy the planet, forcing Captain Will Decker (Stephen Collins) to offer an alternative solution. Merging with the probe, Decker gave V'Ger the information it was seeking about humanity , and creating a brand-new form of life in the process.

Why Star Trek Movie Villains Became More Like Khan Than V’Ger

Audiences took to the epic action and adventure of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan more than the philosophical tone of Star Trek: The Motion Picture . This meant that future Star Trek movie villains were crafted in the mold of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). V'Ger was a vast, unknowable, sentient machine that didn't have much to offer moviegoers in 1979. It's easier for audiences to relate to the Enterprise crew's movie adventures if there's a tangible villain that can face off against Kirk or Spock.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan defined the rest of the Star Trek: The Original Series movies and beyond, because it proved that audiences were willing to look beyond cerebral sci-fi concepts if there was a recognizable villainous archetype. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the exception, because despite featuring another alien probe intent on destroying the Earth, the pacing and script remembered to let the Enterprise crew have fun. The huge commercial success of Voyage Home suggests that the real problem with Star Trek: The Motion Picture was its characterization of Kirk and the crew, rather than its choice of V'Ger as a villain.

All six Star Trek: The Original Series movies are currently available to stream on MAX.

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Star Trek: The Original Series follows the exploits of the crew of the USS Enterprise. On a five-year mission to explore uncharted space, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) must trust his crew - Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Forest DeKelley), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) - with his life. Facing previously undiscovered life forms and civilizations and representing humanity among the stars on behalf of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise regularly comes up against impossible odds and diplomatic dilemmas.

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The accompanying booklet features articles on the design of the ship and filming of the V’Ger sequences and is full of beautiful concept art.

If you’re looking for a striking model of an iconic ship that isn’t often given the model treatment, Eaglemoss’ special edition V’Ger is a good choice — and you can pick it up now for $49.99 in the US and for £24.99 in the UK web shop.

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V'ger "amphitheater" set plans?

• Thread starter Redfern
• Start date Aug 15, 2024

Rear Admiral

• Aug 15, 2024

Do any "set plans" for V'ger central core, the amphitheater that housed the Voyager 6 probe, exist anywhere online? You know, something akin to blueprints or elevation drawings. At some point I'd like to try digitally modeling that segmented bowl structure. I know it's divided into 9 "wedges", each 40 degrees, and almost identical to one another. That'll make the task relatively simple. But a cross section slice would be of great help getting the proportions and the angle of the sloping panels correct.. No need for a Voyager probe as I already have one. Any feedback will be appreciated. To be clear, this is not any kind of emergency, just something I'd like to model for fun at some point.  

• Aug 16, 2024

Firebird said: Vger Vger Archive of Star Trek Set Blueprints frogland.co.uk Click to expand...

I could've sworn I've seen a drawing of the various boxes and panels, but the closest thing I can find is some concept art. It's a side elevation, but the proportions aren't final.  

• Aug 17, 2024

Redfern said: Ooh...! some beautiful resources there, to be sure! I DO greatly appreciate your research, really ! Alas, what V'Ger plans that site contains seems to be the exterior of the entire "ship", a side elevation of the human built probe, but none for the amphitheater . Sigh... That's the way it goes some5times. Never the less, that site looks to be a treasure trove for many other Trek artifacts. I'm bookmarking it, anyway. Click to expand...

Firebird said: I'd recommend checking out the Set Blueprint Exchange thread in the Fan Art forum. The website I linked to is the work of Redgeneral who's been gathering and cataloging any Trek blueprints that have made their way out into the interwebs. Click to expand...

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Designing the Living Machine

After the planned pilot of the second Star Trek television series, “ In Thy Image ,” became the basis for Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Richard Taylor as art director assumed responsibility for designing the mysterious entity known as V’Ger (then still written as “Vejeur”). Mike Minor had drawn a few concepts for Phase II . Tony Smith, brought in by Taylor, developed the entity further.

Taylor’s idea was that the whole of V’Ger would never be seen. “It was to be a dark object, not some light-covered mothership from Close Encounters ,” he told Tracy Tobias in 2001 . “It’s always more mysterious to show less and leave it to the imagination.”

There’s a part of V’Ger toward the tail section, where there is a huge sphere that rotates and in the center of that sphere is the old Voyager 6 probe. Our V’Ger design is much more complex and much more mysterious. For one thing, it would have been a lot more interactive with the Enterprise .

Taylor’s philosophy was to make V’Ger a living machine.

It would have “morphed” and on the inside the walls would have been iridescent and changed as the Enterprise moved past them.

Images of the Enterprise would be projected on the walls as V’Ger was analyzing the ship. Parts of walls would break apart like a flock of birds or a swarm of insects.

The swarms would go from one place to another and reassemble. You could think of the particles as digital energy or digital information. I wanted it to be a very metamorphical and very mysterious place. For the exterior of the thing, one of the design concepts I had was to photo-etch thin metal plates so that the outside surface would have multiple levels which would continually move, creating different patterns. We found a material that you could apply like paint that when heated with warm air from a blower would change color. It had an iridescent color quality that I was looking for, like a beetles’ back or butterflies wings. I wanted V’Ger’s skin or surface to change color near the Enterprise as it moved over the surface. I wanted the image of the Enterprise to be left like glowing phosphor images along the walls of V’Ger.

Transformation

At the end of the film, V’Ger would have evolved into a higher being. “What we had storyboarded was that the whole V’Ger craft unfolds and turns into this incredible object in space,” said Taylor.

That effect would have started where Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the Voyager 6 was and would have radiated outward from there through the ship. There would have been this change that goes through V’Ger’s interior and then to the outside, unfolding into a big flower kind of thing with all these radiating colors and such.

The visual effects in 2001 Director’s Edition approximated this vision, but the original 1979 film looked less impressive.

Brick Price, whose company Brick Price Movie Miniatures was brought in by Robert April on The Motion Picture , worked on the V’Ger model, or at least the early stages of it while Taylor was art director.

The model they started on in August 1978 looked like a cigar with a maw that opened up. They disliked the design, feeling it was too reminiscent of “The Doomsday Machine”, and there was already enough trouble with the script being similar to that episode and “The Changeling”.

But we did a lot of tests working with the textures like paint, color and light, things of that sort, and it wound up with a very organic Art Deco look to it. Taylor was an avid deco fan. That one might have been interesting had they gone with it. It would have had a bubble on it and the Voyager craft would have been on an island underneath one of those. The whole skin surface was sort of iridescent. But then Paramount decided to have miles and miles of white and not let people know what it looked like exactly. Ours was really bizarre and all convoluted with things hanging off it. So every time it changed hands it changed completely. Taylor’s original interior concept of V’Ger was extremely complex. You can see all sorts of actual light functions and all sorts of spheres representing the V’Ger concept of life.

Taylor felt the changing of hands compromised the design. “We had built test pieces and had done extensive tests of processes we were going to use when we finally began construction,” he said. But Douglas Trumbull, the movie’s director of “special photographic effects” (as VFX were called back then) was unimpressed. “I was told Trumbull described the exterior as a ‘weird fish’.”

A new approach

Trumbull was brought in by the studio with less than a year to finish the effects. He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014 that Robert Abel and Associates — the company Taylor worked for — had made some fundamental mistakes by using technology that wasn’t ready for primetime. They also had no motion-picture experience. A desperate Paramount gave Trumbull carte blanche .

He divided the work between two teams: his would work on the interior while John Dykstra was put in charge of V’Ger’s exterior.

The work that the Abel studios had done was abandoned, and the teams set out to develop entirely new concepts. Famed illustrators Robert T. McCall and Syd Mead were hired to design a new version of the giant spacecraft, with Mead’s concepts having the biggest influence.

The model of V’Ger they built was never seen in its entirety, but it was an incredible beast, 60 feet long. Dykstra remembered that constructing it in time posed logistical problems:

We were building the model on one end of the stage and photographing it on the other with a black curtain between the two — that was the unique approach to doing the work. We had three crews working 8-hour shifts in order to get that work done.

The situation was complicated because the camera had to record several passes over the model at slow speeds. Some of the passes took as long as 18 hours, and if the motors failed (which they often did) they had to be recorded again from the beginning.

Trumbull’s team, handling the interior of V’Ger, considered several approaches — possibly using matte paintings or some kind of laser-scanning effect — before settling on a conventional model.

When it was filmed, the model was filled with smoke to give it a sense of scale. The walls were originally illuminated with miniature light bulbs, which were built into the model. However, when it came to filming they were too big to be convincing. Greg Jein, who had built the model, suggested a solution: drill hundreds of holes in the model and run fiberoptic lights behind them.

The major reason Trumbull took on the shots inside V’Ger was that he was also filming a new sequence in which Spock explored the inside of the vast machine . His Spock spacewalk replaced the memory wall sequence that Abel studios had planned, and which had been filmed during first-unit photography. Trumbull did not feel he could make the sequence work. The wire work that had been filmed on the stage was awkward and unwieldy. There were problems with reflections in the spacesuit faceplates.

Trumbull convinced Director Robert Wise to let him shoot a new sequence, which he designed himself. The storyboards were worked up by Tom Cranham, with several artists, including McCall and David Negrón, developing concepts for the things Spock would see. The spacesuits were completely redesigned and built at Apogee.

The final effect — when V’Ger disappears leaving the Enterprise in orbit around Earth — was specially designed so that it only expanded horizontally, insuring that it could not be mistaken for a conventional explosion.

Incredibly, all these shots were completed in time for the movie’s premiere and the world was so impressed with what it saw that the Trumbull/Dykstra team was jointly nominated for an Academy Award.

12 comments

I believe that the image shown here is Mike Minor’s concept of V’Ger for the Phase II television pilot. If you look at the enlarged image, you can see Minor’s signature at the lower right. For certain, this image pre-dates the production of The Motion Picture , because Starlog published a photo of Minor in front of this rendering back in 1977 or so.

Hey Pierre. You mean this one? The signature is difficult to read, but I think you may be right.

Hi Nick, Yes, that’s the picture I meant. By the way, I love the website and am astounded at all the images that I’ve never seen before. I really am interested in the production of the Phase II series and wished there was more imagery available of the sets as they stood before the switch-over to The Motion Picture . I’ve found some very nice photos in old issues of Fantastic Films as well as poorly reproduced images from the Enterprise Incidents fanzine and wished that better versions were available! No matter, your website is great and will keep me entertained for a good long time!

I think you may be right. Let me correct that in the article. Thanks for the kind words about the site! It is hard to find quality pictures of the Phase II sets. There is some test footage from 1977 of the engineering set, but of the bridge I’ve only seen a couple of photographs and no photos of the sickbay set, as far as I know.

Hey Nick, Yes, that illustration of V’Ger is definitely the Star Trek: Phase II version as designed by Mike Minor. His signature is on it in fact. Hope you are doing well, my friend!!

Do any elevation-type drawings exist anywhere of V’Ger’s “core” the ‘amphitheater” where the original Earth-based space probe was anchored? It doesn’t have to be fancy, just some kind of cross-section outline showing the relative width of the base to the sloping sides (and their angles) as well as the relative height of the “pillars” surrounding the complex. “Fan” illustrations would serve well enough.

You would need a drawing or schematic of the set, I guess. I checked my archive, but I don’t appear to have such a drawing myself, sorry. Maybe somebody reading this can help.

I’ve always been intrigued by Abel’s concept of V’Ger. It would be amazing to see an “alternate” version of the movie made with CG renderings of the Abel version of the “living machine” replacing the Trumbull version.

Completely agree with you. I would love to see that version of V’Ger. It sounds so amazingly creative, and totally different to the one of the film. Much more organic, like a true living organism. Thank you so much for this website, photos, interviews, etc. I never came across all this information before and it is outstanding!

An amazing site, thank you so much for the background and detail to one of my favorite films.

Thank you for the kind words!

I’m in love with all this amazing never seen before content! Thank you so much for sharing it. How I would LOVE to see this version of V’Ger done nowadays… and as close as possible to these wonderful concepts and ideas. I love the iridescent texture idea as well the micro components and the “island” where the Voyager is. Such a pity it was not done…

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V'Ger is the main antagonist of the 1979 science fiction film Star Trek: The Motion Picture , the first installment in the Star Trek film series.

Biography [ ]

V'Ger was one of, if not the most powerful alien entity ever encountered by the Federation. The entity itself was the size of the island of Maui on Earth, while it generated a cloud measuring in at a staggering 82 AUs, making it large enough to envelope the entire solar system.

V'Ger was first identified in deep Klingon space, hidden in a massive cloud of energy, moving through the stars towards its final destination: Earth.

The cloud easily destroyed three of the Klingons' new K't'inga-class warships and the Federation monitoring station en route. Later on in the film, the newly refitted starship Enterprise intercepts the energy cloud. After getting the cloud to break off its attack on the Enterprise , Admiral Kirk orders the vessel to penetrate the cloud and discovers the massive vessel residing within. They then reach the front of the vessel and V'Ger then suddenly attacks the Enterprise. A probe appears on the bridge, attacks Spock and abducts the navigator, Ilia. V'Ger then uses its powerful tractor beam to move the Enterprise into its interior. Ilia suddenly reappears on the ship, now replaced by a robotic doppelganger, a probe sent by "V'Ger" to study the crew. Later, Spock takes an unauthorized spacewalk into V'Ger's core. He then minds melds with a massive model of Ilia in the center. Overloaded by information, Spock is knocked out. Later, after being rescued by Kirk, Spock reveals that V'Ger itself, is a living machine.

At the heart of the massive ship, V'Ger is revealed to be Voyager 6, a 20th-century Earth space probe believed lost. The damaged probe was found by an alien race of living machines that interpreted its programming as instructions to learn all that can be learned, and return that information to its creator. The machines upgraded the probe to fulfill its mission, and on its journey the probe gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness.

Spock realizes that V'Ger lacks the ability to give itself a focus other than its original mission; having learned what it could on its journey home, it finds its existence empty and without purpose. Before transmitting all its information, V'Ger insists that the Creator come in person to finish the sequence. Realizing that the machine wants to merge with its creator, Decker offers himself to V'Ger, as he merges with the Ilia probe and V'Ger, creating a new form of life that disappeared from the physical realm.

A few weeks later, Spock had mental contact with Voyager while working to defuse a crisis on the Fabrini world ship Yonada . Afterwards Spock reported to Kirk that the part of Voyager that had been Decker seemed to be happy in his new life.

• V'Ger is one of the few principal villains of the Star Trek movies to not be killed by the end of the movie. The others are the Whale Probe and Khan Noonien Singh (in the alternate reality).
• V'Ger is memorable for being the first ever main antagonist in a Star Trek film.
• For the 2001 Director's Edition of The Motion Picture , the size was scaled down from 82 AUs to 2 AUs. While this seems drastic, 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which still makes V'Ger one of the largest villains in Star Trek . In the novel Ex Machina the vessel itself is mentioned to be the size of Maui.
• In the non-canon novel The Return , V'Ger is revealed to be upgraded with Borg technology, which would make it the first Borg introduced in the Star Trek series.

Navigation [ ]

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• 2 Offspring
• 3 Absolute Solver

Klingon Fight with V'ger

The Klingon Fight with V'ger was an incident in Klingon history that took place during the 2270s . It involved a fleet of three Klingon K't'inga -class battle cruisers encountering, in Klingon territory , a hugely powerful lifeform which identified itself as " V'ger " and was manifesting as a vast, luminous cloud in space . Although the Klingon starships attacked V'ger , the entity rendered them and the weapons they fired totally ineffective. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

• 2 The battle
• 3 Aftermath
• 4 Background information

Prelude [ ]

In the late 20th century , the NASA deep space probe Voyager 6 was launched from Earth , designed to collect data and transmit it back to the planet . After falling into a black hole that took it to the far side of the galaxy , Voyager 6 was altered by the inhabitants of a machine planet and went on to gather so much knowledge that it developed into a sentient , living being that considered machines to be the only true lifeforms. On a mission to join with "the Creator ", V'ger entered Klingon space. The entity would misinterpret as hostile any contact, even scans of it, without an exchange of friendship messages first.

On approach to V'ger , a pair of Klingons watch the entity on the Amar 's viewscreen

Detecting the arrival of the gigantic entity, the fleet of Klingon battle cruisers set a heading for V'ger . Aboard the IKS Amar , as the three Klingon vessels were on final approach to the mysterious lifeform, the Amar 's captain , who spoke Klingonese , ordered that a visual of the entity be shown on the ship's viewscreen and that the Amar 's torpedoes be prepared to fire. The fight was about to commence.

The approach of the Klingon fleet towards V'ger is depicted, in the film , with a continuous 180-degree shot in which the trio of Klingon battle cruisers approach the camera, the view then tilts straight down as the ships pass directly under the camera, and the camera then rolls around to follow them from behind. This extremely sophisticated shot was thought up by John Dykstra at Apogee, Inc. ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 32) He later recollected, " It was a very difficult shot to do. It took almost three weeks of original photography to get the single center ship. " ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD) )

The battle [ ]

The Amar prepares to fire a photon torpedo at V'ger

The Amar initiated the engagement by launching three consecutively fired photon torpedoes at the cloud. At first, their course was tracked by the graphic displays on the Klingon ship's bridge . However, each of the three torpedoes vanished from those displays, one by one. This development alarmed the Klingon captain , who reacted by ordering that the Amar take evasive action. The ship's relative position, therefore, began to be elevated.

Meanwhile, the conflict was detected by the Federation comm station Epsilon IX . Audio-visual footage from the battle was intercepted by a Federation sensor drone on Quad L-14 . Aboard the Epsilon IX space station , the encounter was reported by a female lieutenant to Commander Branch , though the lieutenant wasn't sure who the Klingons were battling.

More footage of the battle was shown being received by Epsilon IX in the original theatrical cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture than in the director's edition . Deleted from the latter edit was a computer voice which commented on the progress of the battle, including a description of the V'ger cloud and the line, " Imperial Klingon Cruiser Amar continuing to attack. " Moments later, the interior view of the ship showed a hit from inside the bridge, the Klingon captain being stumbled away from the camera.

One of the Klingon vessels is eliminated by V'ger

A series of flashes illuminated the cloud. As the Klingon fleet continued to pursue a course away from the entity, V'ger shot a bolt of plasma energy which struck one of the Klingon battle cruisers, enveloping it in a lightning -like effect and a blue light that spread across the entirety of the ship's hull , immediately before causing the craft to disappear.

The Amar , the only remaining battle cruiser, attempts to flee from V'ger

Now, only the Amar was left of the Klingon forces. V'ger fired another plasma energy bolt at the remaining Klingon ship. Despite retaliating with a single photon torpedo fired from its aft torpedo launcher , the Amar was thwarted with the same effect as had engulfed the other two craft, even causing lightning-like energy tendrils to appear on the vessel's bridge. With the ship's disappearance, V'ger was left as the victor.

The production staff decided to show the digitization of the Amar from the perspective of the ship's bridge, a set that had been built in six levels. " We set up an elaborate six-level bluescreen optical so you could see the digitization effect working through the ship from back to front, " remembered Douglas Trumbull . " First we started with the full set. Then we replaced the farthest level – which was the back wall of the set – with a blue process screen so we could add the actual disintegration footage later. We had to have sequenced light sources concealed behind each level, because as the disintegration occurs a brilliant lighting effect flashes onto the other levels of the set. And we just worked through all six levels like that – very quickly, so that by the time the Klingons in the foreground turn to react, the effect has engulfed them. " ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 27)

Aftermath [ ]

At Epsilon IX, the outcome of this incident shocked Commander Branch and the female lieutenant. Whereas the battle had been fought in Klingon space, V'ger , as the lieutenant reported to Branch, was on a direct heading to Earth.

The conflict proved to Starfleet that V'ger was, in the words of Admiral James T. Kirk , "an object of unbelievable destructive power." To demonstrate this to the USS Enterprise 's crew , a recording of the incident, concluding with V'ger 's strike against the Amar and that craft's subsequent disappearance, was played on a viewer on the Enterprise 's recreation deck at 0400 hours. This was done at Kirk's request, he having recently been transferred to take command of the Enterprise from Will Decker . Kirk also pointed out to the assembled officers that the footage was everything Starfleet currently knew about the entity, apart from the fact that it was heading straight for Earth.

Unfortunately for the Federation, the Klingon encounter served as a shocking precedent for what was to come next, when, moments after the Enterprise crew finished watching the playback of the confrontation, Epsilon IX reported that it, too, was under attack by V'ger , which proceeded to eliminate the station in the same way it had with the Klingon vessels. Under Kirk's command, the Enterprise , though it had just completed an eighteen-month refit , was hurriedly launched to protect Earth from the imminent threat. After journeying inside the intruder and thereby discovering that V'ger had stored elaborate image recordings of everything it had passed along the way, the Enterprise ultimately succeeded in saving Earth. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

Background information [ ]

The name of this article is based on a line of dialogue in Star Trek: The Motion Picture , when Commander Branch, watching the encounter, asks about the Klingons, " Who are they fighting? "

This incident begins Star Trek: The Motion Picture . However, it had its conceptual roots in the Star Trek: Phase II script " In Thy Image ", similarly arranged to take place at the start of that feature-length episode. In the first and second drafts of the "In Thy Image" script (by Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry respectively), the three Klingon warships were identified as " Koro -class" (their designation was later changed to " K't'inga -class" in Roddenberry's novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture ). Roddenberry believed this battle is realistic from a Klingon standpoint. " It seems to be an unprovoked attack, but Gene Roddenberry noted that this is what Klingons would do, " explained The Motion Picture Director Robert Wise . ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD) )

Concept art for the conclusion of this battle, by Michael Minor for Phase II

The notion of the Klingon battle cruisers being defeated in the fray was already thought up for "In Thy Image", although the chosen technique of having them be annihilated was by causing them to actually explode. A couple of storyboards were illustrated in which this was V'ger 's method of overcoming the Klingon warships. ( The Art of Star Trek , p. 157) Douglas Trumbull recalled, " Abel's people had planned to take these models and blow them up, like in Star Wars ; and, in fact, they were building lightweight foam versions of the ships with pyrotechnics inside. " ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 27)

Despite the fact that the Klingon onslaught was featured at the beginning of "In Thy Image", John Dykstra had to persuade Gene Roddenberry that a similar large-scale confrontation, at the outset of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , could be achieved by his company: Apogee, Inc. To convince Roddenberry of this, Dykstra used the long opening shot portraying the arrival of the Klingon fleet. ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD) )

Although John Dykstra wanted the demise of the Klingon vessels to still be spectacular, a new method of removing the ships was thought up, instead of actively destroying them physically. Douglas Trumbull recalled, " We decided that that wasn't what we wanted here, because the idea – which we don't know at this point in the movie – is that V'ger is zapping these things and turning them into some kind of stored information. " ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 27) Robert Wise concurred, " What we wanted to indicate was the ships weren't really being destroyed but digitized; they were converted into data patterns by V'ger." ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD) ) As a result, the team opted to design an effect that sweeps from one end of a targeted ship to the other, deliberately giving the impression that each of the Klingon vessels was being transformed from a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional light form that was then stored by V'ger . ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 27)

The filming of this battle sequence, even including the live-action portions, was left until after principal photography on the film in general had been completed. The sequence was shot by John Dykstra, and Apogee also produced the effects for the battle. ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 27) The combat sequence called for the company to film closer to the K't'inga -class model than they had expected they would need to, so very minute surface details were purposefully added to the studio model . ( American Cinematographer , February 1980, p. 174) Ultimately, representing the defeat of the Klingon warships involved a variety of different techniques, including laser scanning and Tesla coil lightning effects. ( Cinefex , issue 1, p. 27)

This space battle doesn't include any hand-to-hand combat, yet Klingon disruptors were designed for the film by Andrew Probert . Probert also recommended an ultimately unused ending for the movie, where the Klingons who had been defeated by V'ger would return to pursue and assault the Enterprise , prompting it to carry out a saucer separation . For that sequence, Probert designed a series of storyboards, before the idea was discarded. ( The Art of Star Trek , pp. 182 & 198-199)

Upon editing the film for his director's cut of the movie, Robert Wise made the pacing of the battle slightly tighter. He specifically removed a couple of moments featuring the Klingon captain, feeling that these edits would make the captain seem a bit more aggressive in attacking the V'ger cloud. ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD) )

Prior to the original release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture , audio-visual clips from this battle, featuring the Amar firing a torpedo and one of the battle cruisers being consumed by the lightning effect, was revealed as part of the film's theatrical trailer. Similarly, footage of the Amar firing at V'ger was additionally incorporated into a trailer for the director's edition of the movie. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director's Edition (DVD) special features)

When the movie was released, this sequence not only reinforced to the audience the fact that they were watching a movie, given that there are as many as three spacecraft shown on screen at the same time as each other, but also established V'ger as a major threat. Regarding the historical context that the sequence had in reality, Daren Dochterman stated, " So, of course, we've already seen the Klingons being portrayed on the original series as real, you know, meanies and powerful, and now we see this dangerous cloud basically making mincemeat out of them with no trouble at all. " ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Blu-ray) / (2010 DVD) )

However, a reviewer for Time magazine lamented that the Klingons don't come back after this battle, completely misunderstanding that the Klingons are portrayed as attacking V'ger at the start of the film and were definitely intended to be separate from it. ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Blu-ray) / (2010 DVD) )

Garfield Reeves-Stevens was highly enthusiastic about this battle, describing it as "perhaps one of the best pieces of science fiction cinema ever made." Denise Okuda agreed by calling the sequence "cool." ( audio commentary , Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Blu-ray) / (2010 DVD) )

This battle was the first of many appearances of the K't'inga -class. The sequence also included notable changes to the Klingon make-up and costuming. It was also the first time that subtitles were used in a Star Trek production and the first time Klingonese was spoken on-screen. The musical cue that accompanies this sequence in the film was simply called "Klingon Battle". Archive footage from the encounter, to portray a fleet of three K't'inga -class battle cruisers, was reused in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , for the Kobayashi Maru scenario faced by Saavik in that film.

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Character Analysis

Despite V'Ger's penchant for wanton destruction, we can't help but like the little weirdo. It might be acting out, but we can certainly relate to the feeling of not knowing what you need, but simply knowing that you need something .

It's kind of like every time we stand in front of a vending machine. We don't know if we need Doritos or Skittles…we just know that we need.

Started From the Bottom

In a way, V'Ger has a classic rags-to-riches tale. Born Voyager VI, a poor unmanned space probe from the planet Earth, it was caught in a black hole before being saved by a society of sentient machines.

And these guys didn't just nurse him back to health—they gave him a major upgrade. From there, V'Ger continued its travels, now armed with this pesky thing called "self-awareness" and an overwhelming desire to reunite with its Creator.

That's about when the movie starts. If we accept Spock's claim that V'Ger is nothing more than a "child," then its destruction seems a lot like a temper tantrum. It's a way to get attention.

Like a tween experiencing the blinding rage of hormones, V'Ger is no longer content with simply doing what it's told. It wants to understand why .

Learning the Ropes

What's more, V'Ger doesn't seem to understand these strange biological creatures it keeps encountering—they're nothing like the form of life it's used to. So you can understand its shock when it discovers that humanity is its Creator. How is V'Ger supposed to comprehend that with all of its "pure logic?"

As it turns out, the answer is "by merging with humanity." This presents a bold leap forward for V'Ger—an entity that's no stranger to bold leaps. From unmanned probe to self-aware machine to robot-human hybrid, V'Ger is making moves and rising up the pecking order in the universe.

Good for you, little buddy.

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Star Trek: What Is V’Ger?

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Star Trek: What is a Sonic Shower?

6 most powerful weapons in star trek history, ranked, star trek: why was the original series canceled, quick links, what is v’ger, what happened to v’ger, the legacy of v’ger in star trek, key takeaways.

• The first Star Trek feature film saw the crew of the USS Enterprise take on V’Ger — an immensely powerful threat heading straight for Earth.
• V’Ger proved to have a surprising connection to humanity and posed a challenge that Kirk and crew were familiar with from the Original Series.
• In the decades since The Motion Picture , the franchise has repeatedly attempted to pull the entity and the philosophical and existential questions it posed into wider lore.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture saw the crew of the USS Enterprise warp onto the big screen for the first time, so it was no surprise they faced a vast and all-powerful threat.

The first Star Trek movie sprang from the abandoned Star Trek Phase II TV project and picked up its antagonist from the abandoned script ‘In Thy Image.’ In the late 1970s sci-fi boom inspired by brewing rival Star Wars , The Motion Picture was intended to serve up a blockbuster spin on the Original Series ’ metaphysical storylines. Its threat was suitably immense and spectacular and stood apart from more humanoid and physical threats. But the ominously named V’Ger had links to Star Trek ’s past, and the franchise has been keen to tie it to the future ever since.

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V’Ger is, without doubt, one of the greatest threats any crew of the USS Enterprise has ever faced. When first detected, it was a vast cloud heading through Klingon space to the Federation. It obliterated Klingon battle cruisers and Starfleet’s Epsilon IX station when it interpreted its scans, which detected a solid object at the cloud’s center, as a hostile act. The cloud was vast, measuring 2 Astronomical Units (confirmed in The Motion Picture ’s director’s cut), which made it larger than Earth’s orbit of the Sun. It was also immensely powerful, with the energy of more than a thousand starships .

Seizing control of the refitted USS Enterprise from Captain Will Decker, Admiral Kirk took the ship into the cloud by ensuring the craft didn’t appear threatening. At the same time, V’Ger entered the Solar System and deployed a weapon that would devastate Earth. The Enterprise’s first contact mission determined that V’Ger communicated at imperceptibly high frequencies. When scanning the Enterprise with an invasive plasma-energy beam, V’Ger seized Lieutenant Ilia, the Enterprise’s Deltan navigator. It subsequently duplicated Ilia on a cellular level to act as a liaison, demonstrating its thirst for knowledge and naivety. Although the memories of the replicated Ilia had also been duplicated, they were suppressed.

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When Spock went it alone to enter the ship at the heart of V’Ger, he traveled through a cylindrical craft constructed with multiple energy, organic, and artificial chambers, separated by apertures. One area was a vast library with 3-D holographic constructions of everything V’Ger had encountered on its travels, even galaxies. Spock learned that V’Ger was a living machine. However, despite V’Ger telepathically guiding Spock, the Vulcan’s ambitious attempt to mind-meld with the mysterious entity rendered him unconscious.

Just beyond where Spock managed to get in his environmental suit was an inner sanctum where the truth of V’Ger’s origins was held. The center of Voyager could maintain an M-class environment that was breathable for humans. It was there that Kirk, McCoy, Spock, Decker, and the liaison Ilia found the core of V’Ger, at the heart of a vast neural network powering the immense entity.

Their discovery was surprisingly familiar — Kirk wiped away the grime on a plaque to reveal V’Ger as Voyager 6. At the ship's heart was the original deep space NASA probe that was launched in 1999 in Star Trek continuity. This would have particularly resonated with audiences at the time of the film’s release: Voyager 1 and 2 had been launched two years before and, as of 2024, are still operational in interstellar space.

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The crew of the Enterprise learned that, soon after launch, the Voyager 6 probe had been caught in a black hole after leaving the Solar System, emerging on the far side of the galaxy. Being picked up by a planet of living machines, the residents had found Voyager to be primitive but resonated with its exploratory message.

Naming it V’Ger after the covered plaque, the machines vastly upgraded the probe with advanced methods of fulfilling its mission objectives, including 3D imaging and an extraordinary capacity to evolve. They then sent it on its way with the literal interpretation of the message, “Learn all that is learnable and return that knowledge to the creator.”

On its long journey back, V’Ger amassed, stored, and processed so much knowledge it became self-aware. However, that sentience clashed with its machine logic. V’Ger realized it lacked the intuitive, irrational elements that would allow it to deal with the complexity of its existence and surmised its creator could help it understand what lay beyond its mission. It had a foolproof way of confirming its creator: asking them to complete the sequence that would allow transmission of its accumulated knowledge.

From the steamy to the hilarious, Star Trek fans never know what to expect when sonic showers get involved.

Unfortunately, the advancements and machine logic could only perceive organic life as an infestation.

Still, despite the devastation along the way, V’Ger was proved right. Choosing to sacrifice himself after the transformation of his ex-lover, Ilia, Decker chose to merge with the machine. He was absorbed with Ilia’s duplicate when he manually completed the data transmission. The result was the emergence of a new lifeform, as V'Ger evolved into a higher level of existence.

As Spock said:

V'Ger must evolve. Its knowledge has reached the limits of this universe, and it must evolve.

V’ger occupies an important part of Star Trek and couldn’t help but influence future threats. But its roots are in well-established concepts. The idea of a creation turning on its maker has existed since the first science-fiction novel, Frankenstein . The plot of The Motion Picture added classic sci-fi themes like the perception of higher science appearing incomprehensible and the philosophical clashes between machine logic and human irrationality.

The Original Series had mined a similar idea in the second season story ‘The Changeling.’ There, Kirk’s Enterprise encountered a 265-year-old interstellar probe from Earth, which had gained significant powers and intelligence and was intent on destroying lifeforms that didn’t meet its standards of perfection. In that episode and three other Original Series stories, Kirk showed a gift for talking a computer to death, although he couldn’t achieve the same feat in movie theaters.

Star Trek's rich lore has introduced fans to countless pieces of technology—including extremely powerful weapons capable of great destruction.

The alien probes that threatened Earth in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home owe a clear debt to V’Ger three films before. When the Borg made a similar run into Federation and the Solar System in Star Trek: The Next Generation , the collective also chose to make a liaison from one of the Enterprise’s crew. However, Locutus wasn’t a duplicate of Jean-Luc Picard, and the Enterprise could recover its captain.

The links with the Borg didn’t stop there, with several storylines, canon and not, linking V’Ger’s creation with the Delta Quadrant collective. Gene Roddenberry jokingly drew the connection after the Borg’s first appearance in ‘Q Who,’ according to the writers of the 1993 Star Trek Chronology .

The idea was expanded in William Shatner’s Shatnerverse sequence of novels that revived his legendary captain after Kirk’s death in Star Trek: Generations . In The Return , Spock escapes assimilation having already mind-melded with V'Ger, which supposedly left a part of the Collective in his mind. A nice bit of circular affirmation comes from Spock’s warning in The Motion Picture that “Any show of resistance would… be futile.”

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The video game Star Trek: Legacy flipped the idea by suggesting that Voyager 6 had traveled in time and space and inadvertently created the Borg as it developed its power of assimilating knowledge. Star Trek Online is another video game to play with the idea, where some Borg vessels resembled V’Ger core. In comics, the Kelvin timeline-set Star Trek: Nero has an alternative V’Ger able to reactivate Nero’s ship Narada thanks to Borg modifications. Another allusion may be in voyages in the Borg’s native Delta Quadrant made by the probe’s great franchise namesake, USS Voyager.

V’Ger has returned to the expanded universe and enjoyed drawing in explanations for its origins, but the franchise hasn’t helped with the future. As yet, there hasn’t been a subsequent appearance for the lifeform born from V’Ger and humanity’s union.

The Motion Picture ’s pacing and worthy approach to sci-fi didn’t go down as well as Paramount hoped, and the series was rebooted with the militaristic action of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . However, the story of V’Ger remains a philosophical work exploring the implications of space discovery and the meaning of life.

Star Trek I: The Motion Picture

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