For 10 years after the cancellation of the original Star Trek TV show in 1969, creator Gene Roddenberry’s mission was to seek out ways of getting a movie version, helped by the growing re-run fanbase and a warp-speed boost from the colossal success of Star Wars. The end result was Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, now re-released in a 4K restoration, directed by veteran all-rounder Robert Wise with Douglas Trumbull on special effects. This is the “director’s edition”, first authorised by Wise in 2001: it brightens and clarifies the effects, enriches the sound mix, adds minor expository and ambient scenes and emphasises the unhurried visionary grandeur that Wise was aiming at.
At the time of its original release, I was disconcerted by the Enterprise crew’s silly new uniforms: the men’s tunics are extended downwards at the waist to form an entirely ridiculous triangular flap over the crotch area. And living in the eternal TV present as I was, I was secretly shocked at how much older the main cast suddenly looked, everyone’s hair greyer and more precariously bouffant-ed. With this first movie, the Star Trek concept had evolved into something more ambitious and Kubrickian, with plenty of andante outer-space sequences and an entire pre-credit “overture”, just dark starry space to a muted orchestral theme. I missed the cartoony narrative snap of the TV show and the original signature tune, but the doors still go fshhhht-fshhhht and the dialogue scenes between Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest Kelley) still have that wonderfully theatrical resonance and serio-comic panache, Shatner’s DRAMATIC way of SPEAKING, often-doing-a-one-breath-run-up-to-a-big-EMPHASIS is still a joy. It’s only now I can see that the relationship of Spock and Kirk has a Jeeves/Wooster drollery.
