Star Trek: The Motion Picture

(It's Star Trek Month at Blessed are the Geeks, so I am reviewing every Trek movie in chronological order.)

Picture it: It's 1979 and Star Trek has been off the air for ten years. Star Wars just came out, and brought science fiction back into style. So Paramount decided to cash in by reviving Star Trek for the big screen. Only instead of making a fun, exciting show that the fans would love, they decided to make a huge piece of crap.

All things being equal, Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn't a terrible science fiction film, but it sure is terrible as a Star Trek movie, forgetting most of the charm, drama, and humor from the show in favor of the film that borrowed way too much from 2001: A Space Odyssey than anything else. There's even a long, drawn out trippy space warp sequence that's a direct ripoff from the "beyond the infinite" stargate sequence from 2001.

But this movie's worst crime is that it's boring. Kirk doesn't act like Kirk, Spock doesn't act like Spock, McCoy, well... you get the idea. There were no great character moments, and any random line of dialogue could've been given to any character without regard to the plot. The only standout characters from this film were Commander Decker and Ilia, neither of whom are from the original series.

So what we are left with is an interesting curiosity that won't satisfy fans of the series or fans of science fiction in general. Why did they hire Robert Wise to direct this? He's a great filmmaker to be sure, but he was much better suited to classic Hollywood films like the Sound of Music and West Side Story. Who thought he would be a good fit for the first film adaptation of Star Trek?

Skip it.