STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE

Release Date: December 7, 1979
Screenplay By Harold Livingston
Story By Alan Dean Foster
Music By Jerry Goldsmith
Produced By Gene Roddenberry
Directed By Robert Wise
Domestic Gross (US): $82 Million

Production Notes

The Motion Picture was adapted from the "Star Trek: Phase II" TV pilot episode "In Thy Image", which was never filmed. The original 32 page outline for "In Thy Image" was written by Alan Dean Foster based upon the one-page "Genesis II" TV premise "Robot’s Return" by Gene Roddenberry.

Writer Harold Livingston quit the production three times over intense conflicts with Gene Roddenberry. Harold Livingston: "I just didn’t think that Gene was a good writer. He, for his part, I’m sure, considered me a total interloper.".

Dennis Clark was hired as a new writer in Livingston’s absence the first time he quit. Dennis Clark: "(Roddenberry) makes very bad mistakes with the people that work with him. He alienates them. I was always a Trekkie. I would have been very proud to have my name on the first ‘Star Trek’ movie."

Dennis Clark: "Gene didn’t want (Nimoy and Shatner’s) input. He didn’t want me to have their input. He didn’t even like Bob Wise’s input. I wish I could tell you more, but my point of view is very biased and it’s a part of my life I don’t even like to think about." Clark stayed for only three months and Livingston was asked back by Paramount.

Leonard Nimoy: "There was no indication of where Spock would fit into the bigger picture. I took it as Gene really being lost on that issue. He was just farting around, trying to shoehorn the character into the basic framework of his existing screenplay."

Leonard Nimoy: "It scared me to death to think that the real impetus behind finally putting the Enterprise on the big screen might have been provided solely by the box office receipts of Star Wars."

William Shatner: "As our first weeks of production wore on, it became rather obvious that Gene and Harold still hadn’t quite gotten a handle on how we might actually finish this story. Script revisions, sometimes arriving as late as thirty minutes prior to the start of the day’s shooting, began coming in on a regular basis, and whether signed off with an H.L. or a G.R., it was obvious that the continual interoffice creative clashes were really beginning to hurt the film."

William Shatner: "I hated our new uniforms. Ugly, form-fitting, pastel-colored, one-piece jumpsuits, these things itched even worse than our old TV series togs."

Leonard Nimoy: "Brand new costumes were designed – I thought they were sleek, even cool, although others referred to them as the ‘monochrome pajamas.’"

Leonard Nimoy: "Kirk and Spock were just basically standing around that f-cking bridge, staring at a bluescreen at the mercy of this . . . thing, for pages and pages."

Leonard Nimoy: "The movie seemed to have been taken out of our hands. And our energy was sapped by an unwarranted reverence. We were passengers along for the ride on a voyage we could never quite fully manage or understand."

William Shatner: "We’d been shooting for almost three months and we still hadn’t finalized the last act of our film. As a result, the rewrites got even more frantic, and we often began shooting scenes less than twenty-four hours after they’d been yanked from Harold Livingston’s typewriter."

Leonard Nimoy: "(Shatner) and I shared a real camaraderie and we were in mutual agreement about what the script’s problems were. So we began working out a lot of those problems together."

Leonard Nimoy: "With the cameras rolling and Bob Wise and Gene Roddenberry watching, our scene began in earnest. Kirk delivered his line, and McCoy gave the appropriate response; then Kirk turned to Spock and offered to return him to Vulcan. And I – or rather, Spock – replied, ‘I have decided to stay with the Enterprise, Captain. If Dr. McCoy is to remain on board, my presence here will be essential.’ It drew a good laugh on the set – but when I saw the whispered conversation between Gene and Bob Wise behind the camera, I knew it was doomed. Bob walked over with the decision, ‘The feeling is that the joke is inappropriate in light of what’s gone before.’ The scene was filmed as written."

When Roddenberry didn’t get script credit for The Motion Picture, he protested and it almost went to arbitration by the Writer’s Guild. Harold Livingston: "I guess (Roddenberry) decided to withdraw (the protest) and assume this injured pose. But he would have lost the arbitration because he didn’t write any script. All he did was rewrite, patch up, fool around and screw everything up."

Roddenberry and Alan Dean Foster also battled over the "Story By" credit. Although Foster had essentially written the entire story, Roddenberry wanted sole credit. Foster offered splitting the credit, but Gene wasn’t satisfied with that, either. Foster eventually received sole credit. Alan Dean Foster: "I had only worked with people like George Lucas, who is one of the nicest people in the movie business, and Ronald Shusett, who produced Alien. But Star Trek was my worst experience. Nobody had ever tried to do that to me before. That’s just the way it is, apparently. They put you in the shark cage, you learn how to fight with the other sharks or you go back in the goldfish bowl. I belonged in the goldfish bowl."

Released by Pocket Books, a novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, "by Gene Roddenberry," was actually ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster - who received no credit on the novel. Foster's novel was superior to the film in many ways.

William Shatner: "It was as if the effects houses had been a bit too brilliant for the film’s own good."

Leonard Nimoy: "Eventually, the special effects became downright tedious. A great cheer went up from the audience when the ship went into warp speed, but unfortunately, the story itself never really took flight – and the chemistry that had existed between the characters was never taken advantage of."

Robert Wise: "We never sat down and consciously decided to shift our emphasis from the ‘Star Trek’ characters to all of these cutting-edge effects. That came about because of our story and the script."

Robert Wise: "One of the reservations that I have about this film is that I didn’t have the time to fine-tune it. I think we could have trimmed it by six and a half minutes, at least. I don’t think it’s everything I hoped it’d be."

Film Quotes

McCoy: "Why is any object we don’t understand always called a ‘thing’?"

Spock: "Any show of resistance will be futile."

McCoy: "Spock, this ‘child’ is about to wipe out every living thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do? Spank it?"

Spock: "It knows only that it needs . . . but, like so many of us, it does not know what."

Navigator: "Heading, sir?" Kirk: "Out there . . . that-a-way."

End Title: "The human adventure is just beginning."