Surprised you missed out McCoy being mocked for not wanting to use the transporter when it literally barbecued Sunak a few minutes earlier.

My dad took me and my brother to see this film after it opened in December 1979. We were big Trek fans and it was a thrill to see the cast reunited for a major movie.

Even as a child seeing this movie, knowing the Klingons were not idiots because watching Star Trek was part of how I was raised, I asked my dad why they would just shoot at a cloud as big as our solar system. That's one of the first times he told me to stop over-analyzing things, shut up, and just watch it. It's been decades and I'm an old man now, but I feel like child me just got redeemed here.

You missed the actual dumbest thing. Two people get sploded in the transporter, and seemingly moments later McCoy beams in while the crew banters about his well-known distrust of the technology.

I distinctly remember seeing this in the theater as a 15 year old and thinking "Wait, a planet of super-smart robots that couldn't figure out how to remove a bit of grime?"

Best thing about the motion picture is that it paved the way for the Wrath of Khan

But really, I remember sitting in the theater on opening night and was just psyched that Star Trek was back and on the big screen. Nothing else mattered. I didn’t sit there making jokes like MST3K, this was Star Trek, and it was back!

In an earlier revision of ST:TMP the V'Ger message is actually decoded. In the August 9th revision (1) Spock does NOT smash the Science Console when Ilia is kidnapped. (2) The ship is held for 12 hours alongside VGer after Ilia is taken away and before being pulled into the ship (3) In the 12 hours, Spock has decoded the message: V'Ger (revealing the name) is asking for the the Enterprise's place of origin and intentions. (4) Spock programs the computer to talk with V'Ger, and actually communicate directly with it where they find out that it's headed for Earth, the home of the creator. (5) Suddenly the Enterprise computer begins communicating directly with V'Ger without crew's prompting, causing Spock to smash the science console. The earlier May 17th draft goes a little further having Spock realize V'Ger is a living machine when it refers to itself as "I" and "My." By October 2nd, the scene is no longers in the script.

Kirk has a thruster pack. He uses it to direct Spock's limp and unconscious body back into the ship. He doesn't follow Spock because he disagrees with the risk Spock is taking. Spock doesn't expect to return from his voyage into Vger. That's why he is narrating his findings so the log launched from his suit would be recovered by the ship.

I don't care how many plot holes it has - I love this film . Why is it necessary to pick things apart. All film/tv can be looked at this way, or they can just be enjoyed as a bit of escapism. I, for one, will continue to watch this film with affection.

Firstly, I want to make it clear I know Brie didn't write the article, so none of what I'm about to say has any focus on her. This is just such a negative, pessimistic article. Imagine going through an entire movie and just writing down things that you find to be "dumb", and the writer did this at least 6 times for WhatCulture. If you compare this to let's say, Sean Ferrick's Ups and Downs series, he confronts some of the downs with still a sense of positivity and optimism which I feel is the way Trek is meant to be taken. I really subscribed to Trek Culture only because of Sean and his enthusiasm for Star Trek, and since then have discovered some other great presenters here, but this kind of stuff really just makes me feel like this is just one long recorded Reddit thread. Maybe it's just me.

So no one is going to consider that with McCoy being reinstated as CMO that he wouldn't go through and do a quick review of personnel and at least gander at the new people's file?

1:03 Decker's statement seemed to imply that it was something like like a wormhole that earlier scientists mistakenly thought was just a blackhole. This is what always made the most sense to me.

My favorite stupid moment is a small one. At one point McCoy walks on to the bridge, looks around, and leaves. No one says anything to him, he doesn't say anything, he wasn't called there. Just really there to show McCoy still exisits.

McCoy & the ensign plus Chapel & Ilea being acquainted...absolutely possible due to crew rotations...military personnel on new assignments know lots of folks at their new base...very common.

Not a topic of the video, but it occurs to me that if they had just worn black or charcoal trousers that the uniforms would look pretty good. Kirk's contrasting gray and white admiral's uniform is actually really nice. Just no one piece jumpsuits in the future, please.

Ilea's sensors are localized to her skin and private areas. These need to be exposed for full probe readings. Plus, stripper heels magnify the accuracy. Roddenberry and Berman told me so

This movie bored my arse off, but absolute mad love and respect to anyone who counts this one as a favourite.

You said "penetrate the orifice" more times than necessary, and I love it 🤣🤣

As dumb as the Klingons taking potshots at a mysterious energy cloud was, it was still the best scene in the movie. Great pacing, great effects, great score. And Stephen Collins was nowhere to be seen. And really, given how some Klingon commanders react in other situations, it wasn't out-of-character at all.

The final edit (by the director) occurred just hours before the release of the film the next day. The first prints were rushed to theaters by express air freight at a major cost to the studio. I was lucky to find a small theater in Manhattan that still had first-day tickets at 12 noon.

It's hilarious how you read the Captain's logs, even imitating Shatner's voice overacting. :) Great job on that video, too!

Yes, they were "dumb, dead Klingons", but it's consistent with later canon. In Discovery, Burnham suggests that the weapons officer fire at the Klingons with full phases and torpedoes, because the Vulcans did it and it worked. The aKlingons in TMP were doing what they do, but they didn't expect the elephant to step on them.

"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes And other science facts, Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax" -MST3K

To be fair, the Klingons attack wasn´t that dumb, since it perfectly suits the Klingons: "Attack first, ask questions later" 🤭

I remember coming out of the theater from seeing this on opening day, and my group of "nerdy" friends and I did a lot of discussing and pulling apart the movie, and frankly I don't remember the things we cringed at and appreciated. However, I think it might be true that you're raising a bunch of different things. As always thank you so very much for the video. I think the biggest point of contention, for us, at the time, was they just did a expanded version of "Star Trek: The Original Series • The Changeling".

Yes, it is quite normal for people to meet on a posting early in their career, then not see each other until they're posted to the same base/ship/squadron at some distant future time.

Ilea's robe was outstanding! Women recreated this design for themselves!

It's always so weird seeing the starbase the right side up, rather than upside down as it is in every other appearance.

The black hole issue can be somewhat fixed. Let's presume we detected a gravitational anomaly at a time we were launching additional Voyagers after Voyager 2. We'd probably assume it was a black hole, and send Voyager 6 to investigate, and was intended to impact the presumed black hole. However, it turned out to be an unstable wormhole that changed its endpoint near Earth when Voyager 6 entered. The dialogue as given is still awkward exposition for the audience but a minimal rewrite can reduce the awkwardness.

The new 4K directors edition fixes a lot of the problems from previous versions.

Ensign Perez could have been posted to the Enterprise during McCoy’s tenure during the five year mission.

To be fair, Klingons shooting at the unknown is entirely in their character; so while it's not a smart decision, it certainly makes sense.

It seems I must say this once again! Sulu had good reason to be shocked at Spock's pronouncement that the V'ger cloud was a twelth-power energy field. Decker put it well when he said that it was a power level that thousands of starships couldn't generate. Just to put the matter into perspective, our sun is a ninth-power energy field.

The fan theory is that Voyaget 6 actually went through a temporary wormhole. Similar to the Barzan wormhole.

"Newly Boneheaded Klingons." LOL!

I believe Voyager 6’s computer was damaged scrambled enough that whomever found it and put it into that massive ship didn’t bother to clean off that name plate (because what aliens speak English) and just said, “your name appears to be these symbols: V-G-E-R”.

I always just assumed Kirk just hurriedly, and largely without thinking deeper about it, pressed a button or two to summon something to wear that was already in Illia's dress ensemble (we don't exactly see the man just shuffling through a dress catalog after all). So the scantness of her attire at least somewhat checks out in the little lore we have on the Deltan species. Who are far more liberal in their sexuality than humans are. I actually really liked TMP, aside from the ship's muted white and gray interior color palette. The newly remastered 4k version is absolutely STUNNING.

Having lived through the 1970s, I remember how starved we were for anything Star Trek.

Ilia being 'taken' does not mean she's vaporized nor dead. These guys are moving with a bit of cautious optimism now, but they're not burying her yet.

The Klingon's actions *are* dumb but they aren't out of character. They're a warrior race. Can you imagine the glory and honour that'd be bestowed upon that crew if, by some random, Nat-20s-All-The-Way chance they managed to destroy The Intruder?

They clearly spent 20 hours flying round and round and round and round and round and round the Enterprise listening to epic music. You can see those 20 hours in realtime in the unedited Director's Cut.

1:20 Today I learned that Pluto is 17 kilometres away from Earth

I do like the old "deliberate mispronunciation" tactic. Really encourages interactions 😁

Ilia's outfit is probably why a huge percentage of the audience didn't get up and leave before the movie ended.

Love Trekculture videos. But did anyone else pick up on the irony of her replacing the word idiocy with the made up word “idiotocy”? 😂

1:22 “That’s peanuts to space” A superbly executed tribute to “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Nothing like looking at a 43 year old movie through a 2022 lens. Yeah makes perfect sense to me. Well we all like to poke some fun at Star trek, I'm a major major trekker, some of the comments just seemed to forget that things were not as well known about space as they are today. Most people didn't notice all this in 1979. I remember seeing it in theaters and I was thrilled at the special effects. I know I'm in the minority but I really like this movie, mistakes and all. And the new version is fantastic to watch. 🖖🏼

Kirk: "Let's put some clothes on her" *Puts clothes on* Kirk: "Nice"

Loved it when I saw it in the theatre as an 11 year old, and still love it today.

A lot of the dumb things in the movie were addressed in the decent novelization by Alan Dean Foster (same guy who wrote the awesome original Star Wars novelization). When Uhura announced to the bridge that Lt Illia was Deltan, both Sulu and Chekov turn around making strange faces. When she arrives on the bridge she explains to Kirk that her oath of celibacy is on record. This makes absolutely zero sense in the movie, but the novel explains that the Deltans are an humanoid alien race that put off extremely powerful pheromones that make human males insane with arousal. This included Decker who almost went insane with sexual desire while they dated, which is why he broke it off (their relationship not his...) and left her home planet in the first place. The bizarre part was they left those stupid and disposable lines in the movie without any context to explain it. Ironic, Star Trek got a G rating when Disney's The Black Hole which also came out in Christmas of 1979, got their first PG rating ever.

I'm surprised that you didn't mention the ridiculous uniforms that they wear in this movie, which are only worn in this movie, and the fact that kirk and probably others are wearing different uniforms at different times throughout the movie

Canon after the Motion Picture states that VGer’s cloud was actually 2au wide.

Think i read that the "black hole" was one that was like a "rogue planet" travelling around the galaxy, passing by the Sol System.

(10) Uh, we're talking about Voyager SIX here ... which presumably was faster than Voyagers 1 and 2, so it could have gone further than 17.2 billion kilometers. (7) Persis Khambatta was a former Miss India (although she usually has hair). (1) 14:22 "We can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" (oops, wrong series) And you forgot ... those **** uniforms.

You missed the fact Kirk's spacesuit was different when he grabbed Spock. Most expensive continuity error in movie history?

Everything in the movie is incidental to Spock's character development.

I agree about the heels on Ilyia's outfit, but outfit, and costumes in general, were 1970s, based on Logan's Run type of films. Different times, and not at all prudish compared to today.

Don't say the photosonic scan, it's LIDAR people, predicted decades early. Great film I remember be taken to see this film by my oldest brother, who died in 2007. I remember being blown away by the opening with the Klingon battle. It is still one of my favourite opening of any film. I know it has flaws but still a great film. Re-watched after my wife said that it was one of her favourite Star Trek films and my love for it returned.

I almost choked on my hot dog at the “outright dumb”. 😂😂😂

you are dead wrong about the Bones Chapel thing. Them knowing the names of the crew IS LITERALLY the only thing they would be doing once on board. Thier entire job depends on that.

I view Gene Rodenberry and George Lucas in a very similar vein - both were visionaries early in their careers but stuck around long after their best years were behind them. Rodenberry was perfect for TV based sci-fi in the early to mid 60's. But ten years later, attempting to write a screenplay and produce a feature length film in the late 70's he was way out of his element and depth. IMHO this movie and TNG were made and thrived despite his best efforts

The scene on the rec deck was added because the entire crew was never scene on screen before. And they haven't been seen together since that was the 430s big scene.

This movie is in my top five for Star Trek movies. Highly underrated.

7 days leading up to the Friday release of ST:8 - First Contact, the local theater did a week long marathon showing all the other movies, one each night at a 10pm showing. As a person who worked 1st shift this was tough for me and I dozed off at the first movie somewhere during the long special effects tunnels near the end. I still have my laminated pass to see all 8 movies. I was the only person to show up for all 8 movies.

You need to factor in the Director's Edition, i.e., the finished film. For instance, they reduced the size of Vger's energy cloud, via a simple edit, down to a slightly more reasonable 2 AU. Re: Ensign Perez, presumably the Enterprise has largely the same crew as she did during TOS (one of those time references that slip on by tells us that it's only been a few years since the end of the five year mission, and Scotty grouses about how the crew haven't nearly enough time with the new equipment, implying old crew). As for Ilia and Chapel, yeah, that's some pretty fast bonding.

Obviously, many points that weren’t brought up… 1. You’d think that something as massive as V’ger, travelling at warp speed, would have been easily detected months, if not years ago instead of the three day warning. 2. If V’ger was lost to a ‘black hole’, survived, and was found by who knows, at some place, how did it ‘know’ what direction to use to come back! It’s a mighty big coincidence that it went the right way, the universe is immense! 3. Surely when V’ger accessed the ship’s computer that it would have found reference to itself 4. Following the V’ger incident, it seems the whole thing was dropped! No research into the aliens that took care of V’ger, nothing from those aliens and nothing from the V’ger/Decker merger. 5. Surely the path that V’ger followed to reach Earth could have been calculated… 6. If V’ger was this massive, wouldn’t this affect everything in its path, even our solar system, planets, perhaps the Sun?

Yes, the Klingons shooting torpedoes at the cloud was beyond stupid. Even assuming the torps each had a power equal to a 100 megaton explosion, that would have been like shooting a BB gun at an approaching hurricane. A better action would have been for the Klingons been launching probes. Heck you could fix that error by changing the subtitles.

The whole movie was stupid, but it was Star Trek. I saw it 8 times in the theatre.

McCoy knew who Sulu, Uhura, Checkov, etc. were. Because a lot of the ship's crew from his days aboard during the 5-year mission had stayed with her during her refit. So Perez might have been one of them. I mean, that's dumb; the refit took 18 months, so Perez should have been a Lieutenant JG by then, but maybe he wasn't a great officer and didn't earn a promotion. I always hated that the cloud was 82AU in diameter. It's basically the size of a small solar system, being generated by a ship that looks like it's a few hundred km long (I've seen estimates that it was between 100km and 200km long). But at least Bob Wise made that a little more believable in the Director's Edition - he edited Xon, er, Branch's dialogue down to say "Over two AUs in diameter!" Still unbelievable, but less so than 82AU. The Ilia probe's appearance naked in a shower was stupid, as was the outfit she wore for the rest of the film. As a kid I didn't notice - I was ten when the movie premiered - but over time I've come to realize that it was probably either Gene Roddenberry or Bob Wise's decision to put that stupid outfit on Persis Khambatta to show off her beautiful legs. A better decision would have been to have the probe appear back on the bridge, in the same uniform that Ilia was wearing when she was killed, but to have put the real Ilia in an updated version of the sexist miniskirt uniform worn by Nichelle Nichols and all other female cast throughout the original series run. I mean, it would still have been misogynistic as hell, but at least it would have been consistent within the show's fictional reality. Also, why did the probe that killed Ilia focus on her at all? It was already throwing Spock around the bridge like a rag doll to punish him for cutting off its access to the ship's computer - logically, Spock should have been the one digitized to death, not Ilia. A simple change, having the probe connect to the ships systems through the nav console and letting the info appear on the main screen, then having Ilia smash the console, would have explained the digital assassination far better. Lots of other dumb stuff in this film, along with boring stuff and awful production design choices, but that's a Star Fleet uniform of a different color...

One that always gets me about this film, is treating Bones' paranoia about the transporter as amusing, even though he expresses it NOT FIVE MINUTES after the Enterprise's original science officer dies in a transporter accident! If you want us to think Bones' transporter aversion is a joke, then maybe you shouldn't have him express it whilst the ground crew are carting away what's left of the last guy to attempt to use it in three different buckets

Films are also made three times. 1: When you write it. 2) When you shoot it. 3) When you edit. Scenes are always cut or trimmed for one reason or another, and you do your best as an editor to make it all make sense but sometimes, there's no fixing things.

Decker's line about black holes is wonky but not in the way you report. VOYAGER 6 could easily have encountered a Black Hole on the outskirts of the solar system... Heck even inside it. Not all black holes are as massive as a star. Some small ones can have the mass of a dwarf planet and as there are plenty of as yet uncataloged bodies out there one could easily be a black hole. We wouldn't know it was there until it ate and burped out some x rays. The problem is Decker saying "what the used to call", why would he say that? Either he would use the 23rd Century term or just say Black Hole.

Spock was on a one-way mission to V'Gers innards, but the transporter could have been used to retrieve Spock and or Kirk.

The Klingons only shot at things in Startrek lore. They don’t have a friendly mode even to their enemies, enemies!!!!

Shooting at something that's ridiculously powerful is actually VERY Klingon. LOL But that cloud is as big as our solar system. Shooting blind inside that hoping to hit something is dumb.

I've seen another version of the movie where the probe zaps a security officer before it zaps Ilia!

Cheese, you and Tinykid are my faves from Trek Culture. Support. Edited to repair awful typing while high grammar. It was gross.

Surprised at the Klingons response? Come on, they are KLINGONS! They always shoot first and don't bother asking questions! 😆

I'm gonna blow your mind here, but maybe McCoy and Chapel heard other people call the ensign and Ilea by name at some point during the 2 days. Or maybe they just familiarized themselves with the crew roster beforehand.

Bashing this movie is getting to be very boring!

It makes sense that McCoy would know the ensign. Drafted back or not, recently back on the ship or not, he's the CMO. He would immediately review the crew manifest. Also, the V'ger cloud is 2AU, not 82. Still enormous, but not 82AU enormous.

Bah! Kor probably ordered the captain of the Klingon task force to go on his suicide mission. Pissed him off some how. Perhaps by drinking the last of Kor's bloodwine. You know what? That's my head canon now. Kor sent the order for those three ships to engage V'ger because their commander drank the last of Kor's bloodwine. Lesson learned? Don't leave a Dahar master on empty.

The Klingons could have tried cloaking after they fired torpedoes. And if that worked, enter V'ger, find the central core and fire at it.

The V’ger name thing has been killing me since I was a wee lass 😹

Amazing they went through almost 109 story idea to end up with this. GR had one rejected too. Wanted klingons to travel through time portal to stop Earthmen not to have . obtain warp drive. Uniforms looked like they worked at Burger King or left over from Satuday Night Fever

Tomorrow is Yesterday (TOS): "Black star" close enough to Earth to throw the Enterprise back in time and back into Earth's atmosphere.

"But that's peanuts to space". Ha ha, nicely quoted Also, you missed the dumb thing of putting in the whole "oath of celibacy" thing they did about Ilia. If you read the novel, you find out exactly why she said that and also why Uhura say's "she's Deltan" and everyone's reaction to that and reacts when she enters the bridge. The movie does, and says, these things with zero explanation about any of it. Therefor, when just watching the move, it's all really dumb and senseless. If they weren't going to explain it, then they should have just left it out as it serves no purpose without context, except to add to people's confusion about the movie.

I was 18 when the movie came out. In '79, it was perfect.

Some of these, like the “everyone knows everyone”, are serious nitpicks. In the Navy, people find they run into people from previous stations all the time, using the phrase “small navy”. It’s a very common phenomenon in the service for people serving for several years.

I’m in the UK and remember as a kid seeing a tv version of the motion picture in the late 80’s. A notable difference was during the wormhole scene - there were no video or audio effects during the bridge scene!

Number 10 Klingon crewman: Shall we fire upon the cloud, Captain? Klingon Captain: No, let it pass. Maybe it will wipe out those pesky humans. Klingon crewman: But sir! What about our glory? What of our honor? Klingon Captain: Oh yes? ‘Let us shoot at the solar system flying by!’ What do you think our weapons would do to it? And what do you think a thing that size’s weapons would do to *us* if it noticed us? Remember Kahless-“The wind does not respect a fool.”

I like this channel but this just seems like nitpicking to me.

Well, the thing about a black hole - it's main distinguishing feature - is it's black. And the thing about space, the colour of space, your basic space colour - is it's black.

The most exciting part of this movie was the Vulcan getting cooked like a marshmallow in a microwave.

Bones ran into Perez in the Mess Hall. And dropped some Spanish on him. That's how he remembers him.

Ilia's short robe was the best thing about this movie.

Wait... wait... Are you saying... "idioticy"? HOLY CRAP! YOU ARE! Why are you saying "idioticy"? It's even in the CC for the video! You can't just make up glorcks! If you do, people won't know what each other is morking about! Edited to repair the auto correct of words that are TECHNICALLY not spelled wrong as they are also technically not words.

I still get bit by mosquitoes despite their size difference. It's in their nature. So too Klingons

True, there were many 'holes' in the movie, but as many others thought at the time. "It's Star Trek and it's back!" Also, the book "The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture" reveals how some things had actually been stollen from the sets, among other issues.