Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979): Is It Worth A Rewatch?

<v Speaker 1>Hey guys, Bill Benton, Jason Massik here from the All
<v Speaker 1>Eighties Movies Podcast. When we're cruising into Ming's Palace on
<v Speaker 1>our Hawkman rocket cycles, we turned down the Queen and
<v Speaker 1>turn up the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcast. Long
<v Speaker 1>live Jason and d They'll save every one of us.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley you Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. We are here for another special episode.
<v Speaker 2>This one is a little different. We kind of approached
<v Speaker 2>this as a what the heck happened, but we decided
<v Speaker 2>to take it in a different way. We're dealing with
<v Speaker 2>a couple of movies today. The question is is it
<v Speaker 2>worth the rewatch? So we're not gonna boldly go where
<v Speaker 2>no man has on before. We're deciding whether to go
<v Speaker 2>back where we've already been and see if it's a
<v Speaker 2>better experience the second time around.
<v Speaker 3>So we're comparing Star Trek Demotion picture from nineteen seventy nine,
<v Speaker 3>which is reaching its forty fifth anniversary this year, against
<v Speaker 3>Star Wars The Phantom Menace which came out ninety nine,
<v Speaker 3>which is reaching its twenty fifth anniversary this year.
<v Speaker 4>Hard to believe, And.
<v Speaker 3>We're going to compare these two, we're gonna ask the
<v Speaker 3>question are they rewatchable? We're also going to say, you know,
<v Speaker 3>what works, what doesn't, how do we change it?
<v Speaker 4>How would we improve it?
<v Speaker 3>And so today we've also invited a couple of friends
<v Speaker 3>to come on and talk about Star Trek demotion picture.
<v Speaker 3>We've got our old stand by Jeff Johnson of the
<v Speaker 3>filmed By podcast and the Star Trek podcast Phasers Set
<v Speaker 3>for Stunt.
<v Speaker 4>Jeff, how you doing man? Jason?
<v Speaker 5>I am doing great, And like Kirk, my orders are
<v Speaker 5>to intercept, investigate, and take whatever action is necessary or possible.
<v Speaker 2>Today.
<v Speaker 3>Nice, Hey, before we introduce Chuck, tell us a little
<v Speaker 3>bit about Phaser Set for Stun.
<v Speaker 5>So a couple of years ago on the film By podcast,
<v Speaker 5>we started doing some recaps and a couple of the
<v Speaker 5>guys are huge Star Trek fans, and we recap couple
<v Speaker 5>shows and it got wildly popular, so much that we
<v Speaker 5>just we realized, like, hey, we can't just recap Star
<v Speaker 5>Trek shows.
<v Speaker 4>We got to have a Star Trek pod going.
<v Speaker 5>So Phaser's Set to stun has been up and going
<v Speaker 5>for the past year now, and every Wednesday, you know,
<v Speaker 5>film buy us Every Tuesday, Phaser set to stun. Every
<v Speaker 5>Wednesday you can hear Wayne Whited, David Burns, and Scott
<v Speaker 5>Hoffman talk all things.
<v Speaker 3>Trek, and we've got mister Chuck Bryan who has come
<v Speaker 3>on to bring expertise on Star Trek the Motion Picture.
<v Speaker 4>Chuck, how you doing man?
<v Speaker 6>Hey guys, I am doing well, and I would like
<v Speaker 6>to make it plain that my oath of celibacy is
<v Speaker 6>on record. But thank thanks for having me on, Jason
<v Speaker 6>and d and nice to meet you, Jeff.
<v Speaker 4>Absolutely, Chuck, it's a pleasure.
<v Speaker 2>So so. Chuck has been a fan for a little while,
<v Speaker 2>and after our Beverly Hills Cop three episode, he sent
<v Speaker 2>us an email entitled the Motion Picture versus the Phantom Menace. Bye.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, the mere fact that this is Star
<v Speaker 2>Wars and Star Trek causes me to stumble over my
<v Speaker 2>words enough, but the fact that the abbreviations for the
<v Speaker 2>two movies are TMP and TPM makes it even harder.
<v Speaker 2>But Check sends me this email about these two contenders,
<v Speaker 2>if you will, and his opening line is, oh, you
<v Speaker 2>guys are going to step on my toes with this one.
<v Speaker 4>He tells it.
<v Speaker 2>He goes on to say that we're not wrong about
<v Speaker 2>the Phantom Menace, but he is a strong advocate not
<v Speaker 2>just for Star Trek the Motion Picture, but specifically the
<v Speaker 2>new cut that was done in twenty twenty two as.
<v Speaker 5>Rust as a head necessary take us out.
<v Speaker 6>Star Trek the Motion Picture for me, has been one
<v Speaker 6>of those films that kind of the older I get
<v Speaker 6>and the more I watch it, the more it begins
<v Speaker 6>to mean a little something different for me. On Facebook,
<v Speaker 6>there is a group called the Star Trek the Motion
<v Speaker 6>Picture Appreciation Society. It's a private group and if you
<v Speaker 6>ever sign up for it, you're gonna get to meet
<v Speaker 6>a lot of the people who actually worked on the
<v Speaker 6>films and on the twenty two remastering, David Fine, Mike Mathesino,
<v Speaker 6>Jin because I'm saying her name's totally wrong, but these
<v Speaker 6>are all guys who had worked with Bob Wise in
<v Speaker 6>two thousand and one when he had the opportunity to
<v Speaker 6>go back and finally complete his vision of what Star
<v Speaker 6>Trek the Motion Picture was supposed to be. And so
<v Speaker 6>the twenty two version came out a couple of summers ago.
<v Speaker 6>One of the main goals of getting this version of
<v Speaker 6>the film was to actually get it back on film stock.
<v Speaker 6>A negative that could be printed and could be projected.
<v Speaker 6>The two thousand and one version was just DVD video
<v Speaker 6>only and could not be upscaled, And so Star Trek
<v Speaker 6>Demotion Picture got yet another release, and it was glorious
<v Speaker 6>to see it once again in the movie theaters.
<v Speaker 2>One of the key features as you're watching the new movie,
<v Speaker 2>the one that came out in twent two, which is
<v Speaker 2>available streaming on Max right now for everybody listening, is
<v Speaker 2>there are lines that are kind of the key point
<v Speaker 2>of the whole idea behind the whole movie that got
<v Speaker 2>cut from the original theatrical release. And so if you
<v Speaker 2>watch that original theatrical release and you were bored or
<v Speaker 2>you said, well, I don't really understand what the point
<v Speaker 2>of all of that was. The good news is that
<v Speaker 2>people who were asking the same questions, who were in
<v Speaker 2>the know, took this film and made it what it
<v Speaker 2>was supposed to be. And you can see that now.
<v Speaker 2>Now the question is given the new cut, is it
<v Speaker 2>worth the rewatch, which we'll address at the end of
<v Speaker 2>our show.
<v Speaker 7>This simple feeling is beyond features comprehension.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, guys, I've got a story to tell you. I
<v Speaker 2>dare to say movie worthy on its own if you
<v Speaker 2>will indulge me for just a second before we get
<v Speaker 2>into star trek, can I talk to you about a constellation?
<v Speaker 4>Oh my gosh, please do.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, if Chuck knows this story, I won't be surprised. Jason,
<v Speaker 2>if you and Jeff know this story, you will I
<v Speaker 2>will bow at your feet. Okay, eat my shoes? Yes, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So are you guys familiar with the Lockheed l DASH
<v Speaker 2>zero four nine constellation? Okay? The thing is, it is
<v Speaker 2>not a group of stars. It is a plane. And
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen forty seven June, to be exact, that plane
<v Speaker 2>took off. The captain of the plane was named Captain Short.
<v Speaker 2>There was a first officer named McCoy. There was a
<v Speaker 2>third officer named Wesley. Not making this up, This is
<v Speaker 2>all true story. And they left at about three point
<v Speaker 2>thirty from Karachi on the first leg of a trip
<v Speaker 2>back to New York City. The third officer was just
<v Speaker 2>there as a deadhead. But then about five hours into
<v Speaker 2>the trip, Captain Short was a little tired. Third officer
<v Speaker 2>comes up and gives him relief by taking the yoke
<v Speaker 2>for a little while. And while he's flying the plane,
<v Speaker 2>engine number one goes out, so of course, Captain Short
<v Speaker 2>comes back up. He takes the yoke back again. He decides,
<v Speaker 2>the other engines, I think will get us to where
<v Speaker 2>we're going, and so he makes the decision to keep
<v Speaker 2>on going. This was the wrong decision because what happens
<v Speaker 2>is those other engines were using so much power that
<v Speaker 2>they overheated, they caught on fire, and one of the
<v Speaker 2>engines fell off, which means the plane was no longer airworthy.
<v Speaker 2>At that point, they knew they were going to crash,
<v Speaker 2>and it was just a matter of when the third
<v Speaker 2>officer leaves the cockpit, goes back and assures the passengers
<v Speaker 2>that everything is under control. He orders the flight attendants
<v Speaker 2>to get in their seats and say seated. He goes
<v Speaker 2>to the back plane. He takes his seat. As he's
<v Speaker 2>sitting there, a woman starts screaming because she's so scared,
<v Speaker 2>and so he gets up and he goes to comfort
<v Speaker 2>her just before the plane crashes. So as the plane
<v Speaker 2>hits the ground, he is not buckled in. He breaks
<v Speaker 2>three of his ribs. The plane is torn in two
<v Speaker 2>seven of the crew are killed, eight of the passengers
<v Speaker 2>are killed, and they're in the middle of the day.
<v Speaker 2>He leaves the plane and begins as now the lead officer.
<v Speaker 2>Since both the captain and McCoy are both dead, he
<v Speaker 2>begins rescue efforts to get all of the surviving passengers
<v Speaker 2>off the plane. The plane is on fire, he makes
<v Speaker 2>the decision, I'm going to get one last person and
<v Speaker 2>takes them off as the plane is engulfed in flames.
<v Speaker 2>That person that he thought he was saving ended up
<v Speaker 2>dying because it was such a treacherous situation. Now they're
<v Speaker 2>in a plane that's in the middle of the desert,
<v Speaker 2>in the middle of the nights. Three in the morning,
<v Speaker 2>he's taking control and trying to do everything he can.
<v Speaker 2>He sets up the inflatable slide as shelter for people.
<v Speaker 2>He begins looking around, and then nomads in the desert come.
<v Speaker 2>He has to convince them to only rob the dead
<v Speaker 2>people instead of robbing the living. By the time the
<v Speaker 2>sun comes up, he has to make a journey to
<v Speaker 2>try to see if he can see any signs of life.
<v Speaker 2>He sees some telegraph wires, so as he's headed back, though,
<v Speaker 2>another group of rotters comes by and actually robs the living,
<v Speaker 2>but they don't kill anybody. He sends two groups out
<v Speaker 2>to follow the telegraph lines in either direction. One of
<v Speaker 2>those groups sees that it's connected to the city. He
<v Speaker 2>makes his way to the city, calls in the plane crash,
<v Speaker 2>and eventually everyone is rescued. After this, six months later,
<v Speaker 2>he's absolved of any wrongdoing and is credited as a
<v Speaker 2>hero for this crash and how he treated it. But
<v Speaker 2>he decides, based on this and some other issues he's
<v Speaker 2>had with flying in the past, including his time in
<v Speaker 2>World War Two, I don't want to fly anymore. And
<v Speaker 2>he decides, I'm going to do what my dad did,
<v Speaker 2>and so he joins the LAPD. I said his name
<v Speaker 2>was Officer Wesley. It was Officer Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, whose dad,
<v Speaker 2>Officer Roddenberry, was a member of the LAPD. So this
<v Speaker 2>hero is now a traffic cop. But he's a good writer,
<v Speaker 2>and so he becomes a speech writer for the Chief
<v Speaker 2>of police. That leads him to participating in a new
<v Speaker 2>TV S series based on real life is dramas called Dragnets,
<v Speaker 2>which leads him to write episodes for that series, which
<v Speaker 2>leads him to create series that we now know as
<v Speaker 2>Star Trek.
<v Speaker 4>Brilliant.
<v Speaker 2>That was unbelievable that I'm putting microphone down and I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna be quiet for the rest of the podcast, indulging
<v Speaker 2>me for that crazy but.
<v Speaker 4>That is awesome.
<v Speaker 5>Hey, I have been around long enough to know that
<v Speaker 5>when d starts one of these intense stories, it's we're
<v Speaker 5>going to go down a rabbit hole and somehow he's
<v Speaker 5>going to tie it into what we're talking about.
<v Speaker 4>I was like, what, how is this? Where are we going?
<v Speaker 5>That was fantastic, and yeah, you're right, I'm ready to
<v Speaker 5>watch this movie now.
<v Speaker 4>Fascinating. Yeah, fascinating, Okay, go ahead.
<v Speaker 6>I kind of wonder though, you know, you think about
<v Speaker 6>everything that that Roddenberry went through. He obviously he has
<v Speaker 6>a definite philosophy of life. He has a philosophy for
<v Speaker 6>how he wants to see the few sure, and it's
<v Speaker 6>a future where we as a human race have gotten
<v Speaker 6>past the things that are holding us down now, the
<v Speaker 6>way in which we go to war with each other
<v Speaker 6>and all, and it sets up this bigger, brighter future.
<v Speaker 6>And I just I wonder how much of that was
<v Speaker 6>influenced by that story you told.
<v Speaker 2>Right there, I heard him talking. He was talking about
<v Speaker 2>why he decided to develop a sci fi program. He said,
<v Speaker 2>you know, I had things that I wanted to say,
<v Speaker 2>and I had to figure out a way to say them.
<v Speaker 2>He said, you know, I'm not trying to compare myself
<v Speaker 2>to Jonathan Swift, But Jonathan Swift had things to say
<v Speaker 2>about London, and so he decided to write Gulliver's Travels.
<v Speaker 2>He goes, I have things to say about a lot
<v Speaker 2>of things, Vietnam War, for example. It seemed to me
<v Speaker 2>that space travel was an opportunity to be able to
<v Speaker 2>say what I wanted to say in a television format. Beautiful.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, okay, So before we start, do you remember when
<v Speaker 3>you saw Star Trek the most picture for the first time.
<v Speaker 4>The spock Every minute brings that object closer to Earth.
<v Speaker 2>I meet you.
<v Speaker 7>I am convinced we are inside a living machine. Shall
<v Speaker 7>I go to battle space and sent insatiable, curiosity, spuck.
<v Speaker 8>You haven't changed a bit. You're just as warm and
<v Speaker 8>sociable as ever. I hope we got this one off
<v Speaker 8>to a good start. I hope so too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. It was I mean, I I'd seen all of
<v Speaker 2>the others, had Wrath of Khan was the first one
<v Speaker 2>that I saw. You know, I was born in seventy five,
<v Speaker 2>and so when this came out in seventy nine. It's
<v Speaker 2>possible that I saw it and I have no memory
<v Speaker 2>of it. I did, but my first time that I
<v Speaker 2>remember watching it, I was like, I should go back
<v Speaker 2>and watch that original and I was a teenager and
<v Speaker 2>I was bored. I was I was way bored.
<v Speaker 4>Right right.
<v Speaker 3>What about you, Chuck, When was the first time you
<v Speaker 3>saw this?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 6>I saw it actually on the original release. I can
<v Speaker 6>tell you the name of the theater that I saw at,
<v Speaker 6>and I can tell you the name of the auditorium
<v Speaker 6>that I saw it in. And I can tell you
<v Speaker 6>that a few years later, as when I was in college,
<v Speaker 6>that same theater was where I went and went and
<v Speaker 6>worked my part time job while I was working through college.
<v Speaker 6>And that's how I kind of remember a lot of things.
<v Speaker 6>I think someone once said, I don't remember birthdays and
<v Speaker 6>wedding anniversaries and stuff like that, but I can tell
<v Speaker 6>you when a movie was released, and I relate everything
<v Speaker 6>kind of back to that. So yeah, I definitely remember
<v Speaker 6>seeing it for the first time.
<v Speaker 4>All right, Jeff, what about you?
<v Speaker 5>My story would probably echo D's. I remember a friend
<v Speaker 5>in my youth, A friend was using Wrath of Khan
<v Speaker 5>to show me that star Trek could be as.
<v Speaker 4>Entertaining as Star Wars.
<v Speaker 5>Loved Wratha Khan was ready to for more, and I
<v Speaker 5>wasn't old enough to respect the canon at that time,
<v Speaker 5>so I felt really bored with the motion picture.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, So I saw it in the theater just like Chuck,
<v Speaker 3>except I'm a few years younger. I was born in
<v Speaker 3>nineteen seventy three, so I'm six, and I remember my
<v Speaker 3>uncle was like, you know, hey, we're gonna go see
<v Speaker 3>this movie. I'm like, great, what are we seeing. It's
<v Speaker 3>Star Trek. I'm like, what is that. He's like, well,
<v Speaker 3>it's kind of like Star Wars. So when I went
<v Speaker 3>to the theater, I'm expecting laser battles and lightsabers, and
<v Speaker 3>what I got was a lot of you know, looking
<v Speaker 3>and thinking. So I was bored initially too. Now that
<v Speaker 3>movie was not made for a six year old, you know,
<v Speaker 3>it was made for a forty five or fifty year old.
<v Speaker 3>And now I'm forty five and fifty, so my perspective
<v Speaker 3>has changed a little bit. But at the time, I
<v Speaker 3>was like, this is not Star Wars. Okay, So let's
<v Speaker 3>talk a little bit about the history, not so much
<v Speaker 3>of Star Trek, but of Star Trek the Motion Picture.
<v Speaker 8>Buck, you haven't changed a bit. You're just as warm
<v Speaker 8>and sociable as ever.
<v Speaker 7>No have you, Doctor, as your continued bred election for
<v Speaker 7>irrelevancy demonstrates.
<v Speaker 3>As early as nineteen sixty eight, Geene Roddenberry addresses a
<v Speaker 3>crowd in Oakland at a convention and says, hey, guys,
<v Speaker 3>I think we're gonna do a motion picture of Star Trek.
<v Speaker 3>And people are like, heck, yeah, let's see this at
<v Speaker 3>the movies. Well, in nineteen sixty nine they cancel the series, right,
<v Speaker 3>and so at that point everything's kind of dead. But
<v Speaker 3>as early as nineteen seventy five, Paramount comes to him
<v Speaker 3>they start to kind of dream up the idea of
<v Speaker 3>a Star Trek movie, and so he begins to work
<v Speaker 3>on it. Well, as we all know, in nineteen seventy seven,
<v Speaker 3>Star Wars completely changes the game. So Paramount ramps up
<v Speaker 3>their efforts at that point and says, what sci fi
<v Speaker 3>action franchise do we have in our closet that we
<v Speaker 3>can ramp up to be with Star Wars? And actually
<v Speaker 3>I found it interesting. Close Encounters was a kind of
<v Speaker 3>catalyst for Star Trek the Motion Picture, because people viewed
<v Speaker 3>Star Wars as a fluke, and Close Encounters proved that
<v Speaker 3>it wasn't a fluke and that science fiction could be
<v Speaker 3>a viable money maker. And so at that point they
<v Speaker 3>go back to Gene Rodenberry and that's when we start
<v Speaker 3>in Earnest or Star Trek the motion picture.
<v Speaker 4>That's a great point.
<v Speaker 5>You got to remember sci fi had a good life
<v Speaker 5>two thousand, you know, Kubrick's two thousand and one, and
<v Speaker 5>I think it's like nineteen sixty eight, Logan's run in
<v Speaker 5>seventy six.
<v Speaker 4>It's bankable.
<v Speaker 5>So it's a great time to bring this this franchise back.
<v Speaker 5>What I find fascinating is that after several failed attempts
<v Speaker 5>with the scripts and directors, they said, you know what,
<v Speaker 5>let's just do TV and Star Trek Phase two was
<v Speaker 5>supposed to happen, and then that got canceled. You know,
<v Speaker 5>in pre production they're like, no, let's we got to
<v Speaker 5>have the movie. Let's let's go let's go big.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So the interesting thing about Star Trek Phase two, as
<v Speaker 3>I understand it, check you can help me with this,
<v Speaker 3>but that's where the Decker and Ailiah character kind of
<v Speaker 3>are born.
<v Speaker 4>Is Star Trek Phase two.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, you have you have the Decker and Alia characters.
<v Speaker 6>I'm not one hundred percent sure if they had the
<v Speaker 6>same kind of relationship. But they were also missing one
<v Speaker 6>particular character who they weren't going to get back. They
<v Speaker 6>had no mister Spock. Leonard Nimoy was not going to
<v Speaker 6>sign up for another series. Not only that, he was
<v Speaker 6>a little bit, I don't know, angry about the way
<v Speaker 6>the merchandising agreements had worked. So after Star Trek went
<v Speaker 6>off the air, the residuals that he and the other
<v Speaker 6>actors were getting basically after a year, they were done,
<v Speaker 6>but Paramount was still making a lot of money selling
<v Speaker 6>the likeness of their faces, their images, you know, just
<v Speaker 6>in the characters of Spock and Kirk. And he was
<v Speaker 6>a little more than upset about that, and that was
<v Speaker 6>between the series, and it kind of felt he was
<v Speaker 6>taking advantage of a little bit he wasn't too keen
<v Speaker 6>to jump back on. So they had to get another
<v Speaker 6>science officer on board, and they came up with the
<v Speaker 6>character of Zoon, and Zon was a fully vulcan science
<v Speaker 6>officer who was maybe twenty ish or so. Ended up
<v Speaker 6>being cast by by rodden Berry and Company by an
<v Speaker 6>actor named David Gutreaux, I believe is how you pronounce
<v Speaker 6>his name, and David. He walks into Gene Rodden's office
<v Speaker 6>and he says, congratulations, David, you are our zone. And
<v Speaker 6>at the time, this is in one of those times
<v Speaker 6>when is it going to be a TV show? Is
<v Speaker 6>it going to be a movie, But at this point
<v Speaker 6>it was looking more like it was going to be
<v Speaker 6>a motion picture at that point, and I believe that
<v Speaker 6>may have been around August of seventy seven. At that point,
<v Speaker 6>I think is when Michael Eisner, you know, the guy
<v Speaker 6>who went on to be mister Disney, he was actually
<v Speaker 6>head a Paramount at that time. And this was around
<v Speaker 6>the time when they said, what do we have in
<v Speaker 6>our arsenal of shows that we could make? And they
<v Speaker 6>looked at Star Trek and they were beginning to think
<v Speaker 6>of that more as a motion picture at that point.
<v Speaker 3>So let's talk a little bit about Leonard Nimoy, because
<v Speaker 3>Paramount got down on their hands and knees and begged
<v Speaker 3>him to come back.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, definitely.
<v Speaker 3>Somebody's daughter said, you can't have Star Trek without Spock.
<v Speaker 2>I saw him. I saw Leonard Nimoy talking about it specifically,
<v Speaker 2>and that was what he said. He said, if I
<v Speaker 2>was watching the movie, I wouldn't want to watch it
<v Speaker 2>without Spock, and I wouldn't want anyone else to play Spock.
<v Speaker 2>And so if you know the movie's going to get made,
<v Speaker 2>what other choice do you have in that situation? Right?
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, Once they brought Robert Wise on, he was told
<v Speaker 6>by his wife, by his family, they said, you cannot
<v Speaker 6>have Star Trek without mister Spock. They were able to
<v Speaker 6>get the licensing resolve to everybody's satisfaction.
<v Speaker 4>And then they wrote a check to Leonard Neimoy.
<v Speaker 6>They wrote a check.
<v Speaker 2>I feel like William Shatner was maybe less difficult to
<v Speaker 2>convince from what I understand, talking about how badly their
<v Speaker 2>contracts were with the TV show. After the cancelation of
<v Speaker 2>the TV show, within a year, Shatner was homeless, like
<v Speaker 2>he lost his house. He was and actually was living
<v Speaker 2>in a truck, and by nineteen seventy he was living
<v Speaker 2>in a truck. Wow. He watched the launch of one
<v Speaker 2>of the space programs. I don't remember what it was,
<v Speaker 2>but he was just saying to himself, It's just so
<v Speaker 2>crazy that a year ago I was in space and
<v Speaker 2>now I'm in a truck watching this space stuff happen,
<v Speaker 2>and he didn't I mean he didn't do He did
<v Speaker 2>just a handful of movies and TV spots in between
<v Speaker 2>the Star Trek series and this one, including one of
<v Speaker 2>Jason's favorite horror.
<v Speaker 4>Movies, Kingdom of the Spiders.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, if you want to go back and look at
<v Speaker 2>our best horror movies of the seventies, Jason pulled out
<v Speaker 2>Kingdom of the Spiders. He had done some work with
<v Speaker 2>Roger Korman, who's not you know who's fantastic. God rest
<v Speaker 2>his sole he just passed, but also not known for
<v Speaker 2>high paying his actors either, so he was in a
<v Speaker 2>tough spot for that ten years.
<v Speaker 3>Wow, let's talk about Robert Wise for a second. Listen
<v Speaker 3>to the list of films that Robert Wise directed before
<v Speaker 3>Star Trek, The Motion Picture Okay, The Davier Stood Still,
<v Speaker 3>The Haunting West Side Story, The Sound of Music, The
<v Speaker 3>Sound of Music, The News Yes, and then he also
<v Speaker 3>directed kind of I think, an underappreciated seventies sci fi
<v Speaker 3>movie called The Andromeda Strain, which was by Michael Crichton.
<v Speaker 2>When I was looking at the IMDb on this that
<v Speaker 2>one popped up, and the trailer, the preview for it
<v Speaker 2>popped up and I was like, oh, dang, this looks
<v Speaker 2>like a great story. Like suddenly, like a whole town
<v Speaker 2>of people just drop dead in the middle of whatever
<v Speaker 2>they're doing that day, and it all kind of seems
<v Speaker 2>to get traced back to some sort of organism that
<v Speaker 2>has come from the space rocks that they brought back.
<v Speaker 3>I saw somebody say that the Andromeda Strain and Star
<v Speaker 3>Trek the motion picture are very similar because you spend
<v Speaker 3>two and a half hours for people to go in
<v Speaker 3>look at something accurate. But they land Robert Wise, the
<v Speaker 3>guy who directed Sound of Music and The Day There
<v Speaker 3>Stood Still and West Side Story. He's old Hollywood. He's
<v Speaker 3>not familiar with Star Trek, or at least not super
<v Speaker 3>familiar with Star Trek, but he ends up kind of
<v Speaker 3>being the anchor on this movie. He's the guy that
<v Speaker 3>kind of holds everything together. He's also one of the
<v Speaker 3>reasons why they were behind schedule because he wouldn't shoot
<v Speaker 3>over twelve hours per day. He was like, Nope, not
<v Speaker 3>going to do it, not gonna work that hard. Chuck
<v Speaker 3>what he got for us on Robert Wise.
<v Speaker 6>One of my favorite Robert Wise movies. And if you've
<v Speaker 6>never seen this one, go back and watch it. It's
<v Speaker 6>Run Silent, Run Deep. It's a little bit older World
<v Speaker 6>War two submarine movie. Excellent film. But before he was
<v Speaker 6>a director, he was an editor. And one of the
<v Speaker 6>things that I was listening to David Fine, who is
<v Speaker 6>the producer of the Director's Edition, listen to him when
<v Speaker 6>he was talking about how when Robert Wise was editing
<v Speaker 6>the de back in two thousand and one, he said
<v Speaker 6>he would you'd see him kind of conducting with his
<v Speaker 6>hands the beats of what was going on, and then
<v Speaker 6>he knew right where to cut a film, and he
<v Speaker 6>had incredible instinct about pacing and what it was that
<v Speaker 6>made a good setup and a good scene.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, before we get into we're gonna talk about what works,
<v Speaker 3>what doesn't work, what will we change, Let's just talk
<v Speaker 3>briefly about what this movie is about. So, Jeff, you
<v Speaker 3>want to give us breakdown on what the plot is
<v Speaker 3>of this movie.
<v Speaker 5>Jason, and my most IMDb styled answer, I would I
<v Speaker 5>would say it's when an alien spacecraft of enormous power
<v Speaker 5>is spotted approaching Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk resumes command
<v Speaker 5>of the overhauled USS Enterprise in order to intercept it.
<v Speaker 8>Spock. This child is about to wipe out every living
<v Speaker 8>thing on Earth. Now, what do you suggest we do, Spanky.
<v Speaker 2>The massive spacecraft, whatever it might be, is also destroying
<v Speaker 2>things as they come into its path, including including a
<v Speaker 2>Klingon vessel, which we see at the very beginning of
<v Speaker 2>the movie. And this is the first time that we
<v Speaker 2>see Klingons with their trademark head bunk whatever that stuff
<v Speaker 2>is called. And I was listening to it was one
<v Speaker 2>of those nineteen seventies Trekky conventions. And what's the actor
<v Speaker 2>that plays Scotty, what's his name is Mouhan. So he's
<v Speaker 2>talking to the crowd and he's mentioning He's like, they've
<v Speaker 2>got these things on their head that look like warts,
<v Speaker 2>which they've never had before. But what I attribute to
<v Speaker 2>Scotty sending them a herd of troubles nice only dorky
<v Speaker 2>trekky people.
<v Speaker 7>Job.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, that's right, all right? What do we think works
<v Speaker 4>with this movie?
<v Speaker 6>So?
<v Speaker 2>I think that the I think the storyline on this
<v Speaker 2>is very strong. Like, as I am watching this for
<v Speaker 2>the second time, I'm thinking to myself, this is actually
<v Speaker 2>a compelling thing, Like you've got this ominous death cloud
<v Speaker 2>moving at amazing speed toward the planet. What are you
<v Speaker 2>going to do? And the answer is, we're going to
<v Speaker 2>go meet it before it gets here, and we're going
<v Speaker 2>to try to figure out what it is and how
<v Speaker 2>to stop it. That's a great That is a great
<v Speaker 2>storyline if it sounds really exciting, and so if it was,
<v Speaker 2>you know, handled in a different way, there might have
<v Speaker 2>been more exciting features to it. But the other part
<v Speaker 2>that I think that works for this is they take
<v Speaker 2>time to appreciate the special effects in this movie. I
<v Speaker 2>feel like, especially in twenty first century movies, we have
<v Speaker 2>so many special effects that are absolutely crammed down our
<v Speaker 2>throats in every scene of big action movies that you
<v Speaker 2>don't have time to even notice most of it, let
<v Speaker 2>alone like soak it in and kind of go, oh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, they did a good job with this this one.
<v Speaker 2>This movie might take it a little bit to the extreme,
<v Speaker 2>but I actually was. I was pleased to have them go, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>let's watch the spacecraft move through space. Let's see how
<v Speaker 2>friggin' big the enterprise really is. I mean, I don't
<v Speaker 2>think that's something that people really truly appreciated from the
<v Speaker 2>television series. But he addresses the crew before they get
<v Speaker 2>started and you're like, oh, dang, this is a huge
<v Speaker 2>this is a huge group of people. There's a whole
<v Speaker 2>army of people that are involved with running this ship.
<v Speaker 2>And then you get this outside shot to go, oh, wow,
<v Speaker 2>this thing is gigantic, which of course it would have
<v Speaker 2>to be. You'd have to have a giant ship just
<v Speaker 2>to be able to sustain life for that travel through space.
<v Speaker 2>So those are the things that I think worked. And
<v Speaker 2>then I just I mean, I love that they got
<v Speaker 2>the original cast members back and that they were all
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they weren't as characters where they were when
<v Speaker 2>we left them, but they were still James T. Kirk,
<v Speaker 2>mister Spock, and McCoy. I love it all.
<v Speaker 4>Right, Jack, what works for you in this one?
<v Speaker 6>Well, I'm going to start where Dee left off, and
<v Speaker 6>that's with getting the characters back in all the original actors.
<v Speaker 2>That was.
<v Speaker 6>I mean, if they could not have, if they didn't
<v Speaker 6>get Leonard nimoy, would it just would not have been
<v Speaker 6>the same movie. But I think what I really like
<v Speaker 6>how they introduced, how they brought everyone in one by one.
<v Speaker 6>He's introduced with Spock and he's he's going through the
<v Speaker 6>final stages of the coolinar ritual, and then it introduces Kirk,
<v Speaker 6>and Kirk is now going back to the Enterprise and
<v Speaker 6>he's he. The next character that they introduced is the Enterprise,
<v Speaker 6>because the Enterprise is a character of the show. And
<v Speaker 6>then they bring back McCoy, you know, and McCoy honestly
<v Speaker 6>does not need to be in this movie, but Kirk
<v Speaker 6>needs him. Kirk needs him to be Kirk.
<v Speaker 7>Mc bones, I need you.
<v Speaker 2>Badly.
<v Speaker 6>And then finally, once they're on their way, the Enterprise
<v Speaker 6>isn't working because it's still missing spot. And then once
<v Speaker 6>Spock comes on board, the Enterprise is happy at that
<v Speaker 6>point and everything begins to work and they're able to
<v Speaker 6>go on their mission. So I thought the characters all worked.
<v Speaker 6>I think the other thing that really worked is Jerry
<v Speaker 6>Goldsmith's score. I can't begin to tell you the number
<v Speaker 6>of times I have bought this score. It was the
<v Speaker 6>first LP album that I had ever owned in my life,
<v Speaker 6>and I still have it, and I have it on
<v Speaker 6>various CDs and other digital platforms for it, and it's
<v Speaker 6>just an amazing score. I don't know if you notice.
<v Speaker 6>They call it the blaster Beam. So every time they
<v Speaker 6>would show Vjure you'd hear this. Wow, that's an instrument
<v Speaker 6>that they created for this particular recording, and I think
<v Speaker 6>it gives that whole gravitas towards to the voice of
<v Speaker 6>VDRE and it's just really good. And of course the
<v Speaker 6>effects are amazing. And since you guys did watch it
<v Speaker 6>on Max, could you tell whenever they were using the
<v Speaker 6>Digital Enterprise versus the Model Enterprise? Because there were, But
<v Speaker 6>like I mean, you ever like today you watch movies
<v Speaker 6>and you kind of go, okay, I know, I'm kind
<v Speaker 6>of looking at CGI. When they did this, their use
<v Speaker 6>of it was so subtle, and a lot of times
<v Speaker 6>it was there to fix problems that may have been
<v Speaker 6>in the original negative or maybe in the compositions. But
<v Speaker 6>there's different areas, especially later on when you were saying,
<v Speaker 6>d how big the enterprise is, right, and they set
<v Speaker 6>so much time up at the beginning about how big
<v Speaker 6>the enterprise is, and then you see how much bigger
<v Speaker 6>VGRE is, like Vger engulfs it to where the enterprise
<v Speaker 6>is just this little speck, and that sense of scale
<v Speaker 6>was just I just it blew me away.
<v Speaker 4>Jeff, what about you, Ben Well?
<v Speaker 5>I think Chuck and de have done a lot of
<v Speaker 5>the heavy lifting there for me, because I'll i'll have
<v Speaker 5>to talk about, obviously the story Harold Livingston, who was
<v Speaker 5>a fame TV writer. It blows my mind that this
<v Speaker 5>guy mostly known for Six Million Dollar Man and Mission Impossible,
<v Speaker 5>he wrote Star Trek the motion picture. What a way
<v Speaker 5>to make your mark. I think it does a great
<v Speaker 5>job of giving the movie a lot of tension. It
<v Speaker 5>almost gives it in the same way like a movie
<v Speaker 5>like Wargames does, where you're up against something that you
<v Speaker 5>cannot possibly defeat, so our protagonists have to rely on
<v Speaker 5>their wits if they're going to save the day. And
<v Speaker 5>that's one thing maybe my youth I didn't really appreciate,
<v Speaker 5>But as an adult, the story here is just it's
<v Speaker 5>one of the most intelligent Star Trek stories I think
<v Speaker 5>has been out there.
<v Speaker 4>As far as the visual effects night and day. When
<v Speaker 4>we're talking about the.
<v Speaker 5>Director's cut and it's gorgeous, you know, can't you can't
<v Speaker 5>talk about these effects without talking about Douglas Trumbull. I
<v Speaker 5>always think about the scene where Scotty and Kirk are
<v Speaker 5>taxiing over to the Enterprise and it's just this long
<v Speaker 5>drawn out moment where there's no dialogue and that's that's
<v Speaker 5>something that Trumbull took straight from Kubrick and was like,
<v Speaker 5>let's just get in the enterprise. Let's admire the enterprise
<v Speaker 5>and see it for all it's grandeur. You know the
<v Speaker 5>idea that this is. You know, Trumble's the first pick.
<v Speaker 5>Obviously he turns him down because he wants to be
<v Speaker 5>a director and he's committed to close encounters of the
<v Speaker 5>third kind. And they had so much they had so
<v Speaker 5>many problems with the visual effects team that they were
<v Speaker 5>working on that they I think they spent like five
<v Speaker 5>million dollars and went nowhere with what they had maybe
<v Speaker 5>like one shot.
<v Speaker 4>Zero working shots. Yeah, yeah, zero working shots.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, first of all. And it was Robert Abele and associates.
<v Speaker 6>Go and look at the commercials that they did in
<v Speaker 6>the seventies. They used a lot of that same slit
<v Speaker 6>scan techniques that Trumbull did with the Stargate in two
<v Speaker 6>thousand and one. It's just really really slick commercials, very
<v Speaker 6>very famous. But yeah, they got they spent like I
<v Speaker 6>thought the number was more like a million, but I mean,
<v Speaker 6>what's a million or five million when your total budget
<v Speaker 6>is forty And they had been working on it for
<v Speaker 6>a year they had finished principal photography, like in January
<v Speaker 6>seventy nine, Bob Wise goes and says, okay, I want
<v Speaker 6>to see what you got, you know, show me something,
<v Speaker 6>and they showed him maybe thirty seconds of some of
<v Speaker 6>the work that they were doing on the probe scene
<v Speaker 6>when it was on the bridge, and that was it.
<v Speaker 6>Bob left that particular meeting. He said, I never want
<v Speaker 6>to see that guy again. He's out of here. And
<v Speaker 6>luckily at that point Trumbull was free, and Trumbull brought
<v Speaker 6>in another person, John Dykstra, who worked on a little
<v Speaker 6>show called Battlestar Galactica, but before that he cut his
<v Speaker 6>teeth on this other movie, Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah, he
<v Speaker 6>was the guy who did the dystra for all those
<v Speaker 6>motion control cameras and everything.
<v Speaker 2>So he also did the motion control for the Gopher
<v Speaker 2>on caddy Shack.
<v Speaker 4>There.
<v Speaker 2>Check out the Caddyshack episode.
<v Speaker 6>But they had more visual effect shots than Star Wars
<v Speaker 6>and Close Encounters combined.
<v Speaker 4>That's hard to believe. Okay, that's amazing.
<v Speaker 6>Well, well, also remember this is January February of seventy nine.
<v Speaker 6>This picture has to release on December seventh, deadline. Yeah,
<v Speaker 6>that was a big deal, right, Yeah, they had contracts
<v Speaker 6>with theaters. They were going to clear the slate for
<v Speaker 6>December so that they could get this movie in And
<v Speaker 6>this is going to be the next blockbuster, right, And
<v Speaker 6>so there's like a thirty five million dollar guarantee the
<v Speaker 6>film studio is going to get from the distribution of
<v Speaker 6>this film. However, if they don't make it, it's not
<v Speaker 6>only that thirty five million, but they got to pay
<v Speaker 6>thirty five million out, so they stand to lose quite
<v Speaker 6>a bit of money in penalties and lawsuits and other
<v Speaker 6>such things.
<v Speaker 3>I heard Michael Eisner actually said if we have to
<v Speaker 3>release it with the black thing, that says effect here
<v Speaker 3>we're releasing.
<v Speaker 6>They got the teams to work three eight hour shifts
<v Speaker 6>to get it going.
<v Speaker 2>Jeff, you're talking about the writing on this one, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>which is fantastic and I've already put it on my
<v Speaker 2>good list as far as things that are of high
<v Speaker 2>quality about this movie. But I was just thinking about,
<v Speaker 2>you know, the characters. You start with Spock on his
<v Speaker 2>home planet with long hair, going through this ceremony to
<v Speaker 2>rid himself of the what's left of his humanity. You
<v Speaker 2>start with Kirk and he has lost the Enterprise and
<v Speaker 2>now is trying to take it back basically by force.
<v Speaker 2>And you're like, wow, okay, these you know, we're starting
<v Speaker 2>with adventure at the beginning, and then with McCoy, he's
<v Speaker 2>like involuntarily, you know, brought into the shanghaied, he was drafted.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, he shows up like he just came out
<v Speaker 2>of the Star Trek disco with his full beard. And
<v Speaker 2>so finally with McCoy, we understand why he's angry all
<v Speaker 2>the time, you know, like I didn't understand in the series.
<v Speaker 2>Now I know he never wanted to be here in
<v Speaker 2>the first place. That's why McCoy is always angry.
<v Speaker 3>McCoy looks like he's been living in Thailand. He's smoking potties,
<v Speaker 3>hanging out with ladies on the street all the time.
<v Speaker 6>But you've got this, McCoy had become a veterinarian after
<v Speaker 6>he left Starfleet, so he didn't want to operate on
<v Speaker 6>people anymore. Now that wasn't the original stories.
<v Speaker 2>That's fantastic, Well, that was what I was going to say.
<v Speaker 2>You've got a fantastic first act, You've got a fantastic
<v Speaker 2>plot point. But you chuck. You said the script was
<v Speaker 2>actually missing the third act, like they didn't know what
<v Speaker 2>they were going to do with it.
<v Speaker 6>That was and that was that was. That was one
<v Speaker 6>of the big problems even with Bob Wise, you know,
<v Speaker 6>Bob Is used to like, hey, we've got everything laid out,
<v Speaker 6>we know what we're doing, and they didn't have the
<v Speaker 6>third act for it, and they had brought in everybody
<v Speaker 6>to try to pitch ideas. They even got to William
<v Speaker 6>Shatner and Leonard Nimoy pitching some of their ideas. And
<v Speaker 6>it was one of the producers are he worked with
<v Speaker 6>Roddenberry John Povel, who came up with this idea that
<v Speaker 6>Veegre has grown as much as he's going to be
<v Speaker 6>able to grow, and he must evolve to the next level.
<v Speaker 6>And then that's where the concept of joining with the
<v Speaker 6>Creator came into being.
<v Speaker 7>What Veja needs in order to evolve is a human quality,
<v Speaker 7>our capacity to leap beyond logic.
<v Speaker 6>And so that's how that whole ending came about.
<v Speaker 3>Jason works for you man, Well, okay, so I just
<v Speaker 3>kind of what you guys have already said. Number one,
<v Speaker 3>I give this movie a lot of credit for getting
<v Speaker 3>the gang back together, right. This gave us the rest
<v Speaker 3>of the Star Trek movies and TV series that we
<v Speaker 3>have basically because it got us kicked off with Kirk's
<v Speaker 3>bach McCoy, you know, Scotty. It introduced me to Star Trek,
<v Speaker 3>So thank you for that. I think the special effects
<v Speaker 3>and score are amazing. The sense of wonder and discovery
<v Speaker 3>with this movie, I think are very strong. I think
<v Speaker 3>the director did a great job. I think the fact
<v Speaker 3>that Veigre spoilers Beijer is Voyager.
<v Speaker 4>Six sent from Earth.
<v Speaker 3>Like when I first realized what that was, I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>this is so cool. Right, this is our own creation
<v Speaker 3>that is seeking us out to talk to the creator.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, let's talk about what doesn't work.
<v Speaker 2>Well, balls, do the.
<v Speaker 4>New medical facilities meet with your approval?
<v Speaker 7>They do not.
<v Speaker 6>It's like working in a damn computer center.
<v Speaker 4>D you're up?
<v Speaker 2>Okay? So I noticed something you got, you know, text
<v Speaker 2>thread that we had when we started, you know, when
<v Speaker 2>we decided we're going to do this. I love the
<v Speaker 2>text threads because it's like, oh, hey, did you guys
<v Speaker 2>hear about this? Oh hey, check this thing out. And
<v Speaker 2>so in one of them, somebody sent the poster because
<v Speaker 2>the poster is by the same artist who did the
<v Speaker 2>poster for Apocalypse.
<v Speaker 6>Now, I think it's Bob peak.
<v Speaker 2>So in that poster, I noticed it because just because
<v Speaker 2>we're looking at the poster and it's for the very
<v Speaker 2>first time that it says there is no comparison, like
<v Speaker 2>that's on the poster, and I was asking myself, well,
<v Speaker 2>what does that mean? What are they what are they
<v Speaker 2>talking about that they're saying there is no comparison because
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't really have anything to do with the plot
<v Speaker 2>of the movie. So then that begs the question is, well,
<v Speaker 2>if it's not the movie that they're talking about, what
<v Speaker 2>are they talking about? Well, does it mean that there's
<v Speaker 2>no comparison to Star Wars.
<v Speaker 4>That's what I think they mean.
<v Speaker 2>Is that what we're talking about.
<v Speaker 5>Oh, that's a clever way to take a jab at
<v Speaker 5>the at Lucas.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So my thought is then, I mean, they're right, there
<v Speaker 2>is no comparison to Star Wars. It is a completely
<v Speaker 2>different kind of movie. But I'm not going to I'm
<v Speaker 2>not going to say that, well, I am going to
<v Speaker 2>say Star Wars at Star Wars A New Hope is
<v Speaker 2>a better movie than this movie.
<v Speaker 4>But you're having a limb right there.
<v Speaker 2>But they're different kinds of movies, and one of the
<v Speaker 2>things we've talked about it already is the fact that
<v Speaker 2>Kuber had come out in sixty eight or sixty nine,
<v Speaker 2>whenever it was. With two thousand and one A Space Odyssey.
<v Speaker 2>If I was saying to myself, did they try to
<v Speaker 2>emulate Star Wars or did they try to emulate another movie?
<v Speaker 2>I would say it was another movie, and it was
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and one of Space obyssly because Cooper took
<v Speaker 2>so much time doing the exact same things where he
<v Speaker 2>lets you soak in the special effects and listen to
<v Speaker 2>some awesome music, and so to me me, I probably
<v Speaker 2>wouldn't have done that as much, because, quite frankly, the
<v Speaker 2>special effects in this movie were not as good as
<v Speaker 2>they were in two thousand and one A Space Odyssey,
<v Speaker 2>even though it's ten years later and they should have
<v Speaker 2>been significantly better at that point. They were good, but
<v Speaker 2>they weren't Space Odyssey good. They weren't Star Wars good,
<v Speaker 2>and so if you're going to make that decision, you
<v Speaker 2>got to come stronger with your special effects somehow. What
<v Speaker 2>also didn't work for me is that none of the
<v Speaker 2>uniforms had cot pieces and all kinds of beans and
<v Speaker 2>Franks up there that I was just not excited to see.
<v Speaker 2>I heard Shatner drop weight. Oh wait, speaking of that,
<v Speaker 2>speaking of the text thread, I have to read what
<v Speaker 2>happened right before we started recording. Jeff Johnson is like, hey,
<v Speaker 2>is there an invite? And Jason says, still still setting
<v Speaker 2>up Hank tight guys, And then he said, also the
<v Speaker 2>Star Trek podcast the search for Dee Graves because I
<v Speaker 2>had not yet gotten here. Jeff says it is illogical
<v Speaker 2>to proceed without d Graves, and then Jason says, the
<v Speaker 2>Graves unit is almost here, and then Chuck says, why
<v Speaker 2>doesn't the creator respond? And I said, if you think
<v Speaker 2>I'm using the transporter after what happened to that first
<v Speaker 2>group in the movie, you're out of your vulcan mind.
<v Speaker 6>Yeah. Can I say something about the transporter accident?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah?
<v Speaker 6>Was that not the most horrific thing ever? Yes?
<v Speaker 4>In a G movie?
<v Speaker 6>Yeah, in a G movie. Yeah. And that one always
<v Speaker 6>gets me. And someone made a comment.
<v Speaker 9>About think about that, You're in the most agony that
<v Speaker 9>you've ever been in and your mouth hasn't yet materialized
<v Speaker 9>for you to scream, and.
<v Speaker 6>Then you get that it comes in and then they
<v Speaker 6>try to put enterprise.
<v Speaker 2>What we got back didn't live long. Fortunately. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>when I'm watching the series, I'm just thinking, Okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>this technology is so sound that it's never concern. And
<v Speaker 2>then they yanked the rug right out from underneath this
<v Speaker 2>on the very first transporter trip of the movie, and
<v Speaker 2>you're like, oh, so every time this happens, and it
<v Speaker 2>happens all the time, you're at risk of becoming a
<v Speaker 2>pile of carbon goo. Yeah, that's terrifying.
<v Speaker 5>It was terrifying when we thought the worst thing that
<v Speaker 5>could happen was what we saw President scrub deal with
<v Speaker 5>his asse was on backwards. This this movie movie shows
<v Speaker 5>us more of like David Crodenberg's The Fly, where things
<v Speaker 5>can go wrong. And I totally understand McCoy's disinterest in
<v Speaker 5>ever wanting to beam after seeing Star.
<v Speaker 4>Trek the motion picture.
<v Speaker 5>Hey, before we get too far away from Bob Peek,
<v Speaker 5>a little tidbit about Bob Peek.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, the poster's gorgeous, it is, And.
<v Speaker 5>I just realized, I just realized I've got his artwork
<v Speaker 5>hanging on my wall. He also did the one sheet
<v Speaker 5>for Superman the movie, the famous You'll Believe a Man
<v Speaker 5>can fly. Oh really, yeah, I mean I know when
<v Speaker 5>you talk great poster work. You know, Drew Strewsy is
<v Speaker 5>the first name out of most people's mouths, but Bob Peek,
<v Speaker 5>he does gorgeous art.
<v Speaker 4>Aside from Star Trek and Superman.
<v Speaker 5>You know, he did The Dark Crystal, he did The
<v Speaker 5>Spy Who Loved Me and uh, you know you mentioned
<v Speaker 5>Apocalypse now, but uh, we'd be we'd be remiss.
<v Speaker 4>If we didn't mention he also did the.
<v Speaker 5>The dart work for any which way you can, Hey,
<v Speaker 5>little little little throwback to.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah nice, okay, Jack, what did not work for you
<v Speaker 3>in this movie?
<v Speaker 6>Wow?
<v Speaker 7>Anything?
<v Speaker 6>Pardon? Well, you know I'm a homer for it. So
<v Speaker 6>it's uh, it's kind of gotten to the point. But
<v Speaker 6>I I would say, if if there's anything, I still
<v Speaker 6>feel that there are some sequences that could have been trimmed,
<v Speaker 6>or you know, even some of the relationships could have
<v Speaker 6>been explored a little bit more. One of the things
<v Speaker 6>that I think a lot of a lot of folks
<v Speaker 6>had complaints about it when it first came out, and
<v Speaker 6>it's still there, but just because it's not in the story,
<v Speaker 6>is that the major characters have a lot to do
<v Speaker 6>or they have stuff to do, but Hohura really doesn't
<v Speaker 6>have much to do in it. Sulu, most of his
<v Speaker 6>interesting lines got cut in in the director's edition. And
<v Speaker 6>you know, check Off and Scottie, they they they're very
<v Speaker 6>relegated to what they do. There's not a lot of interaction.
<v Speaker 6>This is a this is a travel movie. I think
<v Speaker 6>those are my only things that I would have loved
<v Speaker 6>to have seen as a fan.
<v Speaker 3>All right, Jeff, you're up what doesn't work.
<v Speaker 5>I will agree with Chuck that there are some serious
<v Speaker 5>pacing issues in this film, and I understand long drawn
<v Speaker 5>out shots to show off the visual effects.
<v Speaker 4>However, I would have loved to see them trimmed more so.
<v Speaker 5>We could have made better use of of George Takai
<v Speaker 5>and Walter Koenig and Michelle Nichols who kind of just
<v Speaker 5>showed up for like glorified cameos. So that that's a
<v Speaker 5>problem for me. De mentioned the uniforms. I gotta say
<v Speaker 5>these are the worst Star Trek uniforms for me. In
<v Speaker 5>Star Trek, they just they felt more casual. I absolutely
<v Speaker 5>don't like that. The colors signifying the rare Yeah, they're.
<v Speaker 4>Practically non existent.
<v Speaker 5>You know, if you you have to you kind of
<v Speaker 5>have to queue into the delta on everyone's chest to
<v Speaker 5>see like the color behind it, to find out like
<v Speaker 5>who who's a science officer, Who's who's engineering? So I
<v Speaker 5>really didn't I really didn't care for that.
<v Speaker 6>Would you agree, Jeff that those that have.
<v Speaker 5>Been very comfortable, Well yeah, I mean they're it's like
<v Speaker 5>they're walking around wearing pajamas a lot of the times.
<v Speaker 5>Until you get to Ilia at the end when she
<v Speaker 5>comes back as the probe and what do we got for?
<v Speaker 5>Can she just wear a guy's dress shirt? Because that's
<v Speaker 5>that's all we got in the budget, you know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 5>we spent eighteen million dollars on the on the Phase
<v Speaker 5>two television show that we're adding into this budget.
<v Speaker 4>So we just grab a guy's shirt. That's so it.
<v Speaker 2>Please please add that to my what I like about
<v Speaker 2>this movie category? Please. I forgot to mention that. And
<v Speaker 2>then before John, I'll let you talk Jason, but before
<v Speaker 2>before we go, I have to mention one other thing
<v Speaker 2>that I didn't like. It didn't make any sense to me.
<v Speaker 2>The other troubling thing is when they're at warp speed
<v Speaker 2>they number one. When when things are going wrong, everybody
<v Speaker 2>gets all fuzzy in dream sequency, right, That's that's problem
<v Speaker 2>number one. But then problem number two. You know, it's
<v Speaker 2>it's grabbing from Star Wars. We could, you know, end
<v Speaker 2>up in the middle of an asteroid feel traveling through
<v Speaker 2>space isn't But but then that actually happens in this one,
<v Speaker 2>and they're like, oh, let's put an asteroid, but the
<v Speaker 2>asteroid is there with them, Like, how's the asteroid traveling
<v Speaker 2>at warp speed so that we are seeing the asteroid
<v Speaker 2>in real time instead of as a blur or whatever the.
<v Speaker 4>Wormhole effects that the wormholes ses. I'm not going down.
<v Speaker 2>A wormhole after the asteroid, but it's in front of them. Still,
<v Speaker 2>it didn't it didn't make any sense, and as far
<v Speaker 2>as I can tell, nothing to do with the plot
<v Speaker 2>like it didn't wasn't necessary. It was just a let's
<v Speaker 2>put an asteroid in front of them and forget all
<v Speaker 2>physics that are involved in this science really really science.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, they want to do great explanation on some
<v Speaker 2>stuff that I was just like, okay, if you say so,
<v Speaker 2>but I couldn't tell if it was real science or
<v Speaker 2>made up science or what. But they gave these stupid
<v Speaker 2>science details and then they absolutely just go, oh, well,
<v Speaker 2>let's put a rock in the way.
<v Speaker 4>A rock like a video game.
<v Speaker 3>It looks like it looked like battle Zone, it looked
<v Speaker 3>like a giant a flying potato, look like a great
<v Speaker 3>white shark coming closer to you.
<v Speaker 4>I'll tell you, Jason, the last thing.
<v Speaker 5>For you, for you before you talk about what doesn't work.
<v Speaker 5>And I'm sure you're gonna you're gonna highlight this. There's
<v Speaker 5>there's a significant lack of action. And that's not just me,
<v Speaker 5>that's pretty much everyone in nineteen seventy nine. But I
<v Speaker 5>think you've got a good fix, and I'll kick that
<v Speaker 5>down the road so you can talk about it.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you, Thank you.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, you know, Jeff and I have already talked about
<v Speaker 3>things I would do to change this movie, and I'm
<v Speaker 3>anxious to talk about that. So I'm not offering problems
<v Speaker 3>without solutions here, but I do have some issues. I
<v Speaker 3>don't think I'm really covering any new ground. There is
<v Speaker 3>not very much action in this movie. There is is
<v Speaker 3>almost no humor. There is not a lot of fun
<v Speaker 3>to be had, right, and one of the biggest things
<v Speaker 3>that's glaringly absent is the romance between Iliah and Decker.
<v Speaker 3>If we could have had a little bit more of that,
<v Speaker 3>that's what I We'll talk about that here in a minute,
<v Speaker 3>when I will discuss what I would fix. But and
<v Speaker 3>I think there are just some shots that were too long,
<v Speaker 3>including the two minutes of flying space at the beginning
<v Speaker 3>of the movie for no reason, before the paramount emblem is.
<v Speaker 4>Even on the tee.
<v Speaker 3>Just tighten things up, Let's trim it up a little bit.
<v Speaker 3>I appreciate the beauty and the care and the style,
<v Speaker 3>but it's just too long, and they need to beef
<v Speaker 3>up the action a little bit.
<v Speaker 5>You know. You mentioned a lack of humor. I think
<v Speaker 5>this movie has one of the more comedic moments in a.
<v Speaker 4>Star Trek film.
<v Speaker 5>I got I gotta point I gotta point out the insign,
<v Speaker 5>the pure seventies insign with his mustache.
<v Speaker 4>Who Spot does the neck pinch on he.
<v Speaker 5>Does the greatest to the overacting award goes to this guy.
<v Speaker 4>He milks it for always always worth it.
<v Speaker 5>He just slowly like we've seen Spot do that like
<v Speaker 5>a thousand times, and these guys drop like bags of dirt.
<v Speaker 4>He's in the war. Who you know. I love it.
<v Speaker 5>Every time I watched this, I love that guy's facial expression,
<v Speaker 5>so he's fantastic.
<v Speaker 4>Shout out to that guy. I don't even know who
<v Speaker 4>he is, but I texted you guys last night.
<v Speaker 3>I told you the spot in the movie where the
<v Speaker 3>probe comes on board and starts zapp and Iileiah and
<v Speaker 3>she keeps playing freeze tag and her face is making
<v Speaker 3>those contorted That makes me laugh every time, and I
<v Speaker 3>know I'm not supposed to laugh at that moment.
<v Speaker 6>So no real quickly about about that particular scene in general.
<v Speaker 6>So when they did the director's edition, the amount of
<v Speaker 6>original film negative that had not been comped or anything
<v Speaker 6>that they were able to get is the reason why
<v Speaker 6>that movie looks so good today, because they were able
<v Speaker 6>to go in and redo things properly because they didn't
<v Speaker 6>have the time in seventy nine to do it that way,
<v Speaker 6>and even in two thousand and one they did not
<v Speaker 6>have the original negative. So the angels of Paramount's Archives
<v Speaker 6>were very gracious in giving them what they needed. The
<v Speaker 6>one thing that they wanted to fix that they did
<v Speaker 6>not have the negative for was that scene right there.
<v Speaker 6>And if you go back and watch the original version
<v Speaker 6>of it and then compare it to this you'll see
<v Speaker 6>that the amount of cleanup and how it looks, it's
<v Speaker 6>amazing what they were able to do. But I get
<v Speaker 6>what you're saying about the contortions of her face. She
<v Speaker 6>has that Oh crap, it's over boom.
<v Speaker 4>All right, d how did you fix this picture?
<v Speaker 2>Let me talk about what they did in the twenty
<v Speaker 2>twenty two edition that absolutely worked to make this a
<v Speaker 2>much better movie. I mentioned it before, is that the
<v Speaker 2>a key aspect of this was that they had cut out,
<v Speaker 2>like a long part of monologue. After he has had
<v Speaker 2>his face to face experience with Veegure, right, he goes rogue,
<v Speaker 2>He goes out on his own to confront Veger, and
<v Speaker 2>he identifies with it on a deeper level and arrives
<v Speaker 2>back at the ship, and a large part of that
<v Speaker 2>dialogue got cut or that monologue got cut at when
<v Speaker 2>they did the first release, but they bring it back
<v Speaker 2>in this one, and he is tied to Veguer, like
<v Speaker 2>his story and Veger's story are tied together, and that
<v Speaker 2>is the story of why do we have humanity? Why
<v Speaker 2>is it important that we have humanity? Because at the
<v Speaker 2>beginning of this, he's ready to give his humanity up
<v Speaker 2>to become a completely logical being because he feels like
<v Speaker 2>that the emotions are unnecessary. But then he's called aboard
<v Speaker 2>the ship. He feels like he needs to go on
<v Speaker 2>this final journey and he confronts a being that is
<v Speaker 2>completely logical, that lacks all emotion, and he appreciates the
<v Speaker 2>danger and the coldness and the lack of something that
<v Speaker 2>he realizes is truly important. And that's how he moves
<v Speaker 2>from being the guy who's ready to give up to
<v Speaker 2>his humanity to the guy who is embracing his humanity.
<v Speaker 2>And so that whole why am I here? Is this
<v Speaker 2>all there is? That's a question that Spock has at
<v Speaker 2>the beginning that his experience with Veger helps him answer.
<v Speaker 2>And so I got to give them credit for that
<v Speaker 2>to go number one, terrible idea to cut it out
<v Speaker 2>in the first place, but way to go on grabbing
<v Speaker 2>that and bringing it back because that was gold.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, Spock weeping in that moment is when he it
<v Speaker 5>makes the movie for me.
<v Speaker 2>And then short answer because it went on so long
<v Speaker 2>on that one on something I would fix in the
<v Speaker 2>movie I until I rewatched it. This time, I thought
<v Speaker 2>that the voyager was the voyager one, not a voyager
<v Speaker 2>six that came out. You know, that's not a real
<v Speaker 2>thing totally.
<v Speaker 4>I'm down for that, the.
<v Speaker 2>Idea that that thing that we sent out, that we
<v Speaker 2>had that experience with. You know, that the Voyager going
<v Speaker 2>out was a big deal, even you know, for a
<v Speaker 2>little kid like me, that was an impressive thing. And
<v Speaker 2>so so, you know, I understand that they didn't know
<v Speaker 2>what was going to happen with the Voyager and there
<v Speaker 2>was a lot of question in the air, and they
<v Speaker 2>didn't want to screw that up. So okay, we'll make
<v Speaker 2>one that got sent out, you know, as Voyager number
<v Speaker 2>six twenty years later. But what's ironic about us recording
<v Speaker 2>this and the timeline of things is that that original
<v Speaker 2>Voyager one has kept on trucking on for the last
<v Speaker 2>forty seven years until middle November last year, and for
<v Speaker 2>the very first time, it sent back a message that
<v Speaker 2>didn't make any sense. So the Voyager one is sending
<v Speaker 2>back ones and zeros that mean different things, just like
<v Speaker 2>all of the computerized digital systems that we still have
<v Speaker 2>today in twenty twenty four. But what happens is after
<v Speaker 2>forty seven years, it's it's out of our solar system
<v Speaker 2>and it just starts sending one zero one zero, one zero,
<v Speaker 2>one zero, Like it's a repeat it doesn't make any sense,
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't tell us anything. It's not a code that
<v Speaker 2>we don't understand. It's just a repeating code. And because
<v Speaker 2>the technology is forty seven years old, like the lady
<v Speaker 2>who runs the program literally said, there's more technology in
<v Speaker 2>the remote you use to open your car than there
<v Speaker 2>is in the voyager one right, wow. And so so
<v Speaker 2>this is what's what's really going on, is they and
<v Speaker 2>they have to wait like nearly two solid days, like
<v Speaker 2>it's like a twenty two hours to send a message,
<v Speaker 2>twenty two hours to get a message back, and so
<v Speaker 2>it's a very long process that they're trying to fix
<v Speaker 2>this archaic piece of machinery and they can't even tell
<v Speaker 2>really what's wrong with it. And then just a few
<v Speaker 2>months ago, it sends something else. It sends something other
<v Speaker 2>than one zero one zero, one zero. It's not anything
<v Speaker 2>that makes sense, but there's like hope that maybe we
<v Speaker 2>finally have figured out what's wrong and this thing can
<v Speaker 2>keep going. It's unlikely that it's going to make it
<v Speaker 2>to fifty years, but my gosh, that little story right
<v Speaker 2>there is enough for me to go well, maybe some
<v Speaker 2>other life form had an interaction with this thing, and
<v Speaker 2>maybe they were like, well, these are all ones and zeros.
<v Speaker 2>What if we just repeat the ones in zeros. Well, okay,
<v Speaker 2>that's upsetting them. Let's send them a mixed code and
<v Speaker 2>see if that helped. Like, there could be life out
<v Speaker 2>there communicating with Voyager and then using that as a
<v Speaker 2>way to communicate with us. What if that was the possibility. Well,
<v Speaker 2>these guys saw that as a possibility back in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>seventy eight and said, what if some sentient computer took
<v Speaker 2>control of one of the Voyagers and made its quest
<v Speaker 2>to gain all knowledge in the universe? That should have
<v Speaker 2>happened with Voyager one. It could have happened. It could
<v Speaker 2>be happening. So there you go.
<v Speaker 6>You know they translated that right, the most recent code.
<v Speaker 2>Did they get it? Yeah? What is it?
<v Speaker 6>It says I went to the colonar ritual alongike opposis
<v Speaker 6>lousey necklace.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, feeling right at all?
<v Speaker 2>Job?
<v Speaker 7>Yeah?
<v Speaker 4>Good one?
<v Speaker 3>Judge, All right, Chuck, is there anything you would change
<v Speaker 3>about this movie?
<v Speaker 6>I'm looking at what would have made the movie we
<v Speaker 6>got in seventy nine better, and I would have moved
<v Speaker 6>a release date from Christmas to Easter. I would have
<v Speaker 6>had them do screenings of it so they could get
<v Speaker 6>it in front of test audiences and they could look
<v Speaker 6>at what the issues were as far as we're pacing was,
<v Speaker 6>and then let Bob Wise go back and address those
<v Speaker 6>issues back then. It would have given the effects team
<v Speaker 6>time to get in and to actually really go through
<v Speaker 6>and do a proper finish up some of their shots.
<v Speaker 6>It would have allowed for a proper sound mix. Something
<v Speaker 6>that you guys don't hear in the twenty two version
<v Speaker 6>is a bad sound mix. The sound mix in that
<v Speaker 6>is incredible in Dolby atmost. The sound mix we got
<v Speaker 6>in the original version is very horrible. The color grading.
<v Speaker 6>They did color grading on that movie in four days.
<v Speaker 6>It usually takes a month or so to do an
<v Speaker 6>entire film on that. And so basically everything they said
<v Speaker 6>is when in doubt, just go dark on it. And
<v Speaker 6>so if you watch the theatrical cut, you'll see that
<v Speaker 6>it's it. It looks blurry in some areas. It's it's
<v Speaker 6>just it's just really flat looking, and it's it's it's lacking.
<v Speaker 6>That time, I think that Bob Wise needed to really
<v Speaker 6>get out test the film see or what didn't. As
<v Speaker 6>it was, they were putting that film together up until
<v Speaker 6>the last second. They had rented a stage in MGM
<v Speaker 6>Studios where they had all the canisters, and they were
<v Speaker 6>as they were developing the reels, they were putting them
<v Speaker 6>in and you know they're in there, they're wet. And
<v Speaker 6>then they got to get over to Washington, d C.
<v Speaker 6>For the premiere on December sixth, and they basically given
<v Speaker 6>Bob Wise the film and he's bringing it over on
<v Speaker 6>the plane while the other planes are now going out
<v Speaker 6>to distribute the films to the theaters for the following for
<v Speaker 6>the December seventh premiere. They they had no time and
<v Speaker 6>if I could go back and change one thing about it,
<v Speaker 6>I would have them slip that date.
<v Speaker 4>All right, Jeff, what would you change if it please?
<v Speaker 5>Starfleet, I'd like to see my time answering this question
<v Speaker 5>in lieu of what the Covin cut will be. I'm
<v Speaker 5>excited about about the Covin cut.
<v Speaker 4>Well, thank you, well, thank you.
<v Speaker 2>Okay.
<v Speaker 3>So I am a red shirt.
<v Speaker 4>I'm not a trekky.
<v Speaker 3>I was brought up on Indiana Jones and James Bond
<v Speaker 3>and so Jeff and I were talking today and my
<v Speaker 3>thought is if you would just start this movie in
<v Speaker 3>an act three of a different adventure where you have
<v Speaker 3>Decker as the hero of the Enterprise. He is completing
<v Speaker 3>some awesome mission where he has defeated the Romulins or whatever,
<v Speaker 3>and he's the hero. Even if you said five years
<v Speaker 3>earlier and you kind of set that up. I think
<v Speaker 3>it would be great if you had a romance with him,
<v Speaker 3>and I Leiah at that point. I told Jeff James
<v Speaker 3>Bond that whole thing put her in bed with him.
<v Speaker 3>They're in love, right, but she has to stop him
<v Speaker 3>because of this celibacy thing that she's got.
<v Speaker 6>My oath of celibacy is Captain He's.
<v Speaker 2>Got to stop because he's got to go save the ship.
<v Speaker 2>There you go, and then he loses his opportunity because
<v Speaker 2>of the valve of celibacy.
<v Speaker 4>There you go, There you go.
<v Speaker 2>Love this idea, keep going, please.
<v Speaker 3>I love the idea of him being the hero of
<v Speaker 3>the enterprise so that the audience loves Decker. We really
<v Speaker 3>have no reason to like Decker at all in this movie.
<v Speaker 3>And so when Captain Kirk shows up, you're like, yeah, Decker,
<v Speaker 3>get out of here.
<v Speaker 4>This is Kirkship.
<v Speaker 3>But I'd like the idea of being conflicted about who
<v Speaker 3>does the Enterprise belong to? Is it the old guy,
<v Speaker 3>is that the new guy? You know they're both good.
<v Speaker 3>And then I even told Jeff, like for me, pursus
<v Speaker 3>Kabata had to shave her head for this movie because
<v Speaker 3>they wanted her to stand out and look different on whatever.
<v Speaker 3>If they could have built that in as somehow part
<v Speaker 3>of her celibacy ritual in some way, I think that
<v Speaker 3>that would have been really cool. You could have seen
<v Speaker 3>her quote unquote beautiful and then sacrifice and then later
<v Speaker 3>she and Decker come together. I think that that would
<v Speaker 3>have made that storyline a bit more satisfying.
<v Speaker 2>I just want this to be a whole other movie.
<v Speaker 2>I just wanted to be a prequel to the movie.
<v Speaker 6>Jim, I want this as much as you wanted The Enterprise.
<v Speaker 5>I want this Seeing Decker as a as a number
<v Speaker 5>one and then promote up and get his first first
<v Speaker 5>command as.
<v Speaker 4>Captain of the Enterprise.
<v Speaker 5>That would have been so much more fulfilling at the
<v Speaker 5>beginning of this movie than the two or five minutes
<v Speaker 5>of just Stars that we got. And Jason's absolutely right,
<v Speaker 5>like we would have cared about Decker and it would
<v Speaker 5>have created this Crimson tide effect. Where are we with
<v Speaker 5>Decker or are we with Kirk? Like who's who's really
<v Speaker 5>right here? Because Decker makes some really solid points. When
<v Speaker 5>when he you know, permission to speak freely, he he
<v Speaker 5>kind of tells Kirk like it is I'm still like, well, sorry,
<v Speaker 5>we don't care about you.
<v Speaker 4>You're not Kirk, Thank you, thank you? All right? D
<v Speaker 4>is this movie rewatchable?
<v Speaker 2>Feature expects an answer? Okay, So I just want to say,
<v Speaker 2>after William Shatner saw this movie for the first time,
<v Speaker 2>William Shatner, star of the movie, saw this movie for
<v Speaker 2>the first time, he said, well, that's it. We gave
<v Speaker 2>it a rest shot. It wasn't good and it will
<v Speaker 2>never happen again. Thinkingness, he was wrong, he was, he
<v Speaker 2>was wrong. But I understand his perspective because they didn't
<v Speaker 2>mess up the theatrical cut. They took out some important
<v Speaker 2>pieces and they were going on the heels of Star
<v Speaker 2>Wars and it was anything but that. And so yes,
<v Speaker 2>I understand. But fifteen years later he said, JOSHU, what
<v Speaker 2>I know? And after the revisit number one, revisiting the
<v Speaker 2>initial story, I was very impressed being able to watch
<v Speaker 2>what's streaming on Max now this new edition. I'm definitely
<v Speaker 2>two thumbs up. Go watch this movie. If you're under
<v Speaker 2>the age of eighteen, probably not. This is probably going
<v Speaker 2>to be not your pace of a movie. And unless
<v Speaker 2>you're a special kid, you don't. You're just not gonna
<v Speaker 2>get it. But if you're a grown person who's you know,
<v Speaker 2>watched movies like Schindler's List, you can watch this movie
<v Speaker 2>and go, wow, this is actually a very good movie.
<v Speaker 2>So yes, worth of rewatch all.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Chuck, do we even need aska rewatchable?
<v Speaker 6>Definitely, one hundred percent. The even number films are always
<v Speaker 6>the cursed films. But for me, I really love Star
<v Speaker 6>Trek three a lot. And then right after that is
<v Speaker 6>Star Trek the Motion Picture. One of the things that's
<v Speaker 6>neat about Star Trek the Motion Picture is that it
<v Speaker 6>is a product of seventies sci fi. It's not Star Wars.
<v Speaker 6>Star Wars is more space opera. It's a different beast.
<v Speaker 6>As we've talked about, it has a certain look in
<v Speaker 6>terms of, you know, the uniforms, like it looks very
<v Speaker 6>similar to Space nineteen ninety nine vibe. Some of the
<v Speaker 6>ways that the ship looks. If you ever go to
<v Speaker 6>Space Mountain in Orlando. The same look and feel is
<v Speaker 6>in there. That's that's a very definite seventies feel to it.
<v Speaker 6>For me. There's just something very nice about having one
<v Speaker 6>of these movies that is different from the others, and
<v Speaker 6>it's just very special. It's like a bottle up so
<v Speaker 6>and then we get all the fun ones after that. So, yes,
<v Speaker 6>very watchable.
<v Speaker 5>Okay, Jeff, I'm gonna have to say absolutely, it's rewatchable.
<v Speaker 5>But kind of like where d was going with it,
<v Speaker 5>I think a younger person might not be their cup
<v Speaker 5>of tea or their cup of Earl Gray if they're
<v Speaker 5>young Patrick Stewart, I kind of feel like, if you're
<v Speaker 5>introducing someone to Star Trek, I wouldn't start them out
<v Speaker 5>on the motion picture. I would go with something more popular,
<v Speaker 5>something better, better paced.
<v Speaker 4>And if you say, okay, if you like it, if.
<v Speaker 5>You're really getting into it now, now go back and
<v Speaker 5>see how it all began.
<v Speaker 2>All right.
<v Speaker 3>So I guess as to me, is this movie rewatchable?
<v Speaker 3>Yes it is?
<v Speaker 4>Is it even good?
<v Speaker 3>Yes it's good, but it's not what I'm going to
<v Speaker 3>revisit all the time. I'm going to watch Ratacon Search,
<v Speaker 3>Respock Voyage, home three times for every one time I
<v Speaker 3>watch this one.
<v Speaker 4>This is long. It's a bit slow. Yes, if you
<v Speaker 4>haven't seen it in forty years, should you watch it?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? You should.
<v Speaker 3>All right, Well, that is going to do it for
<v Speaker 3>Star Trek the Motion Picture. Next week we're going to
<v Speaker 3>talk about Star Wars The Phantom Menace and find out
<v Speaker 3>if that one is rewatchable.
<v Speaker 4>So come back here, Chuck. Thank you for being with us.
<v Speaker 3>We enjoyed having you on and thanks for bringing your
<v Speaker 3>expertise on all things Star Trek man.
<v Speaker 6>Thanks thanks for having me on. It's a great time.
<v Speaker 3>Jeff, thanks for being on. What we got coming up
<v Speaker 3>from you? Man Well Jackson.
<v Speaker 5>Outside of our normal normal formatted show on Tuesday, we
<v Speaker 5>are continuing on Fridays with our film at forty five
<v Speaker 5>limited series and our nineteen ninety six limited series. I
<v Speaker 5>mentioned at the beginning of the show, we have We've
<v Speaker 5>got our phaser set of Stun Star Trek podcast that
<v Speaker 5>happens on Wednesdays now, and.
<v Speaker 4>It's it's a little bit down the road, but I'm
<v Speaker 4>gonna go ahead and tell you.
<v Speaker 5>Just like Veigre and the the Carbon Units needing to
<v Speaker 5>become one, our phaser sets of Stun series and our
<v Speaker 5>film at forty five series are in fact going to
<v Speaker 5>become one when we crossover and we cover Star Trek
<v Speaker 5>the Motion Picture on Friday December sixth, which is actually
<v Speaker 5>the forty fifth, the true forty.
<v Speaker 4>Fifth anniversary of the film's release.
<v Speaker 2>It's awesome. I thought you were going to say you're
<v Speaker 2>going to have an AI host or something.
<v Speaker 5>I'm working on it. You know, we'll see you know,
<v Speaker 5>I might get one in there.
<v Speaker 4>All right, everybody, thanks for being here. We will see
<v Speaker 4>you next week.
<v Speaker 2>So ninth, December thirty first, nineteen ninety six, I am
<v Speaker 2>two days into a three day party in the Auxtrian Alps. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>I'm with a bunch of people who speak German. We've
<v Speaker 2>been partying and partying, and me and this major party
<v Speaker 2>animal are finally having a little bit of quiet time
<v Speaker 2>out on the balcony of this lodge that we're at,
<v Speaker 2>and his English is only slightly better than my German.
<v Speaker 2>And he says to me, D D this name? What
<v Speaker 2>is this D? And I was like, well, it's my
<v Speaker 2>middle name. My first name is James. Actually He's like, oh, oh,
<v Speaker 2>James D. James Kirk, and so yeah, it is the
<v Speaker 2>universal language.
<v Speaker 6>It turns out, did you ever hear the story that
<v Speaker 6>Shatner told about the Vietnam veteran? Okay, so the story
<v Speaker 6>was he was on his way to that premiere in DC, right,
<v Speaker 6>and so the limo driver who was driving him, I
<v Speaker 6>just said, you know, he, mister Shatner, I really wanted
<v Speaker 6>to be the one who drove you because I wanted
<v Speaker 6>to tell you this. He said, I was in the
<v Speaker 6>Vietnam War and I was captured. And then he proceeds
<v Speaker 6>to describe the ways in which he was tortured, when
<v Speaker 6>he was when he was captured, and then when they
<v Speaker 6>would take him out of the box or whatever they
<v Speaker 6>were doing, and he was there in a in a
<v Speaker 6>room with ten other guys. They were all the other
<v Speaker 6>guys who were in the same situation, and they only
<v Speaker 6>thing that they could really talk about. They realized the
<v Speaker 6>way that they kept their sanity was that they started
<v Speaker 6>to retell Star Trek episodes to each other, and so
<v Speaker 6>they would like, one person would be Kirk, one person
<v Speaker 6>would be Spock, and they would you know, mess it
<v Speaker 6>all up in all that because they wouldn't remember how
<v Speaker 6>something goes. But Shatner has told that story about about
<v Speaker 6>trek He's and how much that it has meant to them,
<v Speaker 6>even you know, in the worst of times.
<v Speaker 2>It's a great story.
<v Speaker 5>Yeah, I'll tell you what I think is fascinating about
<v Speaker 5>Shatner is a couple of weeks ago he announced that
<v Speaker 5>given the right story, he would come back and play
<v Speaker 5>Kirk again, whether it's a TV show or a movie.
<v Speaker 5>And I think a lot of people are quick to
<v Speaker 5>dismiss that because they know he's ninety three years old.
<v Speaker 5>But I'll tell you, when we met him last year,
<v Speaker 5>he first off, he does not look ninety three. He
<v Speaker 5>looks maybe like he's sixty three, and he sounds like
<v Speaker 5>he's fifty three.
<v Speaker 4>He is, He's Kirk. He's still Kirk.
<v Speaker 5>And if they brought him back for even if it
<v Speaker 5>was a guest spot on like you know, Strange New
<v Speaker 5>Worlds or something like that, I would be all for
<v Speaker 5>it because the guy can still do it.
<v Speaker 4>He's incredible.
<v Speaker 6>One of the things that I really like though, just
<v Speaker 6>thinking about like friendships and stuff like that. You know,
<v Speaker 6>I've got a great bunch of guys that I've been
<v Speaker 6>friends with since high school. We still get together. I'm
<v Speaker 6>originally from South Carolina. We still get together talk about this.
<v Speaker 6>And one night I'm out for a run and I
<v Speaker 6>get a call or something from one of my friends
<v Speaker 6>and he says, you know, I was just listening to
<v Speaker 6>the Shirley you Can't Be Serious podcasts and I heard
<v Speaker 6>you do an introduction.
<v Speaker 4>Really, and I'm like, what, you actually listen to.
<v Speaker 3>This show?
<v Speaker 5>I got.
<v Speaker 6>So there's a bunch of guys there that are yeah, yeah, hey, yeah,
<v Speaker 6>I just want to say hi to my to Alan Green,
<v Speaker 6>I know you're going to be listening to this. Thank
<v Speaker 6>you for encouraging me to come on and do this,
<v Speaker 6>and yeah, so love your brother.
<v Speaker 4>That's cool.
<v Speaker 2>That was fantastic beat. Thanks thanks Alan. Yeah,