Star Trek: William Shatner Looks Back at The Motion Picture - Video

Willy Shat-ner! ; P

Hey @ ED kudos on your Superman interview.. its up in Superman Homepage!!

Cool @ ED! :)

Damn watching that video makes me want to get a blu-ray set of the whole collection of Trek!

Only got a few on VHS lol (Not played a VHS in years haha) bought Star Trek IV on DVD a couple of days ago though, love that one!

When I say borefest, I'm referring specifically to the 12-minute sequence where Enterprise travels through V'ger and the cast has little else to do but "ooh" various light shows. At it's core, though, I've actually always enjoyed the first film, mostly because of the way it dealt with Kirk's obsession over the Enterprise and Spock ultimately coming to grips with his human side. There's a lot of dopiness in it, too (Scotty gripping Kirk's arm in the shuttlepod, Shatner's reading of the line, "Oh my God" after a transporter malfunction and, worse of all, V'ger, with all of its accumulated knowledge, can't figure out that dirt is blocking part of its name of Voyager 6), but it's the film that probably comes closest in flavor to an episode of the original series. Despite my "borefest" comment, I'm actually a fan (and have been a fan of the original series since it debuted in 1966 when I was the ripe old age of six).

xXkryptoniteXx, I would still argue that there's some wonderful stuff in Star Trek V (which Shatner directed), most notably the character bits between Kirk, Spock and McCoy (especially in the campfire scene) and the greatest Kirk moment ever: "Excuse me... What does God need with a starship?"

I had read the Star Trek V script prior to it going into production, and I'll never forget the writer's description of that moment in the script:

"KIRK: Excuse me... what does God need with a starship?

McCoy's eyes bulge as though Kirk has just farted in church."

Overall, I really liked the first Star Trek movie. The costumes sucked and I get that they used that stuff coming from the proposed new tv series, and parts were really slow. But, I thought the whole V'ger story was great science fiction storytelling. The story was by Alan Dean Foster who is a sci-fi writer.

cool

It's my favourite Star Trek film, I LOVE it!
One of the few examples of an hard science fiction major film.
PS: I don't find it boring at all.

There were too many segments in this film that you do walk away from feeling they were boring. Another that comes to mind is when they first attempt to go to warp and everything goes freaky blurry and slow motion like a bad acid trip. There were long drawn out scenes like these that slowed the overall pace of the film. One last rewrite (this script was originally a planned tv show sequal to the original series titled "Phase II") and a few hours in the editing room would have done wonders for this film. Overall though, once you get past those hurdles, there are some very entertaining moments. I most enjoyed and anticipated the scenes in which they each finally see one another once again after so many years, from Kirk first stepping onto the ship to McCoy being beamed in to Spock's sudden unannounced arrival. These moments made it worth while alone.

And yes, the main plot itself of a lost space probe being integrated with a higher artificial intelligence and coming back to earth hundreds of years later was a great idea. It was just poorly executed. The pace was waaaay too slow at times. Maybe if Nicolas Meyer had directed that one instead of Robert Wise it may have been better.