Thread by @dolari

Star Trek: The Motion Picture Watchalong trailhead starts here!

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00:00 - Some quick backstory. The first ideas of a Star Trek movie surfaced during the original run of the show. More as an afterthought than something to pursue, taking a proposed episode by Gene Roddenberry called "Kongo" about a plantation world where...

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...the slave masters were black and the slaves where white.

Once the series was cancelled, the movie idea resurfaced a few times, mostly as an idea about showing how the crew of the Enterprise got together for the first time. They never got made, mainly...

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...because no one had made a movie based on a TV show before, and no one was sure how the movie would fare.

With Star Treks rating explosion in syndication, we got Star Trek: The Animated series, but also the idea of a movie again. "Star Trek II" was...

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God returning to earth to reclaim humanity for itself, but is revealed to be a machine. Paramount wasn't too happy about Kirk taking on God and passed on the series.

A pitch meeting was set up where many scifi writers got to pitch for a movie, including...

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Harlan Ellison who put aside his anger over City on the Edge of Forever to pitch a movie about a reptilian alien changing Earth's history to make dinosaurs the dominant species on Earth. A Paramount exec wanted to put Mayans into the story which was...

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...historically inaccurate. Typical Ellison hijinks ensued.

Eventually they settled on a story by Chris Bryant and Allen Scott called "Planet of the Titans" involving a race to discover the secret of a black hole before the Klingons. This got pretty far...

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...into pre-production, including Ralph McQuarrie being hired to do some conecpt art along with Ken Adam, who they were expecting to be the production designers for the movie.

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By the time the script was turned into Paramount, the story had changed so much that Paramount sent it back to be rewritten by then director Phil Kaufmann, who changed the story even more drastically.

Paramount then decided that maybe a movie wasn't a good...

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...idea. Paramount was going to launch a new Paramount Television Service, and a new series "Star Trek Phase II" (which was only ever a temporary title, the final just being "Star Trek II") was to be its flagship. Sets were designed, contracts signed...

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...scripts comissioned and new characters developed. Xon would have been a replacement for Spock, with Leonard Nimoy declining the series due to a dispute with Paramount. Decker, the executive officer, was designed as a possible replacement for Kirk should...

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...William Shatner become too expensive too continue with the series. Ilia was to be the new navigator as Chekov would move to security.

13 stories were comissioned with only a few making it to first draft status. One of these treatments was Alan Dean...

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...Foster called "In Thy Image" about a giant ship returning to Earth to find its creator. During the presentation of the treatment and subsequent pitch to the heads of the Paramount Television Service, they realized that the story wasn't just good - but...

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...good enough for a movie. The Paramount Television Service as it happened wasn't getting off the ground and there was a good chance it wasn't going to happen. The idea to adapt the script to the movie began with having Phase II producer Harold Livingston...

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...rewrite the treatment into a "two hour pilot for Phase II" that could become a motion picture should Paramount Television Service fail. But most everyone in the room knew this was going to be that start of a movie.

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And that is how we got Star Trek: The Motion Picture. ...eventually.

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00:01 - Star Trek: The Motion Picture begins with an overture of "Ilia's Theme." I kinda miss overtures. A way to settle into the movie before it even begins. Set an atmosphere. But this was forty years ago, when movies gave you time to think and consider.

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00:01 - "One star for every script revision." --Denise Okuda, ST:TMP Blu Ray commentary.

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02:05 - By the way, I did mention that I'd be doing the Director's Edition of ST:TMP, but instead am doing the Theatrical cut, mainly cause I just got in in HD Blu-Ray. I'll be adding pieces from the various cuts, though as I get to them.

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02:18 - Leonard Nimoy didn't want anything to do with a Star Trek rebirth due a merchandising dispute with Paramount over the Spock character. Xon was created to fill his shoes, a full blooded Vulcan struggling to understand and eventually emulate human...

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...emotion. When Robert Wise took on the Director's position for ST:TMP, his wife, Millicent was a Star Trek fan, and convinced him they couldn't do Star Trek without Nimoy and Spock. It took Jeffrey Katzenberger begging on his hands an knees in front of...

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...Nimoy at a restaurant to get him to reconsider. That and a hefty check from Paramount settling the merchandise dispute.

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02:21 - Something I found rather endearing is that DeForest Kelley had pretty much retired from acting after doing one movie after Star Trek (Night of the Lepus). He only came out of retirement to play Dr, McCoy in subsequent Trek appearances.

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02:35 - Persis Khambatta was originally hired onto the Phase II television series. When it went to movie, she was dissapointed that her five year contract was gone, but was happy that it went straight into features.

02:44 - Jerry Goldsmith actually did several passes at the ST:TMP soundtrack. Some sounding substantially different (almost like a western) than what was on the final soundtrack. I'm glad he redid it, though, as I consider this one of his finest soundtracks.

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02:59 - Oh, these credits got so complicated...

The basic story comes from Alan Dean Foster's original In Thy Image treatment. This treatment was mostly written in multiple drafts by Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry (along with Dennis Clark in a draft...

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...that was discarded). Gene wanted equal writing credits with Harold Livingston, and for some reason didn't want Foster to have a credit. There were threats to go to arbitration with the WGA, and Roddenberry pulled out of the argument giving Livingston sole...

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screenplay credit and Foster getting story credit.

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Twenty three minutes into the hour and I'm 3 minutes into the movie. Guess I should settle in.

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03:19 - The opening Klingon Battle is in all the drafts of the movie/TV Series except the Alan Dean Foster treatment. Something that got lost, though, was a fly through space past a supernova/exploding star as the camera streaked to the battle.

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Some concept art from Robert McCall of the battle from when the Doug Trumbull (I promise to get your name right this time) and John Dykstra effects group got the effects job.

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04:27 - "I wanted to give the Klingon bridge the look of a submarine that's been at sea far too long." Paraphrased from either Andrew Probert, Doug Trumbull or Robert Wise, I don't quite remember anymore. Concept art from Andy Probert, I believe.

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The fact that I can't remember all these quotes anymore is one of the reasons I do the watchalongs. So it's written down should I forget it all in my old age....

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The Klingon Bridge, by the way, turns into the Torpedo Room in Star Trek II. Waste not want not.

Fun Fact - Klingons LOVE them some McDonald's:

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05:55 - Not 100% sure on this one, but I believe the Klingon ship models are the same ones they were going to use in Phase II heavily "greeblied" up to get detail on the ships. V'Ger, the Drydock, the Shuttlepods and the Enterprise were constructed for Phase...

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...II (although the Enterprise and Office Complex weren't actually completed), but not used due to lack of detail.

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06:02 - Epsilon IX appears in multiple drafts of the script. In some it's just noted as a listening post, in others, it's actually a listening post embedded into a asteroid. Coulda sworn I had some Andy Probert Concept Art of that.

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07:22 - This movie looks FANTASTIC on Blu Ray.

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07:27 - I saw this movie in the theaters in 1979 at the tender age of 5. There are VERY specific scenes I remember from that showing very vividly. This being one of them.

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Oddly, the scripts don't really talk about the Klingon ships being "digitized." They mostly mention implosion and even damage (one loses a warp nacelle). I have a feeling the digitiziation idea actually came AFTER primary filming and was only something Doug...

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...Trumbull had thought up for his version of the Spock Walk. Maybe. Not sure. He'd know. :)

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08:13 - Almost all of the lightning effects are actual lightning coming off a Tesla coil. John Dykstra said he'd have that machine going for hours to get all the lightning strikes and that people who went into the Tesla Coil room "weren't right" when they left.

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08:55 - First of the major changes between the Theatrical Cut of ST:TMP and the Director's Edition. In the original, there's a wonderful, but way out of place, matte painting of Vulcan with moons planets stars and volcanos. Really nice matte. Totally not...
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...the Vulcan described by Spock in the series. The Director's Edition fixes these shots beautifully. I wanted to "watchalong" the Director's Edition, but since the 4K version isn't out as yet, I decided to go with the theatrical.

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09:05 - A second unit team was sent all the way to Yellowstone National Park to film scenes on Vulcan. Once they got there, they realized that the available space to film was super limited. In the end, the only two shots from Yellowstone are these two.

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09:40 - The Kolinahr scene is in all drafts of the film featuring Spock. But not only that, it's in the "God Thing" and "Planet of the Titans" stories as well! It appears that Gene really wanted to tell the story of Spock trying to exorcise his human half.

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The scene was filmed in Old English, as per Amok Time. However, Roddenberry or Robert Wise thought it was a cheat to have the Klingons speak their own language and have the Vulcans speak English, so James Doohan(!) was brought in to create a Vulcan langauge...

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...out of their mouth movements.

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11:43 - Just something wierd I noticed. The floor pattern here (filmed at the Paramount Tank Lot) is the same as the underside of the Phase II Engine Room!

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11:49 - Another place where the Director's Edition excels. Where we have only one matte painting of San Francisco in the Theatrical version, we get three showcasing the city more.

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We also get a much better shot of the San Francisco Tram station, complete with old school shuttlecraft.

In all drafts of the Motion Picture, Kirk goes to San Francisco to meet with Nogura, but how he gets there changes with each draft. In the very first...

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...Livingston draft, Kirk actually meets up with McCoy near the Coit Tower where McCoy is bandaging up a child's pet cheetah! Kirk tries to get him to re-up with Starfleet, but McCoy has survivor's guilt and won't go back due to all the lives that were lost.

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The second draft, by Gene Roddenberry...well...that one is REALLY different. He's skinny dipping in the ocean with his girlfriend Alexandria, and they have a little race back to Starfleet HQ. Complete with goofy backflip and ass slap.

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Something in these two drafts that we lose in the movie is the sense of how Earth is now a garden planet. Roddenberry's drafts talk about how everyone lives underground, and the surface, with the exception of living-history style "old cities." Livingston's...

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...talks about amusements for everyone and baskets filled with fruits and vegetables for the taking. Sounds pretty nice if you ask me, she said looking at her $130 grocery bill.

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12:26 - The uniform Kirk is wearing was actually going to be the uniform EVERYONE would wear. I prefer some of the looser cut fits we see instead. This makes a nice dress uniform, though.

These scenes in the tram exist in (possible) Dennis Clark draft of...

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...the movie on up. The gist is the same. Kirk meets with a starfleet member (Scotty in the Dennis Clark Draft, Sonak in the final script), and asks why they're not on the ship. Kirk is genuinely angry at Scotty in the...

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...Dennis Clark draft (everyone is noticeably grumpy in that draft), but more in line with the Motion Picture's annoyance in the final two drafts.

The whole Nogura meeting was in all drafts of the movie (except the final), also with really different...

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...interpretations of Kirk taking command. In the first two drafts Kirk is reluctant to take command, suggesting other captains instead and only taking it on himself when no one else is available (Decker here is actually the captain of ANOTHER ship, the Boston).

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In the Gene's second draft adds a nice bit about Alexandria, his girlfriend, being Nogura's assistant and that she tell his loved one that he had planned to propose to her, but this came up. She says "I'm sure they understand." I liked that. There were two...

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...different writing philosophies between Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry. Livingston preferred action over character scenes, and Roddenberry was vice versa. While this movie could have used a LOT more action, it also could have used a LOT more...

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...character pieces. Something that got lost in the script war we'll likely get into later.

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In the Dennis Clark draft, Kirk meets with Nogura to demand command of the Enterprise because Decker (now Captain of the Enterprise) is too inexperienced. He's surprised when Nogura hands it to him before he even asks.

Also: my bad. The Nogura scenes don't...

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...exist in the shooting or final draft of the movie. Oops.

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12:54 - Spot the Coke Can!

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13:03 - The Office Complex in ST:TMP was designed by Andy Probert and built by Doug Trumbull's Magicam. Earlier versions of the Office Complex looked like just a cylinder with work-bee style shuttle (early movie concept), and even earlier, a dodecahedron...

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populated by other dodecahedrons (which were not just offices, but shuttles). You can see the office complex dodecahedron in the background, and the office/shuttles to the right.

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13:48 - Another fix in the Director's Edition. Glad a shuttle flew in the last minute when Scotty opened those doors in the Theatrical edition!

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14:10 - The meetup with Scotty at the office complex is in all drafts but again shows off the story ideas each brought to the story. Harold Livingston's first, shooting and final drafts tend to be the same "slight annoyance that the transporters aren't working"

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Gene's second draft has Kirk genuinely happy to see Scotty, with a handshake becoming a bear hug, and an emotional excitement to seeing the Enterprise again.

The (possibly) Dennis Clark script actually has an apologetic Kirk, who had been super rough with...

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...Scotty on the way to Nogura's office as to why the ship wasn't ready. Even then he was only happy because he got the ship.

Livingston is very much "All in a day's work," Roddenberry is "Everything is Super Awesome" and Dennis Clark is "Grumpy universe Trek."

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15:03 - Originally there was no Star Trek theme in the score. You did have an Enterprise theme, though, which was slightly altered to become the Star Trek theme. Here's the alternate track used for the Enterprise flyby. It's close...



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...but different, and has a very Space Western feel to it.

The Enterprise refit and flyby is in every single draft of the movie going all the way back to The God Thing in 1975. And in fact, was used as a solution to a problem facing our heroes! In The God...

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... Thing, asteroids are sent hurtling towards earth. Kirk orders the antimatter fuel that's meant for the news ship to be thrown at it so the antimatter within would destroy the asteroid.

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Three hours into the watchalong, and I've gotten 15 minutes into the movie. So the watchalong is going as long as most people feel the movie is going when they watch it.

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16:19 - Doug Trumbull is the only person I know of who could make a starship model do a strip-tease.

Also, I dont care what anyone says about the flyby and how it slows the movie down. It's amazing It's fantastic. It's beautiful. Drink in that ship and music.

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Enterprise Strip-Tease, I mean Flyby Appreciation Post.

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18:11 - "N. C. C. 1. 7. 0. 1. No bloody A, B, C or D."

Best damned starship ever designed.

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How we got there, Part 1:

Top Left: The Matt Jeffrey's original.
Top Right: Ralph McQuarrie's design for Planet of the Titans
Bottom Left: Ken Adams design for Planet of the Titans
Bottom Right: Matt Jeffrey's/Joe Johnston's Phase II design blueprints

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How we got there, Part 2:

Top Left: Phase II Model (never completed)
Top Right: Rick Taylor/Andy Probert's ST:TMP Enterprise design.
Bottom Left: Rick Taylor/Andy Probert ST:TMP model
Bottom Right: Doug Trumbull ST:TMP repaint/remodel

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18:24 - Some other concept art/early models for the dry dock.

Top left: Phase II drydock and Enterprise
Top right: Planet of the Titans
Bottom left: Phase II drydock lit up
Bottom right: Early Andy Probert ST:TMP concept

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Found a better picture of the Rick Taylor/Andy Probert ST:TMP design in my archives.... I need to organize these better.

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By the way, many of these pictures come from books, cards and images I've scoured from the internet over 30 years. There are credits I'd love to give, like Forgotten Trek and Trek Core for some of these, but I no longer remember where most of these came from.

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I super appreciate your efforts in collecting these and if this long long LONG thread is of any use to your Trek sites, feel free to use it.

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I really hope y'all like minutae.

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18:43 - Again, the Director's Edition fixes a shot that gives just a little more oomph to the scene.

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19:23 - The fronts of the nacelles are something Rick Taylor wanted to design himself. He had an idea based on 1940s car grills.

Matt Jeffries Phase II just has a "blank" area here. Most aren't sure if it's just a metal cap, or colored plastic or what.

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19:25 - Rick Taylor LOVED these lights on the original Phase II drydock, and ended up using them in the ST:TMP drydock.

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20:04 - Something is wrong with this picture. Do you know what?

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20:53 - Andy Probert designed the interior of the Secondary Hull, and did several of the matte paintings for it. Others did other mattes, but they didn't actually conform to the model.

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21:30 - Kirk enters the turbo-lift and goes straight to the bridge in the movie. In other drafts, though, there's a scene here with Doctor Chapel. Again, it shows how the different writers treated the characters. Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry...

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...have a nice scene where Chapel overrides the Turbolift because she has perishables. She mentions that she's back on board because she was the "only halfway decent Doctor" they could got on short notice. He replies "They chose her captain that way, too."

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The (possibly) Dennis Clark draft has Kirk instead tell her he misses McCoy. Chapel takes this personally and mentions she may not have his experience, but she's just as good as he ever was. This is the draft where everyone is just grumpy to everyone...

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The best version of this scene? In the Livingston shooting draft, Chapel is the one who plants the idea of drafting McCoy onto the ship!

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Given that we do have the shot of Kirk going into the turbolift, I wonder if it got filmed?

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21:32 - The Bridge in Chaos. Oddly, the design here hasn't really changed all that much from Phase II! The basic bridge stations have more detail and lights compared to Phase II. The biggest changes from that and the Phase II series were the loss of a...

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..."weapons bubble" that would have been directly behind Chekov's station, a transporter closet that would have been directly in front of it (explaining his wierd little nook on the bridge), and the transporter console just to the right of the viewscreen.

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Oh, and Kirk's big old sweet 70s era Papasan chair. COMFORT IN THE FUTURE!

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22:09 - Kirk briefs the Bridge Crew. This is actually a fairly good example of the differences between Livingston and Roddenberry's approaches, and why sometimes they were good, and sometimes they were bad.

In the Livingston/Clark(?) versions of the...

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...scripts, it's fairly much like you see in the movie. He shows up, quick debrief, leaves. Roddenberry's version, as I mentioned, tends to have more character moments, and a lot of them. Occasionally, they're a bit much.

In his version, he has the...

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...bridge crew read his command orders over the PA, and the ship begins to yelp cheer and chant Kirk's name until he has to call red alert to get them all back to order. It's a bit much.

But then just after there's a nice scene with Scotty where he's...

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..rallying the troops to get the ship underway in time. Sometimes Gene really nails the character moments, sometimes it's a bit much. Sadly, pretty much any character moments are gone from the final movie, good or bad.

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22:37 - We do get a moment here in the extended versions of the film (ABC, Special Longer Version, Director's Edition) that has the crew worry about Capt Decker's response to Kirk taking command. Uhura mentione their chances of surviving may have just doubled.

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It's sad that even these smaller, less intense character moments got cut, as well. The movie really misses the mark on character development over spectacle.

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DINNER TIME.

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22:38 - These cooridors were up 21 years. From the Phase II episodes all the way to Voyager. The Star Trek Stage 9 set was considered one of the oldest standing sets in Hollywood.

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22:45 - The Engine Core is a pretty amazing piece of work, done by Sam Nicholson and Brian Longbotham. Apparently they got the job by being able to produce amazing light effects cheaply and even kind of on the fly.

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According to the making-of book, while they were designing their house was just awash in different sorts of light, sometimes synchronized to music. Once they created the effect they wanted, the did some crazy things like drop into the warp core from above to...

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fix machinery. Then when they heard the V'Ger set needed special lighting they bluffed their way into doing it, and had to design it on the fly, making a BEAUTIFUL effect for the set. The Making Of book hints as to how they did it, with mylar, water and light.

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23:46 - In all but the first version of the script, this scene plays pretty much like the movie. The only difference is that in Dennis Clark's (?) version Scotty scowls angrily at Kirk instead of sadly. That is the "grumpy" draft.

Decker as a character is...

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Very different depending on the writer. In the original drafts, where Decker is pulled off his own command, he starts out belligerent, but comes to like Kirk's laid back command style. Kirk also comes to mentor Decker on command decisions. Eventually...

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...Decker asks to stay on board as executive officer, which Kirk happily allows. In the Dennis Clark draft, though Decker is openly hostile to Kirk from the very beginning to point of almost being a villain of the piece. He doesn't like Kirk taking command...

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...tends to undermine him and at one point while working WITH the crew, pulls a phaser on them to basically get what he wants.

Thankfully, the conflict between Kirk and Decker is still there - just toned down a whole lot in the final movie.

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25:11 - "Gerbil cages coming through." --Daren Dochterman, ST:TMP Blu Ray Commentrary Track

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25:30 - Grace Lee Whitney's Janice Rand shows up long enough to have a terrible moment. The transporter accident is treated differently in some of the drafts of the script. In the first draft, the transport start and then just dissapears.

In the second...

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...however, it's not as pretty. The second person is Alexandria, the person Kirk was going to propose to when he got back. She'd volunteered for the mission.

There's no transporter accident in the Dennis Clark script. There is, however, a similar and...

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...MUCH more graphic transporter accident in the God Thing script, which shows the result of the transporter accident. Someone really wanted to show someone dying in a transporter.

The transporter accident survived all the different drafts for various reasons.

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In the first draft, it kills Ronak forcing them to add the inexperienced Xon as Science Officer. In the second, it does that AND shakes Kirk to the core, the first step into Kirk beginning to doubt himself through this script. In the shooting script, again...

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...Ronak is killed and now science duties are piled on Decker, making him more alienated. On top of that, director Robert Wise wanted a theme of "The Enterprise is Unhappy without Spock" which is why the transporter goes wonky as well as the wormhole sequence.

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...if that's the case, the Enterprise is also a two time murderer...

Also: 🎵 Everybody GET DOWN. 🎵

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"Commander, is that a phaser in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

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28:08 - It's very hard to see, but in the top right corner you'll part of the Enterprise's starboard nacelle. It's got the red pinstriping that was all over the Rick Taylor/Andy Prpbert version of the Enterprise. By the time Doug Trumbull had completed...

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...the model work most of the pinstriping was removed.

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28:14 - Tag yourself! I'm eight rows back, 12 people from the left. (Honestly...I know at last one person who can genuinely tag themselves in this image.)

If you notice, the windows here are very square. On the Enterprise, there's only round or tablet...

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...windows on the ship. Except for ONE spot. Starboard side aft of the saucer section (another Rick Taylor/Andy Probert model shot, too!)

Harold Michelson really didn't care if his sets didn't match the modelwork. He didn't think anyone would notice, so...

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...he just did what he wanted. The modelers, though pushed back because there was no place to put those windows on the model itself.

Apparently there was a lot of teeth gnashing from a lot of peopleuntil one day Michelson said "What if we just put it HERE."

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And now that little assymetry in the windows bugs me EVERY TIME I SEE IT. And now it'll bug you, too.

You're welcome.

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29:29 - "Measures...my god...over EIGHTY TWO A.U.s in diameter...must be something incredible inside there generating it!"

Thank you for trimming this down to "Two AUs" Director's Cut. 82 is about half our solar system....

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Michael Gatreaux also gets some screen time here, after being cast as Xon for Phase II, then removed when Leonard Nimoy returned for the movie. He was given the role as a thank you.

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It's taken me 7 and 3/4 hours to get 30 minutes into the movie.

This is gonna be a while.

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30:44 - This must have been a nightmare to rotoscope and animate.

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30:50 - Bye Bye, Epsilon 9. See you again on the back wall of the officer's club in Star Trek III.

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31:12 - David Gerrold up front doing a MIGHTY heroic pose there.

This is 430 members of the cast and crew's friends and families, some of the crew that weren't needed that day and a few fans! Robert Wise's wife Millicent is to the right of the downcast Vulcan.

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32:05 - Ilia appears! Persis Khambatta was actually hired on for Phase II, and kept the role when it was moved to The Motion Picture. While she was dissapointed in losing the five year contract, she liked knowing she was going straight to features.

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Ilia's whole character is very muted in The Motion Picture. She was assigned this very sexually-positive character in Phase II, and they tried to have that carry over to the movie, but it's basically a line about an Oath of Celibacy and then nothing.

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While there were other scenes that were filmed and dropped, they didn't drop the Oath line, which just led to a bit of "WHAAAAAT????"

The Ilia/Decker relationship (which became the Riker/Troi relationship) didn't seem to actually exist in Phase II. In fact...

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In Roddenberry's 2nd draft, Decker is cold to Ilia and thinks Deltans are trouble due to the sexual problems they cause on other ships. It's only in the Dennis Clark draft where things get un-grumpy. Decker still mentions they cause problems, but more...

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...light heartedly. It's in this draft they know each other.

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Also: Decker Play Space War on the combined Science Station and Honeycomb Beehive waiting for Kirk to keel over so he can get the command chair back.

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32:52 - There's two scenes at this point that are in extended versions of the movie, but not the theatrical. The first is a scene between Sulu, Ilia and Decker (blue script) and is only the in ABC and "Special Longer Version" cuts of the movie.

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Through all the scripts, there's a bit of tenderness between Sulu and Ilia, with several scenes that slowly got whittled down until the final draft where this is all that's left.

I really prefer the first draft where Ilia is obviously interested in Sulu...

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...in later scenes and the two kind of start bonding.

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The second scene is another character scene that was really needed in the theatrical version (and was put back into all versions of the extended movie) involving McCoy not wanting to beam back to the Enterprise until he sees everyone else beam in.

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33:10 - Beamed in straight from the Mountain Man Disco, Bozeman, Montana.

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36:50 - The Navigational Deflector is at first brown on launch, then blue, then brown again in V'Ger. It's only in this movie that the deflector is actually showing that it's variable, becoming more blue the faster it goes. All other movies, it's always blue.

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38:00 - Doug Trumbull gets to show off his 2001 chops.

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39:30 - The Engineering set is forced perspective to make it appear much longer than it is. If you look, you'll see a smaller girl in the background, and beyond her an even smaller boy. Occasionally there'll be a shot with him in a hilariously oversized helmet.

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40:00 - The original score to the Wormhole Scene was so so so much better.



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40:15 - The Wormhole is another one of those spectacle moments, where it's expected to hold your attention through the effects, but instead drags the movie down.

The effects are great and clever for the time, with the wormhole being a long exposure of a laser.

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The interior wormhole effects were some of the only effects created by the movie's first effects house, Robert Able and Associates. Apparently it involved a lot of computer controlled exposures to make the lighting trails.

One of the women animators of this scene was really unhappy with the removal of Ilias sex-positivity story, and decided to make amends by having one of the light trails reach for her breast. Really. It's in the Return to Tomorrow book.

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I see you hiding in plain site, Letraset punctuation cluster, you old slyboots.

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The Photon Torpedo is blue, but if you look at the reactive lighting on the model, it's red. I'm sure the torpedo was supposed to be red, but red effect on red effect would have been hard to see. It's also out of sync, likely on purpose after the color change.

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The Wormhole scene as a story, though, really drags the movie down for no real reason. It does feel like "script-cruft" as in the earlier drafts there WAS a reason.

In the first two drafts, Xon actually takes the computers off line to reprogram them to...

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...his liking, taking the chance that nothing will happen in the few minutes they're offline. Of course, something happens. It's a good develop of Xon that he's booksmart, but not street (space?) smart. In the Dennis Clark draft, it's there to basically...

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...show that Kirk doesn't know his ship very well, which could have been done faster some other way. I've heard the wormhole sequence was probably going to be cut, but that Robert Wise wanted it in, because of his "The Enterprise is Unhappy Without Spock" idea.

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43:25 - There a big difference between watching a movie at a theater and watching it at home. I've seen it at a theater exactly TWICE. Once in 1979 and another in 2019. When I saw it in 2019, I realized something. You can't focus on the whole screen at once.

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It's simply too big. So you focus on various characters and props and whatnot. All these years of watching on TV all at once, I never focused on Kirk. And he's SEETHING here over his failure to get to warp.

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44:40 - The Decker Meeting exists in all versions of the script, but the motivations for each are a little different. In the first draft, Kirk berates Xon for shutting down the computers on the bridge, then Decker does the same at Kirk. In these versions...

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...there's a lot of back and forth that both Decker AND Kirk were wrong for their handling of the asteroid situation (Kirk wanting to phaser the asteroid, Decker wanting to steer around it, which both weren't possible).

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It's Kirk's reasonable-ness to being open to being wrong that begins to turn Decker to working with Kirk and (in the first draft) to consider staying on the Enterprise when the mission is over. Great character work there that the change in plot lost.

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In the Dennis Clark draft, Kirk is overly harsh with Decker and realizes it. He attempts to apologize, but Decker, being a jerk in this draft, shuts it down. In the other drafts it pretty much as we see it on screen. a

46:02 - Another character moments in ST:TMP, which again is different in the different drafts. It only appears in the shooting scripts, with the general gist being the same. In the first revision of the shooting script, he kinda goes Anakin Skywalker, though.

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46:58 - Tiny Cut Scene is Tiny (Only in the ABC and Special Longer Version cuts)

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It's also about this time that my two shooting scripts begin to diverge, and was likely part of the growing "script war" between Gene Roddenberry and Harold Livingston. Harolds scripts tend to focus on action, while Gene's tended to focus on character.

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And about this time is when I believe Gene began re-writing Harold's edits. And vice versa. Sometimes daily. Sometimes hourly. I really believe that the end result of this was the removal of Gene's character scenes as well as Harold's action scenes...

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...leaving the movie on a kind of cruise control that made it beautiful to look at but a bit of a slog in the story department. The story just "happens" instead of being driven by character and action.

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48:27 - The Vulcan warp shuttle Surak! Designed by Andrew Probert, it originally had a purple cast to it that was sadly dulled down for filming.
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49:38 - Spock arrives on the bridge. Of course, Spock only appears in the Motion Picture drafts. While he's pretty aloof in the movie, trying to be Super Stoic, in the likely Dennis Clark "Grumpy Draft" Spock is particularly mean, demanding everyone stop...

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...welcoming him and requesting total isolation from the human crew.

Oddly, just before Spock shows up, it's DECKER who figures out the fix for the engines with a (temporary) workaround.

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53:45 - Another short fixed in the Director's Edition. Sorta. The nacelle is in the right place, but the stars are still kinda "crabwalking" in the wrong direction based on the window position. Something I hope they fixed for the 4K Director's Edition.

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In the (what I'm now calling the possibly Dennis Clark) "Grumpy Draft" this scene is short sweet and to the most grumpy Vulcan way possible.

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Another character moment lost is that during this meeting in the shooting scripts are that McCoy needles Spock a bit about his Kohlinar experience. He brings it up, notices Spock wince and determines it went badly. Then goes on about perfect logic and...

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...how that means no beauty or joy to the point that Spock appears to actually want to confront him physically.

It's a wierd character moment, but again, this movie is in need of character moments.

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55:40 - This is what my Hue Lighting System is set for from 11PM to 1AM.

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55:52 - The Enterprise finally meets The Intruder. However, just before that happens....

In the first and second drafts, Epsilon 9 is never destroyed. They send along the info about the Klingon Cruisers and that is that.

Instead, the light cruiser Aswan is sent out to meet...

...the Intruder and gets to it before the Enterprise can. It's toast. In the Dennis Clark Grumpy Draft, just to be extra grumpy, Epsilon 9 is destroyed AND the Aswan later. The shooting drafts drop the Aswan completely.

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57:39 - PRetty much all the drafts have the same basic action here. The Enterprise meets the cloud (in the Motion Picture drafts, in the Phase II, it's just a gigantic ship), is attacked and survives, a second (sometimes multiple) attack is launched which...

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...stops when Xon/Spock figures out they're communicating at a high rate of speed. In the Phase II scripts, they're pulled next to the ship in a Tractor Beam. In the Motion Picture scripts, they go into the cloud.

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59:21 - Walter Koenig did actually get a slight burn from the chemicals they used to make the smoke on his arm. Life imitating art.

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59:48 - Not in the theatrical cut, but in most other extended cuts, is a nice little character moment for Ilia. Chapel comes in to work on Chekov's burn, but finds Ilia there already working on him. She stops the pain so Chapel can work on his burns.

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59:57 - Forty two years after it's release, I finally got some peace knowing I wasn't the only person who thought Lee Cole's communications logo looked like the Burger King logo.

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1:00:50 - WE BROKE THE ONE HOUR MARK ONLY ELEVEN HOURS AND THIRTY SEVEN MINUTES LATER.

There's some extra scenes in the ABC and Special Longer Version editions during the second attack, but really they're all just kind of status reports. Not sad to see them go.

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Ever wonder what the Linguacode Friendship Message was? Straight from the Roddenberry Draft:

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1:00:52 - Another nice Director's Edition fix. In the theatrical version, the whiplash just fades off on the viewscreen. The DE uses a nice CGI shot to show the whiplash die just before hitting.

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1:02:00 - A cut here involved spock sensing V'Ger's intentions, most of which were cut from the theatrical version. Decker suggests that V'ger called off the attack as a warning. Spock says that would involve compassion. He sensed no emotion at all from V'Ger.

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1:02:35 - ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CLOUDS?! CAUSE YOU ARE GONNA GET SOME CLOUDS.

Honestly, this portion of the shooting script is tiny. It's about a page long which usually means it's a minute long, but in actuality it's 3 and half minutes long. And that's...

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...just to V'Ger. The music is lovely, though.

The clouds were all multi plane exposures of paintings made on glass, filmed over and over again at different movements. The illusion from that becomes a 3D space, in this case the "Force Field cloud."

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Added to the ABC and Special Longer Version (which I keep typing as Special Lover Version) are more lines about the strength of the forcefield, which makes this already long part even longer.

Don't get me wrong, I love the full cloud sequence, but it's LONG.

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1:06:16 - ::points:: V'GER

And we're at the halfway point of the movie. It's been just over 12 hours, and I think we'll continue the #sttmpwatchalong tomorrow. Be back here at 12PM PST/3EST for the second half of ST:TMP.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll continue.

A Tale of Two Effects Companies: There were two major effects companies working on Star Trek the Motion Picutre. Robert Abel and Associates and Doug Trumbull's Future General (with John Dykstra's Apogee...

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...working alongside it). For about two thirds of the production, Robert Abel's ASTRA was the effects provider for the series. Most of this time was spent with design work by folks like Richard Taylor and Andy Probert, much of which showed up on the screen.

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But in the end, there were only a few effects from them that showed up on the screen. In fact, the only completed effects shot from ASTRA is the Bridge trail effects during the wormhole sequence. They also did the on-set effects for the probe effect we'll...

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...be getting into later. They also designed and set up the physical effects for the "Memory Wall" sequence, of which all footage was discarded. And yet, they were on the show for two thirds of the production. What happened?

Robert Abel and Associates...

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...were pretty much known in the 70s for great effects work on a small scale, mostly for commercials. When it came time to bid on the effects budgets, RA&A put in the best bid, which was way lower than it should have been. On top of that. RA&A were looking...

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...to deliver some top notch cutting edge effects. But the low bid, plus the big ambition kind of meant this was gonna be tough. Add to that they were custom building a lot of equipment to film, and their previously low bid exploded.

There are a lot of...

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...great designs coming out of RA&A. On top of that, when they had the means to move on the effects, they did. They built the original version of the Enterprise miniature, which with some gussying up by Doug Trumbull was used up until The Undiscovered Country.

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Even did some set design for the Memory Wall. But the non-physical effects work was no where to be seen, because they were still trying to build the machinery to film it. On top of the low budget ballooning, RA&A kept making commercials using the Paramount...

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...paid-for equipment meaning the effects time was being used by other projects. It all came to a head near the end of production when the combination of the Memory Wall sequence being dumped due to the rigging issues as well as just not looking good due to...

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...to it looking lackluster and Robert Wise seeing just one effect after a year of work that he felt was terrible (I'm not sure which effect that was, as the bridge wormhole effect was pretty good). RA&A were fired, much of the equipment reposessed by...

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...Paramount, and Doug Trumbull (who didn't want to do effects work anymore and go into directing) was asked to come in to save the effects. He not only basically got a blank check, but a promise to make whatever movie he'd like. This ended up being 1983's...

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...Brainstorm, which I loved, but I love wierd movies.

He took all the completed miniatures and upped the detail work on them and added self-illumination, and began work on creating new miniatures with John Dykstra's Apogee. Andy Probert was re-hired as a...

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...designer and the effects work began. The downside? The movie was locked into a December 7th release date, or Paramount was going to lost a TON of money. This gave Apogee and Future General nine months to complete the effects for the movie.

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The companies worked 24/7 including weekends and holidays, which is absolutely not cheap, to get the effects out. Under this deadline, Doug Trumbull wanted to make sure everything was still good as well, so compromises in design were made.

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In the end, I believe only one effects sequence was never completed, the ride from the interior of V'Ger to the central core of V'Ger. The extended cuts of the movie have a lot of the interior shots added to lengthen this trip, but the effects work for it...

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...weren't completed until he 2001 Director's Cut when the sequence was created in CGI.

In the end, the movie's effects got done, if just barely in time, Doug Trumbull got his movie, and a trip to the hospital for exhaustion.

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1:06:43 - A cut scene that only exists in the ABC and Special Longer Version cuts is Uhura remarking that "It could hold a crew of tens of thousands." And McCoy adding "Or a crew of a thousand ten miles tall."

This was just one bit of wonder removed from...

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the cloud trip. In the theatrical version we get a lot of wonderment and wide eyes and enrapture. But the cut dialog talks about them being astonished by what they're seeing. While it would have made the cloud sequence even longer, it would at least go a...

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...ways as to why they ARE astonished by this all.

The added scene of Chekov returning to his chair, not so much.

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By the way, here's what my setup looks like right now.

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The V'Ger model. As designed by Syd Mead and built by Apogee. Time was so tight on the effects portion of the film that as this part was being filmed, the model was still being constructed behind a curtain beyond where the camera could see. Also, I see a kitty.

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Vger was designed to look "mechanically organic." The idea being of a living machine. You have this metallic structure but in organic shapes with huge electrical arcs. Mead also mentioned you should see faces in the designs as well (See aforementioned kitty).

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The texture work on this model is incredible. John Dykstra mentioned it looked like a prehistoric fish or whale. Once filming ended and the "miniature" was no longer needed (it was HUGE), they launched it into the ocean.

Also: John Dykstra's "V'Ger Balls"

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It's never said how long V'Ger is, but I always got the impression it was maybe four or five miles long. According to the earlier scripts, it's actually 70 some miles long. O_O

This is one of those shots I remember from the movie when I saw it at age 5 in 1979

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Some of the many designs from the Richard Taylor/ASTRA version of the Cloud and V'Ger flyover. It was much more dynamic than the straight-through flyovers we got, with V'Ger scanning AND DISPLAYING info on it's skin.

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1:12:49 - The Director's Edition saves another victim of the effects crunch. The probe coming toward's V'Ger was done as a series of still-frames (there's tiny motion in them, actually). The Director's Edition has an exterior shot with approaching light ball.

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1:12:50 - The probe effect was started by Robert April with a physical light stand dragged aroudn the bridge. By the time of needing to do the animated effects, Doug Trumbull's group used a mylar sheet to "pinch" the light stand out of the image, and put in...

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...a moire effect to cover the seam (for the most part).

The probe scene exists in all versions of the scripts, although differently in the Phase II scripts. In the original Alan Dean Foster treatment, "We the Wan" which is the V'Ger analogue in that, sends...

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...over a collection of mechanical robot "senses" such as eyes and tentacles. Pretty much the same in the Phase II drafts, although with the added Sulu/Ilia moments that were in the early drafts.

The Dennis Clark draft handles it differently with sparks...

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instead of machines appearing all over the ship. There's also the added moment of Ilia sensing V'Ger's probes before anyone else. The Dennis Clark draft poses that V'Ger can influence people psychically, first with Ilia, and later Spock then Decker.

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In the early Shooting Script, there are actually THREE probes. One on the bridge, one in engineering and one in sickbay. "Tschaa" is this versions reason for the name "Tasha" which will show up later.

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Cut from the final movie was the death of one of the security officers when he pulls a phaser on the probe. In the original shooting draft, both are graphically painfully incinerated. In the later drafts, only one dissapears.

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I guess he'd be the movie's redshirt. OR beige shirt.
"Beigeshirt."

Spock smashing the computer is in all the drafts as well, although in the Phase II ones it's Xon.

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1:14:52 - Taking Ilia and replacing her with a probe is actually one of the core ideas from all the way back to "Robot's Return" a Genesis II story idea that was presented to Alan Dean Foster as a jumping off point for In Thy Image.

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In the episode, a machine from Neptune comes to Earth looking for its creator. In the course of trying to find the god Nasa, it kidnaps Dylan's love interest, Harper-Smythe, who then returns as a robot. In Foster's version no one is kidnapped, just...

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...duplicated (And it's Scott, not Ilia). In later drafts, it takes Ilia (and in the Dennis Clark, it's explicitly shown that the probe is examining her before taking her).

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Time for a bite of lunch....

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1:15:50 - The Enterprise gets pulled into V'Ger.

This is one or the big examples of Livingston's Action/Roddenberry's Character moments butting heads. In Phase II the ship doesn't get pulled into V'Ger at all and just is pulled alongside with a Tractor Beam.

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In the Dennis Clark draft, however, the ship is held for a day AND pulled inside later. A note on this draft, likely by Livingston who was going to rewrite it mentions that the ship would not immediately go into V'Ger. However, in the shooting script, there...

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...is a blue revised note logging that the Enterprise has been in front of V'Ger for twelve hours.

Livingston seems to want to move the action along quickly, while Roddenberry wants to spend time with the crew. Admittedly there are some nice crew scenes in...

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...the Roddenberry drafts. Chapel fawning over Xon (she has a type), Yeomen fawning over Xon, Sulu and Ilia bonding, Kirk trying to get Ilia to relax around humans, Rand and Kirk reminiscing. They're all very nice character moments. It also slows the pace...

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...WAY the heck down. ST:TMP is already a slow movie. Livingston picks up the pace by making the movie more urgent at the cost of character. Roddenberry gives character at the cost of urgency. And two would butt heads over this through the rest of the movie.

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In fact, it's about this time that my scripts tend to wildly diverge. Walter Koenig often said "We were filming a movie with only two acts of a three act script." That's not ENTIRELY true. It's just that endings were kind of...well...wanting. But all the...

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...writers had their own ideas how to end the movie. And the actors, too. Some of the designers as well. But we got an ending, you know. And not a terrible one.

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1:16:36 - Into the ship. In the original Phase II scripts, there's no point where the ship goes inside V'Ger. It's pulled along for the most part outside the ship. In the Dennis Clark version it's pulled in about twelve hours, and depending who is writing...

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...the shooting draft revision, goes right in (Livingston) or waits a bit (Roddenberry).

In the Apogee/Future General finished scene, the Enterprise is in a tractor beam, but kinda glides right in. Something missing from the ASTRA/Richard Taylor versions...

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...dramatically DRAGGED in. Something I would have liked to see, but I'm sure time kept that from happening.

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1:21:57 - Ilia reappears. Sometimes Tasha.

One of the neater cut pieces of the movie is the name "Tasha." Tasha was actually going to be the name of what would eventually be called the "Ilia Probe." What doesn't really come across in the scripts, but does...

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...in the novel is that the essence of what Ilia is actually in there, while Tasha is the logical probe form of Ilia. You can sometimes see it in the dimming and brightning of the red light on her throat.

I love that she gets her name from Chekov's aunt's...

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...fake pearl ring in the Phase II scripts. Roddenberry adds a nice trait that, as a robot, she's terrified of humans until she returns in Ilia's form.

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Of course, in the Roddenberry revision, it's implied that Kirk bones her. Apparently at Shatner's request.

The character is quite different in the different versions of the script. In the Phase II versions, she's actually kind and thoughtful. She comes...

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...as a brainwashed cult member who believes everything is good and nice, which follows the religious quest theme of V'Ger in these drafts. She rarely gets angry. In the Dennis Clark Grumpy draft, though, she changes dramatically. She's militant, demanding...

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...to do her job at her pace despite whatever the servo units want, often hurting others and even threatening death to get her way or complete her task. More of a militant cultist than a hippie cultist.

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1:22:49 - The Phase II draft has a wonderful scene about who and what V'Ger is. Instead of getting the runaround, we get a quasi-religious motif I like very much. I'm sad we lost that, cause it's kind of neat.

It's toned down in Roddenberry's second draft...
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...but returns in a more cryptic way in the Dennis Clark draft.

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1:25:23 - According to Mike Okuda on the ST:TMP Blu Ray commentary, all the isolinear chips in TNG are made from that green plastic layer of the bio-bed.

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1:26:43 - They made 9 doors for 9 takes. Apparently, some of them were too hard to break open, some were too easy and they never got the shot. In the end, they just cut away quickly.

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1:27:30 - From here forward the scripts are wildly different and in different sequences. I'l try to keep to the movie's sequence of events.

I have notes here that say that when Decker shows Ilia the pictures of the different ships name Enterprise...

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...mistakes it for the personal evolution of THIS Enterprise and that it's been corrupted by humans, but for the life of me, I can't find that in the scripts. Earlier drafts have there's no Rec Deck scene and instead Kirk and Ilia go directly to the bridge.

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Adding to the Sulu/Ilia bonding thread in the early drafts, Tasha actually tries to continue it with Sulu. In both Phase II drafts, Ilia then demands the humans accept the Creator as their god.

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1:28:55 - Some really powerful, yet subtle, acting here by Persis Khambatta showing Ilia "coming through" the Tasha programming.

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1:29:40 - A small Director's Edition fix here. In the theatrical, the windows are blacked out with just the BAREST hint of purple on Ilia. The DE fills in the exterior image, and tints it purple to match. I do like these small environmental changes

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1:30:23 - This poor guy. First day on the new Enterprise, cushy security job, and blows it. Years later he takes a cushy security job on Earth, and then SULU manhandles him. Can't win for losin', buddy.

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1:30:59 - This scene of Ilia trying on a head-band to help ressurect memories, seems to be a very last minute addition, that only shows up in revisions of the final shooting draft. It's a character moment, so I'm thinking it's Roddenberry's writing.

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What's funny is each cut of the movie edits this scene just a little differently. I'm guessing it was done so late that a proper edit just wasn't done. Notice Ilia's sensor brightness telling you when she's Ilia, and when she's Tasha.

The Special Longer Version lives up to it's name be adding quite a bit to this scene at the beginning and end, and even moves it to a different place in the movie. Here we see Ilia and Decker enter, then the scene as cut, ending with Tasha taking over again...

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And asking what Kirk and Spock are doing inside V'Ger. The move of the scene is likely because in the shooting draft both Kirk and Spock are in V'Ger, and in the final, it's just Spock until Kirk goes to get him

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1:32:25 - Ho boy. The Memory Wall/Spock Walk. You might want to get a sandwich.

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In every draft and treatment, there's a sequence where a random assortment of our heroes goes into V'Ger to learn about who and what it is. While the sequence is usually in the middleish part of the story, in the treatment and Phase II drafts, they're...

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More akin to the end of the movie where V'Ger is totally revealed. Much more mechanical given the budgest of a TV Show. Once we're told what V'Ger is, the Enterprise is sent along to Earth to "prepare" for V'Ger's arrival.

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In the Clark and early shooting drafts, Kirk and Spock both explore V'Ger. In the Clark version, V'Ger is hinted at when Spock detects earth metal 35 kilometers into the ship, however at the same time V'Ger releases the Enterprise keeping them from exploring.

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They explore crystalline caverns and find a powerline that Spock decides to mindmeld with, nearly killing him. The shooting script is roughtly the same, except that there are a few dangers added including a cloud that forms solidly around them.

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Now we get to the infamous Memory Wall version. In this version, Spock goes alone, because he's looking for answers to his own problem. Kirk finds out Spock's left and goes after him. These shots are actually in the ABC/Special Longer Version of the film.

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Notice the White square-visored suit, versus the yellow-sphere visored one he'll have later. Also, notice the UNFINISHED SET EXTENSION EFFECTS since the ABC/Special Longer Version cut is taken from unused film elements.

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For the most part, Spock ignores Kirk, getting closer and closer to a pulsating wall. Sensor "bees" move from one wall to the other, and as Kirk closes on Spock, he gets caught up in them causing him to get encased in the sensor crystals. Spock releases him...

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...explore V'Ger together, coming to a crystalline room. Spock decides to meld with one of the crystals and it goes about as well as could be expected.

Most of this was filmed, but none is in the movie. Why?

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This was a sequence that ASTRA decided to take on themselves. They designed quite a bit around it. The designs look pretty good. They were good designers, but unfortunately had very little experience in making movies. They mostly made commercials.

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"The Trench" set is a good example of what the problem was. It's a semi-curved set with a lot of dynamic lighting. It also is just one curved set. There's little to break up the view, so any other angles or reverse shots look like the same part of the same set.

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The same issue happened with the actual Memory Wall. On paper, the crystalline design looked good. On set, not so much. When some of the rigging effects broke down, Robert Wise was so disappointed in the sequence, he decided to come back to it later.

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MANY months later, the whole show is in jeopardy, Wise still needs to go back and film the memory wall, and he goes to Doug Trumbull and asks if he can fix it. Doug says "Nope, but I'll film it from scratch for you." He wrote, directed and filmed the...

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...segment himself based off concept art by Robert McCall and did the effects, coming up with a better way to tell V'Ger's story, by having us witness it alongside Spock.

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1:36:31 - IMDB says that's Miss Piggy there at the bottom. I'm skeptical.

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1:37:00 - This is apparently Persis Khambatta's make-up mask, cleaned up and put on a body with a uniform.

1:37:33 - Kirk now in his formal space suit....

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1:38:15 - Spock waked up in Sickbay. This scene exists mostly in all of the Motion Picture scripts but the story push is different in each. Dennis Clark's has him wake up with no memory of what was in the meld (but it begins to come to him).

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Early shooting drafts have him realize that a sterile world with no wonder or beauty awaits him if he continues down the path of total logic. The later ones have the revelation of V'Ger being a living machine (which is revealed elsewhere in earlier drafts)

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TNG used those medical monitors above the bed. Same graphics and everything.

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1:42:01 - Kirk: "Mr Chekov, Mr Decker's present location?"
Chekov: "He...they are in engineering sir."

There was an actual scene filmed in Engineering with Scotty, Decker and Tasha, which was removed. Never change, Scotty.

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1:42:02 - In the theatrical cut we never see V'Ger in full. In the Director's Edition, V'Ger is seen coming into orbit. The CGI shot is better than the one we see in the movie, but I'd love to have seen the concept art of V'Ger eclipsing the sun.

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In Clark's Grumpy Draft, the cloud forcefield V'Ger was creating actually ravaged Earth, causing huge damage across the planet.

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1:42:49 - Revolution 101X in State College, PA used to run the following ST:TMP based ident:
"A simple binary code, carried by carrier wave signal.
Radio!"
"Radio?"
"Radio!"
"..."
"Radio?"
"Radio!"
"..."
"Radio?"
::sound of a face punch::
"..."
"Radio?"

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1:43:20 - The Director's Edition redoes the neutron bomb sequence by flipping it upside down to match the original concept art better.

It also updates the neutron bombs flying over earth to closer match as well.

The bombs are in all versions of the script. In Phase II, the ship is already at earth and attempts to take them out only to detect a proximity fuse, and flees before setting it off.

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DINNER TIME! BRB

(HAHAHA...Uhura's dead, though)

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Oops, I was wrong. V'Ger DOES pull the Enterprise inside of it in the Livingston Phase II draft, but only after it gets too close to the Neutron bomb. Sorry, the stories are so different between drafts here, it's hard to keep up.

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Also in Livingston's Phase II, it's already known that V'Ger is Voyager 4 (not 6 in this version) and is trying to transmit information on how to properly repair itself, misunderstanding why V'Ger is there to begin with.

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In the Clark draft, we finally get told that the metal analysis Spock got during their Space Walk points to elements only found on Earth.

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Okay, all caught up, back to the movie.

Ope, one more thing I missed in all the intertwining storylines. In the Livingston draft just before V'Ger gets to Earth, Kirk turns DOWN a chance at making whoopie with Ilia. A far cry from Roddenberry implying he did!

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Again, sorry about the back and forth. IT's very chaotic around this point in the scripts.

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1:49:20 - The forward "orifice" (their words, not mine) open allowing the Enterprise to fly to V'Ger.

In the theatrical version, V'Ger is right on the other side of the opening, which made no sense to me, cause Spock was right there and didn't see it.

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What I didn't know at the time, was there was a whole sequence here that was cut, likely due to lack of time to finish the effects. There's a bit of dialogue about the bluff being called, but then they're right at V'Ger.

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In the special longer version, there's more dialogue about having Scott set up self destruct and Spock weeping for V'Ger as he would for a brother making this segment a little longer, but still it's direct to V'Ger

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It isn't until we get the Director's cut that the effects and dialogue are added in full, and we see it as it was intended. The "I weep for V'Ger like I would for a brother" lines were suggested by Nimoy, to get some more emotion into the ending.

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In another Coke Can related trivia point, apparently the V'Ger "lighting" is just a really bright light in a Coke can with holes poked in it.

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During all this in the Dennis Clark Grumpy Draft, Spock begins to remember what he felt in the mind meld earlier. Tasha points out "The Messenger" as the source of the Earth minerals somewhat identifying V'Ger as different than Voyager.

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1:51:58 - Ah, THAT matte. I always attributed the warp-ness (no pun intended) to a bad matte. The Director's Edition actually removed the matte completely going for a CGI recreation.

According to Daren Dochterman Foundation Imaging did try to recreate and fix the matte in CGI but it's "an impossible shot." They couldn't get the lighting on the film element to match the lighting from the corrected model's angle and look good at the same time.

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Due to a lack of time, when the Enterprise appears at V'Ger, the hexagonal "rocks" are already in place and surround the V'Ger amphitheater. That's now how it was originally envisioned.

There were supposed to be walkways that "built out" to the Enterprise...

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...the Director's Edition created a whole new CGI effect for what was supposed to be the final effect.

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1:53:35 - V'Ger revealed. A ton of the design on "The Wok" is based on the Robert Abel/ASTRA design. Earlier phase II versions as shown earlier tended to be more mechanical and smaller sets of a TV show.

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ASTRA's designs tended to be bigger and more expansive. The V'Ger probe is heavily damaged, but recognizable. In some shots, Ilia's preserved body is shown along with other pieces of machinery almost like a collection.

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The special lighting in this scene is again from Sam Nicholson and Brian Longbotham, providing the lighting in the power spires. Apparently lights on a rotating drum of reflective material.

The lighting changes were cued so the set would uniformly change colors
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The lights used here were so bright, they'd bleach out the colored gels which had to be replaced often.
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Creepy...

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In the Dennis Clark draft, Spock begins to remember more from his mind meld. Also, I wonder who drew this?

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1:58:01 - Kirk asks Uhura to contact Earth for the NASA Code signal to force Voyager to release it's data.

Now's a good time to stop and visit the sidetrips in the other drafts as we start veering back to the end of the story.

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In Harold Livingston's Phase II, the crew are trying to convince V'Ger they are the creators. Just as V'Ger enters orbit Kirk orders Xon to prime self-destruct.

Kirk and Ilia beam down to Union Square Park to show her humanity and nature.

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They come to the beach, where she asks if humans made everything in nature. But the mood is fouled when she sees a hydrofoil. A machine enslaved by humans. They head to the Starfleet archives.

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V'Ger fires the neutron bombs, the Enterprise intercepts, but flees after detecting a proximity fuse. V'Ger captures it and pulls it in.

At the archives, Tasha is shown proof of the Voyager program, but she knows it's staged and not a 300 year old original.

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Decker decides to send a record of Earth's history to prove to V'Ger it shouldn't kill humans. It detects it's abridged. Out of desperation, Decker considers sending ALL of the database. Xon counters that the database has more info on other carbon based life.

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After finding a 300 year old film from NASA, they attempt to show it to Tasha for V'Ger. It doesn't go well.

After deciding that it was too dangerous to give V'Ger all the information on Earth, Decker erases the tapes.

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In the Gene Roddenberry Phase II Second Draft, the scenes are mostly the same, with a few expansions. On seeing the child Tasha begins to feel emotions.

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In this version, it isn't about finding proof that human's built Voyager, but that it already HAS that information.

The more Tasha sees of humanity the more feelings she gets. To the point that she is willing to defy V'Ger for Kirk.

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She's shown proof, but V'Ger rejects it out of hand. Humans cannot have built V'Ger.

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In the (possibly) Dennis Clark "Grumpy Draft" script, the action is roughly the same as the Motion picture except that Decker has stayed behind as the others go to V'Ger. Spock is still reeling and getting flashes from from the V'Ger mind meld.

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The crew do try to get the release code as V'Ger has made it impossible to key in manually, but need to go to Earth to get it due to the damage wrought by V'Ger's force field.

There's also a hint that Decker has kinda snapped.

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Decker continues to act mesmerized and pulls a phaser on Spock and McCoy trying to brute force the release code. Grumpy Decker becomes Grumpier.

Kirk finds the release code, and sends it to Uhura, forwarding it to Spock and McCoy.

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With a few exceptions, and some looser dialog, the early shooting draft is the same as what's on screen.

1:59:15 - The crew gets the response code, but V'Ger burns out it's own antenna lead to force the Creator to join with it.

In Phase II, with all the chips down, and everything about to go to hell, this ending never happens.

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Instead, we get a much more personal ending involving the Tasha probe, deciding personally that humanity is worth saving and lying to V'Ger directly that she's seen proof of V'Ger's human origins.

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V'Ger contacts the Enterprise and says it will spare the humans. It then decides it can learn nothing from it's creators and goes away.

Even Harold Livingston has said "he pissed away the V'Ger's ending." It was too big a puzzle to solve gracefully.

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Ilia is returned to the crew, alive and well, as is the Tasha probe, although it returns as the mechanical probe and dies immediately.

The ship is declared fit for duty, and the episode ends with the promise of new adventures, ending Phase II's pilot episode.

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Gene Roddenberry's Phase II rewrite was a little more on the nose about it being a movie.

Xon is the one who decides to directly contact V'Ger by beaming his brain patterns to V'Ger's main computer. Decker, however, decides to go in his place.

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There was the possibility of going to series after the movie was over (at this time), and Gene wrote a "Get Out of Jail Free" clause to bring Decker back should it happen.

Again Gene's character moments. Tasha and Scott....

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With V'Ger gone, and everything back to normal, the ship gets a call about Klingons near Rigel, and sets out to new adventures....

The Dennis Clark Grumpy Draft (I hope he doesn't mind that, he's a good writer) takes the story more along the lines of the movie. Spock recieves another memory from the Mind Meld as Decker moves to key in the response code.

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The meld begins and Tasha who has just shown up with Kirk, runs into the meld dissapearing. The rest of the crew race back to the ship, with Kirk ordering full reverse as soon as everyone is onboard. The escape just as V'Ger dissapears into a mobeus effect.

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The early shooting script, begins with finding the code. Tasha realizes they may actually be the creator and has a request.

There is a snag as the code is not available easily. It was a scientific secret which blows McCoy's mind.

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Kirk and Tasha beam down to Earth to help dig through the records and find the code.

Decker and Spock attempt to get close to Voyager and are thrown back, but were able to notice something was off.

McCoy and Decker have a heart to heart.

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Kirk finally finds the Voyager program, but it's all in microfische, something they don't know how to read. Tasha, however, can simply scan it and finds the code herself.

The code doesn't work because of V'Ger's sabotage. It'll need to be input directly.

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Decker enters the code, V'ger ascends and...

...somehow, Palpatine (I mean Ilia) survived.

The ship is ordered to put into Spacedock, and Kirk refuses, taking the ship "out there...thataway" to end the movie.

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As you can see, there were multiple ways the movie changed the very end, from from "Turning and going" to "Head to Rigel" to "Out there, thataway."

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Designer Andy Probert, however, had an idea that when V'Ger left, the Klingons were undigitized and attacked, damaging the Enterprise and causing a saucer separation.

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There was quite a bit of art for the final melding, lots with faces in the clouds or over Earth which would have been CREEPY. Nice. But Creepy.

Love Bird V'Ger so so so much.

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V'Ger Aslpode

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2:07:05 "We can have you back on Vulcan in four days, Mr Spock."
"Unnecessary, Mr. Scott. If Doctor McCoy is to remain onboard, I will be definitely be needed here."

Actual ad-libbed line by Leonard Nimoy. Paraphrasing, but actual.

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2:07:25 - MAGIC SWITCHING ARMBANDS

And that's the end of the #sttmpwatchalong . Almost two days on the dot. O_o

This post was brought to you by 31 years of obsessing when I picked up a copy of The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and learned about all the aborted movie attempts and TV shows.

ST:TMP has always been one of my have Trek movies, if flawed, and this book launched me into trying to find as much info as I could about The God Thing, Planet of Titans and Phase II as I could get my hands on. I've picked up many books over the years where many of these...

...stories, trivia and pictures come from. As we got DVDs, more information came in the Making Of documentaries and commentaries, and with the rise of the internet, I was able to find scripts and even more images. Many of the images here are, frankly, stolen from numerous...

...websites over the lat 25 years. A few I know of offhand are Trekcore, Forgotten Trek, Beyond the Marquee, Memory Alpha and a whole bunch of others. I'm sorry I've forgotten some of the names, but I'll be happy to add them when I remember, or am reminded of them.

I sure hope I'm not in trouble for that.

So, thank y'all for letting me saturate your Twitter accounts for a weekend, talking at length about one of my favorite movies, and I'll stop talking about it now for at least eight hours.

Gotta sleep sometime, you know.

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