Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - TOS Movies Final Week - Final Frontier & Undiscovered Country! Pg 28! (TNG NEXT WEEK)

I was thinking the exact same thing regarding The Counterclock Incident :lol:

Red Dwarf came up a lot in my thoughts throughout the runs of both TOS and these animated episodes, which goes to show just how much of an influence early Trek had on other sci-fi I guess!

It was a bit of a random way to end the run for the original crew but it was pretty serviceable episode overall, just lacking any real pomp for what would be the last we saw of them for a while!

Thoughts on the rest:

The Pirates of Orion
As Moggy says it was bullshit that Bones didn't point out Spock was at risk here! Maybe he really does want the green blooded goblin dead?!

Bem
More primitive culture fuckwittery, hard to keep track of how many times the sacred prime directive has been screwed over by this point! The guy supposedly putting them to the test was a right twat.

The Practical Joker
There's something quite endearing about the ship going crazy but not in a "you're all going to strawberry floating die horribly!!" way - the ship just having gooseberry fools and giggles at their expense was a bit of a laugh - again reminding me a bit of Red Dwarf and Holly playing the prank on them with Queeg.

Liked that Kirk decides to screw the Romulans at the end by not telling them about the anomoly as well! :lol:

Albatross
Another episode, another Red Dwarf reminder, when Bones gets accused of mass murder just made me think of Rimmer in Justice:

Spock just deciding to go full criminal and spring Bones from jail is a bit hard to take but I guess you could argue the ends justified the means "logically"

How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth
I mean come on, what the actual strawberry float is this?! :lol:

Space god snake/dragon/bird, random native American guy suddenly appearing for the first time ever, another strawberry floating intergalactic species zoo...

I guess you can say it wasn't boring!

Pirate of Orion
Meh.

Bem
I do like that TAS isn't really considered canon, but that Lower Decks pulls from it a few times. This is one of those episodes.
Great idea for an alien that you just couldn't do in live action back then. Other than that it was a decent enough episode.

I'll be glad when we're done with TAS, if only so I don't have to hear the same musical sequences over and over again.

Yeah the music cues have been wearing a little bit thin. The horn blaring bit whenever anything vaguely action based happens in particular started to really get on my tits!

And done...

The Practical Joker
Was interesting to see the computer taking the piss. Also loved that the Enterprise apparently had holodeck technology years before TNG did.

Albatross
It was ok. Not sure why they waited so long to arrest McCoy though. Would have thought they would have told the federation about it years before.

How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth
Weird one. Kirk and co solve the most video-gamey puzzle I think I've seen in a tv show and talk to a "god".

The Counter-Clock Incident
Have to agree with Jenuall and say Red Dwarf did it much better.

Overall TAS is fun, but ultimately forgettable. The fact it's not considered "Canon" within Star Trek only adds to that, though Lower Decks revisits some aliens and concepts. I would watch it again as part of a future re-watch but it's not a show I'm ever going to decide to watch on its own.

Movies next week!

Got my 4K boxset for 1-4 and Blu-Rays for 5 & 6 so really looking forward to this.

Exciting!

Going to try and get TMP watched tomorrow

Motion Picture on Tuesday and Wrath of Khan on Thursday for me.

Only recently upgraded to my 4K projector so I'm especially interested to see the first movie on that.
I'm probably going to pick up the stand-alone 4K directors cut when it releases later this year as well.

As much as I enjoy TOS and TAS, for me it's the movies that really shine for the original cast.

I'd say the movies, Wrath of Khan onwards especially, are where Trek starts to find it's feet and really starts laying the foundations for the later series.

Lagamorph wrote:I'd say the movies, Wrath of Khan onwards especially, are where Trek starts to find it's feet and really starts laying the foundations for the later series.

Yeah I would agree with that. As far as I understand, Final Frontier and Undiscovered Country both re-used/re-purposed TNG sets in some places. UC especially fills in how peace with the Klingons came about, which was something TNG had mentioned a few times by that point I think.

The movies are generally pretty decent. For me, when it comes to the six TOS movies I'd say there's three great movies, two good ones and only one legitimately bad one, and even that has a couple of moments in it that I like.

Going to try and get TMP watched tonight.

WOK possibly tomorrow.

I'm moving house Monday week, so need to get the movies in now so I can pack over the rest of the week. :lol:

Get your priorities right Moggy, Trek is more important than moving house :capnscotty:

Jenuall wrote:Get your priorities right Moggy, Trek is more important than moving house

Get your facts right Jenuall. I clearly stated I'd be watching Trek and fulfilling my obligations before I move house. :capnscotty:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Hmmm. It's not bad as such, but it's very slow moving. Glacial in places.

It also had a significant bump in budget from the days of the TV show. Obviously the effects are now dated, but it looks as good as anything out at the time.

I don't think I've ever seen it before, but I was aware of what Vger was. Dunno if I'd caught bits of it or had just picked up the information from somewhere.

Not the best start to the movies, but not a disaster.

I watched Wrath of Khan a few years ago, it'll be interesting to rewatch it now I am far more familiar with Trek.

Moggy wrote:Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Hmmm. It's not bad as such, but it's very slow moving. Glacial in places.

It also had a significant bump in budget from the days of the TV show. Obviously the effects are now dated, but it looks as good as anything out at the time.

I don't think I've ever seen it before, but I was aware of what Vger was. Dunno if I'd caught bits of it or had just picked up the information from somewhere.

Not the best start to the movies, but not a disaster.

I watched Wrath of Khan a few years ago, it'll be interesting to rewatch it now I am far more familiar with Trek.

You'll be glad to hear that's a fairly standard take on The Motion Picture and is the general concensus.

I actually quite like the slower pace of it myself. It feels more like a science-fiction film than any other Trek movie.

You are very right about the budget. They spent about $44 Million on it, which was a ludicrous sum of money at the time, but you can see where it went.
The effects and model shots are fantastic for the time, and I would argue that a large chunk of them still hold up very favourably with other movies from the 70's, 80's and even 90's. Suffice to say they reuse the hell out of those models and even some of the footage in other movies in the franchise, including some of the TNG ones I think.

TMP has some fascinating development behind it as well, being based on a story for the abandoned "Star Trek: Phase 2" series they had been developing. Characters like Decker and Ilia would have been part of that show.

The wikipedia page is a good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture#Production

Cheeky Devlin wrote:
The wikipedia page is a good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture#Production

I googled the guy who played Decker.

:dread:

Moggy wrote:
Cheeky Devlin wrote:
The wikipedia page is a good read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture#Production

I googled the guy who played Decker.

Ick.

Yeah TMP had a lot of pacing issues and went way over budget, so the reigns were greatly tightened for Wrath of Khan.

Whilst a lot of Phase 2 ideas were recycled (the film script is based on the script for a 2 hour length Phase 2 pilot episode) sadly the original models for the Enterprise they built for it were destroyed (Rumour has it that this was supposedly during a party after TMP was confirmed) though the models weren't detailed enough for a movie anyway by all accounts. A lot of the sets they built during Phase 2 pre-production were used though, albeit with quite a bit of re-working.

Lagamorph wrote:(Rumour has it that this was supposedly during a party after TMP was confirmed)

strawberry floating Tories

It's a good movie and I enjoyed it more than the last time I watched it as I am now far more familiar with the characters and storyline.

Bones is still the best character (smuggling illegal booze :lol:

), but Spock was great in this. Even Shatner (other than the gif above) wasn't doing his usual hammy overacting.

I know that Spock comes back, but it must have been a pretty depressing ending when this came out and they didn't know the title of the next movie.

So I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture and figured I would give my thoughts on it, although I doubt they stray to far from what most people will think.

In a lot of ways it really doesn't feel that much like a Star Trek film (even though its the first) it just doesn't feel that much like the original series its kind of slow and thoughtful, in fact the episode of the series it reminds me the most of would be the original pilot The Cage not content wise more in tone. I don't think its a bad film it just doesn't have a Star Trek flavour to it in a lot of parts , apparently Shatner himself said it was sluggish and thought it would kill the idea of any sequels.

The much bigger budget really does show yes the effects are now dated, but at the time they were absolutely stunning, but that's this film to me a case of effects over contents.

My fave bit of the whole film is

Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - TOS Movies Final Week - Final Frontier & Undiscovered Country! Pg 28! (TNG NEXT WEEK)

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