Warp Speed to Nowhere

By R.S.

STAR TREK--THE MOTION PICTURE Directed by Robert Wise; Screenplay by Harold Livingston

It used to be that special effects were created to serve a movie's story, to permit the camera to capture that which could not be found--or recorded on film--in the natural world. But now, in the postStar Wars era, stories are created merely to provide a feeble excuse for the effects. Star Trek consists almost entirely of this kind of material: shot after shot of vehicles sailing through the firmament to the tune of music intended to awe. But the spaceships take an unconscionable amount of time to get anywhere, and nothing of dramatic or human interest happens along the way. Once the ships reach their destination, they do not encounter the kind of boldly characterized antagonists that made Star Wars such fun. In fact, they do not meet any human or humanoid antagonists at all. There isn't even a battle scene at the climax.

Instead there is a lot of talk. Much of it in impenetrable spaceflight jargon. Scanners, deflectors, warp speed, linguacode--words like that are always being barked into the intercom. But it is never to the point: it is hard to decipher where the starship Enterprise stands vis-a-vis the mysterious intruder from outer space. When the crew are not jabbering in technocratese, they are into metaphysics, one of the characteristics of the old Star Trek television show and a major reason for its cult vogue among the half-educated.

It turns out that the villainous UFO is not manned. This is very peculiar, since in the film's opening sequence it is full of weirdos. By the time the Enterprise closes in on it, the creatures have all disappeared, victims not of the story line but of what appears to be a shortage of either money or time. In a very fast shuffle, the film suddenly announces that the villain is not merely a Death Star, but "a great, living machine." When Ilia, the Enterprise's navigator, is captured by the enemy and literally rewired to be its servant, she explains that the machine is seeking its creator and is terribly cross. The bad temper results from the fact that though the great machine thinks like a whiz, it has no human emotions. And so the picture ends not with a bang but, as it were, a bang. One of the space cadets, who has had his eye on the original Ilia all along, agrees to mate with the improved model and produce a hybrid race of brainy but emotionally turned-on creatures. Just imagine how the effects guys get the colored lights whirling in order to preserve the G rating when that happens.

Some of the metaphorical questions that used to get raised by the Enterprise's intergalactic encounters on the old TV show were at least a little more interesting than this stale intelligence-vs.-emotion debate. One suspects a sellout to the Me Generation's self-absorbed search for feelings. It's a wonder they didn't invite the great machine to join them for an Esalen weekend.

There is little point in discussing the performances. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and the rest of the old crowd are back on the bridge. They remember their moves from the old days, though Shatner's promotion to admiral has rendered him more than usually cranky. There is a certain tackiness to the Enterprise, which has been redesigned to fill a large screen. Even some of the costumes are ill-fitting, and the special effects do not reflect the current state of the art. Star Trek had a long, troubled production history. Called to the rescue, John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull have been able to contribute only quite simple versions of the shots they did respectively, and more spectacularly, in Star Wars and Close Encounters. But, completed in haste, Star Trek is, finally, nothing but a long day's journey into ennui.--R.S.

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