Tuesday, December 7, 2021

A Trek Forty-Two Years Ago Today

Last evening I was reminded by a tweet that Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released forty-two years ago today. How could I have forgotten? It was a memorable night.

Picture a dozen teenagers meeting at the big picture house to see one of the most anticipated pictures ever. Try and imagine our disappointment when the end credits rolled: not that we wanted the show to go on, but more a case of "that was it?"; or as friend Mike said after he turned to me from the seat to my left: "I thought it would be better than that."

The next morning I shuffled to the living room, where siblings were watching "Wink of an Eye". Is this some sort of joke? An editorial on what I saw last night? You thought this episode was bad? Last night's event flick made "Wink of an Eye" look like a masterpiece?

The passage of time has been kind to ST:TMP.


3 comments:

Jon said...

I saw a reproduction of the poster for The Day The Earth Stood Still a couple of days ago and noticed Robert Wise's name. Nice set of bookends to have on your shelf, that. Twenty years apart is it?

Simon St. Laurent said...

A little less than two decades, indeed.

I'm going through a book titled "Return to Tomorrow". It was drawn from hours of interviews with key people on the production... the key thing is the interviews were done right after ST:TMP was released. Roddenberry felt they didn't recapture the great chemistry between the characters displayed so prevalently, and classically, in the television series.

A lot of blame was put on director Wise for not understanding that Mark of Quality. To me, the series is one of the great dramatic programs of all time: it had the magic storm.

Simon St. Laurent said...

Correction to my response above: "A little less than three decades."