Star Trek The Motion Picture.
I was 9, I loved the original series, I begged Dad to take Me to see it.
I was expecting an extra long, extra exciting episode, I got what seemed like an eternity of boredom.
Take it form this Trek fan who was 14 at the time
ST:TMP came out:
Practically all blame can be placed on Robert Wise. Wise was brought in to direct. He knew virtually nothing about the series and he did not try learning anything about it either. He squeezed Gene Roddenberry almost completely out of the production.
At the time, the only thing I knew about Wise was that he was a big name director who made
The Andromeda Strain, which I enjoyed a lot. What I did not know (or chose to ignore most likely) was his best work was in musicals like
West Side Story. I still enjoyed the movie, mostly because it breathed new life into the franchise, but it could have been presented WAY better.
Even though I cannot forgive Wise’s poor effort, his is not the worst oversight of a Star Trek film in my opinion. That distinction is reserved for William Shatner’s spit-and-polished
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier—with real emphasis on the word ‘spit’.
