Star Trek had
barely been cancelled when its obsessive fans began obsessing about where the
Enterprise might head next. Even as Gene Roddenberry dangled the possibility of
a new live-action series, and forced fans to settle for a cartoon, there was talk
of a feature film for years. Events began to snowball by the mid-seventies, and
Trekkers (never call them Trekkies!)
got their big screen treat when Star
Trek—The Motion Picture zoomed into cinemas in 1979. Well, maybe “zoomed”
is not the right verb. Perhaps “floated in slow-mo” is more appropriate for
Robert Wise’s notoriously inert epic. Disappointment followed.
One Trekker (or does she prefer “Trekkie”?) who was not let
down by all that “V’ger” business was Sherilyn Connelly. In fact, she is
downright defiant about her love of Star
Trek—The Motion Picture in her new book The
First Star Trek Movie: Bringing the Franchise to the Big Screen, 1969-1980.
Even though I’m among the many who find little to love in Star Trek’s first cinematic outing, I can certainly get behind
Connelly’s stance considering my own vocal love of such fan-irritating items as
The Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic
Majesties Request. I can also get behind her attitude since she expresses
it with so much wit and willingness to acknowledge the flaws of a film she
realizes is flawed but loves anyway.
So you don’t really have to share Connelly’s zeal for a
ponderous exercise in saying “V’ger” over and over to dig The First Star Trek Movie. The road to the film’s eventual release
is convoluted enough to make for interesting reading under any circumstances.
There are bizarre discarded plots about the Kennedy assassination and Kirk
swashbuckling with giant space spiders, gobs of debunkable Roddenberry bluster,
and a disturbingly prescient side-story in which Leonard Nimoy gets shit from prototypes
of the disgruntled losers who now make social media so delightful. However, it
is always the author who is the true star of this show. Connelly’s writing is
so lively and littered with humor (for example, she turns flogging her previous
book about My Little Pony to an audience
of self-serious Trekkies/Trekkers into a running gag) that it makes The First Star Trek Movie much more fun
than the first Star Trek movie.
