A brief history of Star Trek after the original series.
Summer, 1969: Star Trek ends its run on NBC-TV.
The show is seen as a failure by both the network and the studio.
Fall, 1969: Star Trek returns in reruns across the country.
Surprisingly, the show seems to be growing in popularity
but it is still seen as a failure.
Fall, 1969: Gene Roddenberry continues to hope
for a Star Trek revival, possibly on ABC-TV.
The network declines.
Roddenberry also tries, unsuccessfully
to convince a network to produce made-for-TV Star Trek movies.
Jan 1972: One of the first major Star Trek conventions
is held in New York.
Some 3,000 fans prove that the show is far from dead.
Mar, 1972: NBC indicates a mild interest
in a new Star Trek TV project, but nothing happens.
Sept 8, 1973: An animated version of Star Trek
airs on NBC.
May, 1975: Gene Roddenberry signs with Paramount Pictures
to work on a Star Trek movie script.
June 30, 1975: Roddenberry turns in a script
entitled The God Thing.
Studio reception is lukewarm.
August, 1975:
Roddenberry continues to develop story concepts,
while Paramount interviews numerous other writers.
Among the writers invited to "pitch" story ideas
are John D. F. Black, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison,
Ray Bradbury, and Theodore Sturgeon.
Jan, 1976: Paramount transfers Star Trek
to its television division.
April 1976: Paramount returns Star Trek
to its feature film division.
Sept 17, 1976: NASA unveils the Space Shuttle Enterprise
the prototype for a new fleet of reusable spacecraft.
Sept 17, 1976: Paramount announces
that a new Star Trek movie is in development,
to be filmed in England.
Oct 8, 1976: Chris Bryant and Allan Scott finish an outline
entitled Planet of the Titans, to be directed by Phil Kaufman.
May 8, 1977: Despite initial enthusiasm
and a completed script,
the studio decides not to make Planet of the Titans.
June 10, 1977: Paramount announces formation
of a new network, the Paramount Television Service.
The new network will feature the return of Star Trek
in a new weekly series to be titled Star Trek: Phase II.
William Shatner agrees to appear as Kirk
in the new series project.
Nevertheless, commercial sales for the new network
do not meet studio expectations.
Nov 11, 1977: Paramount cancels Star Trek: Phase II,
just two weeks before the planned start of filming.
Paramount instead announces plans
to expand the two-hour first episode of the series
into a theatrical movie.
Robert Abel and Associates is signed
to do the film's special visual effects.
This is the firm's first feature-film assignment.
March, 1978: Robert Wise is signed to direct
Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
March 1978: Leonard Nimoy signs onto Star Trek: TMP.
Aug 7, 1978: First day of filming for Star Trek: TMP.
The project is already locked into a Dec, 1979, release,
a very tight schedule for such an complex film.
Feb, 1979: Serious concerns emerge
as to whether the movie's ambitious visual effects
can be completed in time.
Most of the effects work is transferred to Douglas Trumbull,
who enlists the aid of John Dykstra.
The remainder of the year is a desperate race
to complete the film's visual effects,
during which the film runs seriously over budget.
The work is barely finished in time,
but many serious compromises are made to meet the deadline.
Dec 7, 1979: Star Trek: The Motion Picture premieres.
The film is a tremendous success for the studio.
Nevertheless, director Robert Wise remains distressed
that he has never had a chance to properly complete his film.
Until now.
The Klingon Battle Cruiser was designed by Matt Jefferies
for the original Star Trek TV series.
These Klingon models had much more surface detail
than the TV version
so they would look believable on a movie screen.
The Klingon space scenes
were shot under the supervision of John Dykstra.
The Klingon ship's bridge was located
in this dome on the "head" of the ship.
The Klingon interiors were intended as a contrast
to the clean, sleek Enterprise interiors seen later.
This is the first appearance
of Klingons with bumpy foreheads on Star Trek .
No real explanation was ever given
for the change in the Klingons’ look
from their appearance in the original series.
The Klingon metamorphosis
remains one of the great mysteries of Star Trek.
The Klingon commander was played by Mark Lenard.
Lenard also played the Romulan commander
in "Balance of Terror" (TOS),
as well as Spock's father, Sarek.
The Klingon spoken language heard here
was invented by James Doohan, who also played Scotty.
Linguist Marc Okrand later used Doohan's sounds
as the basis for an invented Klingon language.
Okrand's synthetic Klingon language was used
in subsequent Star Trek movies,
as well as in the spin-off TV shows.
The Klingon written language was based
on Matt Jefferies’ markings on the original Klingon ship model.
The Klingon written language, seen here, has remained in use
on subsequent Star Trek movies and TV shows.
At least three models were built to represent the exterior
of station Epsilon 9 at different scales.
The spacesuited worker was a mechanized model
about a foot in height.
Listen for the faint Starfleet voice message
from "Commodore Probert."
The name was a tip of the hat to designer Andrew Probert,
who was a key figure in the final design
of the movie Enterprise.
Probert also designed the Enterprise-D
for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The station commander was played by actor David Gautreaux.
Gautreaux was at one time
signed to play a character named Lt. Xon
in the aborted Star Trek: Phase II series.
Xon, a full-blooded Vulcan,
would have been the Enterprise science officer.
Xon was to have matured over the course of the series
as he struggled to follow in Spock's very large footsteps.
The character of Xon was dropped during preproduction,
when Leonard Nimoy agreed to reprise his role of Spock.
These Klingon costumes have been seen
in other Star Trek productions
more than 20 years after this film was made.
The intricate V'ger cloud was created
with a photographic technique known as "streak scan."
The Klingon ship bridge was later redressed and used
as the Enterprise torpedo room in Star Trek II and III.
The communications tech was played by Michele Ameen Billy,
who was also the assistant to writer Harold Livingston.
Nearly all Starfleet personnel in this film
wear the familiar Starfleet arrowhead emblem,
but Epsilon 9 crew members
wore a patch depicting a dish antenna.
A tiny part of this shot was filmed with Leonard Nimoy
on location at Yellowstone National Park.
The remainder of this scene was filmed in a parking lot
at Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles,
in the same spot where Cecil B. Demille
once parted the Red Sea for The Ten Commandments.
This new matte painting reflects Spock's line in "The Man Trap,"
where he told Uhura that Vulcan has no moons.
Star Trek visited Vulcan once before,
in the original series episode "Amok Time,"
written by Theodore Sturgeon.
Actor Leonard Nimoy devised
the Vulcan split-fingered greeting for that episode.
It has been part of Vulcan culture ever since.
The actors actually spoke English
when the scenes were shot,
but after filming was completed,
it was decided to re-voice the actors in a Vulcan language.
Dialectician Jimmy Doohan devised alien-sounding words,
based on the lip movements of the actors.
If you look and listen carefully, you'll see
that the actors’ lip movements match the English subtitles.
Some of the English subtitles have been reworded or rearranged
to make this slightly less obvious.
The Vulcan mind-meld was invented by Leonard Nimoy.
Spock first performed the mind-meld
in "Dagger of the Mind" (TOS).
It was a clever means of providing
important plot exposition
from an uncooperative character in that episode without...
...a potentially boring interrogation scene.
Nimoy thought, correctly
that the mind-meld would make the mysterious Mr. Spock
even more fascinating to the audience.
The head Vulcan master was played by Edna Glover.
Glover was a member of the same acting troupe
of which David Gautreaux and Michele Ameen Billy
were members.
This scene was Star Trek's first real glimpse of future Earth.
Budget limitations made it virtually impossible
for the original Star Trek series to show future Earth.
This was one reason why those stories almost never went there.
Budgets for feature films are often considerably higher
than those of episodic television,
so the film took advantage of the opportunity
to give a peek of Earth in Star Trek's future time.
William Shatner played the heroic James T. Kirk
reprising his role from the classic television series.
Shatner's Kirk is regarded by many
as the prototypical spaceship commander.
San Francisco has always been an important part
of the Star Trek universe.
The dedication plaque on the original series bridge
indicated that the ship had been built
at the "San Francisco Yards."
Other Star Trek movies and the spin-off TV shows
have also visited San Francisco several times.
The space office complex was a model about 6 feet in height.
The upper, central level was designed as a large arboretum,
complete with dozens of tiny trees.
One of the outer pods is shown to be incomplete,
as if the space station was still under construction.
The office complex was later modified and used
as the Regula 1 lab in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The model later appeared as a variety of starbases
in Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: DS9.
This pod was a larger scaled model,
with the interior scene rear- projected into the window.
The round control station was originally designed
to be a nurses’ station for the Enterprise sick bay.
The transporter effect was created by Apogee.
(This seems to happen a lot.)
(One almost wonders if other starships stay away
when the Enterprise is in town,
knowing that danger must be near.)
The idea of the ship launching prematurely
was devised when this film was planned as a TV movie.
At one point, it was thought that the Enterprise sets
might not be ready in time for the planned start of production.
It was hoped that even if the sets weren't completed,
filming could proceed anyway,
since the Enterprise herself
wasn't supposed to be entirely finished, either.
Fortunately, enough time was later allowed for the sets
to be redesigned and finished for filming by Robert Wise.
The Starship Enterprise was designed in 1964
by Matt Jefferies, art director
for the original Star Trek series.
His original version of the ship
was seen in all 79 episodes of Star Trek.
In 1977, when Paramount announced
the Star Trek: Phase II, series project,
Jefferies agreed to update his classic design.
An Enterprise model was built by Don Loos and Brick Price,
using Jefferies’ new design.
Loos had earlier built the Tholian ships
and the Space CruiserAurora for the original series.
Price made many props for this film.
In November 1977, Paramount canceled the planned TV series
and decided to make a movie instead.
Work on the ship was also halted,
since it was felt that a more detailed model
would be needed for the big screen.
The movie Enterprise model was built by Magicam
under the supervision of James Dow.
Refinements to Jefferies’ design were added by Mike Minor,
Richard Taylor, Andrew Probert, and Doug Trumbull.
The new model was about 8-feet long
and built with a rigid aluminum internal frame.
The model had complex internal lighting,
and an intricate, multi-layered paintjob...
...that created the illusion that the ship's skin
was made from thousands of plates of exotic metal.
It remains one of the finest miniatures ever constructed
for motion picture visual effects work.
The delicate filigree of the dry dock structure
served to keep much of the ship obscured...
...so that it could be revealed in a few moments when Kirk
(and the audience) sees his starship in her entirety.
Gene Roddenberry originally wanted the dry dock
to be in geosynchronous orbit above the city of San Francisco.
This orbit would put the station some 22,300 miles high,
the same as present-day communication satellites.
Unfortunately, the Earth appears from that altitude
to be a small ball.
The dry dock's orbit was therefore lowered
so that Earth would appear larger and more spectacular.
Some visual effects footage from this dry dock sequence
was used again in Star Trek II.
The dry dock model was refurbished in 1994
for the launch of the Enterprise-B
in Star Trek: Generations.
The travel pod interior set
was also used in Star Trek II and Star Trek ll/.
The small service craft flying overhead
was known as a "work bee."
The work bee was a one-person craft,
equipped with manipulator arms for space construction work.
The work bee model
later appeared in the main title sequence
of the later seasons of Star Trek: DS9.
Work bees could also be used to tow "trains" of cargo pods,
as seen here.
The dry dock interior
featured a large number of spotlights and floodlights,
necessary because an object in low Earth orbit
spends about 45 minutes out of every 90 minute orbit
in darkness.
The hangar deck doors were the point of departure
for the shuttlecraft seen in the original Star Trek series.
This piece of the Enterprise engineering hull
was a larger-scale model made just for these last few shots.
The large door at the back of this cargo deck was based
on the shuttlecraft hangar deck seen in the original series.
These cargo pods were later used as the basis of Khan's home
on planet Ceti Alpha V in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Look very carefully: A tiny dot on one of the ship diagrams
shows a bit of the turbo|ift's movement through the ship.
Unfortunately, Bill Shatner steps in front of the dot,
so you only see the very beginning of its movement.
The bridge is the command center
from which all operations of the starship are managed.
The Enterprise bridge was designed
by production designer Harold Michelson.
Miche|son's bridge was a revamp of the bridge designed
by Joe Jennings for the Star Trek: Phase II series.
Jennings bridge was, of course, based on the original series set
designed by Matt Jefferies in 1964.
The Enterprise bridge has been regarded by many
as a marvel of efficient work station layout.
The U.S. Navy, the Air Force, and NASA
have all studied the Enterprise bridge
as a model of a high-tech command center.
In 1994, DARPA,
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Admin,
even asked Star Trek: TNG designer Herman Zimmerman
to help create an experimental control center,
code-named "Warbreaker," based on the Enterprise bridge.
The tiny white dot is now (briefly) visible
at the top of the saucer,
although it doesn't move this time.
The back half of this corridor
is a scenic painting that visually extends the set.
The multi-story engine room set
was also extended by use of a scenic painting.
The painting, on the floor of the set,
made the engine room appear
to extend several stories below the floor.
Another scenic painting made the set appear to extend
hundreds of feet beyond the back wall of the soundstage.
This illusion was enhanced by the use of a series
of ceiling arches and engine parts that diminished in size.
Two children, dressed in miniature radiation suits,
were placed in the back of this shot
to help enhance the illusion of distance.
The technique is called "forced perspective."
A minor misalignment is visible here
between the actual corridor set and the scenic painting.
The blinking display panel in the ceiling of the corridor
was designed by Rick Sternbach.
Rick intended the overhead panel to guide crew members
where they should go during a Red Alert situation.
Grace Lee Whitney returned here
as Transporter Chief Janice Rand.
Rand had been a semi-regular during early episodes
of the original Star Trek series in 1966.
Whitney was cut from the cast because of budget concerns,
but Rand remained a favorite with the show's fans.
The transporter was "invented" by Gene Roddenberry
to solve a difficult television budgetary problem.
Star Trek's visual effects
would have been far too costly for a low-budget TV show...
...if the Enterprise had to land
on a different planet every week.
The transporter allowed characters
to "beam" directly to a planet's surface,
quickly and (relatively) inexpensively.
(It should probably be noted, however,
that there are still a few bugs in the system.)
The bugs were eventually worked out,
and the transporter room set (in various forms)
has remained in service...
...in most of the succeeding Star Trek movies,
as well as in Star Trek: TNG, and in Star Trek: VGR.
Once again, a corridor whose apparent length has been doubled
by a scenic background painting at the end of the set.
In actuality, turning left at the end of this curved corridor
would lead to the Engine Room,
although on the ''real'' Enterprise,
Engineering was presumably on a different deck
from the transporter.
If you were to go down the corridor in this direction,
Sick bay would be on your left.
Although the Enterprise theoretically had a crew of 430,
it was never possible to show more than a few people at a time
on the original TV series.
The Recreation Deck scene allowed the audience
to finally see the entire crew of the starship.
Amid the hundreds of Enterprise crew members in this scene
are about 150 fans and friends of the production.
Their inclusion was a way to say "thank you" to the fans
for their valuable support of Star Trek over the years.
An "AU" is an astronomical unit,
a length equal to the distance from the Sun to the Earth,
about 93 million miles.
An object 2 AUs in diameter
would be nearly 200 million miles across,
which is pretty darned big.
Among the many friends and fans in this scene
(not all of whom are visible on screen), are...
Millie Wise, David Gerrold, Bjo Trimble, Susan Sackett,
Paula Crist, Katherine Kurtz, Beth Moberly,
Scott Dwek, Eric Doohan,
Thomas Doohan, Zack Richardson, Cedric Taporco, Richard Arnold,
JoAnn Christy, Denise Tathwell, and John Watts.
The Epsilon 9 station models did make one more appearance
after Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
They were wall decorations
in the Spacedock lounge in Star Trek III,
during Kirk's meeting with Admiral Morrow.
The Rec Deck set was built without a ceiling.
For very wide-angle shots,
a matte painting was used to create the ceiling.
Ilia, played by Persis Khambatta,
was originally conceived as a new character
for the Star Trek: Phase II TV series.
Since Leonard Nimoy declined to return as Spock
for the planned series,
Lt. Ilia was intended to be
a bridge officer from another world,
one whose culture was alien to humans.
Just as Vulcan culture was dominated by logic,
Roddenberry intended for ||ia's culture
to be dominated by sexuality.
||ia's "oath of celibacy"
was a reference to this bit of character background.
It was probably intended to help insure
that the show would remain suitable for family viewing.
Dr. Leonard McCoy, played by the late DeForest Kelley,
is Chief Medical Officer of the Starship Enterprise.
One of McCoy's trademarks
is his irrational fear of the ship's transporter system...
...although the earlier scene in the transporter
would seem to vindicate his concerns.
Fortunately, Rand and her staff
apparently succeeded in fixing the transporter,
and Dr. McCoy survived to appear in five other Star Trek movies.
Kelley's final appearance as McCoy
was in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country in 1991.
In the Star Trek universe, however,
Dr. McCoy lives to be at least 137 years old,
when he makes an inspection tour...
...of the Enterprise-D in "Encounter at Farpoint,"
the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Besides his aversion to the transporter,
McCoy's irascibility is one of his qualities
that endears him...
...to Star Trek's fans,
even if it is a source of continual irritation
to the logical Mr. Spock.
The finned ceiling of the bridge was designed by Mike Minor,
who based it on the hubcap of a luxury car.
The Enterprise is piloted by helm officer Hikaru Sulu,
played by George Takei.
Takei first appeared as Sulu in 1965
in "Where No Man Has Gone Before,"
Star Trek's second pilot episode.
In that first appearance,
Sulu was the Enterprise's staff physicist.
In 1966, when Star Trek became a series,
Sulu was "transferred" to the bridge,
where he became helmsman.
The Enterprise's Starfleet registry number, NCC-1701,
was devised by art director Matt Jefferies, who is also...
...a pilot and a well-known aviation artist.
He noted that the prefix "NC" was often used
for civilian aircraft of US registry.
Reasoning that space exploration in the future
would be an international endeavor, he added a second "C,"
since Russian aircraft used a "CCCP" prefix.
Jefferies’ "NCC" was a blending of the two.
Few in 1964 suspected that cooperative space exploration
would be a reality in just a few short decades.
Indeed, even as this DVD is released, the U.S., Russia,
and a dozen other nations are building
the International Space Station.
Visual effects director Douglas Trumbull
supervised the Enterprise scenes.
Trumbull searched for a way
to make the movie Enterprise different...
...from her television predecessor,
as well as from the many spacecraft
that have been seen in other films.
Trumbull came up with the idea
of having the ship illuminate itself,
using spotlights built into the ship's hull.
Trumbull likened the Enterprise to a grand ocean liner at night.
In the Star Trek universe, "impulse power" refers
to the Enterprise's secondary propulsion system.
The ship used its rocket-like "impulse engines"
to travel relatively short distances,
such as between two planets in a solar system.
By Star Trek standards, this is extremely slow.
Travel to even the nearest star at impulse speeds
would take years.
Of course, the impulse engines are far more powerful
than those on the Space Shuttle or any other current spacecraft.
These views of the planet Jupiter were made with a globe
painted by noted astronomical artist Adolph Schaller...
...who used photos of Jupiter
that had just been sent back by NASA's Voyager space probes.
When this film was made, Scha||er's globe
was probably the most accurate model of Jupiter in existence.
The use of "stardates" for the captain's log
began during the early episodes
of the original Star Trek series.
Back then, Roddenberry didn't really want to pin down
a specific calendar year for Star Trek's adventures,
so stardates were his clever way of keeping things vague,
while sounding appropriately naval for the captain's log.
The original Star Trek series
has since been set in the years AD 2266 to 2269.
Warp drive is the primary means of propulsion
of the Starship Enterprise.
Using the controlled reaction of matter and antimatter,
warp drive somehow distorts the fabric of space,
allowing the Enterprise to travel at the speed of light,
and even faster.
This would, of course, violate Einstein's theories.
Present-day physics has little real idea
of how warp drive would work.
In the Star Trek universe,
21st century scientist Zefram Cochrane
invented the faster-than-light warp drive in 2061.
Warp Factor 1 is equal to the speed of light,
some 186,000 miles per second.
No one is entirely sure what one would see
as you break the "warp barrier,"
but this scene is one possible answer.
As a boy, Einstein wondered what you would see
if you were to travel on a photon at the speed of light.
His musings about light
partly led to his theory of relativity in 1905.
Note the use of automatic restraints on the bridge chairs.
These were added because fans had criticized
the original series Enterprise bridge
for its lack of seat belts.
(Of course, they won't be of much help
to crew members at "stand up" workstations.)
In present-day physics,
a wormhole is a hypothetical tunnel
through space between two black holes.
In the Star Trek universe, a wormhole can be created
by an imbalance of a starship's warp drive.
The streaking visual effects here might suggest
the time distortion that might occur within a wormhole,
although theory suggests
the effect would probably be far more extreme.
An object pulled into a black hole (and therefore a wormhole)
would probably be shredded into subatomic particles...
...by the same gravitational forces
that created the wormhole in the first place.
(Then again, maybe a wormhole
created by a warp drive imbalance behaves differently?)
The streaking effects were created by Robert Swarthe
at the Abel and Associates effects facility.
Robert Abel won acclaim in the 1970s
for his imaginative TV commercials
for such clients as 7-Up and Levis.
The complicated wormhole animation
was one of the most ambitious visual effects scenes
done in film to that point.
The orange wormhole interior was created by Doug Trumbull's group
using scanned laser light.
At Robert Wise's request, illustrator Rick Sternbach
wrote up detailed instructions for actor Walter Koenig,
explaining how Chekov should operate his panel
to arm and fire the photon torpedoes.
Wise felt it would enhance the scene's credibility,
even though little is actually visible
of Chekov's button-pushing.
Graphic artist Lee Cole even compiled a 40-page booklet
detailing the function
of virtually every button on the bridge.
The document was treated as "top secret"
during the production of this film.
The small dome in the bridge ceiling was intended
as an "artificial horizon,"
showing the orientation of the ship.
Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott was played by James Doohan.
Scotty regarded the engine room as his personal domain,
into which even Kirk was merely a privileged intruder.
In the original series, Kirk's quarters were on Deck 5, too.
Kirk's quarters was a two-room suite.
One room was an office, with a worktable, a desk,
and an unseen dining table.
The other half was a bedroom with a shower and dresser.
(There was presumably an unseen third room
with his toilet and wash basin.)
The set was also used as Spock's cabin in Star Trek II
and Capt. Esteban's quarters on the Excelsior in Star Trek III.
It was later modified as the junior officers’ quarters
on the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: TNG
Data, Geordi, and Worf all lived here,
although presumably in different (though similar) cabins.
This set's final appearance was as Kirk's quarters
on the Enterprise-A in Star Trek VI in 1991.
After that, production designer Richard James
completely rebuilt the set
to make it more flexible for TNG's needs.
Orange suede covering made the living quarters area of Deck 5
look different from corridors in the rest of the ship.
The backstory of Decker and ||ia's past relationship
was originally developed for the Star Trek: Phase II series.
That door, presumably into ||ia's quarters,
actually leads to the transporter room set.
There's that tiny dot again, very briefly.
The big wall screen in Kirk's quarters
is normally a back-lit piece of decorative abstract art.
When used as a communications viewer,
a film image was rear-projected into the screen.
Special visual effects were normally used
to superimpose images onto viewers
(such as the bridge main screen).
Rear projection wasn't used very often,
partly because it's often not possible
for the film for the screen to be ready in time.
Rear projection was also used for the "test pattern"
on the bridge main viewer in early scenes of this film.
The Vulcan shuttle bore the name "Surak,"
named for the father of Vulcan philosophy.
Some 2,000 years ago, Surak brought a new age
of peace and logic to his troubled people.
Surak was played by Barry Atwater
in "The Savage Curtain" (TOS).
We're looking through the windows of an executive lounge,
located just below the bridge on the ship's saucer section.
The airlock itself is located just behind the bridge,
on the very top of the saucer.
Spock, half-Vulcan, half-human science officer
of the U.S.S. Enterprise, is played by Leonard Nimoy.
Nimoy had declined to appear
in the aborted Star Trek: Phase II television series.
He relented after studio executives and Robert Wise
all decided that this film could not be made without Spock.
Nimoy quipped that the reason
he took so long to sign up for the project
was just that the mail to planet Vulcan was slow.
The round computer screen to the right of Spock
shows equations relating to Einstein's theory of relativity.
They presumably would be of value to a science officer
trying to figure out a problem with a starship's warp drive.
The equations were provided by science consultant
(and NASA scientist) Jesco Von Puttkammer.
Dr. Christine Chapel was played by Majel Barrett Roddenberry,
wife of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
During the original Star Trek series,
Chapel was a nurse (as McCoy indicated earlier).
The symbols on Spock's robe became the basis
of ancient Vulcan writing, seen in sequel films and episodes,
including a "cursive" version
that combined a form of these symbols
with what might be a musical scale.
The inner workings of this console
feature the use of fiber optic circuits.
At the time this film was made, fiber optic technology
was just becoming a reality in real laboratories.
When the ship makes the ''leap'' to warp speed,
the colorful visual effects
have at least some basis in scientific theory.
The rainbow star streaks ahead suggest the color distortion
of Doppler shift at high relative speeds.
The blue streaks behind the ship might suggest
relativistic time dilation that would occur
as you approach the speed of light.
And the flash of light might suggest
the tremendous release of energy
necessary to warp the structure of space.
Warp factor 2 is equal to 8 times the speed of light.
Warp 3 is 27 times light speed.
Warp 4 is 64 times light speed.
Warp 5 is 125 times light speed.
Warp 6 is 216 times light speed.
Warp factor 7 is 343 times the speed of light.
At this speed it would take only about four days
to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri.
Gene Roddenberry requested that a different warp speed scale
be used for Star Trek: The Next Generation.
This lounge is theoretically on the back rim of the saucer,
near the Recreation Deck.
Spock's pursuit of the Kolinahr discipline
was a major turning point for the character.
Spock, who was half human and half Vulcan,
spent most of his life trying to repress his human emotions...
...in favor of the pure logic that is the Vulcan ideal.
Spock's attempt to undergo the Kolinahr was his final,
and greatest attempt to reject his human half.
His failure at Kolinahr
was the start of a new maturity for Spock,
one in which he began to accept both of his halves.
He finally realized, as the audience knew all along,
that his emotions were an essential part of his being.
The table behind Kirk later found its way
into Beverly Crusher's sick bay in Star Trek: TNG.
Although having the bridge awash in red light
while in alert status looks dramatic,
when filmed, the scene tends to look a little "soft."
So it's good, photographically, that Kirk orders the bridge
to be returned to standard lighting.
Uhura, the communications officer,
is played by Nichelle Nichols.
Uhura's name is derived from the Swahili word for "freedom."
Nichelle Nichols has worked with NASA,
helping to recruit minority candidates
into the astronaut program.
Kirk's relationship with Decker has its roots
in Roddenberry's plan to replace Spock
in the Star Trek: Phase II series.
Instead of the familiar Kirk-Spock dynamic,
Kirk and Decker were to have a more father-son relationship.
This would also help to answer those
who criticized Kirk's brashness in the original series,
since, they argued,
a starship captain should not endanger his life
by beaming down to planets
on hazardous landing party missions.
This served as a model for the Picard-Riker relationship
in Star Trek: TNG.
The big tactical displays on the bridge main viewscreen
were also generated by Apogee.
Spock's limited telepathic sense
was a result of his Vulcan physiology
and was seen often in the original series.
He couldn't read minds, but he could sometimes sense
strong thoughts or emotions, even across great distances.
Security officer Pavel Chekov was played by Walter Koenig.
Ensign Chekov was introduced
during the original series’ second season,
partly to give the show more youth appeal.
He was ship's navigator on the original series.
Here, he's been promoted to lieutenant
and is chief of security.
The character was Russian,
paying homage to the Russian people's pivotal role
in the exploration of space.
The first human in space was Russian pilot Yuri Gagarin,
who orbited the earth in the Vostok I spacecraft in 1961.
In addition to playing Dr. Christine Chapel,
Majel Barret also provided the voice
for the Enterprise computer in...
...the original Star Trek.
She also did computer voices for Star Trek: TNG,
Star Trek: DS9, and Star Trek: Voyager.
Barrett also played an Enterprise officer named
"Number One" in the original Star Trek pilot in 1964.
She was second-in-command of the Enterprise,
under Capt. Christopher Pike, played by Jeffrey Hunter.
Spock's console on the bridge
was known as the science station.
This version of the science station
has the most elaborate control panels on the bridge.
Besides a plethora of controls and display screens,
the science station has two ''roll out" side consoles...
...that gives Spock even more controls
for use when needed. (Like now.)
The science station
controls the ship's sensors and scientific instruments.
It also provides direct access
to the ship's library computer system,
in which is stored many libraries’...
...worth of information,
virtually anything that a starship captain and crew
might need to know in deep space.
A better view of the science station's side consoles.
The technical-looking images on the small round monitor screens
were obtained from many different sources.
For example, two upper round screens on Spock's station
have patterns of moving white, horizontal lines.
These images were created by filming an oscilloscope,
which is a test instrument used to analyze electronic signals.
Ironically, this particular oscilloscope was broken,
but designer Mike Minor thought that the image produced by...
...the damaged instrument was perfect
for the science officer's console on the Enterprise.
Another view of the "artificial horizon" dome in the ceiling.
The image on the lower left round screen on Spock's station
was also created with the broken oscilloscope.
The captain's chair even had an automatic headrest!
The cloud fly-through effects
were created under the supervision
of visual effects director Douglas Trumbull.
Trumbull had been an effects supervisor
on Stanley Kubrick's landmark film,
2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968.
Trumbull developed the "slit scan" mechanism
to create the famous "star gate" sequence
at the end of that film.
The 2001 slit scan effects were mostly linear, due to the fact
that Trumbull's slit scan machine was mechanical.
By the time Star Trek: TMP was made,
computerized motion control devices
made curved camera moves possible.
There's the broken oscilloscope again.
As noted earlier, a cloud that's over 2 AUs in diameter
is really, really, really big,
and would take a really long time to fly through.
(Really!)
In the 1979 version of this film, the V'ger cloud
was said to be 82 AUs across,
which is almost 8 billion miles across!
Even the orbit of Pluto,
which is sometimes the furthest planet from the sun,
is only about 50 AUs across.
At Warp 1, it would take over 11 hours to cross a cloud that big.
And, given the fact that the ship
is traveling through some kind of a cloud,
it would probably have to be flying
at a small fraction of light speed.
Even a cloud that's "only" 2 AUs in diameter
would therefore take quite a long time to traverse.
Cast members have said that these scenes
were surprisingly difficult for the actors,
because they were required to stare,
for extended periods, at absolutely nothing.
The images on the main viewscreen
were added in postproduction, months later,
so the actors really didn't know
what they were supposed to be reacting to.
The square-ish symbol on the small red screen
is a communications systems logo,
designed by graphic artist Lee Cole.
Before being hired at Paramount,
Cole was employed at Rockwell International,
where she worked on the space shuttle.
Cole created the graphic layouts
for all the control panels on this Enterprise,
along with Mike Minor and Rick Sternbach.
The massive V'ger entity was probably
the single most difficult design project of this entire film.
More design work was done for V'ger
than for any other design element of any Star Trek film
or television episode.
Many different concepts by many different artists
were developed for the mysterious alien entity.
Among the many artists
who contributed to V'ger's development
were production designer Harold Michelson, Syd Mead,
Robert McCall, David Negron, Mike Minor, Ron Croci,
Douglas Trumbull, John Dykstra, and Robert Abel.
And others.
The V'ger "surface" flyover effects sequence
was created by Apogee.
The V'ger "va||ey" model was about 75 feet long,
made of cast resin, glass fabric, plastics,
and etched brass.
Although most shots of the Enterprise in this film
were made with the large 8-foot model,
a second model, about 18-inches long, was used
when the Enterprise needed to appear tiny on the screen.
The flyover was a close view of one of six huge "valleys"
running the length of V'ger's roughly cylindrical body.
The mysterious swirling cloud at the far end of the ''valley''
was created with laser light.
It was one of the first uses
of scanning laser light effects in movies.
The tiny Enterprise shows that even though V'ger
is relatively small compared to a cloud that's 2 AUs across,
it still dwarfs our favorite starship.
Harold Michelson likened it to a sperm swimming upstream.
The energy probe was created with powerful lights
that were moved around on the set by a lighting technician.
Later, the lights and the person were removed
by projecting the film onto a flexible mirror.
The mirror was distorted until those items simply disappeared,
just as they might in a fun house mirror.
Look carefully at shots in which the probe moves.
You may notice that the flexible mirror technique
causes objects to move when they pass behind the probe.
The swirling energy around the probe
was created by Harry Moreau,
who used moiré patterns to create the animation.
Moreau laid two patterns of lines on top of each other.
By moving them slightly,
he created the effect of dancing energy.
The ''lighting bolts" were real electrical discharge,
created with a Tesla coil, then superimposed in postproduction.
Some of these Starfleet database images are derived
from the U.S.S. Enterprise blueprints
designed by Franz Joseph.
The device that Ilia drops is a tricorder,
a standard Starfleet scientific instrument.
The tricorders in this film
are somewhat more compact and streamlined
than their original TV counterparts...
...but they still serve
as incredibly useful portable sensor-computer-recorders.
The V'ger "maw" and the interior chamber sequences
were supervised by Douglas Trumbull.
The maw was a huge model built by Mark Stetson.
Miles of fiber optics were used for the internal lighting.
Chief DiFa|co was played by Marcy Lafferty,
who was married to William Shatner.
Most of the small round monitor screen images
(including those with the broken oscilloscope)...
...were done with 8mm film loop projectors,
mounted behind the consoles, projecting into the screens.
The filmloop projectors helped bring the bridge to life,
but they presented a number of technical challenges.
First, the projectors were relatively dim,
so lighting on the bridge had to be low,
so as not to wash out the screens.
Also, the projectors tended to be noisy,
so much of the dialogue on the bridge had to be "looped,"
or re-recorded later.
In subsequent Star Trek movies,
the filmloop projectors were replaced with video screens.
These video screens had to be specially modified
to operate at 24-frames- per-second for filming.
The V'ger interior chamber was built by Greg Jein.
Jein also built the "mothership"
from Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Doug Trumbull,
and the Enterprise-D (and many other ships)
for Star Trek: TNG and the other spin-off shows.
This close-up view of a bridge monitor was actually
a separate small console, built especially for "insert" shots.
Note that the detailing
on the bridge consoles on the actual set
is somewhat different than that on the insert console.
Another use of the insert console.
The screen images were rear- projected into the console.
Also note that the screen image seen on the insert console
does not actually appear anywhere on the real set.
The small filmloop projectors made it necessary
to limit light levels on the bridge,
so Richard Kline, the film's...
...director of photography,
was forced to resort to some unusual means
to maintain sharp focus in his shots.
For example, in some shots, Kline used a special lens
called a "split diopter,"
that worked something like bifocal glasses.
Look between Sulu and Kirk in the next shot.
Sulu is close to the camera,
while Kirk is quite a bit further away.
You may notice a little fuzziness between them,
as the split diopter changes focus.
Those three panels of blinking orange lights were intended
to be status indicators for computer memory cells.
(It's not entirely clear how these worked,
but obviously, Spock had no problems with them.)
||ia's cabin was, of course, a redress of Kirk's quarters.
The effect of ||ia's robe "materializing" on her
was achieved with a special version
of the costume that was made...
...with highly reflective "front projection" material.
By turning on a small light next to the camera,
her costume could be made to glow.
Similar material makes highway signs glow brightly at night
when illuminated by car headlights.
A different costume, made of more conventional fabric,
was used for the remainder of the film.
||ia's sonic shower
was later featured in "The Naked Now" (TNG).
In that episode, a frozen, dead crew member
on the Starship Tsiolkovski was found in the shower.
Security officers in this film wear protective body armor,
probably a wise precaution, given their hazardous job.
During the original Star Trek,
security officers normally wore red shirts.
So many red-shirted guards were killed
by mysterious alien forces during those episodes
that one might wonder...
...how Starfleet ever got enough applicants for the job.
||ia's dresser is behind Kirk.
In a later scene, we'll see that the dresser has mirrors.
But in this scene, the mirrors
have been replaced with black cards
to help avoid problems with unwanted reflections.
The bio scans of Ilia were paintings
by Lee Cole and Mike Minor, rear-projected onto the screen.
The lighted wall behind Decker was later repainted and used
as the sick bay on the Klingon bird-of-prey in Star Trek III.
The exam bed was later reupholstered and used
in the Enterprise-D sick bay in some episodes of Star Trek: TNG.
The glass wall and the area behind it
later became Dr. Crusher's office on Star Trek: TNG.
The wall behind the back window
(with the rack of blue canisters)...
...was later used in the Star Trek: TNG
and the Star Trek: VGR transporter rooms.
That back wall was also seen
as part of the transporter room in Star Trek II.
A paper door, courtesy
of special effects supervisor Alex Weldon,
made ||ia's feat of strength a lot easier than it might look.
The laboratory wall behind Kirk was later recycled
into part of Geordi's office in Star Trek: TNG.
This display alcove in the Recreation Deck
was added at the request of Gene Roddenberry,
who wanted to commemorate NASA's decision
to name the space shuttle prototype after his starship.
Besides the space shuttle, the other Enterprises pictured are:
An 18th century wooden frigate,
the much-decorated World War II aircraft carrier,
the present-day nuclear carrier,
a never-before seen spaceship,
actually an early Matt Jefferies design
for the original TV Enterprise,
and the Enterprise as seen in the original Star Trek series.
Most of the furniture in the rec deck was made
of simple wood boxes, covered with upholstery material.
The results looked futuristic,
but were reportedly uncomfortable to sit on.
Listen carefully: The sound of birds chirping in the rec deck
was intended as a subtle reminder of Earth.
It was felt that the crew, far from home,
would need such touches for their mental health
on an extended spaceflight.
When the 1979 version of this film was finished,
deadlines were so tight
that some visual effects were not finished in time.
For example, in the 1979 version,
the view out these windows was plain black.
There simply was no time to matte an image into the window.
In this version, you can finally see
a little of V'ger's interior through the windows.
The "transceiver" light on ||ia's neck
was battery powered,
fed by tiny wires that ran around her neck.
Careful use of makeup blended the wires into her skin,
making them virtually invisible.
The airlock technician was played by Gary Faga.
Faga also played the Starfleet security guard
who made the mistake of calling Sulu "Tiny" in Star Trek III.
There's ||ia's mirror again, this time not black.
The backstory of Decker and ||ia's past relationship
later became the model for the relationship of...
...Riker and Troi in Star Trek: TNG.
Both Decker and Riker served on alien worlds
early in their Starfleet careers,
Decker on Delta, and Riker on Betazed.
Both fell in love with women who had mysterious empathic powers.
Both eventually decided not to pursue these relationships.
And both eventually ended up serving on a starship
named Enterprise,
where they were reunited with their lost loves.
Majel Barrett, who plays Dr. Chapel in this scene,
played Troi's mother in Star Trek: TNG.
Most of the wide shots of the spacesuited Spock
floating in space were done with a small mechanical puppet.
It is sometimes difficult to make the movement
of a mechanical puppet look realistic,
but the use of the real Leonard Nimoy
for close shots helps realism greatly.
One of the monitors on Uhura's console shows
an animated NASAIJPL diagram of the trajectory flown...
...by the real Voyager 1 and 2 space probes,
traveling from Earth to Jupiter.
Also, it is probably a pretty close approximation
of the course V'ger is taking back to Earth.
Free-flying rocket backpacks
have been used by NASA astronauts,
floating in Earth orbit from the space shuttle.
The use of these backpacks was discontinued
after NASA decided that they were too risky at present,
since it might not be possible
to rescue a spacewalking astronaut
if a maneuvering unit were to malfunction.
Naturally, we assume that Starfleet's suits
are quite a bit more advanced than present-day models.
This was actually the second spacewalk scene
filmed for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
An entirely different scene
was written and partially filmed earlier.
In the alternate spacewalk, both Kirk and Spock
explored a part of V'ger called the "memory wall."
They were swarmed by flying memory crystals,
and Kirk's life was endangered when the crystals engulfed him.
Finally, Spock mind-melded with a crystal,
from which he learns the truth about V'ger.
A huge memory wall set was built.
Elaborate "flying" harnesses were used
to simulate microgravity for filming.
Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweikart
was even hired as a consultant to teach the actors
the fine art of moving in zero gravity.
Alas, the original scene proved too difficult to complete,
especially given the severe time constraints for the film.
Doug Trumbull devised an entirely new spacewalk sequence,
seen here, designed to convey the same story information.
Trumbull's version had the advantage of being shorter,
more exciting, and relatively easy to film.
The rapid sequence of images reflected on Spock's face
hints at the later revelations about V'ger.
(Hint: Look at it frame-by-frame.)
The 1983 television version of this film contains a shot
from the original spacewalk scene
with Kirk exiting the ship.
For that version, an airlock door
and a little bit of hull was built.
Surrounding the hull were studio rafters and lighting equipment.
A matte painting was to add more of the ship
and cover the rafters,
but the painting was abandoned when the scene was cut.
Unfortunately, no one realized that the shot was not finished,
or that Kirk was wearing a different space suit.
The medical instrument wielded by Dr. Chapel
is a miniature version of a prop seen in the original series.
This sick bay set was built for the Star Trek: Phase II series,
and it was also seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The set was later modified for use in Star Trek: TNG,
and was further modified for Star Trek: VGR.
In its Voyager form, it was also the Enterprise-E sick bay
in Star Trek: First Contact and Star Trek: Insurrection.
It was also seen as the seedy bar in Star Trek III,
where McCoy tried to hire a ship to the Genesis Planet.
In the first season of Star Trek: TNG, it even served
as the Enterprise-D's beautiful conference lounge.
Spock's mind-meld with V'ger is viewed by some
as a key point in his search for perspective on life.
Throughout his early life
(and in the original Star Trek series),
Spock sought to follow the Vulcan ideal of logic.
His failure at Kolinahr
showed him that pure logic was not enough for him,
even if it was for others from his world.
From V'ger, he now learns
that he must have both logic and humanity
in order to find fulfillment.
After this point, and in later films, Nimoy's performance
of Spock seemed to show an inner serenity...
...that the character previously lacked,
perhaps showing that the meld with V'ger
did indeed bring new maturity to Spock.
These new shots of V'ger were originally storyboarded
for the film, but never completed in 1979.
There's the ol' split diopter again!
The Starfleet uniforms in this film are much less colorful
than those in the original Star Trek.
On the original Enterprise, command personnel
wore yellow/gold shirts, science and medical staff wore blue,
while engineering, technical,
and security personnel wore red shirts.
(And, as Jadzia Dax once observed, women wore less!)
The original series costumes were designed
by William Ware Theiss
during a time when color TV was a novelty,
and the networks wanted their shows
to be as colorful as possible,
to help promote their color broadcasts.
When this film was made, over a decade later,
costume designer Robert Fletcher
was asked to use more subdued colors.
The scope of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
would be much larger than the original series,
so Robert Wise wanted...
...to use costume colors
that would not draw attention away from the characters’ faces.
Fletcher's costumes retained
Theiss's familiar Starfleet arrowhead emblem
from the original costumes.
He did make some slight changes.
Fletcher put the arrowhead on a circular background,
filling the circle...
...with a color denoting the crew member's department.
A white background circle was worn by command personnel.
Science was orange.
Medical was light green.
Engineering was red.
Gray was security.
And gold for operations.
For the next Star Trek movie, Fletcher designed
Starfleet uniforms with burgundy colored jackets.
The monitor behind Spock (with the rotating box)
shows a computer simulation
of the collision of two globular star clusters.
You can see stars in the clusters being scattered
by the interacting gravity fields.
If you look carefully at Persis Khambatta,
you may notice that she never blinks her eyes
during the second half of the film.
She did this to reinforce the point
that her character was now a robot, not a person.
The original TV Enterprise bridge was sometimes criticized
for having only one door.
If that one turbolift became broken,
it could (and sometimes did)
trap the command crew on the bridge.
That's why the bridge in this movie
has two (count 'em!) elevators!
(Of course, if the elevators fail, they're stuck again.
Maybe there's a secret hatch in the floor, too.)
Sets are often designed to make it easy to remove walls,
allowing easier access for camera equipment and the crew.
The practice is known as "wi|ding."
Many of the seams in the bridge walls
are to enable the walls to be removed (or "wilded")
as needed for filming.
Robert Wise felt, however,
that this might work against the realism of the set.
He therefore had the walls bolted together,
so that both cast and crew
experienced the claustrophobic sense...
...of "really" being on the Enterprise bridge.
The practice can be expensive,
as it can increase the amount of time required for each shot.
In the original series, Kirk and company used "communicators"
that looked a little like present-day cell phones.
In this film, the flip phones have been replaced
with handy wrist communicators.
When this film was in development,
the notion that a machine could be ''alive''
was quite startling to some.
Some studio executives, nervous that the central premise
of the Star Trek movie script might lack credibility,
sought the advice of the late Isaac Asimov,
the noted science fiction writer.
Asimov reviewed the script and assured the studio
that the story was well within the realm
of scientific possibility.
The painting at the back of the engine room
was by scenic artist Benny Resella,
who did most of the other backings in this film.
The scenic backdrop
more than doubles the apparent length of the set.
This status report would seem to suggest
that the ship's company was 431 people at this moment.
(It's not clear, however, if this counts Ilia.)
The Enterprise bridge, like many of Harold Miche|son's sets,
found extensive use in later Star Trek productions.
It appeared again as the Enterprise bridge
in Star Trek II and Star Trek III,
although the locations
of some of the workstations were moved around.
Spock seems to suggest here that he does not have a brother.
However, we later learned, in Star Trek V,
that he does have a half-brother named Sybok.
In addition to its use
as the Enterprise bridge in later films,
this set was also redressed to appear as:
Starship Reliant bridge in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Starship Grissom bridge in Star Trek III.
And the Enterprise-A bridge in Star Trek ll/,
for which it got a new paint job and graphics.
Parts of the set also showed up
in the first version of the Battle Bridge set
in the first season of Star Trek: TNG.
After Star Trek III, the set was extensively rebuilt to become
the Enterprise-A bridge in Star Trek V and Star Trek VI.
Some other appearances of the Enterprise bridge set
(or parts thereof) have been:
The Starship Excelsior bridge, commanded by Captain Sulu
in Star Trek VI and "Flashback" (VGR),
the Saratoga bridge in "Emissary" (DS9),
and the Enterprise-B bridge in Star Trek: Generations.
The set was also revamped to be
the Amargosa Solar Observatory control center
in Star Trek: Generations.
It became the bridge of a Romulan warbird ship
in "The Die is Cast" (DS9),
the Starship Prometheus bridge in "Message in a Bottle" (VGR),
the Starship Raven bridge in "Dark Frontier" (VGR),
and the bridge of the Starship Equinox in "Equinox" (VGR).
Parts of the bridge (the turbolift alcoves
and some of the perimeter consoles) have also been used
in the Enterprise-E bridge.
As noted elsewhere, this entire sequence has been
significantly reworked from the 1979 version of this film.
In 1979, the effects artists working on this film
were up against such a tight deadline
that it was simply impossible...
...to accomplish all of the visual effects
that had been planned.
This sequence, in particular,
suffered from an extremely rushed completion.
The visual effects in this reworked sequence
are based on storyboards for shots
that had originally been planned.
Most of the live-action elements are the real actors,
filmed back in 1978.
In one shot, however, the characters were created
with computer-generated animation.
One of the goals in the reworked scene was to restore
a sense of danger to our heroes as they walked gingerly...
...across a narrow bridge,
somehow suspended over an unknown abyss.
The V'ger brain complex was an enormous set built at Paramount.
The elaborate light effects in the floor
required the entire set to be built on stilts...
...so there was room underneath for the lighting rigs.
Additionally, there was a lot of electrical wiring,
necessary to operate all the lights and related equipment.
As a result, everyone working on the set
had to be extremely careful to avoid falling through the floor.
The kinetic lighting effects
were created by Sam Nicholson and Brian Longbotham.
They devised clever gizmos that aimed a powerful spotlight
on a rotating drum of reflective material...
...creating a pattern of moving light
that was focused on translucent screens in the floor of the set.
Nicholson and Longbotham also created the swirling energy
in the warp core in the Enterprise's engine room set.
Similar devices were used years later
for the Starship Voyager's warp drive, as well.
NASA provided technical assistance
in the making of this film.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
provided detailed blueprints of the real Voyager space probes...
...for use in building this large replica.
JPL was even willing to loan Star Trek
an actual engineering duplicate of the Voyager craft,
but it was eventually decided
that the risk of damaging it was too great.
Studio soundstages are usually full of equipment,
with lots of technicians and actors bustling about.
It is not at all uncommon for props and sets
to be damaged during filming, so the studio
was probably wise to be cautious.
Set designer Richard McKenzie
turned JPL's engineering drawings
into construction blueprints.
McKenzie's version was slightly smaller
than the real Voyager probes, about 3/4 scale.
The large round shape behind Decker
is one of Voyager's cameras.
The real Voyager1 and 2 space probes
were launched from Earth in 1977.
Taking advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets,
the two probes made a grand tour
of most of the outer solar system.
They visited Jupiter, and Saturn,
and were the first space probes
to photograph Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager's detailed views of Jupiter's swirling clouds
even served as reference for this film's Jupiter flyby.
They also took the first close-up images
of the outer planets’ moons,
including shots of active volcanoes on a moon of Jupiter.
Alas, only two Voyagers were ever launched.
There was no Voyager 6.
Voyager1 and 2 were the first to explore more new worlds
than any other scientific expedition in history.
That record may well stand
until we have real starships like the Enterprise.
Voyager1 and 2 have since left our solar system,
and are traversing interstellar space.
It is possible, even without a black hole,
that the Voyagers may someday
be found by intelligent beings in another star system.
Because of this possibility, Earth scientists attached
a cosmic "greeting card" to both craft.
The greeting card was a phonograph record
with sounds from Earth, music,
and spoken greetings in many Earth languages.
The record also contained about 100 photographs of Earth,
its life-forms, and their cultures.
Among the spoken greetings is a boy, who simply says,
"Hello from the children of the planet Earth."
The words were spoken by Nick Sagan.
Years later, as an adult,
Nick became a staff writer on Star Trek: Voyager.
Gene Roddenberry reportedly meant for Will Decker
to be the son of Commodore Matt Decker...
...the man who sacrificed himself
to destroy a planet-killing robot
in "The Doomsday Machine" (TOS).
Will Decker was intended to be a continuing character
in the Star Trek: Phase II series.
At the time the series project was canceled,
the role had not yet been cast.
Stephen Collins was not selected
until after Robert Wise joined the project.
Decker was the last major role cast for this film,
since most of the principal cast
were carryovers from the TV show.
V'ger's story (and this film's script)
had its genesis in a story written by Gene Roddenberry
in the early 1970s...
...for a proposed TV series called Genesis II,
whose lead character would have been an ex-astronaut
named Dylan Hunt.
In the Genesis II story,
an old NASA space probe returned to Earth,
where it threatened to wipe out all life.
The probe stopped when it recognized Hunt
as being part of NASA, its creator.
The outline, entitled "Robot's Return," in turn has elements
from Nomad's story in "The Changeling" (TOS).
When Star Trek: Phase II began development in 1977,
Alan Dean Foster was assigned
to write a Star Trek version of the story.
Harold Livingston turned Foster's story into a script
that eventually became Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Lighting on this set, especially in the final sequence,
was so bright, that it could be hazardous to unprotected eyes.
This was a source of concern for Persis Khambatta,
who suffered minor eye damage...
...because she did not blink her eyes while she was on camera.
Part of this sequence was achieved
with on-set lighting effects,
as well as some well-placed blowers.
The on-set effects were enhanced
with more moiré pattern animation effects.
More moiré pattern animation.
This shot gives a good sense of dimensional perspective,
despite being created with flat art.
Part of this "energy wave" animation
was later reused in the Star Trek: TNG episode "Tin Man."
Note that the Starfleet field jackets
have a colored stripe on the left sleeve,
indicating the wearer's department.
Spock's jacket has an orange stripe, for science.
McCoy's stripe is light green.
Scotty seems to imply
that Vulcan is only about four light-years from Earth.
Of course, it might be considerably further
if Scotty had intended to run his engines
at a speed greater than warp 7.
Look at Spock and McCoy!
They've switched jackets in this shot!
Although this film
was necessarily rushed to completion,
it was a major success for Paramount.
Star Trek's fans,
while recognizing the original re|ease's rough edges,
still embraced the big-screen adventure of Kirk and his crew.
One of the best direct measures
of the success of Star Trek: The Motion Picture
is the fact that Robert Wise's film...
...launched a series of Star Trek theatrical films
and spin-off TV shows that have thrived for over 20 years.
During that time, Star Trek has entertained millions,
while helping to inspire countless young people
to become teachers, doctors,
nurses, engineers, scientists, artists, and even astronauts.
Gene Roddenberry's creation celebrates our humanity
and encourages us to find joy in our diversity.