Star Trek: The Motion Picture

The galaxy gets attacked by Laserium. I hadn't seen this flick in about 40 years, so it was almost a fresh experience for me. Except, it wasn't all that fresh, because everything seemed so dated. I watched this outing as part of a project to review the entire Star Trek ouvre, and this followed directly on watching all of the original series, which seemed fresher and more inventive in contrast, even with its cheesier elements in place. There was a certain pleasure to be had in seeing those old cast members together and working their way through more of the old hokum, but it was the external details of this movie version of the story--disposable characters whom no one had any particular feeling for, lots of long, ponderous visuals (the sort of thing done better by near-contemporary films like Alien and Blade Runner--I guess they should have hired Ridley Scott to put this one together), and a partially recycled plot-line--that made the work not quite up to snuff. Still, one has to appreciate this movie as the kick-off point for the revival--even creation, in a sense--of a franchise that in the long run has been something extraordinary in the history of science fiction film and television. Few of the sci-fi works before or since the original series and its descendants have ever called upon humankind to follow the better angels of its nature more forcefully than Gene Roddenberry's vision. and a certain amount of gratitude must be felt for that.