Scotty: The crew hasn't had near enough transition time with all the new equipment. And the engines, they're not even tested at warp power. And an untried captain...
Kirk: Two and a half years as Chief of Starfleet Operations may have made me a little stale, but I wouldn't consider myself untried... They gave her back to me, Scotty.
Scotty: Gave her back, sir? I doubt it was that easy with Nogura.
Kirk: [in Scottish accent] Ye're right.
Kirk: Two and a half years as Chief of Starfleet Operations may have made me a little stale, but I wouldn't consider myself untried... They gave her back to me, Scotty.
Scotty: Gave her back, sir? I doubt it was that easy with Nogura.
Kirk: [in Scottish accent] Ye're right.
The one that gave Klingons their trademark forehead ridges.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is the first movie in the Star Trek film series, released in 1979.
After the Cancellation of Star Trek, the series went on to be Vindicated by Reruns and convinced Paramount Pictures to green-light a Sequel Series, Star Trek: Phase II, as a flagship for a planned new television network. Production stalled until the success of a similarly named movie called Star Wars convinced them to make a theatrical movie instead, using Phase II assets including the pilot script, much expanded in scope and scale. Famed director Robert Wise (known for, among other things, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)) was put at the helm, with the iconic cast returning plus many notable guest characters and actors making appearances.
A couple of years after the series (two in canon, ten in real life), an entity hidden in a nebulous cloud destroys several Klingon ships while on a direct path to Earth. Starfleet is alerted to the threat, and as the Enterprise is wrapping up an extensive refit the plan is to send Captain Decker and his crew to intercept. Admiral Kirk, itching to get back into the galaxy after being at a desk job for two years, convinces Starfleet to give him command of the Enterprise for this mission, earning the ire of Decker. Kirk welcomes both old friends and new crew members alike, though he is frustrated that Spock has left Starfleet to pursue a Vulcan "Kolinahr" ritual which will purge all emotion from a supplicant. In fact, Spock has been shaken by a telepathic connection with this entity and joins the Enterprise once more to determine both what it wants and whether it can aid him in removing the last of his emotions. Their investigation into this threat reveals that it calls itself V'ger and it believes Earth holds answers regarding its own creation.
The big twist of the story is very similar to the Original Series episode "The Changeling,"note along with elements from "Obsession" and the Animated Series episode "One of Our Planets Is Missing". The novelization of the film is noteworthy for at least two reasons: it is the only prose Star Trek fiction ever written by series creator Gene Roddenberry, and it contains a footnote explicitly addressing rumors that Kirk and Spock were lovers (it may or may not have cleared that up).
Jerry Goldsmith composed the score, and after different composers for the first three sequels to this film would return to score four more Trek theatrical films note . Goldsmith's main title theme would be re-purposed as the theme for Star Trek: The Next Generation, and his Klingon themes would be adapted in other Trek film scores and in later Star Trek series.
The quick turnaround with an unfinished Phase II script lead to a Troubled Production, and the original theatrical release seemed to spend a lot of its runtime just showing the various members of the bridge crew staring at special effects in awe. This led to the film receiving several Fan Nicknames based on its quite slow pacing, such as "The Slow Motion Picture" and "The Motionless Picture". Wise's declared intent at the time was to create a 2001: A Space Odyssey for that era but he ran up hard against studio deadlines (in part because the special effects took much more time than expected to produce), and what ended up as the theatrical cut was really more of a workprint. Wise was not allowed to trim it to a more reasonable length because executives figured that if they were spending most of the budget on special effects the effects should be in the film. Editing was done in such a rush that when the prints were delivered for the movie's premiere they were still wet from being duplicated from the masters. The movie was a success financially, but the critical and fan response to the slow pacing and the executive response to the ballooned budget note heavily influenced the tighter scope, yet Actionized Sequel of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
In 1983, a "Special Longer Version" of the movie aired as an installment of the ABC Sunday Night Movie, which added a handful of scenes that had previously been cut from the theatrical release in order to help fill the three-hour time slot (with commercials); this version would also be released on videocassette. In 2001, a Director's Cut was released on DVD, trimmed to be slightly faster-paced and some new special effects to fill the gaps, including a shot that shows the entirety of V'ger at once. Unfortunately, when it came time to prepare higher-resolution Blu-ray versions, the company that had handled the new visual effects had gone out of business and the assets were missing, preventing a remaster for a long time. After Wise's death in 2005 and rebuilding the visual effects once more, the Directors' Cut got a new 4K remastered version in 2022 on streaming, Blu-ray and a limited theatrical release.
By the way, if you were looking for the movie that's simply called Star Trek, that's actually the 11th movie in the franchise (and a soft Continuity Reboot as well). Tropes regarding that film can be found here.
"You are the Trope-unit. You will assist me."
open/close all folders
Tropes A-M
- Activation Sequence: When the refitted Enterprise leaves spacedock. The spacedock lights go dark, things disconnect and get out of the way, there is bridge chatter to report multiple forms of readiness, and in response to Kirk giving the orders for thrusters, Enterprise lights up and starts to move, accompanied by a triumphant reprise of the opening title music. It was the first time the Enterprise had been seen on the big screen, after all.
- Advertising Campaigns: No less than Orson Welles narrated the original trailers and ads for the film.
- The Aesthetics of Technology: The pastel aesthetics of the Enterprise's interior and the crew uniforms were criticised both at the time and for many years later. But now, what with Everything Is an iPod in the Future, they seem ahead of their time.
Interestingly, the Starfleet uniform belt buckles
◊ actually look a bit like iPhones or iPod touches.note - Alien Geometries: V'ger remains one of the trippiest examples in film, consisting of nothing but bizarre angles and lights.
- All There in the Manual:
- The production diary has elaborate backstories for many of the bizarre aliens shown at the Federation headquarters. As an interesting subject of what constitutes Canon, almost none of this backstory has featured in later Star Trek productions. One species was even stated as being expert cloners and that the Federation relies on them for cloning soldiers in times of war.
- Most of these aliens get fleshed out in the novel Ex Machina, which is set immediately after the movie, incorporating bits of their original descriptions from the production diary. The Saurians, meanwhile, at least get mentioned every time someone pulls out a bottle of "Saurian brandy,'' which was around in the Original Series.
- The biggest example are Deltans, the species to which Ilia belongs. If you didn't read the novel, you'd have no idea why Ilia had to take a vow of celibacy, or why she refers to the crew as "sexually immature species" (which is why Sulu and Chekov do an immediate Male Gaze when she enters). According to the book, Deltans use sex as an everyday form of communication. Even the act of greeting someone is a sexual act. Now, bear in mind Decker was stationed on Delta (which is how he met Ilia), so you have to have a new respect for a guy who is unfazed by their society on a daily basis.
- It isn't mentioned onscreen, but Willard Decker is the son of Commodore Matt Decker from the TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine", which somewhat justifies his gung-ho attitude towards giant space threats and his resentment towards Kirk.
- Gene Roddenberry's novelization reveals the identity of the woman killed in the transporter accident as Vice Admiral Lori Ciana and that she was effectively Kirk's girlfriend at the time, with Admiral Nogura partly relying on her to keep Kirk interested in his desk job at Starfleet Headquarters. The movie gives no indication of this.
- The Blu-Ray releases include the Library Computer, an interactive database that will appear on screen as the movie plays offering entries on characters, ships, places, etc. with additional information on them.
- And Starring: "Presenting Persis Khambatta, and starring Stephen Collins as Decker."
- And the Adventure Continues: It ends with "The Human Adventure is Just Beginning".
- Art Evolution: The movie had a massive budget that the original series could never dream of, with a futuristic Earth shown in detail, and hundreds of different aliens walking about. The Enterprise was redesigned and given a 4-minute introduction with booming fanfare. The sets also have a lot more detailing, the costumes are more intricately designed and the warp core pulses with angry energy.
- Artifact Title: It is no longer 'The' (only) Star Trek Motion Picture.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Decker, Ilia, and V'ger.
- As You Know: Kind of a variant: Decker explains that Voyager 6 disappeared into "what we used to call a black hole." If they don't call them that any more, why bother using the obsolete terminology? It got worse when the subsequent Trek shows ignored this line and featured several references to black holes. It is possible that certain phenomena observed from Earth were called black holes but were in reality wormholes, which would explain why V'ger wasn't crushed by a singularity.
- Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: When the Klingons first encounter V'ger, they go Leeroy Jenkins and fire photon torpedoes at it. When that fails and V'ger starts blasting them, they beat a hasty (yet futile) retreat.
-
Author Appeal: Robert E. Wise is familiar with intellectual sci-fi flicks with overt religious overtones. - Back in the Saddle: Deconstructed. Kirk has been captaining a desk for two years, in which time he's spent very little time in space, meaning his instincts are rusty. In addition, Enterprise has just completed a massive refit in which she's effectively been entirely rebuilt, meaning she's not the ship he knew before. Commander Decker, who was in command of Enterprise through her refit period, is much more familiar with the ship and, in Kirk's own words, "nursemaids" him through the mission, helping them narrowly avoid destruction due to Kirk's unfamiliarity with the ship's new design and associated teething problems.
- Big "NO!": Decker during the wormhole scene, though this is partially due to the wormhole slowing down time for the ship.
- Body Horror: Not clearly seen, but the transporter malfunction apparently results in this.Transporter Operator: Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long... fortunately.
- Bookends: The traveling pass over the Klingon vessel in the beginning of the film and the traveling pass under the Enterprise at the end.
- Brick Joke: And not a very funny one, either. Just before the V'Ger flyover, Decker says doing so is an unwarranted gamble in his opinion. Kirk simply asks "How do you define unwarranted?" After Ilia is zapped by the probe, Decker angrily states "THIS is how I define unwarranted!"
- Broken Pedestal: One of the reasons Decker is angry with Kirk replacing him as captain is because Kirk personally recommended him for the position beforehand.
- Carpet of Virility: As was fashionable in The '70s, the V-neck uniforms worn by Kirk, McCoy and Chekov show off their chest hair.
- Celebrity Paradox: A rare nonhuman example is Played With in that the real life Space Shuttle Enterprise was named after the fictional starship Enterprise, but in-universe the Enterprise space shuttle is shown as a precursor and namesake to the starship.
- Closest Thing We Got: Decker is made Science Officer after Sonak's death, since no one else with the right qualifications is familiar with the Enterprise redesign. Spock shows up to resolve that issue later on.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: It isn't as apparent as with other Starfleet uniforms, but each division is differentiated by the color surrounding the assignment patch: white for command, orange for sciences, green for medical, red for engineering (just like TOS), pale gold for operations, and gray for security.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: Marvel Comics published a mini-series adaptation of the film, which was followed by short-lived series chronicling what happened after the movie. Meanwhile, McDonald's featured a serialized comic strip adaptation of the film on the boxes of its first-ever Happy Meals, released as promotional tie-ins with the film.
- Commander Contrarian: Decker. Justified early on; Decker does know the refit Enterprise better than Kirk at that point. Overriding an order from Kirk even saves the ship from being destroyed by an asteroid. Later on, however, he continues to advocate actions which are obstructive or downright contrary to their mission, even recommending firing on V'ger to escape its tractor beam. Decker justifies this with his claim that giving the captain alternatives is the duty of an executive officer, a point which Kirk reluctantly agrees is true. This does nothing to alleviate the hostility between the two.
- Computers Are Fast: The reason V'ger keeps destroying all the ships it encounters is because its greeting message is transmitted in mere milliseconds, under the assumption that the ships are fellow mechanical lifeforms and will thus be able to understand and communicate at the same rate of speed. Normal lifeforms don't even realize they've been contacted, and thus V'ger doesn't perceive them as intelligent. Spock's telepathy allows him to sense that a message was sent, thereby allowing him to deduce its nature and respond in kind.
- Continuity Nod: Various supporting characters from the original series turn up, with promotions. Janice Rand has a brief scene attempting to resolve the Teleporter Accident, and Nurse Chapel is now an MD serving aboard Enterprise.
- Cool Starship: This movie introduces the Klingon K't'inga-class battlecruiser — essentially a more powerful version of the familiar D7 design from the series — in the opening scene, as well as showcasing the redesigned Enterprise.
- Costume Evolution: The uniforms were famously changed from the red, gold and blue tunics with black pants in the show into varying pastel shades of tan, grey, khaki and white, along with pants that merged straight into the shoes. The sheer variety of uniforms is interesting, as Kirk himself seems to change outfits every other scene. Behind-the-scenes, the convoluted engineering of the uniforms made the actors hesitant to sign on to another movie unless those were changed, and only the white engineering jumpsuits progressed to later films with some alterations.
- Critical Staffing Shortage: After Sonak dies in a Teleporter Accident, Kirk asks Decker to find him another Science Officer, Vulcan if possible. Decker informs him that Sonak happened to be the only Vulcan science officer available, and the last qualified applicant on the planet (in the sense that no one else is familiar with the Enterprise redesign). Kirk's response is to have Decker double up as first officer and science officer, since they're on a tight schedule.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The battle at the beginning of the movie between three Klingon battlecruisers and V'ger. Poor Klingons never had a chance.
- Darker and Edgier: This film takes a more serious tone than most of the original series. Perhaps ironically, it is the only Star Trek movie that was rated "G" (for General Audiences) in its original theatrical release in the U.S., meaning all of the sequels were officially considered "darker and edgier", or at least less appropriate for children.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Spock theorizes that this is what V'ger is actually trying to do.Spock: Each of us, at some time in our lives, turns to someone — a father, a brother, a God — and asks, "Why am I here? What was I meant to be?"
- Disintegrator Ray: V'ger's main weapon digitizes whatever it hits, storing an exact duplicate in its databanks. Three Klingon ships and the Federation monitoring outpost fall victim to it. Ilia is vaporized by a scaled down version used by V'ger's probe.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Spock, in his own words, "penetrates" an "orifice" to get into V'ger's inner chamber, then passes through a large structure that looks like a vagina on its side, touches a pink, pulsating sensor to make intimate contact with V'ger, is overwhelmed with stimulation then finally passes out from exhaustion and wakes up alone in a bed... in a G-rated movie.
- Dress-O-Matic: The V'ger probe in Lt. Ilia's form appears in the sonic shower in her quarters apparently completely naked. Kirk pushes a few buttons on the shower controls to somehow put an outfit onto it before it steps out of the shower. Kirk being Kirknote , the clothing provided doesn't include pants and is even shorter than the miniskirts of the original series. It also includes high heels, all the better to show off the Ilia probe's legs.
- Dull Surprise:
- Sonak and another crew member suffer a hideous death at the hands of a malfunctioning transporter. Kirk's response is a flat, affectless 'Oh my God.' without a change of expression. Albeit somewhat justified in the fact that over the years Kirk spent exploring space, aboard the Enterprise and other ships, he’s seen a LOT weirder things happen.
- Kirk, Bones and Decker standing on the Enterprise saucer without spacesuits. It was a tense situation but you’d think somebody would have looked around in awe.
- Dying Object Drop Shot: While the V'Ger energy probe is scanning Lieutenant Ilia on the Enterprise bridge, she is holding a tricorder. When the probe finishes the scan and she is disintegrated, the tricorder drops, bounces off a seat, and falls to the floor.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Director Robert Wise edited Citizen Kane and spent the forty years after that making masterpieces of cinema. Accordingly, this film feels like it's from an entirely different era when watched alongside Wrath of Khan and the films that came after. Its spectacle-based panorama, "soft" lightning and film stock, '70s sci-fi fashions, methodical pace, and use of an overture all make it feel more like a roadshow historical epic from the '60s than the relatively-modern Khan. Their intent was to imitate 2001: A Space Odyssey, but coming after Star Wars (A New Hope) it really feels like it's from a different era.
- This film marks the first appearance of the Klingon language, which here consists entirely of short commands from the Klingon commander to his bridge crew.note
- Earth All Along: Kind of—V'ger turns out to be the (fictional) NASA probe Voyager 6.
- Emotional Hospital Visit: After Kirk recovers Spock from his attempted mind meld with V'Ger, the two talk in Sickbay. Spock takes hold of Kirk's hand and tells him that the simple feeling between the two of them is completely beyond V'Ger's understanding.
- Enhanced on DVD: Twenty years after the movie debuted, Robert Wise came back and massively overhauled and Re-Cut everything for the DVD release. That included fixing some unfinished special effects, removing some useless scenes and adding some others, sweetening the audio, and most importantly, chopping down the waaaay too long special effects shots. Many fans point to the DVD edition as being far superior to the theatrical release. The Blu-Ray/4K/streaming release of the Director's Edition in 2022 further enhanced the effects (old and new), color timing, and sound mix to modern standards.
- Epiphany Therapy: After Spock's mind meld with V'ger, he becomes much more relaxed in his acknowledgement of his emotions, and he retains this personality through all of Nimoy's portrayals of him in the rest of the franchise.
- Epic Launch Sequence: Okay, more like an "epic re-launch sequence", as it's the launching of the freshly re-fitted Enterprise. Also a meta example, as it represents the relaunching of the Star Trek franchise itself.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: Actual deaths in this movie consist of the crews of three Klingon ships getting vaporized for shooting torpedoes at the approaching V'ger; Commander Sonak and another officer, who die horribly on their commute in to work; the crew of the Federation's Epsilon 9 station, who were only in V'ger's way; and Ilia, who is vaporized by a scan. Earth is nearly destroyed by a probe they themselves had sent out centuries ago that was looking for its mommy.
- Explosive Instrumentation: Downplayed.
- When V'ger's first shot hits the shields, the ship suffers no damage save for an electrical surge going right to poor Chekov's console and giving him some nasty burns. The electrical surge looked like it was V'ger's weapon itself, partially getting past the shields.
- During the transporter accident, a console in engineering responsible for that system goes haywire and spits out sparks, as they hadn't finished repairing it.
- Averted when Spock smashes his computer console while the V'ger is messing with it. Spock breaks the keys and nothing else, though the probe starts shocking him in retaliation.
- Expospeak Gag: McCoy describes his Mandatory Unretirement in this manner.
- Familial Chiding: Kirk has just taken control of the ship on authorization from Starfleet Command, and is trying to rush a newly refit Enterprise to meet V'Ger before it arrives in the Solar System. When Scotty tries to tell him the warp drive needs further simulations, Kirk gets short with him. McCoy chides him for it.McCoy: Jim, you're pushing. Your people know their jobs.
- Fanservice:
- A mechanical example; the long, long pass around the Enterprise in spacedock is her very first appearance on the big screen, and Trekkers got a good look at the gorgeous lady.
- More typical fanservice is provided by the Ilia probe's legs exposed by her bathrobe, complete with transparent high heels for no reason other than Rule of Sexy.
- Fanservice Extra: The background characters at Starfleet Command include some personnel (of both genders) in very short skirts and skimpy tops.
- Flawed Prototype: The Enterprise. The ship was gutted from head to toe and outfitted with brand new equipment. However, the ship still needed time to finish installing the equipment and do a proper shakedown cruise when V'ger decided to show up. The Enterprise's first attempt at warp ends up creating a wormhole that sucks up an asteroid and are forced to use photon torpedoes when the phasers are off-line due to being connected to the screwed up warp core. It isn't until Spock returns that the ship is in working order.
- Foreshadowing:
- As the yet-unidentified cloud approaches the Epsilon IX station, one of the background voices reports "Receiving an odd pattern now..."
- Spock describes V'ger's homeworld as "a planet populated by living machines with unbelievable technology." 10 years later, came the Borg... (See also Leitmotif for a possible connection between V'ger and that race.)
- Four-Star Badass: Kirk. To quote Uhura: "[Their chances] of coming home from this mission in one piece may have just doubled."
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: A split second before being assimilated by V’ger’s energy probe, the final Klingon cruiser gets off a second shot from its aft photon torpedo launcher at point blank range (see here at 4:28). It’s as effective as the first one.
- FTL Test Blunder: The USS Enterprise has just undergone an 18-month long refit, updating and improving most of her systems. But they haven't ironed out all of the bugs yet, including the warp drive. The new engines aren't properly calibrated, and Kirk orders that they employ the new warp drive while still in the solar system. The imbalance in the engines creates a wormhole that shorts out their subspace communications and has an asteroid trapped with them heading straight for the ship with deflectors and shields disabled. A photon torpedo destroys the asteroid, and the use of animatter in the torpedoes warhead destabilizes the wormhole, freeing the Enterprise. Scotty warns that it will happen again if they don't finish calibrating the engines, which is soon solved when Spock arrives.
- Funny Background Event: Decker trying not to laugh his ass off at Sulu's clumsy interactions with Ilia. He's aware of the affect Deltan females have on males (especially human males), but it doesn't make it any less funny to watch Sulu act like an awkward teenager with a crush.
- Futile Control Fiddling: The transporter suffers a serious malfunction just as two people begin to beam aboard from Starfleet Command in San Francisco. Kirk takes over the controls from Janice Rand, fidgeting with the controls along with Scotty and calling to Starfleet, "Starfleet, boost your matter gain, we need more signal!" Unfortunately, the patterns begin to degrade and they begin to materialize, before being returned to Starfleet Command. Kirk somberly asks Starfleet if they retrieved the crew who were in the beam. The reply is an equally somber "Enterprise, what we got back didn't live long... fortunately."
- Future Spandex: The movie has this in spades. The main cast threatened to quit if they didn't get rid of them, seeing how not everyone looked good in them. Plus, the spandex costumes were hard to get into and out of, requiring the help of assistants every time the actors needed to use the bathroom, hence the uniform change in the rest of the Star Trek movies.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: V'ger started out as a simple probe. The machine race that found it hooked it up to a giant starship so it could do a better job. After traversing the entire universe, all that knowledge allowed V'ger to gain consciousness and redefine its own mission.
- Hated Item Makeover: As the old hands become reacquainted with the rebuilt and refitted Enterprise, Doctor Leonard McCoy declares that he'll go down to the ship's sick bay with a certain dread. "I know engineers," he forebodes, "they just love to change things." Sure enough, his report to Admiral Kirk is: "It's like working in a damned computer center."
- Heroic BSoD:
- In the theatrical cut, Uhura has one after seeing the Federation outpost taken by V'ger, forcing Kirk to repeat his order, "Viewer off!"
- Chief Rand enters one during the transporter malfunction.
- High Collar of Doom: The Ilia probe wears only a very short bathrobe, but its collar being turned up gives her a subtle air of menace.
- High-Tech Hexagons: All over the place—the Klingon ships' tactical displays, the light gantries in Spacedock, the Federation scanning outpost, and the steps Kirk and company walk over to reach V'ger near the film's end.
- Ignoring by Singing: In order to keep from receiving the final sequence and bring the Creator to it for a face-to-face meeting, V-Ger burns its receiving antenna leads to prevent it "hearing" the final sequence instructing it to transmit its data to the Creator.
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: The new uniforms as a whole apply, but Bones' civilian outfit◊ makes him look like a long lost Bee Gee. Wearing the headpiece of the Staff of Ra around his neck doesn't help.
- In Space, Everyone Can See Your Face: Spock has an (untethered!) spacewalk scene using thrusters, and Kirk has a much shorter spacewalk to catch Spock when he comes flying back. You can see both their faces, though slightly obscured.
- Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: Kirk surmises that V'ger "amassed so much data it achieved ... consciousness itself!"
- Jerkass Has a Point: Decker isn't really a jerk at all, in fact he has a very good reason to be pissed at Kirk, but a lot of his arguments as to why Kirk is unfit to command the Enterprise are justified and in the best interest of the ship, not due to his personal resentment at Kirk taking over. McCoy even realizes this and tells Kirk so.
- Jetpack: Sort of. To get a closer look at V'ger's nerve center, Spock steals a "thruster suit"—a space suit with a rather impressive thruster pack attached. This is implied to be an emergency escape system, and during the destruction of Epsilon 9 someone can briefly be seen attempting to use one in this manner. What else you could plausibly do with a rocket booster that has only a single, fixed duration burn in it attached to your spacesuit is somewhat difficult to imagine.
- The Juggernaut: V'ger's technology is completely beyond anything the Federation or any other race is capable of handling. The top-of-the-line Enterprise could survive exactly one hit from V'ger's weapons, and V'ger just fired again before they talked it down.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Admiral Kirk is back on the Enterprise, but he occasionally finds himself at odds with the ship's commander, Captain Decker. At one point, Decker countermands one of Kirk's orders during a crisis, and ends up saving the ship from destruction as a result.
- Just a Machine: Played with. Decker initially dismisses Ilia-bot as the thing that killed Ilia. However, he starts falling in love with Ilia-bot, causing McCoy to harshly remind him, "Commander... this is a mechanism." By the film's end, Ilia-bot is basically V'ger in humanoid form.
- Kicked Upstairs: Admiral Kirk, before the movie begins. Ironically, Gene Roddenberry infamously got kicked upstairs as well because of the film's disappointing critical reception.
- Lampshade Hanging: McCoy remarks that he expects the entire sickbay has been redesigned, because engineers just love making changes, in reference to the movie's Enterprise being substantially redesigned compared to the original series's version.
- Large Ham: Very notably averted relative to the rest of the films, or for that matter the entire franchise. Everyone was directed to give sedate, non-melodramatic performances, even/especially William Shatner.
- Leave the Camera Running: The movie feels like it has more than enough plot for a 46-minute running time TV episode or even a two-parter with a little padding, but that 70-80 minute plot is crammed into a 132-minute movie, so about halfway through the action stops dead while we watch long distance shots of the Enterprise cruising through what were undoubtedly the pinnacle of special effects at the time (in other words, a cheap screensaver by modern standards) for about half an hour. The film's plot is pretty much the (never filmed until now) pilot for Star Trek: Phase Two, so it really did start out as a 46-minute story.
- Troubled Production on the part of the special effects crew was at least partly responsible for this. There was so much difficulty and expense in getting the effects shot that Paramount essentially decided to use all of it because of the money they paid for that footage.
- Leitmotif:
- The Klingon theme that would echo in later movies and TV shows, and a love theme that plays during Decker/Ilia and Kirk/Enterprise scenes.
- In Star Trek: First Contact, also scored by Jerry Goldsmith, the Borg's leitmotif is very similar to V'ger's leitmotif from this movie, perhaps lending credence to the popular fan theory that the "planet of machines" was the Borg homeworld. This is also somewhat supported by Spock, who has been telepathically receiving some thoughts from V'ger, saying that "Any show of resistance would be futile, Captain."
- A slower mix of the main theme from Star Trek: The Original Series plays when Kirk is delivering his Captain's Log.
- Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Kirk uses V'ger's imminent approach to get Starfleet to assign him command of the Enterprise, which is currently the only ship in interception range, and he has no intention of giving it back once the crisis has passed. McCoy even lampshades this when dressing down Kirk for his hostility towards Decker.
- Living Emotional Crutch: One gone would be bad enough, but the novel and movie establish that not having Spock, Bones or the Enterprise would leave Kirk an Empty Shell of a man.
- Machine Monotone: The Ilia Probe speaks in mostly monotone, though she's occasionally demanding when she gets tired of activities which have no purpose to her mission. Her softer tone towards Decker indicates that the real Ilia still exists within her.
- Magical Security Cam: When the Klingon ships are discombobulated by V'ger, a Starfleet observatory is watching through a sensor probe, which is reasonable enough. Later on, said observatory sends a direct broadcast to the Enterprise, and the live feed continues well after it gets zapped.
- Male Gaze: When Ilia reports for duty, Chekhov and Sulu snap fixed, amorous gazes as if to say, "Hot damn! A Deltan!" They even act like buffoons around her at first. Decker (who is well aware of the power Deltan women have on sexually immature Terran males) is trying not to crack up in the background.
- Mandatory Unretirement: McCoy.Kirk: Well, for a man who swore he'd never return to Starfleet...
Bones: Just a moment, Captain, sir. I'll explain what happened. Your revered Admiral Nogura invoked a little-known, seldom-used 'reserve activation clause'. In simpler language, Captain, they drafted me! - Manly Tears: Spock weeps for V'ger in the Director's Cut.
- Mechanistic Alien Culture: The Ilia Probe struggles to comprehend carbon-based life. The probe is a humanoid android created by a society of Mechanical Lifeforms to interact with the Enterprise crew, so it uses extremely mechanistic language, like "Carbon Units," "Kirk Unit,"note —etc., to describe the humans it encounters on the Enterprise. V'ger assumes that USS Enterprise must be a Mechanical Lifeform like itself, for some reason serviced by "Carbon Units". The fact that V'ger seems unfamiliar with "Carbon Units" (carbon-based life) on the machines' homeworld raises some very interesting questions about the machine's evolution and technology.
- Mega-Maw Maneuver: Done from the other side here. After Enterprise has taken position behind V'ger, V'ger uses a tractor beam to draw them into a hatch on that side, closing it behind them.
- Mile-Long Ship: The main body of V'ger is 48 miles long according to Deleted Scenes and the novelization.
- Mood Whiplash: Less than ten minutes after the horrifying transporter accident, Bones' usual reluctance to use the transporter is played for its usual laughs. Even worse, the crewman that beamed up before Bones quoted him as saying he first wanted to see how it scrambled their molecules.
- The Movie: Or rather, The Motion Picture, because we're classy, dammit.note
- My God, What Have I Done?: Though she doesn't say anything, the look on Rand's face all throughout the transporter accident scene clearly says this. Thankfully, Kirk reassures her that it isn't her fault.
- My Skull Runneth Over: Spock tries to mind-meld with V'ger and nearly fries his brain from the information overload.
Tropes N-Z
- Naked on Arrival: Probe Ilia is beamed in sans clothing. V'ger helpfully beams her into a sonic shower so she isn't strutting around in the buff, and the shower comes with some kind of instant clothing button that puts her in a spacey bathrobe. The Ilia probe was very hot — in the temperature sense (and, sure, the other one too) — when it arrived, the sonic shower was to cool it down. Though how a sonic shower would do so (or why it's called a "sonic" shower when you can clearly see water on Ilia's skin) is another question.
- Never Found the Body: At the end, Kirk doesn't want to declare to Starfleet that Ilia and Decker are casualties. "List... list them as 'missing'."
- No OSHA Compliance: The Enterprise transporter is both powered and in active state while Scotty's crew is busily repairing the system, so when Starfleet ignorantly beams over Sonak and a second person, it immediately goes haywire and mangles the poor bastards. If Starfleet had properly relayed the memo about the transporters or Scotty had shut down the transporter while they were fixing it, the accident would never have happened.
- No Seat Belts: Averted—the fact that seat belts were a subject of public discussion in the late 1970s and that the bridge crew kept thrashing around falling out of their seats in TOS probably helped. This bridge has chairs with armrests that fold down over the legs. They do look kind of awkward, though. Played straight for the handful of poor bridge officers who don't even get chairs◊, let alone restraints. In the novelization, Kirk is embarrassed at first to realise that he doesn't know how to deactivate the safety bars so he can get into his chair, until someone discretely does it for him.
- No-Sell:
- The battle between the three Klingon ships and V'ger is completely one-sided, with the former firing three photon torpedoes into the latter that simply vanish, and a last-ditch photon into V'ger's digitizer ball that does nothing to slow their demise.
- Downplayed with V'ger's first attack on the Enterprise. The same attack that wiped out three Klingon battle cruisers at the beginning of the movie with one shot each is largely dissipated by the shields, and what little residual energy gets through only lights up the warp core for a bit and fries poor Chekov's hands. However, Scotty immediately notes that shields were depleted by 70% with just one attack, so the next shot will definitely kill them.
- Non-Sexual Intimacy: After mind-melding with V'Ger, Spock learns that V'Ger is perfect logic, which Spock thought he'd been trying to achieve. He finds, however, that it is not, as he takes Kirk's hand in his.Spock: [holding Kirk's hand] Jim... this... simple feeling is beyond V'Ger's comprehension.
- "Not Your Fault" Reassurance: After a transporter malfunction caused by a faulty module kills two members of the crew, Kirk offers a brief consolation to Janice Rand, who was operating the Enterprise's transporter, "There's nothing you could have done, Rand. It wasn't your fault."
- Nothing Is Scarier: All you see of the transporter accident is a woman screaming mid-transport, their outlines slowly melting, and just when her screams get loudest, the beam vanishes, and you get the aforementioned Body Horror line. Brrrrrr...
- Obliviously Evil: V'ger kills the crews of three Klingon ships, everyone on the Epsilon IX station, Ilia, and nearly the population of Earth. There is no malice in its actions; it simply doesn't understand that what it's doing is wrong, as it doesn't realize that "carbon-based units" are alive. From its point of view, all it's doing is gathering information as efficiently as possible (and removing inconvenient obstacles to its objective).
- Oh, Crap!:
- A fairly subdued one from a Starfleet officer after observing the results of the engagement between V'ger and the Klingon cruisers:Lieutenant: We've plotted a course on that cloud, Commander. It will pass into Federation space fairly close to us.
Commander Branch: Heading?
Lieutenant: Sir, it's on a precise heading for Earth. - When the transporters malfunction on the Enterprise, Janice Rand lets out a hushed and horrified "Oh no - they're forming."
- The Oh, Crap! continues when Kirk and Scotty realize Starfleet finally got Sonak and Ciana back...just not in one piece.
- A fairly subdued one from a Starfleet officer after observing the results of the engagement between V'ger and the Klingon cruisers:
- Ominous Clouds: The film opens with a massive cloud in space passing through Klingon Space heading directly to Earth. The cloud is already impressive and foreboding on its own. But then it is able to easily dispatch three Klingon Battle Cruisers. And then we're told it is on a heading directly towards Earth, and we later learn that it is over 2 AUs note in diameter. The original cut had the cloud at 82 AUs, which is almost three times the distance between the Sun and Pluto!
- Ominous Pipe Organ: Can be heard while the Enterprise is inside V'ger.
- The Only One: The Enterprise is said to be the only starship available to confront V'ger. Keep in mind that "interception range" means "from Earth to the Klingon border," an empire with which, at the time, relations were at best frosty. The novelization makes it clear that there are other starships available, but after seeing what happened to the Klingon's top-of-the-line warships, Starfleet believes only the newly-refitted Enterprise has powerful enough shields to stand a chance of surviving an attack by V'ger.
- OOC Is Serious Business:
- It isn't obvious at first, but both Kirk and Spock are wildly out of character for most of the film, and only McCoy can see it in both of them. Kirk is being a Pointy-Haired Boss towards Decker, while Spock's Kolinahr training has left him with No Social Skills, and the telepathic emanations he received from V'ger make him willing to become a Military Maverick to uncover its secrets. It's not till the closing scene that the banter between the three heroes becomes what fans were used to on the show.
- When Spock recovers from his Mind Meld with V'ger, the first sign that he has regained consciousness is the sound of him laughing softly. Kirk and McCoy are thunderstruck, and Spock, sounding like his old self for the first time, says that he can't help but see the joke: V'ger has achieved Kolinahr — flawless logic and ultimate knowledge — but doing so has only made it realize how empty it is, and the emotions that Spock was trying so hard to deny actually make him a more enlightened being than V'ger.
- Our Wormholes Are Different:
- A warp malfunction pitches the Enterprise into an unstable wormhole, within which is an asteroid they have to blow up before a messy collision.
- A different kind of wormhole ("what they used to call a 'black hole'") is what landed Voyager 6 on the far end of the galaxy.
- Permission to Speak Freely: Decker is outright hostile towards Kirk in plain view of their subordinates, and even more so in private. Kirk looks as though he wants to punch him in the face numerous times, but lets it go as he needs him to guide his command of a ship he no longer recognizes. Notably, when they're in private and Decker invokes this trope directly, Decker does it correctly; he keeps his tone respectful and his comments on point. McCoy ends up taking Decker's side after Decker leaves.
- Pilot Episode: As mentioned above, the script was written as the pilot episode to a new television series, and was hastily being rewritten after filming had already started (hence the addition of Spectacle). In fact, if you watch it with this in mind, you might spot that the finished product still hits many of the beats required of most television pilots, such as introducing the characters, and relaunching the ship, elements which weren't strictly necessary for the story that's being told here, but which make perfect sense in context of setting up the format for a new television show. This is also the explanation for the main flaw of this film: It's a 2+ hour theatrical movie with only about 45 minutes worth of story in it.
- Planet Spaceship: Downplayed. If one includes the concealing cloud (2 AU, twice the distance from Earth to the sun), then V'ger dwarfs a fair portion of the entire solar system. V'ger itself, however, is indicated to be a merely 48 miles long, which still dwarfs pretty much every ship known to the Federation but is miniscule in astronomical terms.
- Plot-Driven Breakdown: The transporter being on the fritz requires Kirk to beam to a nearby space station and then be flown the rest of the distance by Scotty, so they'll have an excuse for a flyover of the refurbished Enterprise. Starfleet missing the memo and beaming over Commander Sonak with fatal consequences then creates a competence gap in the science crew that Spock later fills.
- The Power of Love: It causes Decker, Probe Ilia, and V'ger to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
- Putting the Band Back Together: Kirk drafts McCoy for this reason, and Sonak is a Replacement Goldfish for Spock until the transporter knocks him out of the picture and the actual Spock shows up.
- Rank Up: Since the end of the Enterprise's five-year mission depicted in the original TV series, Kirk has been promoted from Captain to Admiral, Scotty has been promoted from Lt. Commander to full Commander, Sulu and Uhura have been promoted from Lieutenant to Lt. Commander, and Chekov has been promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant. Neither Spock nor McCoy were promoted because both left Starfleet after the end of the five-year mission.
- Real Life Writes the Plot:
- They chose Voyager as the design of what became V'ger because it was a current event—Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, and by the time the film was released, both had already visited Jupiter. Mixes with a bit of Hilarious in Hindsight as there were only two Voyager probes... no matter that only two were ever launched (NASA's original plans for the Voyager program were to launch several pairs of probes, but lack of budget forced them to launch just two spacecraft).
- Sonak was killed in the transporter accident because he was intended to be in the film as Spock's replacement, but Leonard Nimoy agreed to come back late in pre-production, forcing them to add his introduction largely separate from everyone else. The full production history gets even more interesting, the replacement Vulcan science officer in the Phase II series was to be Xon and played by David Gautreaux, who was recast in a minor role as the Epsilon IX commander.
- They chose Voyager as the design of what became V'ger because it was a current event—Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, and by the time the film was released, both had already visited Jupiter. Mixes with a bit of
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: The usual Kirk/Spock dynamic is handily pointed out by the film's poster.
- A richly-colored rainbow was a very popular motif in the late 70s-early 80s. It was used for everything from children's cartoons to a Presidential campaign. New Age devotees adopted the symbol of the rainbow about this time.
- Fridge Brilliance: Kirk is at the red end of the spectrum, and Spock is at the green/blue end. Kirk's human blood is red, and Spock's Vulcan blood is green (presumably making Ilia's Deltan blood yellow).
- A richly-colored rainbow was a very popular motif in the late 70s-early 80s. It was used for everything from children's cartoons to a Presidential campaign
- Red Shirt: No one's wearing any actual red, but that doesn't help their survival chances much.
- Played straight with Ilia. The V'ger probe is interrupted by Spock, who it then zaps in retaliation. Decker then tries to help Spock, and is also zapped. Then it outright vaporizes Ilia, who did absolutely nothing to provoke it. The probe would have also killed a security officer prior to her, but they cut his death to give Ilia's more dramatic weight.
- Originally, they planned to kill Chekov. Thankfully for the sake of the sequels they didn't know they would be making, it was decided that it would be more dramatic if Kirk listed Decker and Ilia as the only casualties at the end.
- Not wearing red shirts didn't seem help the Klingons, the two crew members horribly mangled by the transporters, or the entire crew of the Epsilon IX station.
- The crewman who Spock neck-pinches before stealing a thruster suit has a reddish-brown uniform, the closest we see to an actual red shirt. He survives the movie.
- Replacement Goldfish: In the beginning of the film, Kirk is quite insistent upon getting a Vulcan science officer, even after Sonak dies via malfunctioning transporter. He is obviously trying to replace the now-absent Spock.
- The Resenter: Captain Decker is not at all happy that Kirk's hijacking his command after he just spent the last year and a half overseeing the Enterprise's refit. However when Kirk chews Decker out over it, McCoy sides with Decker, saying that Kirk is the resentful one because Decker has the one thing Kirk wants—permanent command of the Enterprise.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Probe Ilia is a perfect mechanical reproduction of the real Ilia, down to the smallest bodily functions. In fact, this is the chink in the probe's armor, as it were: Ilia's memories and feelings (mostly for Decker) have been reproduced "with equal precision."Kirk: They had a pattern to follow.
Spock: They may have followed it too closely. - Robot Girl: The Ilia Probe, and intentionally or not, she strongly resembles the Machine!Maria from Metropolis.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: The Klingons appear with forehead ridges for the first time ever. Though here, they share the same sort, whereas later Trek installments would show different varieties of ridges amongst Klingons.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: V'ger is originally classified as being over 82 AUs in diameter, which would make it the size of the entire solar system. It's brought down to 2 AUs in the DVD release, which would make the cloud the entire size of Earth's orbit around the sun, which is still quite massive but far more reasonable to hide a ship which, at best, can't be much larger than a planet.
- Scenery Porn: The effects budget was huge, and they made sure to put all of it onscreen. Pacing suffered noticeably as a result.
- Scotty Time: One thing that gets inherited from the series.Scotty: Admiral, we have just spent 18 months redesigning and refitting the Enterprise. How in the name of hell do they expect me to have her ready in 12 hours? She needs more work, sir! A shakedown!
- Sex Goddess: Ilia, although she'd never take advantage of a sexually immature race, as Commander Decker can tell you. Hilariously, one of the first things Ilia tells Kirk after reporting for duty is that her oath of celibacy is on record. As noted in All There in the Manual, Deltans have sex as an everyday part of life; even communicating is a sexual act — so it makes sense that Starfleet wouldn't want to make saying "hello" awkward for non-Deltans.
- Shaped Like Itself: The crew's attempts to learn about V'ger are stymied by that fact that it will only describe itself as seeking its creator, and said creator is simply that which created V'ger. Ilia later reveals that V'ger isn't being obtuse here; it literally doesn't know how to describe itself or its creator. It's not until the climax that they get enough leverage to make V'ger reveal itself to them, thus allowing them to figure out why an incredibly powerful "living machine" thinks someone or something on Earth created it.
- Shout-Out:
- Both the much-beloved fly-by tour of the new Enterprise and some of the music cues recall strongly elements of Robert Wise's The Hindenburg (1975).
- The POV shots of the Enterprise traveling through the cloud and flying over the incomprehensibly alien design of V'ger's surface, and Spock's journey into V'ger's memory core, are strongly inspired by the "Star Gate" sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- Signs of Disrepair: Voyager 6, which is how the antagonist got its name.
- Single Tear: Spock, of all people, sheds one for V'ger."I weep for V'ger as I would for a brother."
- Space Clothes: And man, did the cast hate them. See the Tropes for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for more.
- Space Opera: Heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first movie is very different in tone from its sequels. Part of that was undoubtably a desire not to be seen as a Star Wars knock-off.
- Space Suits Are SCUBA Gear: Averted. Both Spock's and Kirk's space suit air systems were contained within a backpack type suit which fed directly to the helmet.
- Staggered Zoom: Out from the viewscreen when V'ger's plasma probe approaches, before it appears on the bridge.
- Stock Scream: We hear a Wilhelm Scream during V'ger's initial attack on the Enterprise.
- Story Arc:
- It will get more focus in the next one, but Kirk's mid-life crisis (and he was already feeling his age in the original) starts here, carrying on until Star Trek: Generations.
- This also is the start of Spock realising that having emotions (and showing love for your friends) is actually a good thing, with some stops and starts along the way.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Admiral Kirk responds to the incoming V'ger threat by using his clout to reassume command of the Enterprise. Unfortunately, he's been out of the Big Chair for over two years, and that chair is on The Bridge of a thoroughly redesigned Enterprise. As a result, he nearly gets the ship destroyed before they've even left the Solar System.
- In addition, Kirk reclaiming command of the Enterprise means taking the big chair away from his hand-picked successor. This naturally leads to plenty of resentment that undermines their professional relationship.
- Take That!: A number of early promotion materials released to the press during production contained the tag line "There is no Comparison", an answer to those who speculated Paramount was just going to make a Star Wars rip-off. Younger fans may not be aware of how important it not being a Star Wars ripoff was. Everyone was doing them at this time, and most of them were really bad. Not only was this not a Star Wars ripoff, it's actually rather good (for a given value of good).note
- Taking You with Me: Kirk orders Scotty in the Director's Cut to prepare the ship's self-destruct (or more precisely, detonating the warp core as a matter/antimatter bomb), to be carried out on his command, in case their attempt to disable V'ger from its central core fails.
- Technology Porn: Along with the introductory flyby of the ship in dry dock, there's a few loving shots of the Enterprise's awesome-looking warp core.
- Teleporter Accident: Sonak and another crew member are mangled by a malfunctioning transporter as the Enterprise is preparing to leave. And yet, mere minutes later in screen time (and mere hours in-universe), McCoy is still treated as irrational for not liking them.
- Time Skip: The film by itself is a little vague on how long it's been since the end of the TV show, but most chronologies give it about two years to account for Kirk's promotion and the refit of the Enterprise. This contrasted with the longer length of real-world time, such that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan would add an extra ten years to make up for it.
- Too Dumb to Live: The Klingons are confronted with an absolutely gigantic cloud/ship/thing traveling at warp speed through their space, something several AU in diameter. It's seemingly just minding its own business and on a course to cross into Federation space in a few days. But the Klingons decide that the best move ... is to fire a handful of torpedoes into it. With predictable results.
- Too Strange to Show: What Decker, Ilia, and V'Ger become, since they disappear from our universe entirely.
- Transformed Ever After: Commander Decker decides to make a Heroic Sacrifice by fusing with the consciousness of the V'ger probe, which causes him to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. This luminous being drifts off into the cosmos, knowing all what lies therein, but now with a sense of wonder that only a living being could have rather than simply fulfilling its program to "learn all that is learnable."
- Typeset in the Future: During the Original Series, the exterior markings on Federation spacecraft were set in the standard typeface used by the U.S. Air Force. Beginning with this movie, the typeface was changed to Eurostile Bold Extended.
- Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Enterprise has just gone through an 18-month refit and pretty much the entire ship has been rebuilt. They haven't even gotten to engine tests yet. Kirk orders it pressed into service anyway, because the more time they have to 'meet' it, the more time they have to figure things out. A Surprisingly Realistic Outcome happens when the warp engines glitch out the first time they're used, nearly getting the ship destroyed.
- Vow of Celibacy: Lieutenant Ilia randomly informs Kirk when she comes aboard that she has one. Expanded on in the novelization.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Sonak, Spock's Replacement Goldfish dies before getting much screentime or any characterization.
- We Want Our Jerk Back!: No one at the end seems terribly upset at the departure of Captain Decker, and the return of Kirk to full-time command.
- Weapon Running Time: V'ger's plasma-energy bolts travel slowly enough that the Enterprise can see them coming for ten or fifteen seconds —but has no way to divert or stop them and must depend on shields for defense.
- Wham Line: Perhaps the Wham Line for the entire series. The reason the Director's Cut, and even the television version, are so widely preferred over the theatrical version is mainly one scene near the end. As the Enterprise is pulled toward V'ger's core, and Kirk secretly tells Scotty to arm the self-destruct as a last resort, the crew gives status reports... but Spock remains silent. Kirk goes to see what is wrong, to find Spock quietly weeping. Spock confesses that he is crying for V'ger. V'ger, for all its destructive power, is not evil; while destroying it may be necessary, it would still be tragic. Spock has come to realize that V'ger, in essence, is exactly what Spock has tried to become. And Spock was wrong. Spock quietly tells Kirk and McCoy what he has realized: "Logic and knowledge are not enough." It is a major turning point for Spock. After this point, through the rest of the films of the original series, Spock is calm and collected, never doubting. He has found peace, living with both the Vulcan and Human sides of himself.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: V'ger, via Probe Ilia, falls in love with Decker, but is completely confused with this emotion.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Played for Laughs when Kirk reveals it wasn't Nogura who "drafted" McCoy.
- When Decker saves the Enterprise from the wormhole, Kirk attempts to give him one of these for countermanding his orders. Decker ends up throwing him a Shut Up, Kirk!, letting him know that he's going to get the crew killed with his inexperience with the ship's new systems.
- After Decker leaves, McCoy takes it even further, ripping Kirk a new one. In the theatrical version, he even makes a thinly-veiled threat to declare Kirk medically unfit for command if Kirk doesn't start listening. After McCoy lets him have it, Kirk does indeed start to listen.
- The Worf Effect: Appropriately enough, the Klingons are on the receiving end at the very beginning of the film. Three K't'inga-class warships get insta-disintegrated by V'ger to showcase how powerful V'ger is.
Tropes seen in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture include:
- All There in the Manual:
- It's stated in the novelization that Commander Willard Decker is the son of Commodore Matt Decker from the TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine", and the Enterprise was his big chance to prove he wasn't crazy like his dad. That explains why he's none too pleased with Kirk casually commandeering the Enterprise, (or some of his crew grousing about it). Notably, it's a complete inversion of that episode, with Kirk now the flag officer who commandeers Enterprise from her rightful CO and initially makes poor command decisions that nearly lead to the ship's destruction.
- The novelization also reveals the identity of the female transporter accident victim, as well as why Chekov and Sulu suddenly act strangely around Ilia. (Females of her species can emit pheromones that make males want to mate with them).
- Amicably Divorced: Kirk and Lori Ciana, which makes Kirk's reaction to her death in the movie all the more weird. For this reason, many fans prefer to think that the person killed along with Sonak in the film's transporter accident was actually the ship's original navigator, who subsequently got replaced by Ilia.
- Artifact Title: It's a book, not a movie.
- Body Horror: The novelization suggests that Sonak and the other crewmember (Vice Admiral Lori Ciana) were rematerialized with their internal organs outside their bodies.
- Boldly Coming: Together with Intimate Psychotherapy — Kirk tells Decker to have sex with the Ilia probe in the hopes that it would reawaken Ilia's memories. In Kirk's internal dialogue, he muses that in different circumstances, he would have wanted to do this himself, but he knows Decker is the best man for the job in this case.
- Fashion-Based Relationship Cue: The novelization reveals that in Deltan society, headbands such as the one Decker puts on the Ilia probe mean the wearer is in a marriage-like relationship.
- Framing Device: The novel directly refers to the events of the original TV series as dramatizations based on the voyages of the Enterprise. So that means Star Trek is seen by its creator as a Show Within a Show. Justifiable since Roddenberry got fed up with being asked why the Klingons looked different from the ones seen in TOS. His answer remained that he always intended for everything, including the Klingons, to look more elaborate and detailed than they did on TV; they just didn't have the money or the technology to realize it. Making the original series an "in universe" dramatization takes care of that question. In terms of the production's looks, we might assume that what is low budget and zeerust to us in the real world is simply a stylistic choice on the part of the "in universe" show's creators.
- Human Subspecies: "New Humans", a large offshoot/movement of enlightened Earthlings which developed as a result of humanity throwing off the shackles of warfare and conflict. They're considered highly evolved and more intelligent and adaptable than the "primitive" humans around them, and have developed the inborn human potential for psychic abilities. They are, however, largely unfit for Starfleet (or even deep space travel) due to being too smart and too adaptable. During Starfleet's early years, there was a high rate of mysterious disappearances among ships crewed by New Humans. Eventually, a Vulcan study concluded that when they encountered new alien civilizations more advanced culturally or technologically than humanity, the New Humans would tend to feel they have more in common with said civilizations and decide to abandon Starfleet and Earth to join them. As such Starfleet was ironically forced to lower the standards on their recruitment tests somewhat if they wanted to operate efficiently.
- Mindlink Mates: Spock hears Kirk's thoughts from light-years away, and later on it's mentioned that "It was common knowledge that telepathic rapport between Vulcan and human was possible only in cases of extraordinarily close friendship."
- Ship Tease: The word t'hy'la, as mentioned above, along with the famous footnote in response that seems, on the surface, to debunk Kirk/Spock but could just as easily be used as evidence for it.
- Vow of Celibacy: Ilia's is explained here. Deltans (Ilia's race) are highly sexual and view humans as immature when it comes to sex, and more to the point having sex with a non-Deltan can potentially kill their partner (because it involves a blending of minds as well as bodies). Deltans are compelled to take a vow of celibacy in order to join Starfleet. Just about everything in Deltan society is sexual on some level, even greetings. The issues became apparent when the Deltans killed the first contact team entirely by accident.
