A Movie Every Night: Star Trek The Motion Picture

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
Director: Robert Wise
Starring: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Special Bluray edition
(which means the screen shots are courtesy of Nikon and the cousin/roommate)

Kirk, Spock and Bones: as it should be, friends

The idea behind this series is to watch movies I either haven't seen before or haven't seen all the way through. Now, I know you're going to think I'm lying on this one, but the only Star Trek movie I've ever seen all the way through is The Wrath of Khan. Honest as the day is long -- no, wait, I saw that one with the whales, but I never saw the first movie, although I think I maybe tried to watch it once way back when it was on SelecTV and the only thing I remember is that VGER was Voyager. I'm sorry, did I ruin it for anyone? I haven't. Honestly, by the time you get to that point you're already kind of sleepy anyway and the surprise is a little lifeless. It takes them 20 minutes just to get Kirk on board the Enterprise. (That's 20 minutes in a shuttle, not 20 minutes of forwarding the story.)

My mother likes this one, she says, because it's a love story. I think she's absolutely right. Kirk loves his ship enough to challenge the new captain out of ownership. The new captain, soon to demote down to commander, Will Dekker (Stephen Collins), loves the navigator, Lt. Ilia (Persis Khambatta), who apparently likes him, sort-of, but won't sleep with him or anyone, apparently, because she tells the captain and the entire crew that she is celibate even though no one asks.

Brokeback Enterprise

There are some sweet moments of boy-love between Kirk and Spock, machines love other machines --- it's a crazy universe. But the big love is clearly reserved for Dekker and Ilia, who ... it's complicated. Let's just call her Veeger and she's a machine, right, and she has feelings, right, but doesn't have feelings, right, and the machine wants to know if there's MORE, right, than just being a machine, right, so it's tapping into feelings, right, and so the mommy and the daddy when they get together....

Dekker "mates" with the machine

Kirk's reaction: How is it I've never had that kind of action?

Yes, my mother is right. It's all about love, love, Love!