Customer Reviews

Star Trek the Motion Picture

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Gene Roddenberry's novelization of "Star Trek -- The Motion Picture" is a book I've always liked, and is far superior to the movie on which it's based. The first "Trek" movie works neither as science fiction cinema nor as a "Star Trek" adventure. Gene's book, by contrast, works both as science fiction and as "Star Trek".

Needless to say, the book and the movie have the same plot, which proceeds just as slowly in both versions -- but the book remains engaging throughout due to the insight it gives us into the characters' thought processes. Gene is able to do things in the prose format which the movie could not do, such as presenting the opening attack on the Klingon ships as a thought transmission from Starfleet Command which Jim Kirk receives while visiting the Library at Alexandria (which Gene correctly predicted would someday be rebuilt). We gain much more insight into the civilization of 23rd-century Earth, and into the characters and how they have changed since the end of the original series, than the movie gives us. Gene even manages to address the eternal question of whether or not Kirk and Spock's relationship was more than friendship in a way which is completely true to both characters and to Gene's own philosophy -- and is also very funny.

Over the years some fans have questioned whether or not Gene actually wrote this book. I don't know why -- his stylistic fingerprints are all over it. The book deals with many of the themes and concepts that recurred throughout Gene's work. It clearly could have been written by no one else.

The film version of this story has often gotten some heat over the years since its release in 1979. Most often it's been labeled as too slow, too much focus on visual f/x and not enough character. Some years ago the Director's Edition of the film addressed the pacing criticisms in a well edited cut along with some freshened up f/x as they were meant to be done originally. But sadly a new film cut can't put in what wasn't filmed in the first place.

Gene Roddenberry's novelization goes some way in providing background and context to the events that are played out on the screen. This book actually moves along at a good clip, and while it isn't written with a lot of style it does accomplish what it sets out to do: fill in the blanks that might seem to be missing in the film. Also, unlike some novelizations of movies, I can't really think of anything in here that contradicts the movie.

I love the film Star Trek - The Motion Picture, particularly the Director's Edition, yet even I admit it needed a little more character drama. If the movie had included some of the materiel in the novelization a little more closely some of the criticism regarding lack of character wouldn't have arisen.

While I'd never been a fan of the film, I'd been looking for something outside the normal vein that could still ring with an air of authority after a decade-long lapse from Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry's credit as this piece's author flagged this volume as something fitting the bill (I was thankfully unaware of claims it had been ghostwritten; for me, the characters seem too vulnerably human to have come from the depressingly romantic realist writers I've come to associate with Star Trek fiction).

Roddenberry covers instances of technology and commentary never mentioned within canon, including Starfleet cranial implants and Kirk's views on a rumoured romantic relationship between himself and Spock. The introduction, written by Roddenberry from Kirk's point of view, should be mandatory reading for anyone involved in future movie/series material, and is almost worth the purchase price in itself.

Favourite quotes:

- "I have always looked upon the Enterprise and its crew as my own private view of Earth and humanity in microcosm. If this is not the way we really are, it seems to me most certainly a way we ought to be. During its voyages, the starship Enterprise always carried much more than mere respect and tolerance for other life forms and ideas - it carried the more positive force of love for the almost limitless variety within our universe. It is this capacity for love for all things which has always seemed to me the first indication that an individual or a race is approaching adulthood." - Kirk

- "Vejur was everything that Spock had ever dreamed of becoming. And yet Vejur was barren! It would never feel pain. Or joy. Or challenge. It was so completely and magnificently logical that its accumulation of knowledge was totally useless."

This book is amazing. Since it is written by Gene Roddenberry himself, the reader is allowed to see Spock and Kirk as he wanted them to be shown. It's a wonderful addition to any Star Trek collection and works wonderfully as a tie in to the Motion Picture.

Gene Roddenberry, awesome imagination, not so awesome writer. The story was good, with some changes from the actual movie (as expected) but the writing was awful. His choice of words were, are times questionable.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a novel based on the 1979 movie of the same title. Three years after the conclusion of their five-year mission, the crew of the Enterprise is reunited and sent out to stop a dangerous intruder (Vejur) headed for Earth. Vejur is a threat to both Earth and humanity--and Captain Kirk is put into a position to save both Earth and the human race. I saw the movie in 1979 and liked it; the book enabled me to relive the events of the movie and brought back many memories. Author Gene Rodddenberry (the creator of Star Trek) has done a good job with plot development, character descriptions, and an interesting scientific premise with this great science fiction story. Also, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is an intellectually intriguing and suspenseful book. If you like Star Trek and/or science fiction you will like this story.

As the title says, this is the novelisation of the first Star Trek movie. The enterprise crew has a new member who disagrees with Kirk about how things, should be run.

On a mission, they come across a strange woman and a machine that calls itself V'ger - part of which is the old Voyager probe.