Seems to be Star Trek day on SyFy...imagine that, scifi on there!
I know the first movie gets teased a lot (and all odd numbered ST movies), but I still like this one a lot. VGER might be a stretch, all that alien AI that sent it back, but they couldn't wipe a little dirt off the side of the satelite or get the name from the onboard data to get "Voyager", but I still like the general premise. The "machine culture" that sent it back may have been the precursor idea to the Borg, come to think of it.
Also, I love the presentation and tone of the movie. Of all of the movies, it seems to have been taken with the most serious tone. ST 2 goes back to a slightly campy overtone. The first flick really moved the whole thing to a larger scale from the series and made some nice changes. Klingons got their new look, you get an idea of the scale of the Enterprise with the fly around in the beginning and then the briefing in the huge recreation area...good stuff. The most recent movie does an even better job of that and adds the "industrial" look to engineering but they did a good job of this back in '79 too.
Saw this in the theater when it came out, so that might color my view of it--it was HUGE when Star Trek came to the big screen--but I like this one. Most of the movies I just don't care for, they seem like extended versions of tv episodes, but this one didn't. Too bad it lacked battles that Wrath of Kahn had.

+1

Some ST films are better than others, but there hasn't been one that I've regretted watching.

Nice write up, I and II are the only ST movies I really care for and I'd happily watch either if they turned up on my TV schedule.

TMP gets a lot of stick for being slow but I like the serious tone and thoughtful screenplay - you just can't make a film like that these days, most outer-space-themed movies have to be chock full of whizz bang effects and explosions (bar a few notable exceptions on the "...2001" thread, but you couldn't do that with a recognizable canon like Star Trek and a big budget: witness high-octane re-imagined version recently - it was certainly entertaining, but was always going to be full of Gratuitous Space Battles (tm) and action sequences).

GSB would make a great movie. You wouldn't know who anyone was or why they were fighting, but a lot of blowing !@#$ up. LOL

I like ST: TMP quite a lot and I have the 2 disc special edition which has the really magnificent exterior shot of VGer among some other new CGI enhancements. It helped quite a lot that Robert Wise directed the film. He's directed other sci-fi classics like "The Andromeda Strain" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

I dont see how there was any campiness at all in Wrath of Khan. It was a very dark, serious and philosophical film.

ST IV had some campiness in it but it was the "good" type of campiness where it just worked well.

Some of the enhancements in the Special Edition of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was beneficial, but some was quite the opposite. The added flying of V'ger made the "Spaceballs" one seem short in comparison. It was something that definitely was too long and ruined the pacing.

Campy wasn't the right word, but the subsequent movies certainly had a lighter feel about them. The characters were more what you expect from the series, TMP seemed to try to rise above the series somewhat, for lack of a better description. There's little humor in TMP, it's even a little dark with Kirk usurping the Enterprise. I like the presentation even though it's not standard Star Trek.

Robert Wise directed/edited a lot of films I grew up and loved, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Haunting, Sound of Music, The Andromeda Strain. Think he edited Citizen Kane too.

To me Star Trek TMP is very much a Robert Wise film that happened to be Star Trek and special for that reason. It has a pacing that means you can go into the kitchen, make a sandwich, pop down to the store, come back and still not miss very much.

It has five minutes of motion control porn, although I no longer get excited by flypasts of hot-glued models. It's quite laughable now, models often look better than CGI to me.

Speaking of which, ST:TMP was the first time you saw the Enterpirse *turn*!
Before that it just flew (or just zoomed in) straight, even if a little too much rudder to look like it might be turning. LOL