Center-Frame Knuck (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

Here's to the finest crew in Stockling.

Engage.

Who am I to argue with the captain of the Enterprise?

Welcome to The Greatest Generation.

It's a Star Trek podcast by a couple of guys who are just a little bit embarrassed about having a Star Trek podcast.

I'm Ben Harrison.

I'm Adam Pranica, and today we are the first in a series of podcasts about Star Trek movies and a special podcast event we're doing called Star Trek Podcrawl.

I'm so excited about this event.

It is somewhat in celebration of our ninth birthday as a podcast, but it's also, I think, a celebration of the entire Star Trek podcasting community.

We've got so many great shows participating, and each of them is going to be reviewing a Star Trek film.

And we're the first of seven.

So that gets us up through Star Trek Generations.

Everybody participating in the podcrawl is dropping an episode today.

Yeah.

And we are all doing it in support of the National Center for Science Education, which is a charity that Adam and I have supported along with the Friends of DeSoto for a long time.

We have felt for a long time that there is a community of Star Trek podcasts out there that don't really talk.

What a great opportunity this is to just sort of bring a bunch of them together in celebration of this thing that we love in support of a thing that really matters.

I think that, like, there was some worry that we might have to have the kind of relationship with the other Star Trek podcasts that is entirely red phone based and we only communicate in cases of great emergency.

Sure.

But no.

The shows that did not choose to participate in this project are the ones that we still have red phone relationships with.

They know who they are.

No, but we're all of us banding together, looking toward an optimistic, Star Trek-like future.

And I think that science education is such a crucial piece of how we build that.

So NCSC is the organization we're supporting with this event.

an organization that is dedicated to bringing like reality-based, data-based science education to classrooms that is like uncontroversial and just here is the truth as best as we can figure it out, especially about evolution and the climate crisis.

They do a lot of work in places in this country, especially that those topics are hard to get into a regular classroom.

So we really salute the work that NCSE is doing.

And if you'd like to support, we're suggesting a $10 donation.

Go to star trekpodcrawl.com and help us reach our goal.

Your benefit here is you get to listen to seven podcast episodes about seven Star Trek films by seven different podcasts.

And maybe you'll find some podcasts that you like along the way.

Yeah, we should probably introduce ourselves to what probably represents a brand new audience

for us.

The Greatest Generation has been around for, as Ben said, nine years.

And we are a show that started out by doing episodes about Star Trek the Next Generation.

We've grown into a show that does live comedy shows around the country in front of an audience that we call Friends of DeSoto, FODs.

And this is an audience of folks who feels about their Star Trek fandom the way we do.

We love Star Trek.

We are a little bit embarrassed to put our nerd shit out on Maine.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the energy that we put behind it.

You know, it's still a little bit weird when my lawyer wife introduces me to someone at a work party and I am asked what I do for a living and I have to say I have a podcast about Star Trek.

So that's like the, that's the tension that we deal with here on the show.

I'm sure the other podcasts participating in the pod crawl are unashamed, have no idea what we're talking about with these feelings.

And good for them.

Good for them.

We're going to meet some of those podcasters along the way.

I hope you'll stick around for the end of this episode because we will be talking to the next podcast in the crawl, the seventh rule, reviewing the Wrath of Khan right after this.

And also like listen all the way through to the end as we will be talking to Star Trek the next conversation at the end of their review of Star Trek Generations.

And it'll just loop back around, creating a Star Trek podcast Uroboros.

Pretty great experiment that we're starting today.

Congratulations to all of the listeners out there going for the record by listening to all of these in one sitting.

Yeah.

Probably in a bathroom.

Yeah, probably in a bathroom.

But, you know, bathroom with tub of bunker food, probably

is the way to do this if you're going to try and make it through the whole thing in one sitting.

We really appreciate everyone that supports.

The URL again is star trekpodcrawl.com to kick a little bit of money toward the National Center for Science Education.

And what do you say we start talking about this movie, Adam?

Let's penetrate into the orifice deep within Star Trek the motion picture, Ben, from 1979.

What is your relationship with this movie?

Because this one is, in my experience, a much later-in-life pickup.

I think that for most of my childhood, the Star Trek film started with Wrath of Khan.

Like most comparisons I serve up on our show,

this had a real First Blood versus Rambo First Blood Part 2 kind of vibe to me.

Like when I was growing up, I got into Star Trek off of Wrath of Khan.

And I had to circle way back around much later to pick up the motion picture, and that's because it seemed to me to be the boring one.

Right.

And by my parents and the people who would stick tapes into VCRs and sit me down in front of TV so I would leave them alone.

Like that was a more reliable form of entertainment for me than the motion picture ever would be.

So it took, I think, until like high school before I ever watched the motion picture.

Yeah, I think I was probably in high school as well.

And I think that when I watched it at that time, I was of a mind that like, this is not for me.

Like I can tell that there's something in this movie that is, you know, earnest and thoughtful.

And, like, it is well crafted artistically.

But Wrath of Khan has guys, like, yelling at the stars, and the camera pulls out into outer space, and you can still hear them yelling.

Yeah.

It's a very different vibe from the other films in the Star Trek series.

And I am curious as we talk our way through this to see if your perception and my perception have changed.

Well, I definitely stepped up to it thinking, how good could this be for 1979 and for the pace that I heard about and for its effects I heard were kind of spotty or hit or miss.

I don't know about you, but I watched the like brand new-ish remastered 4K super high-definition version of this movie, and I can't wait to tell you what I thought about all that.

Well, anything that you heard about pace is not disabused in the first few moments of this film because we just get a orchestral score as we pull away from some stars for a while before the studio logo comes up.

What was that about?

I used to be a projectionist, Ben, and I feel like this was intended for a theater audience where, like, okay,

the film has hit the lights down queue.

We're starting to roll it.

And you're going to get three minutes, I think, of Starfield footage and a musical score before we finally get the Paramount logo.

I watched this through the Paramount Plus add-on to the Apple TV app, and there was an audio glitch when I put it on.

And so I thought it was just silence and stars for those three minutes.

It's so weird you would get a glitch in the Paramount Plus app in any way.

I never would have expected that.

Yeah, I was like, well, by the time we saw the Klingon D7s on screen, I was like, okay, there's got to be soundtrack at this point in the movie.

Let me figure out what's going on.

But I was like, man, what a flex to just open your movie with three minutes of silent stars.

What a flex to open the movie with these three Klingon ships and the shots of them so close, so orbital.

I feel like you see more of these ships than you ever have before, and you have the time to really take it all in.

That shot that comes up on the nose of the lead D7 and then does a flip over it and lets it fly away with a god shot in between

is one of the slickest model miniature shots in Star Trek history.

And these ships look so great.

They are so imposing and scary.

And I think it's so effective that they are established as being this imposing and scary, only to be like eliminated almost immediately.

I kind of wish we had the opportunity to watch the unfucked with version of this movie back to back with this one, because as a tone setter, it was extremely effective to get such great effect shots here.

But I wonder if that hits a little differently than the non-great version that we got.

If maybe it even works against the tone it tries to set.

Who knows?

I mean, like...

There have been lots of movies that have been digitally quote-unquote upgraded over the years.

If there are any Star Trek podcasts that are late to respond to the invitation to pod crawl they can be the ones to cover the unremastered version of the motion picture congratulations

we have a super 16 print of it that's been collecting dust on a shelf in paramount's backlot for years

you guys can watch that version so these klingons in classic klingon fashion are incredibly suspicious of this blue cloud that they've pulled up on And we get a lot of shots of them scanning it and stuff.

And they decide to probably just shoot some torpedoes at it and see what happens.

That is the way Klingons scan for life forms, I guess.

That's first contact, isn't it?

Contact those torpedoes.

And

great effects shots of the torpedoes coming out and flying toward this thing.

And the torpedoes just kind of go nowhere.

Like we see them going in and

then they don't come back out again.

What did they expect?

It was a cloud, guys.

Yeah.

It's not a hard surface for your torpedoes to impact on.

Klingon yells at cloud is

the newsreel for this moment.

Oh, man.

In the Abe Simpson art style.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I love how mutton-choppy these Klingons are.

They really look like some Lenny Klingons, like slackjaw yokel Klingons shooting at clouds.

I don't think they're sending their best to the cloud.

These guys are like doing target practice with a sawed-off shotgun on a beat-up car on the back nine of their property.

I was just as surprised that the Klingons would ever send a distress call.

And that's what Upsilon 9 receives, a distress call from one of these Klingon ships.

And we see one of these Klingon ships taken off the board immediately.

It's hit with this blue sphere of energy and it envelops it and makes it disappear.

And this listening post gets to watch the entire scene.

I love this.

Starfleet has so fully compromised the codes that the Klingon Empire uses to transmit between ships that they get just like footage of what's going on in real time.

And they're scanning this thing from their space station, which is one of the beautiful models in Star Trek history.

Sad that we never got to see it again.

They're pretty worried about the situation that the Klingons have found themselves in.

I mean, and they're also worried about the situation that Earth will soon be in because this thing is headed straight for Earth.

But that's not where we're headed.

We're headed to the planet Vulcan, which has never looked better.

We get long hair Spock.

Spock's walking down a mountain road toward a town called Hope, where he's stopped by a local sheriff

and cited for vagrancy.

Yeah.

And you're like, wait, so the local sheriff took offense to him having an American flag on his jacket?

And he said, people don't cotton to that kind of thing around here in a rural town in America?

What's going on here?

Just an amazing look.

Leonard Nimoy fucking rocks this hair.

He really does.

He looks amazing.

He looks so sick.

He looks like a background character in Star Trek the Animated series with this hair in the best way possible.

Yeah.

And how good does Vulcan look, too?

These giant statues?

Yeah.

I mean, this is clearly cleaned up.

digitally, but it looked fantastic.

And he finds himself at the foot of one of these statues with some elder Vulcans

who are congratulating him on all the hard work he's been doing, trying to rid himself of all feeling and achieve the right of colonar.

And they're about to put this necklace around his neck, giving him like the Congressional Medal of Honor, but for logic, when something kind of catches his attention in the sky, and they're like, oh man, maybe this guy doesn't deserve this after all.

And he like puts his hand up and stops her.

It's so shitty that

Spock has readied himself for this moment.

And you don't have to throw the necklace onto the ground, do you?

Like, it's very showy as a thing.

Because, like, I guess it's not that big a deal to get this symbol if you're just gonna leave it there on the ground.

Like, he could just pick it up and take it then, right?

It's so wild that Chewbacca's there and they don't even have one for him.

Chewbacca did all the same stuff.

I know.

This is, I think, the first time in the movie where we hear the blaster beam.

We really should talk briefly about the blaster beam as an element of this movie.

It is like the springy thing that sticks out that stops a door from punching its door handle into the drywall of a house.

Oh, yeah.

That I played with as a little kid, I would like to be able to move.

Yeah, as the father of a two-year-old, I hear this sound constantly.

Yeah.

That is Blaster Beam, and we get a whole bunch of it starting here.

Yeah, this sound signals to everyone there, including Spock, that pure logic is not something that anyone should be draping around his neck.

And the lead Vulcan wants to meld his mind to figure out what's going on.

Her manicure is incredible when she does this, but like the long nails, very scary to have that close to your face.

We talk about it all the time: a non-consensual mind melt, kind of troubling to witness.

And yet, there she goes.

She goes right on in there.

And what she learns is that Spock has received some sort of communication from something in space.

And this is the reason why his culinar is a failure.

Yeah.

Not the only son of Sarek that will present himself in this podcrawl receiving signals from something in space.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the vibe turns on a dime as Colin R kind of crumbles all around him because we cut to San Francisco and just like triumphant Starfleet music and an establishing shot of Starfleet Command where Admiral Kirk is walking around admiraling.

He meets a kind of uppity Vulcan who is a very red shirt spock replacement kind of energy.

The sort of Vulcan you want to see die in an extremely painful way the moment you meet him.

Like, I can't wait until this guy gets his comeuppance.

Yeah, I don't know why, but I just feel like he deserves a gruesome death.

15 minutes into the movie, we've waited to see Jim Kirk here.

I was a little bit surprised at waiting so long for the introduction.

Yeah.

This is still like the beginning of the movie, though.

Like this movie really takes its time with moments.

But let's talk about what it does in these previous few scenes.

Like it kind of builds a momentum from jump.

It starts very slowly with a starfield in space for three minutes in music.

And then we see what happens to these Klingons in kind of a slow reveal.

Right.

We're on Vulcan, where we figure out what's going on with the Culinar and how Spock feels about that.

And by the time you get to Starfleet Command, you get the wide shot of that scene and everyone's moving.

Everyone's moving urgently, including Kirk.

And this feels like the moment in the film where like the wheels have hit the track on the film and the story is now like fully going.

And I really love how admirally his energy is at the beginning of this.

Like he is, he is very much like telling people where to go and what to do and talking about important high-line meetings he's taking that are going to be quick and then he needs to be up in up in orbit.

And like, he does not seem like he has captain energy anymore.

He certainly doesn't look like he's wearing a captain's uniform, Ben.

What did you make of the Starfleet uniform that looks like an untucked dress shirt in shape at the bottom?

Yeah.

This is not a branded content moment, but like this is not an untuck it shirt that goes straight across at the bottom.

This is clearly like the swoopy untucked shirt look.

I mean, it's that downward point points very specifically at something.

It sure does.

Yeah.

So he, in short order, beams up to an orbital space station where Scotty meets him.

And they talk about how the transporters are not working yet on the Entrepreneur because they've been refitting it and getting it ready for motion picture cinema cameras

for the last 12 months.

And so they're going to have to go over there by shuttle.

I love the magic trick that Kirk does here, which is like Scotty

extremely upset at the launch orders being moved up.

She needs more work, sir.

A shakedown.

And Kirk jingling his keys a little bit in front of his face and going like, that's not what you should be concerned about.

Captain now.

And it totally distracts him from that other thing and makes it about Kirk.

Yes, because Kirk has argued argued his way back into command of the Enterprise.

And he tells Scotty a little bit about, yeah, there's an alien object heading straight for us.

It has awesome destructive power.

It, you know, made a bunch of Klingon D7s disappear right before our very eyes.

And Enterprise, as in all Star Trek films, is the only starship in range.

Enterprise gets a greater and longer and more majestic introduction than Jim Kirk here.

The flyby that we get,

we luxuriate for a very long time here in a way that I wanted to live in.

Like, this is this would set the tone for every Star Trek movie to follow.

Absolutely.

And to some extent, all of the shows to follow as well.

Like, I think you need the majestic shots of the ship moment to really feel like you're in Star Trek to some extent.

Question, Ben.

This sequence finishes so perfectly with Scotty's capsule mating with the ship, like at the exact moment of the music ending.

Do you think the musical score was diegetic and Scotty played it

in the shuttle?

And that's why Kirk is so grateful at the end.

Like, God, that was an amazing experience, Scotty.

I think it hits super hard if maybe, like, if you were to somehow unmaster the musical score here and make it sound like it was coming out of a boombox box or like maybe a speaker system in the dash.

I think that would convey what I'm trying to talk about here.

Like with a slightly tinnier sound to it.

Thank you, Mr.

Scott.

No, come on.

You know that Scotty put a couple of 12-inch subwoofers in the trunk of that shuttle.

Like the Steve Zissou

score version of this.

Here's another question I had in this moment.

Like, Kirk has not gone super deep on the threat as he's described it so far.

Yeah.

But there's so much lingering on the ship.

Do you think when you're Kirk, when you're about to board your ship, you ever think this might be it?

Or do you always think this is it?

Like, this might be the last time.

This might be the last time I get on the ship, and I might never come off of it.

I mean,

the legend of Kirk as the captain who doesn't believe in a no-win scenario isn't until the second movie in this run.

And yet,

I kind of always wonder if that is something that he is constantly telling himself.

Yeah.

Or if that is something he truly believes in his bones.

And I want to say like his energy walking onto this bridge feels more like he believes it in his bones.

He doesn't need to remind himself that he doesn't believe in a no-win scenario.

And if you're his crew, I think that's how you would prefer it from your commanding officer.

Definitely.

Like, you'd ever want to question whether he believes in what he's doing on that level.

He walks onto this bridge and it is fucking chaos because everybody has been told that they are dusting off way sooner than anyone expected.

And we just pan around this bridge.

There are so many people, you know, wrenching on things and up on floaty pedestals.

There's one guy like raising some piece of junk up into the up into the the ceiling so that presumably it can fall on someone when they get hit with a torpedo in a later film.

In putting his arms over his head, what he does is make the onesie he's wearing extremely tight over the front of his body, Ben.

Yeah, this is another thing that you really have to do to establish we are in Star Trek is have someone's bonch just protrude off the screen like this.

It's center frame knuck.

You can see nothing else in this moment.

it's incredible

it's so cinematic I want to know everything about this guy

honestly if I were wearing this I would have gotten a step stool so that I wouldn't have to reach up as high and make the front of my uniform so tight in order to expose myself this way it seems like an HR violation right like you can't have your dick that unavoidable on the bridge of the flagship.

Yeah.

He cheated.

I don't believe.

Let's know.

When the scenario, he cheated, cheated.

Change the conditions of the test.

I don't like to lose.

It is absolute chaos on the bridge at this point before people realize that Kirk's there.

And the reception, that's what you want if you're a Jim Kirk arriving on Enterprise.

They love him.

Yeah, there's a lot of the OG crew here.

We've got Chekhov, Sulu, and Uhura.

And they are very happy to see Kirk, but there are also some newbies who are less so.

Like, he's told that Decker, the captain of the ship, is down in engineering, and that is who he's here to look for.

He's also told that Decker does not know.

I mean, neither does that Vulcan guy that we met earlier in Star Weak Command.

I mean, how many secrets are we keeping if we're Jim Kirk at this point?

True.

When he leaves the bridge, some of the newbies are like, what the fuck is that guy doing taken back over?

Like, we don't know him.

He doesn't know shit about this ship.

We changed everything.

I mean, are Kirk and Rand going to like beam that Vulcan before and Decker from up here?

And like in the middle, they're just going to splatter against each other and die?

What's the plan for them?

That's not the kind of entity that Decker wants to merge with.

No, definitely not.

So we go down to main engineering.

What a beautiful warp core on this ship.

It goes all the way down, doesn't it?

It really does.

And initially, Decker is very happy to see Admiral Kirk.

Oh, we're getting a top-brass handoff.

He's got the confidence of a man who is captain of this ship and is proud to be.

He gets the double kick in the nuts that he is being demoted and he's going to be exo to Jim Kirk for this mission because Jim Kirk has five, count him, five years of experience.

It's so much more than Decker's got.

Like, I know that it was a five-year mission in the original series, but I don't think you need to stick to that for like continuity in the feature film.

So, there has been a terrible accident that has occurred to Decker's ambition in this scene.

It is positively melted into just a puddle.

And in the very next scene, in the transporter room, something very similarly happens to this Vulcan science officer that we met down in San Francisco.

Poor guy.

They, you know, are trying the transporters, which we were told were not working previously by Scotty.

And two people are coming up, and

they're not quite sure they've got the signal.

Kirk, like, elbows Rand out of the way so that he can use his much better transporter skills, presumably, to try and save them.

How does this happen, Ben?

I used to work at a giant airplane company that made giant airplanes.

And if you were going to go work on the elevator in the back and I was on the flight deck, there's no way I'm operating the controls for the elevator because there's a big tagged out thing on it.

Yeah.

What are they doing maintenance on the transporter while transporting?

And the comms are so fucked up that they can't warn the people in the transporter room to stop what they're doing?

I mean, in their defense, if you were able to use the comms, you could probably barely hear what they were saying over the screams of the people being transported and then lost.

This is the worst part, isn't it?

It's the sound.

Yeah, do you think that they made like sculptures of the like warped bodies that we see for a moment?

Like, I was wondering how they did that effect, if that's all an optical process, or if somebody actually had to, like, get some paper-mâché and make, like, a deformed humanoid shape.

You'd have to ask Garrett Wong.

He's probably got that prop in his collection.

I bet he does.

He was stating the obvious again.

This isn't Rand's fault, is it?

No.

I think the buck has to stop with Scotty on this one.

I think it's Scotty's fault.

I think so too.

Yeah.

This is a management issue.

Yeah.

Anyways, the science officer, that Vulcan guy, is one of the two people that got turned into cat food.

And it sounds like it was really gruesome on the other end.

What we got back didn't live long, fortunately.

The shape that we see in the transporter room really does a lot of storytelling here.

That it is semi-humanoid looking

is gross.

And that's all you need to see.

You don't need to see the puddle.

Kirk wanted a Vulcan for his science officer specifically.

He was doing a race not blind hiring practice here.

And unfortunately, that guy was the last science officer of Vulcan Heritage in Starfleet.

So Decker's got that job too now.

It's so crazy that the sequence of scenes goes, Kirk tells Decker he's not captain anymore.

Person dies in the transporter room.

Kirk tells Decker he's now the science officer.

Like, he gets two demotions, basically, in back-to-back scenes.

If I were Decker, I would stay away from Kirk the rest of the mission.

Every time I see that guy, he's fucking kicking me in the junk.

Yeah.

I'm afraid you're going to have to double the science officer.

If that wasn't bad enough, we go to the rec deck where Kirk has assembled the entire crew so that they can watch some previous Star Trek.

Another iconic Star Trek film thing to do is show some earlier stuff from a previous film, ideally, but in the case of the first film, just earlier in that film.

Ask anyone who teaches executives how to give presentations to their employees, and they'll tell you, an attention-getting introduction is what you want.

And this destruction of three Klingon ships absolutely qualifies.

The Epsilon 9 space station face times right after

he shows these people the blue cloud destroying the Klingon ships.

And they start talking about how big the object is and how it's moving right toward Earth.

And they try to scan it because it is coming right past the Epsilon 9 station.

And scanning it seems to anger the cloud.

And it shoots something at them.

And they suffer the same fate as the Klingons,

except for the FaceTime camera seems to be the one thing that the cloud didn't collect.

Because that's still broadcasting.

It's like a Blair Witch situation, like where the camera drops and then you just see the Klingon ship facing a wall.

And then that's the end.

Yeah, this is a found footage Star Trek film.

I got to ask you here, because we see this a bunch for the entire movie, what is the deal with people being outside in spacesuits all the time and in extremely dangerous situations where you know this thing is headed your way to Epsilon 9?

Why are you out in a spacesuit?

Hunker down.

Yeah.

That is the most optimistic person in science fiction movie history is the guy in the spacesuit outside of Upsilon 9 as Vidra approaches.

I'm going to go,

you know, wrench on a couple of antennas.

And they're like, you know, you know, we've been ordered to shelter in place while this blue cloud passes by, right?

And he's like, yeah, but come on, don't bullshit a bullshitter.

You know who never calls in sick?

That guy.

He always goes to work.

We learn that we're getting a new navigator a a Deltan named Ilya

and she reports for duty this is a the beautiful Perseus Cambata

who

you know arrives on the bridge and immediately announces that she took an oath of celibacy at Captain Kirk because she can just like pick up on all of his vibes

Just imagine it's new person day at work and that person after being introduced to the group, is like, just letting everyone know, I am not having sex with anyone.

Send a memo to everyone at the company.

I will not be fucking them.

I know that it's like

the polar opposite of sexual harassment in the workplace, but it also felt like a weird HR situation, you know?

Speaking of weird vibes, remember, Ben, that moments ago, Janice Rand was involved in a terrible workplace accident in the transporter room.

She has bounced back big time because

the situation regarding Dr.

McCoy being the last to arrive to the ship, you look at her in this scene.

She's got a sense of humor about this.

She was just involved in an extremely gruesome death moments ago, and she's fine.

Permission to come aboard.

Permission granted, sir.

She is such an aspirational character in that way.

Like, do you know how much guilt I would carry with me for the rest of my life to have been at the controls of a transporter when somebody turned into cat food?

You would never beam anyone again.

That would be it.

I would never beam anyone again.

I would never sleep again.

Not Janice Rand.

That shit rolled off her back like water off a duck's.

You would spend the rest of your life beaming yourself from place to place

in order to somehow make it even and at some point statistically.

Like,

please let it be my time.

I know it's like a one in ten million chance, but if I just keep doing it, my number's gonna come up.

It's like transporter cutting.

That's what you get into afterwards.

Like, you can find the beam, just a molecule tighter around your body every time you go.

I remember reading about your missions when I was in grade school.

Oh, really?

James G.

Kirka Bleve, as a dust enterprise.

Hell of a thing to interrupt Dr.

McCoy during keyboard practice for his 70s funk band that he plays for.

He does not want to be on the ship, but this is a great moment of Kirk-McCoy friendship that you see depicted right here.

Kirk tells him he needs him,

and it works.

Damn it bones.

I need you.

Badly.

He's very annoyed at the way Kirk has done this, but he also loves Kirk so much that it's like all water under the bridge by the time they're walking down the hallway together.

It's a moment.

It's a great moment.

Maybe my favorite moment of this movie.

So Enterprise leaves Space Dock, which gives us a second bite of that apple that we got with the first fly around.

And Ben, I'm not too full for this.

Like, I wanted this entire sequence again.

It is a movie that they spent so much money money on, and it is all up on the screen.

These still look great.

Like, so many perspectives of the ship, so many, like, amazing camera angles, given the complexity of the model and the fact that, like, different parts of it are moving relative to each other.

Like, just absolutely top shelf stuff.

And we get a little captain's log here.

Like, Captain Kirk, as he is referred to for the rest of the film, like, I guess he also took a like temporary demotion to captain.

Like, I was wondering about that with Decker.

I was like, why do you also have to bust him down to commander?

It's not like he did something.

He knows what he did.

You're still ahead of him in the rank structure.

But

I guess that's how it works in naval rank stuff.

I hadn't seen this movie in a long, long time, so I had forgotten the sequence that follows.

They've got to hurry up and go, get out to this thing.

And that involves firing up the warp drive inside the solar system this is a risky proposition especially for a ship that has more or less gone untested in all of these systems right it's never gone to warp essentially and uh they want to run simulations and make sure everything is as it should be before they do this decker is stressed about it scotia is stressed about it but kirk is really insistent like this is too big of an emergency to keep fumble fucking around with the testing of it.

We've got to go.

Of all the dangers I thought might occur were you to go to Warp with an untested design, I didn't think the creation of a wormhole that would then suck asteroids into your path would be one of the issues.

But evidently, like,

everyone's very aware about what has happened here and what they need to do to get out.

I like a wormhole that is weird to be in, you know?

Like, there are wormholes in Star Trek that are just just space tunnels that get you somewhere faster, but there are wormholes in Star Trek that you talk to

weird, you know, aliens that are represented by all of your friends and coworkers.

And there are weird wormholes that, you know, put weird chromatic aberrations all over the screen and everybody's talking in slow-mo.

I think this scene is secretly really important.

in the film and that's because if you're showing a Star Trek movie in a movie theater to a general audience, to people not familiar with the ship or the characters of the story or whatever, you're probably wondering what sort of weapons this ship might have.

And all this scene is, is target practice for an asteroid.

And it conveys that information to an audience.

This is a ship with weapons.

Here's how they look.

Here's what happens when you shoot them.

Good to know because we're about to roll up on Vega a little later and we want to know what the ship's capable of if it had to attack.

Yeah.

It's also really important because it establishes that Scotty and the entire engineering team have changed into their role of Polish sausage uniforms.

Yeah.

And that's just a delightful event in the film.

Do you want to be helmet guy in engineering or don't you?

Because there's one conspicuous guy wearing a helmet in there.

Yeah, it seems like everybody that goes like down that corridor has to put on the helmet because I guess it's so radioactive there.

I think when you're helmet guy, guy, you stay helmet guy because you don't want to share helmets in engineering.

That's just sneaky.

Come on.

Are you telling me you want to smell what Scotty had on his breath?

No.

No way.

He didn't leave his post to eat lunch.

He had his desk.

He had a sad desk salad in his helmet.

Oh, poor laddie.

He just used the dressing packet that came with the salad.

So, turns out it was the engines that created the wormhole.

And before they go to warp again, Scotty's going to need some time to dial in some tweaks.

Yeah, and there's also an important moment here where Kirk wants to phaser that asteroid, and Decker countermans the order and has them torpedo it instead, which is the thing that drops them out of warp and out of the wormhole.

Like, the ship is not messed up at all, but it was a scary moment.

Like they almost didn't make it to the mission.

Later in Kirk's quarters, he's got to challenge Decker on what the hell was up with this countermanding of the order.

And McCoy's brought into witness.

I think this is smart.

Whenever a manager and a subordinate get into it, there's got to be a witness, and that's what McCoy's there to do.

Yeah, McCoy is kind of shop chief in it for Decker.

The explanation kind of makes sense, right?

Decker's like, look, man, I've been the captain here more recently and a little bit longer than you, and I'm familiar with sort of the weird quirks of the refit ship, and you could have killed us all.

And this is very persuasive to Kirk.

The Phasers go through the warp core now, and Kirk is like, oh, well, jolly good.

That's exactly why I explained I needed you as XO and didn't just like leave you at Earth, which I also could have done.

And then Decker, the cheek on this guy, to say, sorry if I embarrassed you, Captain.

Holy shit.

Pretty great.

I was 100% Team Decker after he had the guts to do that.

I mean, it made me like Kirk even more here, too, because Kirk had every reason to go, What the fuck?

Hey, hey, guess who's not even exo or science officer anymore?

You're

why don't you go clean bedpans in Six Bay?

Yeah,

Decker leaves and meets up with Ailea in the hallway, and they talk about how hard it was to depart from each other the last time he saw each other because he spent some time on her planet, and they parted ways without ever saying goodbye to each other.

So the vibes are a little bit star-crossed between them.

It is so clear that the first time

Will Riker sees Deanna Troy again in Star Trek The Next Generation is basically a copy of this scene.

It totally is.

Right on down to Will being the first name of this character.

Yeah.

And the sexual presence of the woman involved in these scenes.

It feels almost exactly the same.

Yeah, it's especially interesting in the context of her coming aboard and saying the thing about the

vow of celibacy, because it's like, it doesn't feel like that between these two.

No, no, there's definitely still some heat there.

You could tell.

Who are you?

Who do you think I am?

Don't tell me.

You're from outer space.

No, I'm from Iowa.

I only work in copper space.

Back in Kirk's quarters, Bones kind of gives it to him straight and accuses Captain Kirk of being kind of an adrenaline junkie who just used his position of power to bully his way back onto the Enterprise so he could do dangerous shit again.

It's an obsession.

I thought that was such an interesting moment because when Kirk walks into this movie, he is playing the role of Admiral so capably

that I kind of needed this moment to make me realize like, oh, that was like a mask he was wearing and he has like completely bullied his way back here.

And it's an interesting bit of conflict for this character.

It's like, it's not a likable thing about Kirk that he would do this.

The movie makes a choice by not showing us the scene where Kirk has fought to get the Enterprise back with command and make this happen.

Was there any part of you that was suspicious about whether or not that actually happened?

And if Kirk was their rogue?

I didn't go there, but I very much understood the meeting that he was going to have right after he met up with the new science officer to be the one where he was going to get command back.

And he was predicting that that was going to be a three-minute conversation.

Yeah.

So it kind of feels like he just told them that that's what he was doing, and like nobody called his bluff.

So kind of convenient that that guy and the other guy died in that moment.

Kind of saved him the effort, huh?

You're saying that the other person in the transporter was the admiral that was coming up to tell Kirk, like, actually,

no deal, you're going to stay here and we're going to let Decker take this one.

That's my hypothesis.

That's what I'm asking.

Oh, man.

I love this theory.

Yeah.

Well, a grade one priority Federation shuttle wants to come up alongside the ship, and Kirk gives the OK for this.

This shuttle is the Surak, and it is basically a Nike shoebox on top of a couple of nacelles that is warped out to meet them.

Didn't it remind you of Beverly Crusher's ship in Star Trek Picard, the way it could kind of load a cassette

into another ship for boarding and so forth?

Yeah, I liked it.

Yeah, and I really liked the shot of it like doing a flip around so that it could line its docking ring up with the Enterprises.

Pretty showy there, Spock.

And I didn't think you had to do that.

It is the Denzel Washington checking his watch in Crimson Tide of docking maneuvers.

You ever watch Dodge Ring?

It's Spock, and he goes right to the bridge, and

he immediately fires Decker as science officer.

Commander.

If I may.

Oh.

How bad has the last 40 minutes been for Decker?

Like,

compared to his entire life?

It's incredible.

The only way this movie isn't going to feel like a giant insult to Decker is if he can have the most amazing sex in human history at some point later in the film.

That's how you make it up to him.

Yeah.

But we'll see if he gets to.

Yeah, Spock essentially elbows Decker out of his chair and offers his services as the science officer.

Chapel and Bones come up to the bridge to say hi to him and

express some nicety.

And everybody's expressing niceties, but Spock is

been deep in the Vulcan vibes for way too long to even acknowledge that any of that is being sent his way.

Yeah.

Weren't you kind of hoping for the hairstyle and everything from Vulcan?

Keep the hairstyle.

Yeah.

I mean, he's kind of groomed himself for Enterprise Duty between when we saw him on Vulcan and his arrival here.

I do remember when Uhura said that a shuttle was approaching at High Warp, she said it's got two life signs aboard, a Vulcan and a Boleon.

Yeah.

When that boarding vessel does the flip, you can see a bunch of clippings fly out.

Just a little off the top.

Yeah, when the door opens, you see that all there is in there is a chair and a mirror with a bunch of light bulbs surrounding it.

You know what's crazy?

Later on toward the end of the movie, a bunch of characters are out on the saucer, like out in space.

And you can see Dr.

McCoy kind of doing a...

Because he got some clippings in his hand.

He got some clippings.

He had a take five and he dropped it on the hall and he picked it up thinking like it's been in space.

There's not going to be, it's, you know, five second rule, whatever.

Yeah.

Anyways, Spock gets with Scotty and has basically fixed the warp drive in just a few minutes by doing some calculations that nobody else could do.

And Scotty doesn't feel bad about that.

There's no shot at Scotty going like, what the fuck?

This guy.

Like Rand, Scotty has completely let the pulpification of a few high-ranking Starfleet officers pass him by.

He is not preoccupied with that.

He's not preoccupied with his failure to get the warp engines online in time for what Admiral Kirk wanted.

They go to warp, and Adam,

they go to Warp Factor Savo!

It's a great moment.

Bring it on!

Look at how fast they're going now.

So good.

We're now almost an hour into the movie, and it's strange how everything so far has been kind of maintenance or interpersonal, you know?

Yeah, like the mission is go out to this thing and figure it out.

But we aren't even close to that at this point in the movie.

We have some more time to catch up with characters.

This is why kids don't like Star Trek the motion picture, isn't it?

Yeah.

Because nothing's really happened for kids up until this point.

It really hasn't, but I loved this stuff.

Like when they met up in the veterinary waiting room area of the ship to

talk to Spock.

He's like, yeah, like there are these perfect thought patterns that I've been like picking up that are emanating from the intruder, which is what they've taken to calling this blue cloud.

They have a whole conversation about like what motivated Spock to unretire from Starfleet and come back.

And when he leaves, Bones is like, the guy is like picking up alien signals from the cosmos.

Like, can we trust him?

It's a real who side is he on on kind of moment, right?

Because it's clear Spock isn't there to work in Starfleet again.

Spock is there to hitch a ride.

Much like his brother, he just needs a starship to meet up with the intelligence that he's been in contact with.

Yeah.

But Kirk trusts Spock implicitly.

And

I loved Bones' retort to this.

Like, how can any of us trust any of us?

How can we trust ourselves?

Like, it's such a good point.

Like, if that's got Spock under its influence, what is protecting any of us?

It's such a great question that Kirk turns Enterprise around, they head back to Space Doc, and that's the end of the movie.

Did you like Star Trek the motion picture, Adam?

It was mostly exposition, but I did like it a lot.

So we're three minutes to the cloud now, and we're back on the bridge.

And the cloud scans them, but based on Epsilon 9's negative experience with scanning the cloud kirk orders them not to scan back orders them not to arm webs not even like putting up shields because that could be interpreted as a hostile act this is like putty flying commercial without reading a book or watching a movie or anything this is raw dog first contact to just like be there and do nothing yeah just looking at it

it's amazing they have like their friendship messages that they keep broadcasting at it, but it doesn't seem to be picking those up or whatever.

Spock thinks there's something in there inside that cloud.

Like absent any other idea.

Sure.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Let's go toward the middle is the idea.

So

they're going to head in.

Decker does not like this idea.

And Shatner won me back over for Kirk in this moment because Decker is kind of like saying, like, what the fuck are we doing?

We don't know what's in there.

Like, let's not go in.

And And he's like, got his finger up and he's getting ready to just like rip Decker a new one.

And Decker explains, It is my duty to both please that booty and also offer alternative courses of action as your XO.

And Kirk is like, Yep, you're right.

Like, I love his take there.

There are moments in this movie when Spock appears to be possessed by this thing and

is either animated by it or speaks for it.

And this is a moment where Spock is like, you know, this thing is wondering why we haven't replied to its message.

And maybe they're going to reply to an energy weapon that gets shot at Enterprise shortly after this.

And this energy weapon targets Chekhov's hand directly.

Yeah, this is, it looks like the same kind of lightning bolt that overtook the Klingon ships, but when it hits the ship's shields, it turns green.

And we see some lightning around the warp core, and then specifically around Chekhov's instruments, and it fries his hand.

Dr.

Chappell comes to the bridge after the lightning has dissipated to look after him, but it is, in fact, Aaliyah who takes away Chekhov's pain.

It kind of feels like Chappell doesn't have to squirt the mist onto Chekhov's hand.

She just kind of does it to make it clear that she, too, has first responder experience.

She too is useful in emergencies.

Can't get rid of her that easy.

I thought it was a little nasty that she had her hand in the line of fire for that, though.

Oh, she got a little bit of the missed herself.

She got some missed herself.

Yeah.

Can't think of a medical professional doing it that way.

The lyrics are very simple.

It's

row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

So it took shooting up Chekhov's hand to recognize that the deal with communicating with this thing is that it's coming in so loud and so fast that they couldn't really detect it on Enterprise.

And Spock is like, look, why don't we just adjust our own communication at that speed and power to send a reply their way?

That makes sense, right?

Except, here comes another energy weapon.

Are they going to get a reply out in time?

Oh boy, they barely do.

This thing is,

I don't know, 100 yards from the ship, less than that.

I don't really have a sense of how far that is, but yeah, it's really close.

And yeah, the cloud pulls its punch right at the last minute as Spock hits transmit.

And he's talking about how like whatever mind is inside this thing does not get that it's communicating with somebody intelligent.

Like it's like completely confused about what we are.

And Spock senses no emotion, pure, unstepped-on, Bolivian shale logic.

The good stuff.

He loves it.

He wants it.

He's had a taste and he craves it now.

Yeah.

He's like rubbing the logic on his gums.

It's really good stuff.

So, yeah, they go into the cloud.

It's very weird in there.

We got a great, you know, 70s movie.

flying through sci-fi strangeness sequence.

These sequences really are beautiful beautiful the entire time.

And so many like great shots of the actors reacting to it.

Like,

I don't know

how you do this as an actor.

Like this seems harder than like crying on cue to me, like giving a genuine sense of reverie and awe.

And like every single one of them gets their close-up.

I don't know, Ben.

I would say when we do a show a week on our hit Star Trek podcast, Greatest Generation, you're able to act as though you're interested in what I'm saying and curious about that.

And I always believe.

Such is your performance.

I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.

Yeah, exactly.

When we were cruising through the inside of this thing,

it looks built and not alive, right?

Yeah.

It's so symmetrical that I never at any point until the end thought it may be a living thing.

They are so deep now that when they try and broadcast back out to Starfleet to let them know what's going on, they can't get any transmissions out.

And yeah, they come to something that is structural and Kirk wants to get a really good look.

So he orders them to like

go in like super duper close and then kind of fly away from it while keeping the same speed as it so that they can just kind of like get a load of it from a bunch of different scales.

How many flybys does this movie have?

I think four?

I mean, it's kind of all flyby in a way.

Yeah.

It's like flyby intermixed with scenes of characters like having long conversations with each other.

Yeah.

It looks very sinister, right?

Like, it doesn't have any of the like green signifiers of later Trek that would lead us to believe that it's just an evil alien.

Well, I mean, Blaster Beam is the sound of sinister malevolence, you know?

Yeah.

It's so freaking weird, too.

Like, there are so many different shots of this thing that that as we fly over it and show the ship at scale.

Like there's there's shots from over top that show how tiny the Enterprise is compared to this thing that are just amazing.

So Enterprise is boarded by some kind of energy probe and it is loud and it is bright and at the moment it doesn't seem like it's a threat to anyone except

that it's taking control of a computer station in a way that they're not really comfortable with.

And some attempts are made to prevent this from happening.

And it takes Spock to get in there and like drop the two-handed axe handle punch onto the computer station to sort of shut it off.

And he gets shocked for it.

I love that this movie is...

canonically using that as a as a Star Trek fight move.

Yeah.

A little bit sad that it was Spock and not Kirk doing it.

Sure.

And sad to see him get rocketed across the bridge by some lightning.

this probe trains itself on ilia

and she disappears along with the probe itself what a shocking moment because it's like it's just all sound and fury and then sudden silence yeah when she's gone and

they're really shocked i mean it's not the first time somebody has vanished to their death right before them today

so it's not like gonna bother them that much but ran's on the bridge watching this and she's kind of shrugs like,

huh,

that was really kind of nothing just then.

She just like checks her nails, you know.

Decker uses this moment to underline that he is giving, you know, reasonable counsel to Kirk.

He's like, this is kind of why I was saying we probably shouldn't go in here.

I think this was a reckless move.

Hey, can it, Decker, before I make you Ensign?

If he didn't want to go in,

he's not going to like what this tractor beam does to them because it starts sucking them even further into this alien environment.

At some point, like bones wandered off the bridge in a way that felt like it was significant to me, and then he wanders back on at this moment, and I was like, where did he go?

I think his face is probably really itchy from shaving off that beard, and he's probably reapplying putting some like aloe with vitamin E on.

I think so.

Now's a good time to do that yeah i mean you missed a pretty trippy light show and the beard that he had suggested to me that he might be somebody that would take great interest in a trippy light show yeahura's getting ready to launch a like sort of what sounds like a black box flight recorder that would go back out to starfleet and they're talking about doing this but now that they're in the tractor beam they can't even launch that because it would be just as stuck as they are yeah like the sensation we're getting is we're going through doors that are closing behind us yeah and there are more doors ahead and there are more doors behind that are closing like deeper and deeper we're going into this thing as if it's like a nesting bank vault

yeah and no ability to warn anybody on the outside as that becomes more and more true and Decker is like, we should shoot the thing that's sucking us in.

Like we should shoot the beam and go.

And Spock is like, guy, like, we've already established that this thing is so much more powerful than all of the starships.

Like, if we start shooting, it's going to get mad at us and we will be eliminated immediately.

Who do you think that detail is for?

The idea of not being able to communicate outside the thing for help?

Because in Star Trek and on Kirk's Enterprise, We're not really doing that ever, are we?

Like the call for help, I mean?

Help is never coming because the Enterprise is help, you know?

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, so it felt a little bit strange to me to hear that a couple of times during this film, that that is a concern.

Yeah, they must be writing that for the general audience.

I think so too.

The first timers in the audience understand that.

So we've got a shower alert, Ben, which gets its own warning sound, its own alert on a bridge panel.

And Kirk and Spot go to investigate inside some Rando's quarters.

And inside they find a person that looks like Aylia in a shower.

And she tells them that Veger has tasked her to observe and record what's going on aboard Enterprise.

All of this while wearing a high-necked robe with a very high

hem.

Yeah.

Veger has some ideas about fashion.

Yeah.

See, the thing is, this isn't Ailea.

It's a robot made to look like her.

I don't even know why the scientists make them.

The real Ailea is dead.

That unit has ceased to function.

And I use the term unit because she started to refer to Kirk as the Kirk unit and people as carbon units that are infesting the Enterprise.

The guy on the bridge in that first scene holding the thing up above his head, that was absolute unit.

Right, exactly.

Veger is here looking for the creator.

And Veger is

that which seeks the creator.

That's kind of as much biographical information as we're given about Veger Kirk hangs his head here he's like god damn it really like we've come all this way and it's like door-to-door religious proselytizers

that's what this is

ah

creator just leave your pamphlet yeah okay iile in an effort to cheer him up make him feel a little bit better says while the the unit that this robot is based on has ceased to function technically that means this unit has not taken a vow of celibacy and

perks right back up.

Oh, yeah, he's in.

The mission of Vega is to find the creator and join with them.

And that's sort of the loop that this character is playing.

But first, she must join with an examination in Sixspace.

She's put up on a bio bed, and it turns out she's full of computers and sensors and feelings for Decker.

That's interesting.

So out in the waiting room, Kirk and Spock wonder whether this person that looks like Aylia has feelings for Decker that they could exploit somehow.

Yeah, they like lock the door behind them and are like, well, yeah, so...

Something happened.

Like her voice sounded less robo when she talked to you, Decker.

So you're going to be like her chaperone and see if you can get under her skin and

get some information out of her when she Kool-Aid man's through the wall and orders them to like give her a tour of the ship, basically.

I have recorded enough here.

You will now assist me further.

Like any tour of the ship, you got to begin in the rec room.

Right?

So that's where they go first.

And Decker does that thing where he tours the new apartment complex and he's like, yeah, so there's like a pool table and foos ball.

That's a bean bag.

Yeah, yeah, and that lamp.

And like, you can rent this whole area if you want.

If you're just like two weeks out, you can pretty much get whatever date you want.

If you want to have like a bunch of friends over, there's like a screening room area.

Yeah.

You know, the HDMI cable tends to be broken, but they say that they're going to get a new one next month.

I just think this would be a great place to find the creator and join with them.

That's what we could call the party even yeah i thought it was amazing that girk and bones took this opportunity to just go kind of like sit and have a drink and watch this all on cctv

as if this is something that they would do under a situation that wasn't an emergency And they're like given the play-by-play, they're like, oh, good idea.

Like he's, he's appealing to like her memories of him and

all that.

Something kind of creepy happens during their conversation.

Decker and Aileya are talking, and she's like, you know, once I finish up this little observation I'm doing, I'm just going to convert all of you into data and blurp you back to the ship where I'm from.

And Decker's like, whoa.

I mean, I thought we were going to play foosball

or something.

You know, when you transform carbon units into data, that means death.

And that is something we would not prefer speaking for all of the carbon units anyway were you speaking metaphorically like were you saying you were gonna transform all of the carbon in my dick into data an interesting thing happens here decorous like you know in doing your studies of all the carbon life forms maybe you want to turn your magnifying glass onto yourself a little bit because i think i got a feeling inside of you

you might have something pretty special why don't you see if you have some feelings in there that may be useful to your investigation?

And so they take this tour into her quarters.

And there they're met by a few other folks who like have her trinkets.

Like, hey, here's this headband you used to really like.

And you remember me, don't you?

It's a very quick scene, but it actually expedites a ton of story here.

What we learn from it is that, like, Ailea is the form that the probe has taken, but there really is Aylia stuff in this probe.

Because like Veger made the probe off the Ailea model and copied her like so accurately that like her memories and feelings are in there.

I love this scene because it also serves as a distraction to everyone on the Enterprise that is useful for Spock because he in the interim has put on a spacesuit and left Enterprise and he's just floating out there.

The reveal that the guy that he neck pinched in the spacesuit room had a rockin' 70s porn stash

when he turned around.

Oh, that delighted me.

Yeah, so Spock is getting ready to like fire himself through this pulsating butthole that's right in front of the ship.

It's just all sphincters in here, isn't it?

It really is.

Yeah, it's it

is puckering.

And

Kirk finds out about the fact that Spock is outside and decides to let him go.

And Spock nails the timing of this and slips through the Sphincter

into

a room that is full of planets.

And he's describing these as being projections.

So I guess they're like holographic representations.

And for some reason, he ditches his backpack

and keeps flying through.

And he's like making a vocal record of this for Captain Kirk because he does not expect to come back.

And he is describing everything he's seeing and this like technology planet that he flies over.

He has to expect to come back.

Why else would he mind meld with it?

I guess he would do that anyway.

Yeah.

He would do it before death for his own information.

Yeah, and it's being recorded in the suit, I guess.

Like

if he can come back from the mind meld and describe it.

Because he mind-melds like a giant Aileya and specifically the sensor that's been installed in her clavicle and

this thing rockets him back out through the butthole and into the waiting arms of Kirk who has gone outside the ship in his own spacesuit to just wait for his buddy

what a catch

amazing yeah the catch you could call it you really could yeah so aboard enterprise in six space Spock is down for the count in a a biobed, except he's also laughing for some reason.

And that's because he knows that Veger is a living machine, and it's from a planet of living machines.

It is infinitely smart, but it has no feeling.

And without feelings and hopes and emotions, it has no answers to the questions that still remain for it.

It is on a journey very much like the one that Spock was on, which is that it's purified its logic, but it it has been left cold.

It's like it's asking the big questions now, the like unanswerable cosmic questions of what am I here for?

And without any

non-logical part of it, it can't comprehend like the human.

And Spock illustrates this point by just like taking Kirk's hand.

And I thought that that was such a beautiful illustration that they came up with for this.

Vega is sort of opposite greatest generation because we are like all emotion and no intelligence.

Yeah.

I think people listening have figured that out by now.

Yeah.

So Vega's getting close to Earth now, Ben, and the cloud that surrounds it has dissipated.

And so like when we get the wide shot of Earth, we're seeing a science fictiony ship in orbit now.

It looks very different than it did before.

It's a really interesting model.

I really liked it.

It looks like something that could take a lot of hair out of a shower drain.

Were you to shove it all the way in there?

Give it a twist, pull it out.

Yeah, or if you're into sounding, it could be like kind of like the varsity move, you know.

Jesus,

I am not.

It starts transmitting binary code on radio, and

it kind of gets mad when

nobody answers its message, and it starts shooting.

The first shot renders all of Earth's planetary defenses inoperable.

And the second is a bunch of balls that are kind of like getting ready to wring the Earth and rid it of all life.

And Ailea starts talking about the carbon unit infestation that will be cleansed from the Creator's planet.

I mean, this is really advanced stuff.

Vidra doesn't need to tent Earth.

Vidra can just put these balls up outside and then the infestation's over.

Right.

And that was a stipulation in the bill of sale, so it's got to do it, you know?

Yeah.

Spock suggests in this moment treating Ailea slash Vegra like a child, which is an unfortunate thing to suggest when there's a Stephen Collins in the room.

This is where the movie pivots, right?

Up until this point, Kirk and company are trying to placate this powerful being that they don't quite understand.

And now Kirk stops playing ball and

goes like, yeah, if you want to,

if you want to link with the creator or whatever, we know exactly how you need to do that, but we're not telling.

And actually, we're just going to leave you alone on this dark bridge.

That's scary, right?

And everyone starts clearing.

I feel like that's a big part of this moment.

Like, in treating her like a child, the leaving her alone is also a big part of that projection.

Yeah, it made me wonder, and I didn't look this up and I probably should have, how when Rod Roddenberry was born, because this is a very like, what the fuck are we going to do about this toddler moment?

And like that idea of it knows that it wants something, but it doesn't know what it wants.

It hit real hard for me, let me say.

I love that also like they are ordered to clear the bridge, but they really just don't quite make it.

So they all get to like hang out in the elevators watching as Kirk kind of negotiates this situation where he's like, I will tell you why the creator hasn't responded, but you got to let me talk directly to Veger.

Ailey agrees with this sensibility and Enterprise is tracked her deeper into the center of the ship.

And this seems like a great opportunity, Ben, to prepare Starfleet Order.

2005, the happy duty of all starship captains is to set auto-destruct of their ship.

Yeah.

Having seen other movies where they actually go through all the rigmarole of setting up auto-destruct, this seemed easier.

It sure did.

I don't think there's a second key involved.

N-T-T-1-7-4-1-0 Bloody A B

C4D by Mr.

Skype.

We're 18 minutes to Earth being eradicated by these things that Vega has put in orbit.

Kirk throws a bag of garbage at Spock's feet at his station.

And when he turns his chair around, there's that single tear rolling down his face.

Why do you cry, Spock?

Coming soon to podshop.biz, our smash hit internet merchandise store, is the don't mess with the science station t-shirt

and bumper sticker.

Let's be honest.

Spock is so sad.

He's crying because the recognition that a life is incomplete without things other than logic and knowledge hits pretty hard, huh?

Like maybe that colonar thing was the wrong tree for me to be barking up.

So they're getting closer and closer, and now a bubble of gravity and oxygen forms around the ship.

and they make it to the very center of this ship and now Ailea really wants the carbon units to make with the information.

So they're going to go out on to the hull of the ship and walk across a bridge to go meet with Veger directly.

Yeah.

And Decker gets himself attached to the away team for this.

Nothing is made of that first step off of Enterprise into

an oxygen bubble that surrounds it.

But you know, there's got to be a moment there where it's like, ah,

we don't have a red shirt with us to do this first.

Hey, Decker, you go first.

All right.

Make sure that bridge is as solid as it looks.

Also, like, why did we put on these dumpy ass suede pullovers for this?

I mean, you need some protection from the vacuum of space, I guess.

But that looks like the kind of protection you wear in like a glass blowing shop, you know?

Maybe that's the expectation.

They're like, we're going to give give up our Starfleet ways and follow in the footsteps of Dale Chihuly.

Yeah.

Now that we're at the center of this mystery.

It's Kirk, it's Spock, and it's Hulehauser.

Wow.

It's almost too stupid to comprehend.

This is amazing.

You can't know for sure if it's Huel because his back is always turned to the camera, but like the voice is unmistakable.

How hot is that glass?

Wow.

So it turns out that Veger is the Voyager 6 probe NASA sent out in the 20th century.

And they were talking about all of this stuff in front of Ilea.

They solve the mystery, you know, when Kirk rubs the dirt off of the panel.

And I do remember this being a genuinely delightful moment to me the first time I watched this movie because I had no idea what was coming, who was going to be

the mystery guest at the center of this.

But that detail is insane, though, Ben.

Why didn't these aliens clean their Voyager?

They're supposed to be hyper-intelligent.

I mean, they never considered dirt.

Look at their whole planet.

It's a fucking dump.

No water?

I thought that, like, Aileya keeps asking for the information.

It's like, that's the information.

This is the Voyager probe from NASA.

Like,

but.

Yeah, Ailey isn't just a child.

Aileya is a dumb child.

She's demanding that they explain it to her.

So they, like, re-explain the thing that they just talked through.

That's for the audience, right?

Yeah.

She does not look thrilled to hear this.

There's a great split diopter shot of her kind of like looking away from Kirk and Spock as this is re-established.

And there are like these weird warpy sounds coming from all around them.

And Kirk orders Uhura to like go through the ship's Wikipedia entry on Voyager 6 and find out what the binary radio code to like transmit all of the information you've gathered is because nobody on Earth is like still working for NASA, so nobody knew what to send it.

But presumably this code will just say, okay, download all the information you brought back.

That was your mission.

And that will satisfy Veger.

But that does not satisfy Veger.

Yeah, Decker knows how the code goes, but it doesn't work.

They blew it.

Yeah.

Time is running out here, Ben.

It's clear that what is necessary is a personal meeting between Veger and the creator, because Veger needs to evolve.

evolve into humanity, which is a weird concept, right?

This thing seems futuristic and mega-smart in a way that seems like humanity and any sort of merging with humanity would be kind of a downgrade.

It's like, I don't just need to meet God.

I need to fuck God and reproduce with.

It's basically what Veger has in mind.

Camera whip pants to Decker.

He's like, I volunteer.

And so without asking permission or anything, he wants this bald baddie bad.

He really does.

He gets on in there, communicates the last bit of the code, and it is a very windy process, the merging with Veger.

I feel like if he is less obscured by the effect, this would be laughable.

Yeah.

I think they do a great job obscuring him in the effect and the sparkles and the ghosts and stuff because his hair is standing eight inches off of his head.

And the fact that she is bald shaved,

like really highlights that when she steps into the column of come light with him.

Yeah.

This is, by the way, what I look like when I achieve sexual ecstasy.

Well, you have a lucky wife.

I sure do.

She's committed, right, to an asylum?

Yeah, she's...

She has a pretty effective restraining order in place.

I have to stay 500 yards away from her.

But we're still married happily.

So, yeah, Vega and Decker merge to become a being of pure energy.

And like the alien ship disappears from around them.

And I guess everybody like ran back across that bridge up the hull and back inside the ship because the Enterprise is all that's left behind.

How fast do you think?

you run once you make it back onto the hull and you and you notice things kind of dissolving around you i mean in a modern film they would have like barely escaped the expanding explosion of the being of pure energy.

Yeah.

And I kind of appreciated that they didn't even give us a glimpse of that, you know?

Yeah.

That's for you to imagine.

Yeah.

And Spock comments on how this is like the birth of a new species that, you know, takes all of the strengths of the technological and the logical and adds the human ability to leap beyond logic to that.

There's a little bit of business.

Somebody asks Kirk to like report status to Starfleet and he is initially going to list Ailea and Decker as casualties but then corrects that to list them as missing.

He's a little bit bumped here because he's like, in addition to the transporter accident folks who were like...

Does that count for us or does that count for the station?

Yeah, I mean, who gets credit for that is kind of what I want to know here because I actually am keeping track of the bodies.

My bodies, specifically.

And that kind of makes the end of the movie have this strange tone.

Another thing about it is, is they're like, okay, cool.

Well, we've got the Enterprise.

What should we do with it now?

And Kirk is like,

let's get a proper shakedown.

And Spock is like, I'll do you one better.

Take me back to Vulcan.

And so they go back to Vulcan.

And we're on the surface with Spock.

And he takes that necklace from the colinar, and he wings it up over his head and he throws it through this giant plate glass window.

Thank you.

And then the camera tilts down at all the shards and it says Star Trek the motion picture.

And that's how the movie ends.

It ends like a fucking discount tire company commercial.

So inspiring.

Ben, did you like this movie?

I expected to be a little bit bored today, and I thought we may be starting the pod crawl off with a dud.

And I'm here to tell you, I think that what we are starting the pod crawl off with is a stud.

I loved this movie.

Yeah.

I mean, like, we just did a tour way, way back in 2023 about Star Trek V, a movie that is like reviled among the faithful for its uneven tone and maybe rushed into production script.

And there's so many things that happen in this movie that sort of feel like the upside down of that movie.

Like in that movie, it's sort of them going on a journey to meet God.

And this is God is on a journey to meet them thinking that

they are God.

It's so Gene Roddenberry in so many ways from both the standpoint of the like

humanist message of it and the like surprising reveal that our our insatiable thirst to to explore space could like come back to to haunt us and also down to the iilea stepping out of the sonic shower in a skimpy little number all of a suddenness of it but all of those moments that are boring and slow and made me not want to watch this movie as a kid in this viewing just delighted me to no end.

And I thought the 4K restoration was really beautiful and well done.

And I thought all the performances were great.

I mean, I think that, like, if there's a main knock against this one for me, it's that

not much of the OG crew gets to do much.

Like, I wanted more Chekhov and Sulu and Uhura and Scotty.

Yeah.

I mean, their character arc in this movie is being grateful that Jim Kirk is captain of their ship again.

Like, that's it.

Yeah.

And like scolding other people for not being grateful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But what a ride.

And I'm so excited to get into the rest of the movies in this podcrawl.

What about you?

I agree totally with your observation about it being so similar to Star Trek V.

Ben, this felt to me like Star Trek V at 33 RPM instead of 45

because it's longer and slower.

Totally.

But structurally, it's so similar in that way.

It's so good looking.

I feel like I'm appreciating this movie at the right time in my life.

If I were to watch this as a kid, it would have bored me.

I would have turned it off.

I would have been someone who was against Star Trek the motion picture.

Instead, I was just neutral to it, neutral and unaware, until I was fully able to appreciate it.

And I feel like now is the time, since the release of the upgraded version, Now is the time to appreciate this movie.

And this is what I want to tell anyone out there who hasn't watched watched it since it first came out or watched a version of it pre-remaster.

Now is the time to see it again.

This is a great Star Trek movie that I really enjoyed watching.

It was big fun.

Well, this is the time in our show where we would normally go to a segment we call Priority One Messages, but because this is out of sequence for us and this is a special episode, instead we're going to cut to a conversation with the Seventh Rule podcast, who will be taking over the reins of the podcrawl and talking us through Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.

And when we come back from that, Ab and I are going to give our drunk Shimoda.

Incredible.

Don't know what that is?

Tune in to find out.

This is the Star Trek podcrawl.

We're going to be watching a lot of great Star Trek films with a lot of great Star Trek podcasts.

And the next podcast in the crawl is the Seventh Rule podcast, hosted by Ryan T.

Husk and Sirock Lofton, a man who needs no introduction.

Of course, he played Jake on Deep Space Nine.

We are in the presence of greatness.

Thank you so much for joining us, you two.

Yes, thank you for that intro.

I don't know about the presence of greatness, but

I was around some greatness.

So I can.

Oh, yeah.

We're in the presence of Jakeness.

Now, can I say that?

That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He did it.

Not insulting.

Right.

Yes.

That's perfect.

We're so excited to have you guys and so excited that you agreed to participate in the pod crawl.

Tell our fans, the friends of DeSoto, about the Seventh Rule podcast and what it's all about.

Well, Ryan, you want me to go?

I mean,

please.

I didn't know anything about podcasts to begin with.

I got a call from Aaron Eisenberg, the late, great,

my partner in crime, Mr.

Nog.

And out of nowhere, he says, hey, do you want to do a podcast?

And I'm like, what is a podcast?

Are those those audio things that you download?

And, you know, and really, is there, you know, what's the interest in that?

I didn't really know anything about podcasts.

And

not only that,

his idea was to watch Star Trek.

And I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about that either because I'm not the biggest.

Yeah, well,

well, you know, I'm on Star Trek, but I wasn't watching Star Trek.

And so.

Yeah, not every Star Trek actor is a fan.

Yeah.

And that was you in the beginning, huh?

That was me starting out.

Yeah.

I mean,

I was aware of certain elements, certain themes, like, you know,

you know, it's always in the landscape of the world.

So when you're flipping through channels or you're seeing commercials or just references in popular culture, you're going to see it.

But like sitting down and watching Star Trek from beginning to end was something that I never endeavored to do.

I felt I knew enough about it just by being close to it in its proximity and knowing the various people involved, but never really knowing the storyline.

So this was an opportunity to watch the show, which I was reluctant about, but the idea of getting together with Aaron and bringing back Naga Jake, I thought was like

too good of an opportunity to pass up.

So that was kind of the beginning of it.

And then Ryan held it down when it came to like putting it all together and just, you know, watching him be this amazing host and the knowledge that he has.

And he's really helped me have an understanding of the culture, of the community.

And the friendship and the network that we built through this podcast has been priceless because those friendships and those people are, you know, family now.

So

so many things came out of it that I had no idea that would happen.

That description's super familiar.

Like it's so important to have a good co-host and Ben knows exactly what that's like.

Excellent.

And also the community that's come out of

our show.

Like I think we very much feel the same vibes.

Like the people that love Star Trek and have connected with these podcasts are a really great group of people.

And we've been really lucky in the folks that we've gotten to know through this.

So I'm so excited that you guys got Wrath of Khan as your film.

We just finished.

Hey, good job by you.

Yeah.

We just finished reviewing Star Trek the Motion Picture, which a lot of people say is one of the worst Star Trek films, but we felt a little bit differently on that.

But a lot of people say Wrath of Khan is the best.

Do you want to tease your review of it a little bit before we toss the keys to to the pod crawl to you guys?

I would love to.

So first of all, Sirock and I have been doing this together originally, of course, with Aaron Eisenberg for over six years now.

We've done all of Deep Space Nine.

We're on season five of The Next Generation.

We've reviewed all of the new shows, Discovery, Strange Worlds, etc.

And now We're like, hey, what about our buddy Walter?

We have Walter Koenig joining us to review original series Star Trek episodes, which has been so fun.

Good get.

Because he's 88 and he's not afraid to tell you how he feels.

So we call him Salty Walty.

Oh, yeah.

He's hysterical.

That should be a cocktail that they make at Star Trek Las Vegas.

Get yourself a couple of salty Walters.

Yeah.

So we were fortunate enough.

to have Walter Koenig joining us to watch The Wrath of Khan.

Now, I'd seen it before when I was a little kid only.

so i just remember the same stuff everybody remembers which is the stuff in the ear right yeah and then spock dying spoilers sirok i believe had never seen it walter hadn't seen it so we're going in this is so much fun and by the way can i just say that sorok he's a little modest here but when he first started out he you could tell it was very begrudging he was doing it because it was his buddy but now he's the biggest star trek nerd and it is the coolest thing you know the coolest thing in the world is to bring in a friend and introduce them to Star Trek, right?

And to get them to like it.

We all fantasize.

Coolest.

Yes.

Yes.

It's cool to bring someone into Star Trek.

What episode are we going to introduce them to?

You know, oh man, you're going to love this, you know?

And it took a few seasons, but Sorak's a total Star Trek fan.

Now he's like, no, no, remember back in season two, there was that guy.

Excellent knowledge.

That's the style.

Dharmaka and Jalada Tenatra.

Are you the guy that's been posting onto our Reddit all those t-shirts to buy Sirock?

Cut it out with that.

He got me.

Well, that is super exciting.

Rewatching Wrath of Khan with a cast member, I can't believe that the Star Trek podcrawl actually nabbed Salty Walty.

I really hope everyone listening to this goes and smashes the subscribe button on the seventh rule.

Tell people how to find your podcast and where all you guys put episodes.

Okay, so obviously you could just Google the seventh rule with a number seven and th not spelled out.

You could find us on patreon.com slash the seventh rule.

Do not spell it out because that is a porn website.

We own that one too.

Okay.

But just don't go there right now.

You have to be introduced slowly.

And we're also on youtube.com slash the seventh rule.

Just type in the seventh rule on any social media.

You'll find us and you'll be directed wherever we want you to be directed if you so choose to click on those links.

Well, gentlemen, it has been an honor and a pleasure talking to you.

And I really hope everyone listening to this will jump over to the seventh rule and listen to your review of Wrath of Khan as this podcast winds down.

And thank you.

But also, by the way, wherever podcasts are found to, wherever audio podcasts are found, just look up the seventh rule.

We'll be there.

That's an obvious answer.

Star TrekPodcrawl.com.

We'll have links to all of the specific episodes.

But yeah, it's been a pleasure talking to you guys.

Thank you so much for joining us on The Greatest Generation.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you.

You guys have been great.

And, you know, it's been an honor too on this end, you know, hearing so many of the things that you guys have pioneered in this space.

So

thank you as well.

This was a great idea.

We're so glad you guys did it.

And we're honored to be brought on to this with the OGs of podcasting.

Yeah, the OGs.

Seriously, man.

I don't think we can claim that.

I think there's O-ergies.

O-ergy.

Yeah.

I like that.

I'm an old Emerald.

James Chicken.

Stop Jim.

Jim.

Your name is Jim.

Hey, Adam.

Zapan.

Did you find yourself a drunk Shimoda in Star Trek colon the motion picture?

Drunk Shimoda!

All right, for all the new listeners, the drunk Shimoda segment is something that we came up with when we first started The Greatest Generation, and we were talking about the

Star Trek the Next Generation episode, The Naked Now, famously the episode with Jim Shimoda and the rest of the crew becoming extremely space-drunk.

And there was just something about Shimoda that stuck with us.

He seemed like he was having the most fun of anybody on that ship.

And so at the end of every episode, we nominate a character or, you know, it's not always a character.

It can be a group of characters or someone behind the scenes that felt like they were embodying that energy.

Every episode, we nominate one.

And band for Star Trek the Motion Picture, I'm going to make mine the guy floating outside of Epsilon 9 as Vidra approaches.

An absolutely insane choice.

There is just like

it's either a terrible boss that has told that guy to go out there and complete the work, or it's a crazy employee going, I'm just going to, you know what, I had a bad employee review and like I'm being pipped.

I got to do something great here, and I know it's dangerous, but I still got to do my job.

That guy floating out there

got it bad.

Vegeta really laid it on him.

There was a real opportunity at the end of this movie when the ship disappears to like undestroy all of the things that it had encountered along the way.

Didn't you think there was a moment like as the ship kept going deeper and deeper into Veger, like eventually we're going to see three Klingon ships in there?

We're going to see Epsilon 9 in there.

I thought that, well, I mean, Spock sees Epsilon 9, but not the Klingon ships.

But these were like depictions.

These were like vacation pictures of Vegra moving through space.

Yeah, I wish we had gotten that.

I mean, just to look at those D7 models one more time would have been really delightful.

What about you, Ben?

Who's your junk Shimoda?

I got to give it to guy whose job is to work in the spacesuit room aboard a starship.

Like, we've watched so much Star Trek.

We know how rare it is for them to do EVAs in this universe.

That has got to be the most boring job, even on the flagship, guy that works in the spacesuit room.

And

that must be why he gets to have an out-of-uniform facial hair situation.

guy that works in spacesuit room is

bowling alley shoe guy at the at the front desk like there's an sat question with a bunch of colons there like that's what i'm trying to construct here that's that's who that is I mean, you really got to hit the helmet with a lot of spray after Scotty uses it.

Absolutely.

Smell like scotch and stogies.

I just laughed and laughed laughed when, like, we know we do not see his face until he is nerve-pinched and collapsing.

And that the reveal of that mustache just made me laugh out loud.

What a thing, Ben.

I'm so happy that we got to kick off Star Trek Pod Crawl.

I'm so glad I got to watch this movie with you.

Like, movies are things that we do on our show out on tour, so it feels fun and unique to cover one on a podcast.

Indeed.

Once again, the URL, if you'd like to support our cause in the Star Trek pod crawl is star trekpodcrawl.com.

I think if everybody listening gave 10 bucks to the NCSC, we could do something really great.

Our target is to get $10,000 raised for science education over the course of the Star Trek pod crawl, and 100% of your donation goes right to them.

It's a tax write-off and everything.

So we really appreciate it.

And we hope you will listen to the next episode and all the episodes in the Star Trek Podcrawl, which you can find links to at star trekpodcrawl.com or in the show notes of this episode.

Want to thank all the other shows for participating in Star Trek Podcrawl.

It's pretty great to gather us all together for this, Ben.

Yeah, these are folks that we've been able to say hi to occasionally at conventions over the years and you know, some whose shows that we've guested on and stuff like that.

In some cases, we've had podcast wars against the submission log.

Yeah, check all of these great shows out, and

we really appreciate everyone who gave us a try for the first time today as well.

Check us out on maximumfun.org if this is your first time listening.

Yeah, listen to and subscribe to all these shows.

It would really help everyone out a lot.

Bye!

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