* CareerResurrection: With the exception of Creator/LeonardNimoy, the cast of ''Star Trek'' suffered from typecasting and limited opportunities after the original series wrapped. This film brought them back into the limelight, provided steady work for the next decade, and opened opportunities to explore non-''Trek'' work.
* CastTheRunnerUp: David Gautreaux was signed on to play a fully Vulcan main character named Xon as a [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute character replacement]] for Spock when Nimoy refused to return to the ''Phase II'' series. He remained on as the series turned into the movie, filmed test footage and participated in cast readings. When Nimoy finally agreed to return, the script was overhauled extensively so that Xon was taken out and Spock arrives on board. Because of the contract, Gautreaux was still paid and the basic character was replaced with the ill-fated Lieutenant Sonak played by Jon Rashad Kamal, while he requested a slightly larger role as the human Commander Branch, the officer of the outpost destroyed by V'Ger. He said that years later Nimoy expressed regret for his part in him losing the role.
* CostumeBacklash: While audiences were dissatisfied with the SpaceClothes aesthetic the actors suffered from uniforms that were over-engineered, required wardrobe assistance to put on and take off making bathroom breaks a chore. Redesigning the uniforms was one of the main demands from the cast when it came to the sequel.
* CreatorBacklash:
** Creator/LeonardNimoy was unhappy with the film in general, feeling that it focused on spectacle instead of character. This too was rectified come the second film, and Nimoy himself would later contribute to writing the films, as well as directing the [[Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock third]] and [[Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome fourth]].
** Creator/WilliamShatner, who saw the completed movie for the first time at the world premiere, was struck by the overall sluggishness of the movie, and was convinced that ''Franchise/StarTrek'' died there and then. He reminisced, "Well, that's it. We gave it our best shot, it wasn't good, and it will never happen again." But, having recalled his reaction fifteen years later (the year [[Film/StarTrekGenerations the seventh movie based on the franchise]] came out), he has added, "Shows you what I know."
* DeletedScene:
** Originally Kirk also followed Spock on his spacewalk inside the memory cores of ''V'ger'', however this scene was left unfinished (mostly due to the bad quality of the special effects) and cut from the finished film.
** A scene in which ''V'ger'''s probe "zaps" a security officer on the bridge was filmed but cut from every release of the film so far.
* DuelingMovies: With the Disney film ''Film/TheBlackHole'', which was released shortly after this one, and had a similar emphasis on trying to feature more cerebral imagery while appealing to mass audiences. Neither of the two did especially well with critics, but this film was easily the victor at the box-office, grossing around three times more than ''The Black Hole'' (albeit with a budget roughly two-and-a-half-times larger).
* DevelopmentHell: Ever since the reruns took off, the new Star Trek production went in every direction, from movies to the Phase II series. The movie "[[http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Planet_of_the_Titans Star Trek: Planet of the Titans]]" included Ralph [=McQuarrie=] of ''Franchise/StarWars'' fame doing some concept art. Basically, Gene Roddenberry was working nonstop since the end of the series to get '''something''' ''Star Trek'' into production. He and others took several runs at a TV movie, or a theatrical film, none of which really excited Paramount, who finally said "You know, it was a TV show, it should be a TV show," and greenlit ''Phase II'' as the anchor series for a new Paramount TV network. Then ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' dropped, and everyone was scrambling to [[FollowTheLeader put their own space-based sci-fi films into production]] (this same rush gave us ''Film/{{Alien}}''), and the only space-based science fiction anyone at Paramount had to work on was ''Star Trek'', and with the network project being canned six months before launch by the head of Paramount's owner Gulf and Western ([[{{Irony}} for fear of losing too much money]]), ''Phase II'' was retooled into ''The Motion Picture''. Much of the effects work that had been done for ''Phase II'' -- including a complete model of the refit ''Enterprise'' -- had to be redone because it wasn't of sufficient quality to work in a theatrical film. This resulted in the film's massively overinflated budget.
* DyeingForYourArt:
** Persis Khambatta, who played Ilia, was very reluctant to shave her hair, as it was a huge part of her image. She even asked for insurance on her hair in case it didn't grow back. Thankfully, it did.
** Creator/WilliamShatner, having not played Kirk in person in ten years (he did provide his voice for [[WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries the Star Trek cartoon]]), went on a near-starvation diet before filming began. This was in part due to reflecting on the original series and being a WalkingShirtlessScene and was really worried about looking out of shape.
* EditedForSyndication: For once, this was a '''good''' thing! Creator/{{ABC}} helped in financing the movie in exchange for the first American broadcast TV airings of the film. To get the most for their money, ABC added many scenes to pad out the three-hour (with commercials) time slot. When viewers tuned in that Sunday night, they saw for the first time Uhura defending Kirk's taking over command, the Ensign who beamed up before [=McCoy=], the tear on Spock's cheek as he cried for his 'brother' ... in other words, all the bits that made it seem like a ''Star Trek'' story. Okay ... so we '''also''' got the Kirk space walk scene with the studio rafters in the background (and in a different spacesuit than in the final version), but hey, nothing's perfect. This version was later released on VHS as a "Special Longer Version".
* EnforcedMethodActing: Spock's return to the ''Enterprise'' was Creator/LeonardNimoy's first time playing Spock onscreen since ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'''s cancellation, suitably fitting Spock's extremely detached manner.
* FollowTheLeader: The film went from two part television pilot to feature film because ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' made big-budget science-fiction popular again.
* HeyItsThatSound: Yep, that's ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''[='=]s theme tune playing at the beginning in its first appearance, and unrelated to the series it ended up representing. Roddenberry liked it so much he used it for ''Next Generation''. It was also reused as the main theme for ''Film/StarTrekVTheFinalFrontier'' a decade after ''TMP''.
* HostilityOnTheSet: The cast and crew got along pretty well. However, behind the scenes, producer Creator/GeneRoddenberry was clashing with his coscreenwriter, Harold Livingston. Livingston had been hired to finish the script Roddenberry had started as the pilot for the never-produced ''Star Trek II'' TV series; knowing Roddenberry's penchant for rewriting others' work he had it in his contract that Roddenberry could do no more work on the script than he already had. That didn't stop Roddenberry from doing it anyway, and Livingston was absolutely furious at Roddenberry for the notes he kept getting on things he knew he hadn't written. It got so bad that Creator/LeonardNimoy had to mediate between them, sometimes with Creator/WilliamShatner's help, after each day's filming was done; the film's production was well underway before the basic outlines of the third act were agreed on. Shatner, in his memoirs, titled the chapter about this movie "Star Trek: The Emotional Picture"
* LoopingLines: Almost all the dialogue on the ''Enterprise'' bridge had to be overdubbed by the actors in post-production. This was due to the fact that the animation/graphics seen on the bridge station display monitors was projected from behind the bridge set walls by dozens of 16-millimetre projectors (one for each display screen), as computer technology was not advanced enough at the time to use real computer monitors on a practical basis. As a result, the clattering sound of the noisy projectors nearly drowned out the voices of the actors, and their dialogue had to be dubbed over later at considerable added time and expense.
* TheMerch: The very first movie-themed UsefulNotes/McDonalds Happy Meal was for this film.
* {{Novelization}}: As was standard for the time, a novelization based upon the film was published as a tie-in. What was notable about this publication is that it was written by Gene Roddenberry himself and stands as the only ''Star Trek'' novel to bear his name.
* PropRecycling:
** Uhura's communications earpieces are the only original props from the original series. They were dug out of storage when it was realized someone had forgotten to make new ones for the movie.
** Some of the clothing worn by the aliens in the movie (seen at Starfleet Headquarters) was made from unused bolts of cloth left over from ''{{Film/The Ten Commandments|1923}}''.
* RealLifeRelative:
** Creator/JamesDoohan's twin sons, Montgomery and Christopher, appear as extras in the movie.
** Marcy Lafferty, who was married to Creator/WilliamShatner at the time, plays Chief [=DiFalco=], who took over for Ilia as navigator after she was abducted by V'ger.
* RecycledScript:
** One of the many nicknames of the movie is "Where Nomad Has Gone Before", as like the episode [[Recap/StarTrekS2E3TheChangeling "The Changeling"]], it tells the story of a human probe [[TouchedByVorlons altered by aliens]] (V'Ger/Nomad) which starts destroying everything in its path en route to its creator (mankind/Dr. Jackson Roykirk). In other words, it's not an ''episode'' stretched to two hours by filler, it's a ''rerun'' stretched to two hours by filler.
** Then again, the actual re-written script comes from "In Thy Image", the commissioned but unfilmed pilot for ''Star Trek: Phase II''. The only major differences are the introduction of new character Xon (emphatically ''not'' a SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute for Spock; more in line with the character we know as Data) and the writing of Decker and Ilia as regulars (again, their history together and general story functions were written into the characters of Riker and Troi). Also, the pilot would have had a faster pace for TV.
** And then ''Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome'' would have ''another'' probe looking for something on Earth, but the consensus is that it was done better in that movie.
* RecycledSet: While redesigned to match Robert Wise's vision, most of the interiors of the Enterprise were made for the Phase II show. It is part of the reason of both the budget bloat (and the random locations that are only seen once), as they were occupying sound stages for months with nothing being filmed in them.
* RewatchBonus: The Vulcan master who tells Spock that he has not achieved ''Kolinahr'' tells him to "[[CatchPhrase live long and prosper]]" in heavily accented English instead of the Vulcan she had been speaking to him in up to that point.
** All her dialog was shot in English then dubbed with the made up Vulcan language. The linguist made the new sounds match the lip movements, but much of it still sounds suspiciously like English, so her subtitles were altered to disguise this. For example when the subtitle said "it touches your human blood Spock", it sure sounds like she's saying "disturbs your human half Spock". Also the caption says "your thoughts... give them to me" and it sounds a lot like "now(?) ... give me your thoughts."
* RoleReprise:
** Five years after voicing the characters in ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries'', the film sees the return of Creator/WilliamShatner as Kirk, Creator/LeonardNimoy as Spock, Creator/DeForestKelley as [=McCoy=], Creator/JamesDoohan as Scotty, Creator/GeorgeTakei as Sulu, Creator/NichelleNichols as Uhura, and Creator/MajelBarrett-Roddenberry as Nurse Chapel.
** Creator/WalterKoenig returns as Chekov ten years after the final episode of the original series.
** Creator/GraceLeeWhitney returns as Janice Rand, thirteen years after her last appearance.
* SameContentDifferentRating: Originally on release, ''The Motion Picture'' was rated "G." However, when the Director's Cut was being prepped for release in 2001, the film was resubmitted to the [=MPAA=] due to the inclusion of new shots. None of it changed the content of the film in any discernible way, but the film was re-rated PG.
* ScrewedByTheLawyers: The shooting was hounded by not one, but two legal feuds, with Roddenberry the target in both of them. Gene found himself becoming an enemy to cowriter Harold Livingston and star Leonard Nimoy, the latter of whom wanted nothing to do with the film; it took literal begging from Jeffrey Katzenberg to get Nimoy into the film, and Livingston had a few contract clauses that were meant to limit Roddenberry's power.
* SequelGap: ''The Motion Picture'' was made 10 years after [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries the original series]] ended, but its setting is only 4 years later in-universe. ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'' would later correct this discrepancy by being set 12 years after this movie.
* ShootTheMoney: Since much of the $45 million (in 1979 dollars) budget went into pre-production work for the ''Star Trek Phase II'' TV series, every ''Enterprise'' interior set that would have appeared in a series is used in this film. The officer's lounge and recreation deck sets would never again be seen in any other ''Star Trek'' movie.
** The tortured history of the film's process shots (see below) also explains why so many of them are in the release print at the expense of character scenes. Paramount ''had'' to justify its splurging somehow.
* SparedByTheCut: Chekov would have been killed by an exploding console during V'Ger's attack on the ''Enterprise''. It was later changed so that he was just injured, and Lieutenant Ilia uses her telepathic/empathic ability to stop the pain in his burned hand.
* TechnologyMarchesOn: According to Dr. [=McCoy=] the new Sickbay is like "...working in a damned computer center."
* TroubledProduction:
** Even when it was still supposed to have been the pilot for ''Phase II'', Creator/GeneRoddenberry and his cowriter, Harold Livingston, had been feuding. His replacement, Dennis Clark (''Comes a Horseman'') got along even worse with the Great Bird, and Livingston was back in three months. But despite Livingston having it in his new contract that Roddenberry couldn't do any more work on it than he already had, Roddenberry would do rewrites on the sly and then send them to the studio head.
** Paramount's original budget was $8 million. The original director and producer were let go once Roddenberry realized just how much the kind of special effects audiences would be expecting after ''[[Film/ANewHope Star Wars]]'' and ''Film/CloseEncountersOfTheThirdKind'' would cost: ''at least'' that much.[[note]]''Star Wars'' cost $11 million and ''Close Encounters'' $20 million to produce.[[/note]] Creator/RobertWise was hired as director and the film's budget doubled. He put shooting on hold while he had the sets and (yes) the costumes redesigned. But the cast, already under contract for the now-abandoned sequel series, was still getting paid every week under regularly extended contracts, and finally Paramount said in late summer 1978 that principal photography ''had'' to start.
** Wise didn't want to shoot for more than 12 hours a day, resulting in the production getting behind schedule after the first two days.
** Nimoy, at the start of the whole project, was hell-bent against returning to ''Star Trek'' thanks to being caught up in his own feud with Roddenberry that was being litigated (a number of Star Trek merchandise was being passed around with his likeness and he got no money for it). When Paramount realized they could not really make the movie without him, then-executive [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon Jeffrey]] [[Creator/DreamWorksAnimation Katzenberg]] flew to New York to '''beg''' Nimoy (literally) to return. Nimoy settled his lawsuit within a few days and was recast as Spock, but was still on really bad terms with Roddenberry (the experience nearly derailed Katzenberg's Hollywood career period, but he managed to survive to get to Creator/{{Disney}}).
** The feuding between Roddenberry and Livingston continued, at the expense of the script. Creator/WilliamShatner, who titled his chapter on this in ''Movie Memories'' "''Star Trek: The Emotional Picture''", said the cast was getting revisions ''every two hours''. And they hadn't even settled the question of what was going to happen in the third act, until two months had gone by and Creator/LeonardNimoy began mediating between Roddenberry and Livingston at night after shooting.
** Shatner and Nimoy both requested rewrites during filming to refine the dialogue as they were both unhappy with what had been written for them ("Kirk wouldn't say this"/"Spock wouldn't say that" etc.).
** Creator/GraceLeeWhitney (reprising her role as Janice Rand from the first season of the series) recounted in her autobiography that, following a practical joke (which Roddenberry was somewhat notorious for) on Wise that she took part in, [[DisproportionateRetribution Wise forbade the makeup department from providing its services to her.]] She noted that this is why it often takes a while for viewers to recognize the transporter chief as Rand (while it's easier to recognize her in ''Film/StarTrekVITheUndiscoveredCountry'', even though no one refers to her by name on screen).
** The visual effects production was a mess in an of itself. When the project first shifted from a television series to a feature film, Paramount wanted to bring in Creator/DouglasTrumbull's Future General Corporation (whose founding Paramount had subsidized) to handle the new effects, but FGC had already committed to ''Close Encounters'', which led to the two companies feuding. In the interim, the job went to Robert Abel and Associates, a company that while having plenty of experience in commercials, had none regarding films.[[note]]At the time, they'd go on to provide animation work for Disney's ''Film/TheBlackHole'' and ''{{Film/Tron}}'' not long after.[[/note]] And it showed. Only ''after'' principal photography was all but done in early 1979 did Wise check on the special effects, of which he hadn't even seen a demo shot (which concerned him). It soon became apparent that RA&A [[SpecialEffectsFailure couldn't get the job done]] (though, in Abel's defense, the frequent rewrites were a contributing factor to the delays). Though sources within the film's production vary on how much they ended up producing during that time, it's often considered to be not enough and not very high quality. None of this was made any easier by four prominent factors:
*** The company, while initially only brought on to handle the effects, ended up doing things that '''''weren't''''' part of the initial deal thanks to Roddenberry's rewrites, like set and costume designs. This got them in trouble with the labour unions as a result of hiring whoever they could to help round out their newly formed Astra division.
*** Abel would use the money and equipment that was intended for the movie on various commercials and {{Creator/HBO}} bumpers, as they themselves were in debt to the tune of almost a million dollars due to a Levi's ad that cost more than intended. The moment Paramount found out about it, they forced the studio to stop all unrelated projects until the film was finished.
*** As noted above, the script rewrites imposed by Roddenberry ended up affecting the effects about as much as the actors, with more and more shots added to the film until it ballooned from the initially planned 140 shots to 350. With the effects budget needing to be reset each time.
*** Finally, most of the remaining time not shooting the film's effects or other commercial projects was spent trying, and failing, to construct a complex computer-controlled camera rig, something that even Abel's employees balked at when they were already running behind schedule.
** By that time, Trumbull had been serving as an unpaid consultant, strictly as a favor to Wise, and it was decided to bring FGC in to take over. However, because of the time crunch (the team now had well under a year to go), Trumbull brought in John Dykstra's [[Creator/ApogeeProductions Apogee, Inc.]][[note]]''They'' were Paramount's first choice to do the effects after FGC declined, but had turned it down to work on ''Film/AlteredStates'', which had a similarly rocky production that, thanks to budget cuts, ultimately freed them up to work on the film.[[/note]] to assist. They had to work around the clock to get the job done. As a result of having to spend way more money than initially anticipated on special effects, a considerable amount of it basically wasted, someone at Paramount insisted on [[ShootTheMoney using as many of those shots as possible in the movie]]. Despite all this, a few sequences by Abel's company did make it into the final product, particularly during the wormhole sequence, and the studio did receive credit for these contributions.
** It was so over budget that Paramount executives were keeping a running tab each day of how much it was such (they had trusted Roddenberry despite the fact that he had never produced a feature film; after this they knew better than to let him again, all while Abel kept asking for budget increases due to the Roddenberry-enforced rewrites). Indeed the VFX production with the studio was such a hot mess, some of RA&A's former crew, including art director Richard Taylor and employee Richard Edlund among others, have since gone on to question Paramount's decision to hire Abel's company in the first place:
-->'''Taylor''': Well, what I found was fascinating was, that why Robert Abel Studios, which was really doing graphics and television advertising and so forth, was asked to do the effects for this film, because there was no track record there. [...] So, to this day I'd love to know who has made the decision at Paramount to come to us, and say, "We want you to do the effects on this film."
** According to Wise and associate producer Jon Povill, the released film was essentially a rough cut that no one had seen in its entirety before shipping. Then Paramount president Michael Eisner explicitly said the release date of the movie was to be December 7, 1979 artificially putting the production under the clock. Wise completed the final cut a day before the premiere and had to take it with him to the premiere at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The reels were still wet when they were loaded onto the projector.
** Following the release of the ''Star Wars'' Special Editions, Robert Wise became interested in revisiting ''The Motion Picture'' hoping to get a chance to complete the post-production the movie didn’t get. Paramount agreed and the 2001 Director's Edition of the movie was released. Wise had hoped that it would be released at a theatrical quality, but Paramount only released the movie on standard-definition home media. Two of the producers who worked with Wise, prior to his death in 2005, promised that they would continue to pursue the possibility of a fully rendered theatrical version of the film.
** In 2022 Paramount released what is likely going to be the final cut of the movie at 4K on Paramount+ streaming and in theatrical quality through Fathom Events. This cut of the movie fixed many of the original issues, for example completing proper color timing (so that the colors seemed less dull) and going back to the original, unused ADR tracks (the original cut relied almost entirely on sound recorded on set). A few CGI elements were also upgraded or replaced, for example the shot of San Francisco as Kirk’s shuttle arrives in Starfleet Command and a newly created CG model of V’ger.
* WagTheDirector: Creator/WilliamShatner and Creator/LeonardNimoy would demand script changes whenever they saw something that was out-of-character for Kirk or Spock.
* WhatCouldHaveBeen: [[WhatCouldHaveBeen/StarTrek See the page]].
* WriterRevolt: In the novelisation, Roddenberry retconned Kirk being a BloodKnight (that in itself a revolt by Shatner and writers against how Gene wanted Kirk be an IdealHero), saying that the show was exaggerated versions of what happened, and Kirk was never as quick to be a soldier as portrayed. Everyone just kinda ignored him on that one.
* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants:
** Creator/WilliamShatner wrote in his ''Movie Memories'' book that not only was the script constantly being re-written, but the cast were given new revisions ''every two hours'', so more often than not, they were forced to wing it.
** Creator/DeForestKelley appeared on a talk show while the film was in production. When asked how the film was coming along, he replied, "It's crazy. We start filming next week, they're already building sets, but the script's not finished".
* YouLookFamiliar:
** Creator/MarkLenard, best known as Spock's father ([[Recap/StarTrekS2E10JourneyToBabel "Journey to Babel"]]) is a Klingon Captain! (Although admittedly you wouldn't recognize him unless you knew it was the same actor under the heavy make-up.)
** He also looks suspiciously like the Romulan commander in [[Recap/StarTrekS1E14BalanceOfTerror "Balance of Terror"]], making Mark Lenard notable as the only actor to have played all three of the major recurring non-human races in the Original Series' canon.
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