We are in the middle of rewatching the original crew’s Star Trek movies. The discussion of the first movie is still ongoing in the thread here. Please hop over there and post your thoughts about Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
So it turns out the first motion picture had a poor critical reaction. The production section in the Wikipedia entry for Star Trek II is pretty interesting and probably worth reading once you’ve seen the movie again.
I’ll just quote this gem.
After the release of The Motion Picture , executive producer Gene Roddenberry wrote his own sequel. In his plot, the crew of the Enterprise travel back in time to set right a corrupted time line after Klingons use the Guardian of Forever to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[17][18]:161 This was rejected by Paramount executives, who blamed the tepid reception and costs of the first film on its plodding pace and the constant rewrites Roddenberry demanded.[12]:240–241 As a consequence, Roddenberry was removed from the production and, according to Shatner, “kicked upstairs” to the ceremonial position of executive consultant.[18]:99
Harve Bennett, a new Paramount television producer, was made producer for the next Star Trek film.[12]:240–242 According to Bennett, he was called in front of a group including Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner and asked if he thought he could make a better film than The Motion Picture , which Bennett confessed he found “really boring”.[19] When Bennett replied in the affirmative, Charles Bluhdorn asked, “Can you make it for less than forty-five-fucking-million-dollars?” Bennett replied that “Where I come from, I can make five movies for that.”[12]:240 Bennett realized he faced a serious challenge in developing the new Star Trek film, partly due to his never having seen the television series.[12]:240 Watching episodes of the show convinced Bennett that what the first picture lacked was a real villain; after seeing the episode “Space Seed”, he decided that the character of Khan Noonien Singh was the perfect enemy for the new film.[20]
So this weekend, let’s watch (or rewatch) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and come back here and post our thoughts.