Star Trek: The Motion Picture/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Creator Backlash: Most of the cast hated the costumes they wore throughout the majority of the movie, which have been derisively referred to as "space pajamas" by many. By The Wrath of Khan, this had been fully rectified.
  • Deleted Scene: Character scenes cut in favor of Leave the Camera Running scenes. This makes the special edition favored by fans.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: 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.
  • Edited For Television: For once, this was a good thing! ABC helped in financing the movie in exchange for the first Network 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. Ok... so we also got the Kirk space walk scene with the studio rafters in the background, but hey, nothing's perfect. This version was later released on VHS as a "Special Longer Version".
  • Fandom Nod: To the Kirk/Spock shippers in the novelization.
  • Fan Nickname: Several, none of them flattering, and all tied to the film's Leave the Camera Running tendencies:
    • Star Trek: The Motionless Picture
    • Star Trek: The Slow-Motion Picture
    • Star Trek: The Motion Sickness
    • Where NOMAD Has Gone Before (alluding to the fact that it's a blown-up version of the episode "The Changeling". NOMAD was the space probe in the TV version).
  • Hey, It's That Sound: Yep, that's Star Trek: The Next Generation'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 to for Next Generation.
  • Real Life Relative: William Shatner's then-wife, Marcy Lafferty, played Chief DiFalco (who took over for Ilia as navigator after she was...abducted by V'ger).
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: They chose Voyager as the design of what became V'Ger because it was a current event--Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977, and by the time the film was released, both had already visited Jupiter. Mixes with a bit of Hilarious in Hindsight as there were only two Voyager probes... no matter that only two were ever planned.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers: 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.
  • Technology Marches On: According to Dr. McCoy the new Sickbay is like "...working in a damned computer center."
  • Troubled Production:
    • The script was regularly being rewritten during filming.
    • The first special effects house couldn't get the job done so John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull were hired late in the production and had to rush things
    • Wise didn't want to shoot for more than 12 hours a day, resulting in the production getting behind schedule a mere two days after principal photography started.
    • It was so over budget that Paramount executives were keeping a running tab each day of how much (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).
    • According to Jeffrey Katzenberg, then the executive in charge of production for Paramount, the released film was essentially a rough cut that no one had seen in its entirety before shipping.
  • You Look Familiar: Spock's father 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 the episode "Balance of Terror", making Mark Lenard notable for being the only actor to have played all three of the major recurring non-human races in the Original Series' canon.
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