Well, you know, that is actually kind of a useful way into Star Trek the motion picture

because this is in many ways a very distinctive film.

It's distinctive for Star Trek in that none of the other Star Trek films are like this.

And especially none of the other original series films.

They made five more films after this.

And this film, in addition to having, I think, a much larger budget and

looking very different. In fact, it was the most expensive film ever made up to that point.

It cost $44 million. Which, I mean, in 1978, $79 is, we're talking big bucks. But it's

distinctive for, I mean, it's distinctive for a movie, especially a movie adapted from a TV show.

Because the original series movies, I mean, taken as a whole, in and of themselves very strange and unusual, they're the product of a cult sci-fi show that only aired 79 episodes for the few years spanning 1966 to 1969, subsequently developed a cult following and a certain critical

acclaim after their cancellation. I mean, the show didn't finish. It was taken off the air.

It was then reborn as a film series a decade later. There were six films, and six point five,

if you count generations, because William Schatner's in that film as well.

And so is George Decay. It's a sort of handing of The Torch kind of movie.

And in all of these films, the cast is basically middle-aged. So you have this odd thing where the whole original Star Trek idea is really at its peak in terms of cultural buy-in and budget

long after the original run and with the characters being middle age.

And rather than pretend that the whole thing is frozen in time and rather just sort of rehashing

the whole thing and, yeah, pretending that William Shatner is the same kind of like hunky guy

who was kissing

green women on the original show or whatever.

The show films actually dwell on the subject of middle age and they lean into that quite a

lot.

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