YOU ARE ACCESSING THE LCARS COMMAND INTERFACE -
ORIGINAL SERIES DATABANK
The Motion Picture
Premiered:
Dec 7, 1979 Director: Robert Wise Screenplay: Harold Livingston Story: Alan Dean Foster Music: Jerry Goldsmith
The Cast:
James T. Kirk: William Shatner.
Spock: Leonard Nimoy.
Leonard McCoy:
Deforest Kelley.
Chekov: Walter Koenig.
Sulu: George Takei.
Uhura: Nichelle Nichols.
William Decker:
Stephen Collins
Ilia: Persis Khambatta
Klingon: Mark Lenard
This story is about an alien cloud venturing towards Earth and destroying everything in its path. Enterprise is the only Federation
starship that stands in its way. But this isn't the same Enterprise that you saw back in 1969. No, the new Enterprise is the most advanced ship in Starfleet, but the ship is launched prematurely in order to intercept the intruder .(whom we'll come to know as V'Ger)
Two and a half years after the end of the mission of Kirk (who has now become an
admiral) and his crew, the Enterprise has been refitted inside and
out, almost an entirely new ship, and some of the crew have drifted
apart - McCoy has taken an extended leave, Kirk has accepted a desk
job, and Spock has returned to Vulcan to pursue the Kolinahr
discipline, a total purge of emotions. In the meantime, Sulu and Uhura
have stayed with the Enterprise during its testing phase, while Chekov
has become ship's chief of security and Nurse Chapel has become a full
doctor.
Captain Willard Decker, son
of the late Matt Decker, is slated to become the ship's new commanding
officer. An "energy cloud" of unknown origin and intent has carved a
path of destruction through the galaxy on a direct course for Earth,
having destroyed a flotilla of Klingon ships as well as Federation
communications relay station Epsilon 9. Admiral Kirk convinces
Starfleet to give him command of the Enterprise, displacing Decker to
the position of first officer. The refitted ship still has problems,
most notably a transporter malfunction which kills two incoming crew
members, including the ship's new Vulcan science officer, whose duties
Kirk again hands to Decker. Once the transporter is repaired, the
final crew members board the Enterprise, such as Lt. Ilia, the ship's
new navigator who once had a relationship with Decker on her home
planet of Delta IV; and Dr. McCoy reluctantly resumes his position
after being called back into service by Starfleet.
Kirk's unfamiliarity with
the Enterprise's new design is proven when he orders the ship to warp
speed against the recommendations of Decker and Scotty, plunging the
ship into a wormhole which it escapes with a last minute order from
Decker. While repairing the damage, the ship is boarded by a ship from
Vulcan carrying Spock, who offers to resume his post as science
officer. Spock begins by helping Scotty overcome the difficulties with
the warp engines, enabling the Enterprise to head for the cloud at top
speed. En route, Spock reveals that he was unable to complete his
Kolinahr training because he detected an intelligence which he
believes is part of the cloud.
Penetrating the cloud, the
Enterprise wards off an attack but is weakened in the process. After
Spock manages to devise a makeshift message to speak to the
cloud-entity in its own language and frequency, the ship delves
further into the cloud and is boarded by a beam of energy which tries
to access the ship's records on Starfleet and Earth defenses. Spock
damages the computer so the beam cannot gather any more information,
but is attacked by the beam, which then seems to envelop Lt. Ilia and
disappears from the ship, leaving no trace of Ilia.
The Enterprise is
trapped inside an enclosed, solid space within the cloud, and Ilia
turns up again soon afterward, but this time as a puppet of the
cloud-entity, identified by the now-dehumanized Ilia as V'ger. Curious
to find more about V'ger, Spock steals a space suit and a thruster
pack and launches himself into a small opening through which the
Enterprise cannot travel, and finds himself floating through the
memories of V'ger's entire journey through the universe, eventually
coming to an image of Ilia as she was before V'ger's invasion of the
bridge. Spock tries to mind-meld with V'ger through the image, but the
staggering amounts of V'ger's memory and thought overloads Spock's
mind, and he is ejected back to the Enterprise, where he is recovered
and given medical attention. The Ilia-probe tells Kirk that V'ger is
on its way to Earth to find its own creator, although V'ger refuses to
believe that its creator could be a member of the human race, which it
intends to wipe out, if necessary, to complete its search. The cloud
has reached Earth and is ready to commence with its task.
When Kirk promises the Ilia-probe
that he has the information V'ger seeks, V'ger releases the Enterprise
and draws it to the center of the cloud, where V'ger itself rests.
Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Decker, led by Ilia, find that V'ger is, in
fact, a NASA Voyager space probe that was encountered by a race of
intelligent machines and, taking the probe's instructions - to learn
all it can and report its findings back its creator - literally, the
machines created the cloud-vessel as a means for Voyager to return to
Earth and deliver its wealth of information. But the probe is
unwilling to transmit its information on command, demanding to become
one with its creator. Decker manually forces Voyager to transmit its
information, but is absorbed by a wave of energy when V'ger believes
its creator - the only being who could operate it - has arrived. Kirk,
Spock and McCoy rush back to the Enterprise just in time. The cloud
dissipates, leaving the Enterprise in orbit over Earth. Kirk and Spock
speculate that Decker's emotions concerning his relationship with Ilia,
the loss of his command of the Enterprise, and other feelings will
transform V'ger into a new life form that the Federation may meet
again in the future.