#ST:TMP

[rainbowresurrection]

Spock having a psychedelic brain blast and crying about how gay he is + the futility of his life-long self-hatred is the most 1970s way that movie could have ended. Chef's kiss

[raisins-n-space]

been thinking about tmp recently and especially spocks makeover between leaving gol and walking onto the bridge in his black outfit and like. he might have gay audacity but there’s no way he cut his own hair that well so hear me out:

i’m choosing to believe there’s a vulcan hairdresser at the bottom of the mountains at gol who specialises in like. extra cunty bowl cuts for all these dramatic kolinhar rejectees. spock walks in through the door and they’re like sit down and (logically) spill bitch. their clients range from vulcan who just wasn’t feeling it to vulcan who walks in proclaiming their love for their ex betrothed surpasses logic and they’re gonna woo them or die trying. the hairdresser just grabs a bowl and comb and is like. wow yeah sounds logical. five credits please 🤲 and they all walk out the doors sparkling.

[spocksjuul]

I keep trying to write a post about why I love the motion picture but it inevitably devolves into incoherent rambling. But like guys how are you not constantly thinking about star trek: the motion picture like can we talk about star trek : the motion picture like ok in the beginning. In the beginning spock/kirk and decker/ilia both haven’t seen each other in years. And then they’re brought together by circumstances beyond their control and there’s tension in both those relationships but there’s clearly still feelings there. And then there’s this obvious parallel between spock and vger both trying to find a purpose in life and then Vger possesses Ilia so there’s an even clearer link between Spock/Kirk and Ilia/Decker. And THEN Spock and Vger share a meld and come to the separate realization that the thing they were missing in their lives was the very thing they were trying to suppress/ignore which was their LOVE for their SOULMATE. Are you guys hearing this it’s the SAME story except one of the romances is about these random one off characters no one cares about and the other is the culmination of the greatest gay love story accidentally written. I love the motion picture so much I am going to explode into a million tiny pieces

[cantsayidont]

I think setting STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS in the TOS era was a questionable idea for a variety of reasons, but one of the more troublesome is their treatment of Spock, which opens some cans of worms I don't think there would have been a good way to handle even if the writers weren't intent on making bad and reactionary creative choices in other areas.

In TOS, most of the Enterprise crew, and really the majority of the Starfleet characters we're shown, are exceedingly racist to Spock with disconcerting regularity. Of the regular cast, I think the only ones who aren't overtly nasty to Spock at least some of the time are probably Uhura and Sulu; they get frustrated with him at certain points, but generally because he's a difficult and inflexible supervisor rather than due to racial animus. A lot of the rest of the crew is openly hostile, and McCoy routinely addresses him with slurs in front of the bridge crew. Kirk tolerates and sometimes participates in this racist abuse, and the only times he seems to take it very seriously are when it threatens to become an operational problem (as in "Balance of Terror"). The main feature that comes to characterize the bond that develops between Kirk and Spock is not that Kirk is significantly more tolerant, but that he will usually (not always) at least listen to Spock's point of view, which the rest of the crew is very reluctant to do (most pointedly in "The Galileo Seven"), and can be persuaded to respect his judgment, which Spock values even though Kirk's attitude and behavior still often make him uncomfortable.

This kind of space-racism toward nonhuman Federation citizens is not necessarily a structural element of STAR TREK (unlike anti-indigenous racism, which definitely is), but it is a structural element of Spock's character. Spock spends a lot of TOS teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, and it's tempting (though not canonical) to read his decision to pursue Kolinhar in the beginning of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE as a response to the stress of being on the Enterprise (fleeing to become a monk!). Even where Spock is not enduring racial slurs and constant microaggressions, you can see how that treatment, both in his youth on Vulcan and as an adult in Starfleet, has shaped his personality. Indeed, this is something I think to which fans of Spock have responded strongly over the years, because his alienation and stress are very relatable for LGBT people, people of color, Muslim and Jewish people (despite STAR TREK's canonical antisemitism and Islamophobia), and autistic people. This doesn't mean STAR TREK stories necessarily have to show Spock being tormented, which is often painful to watch, but if Spock had not been tormented in these ways, he would be a very different person than the character viewers know and love.

Making Spock a regular in DISCOVERY and later STRANGE NEW WORLDS thus presents the writers with a problem: Treating Spock the way he's treated in TOS would be uncomfortable, but avoiding it creates a tension with TOS that the newer shows obviously don't know how to resolve.

Prior to ENTERPRISE, the general presumption about the TOS era (which is stated as fact in some of the novels) was that having mixed-species crews is relatively new for Starfleet, and that the problems Spock faces stem from his colleagues never having lived and worked with an "alien" before and not knowing how to not be weird about it. (ENTERPRISE essentially transferred that idea to Archer's era, where T'Pol gets similar treatment.) In DISCO and SNW, however, we see that many Starfleet vessels have mixed crews, including officers (like Saru) who are much more obviously nonhuman than Spock is, and have for a while. So, how are we to read the events of TOS, with which DISCO and SNW still want to (uneasily) coexist? Is Kirk's Enterprise just a lot more racist than Pike's? That's possible, I guess, but how many STAR TREK fans really want to canonize the idea that Kirk and his crew are unusually intolerant by Starfleet standards? Are we to presume that SNW means to soft-retcon the hostility and constant microaggressions Spock experiences in TOS, shifting the entire onus for his twitchy alienation to his upbringing on Vulcan and to Sarek (who DISCO reiterates is a tremendous dick)? That would be sadly consistent with the disdain with which modern STAR TREK media treats Vulcan (and with the antisemitism of the modern shows), but it's a pretty bitter pill for anyone who thinks Vulcans are neat or cool, which used to be an uncontroversial majority opinion among STAR TREK viewers and writers.

The more sensible answer would have been to just dodge the issue entirely by staying further away from TOS and the period in which it takes place. There are other periods of the TREK timeline that are still largely unexplored (like the early 24th century era of the Enterprise-C), and there's always the option of moving further forward in time, as DISCOVERY eventually did. However, CBS seems very insistent on making heavy-handed appeals to nostalgia that require riding the coattails of TOS, even where that just doesn't seem like a good idea creatively.

My sense with DISCOVERY and SNW is that the producers would really like to simply redo TOS in a manner more consistent with their current vision, but that the decidedly mixed reactions to the alternate timeline JJ Abrams movies has made them gunshy about just declaring that openly. So, it seems they're instead trying to back into it with a kind of death-by-a-thousand-retcons approach, seeking to sand off both the uncomfortable aspects of TOS and stuff the producers and/or the network don't like (like Spock's gay-coding — SNW's determination to no-homo him is pronounced, albeit unpersuasive). I think I would find that vexing even if the producers' vision weren't frequently more jingoistic and racist than TOS, which it often is.

[2mo3cm-man]

I mean, I think it’s a bad move for Star Trek to chase nostalgia and make Legacy, but it’s worth noting that nostalgia has been a part of the franchise since 1979 when The Motion Picture debuted. Like, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for old characters to show up again, or for Trek to explore its past. I guess I draw the line at “WE’RE GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER!” impulse to have the TNG cast relive the glory days decades later.

i acknowledge that’s not a clear or firm line, but still.

[mllebleue]

It's back! So good!

Ohhhh boy finally I’m finished with this bad boy. This is for @plaidshirtjimkirk ‘s @oldmarriedspirk Challenge! This of course takes place before Spock returns to the Enterprise in TMP, and if it’s not entirely clear it’s a slight twist where Spock does in fact seek Bones’ advice for how to approach the Unfuckening he caused between TOS & TMP. 

The format and coloring was largely inspired by Tongari’s  25 Lives, which is one of my absolute favorite comics and pieces of writing, like, ever. :) I think it’s so beautiful and it inspires me so much every time I come across it/an incarnation of it. Please check it out!

I really enjoyed working on this, but more than anything now I’m pleased to get it out into the world so I can stop worrying about it LOL. I hope you enjoy reading it! Thank you to my babes @nomical @beacorominas & @onedamnminuteadmiral for their eyes and ears and words of encouragement! <3 (Bigger and clearer version here.)

[nelc]

Andrew Probert's design sketches for the Surak long-range shuttle for Star Trek: The Motion Picture

[cosmicretreat]

Filming a miniature for Star Trek: The Motion Picture

[citizenkampbell]

Deleted scene from ST:TMP

[trek-tracks]

A completely accurate assessment of a man who knows his best friend is reluctantly still a Hippocratic Oath-following pacifist

Bones:

[rainbowresurrection]

今こそ人類の冒険が始まる

The Human Adventure is Just Beginning

[agnesmontague]

the tmp acronym business isn't for people who blog about both, is for people that search the actual tag and get bombarded with unrelated stuff. The "ac" overlap works because both game series have various entries with various acronyms, so people are gonna tag "acnl" instead of just "ac" because THAT is an even more generic acronym than just two fandoms

genuine question for trekkies: do you guys just tag star trek: the motion picture as just "tmp" bc that would be just calling it "the motion picture"??? don't you have a "st:tmp" tag or something. and my dude people just tag "ac" for either game all the time there's cross-tag contamination for a lot of fandoms and i figured it's something we could live with

[celestialvoyeur]

💛💙SPIRK FIC REC💙💛

Admit it, we all love a good TOS Pon Farr fic!

Here the boys are embarking on their second five year mission after the events of ST:TMP, however, Spock is reluctant to sign on knowing that his ‘Time’ will come round again while they’re out there exploring. He and Jim strike a deal that when the time comes they’ll go through it together. 😁🖖

[lunarriviera]

it was a long empty period with only marshak and culbreath and james blish and i don't wanna talk about it

(but then there was @dduane!)

Show your age based on the state of Star Trek when you were growing up

When I was a kid, there were only 5 movies and The Next Generation was new

[nodaudaboutitt]

Damn st:tmp is mad slow paced 😂 45 minutes in and we only just leave space dock 😳

[edwardallenpoe]

So I just got done watching ST:TMP and I'm too exhausted to give a full analysis but it was good, and not as gay as I expected tbh (tho it is pretty gay trust) so rn I'm taking back all the trash talk I said or had for the movie, it was good👍