Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Director's Edition

Director: Robert Wise

1979 / 143min / 4K DCP

Cancelled after three seasons in 1969, Gene Roddenberry’s cult NBC series Star Trek only gained more and more rabid fans in its syndication afterlife, leading to its resurrection a decade later in this first big-screen outing for the crew of the starship Enterprise, recruited here to intercept a mysterious energy cloud barreling toward Earth and leaving a swath of destruction in its path as it does. To design the marauding vessel discovered travelling inside the cloud, the alien-piloted “V’ger,” Mead, in his first piece of film concept art, worked with Roddenberry, Wise, and FX maestro Douglas Trumbull to help design what would become the 68’ V’ger model used on the shoot, following Wise’s directive to create something “no man had ever seen.”

“The hotly debated debut of the Star Trek motion picture series sought to create an elegiac, 2001: A Space Odyssey-style contrast to the space opera proceedings kicked off only a few years prior by Star Wars. For Wise’s ambitious adaptation, Mead was enlisted by visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull to conceptualize the enigmatic V’ger entity. His design of the non-corporeal, energy-pulsating V’ger added a sense of grandeur and mystery to the film’s portrayal of advanced alien intelligence.” —Series curators William Corman and Elon Solo

Introduction by Syd Mead: Future Pastime curators William Corman and Elon Solo on Saturday, April 19th