Review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) by Martin D — 27 Jan 2014

An unknown entity destroys several Klingon ships, then a Federation space station. Meanwhile, on Vulcan, Spock is about to enter the final stage of Kolinahr - the purging of all emotion - but the entity stirs Spock's emotions, forcing Spock to seek his answers elsewhere.

On Earth, the newly refurbished Enterprise is preparing for launch when Admiral Kirk learns that the destructive entity is approaching. He takes over command of the ship from Captain Will Decker, whose onetime lover, Lieutenant Ilia, has become the navigator.

Kirk requests that Dr. McCoy be called out of retirement to join Dr. Chapel in Sickbay and, after losing the new science officer in a transporter accident, welcomes Spock aboard. Though his former shipmates reach out to him, Spock's only interest is in discovering the purpose of the entity, which overwhelms the ship's scans and weapons systems, then sends a probe that downloads the ship's computer data before vanishing along with Ilia.

Shortly afterward, the probe returns in Ilia's form, introducing the alien entity as "V'Ger" and stating that its purpose in approaching Earth is to find its creator. Kirk asks Decker to try to bring out the probe's memories of life as Ilia.

While he does so, Spock takes a thruster suit and leaves the ship to try to reach the center of the vast machinery of V'Ger, but when he tries to mind-meld with V'Ger, his own mind is overwhelmed by the loneliness of the vast machine.

Soon afterward, V'Ger reaches Earth and launches energy weapons that Ilia says will eradicate all carbon-based life on Earth so that V'Ger's creator - which V'Ger assumes to be a machine - can respond to its hails.

Kirk insists that he can respond to V'Ger and is taken, along with Spock, McCoy, Decker, and Ilia, to the center of the machinery. There, the officers realize that V'Ger is in fact Voyager 6, an old Earth vessel built to gather information to return to its creator.

Voyager 6 vanished into a black hole, from which it apparently emerged on the other side of the galaxy, where a planet of machines took its programming literally and redesigned it to amass all possible knowledge to bring back to Earth.

The Enterprise tries to transmit the code to tell Voyager to transmit its information, but V'Ger burns out its own circuits to force the creator to come personally. Spock hypothesizes that V'Ger has developed consciousness and needs to evolve to find a new purpose.

Guessing that only direct contact will allow V'Ger to achieve its goal, Decker touches the circuitry to key in the code, then merges with V'Ger and with Ilia to create a non-corporeal life form.

Moved by the experience, Spock says he has no need to return to Vulcan, and Kirk orders the ship "out there, thataway.".