I love that the ship feels like a space submarine. It adds to the realism for me. Once yhe ship starts looking like a space cruise ship, or hotel, I think the characters start to drift and become increasingly unprofessional. I love the professionalism in TMP, even the in-fighting feels appropriate to the high pressure situation.
Oh I love the ship design too. I just meant I wish there was more movement of the characters outside the ship into other locations once the film gets going. I feel like in TWOK onwards we see different locales, even if in TWOK it's just Reliant or Regula One or the Genesis cave. In TMP once they get on the ship I feel like they never get out until they go talk to V'Ger.
It's a flawed masterpiece. I prefer it to 2001 because that just has so little character interaction, even if it is a bit higher concept. They could probably have jazzed TMP up a bit if a proper landing party had gone inside V'Ger and interacted with some holographic obstacles, but it would probably have involved the Kirk, Spock, and McCoy sick bay scene taking place in a shuttle so that the characters could transition from there to V'Ger's brain.
Fortunately, we did get to see appearances of the orbital office (albeit flipped upside down) in both TWOK and TNG, and the travel pod made an occasional re-occurance as well. I agree, the design from TMP was just phenomenal. I'm sorry, I know it is blasphemous to say, but I really think things went downhill somewhat when ILM got involved. The fact that they preferred the Excelsior to the refit Enterprise? Ugh.
Actors are definitely not the best judge of the works they are in, and often others such as producers and directors are not as well. For example, Leonard Nimoy consistently said that TMP was all about flashy visual effects and contained nothing about the characters. I hear that and feel like we are thinking about two different movies. I think there was enormous character development in TMP that formed a logical path to where we see the characters later in life in TWOK and beyond. Yes, the effects got a lot of attention, particularly with Doug Trumbull's "first person cinema" approach, but that's hardly all TMP is.
I could be wrong but I interpret ILMs statement being about the models, not the ship design as such. Apparently that Enteprise model was hard to work with. I think I read the same sentiment expressed about the Reliant model, that since they built it or were involved in its construction it was easy to use.
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It's especially weird for Nimoy to say that, as I consider TMP one of the most important "Spock" stories in the entire franchise. I think his character arc in the film is beautifully done, and he is easily the most important character and the thread that binds the film together thematically.
Nimoy appreciated the supporting cast much more than Shatner, so maybe he was referring to the other cast interactions, where we get only a smattering in the first half an hour and then a lot of procedural dialogue.
That would be... Something.
But hey, I'm the guy who still divides all of his digital music of classic albums by "sides" so who am I to judge?
That would be... Something.
