When plans to launch a second
Star Trek television series in the late 1970s were scrapped by Paramount Pictures, the show's creator,
Gene Roddenberry, instead transformed the aborted program's 2-hour pilot into this big budget theatrical feature. Five years after the legendary voyages of the starship Enterprise, James T. Kirk (
William Shatner) is an unhappy, desk-bound admiral at Starfleet headquarters. Kirk goes aboard his old vessel to observe its re-launch under new captain Will Decker (
Stephen Collins). Soon, however, an escalating crisis causes Kirk to take command of his old ship. A mysterious, planet-sized energy force of enormous power is headed for Earth. Reunited with Spock (
Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (
DeForest Kelley), and the rest of his former colleagues, Kirk takes the Enterprise inside the massive energy cloud and discovers that it is the long-lost NASA space probe Voyager. Now a sentient being after accumulating centuries of knowledge in its deep space travels, the alien, which calls itself
V'ger, has come home seeking its creator. Although not a critical home run, box office receipts for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) were strong enough to inspire a revamped television series and a long-running line of theatrical sequels. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide