Star Trek

I'm someone who thinks this movie is very underrated - except those uniforms, why did they think they were a good idea? Geez... anyway - I always liked the premise of it, most particularly what V'ger actually is. So yeah, I could finally read the novelization for this one!

Put that together with me listening to audiobooks, and looking for ones I can get my hands on easily, the other movies that I have listened to were generally just okay since they were so very abridged from the novels. However, here, finally, it's unabridged, hallelujah!

Overall, it was very good. It was a very complete view of the movie; no real added scenes that we are not familiar with, but it does fill in things as a novel always does - like for example, after all these years, I seriously did not know Decker was the son of a character from an Original Trek episode. Totally missed that. But here we get what the characters are thinking or feeling, something we can't always get from on screen. So since I do like this movie (it's not my ultimate favorite - that does happen to be another odd number one, however - yes, I'm odd. LOL), I did like the book.

The things that either surprised or bugged me were: a lot of it was from Kirk's point of view or him thinking about his career and not liking being Admiral and all that kind of thing. It basically got on my nerves after a while, but that's just a me thing probably.

Anyway, I know this one was reissued (the novel, anyway) and the audiobook created for the movie's 40th anniversary this year, but I hope this is just the start of the reissuing and recreating the audios for the other movie novelizations - I can't be the only one that would love to read/listen to the full stories of all of the them! (And if this is so, sure hope we don't have to wait for each one to reach 40 years old!)

A fine complement to the movie, but it suffers from some of its own shortcomings.

Though I enjoyed it overall, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is generally — and rightly — viewed as a flawed film, usually in regards to the pacing (and the uniforms). The novelization seemed to do much to alleviate this, and I felt as though the plot moved at a comfortable yet brisk pace from beginning to end. The book also helped fill in some of the less obvious aspects of the movie's plot and characterization. This is especially true in the case of Spock and V'Ger; the parallel nature of their respective story arcs is made much more explicit. I was also amused by the tap dance the book did around the nature of Kirk and Spock's relationship, though this likely wasn't the author's intention.

The areas where this book falls flat are, ironically, the same areas where the movie excels. Namely, the visuals, or in this case the descriptions. The movie devoted several minutes (arguably too many) to stunning visuals that amaze even 36 years later. The book's language falls rather flat in this regard, and I found myself several times referring instead to my memories of the movie.

Nevertheless, this book works well for what it is: a flawed-but-still-enjoyable companion and complement to a flawed-but-still-enjoyable movie.