Star Trek: The Motion Picture

 Year:  1979

Director:  Robert Wise

Screenplay:  Harold Livingston, from a story by Alan Dean Foster, based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry

Starring:  William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Stephen Collins, Persis Khambatta, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig

Running Time:  132 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction

When a mysterious alien cloud possessed of powerful destructive capabilities is detected on a course heading directly for Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk (Shatner) is put in charge of the newly overhauled USS Enterprise, and reunites his old crew to investigate and stop the cloud's path of destruction by any means necessary.

When the original television series of Star Trek ended in 1969 after three seasons and 79 episodes, it looked like it would be one more cancelled TV show that would exist for evermore in the fuzzy afterlife of repeats.  However, as the 1970s progressed, Star Trek became a major success in syndication, as well as attracting increasing numbers of devoted fans.  A 14 episode Saturday morning cartoon version was broadcast in the mid '70s, but Paramount Studios were becoming interested in a new live-action Star Trek.  In the late '70s Paramount announced plans for a new cable TV  network, to be imaginatively named The Paramount Network, and the flagship programme on launch night would be Star Trek: Phase II, which would feature some of the original cast alongside new characters.  Pre-production was already well advanced on Star Trek: Phase II, scripts had been written, sets had been built, parts had been cast, costumes designed and some special effects footage had already been shot, when Paramount pulled the plug on The Paramount Network, and Star Trek: Phase II was cancelled.  Rather than waste the considerable amount of money and time that had been spent on the new Star Trek, Paramount decided to remount what would have been the pilot episode of Star Trek: Phase II as a stand-alone feature film.  The script was rewritten and veteran director Robert Wise was hired to helm the project.  The resulting film boasts some very impressive special effects, but is hindered by a slow pace, and a drab feeling to the whole thing, from the colourlessness of the Enterprise interiors, to the new uniforms which all seem to be in varying shades of light blue, white and beige.  There is also the pretentiousness and po-faced philosophising which hampered Star Trek at its worse, with very little of the action and humour of the TV series at its best.  Many of the returning actors have little more than cameo roles, and the two new additions Stephen Collins as Kirk's rival for the Enterprise, Captain Decker, and Persis Khambatta at the alien Deltan Ilia, never really get the chance to make much of an impression.  Despite the plot being a race against time to save the earth, there is very little dynamism, and the story essentially calls for the actors to do little more than react to what they see on monitor screens.  It's clear that what the producers were going for was a serious cerebral science-fiction epic along the lines of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), but that is the wrong approach for Star Trek.  The film does have its good points though.  The opening sequence, where the alien cloud encounters three Klingon spaceships is exciting, the special effects are still impressive even after all this time, and there are moments when that create a genuine sense of wonder.  Also the climax, with its clear sexual metaphor is quite daring.  

William Shatner, DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek: The Motion Picture
  

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Year of Release:  1978

Director:  Philip Kaufman

Screenplay:  W. D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

Starring:  Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, Leonard Nimoy

Running Time:  115 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction, horror

Elizabeth Driscoll (Adams) is a laboratory scientist for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, with an interest in botany.  She becomes aware of unusual pink flowers growing out of small pods.  Shortly afterwards she notices that her boyfriend (Art Hindle) is acting strangely, and she becomes convinced that somehow he has become someone she doesn't know.  She approaches her friend and fellow employee at the Department of Health, Matthew Bennell (Sutherland).  At first Matthew doesn't believe her, but when he notices increasingly strange things happening, he realises that what has happened to Elizabeth's boyfriend is just the beginning.  Alien seed pods have landed on Earth and are somehow replacing people while they sleep: replacements that are physically identical to the original, and have the same memories and personalities, but lack emotion or basic humanity.  Matthew and Elizabeth have to save themselves and stop the invasion, but it may already be too late.

Jack Finney's 1953 science-fiction novel The Body Snatchers had previously been adapted in 1956 as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel, one of the classics of science-fiction cinema.  It was later adapted in 1993 as Body Snatchers, directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Gabrielle Anwar, and most recently as The Invasion (2007), starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.  Of course, it's a very risky proposition to remake a classic.  This film updates the setting from 1950s small town California, to 1970s San Francisco.  While Jack Finney denied that the novel was intended to be anything other than an exciting adventure story, the 1956 film is usually seen as a parable about the Communist scare of the 1950s, either a warning that there is a "Red under every bed" or a warning about the McCarthyite witch hunts of the time.  This film could be seen as a film about urban alienation and paranoia.  The mobile camera frequently following the actors like a surveillance camera.  The fact is that this has a very scary premise, your loved ones becoming someone that you don't recognise; the idea of losing your own humanity, and worse yet, they get you while you sleep, while you are at your most defenceless.  Also there is the general uneasiness of city life, living cheek by jowl with countless strangers, some of whom may not have your best interests at heart.  Seen in 2021, the film has the added resonance of the age of social distancing, with the fear of catching a fatal disease just from being around people.  The film has an interesting cast, with Donald Sutherland handling the heroics; Brooke Adams affecting as the first person to become suspicious; an early role for a nervously funny Jeff Goldblum as a struggling poet; Veronica Cartwright, who would later have to deal with even more unpleasant pods in Alien (1979), as Goldblum's frantic wife; and Leonard Nimoy as a pop-psychiatrist (this was the '70s, remember).  Nimoy's casting is interesting, as his best known role was half-alien half-human Spock in Star Trek (1966-1969) who was constantly trying to suppress his human emotions, and almost marks him as an emotionless "pod-person" right from the start, and he gives an effective and quite sinister performance.  Kevin McCarthy, who starred in the 1956 film, cameos as a man yelling warnings at passing cars, as in the previous film's famous ending.  The film is stylishly directed, opening with strangely poetic images of the gossamer pods drifting through space, and the film is shot with the afore-mentioned roving camera, and odd camera angles, right from the start everyone appears suspicious and strange, including Robert Duvall appearing in an uncredited cameo as a priest on a park swing set, gazing at the camera.  It sets itself up slowly, and has some genuinely nightmarish imagery.  The film is very much a 1970s movie, but it has aged very well, the tone is very bleak and there is a real sense of inescapable doom throughout (which makes it feel very current).  It all ends with one of the most famous screams in science-fiction history.

Broke Adams and Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)