Re:Was Star Trek 1 That Bad?

I think ST-TMP is classic for it’s time.
It is a new age now and we are all undergone evolution in our tastes. The age of the “flashing arrow” has died and now we apprediate muti-threaded stories with hard gritty reality. So now we can’t expect the same thing again.

Here is a review stating that the plot partially comes from ST-TOS “The Changeling” (story of Nomad).

The story is cerebral, with little in the way of space battles or other action. It is also, unfortunately, a re-hash of several old Star Trek episodes combined and re-arranged “The Changeling” being the most obvious inspiration”.

Perhaps the greatest strength of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is that, despite a badly-paced middle, it boasts a strong beginning and end. The movie is more enjoyable on video than in the theater (a few character-building sequences have been added) since the special effects are less dominating. After all, beneath all the glitz, there is a legitimate Star Trek story struggling to escape.

http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/s/st1.html
From TVTome:
32. The Changeling
gs: James Doohan (Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott) Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Nyota Uhura) George Takei (Lt. Hikaru Sulu) Majel Barrett (Nurse Christine Chapel) Blaisdell Makee (Lt. Singh) Barbara Gates (Astrochemist) Meade Martin (Engineer) Arnold Lessing (Lt. Carlisle) Vic Perrin (voice of Nomad)

Stardate 3451.9: The Enterprise crew discovers that the Malurian system has been destroyed, and during their investigation the ship is attacked by a small spacecraft of enormous power. When Kirk identifies himself, the attack abruptly ends and communication is established with the unknown vessel which happens to be small enough to be beamed aboard the Enterprise. Kirk learns that the vessel is actually a probe named Nomad and that the attack on the Enterprise was discontinued after Nomad identified Kirk as “the Kirk,” its creator. After consulting the ship’s computers, Spock finds that the probe’s origin is indeed Earth and that its creator, Jackson Roykirk, programmed it to seek out new life. Nomad, however, does not look like the picture in the ship’s record banks. Spock uses the Vulcan mind meld technique and discovers that Nomad was damaged in a meteor collision and drifted in space until it met another probe, Tan Ru, which was originally programmed to gather and sterilize soil samples. Now combined into one machine, Nomad believes that its mission is to seek out and destroy imperfect life forms. Unwilling to remain idle, Nomad erases Uhura’s memory trying to learn what music is and kills Scott when he tries to interfere. Nomad repairs Scott, but Kirk finds that he has a bigger problem after learning that Nomad is returning to its launch point, Earth, where it will find billions of imperfect life forms and sterilize them. Kirk gambles by telling Nomad that he is not “the Kirk” that created it. Since Nomad made a mistake in identification, Kirk convinces Nomad that it is imperfect and must be destroyed. While analyzing its mistake, Kirk has Nomad beamed out into space where it quickly destroys itself.

b: 29-Sep-1967 pc: 60337 w: John Meredyth Lucas d: Marc Daniels