star trek v'ger actress

What Was V’Ger: Star Trek’s Original Movie Villain Explained

• V'Ger, the unique villain in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, was a sentient machine seeking answers about humanity's purpose.
• The movie's cerebral tone and sluggish pace didn't resonate with audiences as well as the action-packed Wrath of Khan storyline.
• Kirk and Spock's cinematic adventure faced criticism but set the stage for future Star Trek villains to be more tangible and relatable.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture pitted Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the USS Enterprise against V'Ger, a unique villain in the history of the Star Trek: The Original Series movies. Released in 1979, The Motion Picture was the first live action adventure for Kirk and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) in a decade, following the cancelation of TOS in 1969. Directed by The Andromeda Strain 's Robert Wise, with visual effects from 2001: A Space Odyssey 's Douglas Trumbull, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a suitably cinematic spectacle .

Despite the cinematic talent involved in its production, the first Star Trek movie was criticized for its sluggish pace and cerebral tone. William Shatner reflected in his book Star Trek Movie Memories that he thought The Motion Picture " wasn't good. " Arguably, Star Trek: The Motion Picture 's "villain", V'Ger contributed heavily to this slightly cold and cerebral tone that put off critics and cast members . Indeed, esteemed movie critic Roger Ebert , while generally positive about The Motion Picture , highlighted the movie's " incomprehensible alien forces ".

Every Star Trek Movie Ranked (From Worst To Best)

What was v’ger in star trek: the motion picture.

V'Ger was a space probe that originated on Earth centuries before the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture . Shortly after leaving Earth's orbit, the Voyager 6 probe was pulled into an anomaly, and emerged into what it believed to be the furthest region of the galaxy. After falling into the gravitational pull of a planet inhabited by living machines, Voyager was renamed, repaired and augmented with vastly superior data retrieval and defensive technology to that of the 20th century. These aliens then sent V'Ger back to its creators, and on its long way home, the probe collected a vast wealth of knowledge about the galaxy, and gained sentience .

Michael and Denise Okuda's 1993 book Star Trek Chronology suggests that Gene Roddenberry later joked that the machine planet visited by V'Ger was the home of Star Trek: The Next Generation 's Borg Collective.

The USS Enterprise intercepted V'Ger on its return to Earth's solar system, to discover a being desperate for answers to the deep philosophical question of " is that all there is? " It was V'Ger's quest for answers that brought it back to Earth, to seek an audience with its creator. If its request was not granted, V'Ger would destroy the planet, forcing Captain Will Decker (Stephen Collins) to offer an alternative solution. Merging with the probe, Decker gave V'Ger the information it was seeking about humanity , and creating a brand-new form of life in the process.

Why Star Trek Movie Villains Became More Like Khan Than V’Ger

Audiences took to the epic action and adventure of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan more than the philosophical tone of Star Trek: The Motion Picture . This meant that future Star Trek movie villains were crafted in the mold of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). V'Ger was a vast, unknowable, sentient machine that didn't have much to offer moviegoers in 1979. It's easier for audiences to relate to the Enterprise crew's movie adventures if there's a tangible villain that can face off against Kirk or Spock.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan defined the rest of the Star Trek: The Original Series movies and beyond, because it proved that audiences were willing to look beyond cerebral sci-fi concepts if there was a recognizable villainous archetype. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the exception, because despite featuring another alien probe intent on destroying the Earth, the pacing and script remembered to let the Enterprise crew have fun. The huge commercial success of Voyage Home suggests that the real problem with Star Trek: The Motion Picture was its characterization of Kirk and the crew, rather than its choice of V'Ger as a villain.

All six Star Trek: The Original Series movies are currently available to stream on MAX.

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series follows the exploits of the crew of the USS Enterprise. On a five-year mission to explore uncharted space, Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) must trust his crew - Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Forest DeKelley), Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Sulu (George Takei) - with his life. Facing previously undiscovered life forms and civilizations and representing humanity among the stars on behalf of Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, the Enterprise regularly comes up against impossible odds and diplomatic dilemmas.

Character Analysis

Despite V'Ger's penchant for wanton destruction, we can't help but like the little weirdo. It might be acting out, but we can certainly relate to the feeling of not knowing what you need, but simply knowing that you need something .

It's kind of like every time we stand in front of a vending machine. We don't know if we need Doritos or Skittles…we just know that we need.

Started From the Bottom

In a way, V'Ger has a classic rags-to-riches tale. Born Voyager VI, a poor unmanned space probe from the planet Earth, it was caught in a black hole before being saved by a society of sentient machines.

And these guys didn't just nurse him back to health—they gave him a major upgrade. From there, V'Ger continued its travels, now armed with this pesky thing called "self-awareness" and an overwhelming desire to reunite with its Creator.

That's about when the movie starts. If we accept Spock's claim that V'Ger is nothing more than a "child," then its destruction seems a lot like a temper tantrum. It's a way to get attention.

Like a tween experiencing the blinding rage of hormones, V'Ger is no longer content with simply doing what it's told. It wants to understand why .

Learning the Ropes

What's more, V'Ger doesn't seem to understand these strange biological creatures it keeps encountering—they're nothing like the form of life it's used to. So you can understand its shock when it discovers that humanity is its Creator. How is V'Ger supposed to comprehend that with all of its "pure logic?"

As it turns out, the answer is "by merging with humanity." This presents a bold leap forward for V'Ger—an entity that's no stranger to bold leaps. From unmanned probe to self-aware machine to robot-human hybrid, V'Ger is making moves and rising up the pecking order in the universe.

Good for you, little buddy.

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W hy's T his F unny?

Designing the Living Machine

After the planned pilot of the second Star Trek television series, “ In Thy Image ,” became the basis for Star Trek: The Motion Picture , Richard Taylor as art director assumed responsibility for designing the mysterious entity known as V’Ger (then still written as “Vejeur”). Mike Minor had drawn a few concepts for Phase II . Tony Smith, brought in by Taylor, developed the entity further.

Taylor’s idea was that the whole of V’Ger would never be seen. “It was to be a dark object, not some light-covered mothership from Close Encounters ,” he told Tracy Tobias in 2001 . “It’s always more mysterious to show less and leave it to the imagination.”

There’s a part of V’Ger toward the tail section, where there is a huge sphere that rotates and in the center of that sphere is the old Voyager 6 probe. Our V’Ger design is much more complex and much more mysterious. For one thing, it would have been a lot more interactive with the Enterprise .

Taylor’s philosophy was to make V’Ger a living machine.

It would have “morphed” and on the inside the walls would have been iridescent and changed as the Enterprise moved past them.

Images of the Enterprise would be projected on the walls as V’Ger was analyzing the ship. Parts of walls would break apart like a flock of birds or a swarm of insects.

The swarms would go from one place to another and reassemble. You could think of the particles as digital energy or digital information. I wanted it to be a very metamorphical and very mysterious place. For the exterior of the thing, one of the design concepts I had was to photo-etch thin metal plates so that the outside surface would have multiple levels which would continually move, creating different patterns. We found a material that you could apply like paint that when heated with warm air from a blower would change color. It had an iridescent color quality that I was looking for, like a beetles’ back or butterflies wings. I wanted V’Ger’s skin or surface to change color near the Enterprise as it moved over the surface. I wanted the image of the Enterprise to be left like glowing phosphor images along the walls of V’Ger.

Transformation

At the end of the film, V’Ger would have evolved into a higher being. “What we had storyboarded was that the whole V’Ger craft unfolds and turns into this incredible object in space,” said Taylor.

That effect would have started where Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the Voyager 6 was and would have radiated outward from there through the ship. There would have been this change that goes through V’Ger’s interior and then to the outside, unfolding into a big flower kind of thing with all these radiating colors and such.

The visual effects in 2001 Director’s Edition approximated this vision, but the original 1979 film looked less impressive.

Brick Price, whose company Brick Price Movie Miniatures was brought in by Robert April on The Motion Picture , worked on the V’Ger model, or at least the early stages of it while Taylor was art director.

The model they started on in August 1978 looked like a cigar with a maw that opened up. They disliked the design, feeling it was too reminiscent of “The Doomsday Machine”, and there was already enough trouble with the script being similar to that episode and “The Changeling”.

But we did a lot of tests working with the textures like paint, color and light, things of that sort, and it wound up with a very organic Art Deco look to it. Taylor was an avid deco fan. That one might have been interesting had they gone with it. It would have had a bubble on it and the Voyager craft would have been on an island underneath one of those. The whole skin surface was sort of iridescent. But then Paramount decided to have miles and miles of white and not let people know what it looked like exactly. Ours was really bizarre and all convoluted with things hanging off it. So every time it changed hands it changed completely. Taylor’s original interior concept of V’Ger was extremely complex. You can see all sorts of actual light functions and all sorts of spheres representing the V’Ger concept of life.

Taylor felt the changing of hands compromised the design. “We had built test pieces and had done extensive tests of processes we were going to use when we finally began construction,” he said. But Douglas Trumbull, the movie’s director of “special photographic effects” (as VFX were called back then) was unimpressed. “I was told Trumbull described the exterior as a ‘weird fish’.”

A new approach

Trumbull was brought in by the studio with less than a year to finish the effects. He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014 that Robert Abel and Associates — the company Taylor worked for — had made some fundamental mistakes by using technology that wasn’t ready for primetime. They also had no motion-picture experience. A desperate Paramount gave Trumbull carte blanche .

He divided the work between two teams: his would work on the interior while John Dykstra was put in charge of V’Ger’s exterior.

The work that the Abel studios had done was abandoned, and the teams set out to develop entirely new concepts. Famed illustrators Robert T. McCall and Syd Mead were hired to design a new version of the giant spacecraft, with Mead’s concepts having the biggest influence.

The model of V’Ger they built was never seen in its entirety, but it was an incredible beast, 60 feet long. Dykstra remembered that constructing it in time posed logistical problems:

We were building the model on one end of the stage and photographing it on the other with a black curtain between the two — that was the unique approach to doing the work. We had three crews working 8-hour shifts in order to get that work done.

The situation was complicated because the camera had to record several passes over the model at slow speeds. Some of the passes took as long as 18 hours, and if the motors failed (which they often did) they had to be recorded again from the beginning.

Trumbull’s team, handling the interior of V’Ger, considered several approaches — possibly using matte paintings or some kind of laser-scanning effect — before settling on a conventional model.

When it was filmed, the model was filled with smoke to give it a sense of scale. The walls were originally illuminated with miniature light bulbs, which were built into the model. However, when it came to filming they were too big to be convincing. Greg Jein, who had built the model, suggested a solution: drill hundreds of holes in the model and run fiberoptic lights behind them.

The major reason Trumbull took on the shots inside V’Ger was that he was also filming a new sequence in which Spock explored the inside of the vast machine . His Spock spacewalk replaced the memory wall sequence that Abel studios had planned, and which had been filmed during first-unit photography. Trumbull did not feel he could make the sequence work. The wire work that had been filmed on the stage was awkward and unwieldy. There were problems with reflections in the spacesuit faceplates.

Trumbull convinced Director Robert Wise to let him shoot a new sequence, which he designed himself. The storyboards were worked up by Tom Cranham, with several artists, including McCall and David Negrón, developing concepts for the things Spock would see. The spacesuits were completely redesigned and built at Apogee.

The final effect — when V’Ger disappears leaving the Enterprise in orbit around Earth — was specially designed so that it only expanded horizontally, insuring that it could not be mistaken for a conventional explosion.

Incredibly, all these shots were completed in time for the movie’s premiere and the world was so impressed with what it saw that the Trumbull/Dykstra team was jointly nominated for an Academy Award.

12 comments

I believe that the image shown here is Mike Minor’s concept of V’Ger for the Phase II television pilot. If you look at the enlarged image, you can see Minor’s signature at the lower right. For certain, this image pre-dates the production of The Motion Picture , because Starlog published a photo of Minor in front of this rendering back in 1977 or so.

Hey Pierre. You mean this one? The signature is difficult to read, but I think you may be right.

Hi Nick, Yes, that’s the picture I meant. By the way, I love the website and am astounded at all the images that I’ve never seen before. I really am interested in the production of the Phase II series and wished there was more imagery available of the sets as they stood before the switch-over to The Motion Picture . I’ve found some very nice photos in old issues of Fantastic Films as well as poorly reproduced images from the Enterprise Incidents fanzine and wished that better versions were available! No matter, your website is great and will keep me entertained for a good long time!

I think you may be right. Let me correct that in the article. Thanks for the kind words about the site! It is hard to find quality pictures of the Phase II sets. There is some test footage from 1977 of the engineering set, but of the bridge I’ve only seen a couple of photographs and no photos of the sickbay set, as far as I know.

Hey Nick, Yes, that illustration of V’Ger is definitely the Star Trek: Phase II version as designed by Mike Minor. His signature is on it in fact. Hope you are doing well, my friend!!

Do any elevation-type drawings exist anywhere of V’Ger’s “core” the ‘amphitheater” where the original Earth-based space probe was anchored? It doesn’t have to be fancy, just some kind of cross-section outline showing the relative width of the base to the sloping sides (and their angles) as well as the relative height of the “pillars” surrounding the complex. “Fan” illustrations would serve well enough.

You would need a drawing or schematic of the set, I guess. I checked my archive, but I don’t appear to have such a drawing myself, sorry. Maybe somebody reading this can help.

I’ve always been intrigued by Abel’s concept of V’Ger. It would be amazing to see an “alternate” version of the movie made with CG renderings of the Abel version of the “living machine” replacing the Trumbull version.

Completely agree with you. I would love to see that version of V’Ger. It sounds so amazingly creative, and totally different to the one of the film. Much more organic, like a true living organism. Thank you so much for this website, photos, interviews, etc. I never came across all this information before and it is outstanding!

An amazing site, thank you so much for the background and detail to one of my favorite films.

Thank you for the kind words!

I’m in love with all this amazing never seen before content! Thank you so much for sharing it. How I would LOVE to see this version of V’Ger done nowadays… and as close as possible to these wonderful concepts and ideas. I love the iridescent texture idea as well the micro components and the “island” where the Voyager is. Such a pity it was not done…

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May 5, 2022

Star Trek The Motion Picture-A Complete History of V'Ger Origins

 At over 97,000 meters in length, the entity known as V'Ger is not something any race can ignore. When it entered Federation space, it eliminated everything that scanned or approached it. Though, its origins would not be discovered until the climax of the movie.

Although did you know that further media would reveal more about this lifeform's strange creation? We have collated the information available about all the V'Ger origins and how they unfold into its story. Below, you can learn everything there is to know, so when you see it on-screen, you can do so with a full understanding of the events that led to its arrival.

V'Ger's Canon Origins

In the real world, the entity called V'Ger first appeared in the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A Director's Edition 4k streaming version of which is currently available on Paramount Plus.

By the end of this movie, you discover V'Ger's fictional origins. In the universe of Star Trek, the Voyager spacecraft missions did not end with Voyager 2. Instead, the probes continued for at least six iterations, with the last launching in 1999.

Voyager 6, the last of the probes, traveled as the others did through the solar system before Earth lost all contact. The Earth governments of the time did not realize that it was not destroyed. It had in fact, fallen through a black hole and re-emerged in another area of the universe.

Star Trek canon is unsure of where this area is. Speculation suggests that it could be anywhere from the other side of the galaxy to a different, extragalactic space.

First Contact

After emerging from the other side of the black hole, V'Ger encountered a planet of what it described as "living machines." These beings saw that Voyager was damaged and, seeing only the letters V, G, E, and R on its side, called it "V'Ger." The other letters were not visible due to damage to the spacecraft.

The living machines saw V'Ger as a primitive machine, but a member of their own kin. They also read Voyager's programming and understood that its creators had programmed it to learn everything that it could. These living machines took these instructions literally.

They rebuilt V'Ger, giving a sense of sentience as they understood it. They also reformed V'Ger's metal "body." This gave it highly advanced sensory equipment and data storage devices.

To protect it, these living machines also augmented V'Ger with the capability to defend itself. This would allow it to travel in relative safety.

As V'Ger began its long journey, it began to think for itself. As a machine, it could not think in terms of emotion, but only logic, and began to question its existence. It decided that it must find its creators to answer this question, and so started its journey back to Sector 001 , the Terran system, and Earth.

As V'Ger encountered the beings of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, it caused immense damage in its attempts to learn more. It considered carbon-based life to be an infestation. As such, it would remove it from its path as it continued inexorably towards the capital of the Federation.

Because of this, and not knowing what the entity was, Starfleet ordered the USS Enterprise to intercept and stop it. The Enterprise's V'Ger mission is cataloged in the events of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The Borg Theory

Several places in Star Trek lore suggest that V'Ger and the Borg share a connection. You should note that these sources are not the same as the canon of Star Trek movies or TV. As such, they may be contradicted elsewhere.

In the 90s and 00s, William Shatner penned a series of Star Trek novels alongside a team of other writers. These "Shatnerverse" stories depict events after Star Trek: Generations. Despite his death in that movie, they deal with the ongoing legacy of Captain James T. Kirk .

Within them, we learn that V'Ger landed on the Borg homeworld of the Delta Quadrant. Here, an early iteration of the Borg are the ones who create V'Ger and sent it back towards the Alpha Quadrant.

Star Trek: Legacy

While not an origin of V'Ger per se, this depiction does contradict other depictions of the Borg and V'Ger. In the video game "Star Trek: Legacy" - V'Ger created the Borg.

After Captain William Decker merged with V'Ger, it moved out into the galaxy. Here, it used this merging as a pattern for the creation of more cybernetic creatures.

As V'Ger's Borg expanded, they needed a single unifying voice to calm their collective consciousness. Out of that need, a Borg Queen was born who soon overruled V'Ger's demands.

Star Trek: Nero

Shortly before the movie "Star Trek" was released in 2009, several prequel comics emerged that talked about the character Nero. Nero, a Romulan, along with the help of the Tal Shiar, had retrofitted his mining vessel Narada with Borg nanoprobes.

While not specifically confirmed in the TV show, Star Trek: Picard did reveal that the Romulans had access to Borg technology. This was in the form of a disabled Borg cube that they performed research on.

After the Narada is upgraded, it takes Nero to V'Ger in this alternate timeline. V'Ger recognizes the Narada as kin , suggesting that the Borg connection is more than only due to being electronic in nature.

Many fans have taken this to mean that these apocryphal sources are accurate. Thus, they believe the Borg are the "living machines" that V'Ger encounters.

More on V'Ger Origins and Other Trek Facts

As a Star Trek fan, you should now have a much denser understanding of Star Trek theories and lore. Maybe now you are a big fan of V'Ger or the original Constitution-class Enterprise. Either way, you probably want to show off your love for the Trek universe.

We supply memorabilia from every corner of the world. You may even want your own V'Ger model now that you understand the V'Ger origins. If so, we have them available, so grab one today .

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Screen Rant

Star trek theory: picard retcons the original movie's villain.

Star Trek: Picard's revelation of an ancient race of androids could have major ramifications, like explaining V'Ger from the first Star Trek movie.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Picard  season 1, episode 9.

The revelation in Star Trek: Picard episode 9 that a federation of synthetics exists beyond the galaxy could retcon V'Ger, the villain of Star Trek: The Motion Picture . The cliffhanger of Star Trek: Picard episode 9, "Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 1", involves Soji (Isa Briones) agreeing with her older sister Sutra that they need to call upon this ancient race of androids to help them destroy the invading Romulan fleet, as well as the rest of organic life in the galaxy. But this mysterious alliance of synthetics could also explain the long-standing mystery of the origin of V'Ger.

V'Ger was a great threat to Earth in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture . A sentient mechanical entity that emitted a vast, destructive cloud of luminous energy, V'Ger traveled from beyond the galaxy en route to Earth seeking its Creator. Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) took command of the U.S.S. Enterprise to intercept V'Ger; when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) mind-melded with the entity, he partly discovered its origins as a space probe that was found and rebuilt by a mysterious planet inhabited by machines. The Enterprise crew then traveled to the heart of V'Ger and discovered it was actually Voyager 6, a probe launched by NASA in the 20th century that disappeared when it left the galaxy. Captain Will Decker (Stephen Colliins), along with a replicant of his love Lt. Ilia (Persis Khambatta), agreed to 'merge' with V'Ger, to give the entity a human perspective that would complete its programming and give it the answers it sought. Suitably evolved into a higher form of existence, V'Ger exploded and vanished, leaving the Enterprise intact.

Related: Star Trek: Picard Episode 9 References Classic TOS Villains

After that first contact with the Enterprise in the 2270s, V'Ger never returned and was never heard from again but over 120 years later, Star Trek: Picard episode 9 offers a new context that could explain where V'Ger came from. Hundreds of years ago, the Romulans discovered an octonary star system with a planet called Aia, the Grief World at its center. On Aia, the founders of what would become the anti-synthetics cabal called the Zhat Vash discovered a warning they called the Admonition, which told of a war between organics and the synthetics they created over 200,000 years ago. However, Sutra learned the Zhat Vash were wrong to believe the Admonition was meant to warn organics and that it was actually left by the synthetics for future androids to heed about their creators. And the androids who won the war millennia ago left our galaxy and founded a vast federation of synthetics who are waiting to be summoned by Soji and the rest of her synthetic family who were built from the positronic neuron of the late Commander Data (Brent Spiner).

Before his death, Gene Roddenberry speculated that V'Ger could have been rebuilt by the Borg but, since that was never set in canon, could Star Trek: Picard 's synthetics federation (which is now canon) lead to a retcon of Star Trek: The Motion Picture ? It's possible that Picard 's ancient synthetics were the machines that found Voyager 6 and rebuilt it into VGer, which then returned to Earth seeking answers to its origins and existence.

The first Star Trek movie even offers a further parallel to Star Trek: Picard : Ilia was killed by V'Ger and replaced by a synthetic version of the bald Deltan that acted as its interface with the Enterprise's crew. The synthetic Ilia was a perfect physical copy (lacking emotions and humanity) in the same way Soji appears genuinely human, though she's programmed with a full range of human emotions. In a way, V'Ger's Ilia is a forerunner to Data, Soji , and all of Star Trek: Picard 's synthetics.

It's worth noting that Star Trek: The Motion Picture 's V'Ger was a rehash of concepts from the TOS episode "The Changeling", where the Enterprise met Nomad, a space probe that was reprogrammed by a mysterious race and returned to our galaxy sentient and powerful. If V'Ger was indeed rebuilt by Star Trek: Picard 's extra-galactic synthetics federation, then it's possible that retcon could explain the origins of Nomad and other machines in TOS like the planet-killer in "The Doomsday Machine" as well.

Next: Picard Questions Star Trek's Most Famous Saying

• View history

Voyager 6 was a deep space probe launched from Earth by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the latter half of the 20th century . The sixth probe in the Voyager series , it was designed to collect data and transmit it back to Earth. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

• 1 Technical information
• 3.1 See also
• 3.2 Background information
• 3.3 Apocrypha
• 3.4 External link

Technical information [ ]

Voyager 6 was equipped with an antenna and a ground test computer , for use in communicating with Earth. It was designed to transmit a signal relaying its readiness to transmit the information gathered, and to do so upon receipt of a code signal instructing the computer to transmit the data. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

History [ ]

During its mission, Voyager 6 disappeared into what was once called a black hole (see V'ger ), emerging on the other side of the galaxy , where it fell into the gravitational field of a planet populated by a race of living machines. The inhabitants found the probe to be one of their own kind, primitive, yet kindred. Discovering its simple, 20th century programming, which directed Voyager to collect all data possible and return that information to the creator, the machines interpreted it literally, and constructed a massive vessel around the probe in order to facilitate that directive. On its journey back to Earth, it amassed so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness itself, becoming a living thing. In the 2270s , the entity was detected by Starfleet en route to Earth, and was intercepted by the USS Enterprise , whose crew was able to discover the fate of the long-lost probe. ( Star Trek: The Motion Picture )

Appendices [ ]

See also [ ], background information [ ].

According to Star Trek Chronology , Voyager 6 was launched in 1999 . According to Decker's line in the movie, however, it was launched " more than 300 years ago ". This suggests a launch date sometime before or in the early 1970s . In the real world, the actual launches of the first (and only) two Voyager probes took place in 1977.

Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 2, Issue 8 , p. 106, also uses the Star Trek Chronology 's 1999 date, noting that " Voyager VI " [sic] was officially approved in May of 1972 , and that all six of the Voyager series were built identically of 65,000 individual parts, including a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, plasma and cosmic ray detectors, and a data storage capacity of 500 million bits.

The fictional Voyager 6 probe around which V'ger was built, was actually a full-scale mock-up of the real world Voyager 1 and 2 probes of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL). JPL's director John Casani agreed to loan the model to the studio in October 1977, mere months after the actual Voyager probes were launched in August and September that year. Then Star Trek: Phase II (the immediate predecessor of The Motion Picture ) Producer Robert Goodwin reported in a progress memo, dated 21 October 1977, " After your conversation with John Casani at Jet Propulsion Laboratories, JPL has agreed to loan us the mock-up of the Voyager, to be used as part of our set as the interior of the Alien Spaceship [note: indicating that the name V'ger had not yet been conceived at the time] . Joe Jennings and Matt Jefferies attended a briefing in JPL last night in the Voyager and Joe Jennings will return there next week with Bud Arbuckle to get measurements so that we can incorporate this large full-scale mock-up into our plans for the set." ( Star Trek Phase II: The Lost Series , p. 52) The text commentary on the Star Trek: The Motion Picture Director's Edition DVD even stated that JPL was willing to even go a step further and loan the production an actual engineering duplicate of the Voyager spacecraft, but the studio declined, saying that the risk of the duplicate being damaged on the set was too high.

Apocrypha [ ]

The William Shatner novel The Return , in which Kirk and Picard join forces to lead an assault on the Borg homeworld and end the recent Borg/ Romulan alliance once and for all presents the theory that a Borg transwarp conduit consumed the probe rather than a black hole, and that the planet seen by Spock was in fact, the Borg homeworld . The suggestion continues that the Borg assimilated the probe, yet the assimilation went "afoul" and changed Voyager 6 into a more sentient being.

Star Trek: Legacy presented the theory that the 20th century Borg civilization was a peaceful race. When V'ger encountered them, they studied its programming, repaired the probe, and sent it on its task. When V'ger returned to the Sol system it could not find its creator, but "a biological infestation." The probe returned to the Borg homeworld and joined with them, and its programming propagated throughout the Collective . Something of a civil war broke out. Massive amounts of knowledge, including the location of Earth, were lost in the resulting conflict, and the Borg of the 24th century were born.

In Star Trek Online , the mirror universe counterpart of V'ger , known as "the Other", is encountered in the 25th century. The probe at its core is known as Conqueror 6 , sent out by the Terran Empire in the 20th century to find new worlds to dominate.

External link [ ]

• Voyager 6 at Wikipedia
• 3 Star Trek: Discovery

• Cast & crew

New Humans, Love Coaches & V'Ger, Oh My - The Novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture

• Podcast Episode

The first of our monthly countdown celebrating the 40th anniversary of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE as we explore the gonzo world of Gene Roddenberry's STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE noveliz... Read all The first of our monthly countdown celebrating the 40th anniversary of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE as we explore the gonzo world of Gene Roddenberry's STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE novelization with exclusive audio excerpts from the actual novel. Join us as the human adventure ... Read all The first of our monthly countdown celebrating the 40th anniversary of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE as we explore the gonzo world of Gene Roddenberry's STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE novelization with exclusive audio excerpts from the actual novel. Join us as the human adventure begins all year long.

• Gene Roddenberry
• Mark A. Altman
• Robert Meyer Burnett
• Daren Dochterman

• Self - Host

• Self - Guest
• Self - Host …
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Did you know

• Connections Referenced in Inglorious Treksperts: There Is No Comparison: Live @Comic-Con (2019)

User reviews

• January 19, 2019 (United States)
• Electric Surge
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 30 minutes

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