At the risk of crapping on Star Trek: The Motion Picture before it's 40th anniversary, I really think I've figured out why that movie is kind of plodding.

Don't get me wrong, I love the movie. It's my favorite cause it's the closest the movies have gotten to Pulp SciFi.

But it really is slow, lacks character moments and just goes on and on. Robert Wise's Director's Cut does fix things in the case of speeding the movie up, but it's still lacking in a lot of action or character moments.

Ever since I got my hands on the first draft of the movie written by Harold Livingston back when it was a two hour TV pilot, I tried to figure out where everything went wrong.

The pilot is actually really good, has a lot of action, a few nice nice character moments and really moves. The only real flaw is the ending, where V'Ger learns humans created it and it literally just turns and leaves.

How did it go so wrong?

I think it was the "Writer's War" between Harold Livingston and Gene Roddenberry.

I got several other drafts of the movie, including the second draft by Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry's second draft actually added in a lot more character moments.