Star Trek: The Motion Picture: The Restored Director’s Edition occasionally feels like a fan project. Or at least a temp project. Like the new opening titles, set in gold. They look like they were done using an iPhone app. Then there are shots where they couldn’t find the original materials, so the picture suddenly looks terrible, like a hacky up-convert to 4K. There are plenty of spectacular restored shots, but when they’re bad, they’re really bad. And they’re usually during effects sequences.

The reason for restoring the director’s edition is because it was made for DVD, and they didn’t do the new special effects in high definition. It took the restoration team a while to convince the studio. The end credits break out the first and second teams, and some of the names are the same; they came back twenty years later to do the same work again, just with eight million more pixels.

The result’s… okay?

In addition to the bad titles and the damaged original footage or whatever, there are a few times the changed special effects don’t work in high definition. Only once is it distracting, when William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley all lose the edges of their bodies in front of a starfield because portrait mode choked on their pajama costumes.

Some of the CGI is good, some of it is middling, and a couple shots are lousy. It’s sometimes annoying but usually forgivable; they’re well-intentioned.

Content-wise, the narrative is unchanged from the last director’s edition (as far as I remember it). A space cloud of enormous power invades the galaxy, headed straight toward Earth, and the only starship in intercept range is the Enterprise. Except they’re undergoing a massive retrofit to make the ship movie-ready in 1979, not impressive for TV in 1966; plus, they’ve got a new captain, Stephen Collins, leading the same old crew.

But not Shatner, who’s a desk jockeying admiral now, or Kelley, who’s retired to take up some weird future New Age thing if his gold medallion is any indication, or Nimoy, who’s retired to his home planet Vulcan to give up all emotion and… get a more blinged-out gold medallion as a reward. They really missed the chance for Kelley and Nimoy to compare bling.

When Star Trek: The Motion Picture isn’t meandering through its sci-fi thriller plot, it’s vaguely about Shatner desperately wanting to relive his glory days and using catastrophe to do it, dragging Kelley along because Shatner can’t do it without him. There’s actually maybe the argument Admiral Kirk’s going through some depression and saving the known universe is just the way to get out of that funk. So long as he gets some help from his friends.

Shatner and Kelley act that arc, which is occasionally in the script. Nimoy shows up later and sort of figures in, but not really. Shatner’s arc stops when he and Kelley get to worry about Nimoy instead. But more significant than either of those arcs is Collins’s G-rated romance with Persis Khambatta. They used to know each other when he was stationed on her free love planet. They’ve got a bunch of unresolved feelings—not to mention Shatner assuming command of Collins’s ship and everyone on the crew being thrilled—and it gets more runtime than any of the other arcs. Also, it figures into the A-plot of the alien spaceship out to destroy Earth.

There is lots of good acting from Shatner, but Kelley’s an absolute deadpan riot throughout. Nimoy’s okay once he gets over his “logical means rude” bit. Collins is bland but affable. Wise directs the heck out of Shatner and Khambatta in entirely different ways but to similarly strong effect. Even as the finale plods—before racing too quick to the finish—Khambatta’s mesmerizing.

Sturdy support from the rest of the crew—Walter Koenig gets the most fun, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols get lots of background busywork, James Doohan’s around in the first act, then relegated to occasional “dannae ken if she can take any more” scenes. Unfortunately, Motion Picture’s got a clunky story, something the director’s editions improve but can’t fix.

Still, the special effects are glorious, the Jerry Goldsmith’s music’s peerless, and the movie’s generally great looking. Except for the pajama costumes, of course. Wise and the very large cast do wonders even with those silly, silly costumes. There are lots of people around at all times; even if they don’t get lines, they do have to react to the dire circumstances, all while in onesies.

I do wish they didn’t have that really bad footage in this version, but otherwise, all drive systems are good to go.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is one of those imperfect films. No matter how many versions, there’s no way to fix one thing without breaking another–or it might just be broken all together. For example, I don’t know if I’d ever realized how focused director Wise is–during the first hour–on William Shatner’s slightly dangerous desire to get back on the Enterprise.

While it continues to pop up occasionally throughout, it eventually goes away. Wise and screenwriter Harold Livingston apparently just couldn’t figure out how to make Shatner sensibly irrational in his actions. So, instead of Shatner’s obsession angle, the picture becomes a muted romance between Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta. It had room for both things–poor Leonard Nimoy isn’t so lucky. His subplot gets jettisoned particularly forcefully in Wise’s director’s cut.

The film still has a lot going for it. The acting from Shatner is outstanding (the way he sells looking at the Enterprise is peerless), DeForest Kelley is great, James Doohan doesn’t have enough to do but he does it wonderfully.

Wise takes a long, long time with the film. Douglas Trumbull’s special effects work is awesome and the film might feature Jerry Goldsmith’s finest score. The long special effects sequences, set to Goldsmith’s music, are transfixing. Not sure what else they’re meant to accomplish but it’s enough.

Wise has a number of good shots, but he’s better with actors than the action.

Even with a heavy front, Motion Picture needs a much longer finish.

In addition to being one of the more intentionally boring films ever made, Star Trek: The Motion Picture features some of the more amazing science fiction special effects. The work Douglas Trumbull does in this film is without equal–he makes the unimaginable visual. It’s astounding (and I was watching the pan-and-scan only “Special Longer Version” and it still looked amazing). So, since Trumbull did all the special effects and Jerry Goldsmith’s music went to all those special effects, it was kind of hard to figure out what–if anything–Robert Wise contributed to the film.

Simply put, he made it real. The Enterprise actually seemed to function on a believable level, people walking around doing menial, but necessary, tasks. Shatner and Kelley have a cup of coffee at one point, because they’ve been up forty hours straight. That cup of coffee is a significant contribution, because even though Star Trek fails in the final act, the film’s more about the journey than the outcome. But Wise also gets some really good performances out of the usually neglected supporting cast–Nichelle Nichols is good, but it’s really James Doohan (and, in a strange coincidence, usually with Shatner) who turns in the best performance. He doesn’t have many scenes, but he does a great job with them.

As for Shatner… Wise only knows how to direct him when he’s not talking. When Shatner looks at people with warmth in his eyes or wonderment (when he’s looking at the retrofitted Enterprise), he makes Star Trek work. Nimoy’s got problems throughout, DeForest Kelley is good as usual (though some of his dialogue makes absolutely no sense and suggests a cut scene involving Romulan ale–not really, but it’d help… Star Trek: The Motion Picture has an utter lack of humor for the first hour and a funny scene would be totally alien), but the real trouble comes from the new additions. Stephen Collins and Persis Khambatta are both terrible–Collins being so bad, he makes Shatner look great in their scenes. Khambatta manages to do better as an android than in the (supposedly) emotive part of her role… I’m not sure how much they affect Star Trek, however, besides simply annoy.

The film is in two distinct parts–little surprise since it was originally a two-hour pilot–and neither part particularly wins over the other. While the first half does offer the deliberately paced, boring but competent (enough qualifying?) look at life in Star Trek’s future, the second half does feature Trumbull’s best work in the film and the “action.” As the film enters the final act and the big revelation, which might not have surprised audiences in the 1970s but is probably fine today since NASA is less familiar than Nabisco), Star Trek becomes rushed and silly. Wise managed to make it anything but silly–not a small feat given an entire cast in their pajamas–but he’d obviously checked out, mental involvement-wise, by the conclusion. Then there’s the summing up scene on the Enterprise bridge–another television throwback–and it almost undoes any positive regard for the film. Luckily, Trumbull’s back for the close and the Jerry Goldsmith music doesn’t hurt.

Oddly, I think Star Trek: The Motion Picture is far more influential than Star Wars. No one of any serious concern ever attempted to ape Star Wars, but bits and pieces of Star Trek–particularly its storytelling (which everyone says they dislike) and the special effects integration–have entered the standard film lexicon.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is one of those films (and there are not many of them) to partially succeed simply because it does not entirely fail.