Here goes. I'll have to edit it for gamefaqs and IMDB posting.
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The Motion Picture is, above all else strong medicine -- the moonshine of Star Trek. Its theme and hold is so strong that casual or unready fans will miss it, and merely come away with the distaste of watching a real crisis to earth unfold in seriousness. Those interested and ready will come away perturbed, though satisfied. The spirit and overall message of Star Trek is boiled down to its perfect essence, with all other factors and conventions removed. The V'Ger spells the possible destruction of earth. Kirk and the crew are unsettled; Bones's pulse is racing; Spock is withdrawn and cold; Scotty is overworked and concerned, and only Chekov and Sulu are left to chance humor at the situation. The Enterprise is no longer a safe harbor; it can kill and destroy as well as it can convey its passengers. So too is the bridge no longer warm. It is a terrifying cross between the space drama Spartan bridge of the Enterprise E with the warmth of the D, producing something truly practical but sterile. There are automatic warning sirens, enough to cause heart attacks and aches in a split second. The Enterprise cannot know that she is the last chance of salvation for the earth; she will only hold up by the merits of her crew, who are facing the gravest danger they've ever known.
With the Enterprise no longer a sword and shield, the stage is reduced to man versus the infinity. The V'Ger personifies cold, infinite darkness by becoming its opposite -- knowledgeable, intelligent sentient. But the two are indistinguishable; the V'Ger is cold and barren, an orphan of the stars wandering in perpetual need and agony. It has no friend, and neither can it empathize or link with others on a common basis or at least, something to agree on in conversation. It is the equivalent of a drifting supernova, left to burn up anything in its path and wander the universe forever. Like the automated Borg, obsessed with assimilating information and forcing compliance by all individuals assimilated, the V'Ger pursues its cold ideal because it is slave to it. It has no emotion, nor humanity; it can never challenge its ideal because that is the programming, and the programming leads to the Creator. The chance at finding the machine God itself is illogical, but hardwired into Voyager 6. There is no reprieve from this deathly directive. Cold logic, by itself, is as dead as the stars. There is nothing to wonder at them, view them, explore them. There is only the tired machination of the universe and its quiet, meaningless observation.
That is Data's salvation. Data desires to become like humanity; he is programmed to be free from his programming and pursue his own purpose, path, and behavior. Though lacking emotions, even the unused memory conduits of lost friends and acquaintances give him knowledge of what loss is like. He has friends, aspirations, and shortcomings, rendering him human like the crew, sometimes even more so according to Picard. But the V'Ger is totally alone. This takes the sheer villainy and threat to earth to a new level, as the V'Ger assumes the very identity of oblivion and faces earth with it. Kirk and the crew are repeatedly frustrated in attempting to understand and deal with the entity because it is as nothing, its programming like the mathematical models governing the formation of planets and quasars -- automatic and above -- or far below -- the capacity to be reasoned with or its own capacity to change. It cannot even speak with the crew directly, assuming the peurile envoy of Ilia. How evident that the creators stood before her! How amazingly obvious their superiority through speech, intelligence, emotion, and humanity! Spock weeps because he knows this. He is finally free of the Vulcan ritualized ideology of logic. He can still use it to his advantage in the future for controlling himself, but he will never end up like Sarek, reduced to dementia and emotional expression from years of repression.
It is obvious, and the crew see the obviousness. Their wonderment at the pure engineering and existence of the V'Ger's shell craft is rendered empty, exemplified by Spock's ultimate statement that the V'Ger is merely a child, bereft of reason and humanity. This is how ugly bags of water can subvert something AUs in diameter; how they can subvert pure energy and plasma; how they can become the masters and gods of the universe. Humanity is God. The reason, the passion, and the desires of Kirk and the crew empower it. The arguably sentient logic is etiolated once humanity trumps it with its leaps of logic and intuition. The power to understand, weep, desire, know, and define is all afforded by an "imperfect" biological medium, affording beauty through the chaos of organic, electrical signals. What is machine logic, even at the highest level, but a mathematical model, fated to execute its directive and remain dormant forever? To lie in the death of a determined fate? And what is God, but life? The power to create and define its purpose and ambitions is God; humanity is God! Spock, with his pained compassion, is God! Bones, with his wisdom, is God! Sulu and Chekov, with their humor in crisis, are God! Decker and Ilia, with his transcendent desire and her residual feelings, are God! Scotty, with his dogged loyalty and service, is God! And Kirk, with his unyielding desire to know, discover, and love the experience -- and the galaxy he explores -- is God. Nothing can compare, regardless of its size or processing capacity, to that which we call humanity.
And our adventure is beginning as we realize and understand this. The Motion Picture devotes 144 minutes to this fact, taking human beings beyond the animal kingdom assumption of superiority to a galactic scale of illumination and beyond. Familiar Star Trek conventions of humor, safety, and peripheral drama (such as romance and physical fighting) are all eschewed to focus on the primary reason for being. The experience is a mind-meld with the universe of Star Trek, revealing everything it stands for in one stroke of power and light. One is perturbed because a better external appeal for one's own existence and illumination is not to be found. Whatever our humble origins as pumping proteins on a rock, we have grown and now have carte blanche to grow as we see fit. To discern the light of humanity, and to know one's true capacity as a human being, is to become truly self-aware. And The Motion Picture, and all its good counterpart episodes, invite one to this realization and wisdom -- to boldly go where no one has gone before.
That is the smile of Picard at the open and close of an adventure.
