Star Trek Movie Memories by William Shatner is worth reading. The accounting behind the first movie included the sunk costs behind the abandoned effort at a television series called
Star Trek: Phase II aimed at resurrecting the franchise on the small screen. This contributed to the movie's whopping reported total production cost of $42 million.
I always enjoyed this "Enterprise exterior inspection" scene and especially the music. I concede that it was far too padded to qualify as a legitimate advancement of the plot or the character development. It mainly served as pure emotional juice for fans who finally got to see their favorite piece of hardware on the silver screen.
Leonard Nimoy spoke at my university back in the late 1980s about the first four films. He said the studio executives played a large role in the first movie devolving into a "bland, sterile" piece of work. I saw many nodding heads of old fans in the audience agreeing with him.
I personally enjoyed the first film when I was a boy and saw it several times in the theaters and on television. I can understand why critics take it to task. It had the potential to be much better. Per
this article the director himself admitted the final edit amounted to a mediocre rush job. I was glad he had a chance to deliver a director's cut to DVD before he died.
I remember the audience all cheering at this point, who cared about the rest, the Big-E was back!
