"Star Trek—The Motion Picture" isn't as funny and inventive and energetic as "Star Wars." It isn't as beautiful and imaginative and obsessive as "2001," or as scary and lowdown as "Alien" (it isn't scary at all, in fact), and it isn't as touching as "Silent Running." But outer-space is a biggish territory, and there is plenty of room in it, I think, for a medium-range, medium-boring vehicle like this one, and although time aboard the Starship Enterprise at warpdrive speed often seems to pass more slowly than it should, Einstein did warn us about that. I enjoyed the trip.

Right at the outset, the Enterprise survives the most serious crisis of its mission, which is the tricky passage from a ten-years-gone television series and subsequent cult object into a movie spectacular—survives it easily, because Gene Roddenberry, who thought up and produced the television show and also has...