14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek The Motion Picture
4. The Navel Gazing Crew
So just what are the brave 400+ crew members of the Enterprise doing as they approach, cruise past, and get engulfed by the awesome, alien and unstoppable entity known as V’ger?
Apparently nothing; engaging in the ages-old art of navel contemplation.
We get no hint that anyone in the crew other than Spock is doing anything other than staring bug-eyed and slack-jawed at viewscreens (and presumably out the windows). When the Ilia Probe arrives Kirk assigns Decker to try to awaken the real Ilia’s memory patterns within the probe. And. That’s. It. Yes, Spock does say this:
SPOCK: Captain. All our scans are being reflected back. Sensors are useless.
But, welllllll, not really.
Sure, V’ger might be reflecting their active sensors scans back at them, but it’s clearly emitting energy in known wavelengths (including visible light), so there are still things they could study. How about even just visually surveying the interior for clues?
How about the crew being ACTIVE instead of PASSIVE? During the Original Series, creator Gene Roddenberry frequently critiqued scripts for lack of action and for not having Kirk active in the story. That's something he apparently forgot during this movie because from the moment they encounter V’ger until Kirk’s big bluff, the crew apparently just sit on their hands, waiting.
Sure, we can assume the unseen crew is doing all these things, but you don’t build dramatic tension that way. Just knowing the crew is doing everything they can to find answers but failing at every turn, leaving their last hope as Decker would have been far more dramatic in a movie that needed all the drama it could get.
No wonder Spock finally took matters into his own hands and took his existential rocket ride. No one else was going to get any answers with those other 400+ slackers on the job.