14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek The Motion Picture

Thirty second countdowns routinely take 90 in movies, but Kirk apparently has chronometer dyslexia, because while he makes a number of references to time in the film his numbers just don’t add up. Let’s begin at the beginning...

We find out the “Intruder” is less than three days from Earth, the Enterprise will launch in 12 hours, and it takes 1.8 hours from launch to zip out to Jupiter on impulse power, then Decker says...

DECKER: Assuming we have full warp capability, accelerating to warp seven will bring us to I.P. with the Intruder in 20.1 hours.

But the warp drive malfunctions and Spock arrives to help.

And here’s where things fall apart.

KIRK: Captain's log, stardate 7413.4. Thanks to Mr. Spock's timely arrival and assistance, we have the engines rebalanced into full warp capacity. Repair time, less than three hours. Which means we will now be able to intercept Intruder while still more than a day from Earth.

Decker said it would take 20.1 hours to intercept the Intruder, which has continued to move closer, so let’s shave 1.5 hours (half the time they spent fixing the engines) from his estimate, and say they’ll intercept in 18.6 hours. Logical, right?

Except after going to warp, the very next scene is Kirk and Bones grilling Spock in the officer’s lounge, at the end of which Uhura calls up and says:

UHURA: Bridge to captain. Revised estimate on cloud visual contact: 3.7 minutes.

Hang on. They’ve been at warp for at least 18 hours, and Kirk decides to grill Spock at the end of that? What have they been doing during all that time? What has Spock been doing?

And it gets worse.

Minutes later they’ve intercepted the cloud and narrowly survived an attack, and when Decker recommends caution...

KIRK: That...thing is 20 hours from Earth. We know nothing about it as yet.

But Kirk said they would intercept more than a day from Earth. Now they’re down to 20 hours. Where’d those four plus hours go?

So they head into the cloud, circle V’ger, Ilia gets zapped away, the Enterprise gets pulled into V’ger’s maw, the Ilia Probe shows up, and Kirk assigns Decker to deal with it. Kirk’s final log entry is after he sends Decker off with the Ilia probe, and starts...

KIRK: Captain's log, stardate 7414.1: Our best estimates place us some four hours from Earth.

20-4=16. What happened to those 16 hours? Sure, flying through the cloud and over V'ger FELT like it took that long, but did they really spend almost as long trucking through the cloud and skimming V’ger as they took to warp to it? Or was it a shorter trip and Decker gave the Ilia Probe a tour of every rivet on the ship for 14 hours while everyone sat on their hands?

Kirk—and the scriptwriters—really needed a wristwatch.

And speaking of time, next, it’s time for the single dumbest action in the movie...