Star Trek’s leap to the big screen was one of the most important developments in the franchise, demonstrating for the first time that it didn’t need to be limited to television series. Yet Gene Roddenberry and the other creative forces behind the franchise had little precedent for such a move – certainly on the scale demanded by the burgeoning blockbuster market of the late '70s and early '80s – resulting in a certain amount of growing pains. In particular, Star Trek: The Motion Picture seemed to lose some essence of the show and underperformed at the box office. Its smaller, leaner sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, is now regarded as an invaluable course correction: returning the focus to character rather than spectacle and climaxing with the dramatic death of Mr. Spock.

The watershed moment helped the franchise move forward into what became a golden age with Star Trek: The Next Generation. But it generated a lot of questions and confusion when the time came to set them both in a larger timeline. No one was hugely concerned about continuity at the time, and subsequent productions have steered away from the era lest they create plot holes that can’t be explained. That, and some strange realities associated with the production, make it difficult to tell what happened in the official timeline between the first and the second movie. With the upcoming 4K release of The Motion Picture sparking renewed interest in that era of Federation history, here’s a look at what happened between the end of the original series, the events of the first movie and the lead-up to the second.

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Star Trek: The Motion Picture Made for Some Serious Ret-Conning

The main cast of Star Trek: The Motion Picture lined up together posing for a picture.

The last episode of the original series – Season 3, Episode 24, “Turnabout Intruder” -- aired on June 3, 1969. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1979, ten years later. Yet according to dialogue from the film, only two and a half years passed since the end of the “five-year mission” constituting the events of the original series and Star Trek: The Animated Series. The cast looked too old for their characters’ ages, which the series compensated for with a decade-long leap in the timeline between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan, despite only 3 years passing between the release of both films.

That left the franchise's in-universe thoroughly muddled, at least to surface impressions, and indeed The Wrath of Khan’s opening title card – “In the 23rd Century…” – was the series’ first formal acknowledgement of any kind of formal date. Everything else had to be established retroactively after the fact. Michael Okuda is generally credited with helping to establish canonical continuity for the saga – specifically with his Star Trek Encyclopedia published in 1994 -- which included a good deal of clean-up around the events of The Motion Picture.

According to Okuda, the “five-year mission” ended in 2269, with The Motion Picture taking place in early 2272. StarTrek.com sets the date a year later, in 2273, which is sufficiently close to Okuda’s estimations to solidify the basics. The Enterprise crew essentially remains where they are during that period. James T. Kirk is immediately promoted to Admiral and becomes Chief of Starfleet Operations, while Spock leaves the crew and returns to Vulcan to purge himself of all emotions. McCoy too, resigned his commission, leading to his "conscription" when The Motion Picture gets underway. The remaining characters are presumed to remain with the Enterprise and oversee its upgrades, which take a full eighteen months to complete. That’s where they’re found when V’ger comes calling at the beginning of The Motion Picture. Beyond that and a few apocryphal details like the birth of certain characters, the timeline is largely empty.

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Made Big Changes

Star Trek Wrath Of Khan Spock And Kirk

The disappointing box office figures from The Motion Picture led to significant changes to The Wrath of Khan. Among them was a giant leap forward to the year 2285, both to let the stars act their age and to focus on the film’s key theme of growing older. That included new Starfleet uniforms -- marking the first appearance of the durable red tunics worn for the remainder of the original cast’s movies – and, in the USS Reliant, the first appearance of a Starfleet vessel other than the Enterprise’s Constitution class. Similarly, the timeline in that period remains largely empty of large galactic events, and instead focuses on the personal development of the crew.

Spock's return to Starfleet in The Motion Picture seems to be permanent, as he abandons his quest for pure logic and serves as the new captain of the Enterprise. Under his watch, the ship becomes a training vessel for Academy cadets. Most of the crew appears to be a part of Admiral Kirk’s staff, with only limited access to the Enterprise, while Pavel Chekov receives a promotion and a new assignment as first officer aboard the Reliant. The only other event of note is Carol Marcus’s development of the Genesis Device, which – according to the film’s timetable – was proposed a year earlier in 2284. The Reliant was searching for suitable planets to test the device when they stumble upon Khan and his band of exiles. Beyond that, the timetable is all but empty, and with Star Trek now evolved far beyond that small stretch in its fictional history, it’s likely to remain that way.

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