Paramount hired Douglas Trumbull as he had already, by 1979, put together some of the most amazing visual effects that cinemas had ever seen. Not only did he create sequences for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” but was a major contributor to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” He would go on to work on “Blade Runner” and “The Tree of Life” in addition to directing the films “Silent Running” and “Mindwarp.”
When talking to TrekMovie, Trumbull admitted that he never spoke to Roddenberry. It was his project and Roddenberry served as a producer, but it seems that he was removed from production early on to let everyone do their thing. Trumbull said:
“I had no contact with him. That was kind of an interesting back story. I don’t know if anybody knows this story, but Gene was, I was told by the studio, a very, very difficult man to get along with. And in order to progress on the movie production, even before I came on board, Paramount just arranged to put Gene on a kind of a lush vacation cruise someplace. I don’t know anything more about it than that.”
Some Trekkies may also be able to tell you that the post-production on “The Motion Picture” was a mess, with the original effects supervisor, Robert Abel, fired after wasting a year and millions of dollars on un-useable shots. Trumbull was brought in at the last minute, given a massive, massive budget, and proceeded to make some of the most impressive effects that “Star Trek” had ever seen. “[I]n my experience,” he said, “the Star Trek movie was the most troubled production I had ever encountered.”
To this day, some of the visuals in “Motion Picture” haven’t been surpassed by other entries in the franchise.