Word: specialize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...major characteristic dominates Iranian universities: the extraordinary role of politics on campus, and politics of a special kind. Though sweeping reforms of the education system along Islamic lines are being talked about, Khomeini has so far had remarkably little effect on the nature of Iran's universities. Only about 5% of the professors and administrators were purged for ties with the Shah. Since the revolution, faculty and staff have formed joint councils to run many of the schools. The tilt is definitely to the left, whether Islamic or Marxist...
Gene Roddenberry, who produced both the series and The Motion Picture, promised that the optical effects in the movie would not overwhelm the idealism that made Star Trek popular as a television show. Roddenberry apparently reneged on his promise. The special effects are not particularly wondrous, although publicity materials for the film claim that special effects wizards Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and John Dykstra (Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica) created the effects with the most sophisticated equipment ever devised for such work...
...Special effects seem to be what movie studios think science fiction is all about these days. No doubt, Star Wars impressed a good many people because it depicted outer space with realism and "flash." But since the "creators" of The Motion Picture wanted to get away from the rough 'em up cowboys and laser beams action of Star Wars, they decided to put their special effects money into non-military opticals of the Enterprise's travel through an alien "cloud." It is quite possible that Dykstra and Trumbull decided that since anyone can create the illusion of space travel--they...
...also rumored that the original special effects team was fired two years into the production, leaving Dykstra and Trumbull to pick up the ball midway. This could account for the rushed, unfinished appearance of the effects...
Since there is no action in the film, dialogue is the only thing left to compete with the special effects, and the dialogue is uninformative, full of jargon, and plainly pseudo-intellectual--almost as much as unfriendly critics would have us believe the television series was. The non-effect scenes didn't have what it takes to counterbalance lengthy visual scenes with little intrinsic interest and much bore potential...