For the first (and probably last) time ever, the old 24 Things... format goes beyond the Doctor Who universe and probes something longer and deeper than Who ever attempted. It’s the uniquely self-indulgent and borderline unwatchable fiasco that is Star Trek – the Motion Picture.

1. It beggars belief that a movie that was already paced like a glacier should decide to open with a 3 minute overture. Even more bizarre when it has such a good theme tune that they waste time with lift music and stars.

2. The production of this movie was extremely troubled. Some might’ve taken the endless problems as a sign that this movie couldn’t be made or shouldn’t be made but, dammit, they took it as a challenge instead and pressed on. No one actually seems to have known what was wrong with it – hence you have a director’s cut 30 years later that actually makes the film LONGER~!

3. How much of this film actually needs to be there? You have Shatner appearing at the window for the first time, the bald chick being probably naked through the glass door and you have the end credits. The rest is just filler.

4. The first hour or two is made up of the contrivances and coincidences necessary to get the spots they wanted. Kirk couldn’t beam aboard the Enterprise because the transporter wasn’t working. Oh well – I suppose that means we have to do a five minute shuttle ride round the Enterprise. Woe is us (break out the model shots, guys...)

5. That five minute tour round the ship is only there so Trekkos can masturbate isn’t it? It’s pure wank fodder. Get them in a good mood so they’ll be all calm and mellow for the two hours that follow. The cinemas of 1979 must’ve been shaking under all that combined Trekko wrist action.

6. Then they get the transporter working (badly) so they can kill off the guy that would’ve had Spock’s chair (because Spock’s now going to be in it) in a hideous accident.

7. Then they fix it completely so Dr McCoy can beam aboard. With an absurd beard. That wouldn’t fool a parrot. Anyone who mocks Shatner’s hair piece is wasting their time – McCoy’s beard is easily the least convincing wig in the franchise’s history. It’s like he was rimming a Tribble when the call came from Star Fleet.

8. Speaking of Spock, for years I remembered him as wearing really big shoes when he first arrived on the Enterprise. Long ones – like the Pied Piper wore. Actually, I think I just imagine him wearing a Pied Piper outfit (which he sort of is – just not with really long shoes).

9. The next pointlessly convenient / inconvenient plot device is the worm hole which stops them getting from home to cloud really quickly. The film needs to up the pace after all the intros and welcomes and shaving so they decide to play with the audience’s expectations by slowing things right down. The Enterprise does a thing and a thing happens – just as they said it might – and twenty minutes later they fix the thing so the thing stops. And the thing is never mentioned again as they mend whatever was broken and the Enterprise can do its thing again.

10. The uniforms are terrible. Apparently the director thought the original series outfits were too garish for film so deliberately made them muted. By muted they mean grey. And very unflattering. The all-in-one suits do no one any favours, the thing in the middle of peoples stomachs is pointless and just makes people look tubby and Kirk’s short sleeved number strips him of any aura of command that he might’ve built up over the previous ten years and fifty minutes.

11. Then the cloud takes over the bald chick and uses her as its mouthpiece. She babbles on about "carbon units" but never comes close to being the adversary this film so desperately needs. I read on Wikipedia that the producers wanted to insure her shaven head in case her hair didn’t grow back but they couldn’t because insurance companies didn’t want to get involved with proving whether her new hair was exactly the same as her old hair. That one (non) fact is more interesting than the entire movie.

12. Decker is a strange character – he’s sort of there to be the young lead but they know he’s doomed so they never do anything to make us care about him. All he’s got is a slightly oddly shaped chin and he once might’ve slept with the bald chick. That doesn’t make us like him.

13. The movie cost $45m and most of that went on special effects. Presumably not much of it on the long shots of people flying in space suits as they look like plasticine figures being moved about on lolly sticks.

14. Decker tries to bring the real bald headed chick out from under V’Ger’s control by showing her the dullest recreation room in the galaxy. "Here’s a fun game we used to play" he enthuses. He presses a button, a tiny bit of floor lights up, he wins. No wonder the crew works so hard – there’s sod all else to do.

15. When Spock is trying to time his entrance into V’Ger, is it me or does that opening and closing thing remind you of a gigantic space sphincter?

16. The big revelation is that the heart of the space cloud is the old Earth probe Voyager. When I first saw TMP (or rather when I first finished TMP which was the third or fourth time I actually watched it) I thought this was clever. Now I realise it isn’t really. The machine race – which doesn’t really believe carbon units (I think "water sacks" is a better term for us) do anything – decides to build a flying space city so this battered old satellite can learned everything there is. Somehow it manages to do this without learning that "carbon units" are responsible for most things that have ever happened. And then it wants to give all this info to "the creator" who is a carbon unit despite carbon units not being important.

17. And then it gets a bit stroppy and wants to give it to the creator in person despite wanting to destroy all carbon units.

18. And then it just accepts Decker as its creator despite knowing everything in the universe and, presumably therefore, being able to tell the difference between a three hundred year old human (all bone and dust) and a thirty year old human (nice hair but no personality).

19. And having scoured the universe it just lets Decker turn it into the Decker and bald chick shagin’ waggon as long as it can do a swirly lighting effect first.

20. And then it goes away. Presumably billions of life forms have been killed by it and countless civilisations destroyed as it rampaged across the galaxy but one lusty act of self-sacrifice from a disposable character left over from an unproduced TV series and it’s happy. Weird.

21. This film was made in 1979 – two years AFTER Star Wars. Had it been two years before Star Wars, when sci fi was all about "2001" then it would’ve made sense. But Star Wars redefined sci fi movies and the people making this one were clearly drowning in script revisions and bundles of cash and didn’t notice.

22. 70s sci fi movies loved the shots of giant space ships flying slowly past the cameras – it’s a trend that is brilliantly spoofed in Spaceballs. Star Wars does it a lot – it’s just that they tend to do it and have the ship shooting at another ship in what we call "excitement". TMP just has it because they can. Swoosh slowly past the camera and... cut to something else. Preferably something pretentious and slow.

23. After Decker, the bald chick and V’Ger have bathed in communal light and disappeared, Kirk says "I think we’ve just seen the birth of a brand new species." This is, obviously, a very pompous line but if you think about it, he’s Captain Kirk. He’s shagged his way around the galaxy. He’s probably been responsible for dozens of new species all by himself.

24. The film’s name – "The Motion Picture" – just about sums it up. The reason they made this film is that they wanted to make a Star Trek film. It didn’t need to be about anything or for anything, just to be a Star Trek film was enough. Get the cast and the space ships on the big screen so the fans could get funny feelings in their trousers. And rather than "Star Trek – The Movie", which sounds kinda fun, they went with "Star Trek – The Motion Picture" because that way they could kid themselves that what they were making was art.

I do sort of like TMP – for all its faults it is a film that I can’t help but admire. It is so unbelievably far up its own arse and so totally unaware of how pretentious and boring it is that I feel such ineptitude should be applauded. It is an obnoxious genius child of a movie that loves itself far more than anyone else could possibly love it but it probably caused more Trekko orgasms than anything until the DS9 mirror universe episode where Kira is a rubber clad lesbian. Gene Roddenbury was removed from the helm after this fiasco. That seems fair enough – he’s made a film about Star Trek that contains none of what made Star Trek any good in the first place.