Star Trek: The Motion Picture received three Academy Award nominations. The nominations were for Best Art Direction, Best Visual Effects, and Best Original Score at the 52nd Academy Awards.
The recognition reflected the film’s major production ambitions. It was Star Trek’s first feature film, and its visual-effects work created a large-scale cinematic version of the franchise, including the redesigned Enterprise, V’Ger’s vast cloud, and the film’s elaborate space sequences.
Jerry Goldsmith’s score was another important part of the film’s impact. Its main theme later became strongly associated with Star Trek: The Next Generation, whose opening credits used an arrangement of Goldsmith’s music. The film did not win any of its three nominations.
A common mix-up is counting nominations for the entire Star Trek film series or confusing the film’s three Oscar nominations with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which received two nominations. The Motion Picture’s three-category total belongs solely to the 1979 film.