In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, V'ger is a fictional sentient life form based upon Voyager 6, a fictional NASA probe. The name V'ger stems from a corruption of the name on the spacecraft's exterior paneling.

It was discovered by sentient mechanical life forms, who found it and "repaired" it, assuming it was an artificial intelligence like themselves, before sending it back to Earth. While on the way back to Earth, V'ger destroyed both a Federation space station and a Klingon fleet.

Admiral James T. Kirk was assigned his old ship Enterprise in order to intercept V'ger. When Kirk and crew his finally made contact with V'ger through the assimilation of Lt. Ilia, they found out what V'ger really needed: to bond with its "Creator," the human race. Captain Willard Decker accepted the offer and disappeared with V'ger. It is possible he was killed, but Kirk chooses to register Decker as missing in action.

V'ger mentions in a visual presentation of its origin that it was once a smaller machine, referring to the fact that it was one of NASA's Voyager space probes (in reality, only two Voyager probes were ever launched). After disappearing into some form of vortex (a black hole is mentioned by Decker, though a wormhole is another possibility), it was then rescued and augmented by a race of machines. The name and nature of this machine planet is never elaborated upon and has never again been referenced in the official Trek canon. Some fans have speculated that the machine race Voyager 6 encountered was The Borg, a race introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation a decade after TMP was released, although The Borg are not artificial intelligences nor fully mechanical by nature, but rather cyborgs.