I rewatched this movie recently, and I was reminded of when I first saw this scene when I was 10 years old or so. It was the late 80s and CGI effects weren’t what they are today, so this wasn’t too far off from the state of the art for the time (the film was released in 1979). The whole feel of the scene still a little bit disturbing to me, but you get a sense of relief when they finally blast out of it.
From imdb.com’s trivia page for the movie:
Issues with the wormhole sequences caused further delays. The footage for the scene was filmed two ways; first, at the standard 24 frames per second, and then at the faster 48 frames; the normal footage was a back-up if the slow-motion effect produced by the faster frame speed did not turned out as planned. The shoot dragged on so long that it became a running joke for cast members to try and top each other with wormhole-related puns.
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It’s hard to wade through the mixed lore arising from competing visions of what is or what should be in regards to faster-than-light travel. In some lore, the wormhole is a necessity; here it’s a problem. The problem is time-space distortion. I’m not sure humans are wired to handle it at all and I seriously doubt that it’s possible to fix that. That’s why it remains fiction, as only in fiction can we escape the reality of a fallen nature.
There were some other Star Trek series where ships used a wormhole quite frequently…can’t remember the details. But in this scene I think it was a combo of a “bad” wormhole and the in-universe technology not being suitable yet.
As far as humans being wired to handle it: yeah, probably not. I wouldn’t be the first to volunteer to find out, though. I’m there are plenty who would do that.