STAR TREK V: The Final Frontier - Cap'tin!, I canna take much more!

STAR TREK 5 - The Final Frontier - "God"-Awful! Originally published 11/8/01

So much potential, wasted.

This could've been a really good film, if only. If only they'd thrown out everything, or at least almost everything. Here's a few of things that will take away from your enjoyment of Star Trek 5, LAMBADA, I mean "The Final Frontier"

The special effects are sub par. There's a few shots of the Enterprise near the beginning that aren't bad, particularly the beauty shot of the ship and the moon, nice touch. But unfortunately, it's one of the few actual shots of the Enterprise you will see in ST5. Here's a hint for the producers of Trek. Fans like the ship, we like to see the ship, please include exterior shots of the ship in your films whenever possible. Other effects include the horrible "planet" beyond the "great effects barrier" that looks more like a visual depiction of Vicks Vapor-action than a planet. Really all the effects seem quite crude in comparison to other trek films; maybe they blew the budget getting Shatner to direct.

The story lacks a villain. Sybok, the happy Vulcan, is about as close as you'll get to one here. The problem with Sybok is, he really isn't dangerous and you'll find his laugh intoxicating. There's also a stupid sub-plot with a rogue Klingon; Captain Krunch or something like that. He's about as threatening as a french poodle with the hairstyle to match. Cap'n Krunch's main purpose in this movie seems to be to blast an ancient Voyager-style space probe(like V'Ger from ST:TMP) into bits. Maybe in a future film a Voyager-style probe will be kind enough to blast an ancient copy of ST5 into dust. There's an even more stupid sub, sub-plot involving the Klingon William Conrad, the henchman from Titanic(David Warner) and some Romulan Babe on planet Nimrod-3 which looks a lot like Tatooine. It's all pretty lame!

And just who are these people? This movie was made in 1989, which means the original series had been out of production for 20 YEARS when this came out. Did the writers never watch this show? Hardly any of the characters in Star Trek 5 even remotely resemble the original series characters. Examples:

A) - Capt. Kirk is now into rock climbing (something never before mentioned). He's annoyed that Starfleet would call him to deal with an alien threat, completely contradicting already established movies where Kirk couldn't wait to get out there and kick some alien can! Kirk's relationship to Spock and Bones seems more like Moe's relationship to Larry and Curly in this movie.

B) - Spock now has a brother, Sybok, who he never saw fit to mention before. Spock chooses not to shoot Sybok and save the ship. So what happened? Did the emotionless Mr. Spock have a bad feeling about shooting an intruder? Is this the same Spock that would have let his own father die (in "Journey to Babel") rather than relinquish the helm to Scotty for a few hours? I guess we could blame this on that "being dead and brought back to life thing." I choose to blame Shatner instead.

C) - Scotty, what the hell is your deal. You can repair the transporter when the damn Doomsday Machine is blastin' chunks outta the hull, but you can't fix it in dry-dock? What about all the other malfunctions on board? Mr. Scott is supposed to be the "miracle worker", yet he can't even keep the Captain's palm pilot from self-destructing. Scotty! Quit sniffin' around Uhura and get to work!

D) - Sulu, Uhura and Chekov seem a bit different too, but maybe that's because they actually get to do something in this film. Which I guess is good except there is a weird and disturbing Scotty/Uhura romance hinted at and possibly an even more disturbing one between Sulu and Chekov! (Just what are they doing out in the woods alone?) Uhura also performs a disturbing and hurtful naked fan-dance to distract some aliens on Nimbus-3. Meanwhile, Dr. McCoy seems cranky, which is at least normal behavior for him.

E) - The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A: WHAT THE HELL? Somehow the whole ship undergoes a facelift from the last movie, the bridge is completely changed and somebody has added like a hundred extra decks and steering wheel, and nothing works right. To quote Kirk "Starfleet has a lot of nerve sending us out in this condition..." Damn straight! What happened? Did they buy the parts from some Ferengi huckster?

Finally the whole plot is just bloody dull! Sybok the happy Vulcan is looking for the Supreme Being (God) on planet Shakaree, the previously mentioned Vicks Vapor-Action planet of heavenly lint. Sybok and his followers take over the Enterprise with relative ease, then sets a course for the "great big effect barrier" Kirk, Spock, and McCoy eventually make nice with him, they all go down to planet Vapor-rub, they find out that "God" is really a hairy thunderer in a Santa suit, Sybok croaks everybody is happy, the end. SNORE!

It's just all really sad. It's as though no one making Star Trek 5 had ever seen Star Trek before! There's no clever new gadgets, no socially relevant commentary, no sir, NO NOTHING! No vision of the future to make us gasp in awe, even the heavenly lint ball planet looks nasty. This place is supposed to look like Heaven, but it looks more like Death Valley shot through a pair of Ray-Bans. Fortunately, this film can be missed without missing anything. It adds nothing to the Star Trek mythos and should be written off as Kirk's fever dream.

I'm a trekkie, and I even own a copy of this movie, but Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier is neither final, nor frontier. It's just bad.