Review of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) by Stewart S — 19 Jul 2009

If Star Trek: The Voyage Home is "the one with the whales", Star Trek: The Final Frontier is "the one directed by William Shatner". This frightening prospect goes some way to explaining why film number five is also known as the worst in the series. Shatner was apparently promised the director's chair on this film as a result of a pay dispute on the last one, and this decision is a very bad one. It suffers from all the worst excesses of Star Trek - dayglo aliens and tacky alien planets, an overlit, plastic looking Enterprise, hokey bonding scenes for the crew, and what someone thought was a deep, high concept (the villain wants to "find God") handled with complete ineptitude. It's a step back to the lurid, cheesy 60âs episodes.

The plot, what little there is of it, is utterly ludicrous - Spock's half brother, Sybok, is a mad religious convert who forces a hostage situation to steal the Enterprise and find the God who has been calling to him. The sub-plot (and I am being generous calling it that) concerns an apparently teenage Klingon who likes shooting space debris and thinks the Enterprise and the renegade Kirk will make an excellent target (yes, the script is so desperate for the slightest threat that it shoves this ridiculous idea in so we can have a few space battles).

To be fair, Shatner's direction is not actually incompetent. It is merely uninspired and average. Everything is so relaxed it could put you to sleep. Admittedly the film does have some interesting scenes - the pre-credits sequence is atmospheric and intriguing and the scene where Sybok shows McCoy his pain is quite moving (though this is entirely due to DeForest Kelley's anguished performance). However there is not an inkling of tension anywhere; the supposedly dangerous barrier to get through to God is a soap bubble traversed in a second (Shatner should have taken a leaf from The Motion Picture's special effects sequence into the heart of V'ger where there was at least a sense of scope and wonder; and the SFX here are bafflingly bad for 1989); and the confrontation with "God" is risible.

Unfortunately the acting is even worse. Without a director to coach him Shatner is woefully wooden, and the regular cast walk through as though they're all on something (Nichelle Nichols has an absurd nude dance scene as Uhura); it all feels like some amateur dramatics rehearsal. Laurence Luckinbill, as Sybok, is such an OTT loony he's difficult to take seriously, rushing through his dialogue as though desperate for the whole thing to be over. Nimoy looks pissed off throughout (perhaps because he was denied the director's chair) and phones in his performance (which is a feat in itself considering how deadpan Spock is required to be). What the great David Warner is even doing in this film I have no idea; it's a thoroughly wasted role.

The entire film can be summed up by the appropriate metaphor of the under-equipped Enterprise falling to pieces around the crew, and the appearance of Kirk re-assuming his status as Captain in jeans and lumberjack shirt: casual, out of place and an utter mess.

My recommendation is to do yourself a favour and skip this one. It adds nothing to the Star Trek universe and cheapens the franchise considerably.