Star Trek V: The movie that doesn't know what it wants to be
I'm not as familiar with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as I am with the other movies featuring the original series cast. Growing up, we had 3 Trek movies on VHS:
- Wrath of Khan
- The Search for Spock
- The Voyage Home
I think we rented The Motion Picture before eventually owning it in VHS as well, and had The Undiscovered Country recorded from TV. Still, those 3 movies got the most mileage on the VCR than any others. I only remember seeing The Final Frontier on TV and we never recorded it.
I've never been tempted to re-visit the movie until the podcast Transporter Room 3 mentioned it as one of the great Chekov moments (when he briefly pretends to be Captain as a ruse to cover a rescue operation). That was enough to give me a reason to re-watch it, this time.
The movie is surprisingly short: 1 hour and 45 minutes, which includes credits. This surprised me even more than when I re-watched Search for Spock and discovered it was an hour and a half. I can only guess the budget was dialed back after IV, and a lot was cut from the script.
I think this is most evident by the re-use of Next Generation sets (the corridors, observation lounge, Ten Forward) and the minuscule amount of time spent on the bridge. But the movie looks great! Nimbus 3, the "planet of intergalactic peace", is meant to be a far-flung corner of the galaxy where government officials are sent to languish (certainly, the Klingon representative is a disgraced general assigned there to get him out of the way). The planet looks like a desolate place while not being a carbon copy of Tattooine or Dune.
But the script is clumsy. The attempts at humour are too forced and don't work — as if Paramount saw the success of IV and thought chasing after humour was the way to go. There are small character moments that are genuinely funny, and that's where Trek humour shines.
The exposition is also bad. When the new Romulan representative arrives at Nimbus 3, she and the other two representatives talk about the planet and its purpose with the always-terrible "as you know..." — I would excuse it if it was the Enterprise crew explaining to the audience what Nimbus 3 is, but the conversation as it happens in the movie is laughably bad. I should also point out that the addition of the Klingon captain intent on defeating Kirk only because he's bored is an equally clumsy way to introduce a "ticking clock" element. Take that ship out of the movie and I think it would still work.
But the movie shines in the 3rd act. It becomes serious in tone, but thankfully it's not jarring. The scene showing McCoy's pain, assisting his father's death only to find that a cure for his disease was discovered a week later, should have felt out of place in an otherwise unserious movie, but when we reach that point in the film there is a slow, dreadful build-up to that moment. And of course it all leads up to the famous, "What does God need with a starship?" which, despite the uneven delivery from Kirk with his "excuse me" line, works as a classic Original Series moment. Unfortunately it is undone, slightly, by the final moments of the movie with a lacklustre showdown with the Klingon captain when Kirk thought he was going to die (because he beamed away his friends and was finally alone).
I also enjoyed Laurence Luckinbill as Sybok. His character is supposed to be charismatic and he came across that way. Despite a few occasions of stilted dialogue, his performance was a highlight for me.
Overall, the script was tightly written; there are no wasted scenes and I was never confused about what was happening during the film. My only wish is that the producers (and director, William Shatner) could decide what kind of movie they wanted to make.