{"id":2986,"date":"2022-05-29T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2986"},"modified":"2023-03-06T11:10:36","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T11:10:36","slug":"trekaday-027-star-trek-v-the-final-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2022\/05\/29\/trekaday-027-star-trek-v-the-final-frontier\/","title":{"rendered":"Trekaday 027: The Final Frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier\u00a0<\/strong>(\"2)<\/p>\n

Star Trek IV<\/em> was a smash and Nimoy had created the story and directed the film. Trying to be a good friend, he diplomatically pointed out to a devastated William Shatner, whose ego was self-destructing, that the \u201cfavoured nations\u201d clause in their contracts could be interpreted to mean that for each film Nimoy directed, Shatner could direct one too. With carte blanche from a happy studio sitting on a pile of Star Trek<\/strong> cash from the last three movies, Shatner set to work on The Final Frontier<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Unlike\u00a0The Voyage Home,<\/em> the Star Trek<\/strong> movie for people who didn\u2019t like Star Trek<\/strong>, this was going to be for the fans. And unlike the last two installments, which had established the seven regulars as a gang of friends who work together to solve mutual problems, this film was going to go right back to the television series and focus on Kirk, Spock and McCoy, with odd bits and pieces for whichever other actors were hanging around. And although all of this was conceived in the shadow of the increasingly successful and well-regarded new show, no heed at all was paid to what was happening on Monday nights in syndication (apart from the re-use of some Enterprise<\/em> corridor sets).<\/p>\n

What was Shatner\u2019s big idea? The one that Roddenberry had been dicking about with for ages, the Enterprise<\/em> meeting God. Give us strength.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s good about this? Well, as director, Shatner\u2019s shot-making isn\u2019t half bad. Compared to the rather ordinary-looking Star Trek IV<\/em>, the opening scenes on Nimbus III are splendid, and the Secret Pain scenes are very stylishly mounted. In fact, given the material the director has been handed, there aren\u2019t any really serious mis-steps in the production, apart from a few ropey-looking effects. Then again, not all the casting comes off. They wanted Sean Connery to play Sybok, and the actor they got has nothing of his magisterial charisma. David Warner is fun but will be iconic next time round. As noted, almost none of the \u201csecond tier\u201d regulars get much \u2013 and sometimes when they do, I rather wish they hadn\u2019t, as more often than not they\u2019re being demeaned, undermined or used for cheap gags. The Motion Picture<\/em> theme (now much more associated with TNG<\/strong>) is back and in general Jerry Goldsmith\u2019s music is pretty good, and Nimoy and Kelley are as fine as ever \u2013 in fact this is probably the best cinematic outing for McCoy.<\/p>\n

But the rest of it? Structurally it\u2019s a mess with tedious early scenes on Nimbus III and in Yosemite that go nowhere, it grinds to a halt in the middle with the fascinating but ultimately barely-relevant Face Your Pain segment, and the money runs out at the end so we conclude with a whimper rather than a bang. Far too many ideas are overfamiliar from previous outings and Shatner is so keen to rewrite the Kirk-is-old-now narrative established three movies ago that he shoots himself clambering up a sheer face of the aptly-named El Capitan. Lol. He doesn\u2019t realise the gravity of his situation. Rofl.<\/p>\n

Choppily edited, indifferently acted and tonally uncertain, with comedy beats that elicit more cringing than laughter, this muddle of a film staggers from mis-conceived scene to mis-conceived scene in ways that make me miss the sluggish but consistent Motion Picture<\/em>. If it weren\u2019t for the success of TNG<\/strong> I doubt there would have been a Star Trek VI<\/em>, especially given that Shatner\u2019s film barely made its money back. Reportedly, the director\u2019s preferred two-hour cut was shorn of 15 minutes by studio suits and producer Harve Bennett, although time is still found for an interminable rendition of \u201cRow Row Row Your Boat\u201d round the old camp fire. Those scenes of \u201csecret pain\u201d are great (in writing, filming and acting) but they play as if ten minutes of a much better movie has been edited into the second act of this one. Those ten minutes earn both of the two stars I’m giving this very uninteresting film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier\u00a0() Star Trek IV was a smash and Nimoy had created the story and directed the film. Trying to be a good friend, he diplomatically pointed out to a devastated William Shatner, whose ego was self-destructing, that the \u201cfavoured nations\u201d clause in their contracts could be interpreted to mean that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11],"tags":[19,79,534,528],"class_list":["post-2986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","tag-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tos","tag-trekaday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-Ma","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2986"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3029,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions\/3029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}