Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Theatrical release poster
Directed by William Shatner
Produced by Harve Bennett
Written by William Shatner (story)
Harve Bennett (story)
David Loughery (story and screenplay)
Starring See table
Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography Andrew Laszlo
Editing by Peter E. Berger
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date(s) June 9, 1989
Running time 107 min.
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget $27,800,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $70,000,000 (worldwide)
Preceded by Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Followed by Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Paramount Pictures, 1989) is the fifth feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series. It is often referred to as Star Trek 5 or The Final Frontier. The film was directed by William Shatner, following two films directed by his co-star, Leonard Nimoy. Shatner also developed the initial storyline.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Following the events of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the crew of the USS Enterprise is enjoying some well deserved shore leave. The newly christened starship's shakedown cruise goes poorly and it is in Earth Spacedock for repairs. In Yosemite, Captain James T. Kirk faces two challenges: climbing El Capitan, and teaching camp fire songs to Captain Spock. Unfortunately, their rest is interrupted when the crew is sent on an urgent mission to rescue hostages on the desolate planet of Nimbus III.

A Klingon commander named Klaa learns of the Enterprise's mission and pursues in an attempt to capture or kill Kirk. His actions are not authorized by the Klingon government, however, and he takes this quest merely to obtain personal prestige as a warrior.

Upon their arrival at Nimbus III, the Enterprise crew discovers that a renegade Vulcan named Sybok, the emotionally driven half-brother of Spock, has taken Klingon, Romulan, and Federation representatives hostage. Sybok reveals that he used the hostage situation as a ruse in order to obtain a starship, being sure the government of one of the hostages (Human, Klingon, and Romulan) would mount a rescue mission.

Sybok uses his unique ability to share with and help conquer a person's greatest emotional trauma to gain the trust of most of the crew. McCoy accepts the experience, reliving his father's death (he euthanised his father to end his pain, but learned afterwards that a cure had been developed a short time later). Spock also accepts the experience, reliving his birth (being half bred of Vulcan and Human, he was never fully accepted by his father). However, Kirk denies Sybok, telling him that the pain experience is what makes them Human.

Sybok then seizes control of the Enterprise, so he can breach a dangerous energy field known as The Great Barrier, to reach a mythical planet named Sha Ka Ree, where a mysterious, presumably God-like entity awaits. Sybok claims to have had visions from the entity of its existence, and feels compelled to follow those visions in order to experience the entity's possible wisdom and power first-hand. However, the planet is somewhere behind the Great Barrier, a mysterious region of space that has been walled-off from exploration since time immemorial and that has never been breached (this is the "final frontier" of the title).

Under agreement and cooperation (as long as he plays it by the book), Sybok relinquishes the helm back to Kirk, and the Enterprise successfully crosses the Great Barrier, finding a planet in this uncharted region of space. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sybok explore the planet, which seems completely barren until a strange outcropping of rocks rises from the ground in front of them and an entity appears to them. Masquerading as God, the entity asks the explorers how they got there. When told about the Enterprise, it demands passage aboard the ship in order to leave both the planet and the Great Barrier and to spread his knowledge to the rest of the Universe. When the skeptical Kirk questions the entity's motivation ("What does God need with a starship?"), it turns malevolent, harming Kirk. McCoy and Spock rush to his rescue, and even Spock has to ask for an answer to the question. Sybok then realizes that the alien entity is actually the manifestation of his own arrogance, seeking to escape the Great Barrier.

Realizing his mistake, Sybok sacrifices himself to delay the evil being long enough for Enterprise to launch a torpedo. However, while Sybok is killed, the entity isn't, and the Enterprise has enough power to beam up two people. Kirk tells Scotty to take Spock and McCoy, leaving himself on the surface of the planet with the entity. Spock is able to convince the Klingon ambassador to order Klaa (who followed the Enterprise into the Barrier and to the planet) to rescue Kirk rather than kill him. Klaa's Bird-of-Prey suddenly de-cloaks and destroys the alien with a disruptor blast. Kirk is beamed aboard, where he receives an apology from Klaa himself, who admits that his attack on the Enterprise was not authorized by the Klingon government. The crews of both vessels and Sybok's captives enjoy a peaceful celebration of their newfound détente. The film ends with Kirk, McCoy, and Spock resuming their vacation in Yosemite National Park.

[edit] Cast

Actor Role
William Shatner Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy Captain Spock
DeForest Kelley Commander (Dr.) Leonard McCoy
James Doohan Captain Montgomery Scott
George Takei Commander Hikaru Sulu
Walter Koenig Commander Pavel Chekov
Nichelle Nichols Commander Uhura
David Warner St. John Talbot
Laurence Luckinbill Sybok
Todd Bryant Klingon Captain Klaa
Spice Williams-Crosby Vixis
Charles Cooper General Korrd
Cynthia Gouw Caithlin Dar

[edit] Notes

[edit] Screenplay

Shatner wanted acclaimed novelist Eric Van Lustbader to write the screenplay, but Lustbader and Paramount were unable to work out a financial agreement. Nicholas Meyer, writer/director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and writer of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, was then offered the writing job. He had to turn down the offer because he was busy directing another film at the time, leaving fans only to wonder what would have come of a Meyer-penned Star Trek V.

[edit] Humor

One of the frequent criticisms[1] of the film is the humor that was shoehorned into the script (written by Harve Bennett and David Loughery), at the insistence of Paramount.[citation needed] The initial storyline by William Shatner was much darker, but after the success of the humor-filled Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Paramount insisted that the story be "lightened up" with humorous elements. Fans complained that too much of the humor was at the expense of the popular supporting characters, particularly Uhura and Scotty, whom the film strongly hints are romantically involved. However, much of the humor is also at the expense of the main characters (including Kirk).

[edit] Special effects

Another criticism of the film is the special effects.[citation needed] The best effects house at the time was Industrial Light and Magic, which were used for most of the earlier Star Trek films, but were unavailable because of their work on the second and third Back to the Future films. It was also reported in publications at the time (e.g. Starburst magazine) that the effects requirements were so huge that ILM "priced themselves out of the market." Instead, the crew went with a much smaller company, Associates & Ferren. A common error frequently pointed out by fans is that the Enterprise-A is shown to have at least 78 decks — this would easily make it the largest ship in the history of the fleet. Shatner's newest book states that ILM's "A-Team " was working on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade while the "B-team" was working on Ghostbusters II. This led to a small company out of Hoboken, NJ, being in charge of the picture. Shatner claimed that this limited what he could do as far as extravagant effects, like hordes of warriors, a Powers of Ten opening shot, multiple rock monsters and demons in the final scene, and as a result many effects were cut due to budget restrictions.

The original end of the movie involved Kirk being chased by a rock monster hewn from the rocky terrain. This footage was scrapped when William Shatner decided that the costume looked unconvincing. Because of budget problems and delays partly caused by the expense of the costume, Shatner was unable to re-film sequences and ended up having to re-use shots of the false god's face instead. Test footage of the rock monster appears in the 2003 special edition DVD release. (The idea of the "captain" being attacked and chased by a "rock monster" was later used humorously a decade later in the 1999 Star Trek spoof, Galaxy Quest.)

[edit] Box office

The Final Frontier grossed $52,210,049 in the U.S. and around $70,000,000 worldwide against a $27,800,000 budget.[2] Though profitable, the film was considered a financial disappointment by many. It made only around half what The Voyage Home had made, and it quickly dropped off the box office charts after its solid $17,375,648 opening weekend.[3] It sold the fewest tickets of any "Star Trek" film up until Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002.

[edit] Director's Edition

Following the success of the Director's Editions of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 2002 and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and subsequent collector's edition DVD releases of the third and fourth films in the series, William Shatner lobbied Paramount to be allowed a budget to film new special effects sequences and otherwise re-tool Final Frontier in order to improve the film. His request was rejected by the studio and the original release version was reissued instead.

[edit] Gene Roddenberry's response

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry jokingly considered elements of this film to be "apocryphal at best", and particularly disliked the idea that Sarek had fathered a child (Sybok) with a Vulcan female before Amanda. Roddenberry made similar statements about elements of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Nevertheless, both films are included in Trek canon.[4]

[edit] Additional production information

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • This is the only Star Trek film, to date, to have a Pre-title sequence (not counting the overture in Star Trek: The Motion Picture).
  • The name of the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree was derived from the name of the actor originally sought for the role of Sybok: Sean Connery, who was unavailable because he was busy filming Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.[citation needed]
  • The initial shots of Spacedock and the Enterprise were taken from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
  • Filming overlapped with that of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the sets of the Enterprise interior used in previous films had been significantly modified for the TV series. Familiar sets such as the curved corridors and transporter room are only seen briefly in this film, and are barely altered from how they appear on The Next Generation.[citation needed]
  • The communicators appear to be of much the same design as communicators from the original 1960s Star Trek episodes.
  • One of the full-size shuttlecraft built for this film was subsequently modified and regularly used on Star Trek: The Next Generation, solving the problem that a full-size shuttlecraft had never been budgeted to be built for the series, although stories frequently called for one.[citation needed]
  • For the scene where Commander Uhura dances in the desert, Nichelle Nichols -- an accomplished singer and dancer -- performed the dance and planned to sing one of her own songs, the studio ultimately decided against it, and a song by the group Hiroshima was dubbed over instead. Nichols reported in her bio, Beyond Uhura, that this decision infuriated her.[citation needed] (In the parody book series Star Wreck, this fact is quite frequently made pun of by presenting the character Uhura/Yoohoo as an enthusiastic but totally inept singer.)
  • This film is one instance of where James Doohan's missing finger is clearly visible, when Scotty is opening a bag of dinner that Uhura gives him around the beginning of the film. Moments later, as Uhura answers a message from Starfleet, the reflection of a film-crew member can be seen in the computer screens.
  • One scene shows a Klingon vessel destroying a probe which has a picture of a man and woman holding hands on its side. It is Pioneer 10, an earlier real-life space probe. In reality, Pioneer 10 will still be less than a light-year from Earth in the twenty-third century, which would mean that the Klingon vessel was operating in the heart of the Federation.[citation needed]
  • A mistake, which was made during the scene where Kirk was climbing El Capitan, made it through to the final cut. When he initially falls from the rock and when Spock catches him he is seen wearing a blue shirt, however while he is actually falling he can be seen wearing a black shirt. A blue shirt could not be used in the closeups of Kirk falling because the background was added with bluescreen and a blue shirt would have appeared transparent.[citation needed]
  • In his autobiography To the Stars, George Takei recounts upon hearing William Shatner would direct this film, he became worried the production. He fancifully recounts how he believed all of the main characters would disappear only to be played by Shatner himself. However, Takei admitted these fears were ungrounded and was pleased with Shatner's professionalism on set.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Warning: A general knowledge of Star Trek lingo is necessary for comprehending this review.
  2. ^ http://www.amazon.imdb.com/title/tt0098382/business Amazon.imdb.com Retrieved on 05-26-07
  3. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/?yr=1989&p=.htm Boxofficemojo.com Retrieved on 05-26-07
  4. ^ Okuda, Michael; Denise Okuda (1996). Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future, revised edition. New York: Pocket Books, vii. ISBN 0-671-53610-9. 

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