Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
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| Star Trek V: The Final Frontier | |
|---|---|
| |
| Directed by | William Shatner |
| Produced by | Harve Bennett |
| Written by | William Shatner Harve Bennett David Loughery Based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry |
| 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. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $27,800,000 |
| Preceded by | Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home |
| Followed by | Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country |
| IMDb profile | |
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Paramount Pictures, 1989) is the fifth feature film based on the popular Star Trek science fiction television series. It is often referred to as ST5:TFF or TFF. The film was directed by William Shatner, following two films directed by his co-star, Leonard Nimoy. Shatner also came up with the initial storyline. The titular "Final Frontier" refers to transcending the boundaries of our universe, "where no man has gone before."
Contents |
[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 | Captain Klaa |
| Spice Williams | Vixis |
[edit] Plot summary
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 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 a desolate planet called Nimbus III.
A Klingon commander named Klaa learns of the Enterprise's mission and pursues so that he can capture or kill Kirk. His actions are not authorized by the Klingon government, however, and he takes this quest on 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 passage onto the Enterprise.
Sybok then 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. 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 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. Together, he and the crew begin to search for this mysterious planet.
However, although they manage to pass through the Great Barrier and discover Sha-Ka-Ree, the entity there turns out to be a malevolent force, trapped on the planet aeons ago masquerading as God and using Sybok as a pawn to acquire a starship as a means for its escape. Sybok sacrifices himself to delay the evil being long enough to allow Spock to convince the Klingon ambassador to order Klaa (who followed the Enterprise into the Barrier and to the planet) to rescue Kirk (who had accompanied Sybok during his meeting with the entity).
[edit] Notes
This film is generally considered to be one of the weaker entries in the Star Trek film series. Even so, some fans feel that the film stayed true to the original series and explored the friendship between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy better than any of the others.
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.
William Shatner's original storyline for the movie was pretty much identical to the final film, until the actual confrontation on the God planet. Instead of an alien masquerading as God, it is actually revealed that Satan was an alien. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy (the latter two actually having succumbed to Sybok's brainwashing) begin to run in different directions. Spock and McCoy are surrounded by an army of the Furies of Hell, demonic beings summoned by Satan. Kirk risks his life and goes back to save them, but McCoy has been carried back across the river Styx, into Hell. The two rescue him, and the film follows the basic outline from there on out, with the exception of the image of "God" following Kirk to the Klingon Bird-Of-Prey. Some fans and critics feel that this much darker storyline, which actually transcends "The Final Frontier", would have resulted in a much more satisfying movie. Others feel that an even more overt focus on God would have made the film worse.
One of the frequent criticisms of the film is the humor that was shoehorned into the script (written by Harve Bennett and David Loughery), at the insistence of Paramount. 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, who the film strongly hints are romantically involved. However, much of the humor is also at the expense of the main characters (including Kirk).
Another criticism of the film is the special effects. The best effects house at the time was Industrial Light and Magic, which were used for most of the earlier 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." So instead the crew went with a much smaller company, Associates & Ferren. The special effects supervisor, Bran Ferren, allegedly admitted he did not care about the quality of the effects work, and the end results were servicable but notably inferior to the previous films. Ferren's preference, not least for keeping the budget down, was to do as much as possible in-camera, i.e. without the use of bluescreen and optical compositing for model shots. 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. Many effects were cut due to budget restrictions.
A final weakness is the ending of the movie. This originally 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 in the 1999 Star Trek spoof, Galaxy Quest.)
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.
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.
[edit] Trivia
- To explain the problem of the USS Enterprise being able to reach the center of the galaxy, while later starships (in particular, the USS Voyager) would take decades to complete such a journey, the novel of Star Trek V indicated that Sybok was an engineering genius who had modified both the shields and engines of the Enterprise so that the trip to the center of the galaxy would only take a few days.
- 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.
- Various theories abound as to the exact identity of the creature in this film which claims to be God. The alien makes reference to "an eternity I've been imprisoned in this place," suggesting that he is some kind of criminal or renegade and that the Great Barrier is his prison. Joe Menosky, who wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Nth Degree, suggests that the creature is one of the "Cytherians," a race featured prominently in that episode.
- While Star Trek books are not considered to be canon, Peter David's Star Trek: New Frontier novels provide an explanation and backstory for the character in one of their later plot arcs.
- Alternatively, Greg Cox's Q-Continuum Trilogy reveals that the malevolent superbeing, The One, is trapped inside the Great Barrier by the Q Continuum for crimes against the multiverse. It is also said that the entity, while not a deity, was indeed the creator of monotheism on Earth; therefore implying that the Judeo-Christian and Islamic God is false (cf. Who Mourns for Adonais?).
- The initial shots of Spacedock and the Enterprise were taken from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and several shots of the Bird of Prey were taken from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
- 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.
- 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.
- Many fans believe that the scene where Cmdr. Uhura dances in the desert was performed entirely by Nichelle Nichols. While it is true that she was the dancer - Nichols is an accomplished singer and dancer - and that she planned to sing one of her own songs during the scene, 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.
- 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.
- One scene shows a Klingon vessel destroying a satellite which has a picture of a man and woman holding hands on its side. Fans have speculated that the satellite was V'ger from "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". It is in fact Pioneer 10, an earlier real-life space probe.
- Producer Harve Bennet makes a cameo appearance as "Admiral Bob" when he speaks to Captain Kirk over the viewscreen, explaining the captain's new assignment.
- In 2006, former Mystery Science Theater 3000 co-stars and writers Michael J. Nelson and Kevin Murphy mocked the film in a downloadable audio commentary track for Nelson's RiffTrax service.
- When McCoy says in the brig "he could kill his own brother as much as he could kill you" this is untrue as in an episode of the TV series, Amok Time, Spock believes he has killed Kirk.
[edit] External links
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier at the Internet Movie Database
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier at Rotten Tomatoes
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier at Box Office Mojo
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier article at Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier at StarTrek.com
| Star Trek television series and feature films | ||
| Television series The Original Series · The Animated Series · The Next Generation · Deep Space Nine · Voyager · Enterprise | ||
| TOS-Era Feature films The Motion Picture · The Wrath of Khan · The Search for Spock · The Voyage Home · The Final Frontier · The Undiscovered Country | ||
| TNG-Era Feature films Generations · First Contact · Insurrection · Nemesis | ||
| Unknown-Era Feature films XI | ||
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