It promises so much, doesn't it? Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. You couldn't be more iconic than that in naming a Star Trek film. It is ironic then that this is the film that, more than any other, fucks around with the characters and back story in a pointless and unnecessary fashion.
A Vulcan dissident who believes that emotion is the path to enlightenment kidnaps a group of diplomats assigned to a crappy, half-arsed ongoing peace initiative between the Romulans, Klingons and Federation in order to lure a rescue ship and provide passage to the centre of the galaxy, there to breach the walls of heaven and look upon the face of God.
No, really, that's the plot.
On top of this, we have Scotty used as broad comic relief, Spock's half-brother, an Enterprise riddled with more technical faults than the Millennium Falcon and Uhura doing a fan dance. The last of these is probably the worst, not because of Nichele Nichols' age - I hope I have legs that good when I'm forty, never mind sixty - but because this veteran crew should be able to infiltrate a compound full of loved-up, ill-disciplined dissidents without having to require a senior command officer to strip off and shake her booty. Again, borrowing a strand from Linkara, this was plan A?
Thinking about it, it's a scene that belongs in a Lethal Weapon movie. It's out of place here, but would fit perfectly in a typical 80s/90s action movie, since its purpose is to have the dance in the film, rather than to advance the plot or character (indeed, it rather regresses the latter).
Sybok, the aforementioned dissident half-brother is referred to as the son of a Vulcan princess (first mention of a Vulcan monarchy) and the plot ignores the fact that Vulcan emotions are supposed to be a raging cauldron, hence the need for their code of logic and self-discipline in the first place. His means of converting people to his cause also assumes that the entire crew of the Enterprise - apart from Kirk - are self-deluded and riddled with mommy (or daddy) issues, which is a pretty insulting bit of psycho-twaddle to hit the heroes of our franchise with.
In fact, that's the film's problem in a nutshell. Kirk is elevated from lead to lone hero at the cost of the other characters taking a competence drop. Scotty knocks himself unconscious walking into a low beam; Scotty, whose primary character trait is his love for and almost mystical attunement to his ship. Uhura does a sexy dance that makes the harp and voice bits with Spock in ToS seem dignified, not to mention demeaning the first African-American woman to appear in a position of authority on US TV. I can't see Martin Luther King Jr. writing an encouraging letter after that scene. And everyone falls for Sybock's bullshit except Kirk, even Spock and McCoy (who otherwise does very little for the entire film).
And then they fly off to see God and it's really the devil, or something, and the 'Great Barrier' is a prison and Spock shoots the devil in the face.
Make no mistake, this one is bad. Leonard Nimoy having shown a deft hand on the tiller as a director, William Shatner now shows that not every actor can make that transition. It's as if he fundamentally fails to get the appeal of the show or the nature of the characters, producing a big old ego piece with everyone else reduced to their most rudimentary traits. It's almost like parody, but without the self-awareness or affection.
Next up, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
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