Stardate: 8454.1
Release Date: June 9, 1989
Ugh, first I had a craptacular week, now I'm stuck watching this shit-tastic movie. Not for one week, but for two, because I swore I'd never try to fit a full-length film into one blog post ever again. Then I found out that none of the films are currently streaming on Netflix, which meant that I'd either have to pay to watch this crap (FTS), or that I'd have to borrow it from someone. Fortunately, I remembered at the last minute that my local library branch has a boxed set of the original TOS films, so that worked out okay. But then the player in the laptop was refusing to play the DVD until I coughed up 60 bucks for an upgrade that it didn't need, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm cursed, or if this awful movie is.
Let's just skip straight to my wrap-up review, okay?
This movie sucks. It is the worst of the franchise, and I can say that with impunity because the whole fandom agrees with me. Actually, I rewatched all of the films over the course of a week a while back, in preparation for a podcast which asked the question "is the second reboot the worst film of the franchise?" While we ended up stating that the second reboot was not, it was ranked right up there with the worst. We then had a go-round as to which Trek movie placed first: the host said ten, I said five. In my mind ten, though still a terrible film, was marginally better because it utilized an original story, whereas five was a rehash of Gene's tired, old "the Enterprise crew meets God" scenario. While I found out through research that this is not quite the whole story, enough of it is truth that I feel my original complaint still stands.
| They did it to keep people from getting trampled to death when the audience left en masse after the first five minutes. |
I found this image through an unrelated search quite some time ago, and saved it for just this blog post. It's so ridiculous that it makes me laugh. Then I'm sad because it reminds me that a marketing team had to try to put materials together to entice people to come see what they knew was a piece of crap film. Lots of others who worked on this film knew it was crap, too. I wonder how many people eventually scrubbed it from their resumes, like that stint you did for six months as a telemarketer to try to pay for college textbooks.
Anyway, nobody is getting any younger, so let's go.
We apparently open on Nimbus III in the Neutral Zone.
On the E, Scotty is watching the scanners while Chekov mans the captain's chair. The Bird-of-Prey cloaks. Chekov makes the executive decision to raise the shields and go to red alert. Scotty reminds him that the shuttle can't dock with the shields up, but Chekov feels he has little choice. He hails the shuttle.
"Hey, cloaked Klingons nearby. Probably gonna fire on us. Recommend you guys find someplace safe to hide."
"Gotta move away," says Kirk.
"Hell no," argues Sybok. "We're so close!"
"Dude, in order to drop to dock with the E, they have to raise the shields and guide us in with a tractor beam. That takes fucking forever. We'll get blown up, the E will get blown up, and your little plan will get blown up."
"That's true," says Korrd. "If my people are cloaked, they plan to attack."
"Fine," pouts Sybok. "Do what you need."
Kirk carefully answers Chekov. "Okay, so... can't return to the planet, so we're gonna do emergency landing plan..... B."
Everyone on the shuttle exchanges glances.
"WTF is plan B?" asks Chekov.
"You know," says Kirk. "B like barricade."
The Klingons are listening in, and Klaa realizes that Kirk is on the shuttle. He changes his attack plan.
"Gonna fly the shuttle in manually," Kirk tells Sulu.
"Fucking lovely," deadpans Sulu.
It is announced that this has never been attempted before, but that Kirk has full faith in Sulu's ability, and he instructs Chekov to open the bay doors.
Scotty drops the shields, the Bird-of-Prey de-cloaks and targets the E, and Sulu shoots the shuttle into the bay. The landing gear scrapes the hell out of the bay floor, and a net shoots up near the back of the bay to catch the runaway shuttle. Doors close, shields go up, Chekov warps the ship out of there as Klaa fires his weapons. The E scrapes away by the skin of her teeth.
Everyone in the shuttle is knocked out. The first to come to are, of course, Sybok and Kirk. They both lunge for a gun, and the fight over it tumbles out into the shuttle bay. Kirk knocks it out of Sybok's hands and it skitters across the floor. They continue to fight, but when Kirk looks up, he sees who is standing over the gun. Spock picks it up and tells Sybok to surrender.
"Nope, you'll have to shoot me." And Sybok steps up to the barrel of the gun.
"Shoot him!" yells Kirk, but why is he yelling that? Vulcans are pacifists.
A moment passes, then Sybok snatches the gun from Spock's hands.
"Join us. Take me to the bridge."
"Fuck off."
"Fine."
Baldy and the hostage-traitors step from the shuttle with guns aimed at the away team.
"Take them all to the brig," Sybok tells the others. "But keep these two." He gestures at Sulu and Uhura.
Kirk looks betrayed as Spock and Bones are lead away with him.
Scotty watches the action from the observation area above the shuttle bay.
DUN-DUN-DUN!
I guess this is as good a place as any to knock off. It's about half-way through.
Join us next week for the less-than-harrowing conclusion of Star Trek V: Why The Hell Was This Movie Made?
Fun Facts:
- The yeoman who hands Kirk his captain's coat on the bridge, then takes away the faulty captain's log, is William Shatner's youngest daughter, actor Melanie Shatner. Shatner's older daughters, Lisabeth and Leslie, played the only two other girls in "Miri."
- Lisabeth Shatner later wrote a book about her father's experiences filming Star Trek V.
- According to Shatner, he was talked into directing this film by Leonard Nimoy. He says that they had something called "favored nation clauses" in their contracts, meaning that whatever one of them got, the other did as well. Nimoy directed movie #4, and encouraged Shatner to direct #5.
- Shatner's first pick for a script writer was novelist Eric Van Lustbader. They discussed the project at length, but things ultimately fell through when they could not agree on novel rights.
- Producer and co-writer Harve Bennett did not want to be a part of STV initially, as he was not getting along with several ST staffers, including Leonard Nimoy. Shatner pushed for him to join the crew, because he trusted Bennett.
- Harve Bennett played the rear admiral that teases Kirk about being dressed casually on the bridge.
- This was the last Star Trek movie to be released in the summer, until the reboot films.
- This movie was the first to be made at the same time as another Star Trek production (TNG).
- Fans often consider this film to be the weakest of the bunch, even though it performed better at the box office than film ten. For comparison, STIV did more than twice the box office numbers than five.
- Because it flopped at the box office in the States, several countries ended up not showing it in theaters at all, and it was not available for viewing until it came out on VHS.
- The film's failure is attributed to several things: the Writer's Guild Strike of 1988 shortened the time frame for pre-production and shooting; Paramount wanted another lighthearted film like STIV, rather than a dramatic one; Shatner directing; some fans were down with TNG at the time; ILM could not do the special effects for this movie, as it had for the others, and the effects house that got the contract did not do a good job; ST was up against a wall of blockbuster films that summer - Tim Burton's Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
- ILM could not do the effects for this film because they were doing the effects for Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters 2.
- Some of the space shots from other films were reused in this one, to save money and to make up for terrible effects: a dry-dock scene from 4, Bird-of-Prey shots from 3, and a spiraling starfield from 2.
- In the original script, Shatner wrote that there was a falling out between the three friends of Kirk, Spock and Bones. Both De Kelley and Leonard Nimoy refused to play these parts, insisting that Bones and Spock would never betray Kirk. Shatner later admitted that if the tables were turned, and a script called for Kirk to betray his friends, he would not have done it either. However, we do get a small taste of it at the half-way mark in this film, when Kirk tells Spock to shoot Sybok, and Spock fails to do so.
- The producers wished for Sean Connery to play Sybok initially, but Connery was unavailable, as he was busy filming Indiana Jones at the time.
- A deleted scene shows Sulu and Chekov visiting Mt Rushmore, which now includes a portrait of a Black woman.
- Close-up shots of Kirk climbing El Capitan were shot with fake climbing walls. The shots of Kirk falling were filmed horizontally, then flipped to vertical.
- This film includes some rare product placement: Kirk and Bones both wear Levi's while camping, and Levi's gets a shout-out in the end credits.
- Spock's "marsh melon" dispenser was made available to purchase by mail order during the summer of 1989, by Kraft.
I guess this is a desert or a post-apocalyptic war zone or something. Either way it appears to be the armpit of the galaxy.
Also, let's be real: Nimbus 2000 is the racing broom you request for Christmas. Nimbus 3 is the dollar store knock-off that your cheap uncle buys you, then pretends like he doesn't know what you really asked for.
Okay, more exposition:
A busted-looking gun resting against a dead-looking tree while a dude nearby digs holes.
Wait, did I check out Holes by accident?
Is some bitch going to poison Kirk with rattlesnake-venom nail polish?
Actually, I'd watch that.
Can I?
Can I watch that instead?
No?
Yeah, okay. *shuffles sneakers in dirt*
A shadowy figure approaches on a horse, and the digger dude runs for the busted-looking gun, trying to load it. He fumbles the ammo, which looks like it's just fucking rocks. Does his gun shoot rocks? Is this a tiny, esoteric nod to when Uhura and Riker both separately suggested that when weapons fail, you can always throw rocks at your enemies?
The shadowy figure gets off the horse and says that he thought weapons were forbidden on this planet. Beardo, the guy in the burlap hood, says he doesn't think the bald dude will kill him over a piece of shitty land with some holes in it, and the bald dude says it's all he has. So Beardo is trespassing. Nice.
Maybe he's looking to sell Baldy some Amway.
Then he stares Baldy down and says "You have a secret pain. Everyone does. Share it with me."
Wait, what? This guy is a door-to-door therapist?
Baldy sobs, "I'm in a terrible movie," and hugs Beardo, asking where he got the power to unlock Baldy's secret pain.
"The power was within you," says Beardy.
Maybe he is selling something. Is it a line of motivational posters?
No, not quite. Baldy asks how he can repay Beardo for staring at him creepily and lifting a weight from his shoulders, and Beardo says that Baldy should join his quest, and that they'll need a starship.
Baldy says there are none on Nimbus III, and Beardo brings his horse forward so we can see that this asshole is riding a blue unicorn.
"Maybe I have a way of bringing one here." He lowers his hood and looks around, in an obvious attempt to get us to notice his pointed ears.
Baldy is entranced. "You're a Vulcan!"
And Beardy laughs and laughs, like a fucking supervillain.
Fade into opening credits while you ponder whether this guy's quest revolves around a cult or a multi-level marketing scheme.
*puts out hand* Cult
*puts out other hand* Marketing scheme
*balances hands* Eh, same thing.
Dramatic music! Opening credits!
Post-credits, we open in Yo-
Yes, thank you, Exposition.
A dude is climbing a rock, and spoilers, it's Kirk. Here's a gratuitous crotch shot.
I'm gonna rag on this movie pretty hard, but I always like to give credit where it's due, and this series of shots is actually pretty great.
On the ground, Bones is bitching to himself while watching Kirk through a pair of binoculars. He's pissed that Kirk would put himself in danger by free-climbing El Capitan, and it's kind of sweet that he cares, but also laughable. Bones, do you not know this franchise? Everyone says, "Kirk, don't do the thing," and then he does it.
So Kirk is climbing this huge rock face with no safety rope, and -
No.
NO.
Come the fuck on, movie. Are you serious right now? Hover-boots?
I cannot imagine Spock ever lowering his dignity to wear such a thing, and I'm sorry that Leonard Nimoy had to as well.
"You should be careful," says Scumbag Spock. "In order to do this properly, you need to concentrate and block out distractions. Become one with the rock."
"Fuck off, I'm trying to," complains Kirk.
He grabs the wrong outcropping of rock, and slips, falling against an obvious green screen. Spock flips in mid-air and shoots after him, and this is really awful. Not like, "oh, noes! Will Kirk's brains get splattered on a rock?" awful, but "dear God, did people really pay to watch this?" awful.
Much like pulling the ship out of a dive at the last minute, or a self-destruct being called off with one second left to go, Spock manages to catch Kirk by the ankle as his fingertips brush the grass.
Bones comes running up, and Kirk makes a Dad joke.
"Hi, Bones. Mind if we drop in for dinner?"
We switch back to check in on how that cult-MLM is shaping up.
No, you can't fool me, movie. That is clearly Arrakis.
We go into a crappy space cantina, and the music is so quiet that it almost doesn't exist, but there's a three-breasted felinoid stripper dancing on the bar, because of course there is.
Another hooded figure shows up, because everyone in this movie is either Kirk, or hooded. Hoodie goes into a back room, and when the hood comes off, it's a smiling chick. She greets the two scummy-looking guys at the table and introduces herself as Caithlin Dar. They exposit that she is their new Romulan representative.
Dude, this is just... no. Like, she has season one Deanna Troi hair, and she screams cheerleader. Not Terran cheerleader, which would make her boisterous, but Romulan cheerleader... just a bit too bouncy for a Romulan.
The human says he is St John Talbot. (A saint? On what planet? Okay, I mean, Nimbus III, but still - guy looks like he showers in a place where you have to pay for your water with quarters.) The Klingon is Korrd.
Outside, Baldy is coming up on the city, with Beardo McVulcanEars riding in on his unicorn, and they've got a small army of MLM salesmen.
Back to the dank cantina back room: exposition between the human and too-smiley Romulan reveal that twenty years earlier, the Federation, Klingon Empire, and Romulan Star Empire all got together to colonize this planet in some kind of weird, misguided peace treaty. They invited what St John Talbot calls "the dregs of the universe" to colonize, then forbade them from having weapons when they started fighting amongst themselves. Now they make their own weapons. (Out of rocks, I guess.) They're all concerned about an uprising.
Beardo's salesmen storm the city gates, and the three reps, who came out at the sound of an attack klaxon going off, rush back inside. Dar and St John Talbot go to a transmitter, whereas Korrd takes a different approach, and raids the empty bar for free drinks.
Beardo goes into the bar, and tells the reps they're his prisoners.
In terran drydock, we get a voice-over of Scotty swearing as we zoom in on the Enterprise 1701-A.
"I think this new ship was put together by monkeys."
Apparently, the shit is falling apart, and it's up to Scotty to fix it. He's on the bridge bitching to himself while knee-deep in tools. Uhura comes in. He chastises her for not being on leave. She chastises him because they were supposed to go on leave together. Anyway, she's a good friend, so she brought them rations for dinner.
A random red alert goes off, and Scotty is pissed, because he just fixed that, but Uhura, ever the vigilant comm officer, recognizes that Starfleet is actually calling them.
"Shit going down in the Neutral Zone," Starfleet says. "Need our best peeps on the job."
"We got no crew, and the ship is in pieces," Uhura explains.
"We still want you guys to handle it," Starfleet insists. "Recall all the shore leave."
Uhura hangs up with Headquarters.
See, kids? This is a lesson from Star Trek to never be extra at work, because even when you have your phone turned off, your boss will call your hotel and force you to work on vacation.
Uhura calls Sulu and Chekov, who are lost in the woods.
"Starfleet fucked us again," she tells them. "Just like they do every movie. Get back to the beam down coordinates ASAP."
"We can't tell her we're lost," says Chekov. "We're conn and nav pilots. We're supposed to know where we're going."
They try some dumb ruse where they tell her that they're trapped in a blizzard, but she relays that she can see a read-out of their location, and she can hear their conversation. She says she will figure out where they are, then send a shuttle to quietly collect them.
It has grown inexplicably dark since Uhura called Sulu and Chekov back, even though I think they were all supposed to be in Yosemite together. Bones has made beans for dinner, using a family recipe. As ever, Bones makes some racist remarks about Spock, and Spock thanks him for the compliment. Sometimes these are exchanges are fun. Now, they seem kind of tired.
Bones gets on Kirk's ass about risking his life for no reason. Kirk brushes him off.
I miss Wrath of Khan Kirk. That guy was a little older, a little wiser, a lot less "hold my beer." This guy is "same old, same old" Kirk.
Kirk says he knew he wouldn't die earlier because his friends were present.
When they prod him, he says that he knows he'll die alone.
Thanks, Professor Trelawney. That's not quite true, but whatever. I get that you're saying that you feel safe because Spock and Bones will always be there to save you.
Spock pulls out this little dispenser thing, and announces that he is going to toast a "marsh melon." His friends are amused by this gaffe, and not only fail to correct him, they use that term as well. (A bit of apocrypha that I like: in the novelization of this film, Bones knew that Spock would research camping before setting out with them, and paid off a computer tech to go through the computer and change every instance of the word marshmallow to marsh melon.)
They jokingly ask what they're supposed to do after eating toasted marshmallows, and Spock recalls that they're supposed to do a sing-along. The others are delighted, and decide to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." They teach Spock the words, then expect him to perform flawlessly in a round. When Spock's turn to jump in comes, he is silent.
Bones yells at him for not singing his part, demanding to know why he remained quiet.
Bones, you guys are dicks. You can't teach someone a song, then expect them to know it well enough to sing a fucking round. You sing it through a few times first.
Spock says he's thinking about the lyrics.
"WTF?" yells Bones. "The point is to sing it and have fun!"
Sassy Spock Moment: "I'm sorry, Doctor. Were we having fun?"
Sassy Bones Moment: "I liked him better before he died!"
Kirk shuttles Bones off to bed.
They're sitting around on bedrolls and Spock insists, "Life is not like a dream."
"Just... go to bed, Spock."
Then they do a Waltons thing where they each say goodnight to each other.
For some reason they still have not been recalled from shore leave.
We end up on a Klingon ship, where the captain, Klaa, prepares to practice with his Klingon hair band shoots a terran satellite out of the sky. He is bored.
A woman who appears to be first officer tells him that there's a hostage situation on Nimbus III. She relays that a Klingon, a terran, and a Romulan all walked into a bar, and got their asses kidnapped.
"The terrans will send a rescue ship," he muses. "I can shoot that instead. Awesome!"
Clearly, this guy cares about Korrd's well-being.
Our boys are trying to sleep when a spotlight hits their campsite through the trees. Uhura steps out and apologizes, saying their shore leave has been recalled, and that transporters are down, so they had to send a shuttle.
"Why didn't you call me?" asks Kirk.
"Haha, someone "accidentally" left it behind," she says sarcastically, handing it to him.
Interesting. No one called Spock or Bones either. Bones I believe would leave his behind, but not Spock.
Uhura takes the boys back in the shuttle. There's one brief love letter shot and one of them staring at the new ship. Kirk gives that quote about "All I ask is a tall ship..." and Spock and Bones argue over the author. There's a punchline, but who cares? When their Odd Couple moments work, they work. When they don't, you fast-forward through them.
Why the fuck must every shuttle be named Galileo?
They take the lift up to the bridge. The voice recognition skips, but they get there. Then the doors on the bridge don't function properly, and they have to force their way out. The viewscreen is wonky. A yeoman hands Kirk his captain's coat and takes his flannel. Work is still proceeding on the bridge. Kirk gets jokingly chastised by the admiral on-screen for coming to work in his casual Friday clothes, even though he isn't wearing the green wrap-around blouse.
The admiral brings Kirk up to speed about the kidnappings. The Klingons haven't said anything yet, but they probably will.
Kirk hangs up, and Bones points out that this mission blows, because they'll most likely run into the Klingons at some point.
"And they don't fucking like you," he adds.
"Yeah, well, I don't fucking like them, either," replies Kirk.
He drops into the captain's chair and rocks it like he's kicking the tires on a car he's thinking of buying. "I miss my old chair," he says to Bones.
Spock gives him a sarcastic, "Aww, poor baby," look.
We go back to Klaa's ship, where the first officer (her name is Vixis) tells Klaa that the E has been dispatched to Nimbus III.
"That's Kirk's ship!" says Klaa excitedly.
"If you kill Kirk, you'll be the greatest warrior in the galaxy," Vixis eggs him on.
Okay, so we're about a quarter of the way through this movie, and we finally got a plot rolling: Kirk is going to rescue some kidnapped representatives on some shit planet out in BFE, Space. And some Klingon d-bag has decided to kill Kirk for funsies.
Kirk attempts to make a captain's log, but the machine malfunctions, and he's forced to snap it shut and hand it to that same girl who took his flannel. I think this might be the first time we've seen the actual log book, though I can't be certain.
The viewscreen plays information on the hostages.
Kirk laments that Korrd was once a great general, and that his tactics were required reading at the Academy. Spock adds that Korrd fell out of favor with the Klingon High Council.
Then they watch a video put out by the hostages.
Caithlin Dar appears and says that they surrendered to the "Galactic Army of Light." They're fine now, but everyone should please cooperate with them. Then Beardo comes on and tells the audience that he's sorry it came to this, but also to just please cooperate.
Spock seems put-out, and plays back a small section of the video that shows Beardy.
"What up?" asks Kirk. "You seem weird."
"Yeah, this is not right," agrees Spock.
Also: Galactic Army of Light? Your army name sucks, Beardo.
Kirk and Bones find Spock in the Obs Lounge (which has a nautical theme, replete with wooden steering wheel), staring out the window.
Spock says he might know the Vulcan from the video, and goes on to describe a kid he knew when he was little. This kid was really smart, and everyone expected him to join the ranks of Vulcan scholars. But instead, he advocated using emotion over logic, and was banished from Vulcan when he tried to get others to join him.
"That's... okay, then," says Kirk, who seems unsure of what to do.
Spock seems troubled.
Bones is just amused at the thought of a passionate Vulcan, which is interesting because he was there when Kirk fought Spock during the pon farr rituals.
Back on the bridge, Uhura reports getting a hail from Nimbus III, asking about their intent.
"Ummm, fake static and ask them to repeat. Stall for time," says Kirk.
She does so.
Spock reports the Klingon ship approaching.
Kirk calls Scotty to ask about transporters.
"Noop," Scotty replies. "Not up, not functioning, and there's no way we could beam the hostages out."
"Gotta go old-school," Kirk decides, and he takes several officers with him to the shuttle bay.
In the shuttle, Spock recommends landing pretty far away so no one will notice them. Sulu does so.
On the surface, Chekov has called Beardo and announced that he is the captain of the ship, and that Beardo is in violation of the Neutral Zone treaty.
Beardo thinks that Chekov and his first officer should beam down to talk.
"Sure," says Chekov, "but you should know that there's a Klingon ship approaching, and they'll be pretty pissed when they get here."
"Good thing you guys are here to protect me, then," smiles Beardo.
Spock thinks it will take the away team more than an hour to walk to Paradise City, which Kirk declares too long. They see that an Army of Light scout party nearby has unicorn-horses, but they determine that they will need a distraction to get at them.
For me, the next scene falls in to the category of "why did they go with that?" Our mostly-male away team has Uhura strip down to her undies and do a fan dance with some palm fronds that they probably found on the ground. She stands on top of a dune and does her dance while a siren voice calls to the army members. They drop what they're doing and run to her, only to find themselves staring down the barrels of Federation-issued weapons when they reach the tops of the dunes.
Don't get me wrong, Nichelle Nichols is a great dancer, and in awesome shape, and I'd watch her fan dance any day. But they couldn't come up with something better than, "make the girl dance seductively"? Also, that's not even her voice. Nichols found out later that they dubbed in someone else's voice, and she was irate. I have no idea why they would even do that. She's a top-rated singer.
So they steal the horses, and the army members' clothes for good measure, then gallop toward the city.
"Let us in!" yells Kirk. "Federation people are right behind us!"
So the Army people in the wall city open the gates and let in their Trojan unicorns. But when no Federation people appear on the horizon, they get suspicious, and Baldy shines a light on them. Kirk tells Sulu to take out the light while Spock's scans determine that the hostages are in the kitty girl strip club. The army now knows that something is up, and they shoot at Sulu, who is fine, but knocked off his unicorn. There's some hand-to-hand combat, and the Federation officers are shooting to stun. In one ridiculous moment, an Army member hops on a unicorn near Spock. The unicorn rears up, but he pinches it, dropping it to the ground.
Kirk makes it into the kitty girl strip club, shoots out the neon sign above the door for no discernible reason, and calls Uhura to bring in the shuttle. In the kitty titty bar, Kirk is attacked by one of the dancers, but he manages to toss her off. Spock approaches behind him, and the hostages come out of the back room.
"Awesome," says Kirk.
But then Dar, Korrd, and St John pull guns on them.
"Please cooperate by giving us your weapons," says St John pleasantly.
Kirk and Spock are lead back into the courtyard, where the Army cheers. They've taken the rest of the away team as well.
Beardo is leading them. Spock walks up to him and addresses him in Vulcan, but what he says is not translated for us. Beardo recognizes Spock.
"Spock, is it you? It's me, Sybok! You have another opportunity to join my movement!"
"Fuck that noise, I'm Starfleet," replies Spock. "And you're under arrest for violating the Neutral Zone Treaty."
Beardo-Sybok laughs. "Oh, wait. You were serious? Okay, we'll just take your ship without your help."
"Are you kidding me?" demands Kirk. "You set this whole thing up to get my ship?"
Sybok figures out that the thing with Chekov was a ruse, and he laughs, because that was clever.
On the E, Scotty is watching the scanners while Chekov mans the captain's chair. The Bird-of-Prey cloaks. Chekov makes the executive decision to raise the shields and go to red alert. Scotty reminds him that the shuttle can't dock with the shields up, but Chekov feels he has little choice. He hails the shuttle.
"Hey, cloaked Klingons nearby. Probably gonna fire on us. Recommend you guys find someplace safe to hide."
"Gotta move away," says Kirk.
"Hell no," argues Sybok. "We're so close!"
"Dude, in order to drop to dock with the E, they have to raise the shields and guide us in with a tractor beam. That takes fucking forever. We'll get blown up, the E will get blown up, and your little plan will get blown up."
"That's true," says Korrd. "If my people are cloaked, they plan to attack."
"Fine," pouts Sybok. "Do what you need."
Kirk carefully answers Chekov. "Okay, so... can't return to the planet, so we're gonna do emergency landing plan..... B."
Everyone on the shuttle exchanges glances.
"WTF is plan B?" asks Chekov.
"You know," says Kirk. "B like barricade."
The Klingons are listening in, and Klaa realizes that Kirk is on the shuttle. He changes his attack plan.
"Gonna fly the shuttle in manually," Kirk tells Sulu.
"Fucking lovely," deadpans Sulu.
It is announced that this has never been attempted before, but that Kirk has full faith in Sulu's ability, and he instructs Chekov to open the bay doors.
Scotty drops the shields, the Bird-of-Prey de-cloaks and targets the E, and Sulu shoots the shuttle into the bay. The landing gear scrapes the hell out of the bay floor, and a net shoots up near the back of the bay to catch the runaway shuttle. Doors close, shields go up, Chekov warps the ship out of there as Klaa fires his weapons. The E scrapes away by the skin of her teeth.
Everyone in the shuttle is knocked out. The first to come to are, of course, Sybok and Kirk. They both lunge for a gun, and the fight over it tumbles out into the shuttle bay. Kirk knocks it out of Sybok's hands and it skitters across the floor. They continue to fight, but when Kirk looks up, he sees who is standing over the gun. Spock picks it up and tells Sybok to surrender.
"Nope, you'll have to shoot me." And Sybok steps up to the barrel of the gun.
"Shoot him!" yells Kirk, but why is he yelling that? Vulcans are pacifists.
A moment passes, then Sybok snatches the gun from Spock's hands.
"Join us. Take me to the bridge."
"Fuck off."
"Fine."
Baldy and the hostage-traitors step from the shuttle with guns aimed at the away team.
"Take them all to the brig," Sybok tells the others. "But keep these two." He gestures at Sulu and Uhura.
Kirk looks betrayed as Spock and Bones are lead away with him.
Scotty watches the action from the observation area above the shuttle bay.
DUN-DUN-DUN!
I guess this is as good a place as any to knock off. It's about half-way through.
Join us next week for the less-than-harrowing conclusion of Star Trek V: Why The Hell Was This Movie Made?
Fun Facts:
- The yeoman who hands Kirk his captain's coat on the bridge, then takes away the faulty captain's log, is William Shatner's youngest daughter, actor Melanie Shatner. Shatner's older daughters, Lisabeth and Leslie, played the only two other girls in "Miri."
- Lisabeth Shatner later wrote a book about her father's experiences filming Star Trek V.
- According to Shatner, he was talked into directing this film by Leonard Nimoy. He says that they had something called "favored nation clauses" in their contracts, meaning that whatever one of them got, the other did as well. Nimoy directed movie #4, and encouraged Shatner to direct #5.
- Shatner's first pick for a script writer was novelist Eric Van Lustbader. They discussed the project at length, but things ultimately fell through when they could not agree on novel rights.
- Producer and co-writer Harve Bennett did not want to be a part of STV initially, as he was not getting along with several ST staffers, including Leonard Nimoy. Shatner pushed for him to join the crew, because he trusted Bennett.
- Harve Bennett played the rear admiral that teases Kirk about being dressed casually on the bridge.
- This was the last Star Trek movie to be released in the summer, until the reboot films.
- This movie was the first to be made at the same time as another Star Trek production (TNG).
- Fans often consider this film to be the weakest of the bunch, even though it performed better at the box office than film ten. For comparison, STIV did more than twice the box office numbers than five.
- Because it flopped at the box office in the States, several countries ended up not showing it in theaters at all, and it was not available for viewing until it came out on VHS.
- The film's failure is attributed to several things: the Writer's Guild Strike of 1988 shortened the time frame for pre-production and shooting; Paramount wanted another lighthearted film like STIV, rather than a dramatic one; Shatner directing; some fans were down with TNG at the time; ILM could not do the special effects for this movie, as it had for the others, and the effects house that got the contract did not do a good job; ST was up against a wall of blockbuster films that summer - Tim Burton's Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
- ILM could not do the effects for this film because they were doing the effects for Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters 2.
- Some of the space shots from other films were reused in this one, to save money and to make up for terrible effects: a dry-dock scene from 4, Bird-of-Prey shots from 3, and a spiraling starfield from 2.
- In the original script, Shatner wrote that there was a falling out between the three friends of Kirk, Spock and Bones. Both De Kelley and Leonard Nimoy refused to play these parts, insisting that Bones and Spock would never betray Kirk. Shatner later admitted that if the tables were turned, and a script called for Kirk to betray his friends, he would not have done it either. However, we do get a small taste of it at the half-way mark in this film, when Kirk tells Spock to shoot Sybok, and Spock fails to do so.
- The producers wished for Sean Connery to play Sybok initially, but Connery was unavailable, as he was busy filming Indiana Jones at the time.
- A deleted scene shows Sulu and Chekov visiting Mt Rushmore, which now includes a portrait of a Black woman.
- Close-up shots of Kirk climbing El Capitan were shot with fake climbing walls. The shots of Kirk falling were filmed horizontally, then flipped to vertical.
- This film includes some rare product placement: Kirk and Bones both wear Levi's while camping, and Levi's gets a shout-out in the end credits.
- Spock's "marsh melon" dispenser was made available to purchase by mail order during the summer of 1989, by Kraft.
- Many of the shots were set up in a matter of minutes, instead of hours, owing to a very tight filming schedule.
- The campfire scenes had to be filmed in tighter angles because the crew was not able to finish building the tops of the trees.
- Korrd is played by Charles Cooper. He wears a decorated coat in this film that will be worn next by... himself, in the third and fourth season episodes of TNG that involve Chancellor K'mpec.
- Locals were hired to play members of Sybok's Army of Light. Because of money troubles and not enough extras, many doubled back and ran through the gates a second time, making the army appear larger.
- This was the first Star Trek film to not be nominated for a Hugo award for "Best Dramatic Presentation."
- Shatner hired Herman Zimmerman to work on the interiors of the 1701-A because he liked Zimmerman's work on TNG. Zimmerman later admitted that, after the film flopped, he thought he'd have no chance of working again post-TNG.
- The corridors of the 1701-A are the unchanged corridors from TNG, which was being filmed next door at times.
- The new bridge set has two stories associated with it. In one, the set from the original movie was being stored outside, and was destroyed by a windstorm. In another, the set had been adapted to TNG, and had been altered so much that it could not longer be changed back. Only a few pieces from the original set survived, and these were used with the new set. Later, some of the decorations would be used on the Stargazer and battle bridges on TNG.
- Bandai/Nintendo had planned to have a companion game released with STV, but when the film did poorly, the game was abandoned. It was apparently only only partially completed, because one can find a ROM of it online, but it contains copy-edit mistakes ("Scotto" instead of Scotty), and it lacks an ending.
- Jerry Goldsmith, who was Gene's pick to score TOS, was not available at the time. However, he was available to score movie #1, TNG, and this film. Following its dismal reception, he refused to score the music for movie #6. However, he did score Voyager, and movies 7, 9, and 10.
- This is the only TOS film not to feature Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco.
- This film won the following Razzie awards: Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Shatner), Worst Director (Shatner). Nominations for Razzies: Worst Supporting Actor (Kelley), Worst Screenplay, Worst Picture of the Decade. MST3K's Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy created downloadable RiffTrax commentary for this film.
-However, the one legit award this film was nominated for was a Golden Reel Award for Best Sound Editing.
- Caithlin Dar's reference to the Federation, Klingons and Romulans unsuccessfully trying to usher in a new era of peace twenty years earlier, refers to the Organian Peace Treaty of 2267 and the Romulan-Klingon Alliance of 2268. This puts the time frame for this film somewhere between 2286 to 2288.
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