Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

What’s the Story?

The first four Star Trek movies flow neatly into each other to tell one continuous saga, wrapped up in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Now the series starts over from scratch. But Starfleet still orders Captain Kirk and his crew from their camping trip and marshmallow roasts (!?) to speed to a desert planet, where ambassadors of the Klingon and Romulan Empires have been taken hostage. The Enterprise is thus lured into a trap and hijacked by Sybok (Lawrence Luckinbill), Mr. Spock's long-lost brother, a renegade cult leader. Sybok intends to literally find heaven and God by taking the ship into a forbidden zone of space.

Is It Any Good?

With uneven scripting and f/x, STAR TREK V is generally considered the least worthwhile among the big-screen adaptations, and feels like a slipshod, just-before cancellation episode of the original TV series. Great to see the classic cast interacting, and there's a revelation about Dr. McCoy that explains the spacegoing physician's grouchy House-like attitude. But the rest is mediocre. In V's defense, the previous three Star Trek movies were a tough act to follow.

The journey to this "Final Frontier" resolves in unsatisfactory fashion, with lots of ray-gun blasts but few answers. In fact, it's easy (and, unfortunately, makes the most sense) to interpret the movie as a photon torpedo-salvo against religion.