Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)
Sometimes movies aren’t appreciated when they are released, and it takes some time for a reevaluation to understand they weren’t as bad as people claimed at the time. 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier won’t be remembered as the best of the Trek films. But it shouldn’t be just tossed away because someone told you it was bad. William Shatner had it in his contract he would get to direct a movie if Leonard Nimoy directed one. Mr. Nimoy was given his chance with Star Trek III and IV. Trek lore is very hard to uncover these days because the actors have taken on the John Ford approach: when the legend becomes bigger than the truth, print the legend. The Final Frontier really swings with ambition, it just doesn’t have the budget to get there. Mr. Shatner wrote the script and had plans for a big finale with rock creatures and a big action sequence for the climax. The budget didn’t allow it, and the whole ending got cut down. There’s a lot of revisionist history about Star Trek, and in 1989, it was claimed The Final Frontier suffered from the competition, since it was the summer of Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II, and so on. It also had high expectations, because Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home finally did what Star Trek movies had tried to do, bring in an audience who weren’t Trek fans. The Final Frontier didn’t have success because people told each other it wasn’t good. It still has that reputation because there’s a fallacy only the even-numbered Trek movies are good. But The Final Frontier has some of the best character moments of any of the movies, and some of the best interplay between Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. We know Mr. Nimoy and DeForest Kelley weren’t fans of the script, and that hasn’t helped its reputation. But there’s a fun movie here, and it features one of the most quoted lines from any Trek movie: “What does God need with a starship?” If there’s a bigger problem, it’s not as accessible for non-Trekkers, and tries to play too much comedy because of the influence of Star Trek IV. But on its own, it is highly entertaining. 2026 is the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. Keep in mind, by the time the cast started making movies, they became caricatures of who they played on TV and became more what pop culture told them they were. However, it’s still worth setting a course for Star Trek V. It might even lead you to realizing it’s only logical to call it up on movie night.
