Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Price: 75 cents
Year: 1989
Length: 107 minutes
Director: Will.i.am. Shatner
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Waltner Koenig, David Warner, Lawrence Luckinbill





Star Trek or Star Wars?

A Personal History:
1983-1999: Star Wars
1999-2004: Apathetic
2005-Present: Star Trek.

The nu-trilogy and the rise of G4 and Spike's constant rotation of TNG reruns pretty much sums up that whole equation as I imagine/hope it has for at least a few other undiscerning nards out there.

So . . .

Maybe it has something to do with me being a nu-jack Star Trek acolyte and a lover of trash and camp and overblown ego trips, but everything you've heard about this movie is wrong. Old-school Star Trek nerds are mirthless bonerheads for denying this movie's majesty for so long. It's probably the quintessential Star Trek dollar video. Although copies of ST: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: Generations are much more plentiful, this one embodies all the glorious misguidedness that marks a truly noteworthy and remarkable dollar vid. For a TV show whose whole reputation and success is indelibly linked to camp, it is downright unfathomable how the campiest Star Trek film ever "shat" out is also the most hated.

First of all, it was directed by William Shatner from a story he himself wrote with the help of only two (!) other credited screenwriters, so it has vision going for it in spades. His turn in the director seat is also invariably a result of the ego-wounding success that Leonard Nimoy had at the helm of both the muted Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and the worldwide smash eco-comedy Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (still the highest-grossing Star Trek movie). One can easily imagine Shatner refusing to make another Star Trek movie unless they let him try his hand at directing the next one himself after all if a plebe like Nimoy could bang a couple out of the park how about letting ol' Shatface swing, hell he even directed 8 wholed episodes of TJ Hooker beforelike. I want to hug those poor subsequently unemployed studioheads for giving me my turkey early this year.

So it opens with some obvious Star Wars knock offs of the sand people and the mos eisley cantina with this brah that turns of to totally be spock's half brah neverbefore mentioned and never mentioned again. Also Capt. Kirk is apparently into free climbing cause he is doing some of that in Yosemite at the beginning and Spock has sweet rocket shoes that saves his life and they all sit around the campfire singing row row row your boat and eating beans and dranking whiskey and making obvious fart jokes. These scenes are great.

Then Spock's brother gets up to some bullshit and eventually it turns out to be a search for God in the middle of the universe who turns out just to be some random dude with a couple deep purple rekkids and a psychedelic face projector. In between, Sulu and Chekov get erotically lost in the (metaphoric?) forest of their own desires and only through sexual exploration and brainwashing are they able to escape. As a result, they spend most of the movie working against the core groop of Shat, Nim, and BoneThugs. Scotty hits his head on something at one point and does a three stooges quality pratfall. There is also an obviously tacked on plot involving some billy zanily misguided Klingons who stop what they are doing when firmly told to stop by an old guy.

So yeah, it's mishmashy, but it's never boring, except when it is boring, but even when it's boring, it's boring in an interesting way so it stops being actually boring so quickly that you are never actually bored in the first place and, in fact, the boredom was kind of a thankful respite from the non-stop excitement anyway, so you (the audience) are always winning with William Shatner's Star Trek Five: The Final Frontier! Don't you wanna win? Sure, you do! So watch this movie already if you haven't yet and if you already have then you should watch it again and again until you like it as much as I do and if you've seen it already and liked it, then I guess you're cool with me, but you should probably check with the Shatman just to be sure. He may make you buy a TekWar book or something, but it'll be worth it cause that's still better than having to watch Boston Legal or some shit like that. Fuck Boston. That place and everything associated with it sucks (except (maybe) Mr. Boston and (definitely) the band Boston).