Star Trek Sundays: "The Final Frontier" is far from the worst Trek film

It ain't perfect, but dammit this movie has heart!

It’s Sunday, and we’re going through all 13 theatrical STAR TREK films, a series that includes a number of pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). We continue today with STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER. Enjoy…

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

1989, Dir. William Shatner

Originally published in 200 Reviews, based on notes from 2022

Star Trek V is not, contrary to popular opinion, the worst Star Trek movie. The original series cast is simply too sharp and entertaining an ensemble to ever draw this film beneath the worst dregs of The Next Generation movies, and moreover, for all the missteps The Final Frontier makes in its first hour, it genuinely goes to some interesting places in its second, and has a few knockout moments I treasure very deeply. The film is a mess, but it’s a mess that’s occasionally very deeply felt, and while William Shatner obviously failed to prove himself as a director here like Leonard Nimoy did on the last two entries, he shares a love for the series that, as with Nimoy’s films, you can feel in the finished product, warts and all. I don’t think this was simply an ego trip, prone as Shatner might be to such assumptions; he wanted this to be good, and under different circumstances, I think this could have been something special.