Star Trek V.

After the debacle of the previous film, I made the conscious decision to watch this next one completely sober. Less conscious was the decision to eventually write this several weeks after watching the film. Ah well…

This is probably the worst film in the series at this point. Granted, any film that tries to tackle the big question about the origins of the universe is pretty admirable, but everything else in it kinds of just flops sideways onto the proverbial carpet like some sort of resigned, defeated animal. The basic premise of the film from memory is that Spock has a half-brother who has embraced passion/emotion (probably the wisest choice considering everything else in the film) and becomes a fundamentalist looking for God. Through sheer retardation and bloodless violence, he assumes control of several diplomatic figures and armed thugs so he can eventually assume control of a starship and find where he believes God is. That ship just happens to be the Enterprise, whose senior officers/actors are on R&R and literally have to be called up to re-join for active service.

The film has some pretty funny moments though, so I’ll do my best to list them off. Shatner’s introductory scene features him supposedly free climbing El Capitan in Yosemite Park, while long-suffering associates Cam, Dave and I waited eagerly for the 25 year old man playing Shatner to turn his head accidentally or something. For some reason, the film’s producers wanted to introduce a potential romantic relationship between the portly-Canadian-man-impersonating-a-Scotsman known as Scotty and the unfortunate communications officer Uhura, which also earned several laughs. The lack of any real exterior shots of the Enterprise this time was really noticeable, as this film supposedly had a massive budget cut during production. Spock nerve-pinching a horse was also pretty hysterical.

Perhaps the most regrettable thing about the film was that I feel there was a sense of ambition to it. I mean sure, Shatner directed this one, but it seemed like he really wanted to try and top the previous film with some introspective character work that ultimately was overshadowed by problems concerning budget and general execution. Watching Bones live out the memory of him failing to save his terminally ill father was probably the best crafted aspect of the film. Otherwise, it’s just mostly a slog – if the best the movie can depict Eden as is a desert with a purple lens filter, then good riddance.

CHEKOV HUMILIATION 5: Makes wind noises into Sulu’s communicator (no context for that, sorry), and has to trick the film’s villain into believing he is the Enterprise’s captain. What fucks me off is that he pulls off the latter.