After the success of the second through fourth Star Trek films, sharing a plot arc and directed by cast member Leonard Nimoy, Paramount decided to put lead actor William Shatner. In. The director's chair. Of the fifth film, Star Trek: The Final Frontier, which opens with Sybok, a renegade Vulcan who happens to be Spock's half-brother, and in tune with other people's feelings, given his signature quote "Your pain runs deep," talking to some weird bald psycho with bad teeth on the planet Nimbus III, Sybok himself wanting a spaceship to meet God on the planet Sha Ka Ree.
Meanwhile, on shore leave, Kirk and the gang are vacationing at Yosemite National Park doing various stuff, with their camping scene at night feeling fairly asinine, with the producers aiming to instill more humor since that in the fourth film was well-received, the results being mixed. Spock lets his brother aboard the new Enterprise, with Sybok using his mind meld powers to gain trust of the crew, with Klingons working their way into the plot as well. They eventually reach Sha Ka Ree and meet God, with Kirk asking the ham-fisted question, "What does God need with a starship?"
The fifth film does have its good moments and Kirk eventually redeeming his apparent religious apathy (which had been shared by series creator Gene Roddenberry) but is inarguably one of the weaker entries of the franchise given its half-hearted attempts at humor and Sybok's running his "Your pain runs deep" line into the ground. Still, it's far from the turkey critics at the time and today have made it out to be, and I enjoyed it more than The Motion Picture. While some have suggested that the fifth entry would become noncanon due to critics disliking it, the modern Trek series Strange New Worlds seemed to retract that.
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| One of the weaker TOS films. | |
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