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Technical Information
Studio: Paramount
Home Entertainment
Year of Theatrical Release: 1989
Disc Format: 2
single-sided, Dual Layer
Image Format: Anamorphic
Widescreen
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Region
Encoding: 1
Sound
Format: Dolby
Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 (pro logic)
Running Time:
107 minutes
Director: William
Shatner
Stars: William
Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, James
Doohan, David Warner, Laurence Luckinbill
MPAA Rating: PG
Disc
Supplements:
- Audio commentary with director William Shatner
and Liz Shatner
- Text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda
- Herman Zimmerman: A Tribute featurette
- Original Interview: William Shatner featurette
- Cosmic Thoughts featurette
- That Klingon Couple featurette
- A Green Future featurette
- The Journey documentary
- Harve Bennett's Pitch to the Sales Team
- Makeup tests
- Pre-visualization models test
- Rock Man in the Raw screen test
- Star Trek V press conference
- Deleted scenes
- Theatrical Trailers
- TV spots
- Production gallery
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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is widely
regarded as the worst of the original cast films. Honestly,
I can think of no good arguments to dispute this opinion. Star
Trek: The Motion Picture may have been overly long and boring,
and Star Trek III may have been silly and ill-conceived at times,
but Trek V is just plain idiotic.
The amazing thing, and I suppose this could
be considered something of a twisted accomplishment, is that
this film pretty much fails on every single level. The story
is absurd, the direction (by William Shatner) is amatuerish,
the acting is laughable (even for Star Trek film) and the special
effects are simply lousy.
The film opens in the middle of a desert on
an alien planet. We meet a Vulcan named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill),
who we will learn later is related to Spock (Leonard Nimoy).
Sybok, it seems, has abandoned the Vulcan philosophies of supressing
emotions. We know this because the scene ends with Sybok standing
in silhouette and laughing meniacally. The scene is composed
like so much B-Movie schlock and the only thing missing is a
highlight spot on his eyes and an evil, melodramatic arch of
his eyebrows. Oh wait, there IS an evil arch!
We then find ourselves at Yosemity National
Park, where a man is free climbing El Capitan. Yes, readers,
this man is none other than Captain Kirk (William Shatner).
When this fact is finally revealed, the stark contrast between
the athletic stunt climber in the early scenes and the aging
Kirk in the close-ups is so ludicrous as to bring any hope of
redeemability for this film to a screeching halt.
It takes lot of guts to write and direct a
scene that features yourself free climbing one of the toughest
rocks in the world, and then make that scene the opening of
your film. I'm afraid that Shatner is just not the man to pull
this off.
After Kirk, Bones (DeForest Kelley) and Spock
are through playing on the rocks, they are dispatched ot the
planet Nimbus III, where Sybok has taken a group of hostages.
Kirk stages a rescue attempt and only succeeds in getting himself,
his crew, and the Enterprise captured by Sybok. For a crew that
routinely saves the Universe from all manner of threats, these
guys are just plain inept when it comes to dealing with Sybok.
Sybok's plan is to journey to an unchartered
part of the galaxy, where he believes he will encounter God
(how it is that Sybok, a Vulcan, subscribes to the Earth belief
in God is never quite explained). Along the way, he converts
much of the Enterprise crew with the aid of some strange, previously
unknown, Vulcan power of mind control. Naturally, Kirk, who
couldn't outwit this guy at any other point in the film, is
suddenly able to shrug off Sybok's mind control attempts and
overcome him.
By the time this film finds its way to its
convoluted end, I frankly didn't care how it turned out. I just
wanted it to be over. I couldn't even console myself by admiring
the terrific special effects that usually accompany a Trek film.
Industrial Light and Magic, the company normally entrusted with
the visual effects, was unavailable and a much smaller effects
house was used.
Today, with a number of smaller, but highly
capable effects houses out there, this might not have been much
of an issue, but at the time ILM was really the only decent
player in town. And it shows. The effects are utterly horrible.
In fact, several key scenes in the film eventually had to be
dropped because the effects simply didn't work (I doubt that
any of these scenes would have salvaged the film, but it's just
yet another example of the multiple levels on which this film
fails).
As a final note on The Final Frontier, it
appears that Shatner had a "if it's good enough for George
Lucas, it's good enough for me" moment. It seems that he
appealed to Paramount to give him money to revisit this film
and finish several abandoned scenes (dropped due to sub-standard
visual effects) and clean up some exisiting scenes. Paramount
wisely refused this request. Perhaps they realized the obvious:
that no amount of "revisiting" would ever make this
a good film.
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top |
Paramount has had a run of consistently
good video transfers and this disc maintains that level of quality.
When there are problems, they are almost always source material
related due to the age of the print. However, even then, when they
put their minds to it, they manage to put out some astonishingly
nice looking discs.
Trek V offers up a very rich color
palette and that is presented nicely here. Colors are very saturated,
but not overly so. Flesh tones look good and the reds of the uniforms
and the blues of space seem to pop off the screen. Contrasts are
strong, with solid blacks and tons of low-light details. I may burn
in hell for saying this, but the quality of this transfer may actually
be a hinderance to the film -- it only displays with even more clarity
the sub-standard visual effects.
The compression on this disc is handled
well, with no artifacting and minimal edge enhancement.
:::back to top |
This film came out in 1989 and
at that time, the quality of any given sound mix was still hit or
miss. When Paramount first released this disc a couple of years
ago, they took the original sound track and converted it to 5.1
without putting a whole lot of effort into it. It would seem that
the same 5.1 track was recycled for this disc.
Surround usage is either non-existent
or just a bit overdone and lacking in realism. The front to rear
and side to side panning is also a bit clunky. Dialog, however,
doesn't suffer and is always right in the center and perfectly clear.
The overall dynamic range seems clipped both on the high and low
end. The result is a sound track that sounds flat and lacks any
real excitement.
:::back to top |
Continuing the line of special
edition Trek titles, Star Trek V is offered as a two disc set.
Disc one features a feature length
audio commentary with William Shatner and his daughter Liz, and
a text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda.
I have seen Shatner in many interviews
and he normally comes across as lively, witty and he seems to have
a genuine sense of humor regarding himself and Trek in general.
Here, he sounds like a broken, defeated man. This commentary is
dead in space. Paramount offers up its disclaimer that any views
expressed are not shared by the company, but Shatner takes no advantage
of that. It's no secret that he was unhappy with many aspects of
the production, but you'll find no evidence that here. Instead,
he and his daughter spend considerable time simply describing on-screen
action and patting themselves on the back for scenes they felt were
clever.
The text commentary is no better.
For previous discs, Okuda put together some really nice bits of
trivia, but here, the infrequent comments do little to enhance the
flavor of the film. (I don't know, maybe there was the thought that
putting a lot of effort into enhancing this film would be sort of
like trying to enhance the flavor of boot leather with steak sauce
-- it just ain't gonna happen.)
Disc two provides a significant array
of featurettes and interiviews.
First up is The Star Trek Universe
series of featurettes. There are 5 in all and they run from about
10 minutes to 20 minutes:
Herman Zimmerman: A Tribute
is a love-fest for the production designer who has been essentially
shaping the way Star Trek looks ever since Star Trek V. The perplexing
thing is that this sort of tribute is generally only offered posthumously,
after someone has retired, or when they've moved on to other projects.
In this case, Zimmerman is still working in the Trek universe.
Original Interview: William
Shatner seems to be less of an interview and more of Shatner
pointing a camera on himself and babbling on (apparently directing
himself in a feature film wasn't enough). This "interview"
takes place as the first day of filming is about to begin and Shatner
very briefly discusses his struggles to get to that point. His credibility
is shattered, however, when he begins to describe the motivations
of rock climbers as a desire to "make love" to the mountains.
The next feature, Cosmic
Thoughts, offers up some insights and thoughts about the
universe and Star Trek's attempts to figure out our place in it.
It features interviews with scientists and notable authors, such
as Ray Bradbury and David Brin.
That Klingon Couple
is an overly long, overly annoying interview with Todd Bryant and
Spice Williams, who played Klingon Captain Klaa and Klingon First
Officer Vixis respectively. This interview seems to have been recorded
fairly recently and the fact that these two still remember their
lines in the Klingon language prove that their career went nowhere
after this film.
Finally, A Green Future
is a tree-hugging piece that praises the film for showing that 200
years in the future, there are people still rock climbing El Capitan
(although no mention is made of the cheesy outfits that climbers
are forced to wear in the 23rd century).
The next section, Production Featurettes,
kicks off with a half hour documentary about the making of the film
called The Journey. There are a few candid moments
here where Shatner's frustrations with not being offered an unlimted
budget are shown. Producer Harve Bennett makes a rather poignant
statement about Shatner being a movie star and expecting the full
movie star treatment with everything he does -- in other words everything
must be done as big as possible -- and that attitide didn't quite
coincide with the realities of film production.
Makeup Tests, Pre-Visualization
Models and Rock Man In The Raw are three
short vignettes about the more technical sides of the film. Of these,
the Rock Man footage is the most interesting. There was to be a
totally different ending to the film that involved a series of rock
men chasing after Kirk. Budget constraints only allowed for the
construction of one suit (instead of the required ten) and that
one suit didn't quite live up to expectations.
Harve Bennett's Pitch to
the Sales Team and Star Trek V Press Conference
offer up a look at some of the stuff most people never get to see
-- namely, the behind the scenes of the publicity of the film.
Rounding things up are four deleted
scenes, two theatrical trailers and TV
Spots and a gallery or Production Photos.
One final note about the special
features is that I found it to be very interesting that the animated
menu screens for both of these discs were about a thousand times
more impressive than the lame duck effects in the film.
:::back to top |
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is really only
a film for those fans that are completionists -- they must own everything
Trek. As far as continuity and story lines go, there is really nothing
in this film that relates to any other. You can safely miss it and
not worry about being left behind for the next film. Some of the
bonus features are interesting, but they really lack the full level
of honesty that would have made them truly valuable. I can't, in
good faith, recommend this film.
:::back to top |
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| As with most Star Trek
films, there is very little here that would be inappropriate for the
kids. Even when the story is lacking, Trek offers up decent values
of tolerance and diversity. |
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| -- By Robert Wurth. Copyright
© 2003. |
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