Mark Maddox and I continue our journey through the first six
Star Trek movies and now reach THE FINAL FRONTIER (1989). We have been both
dreading and looking forward to revisiting this film. Thirty-five years later
is it still as bad as we remember? Are there hidden moments of quality buried in
this bad idea given cinematic form? Join us as we pull this thing apart and
inspect it’s sad remains.
We use Shatner’s own story of the production from his Movie
Memories book to supplement the usual sources. It adds a lot to know the
genesis of the film’s basic story and emphasizes just how easily a poor central
concept can cripple a project. Also, aspiring writers can take note of this
film as a solid example of bad scriptwriting on nearly every level. Neither of
us find much to admire in STAR TREK V but there are a few good moments. Sadly,
those few quality elements have to rest side by side with insults to nearly
every regular character and simply awful dialog. The film’s humor mostly revolves
around laughing ‘at’ the characters and never ‘with’ them. It undermines so
many years of goodwill built up by the franchise for the sake of bad jokes,
dumb ideas and idiotic coincidences that we can only be grateful it wasn’t the
last film to feature the original cast. Row, row, row your boat indeed.
Comments about this film, the podcast or Star Trek in general can be sent to thebloodypit@gmail.com and we’ll be happy to hear from you. Thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon.
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