Star Trek V: Finding Fun in Chaos

I saw this at a drive-in double feature with Last Crusade. Not my favorite Trek movie, but some of the character work is great.

Now that you've seen ST5 you should be made aware of this classic internet meme video made from interview footage Shatner made during filming ST5: https://youtu.be/HU2ftCitvyQ?si=Faxi_kyYBlkPj_vl

There are probably some "Making of" videos on the movies somewhere. I think there is a video version of "Inside Star Trek: The Real Story" from 1998 by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman. That was quite interesting, although I only listened to an audio version.

It might also be noted that Shatner decided to cast producer Harve Bennett as Starfleet Chief of Staff. The bald human or humanoid named J'onn at the beginning of the movie was played by Rex Holman who had previously played Morgan Earp in the Star Trek: The Original Series third season episode "Spectre of the Gun". George Murdock (1930–2012) who portrayed "God" or Sha Ka Ree also played Dr. Salik on the original 1970s Battlestar Galactica. Bill Quinn in his last role played McCoy's dad; he is probably best known as a regular on Archie Bunker's Place and numerous TV guest appearances.

Yeah, Sybok's actor Laurence Luckinbill was the son-in-law of Lucille Ball who was originally one the people who saved and put forth Star Trek in the 1960s, so that's a neat connection. Sadly, I don't think Luckinbill acted much after the movie. "William Shatner discovered Luckinbill by chance by channel-surfing late one night and seeing him perform as (President Lyndon) Johnson. When Shatner called to offer him the role, Luckinbill accepted immediately." It looks like Sybok had the Spock haircut in some scenes and not in most scenes; that was kind of weird.

I had no interest in watching this movie again and watching your reaction to it pretty much reminded me of everything I really didn't like about it. Much of it was stuff I just couldn't buy into. I'll start with Spock's half-brother and while I totally didn't buy into it at the time I guess I now have an easier time accepting the idea. However, I totally disagree with Josh because I thought Kirk's son was handled far more believably. Scotty and Uhura's relationship, no way. As my wife pointed out while watching your video, Uhura and Sulu would make a lot more sense given what we have seen of the characters in the past. Uhura's fan dance which I felt also cheapened the character. McCoy euthanizing his dad. Given the number of medical miracles we have seen the good doctor perform in the past, I didn't believe that he couldn't come with some other solution for his dad's pain that would keep him alive. The idea of a doctor agreeing to put his father down only to have a cure show up weeks later is a great bit of character development but, just doesn't fit at all with the McCoy we have seen through four seasons and movies in my opinion. Sybok healing people's pain causing them to follow him like they were in a cult pretty much pegged my BS meter. The other problems I have with the film are: I felt that much of the humor of was at the expense of the characters (i.e. we are laughing at the characters as opposed to with them). Scotty's head banging was the worst example of this. I felt the two younger Klingons were a barely disguised metaphor of an older person making fun of kids today. Given how completely disengaged I was from the film by the end, I honestly didn't care whether the being at the center of the universe was God or not. Some of the stuff that happens in the movie just seems to do so to advance the plot as opposed to making any kind of actual sense. I guess I would sum all of this up by borrowing a line from Deadpool, "such lazy writing" but, I think my wife put it best after watching this video. She said Star Trek V is like what you would get if you had an AI write a Star Trek script.

Temple Of Doom is my favorite of the three.

Saccharine means overly sweet and sentimental. I believe you can find all the Trek movies on HBOMax.

You're mispronouncing Sha'Ka'Re on purpose, aren't you? I told you to look at the IMDB trivia section for the history of that name...

From what I recall, Sybok's relationship to Spock isn't really noted in promos until after the movie's been out for a bit. At first, I don't think it's mentioned.

I love this movie. It's my second favorite out of the TOS movies and it was nice to see your guy's reaction and commentary even though you didn't like it as much as I did. I can't wait to see more of your videos on Star Trek TNG and the final TOS movie!

This movie isn't fantastic but I do think it gets way more hate than it deserves it's much more enjoyable than the first movie for me

At the theater we went to see Star Trek V, the other movie playing was Batman (1989). 🤦‍♂️

By the way, I don’t know whether you know this, but William Shatner lost his hair at a very young age, like 12 years old. So he has always worn wigs on camera.

Producer Ralph Winter said this of Star Trek 5: “We had fun and felt good about IV, that wasn’t the case on V. I think on V we were smoking our own press releases. We made the mistake of searching for god. That is what the first movie did. What did we think we were going to find? What did we expect? We were focused and we wrote a good script. Larry Luckinbill (Sybok) was terrific. There were a lot of good things about it. I think we were, not delusional, but we almost killed the franchise. “And, unfortunately I almost killed the franchise in terms of the visual effects. We felt like we got taken advantage of by ILM and so we shopped to go to other places. We found a guy in New York, Bran Ferren, who had a pretty good approach to doing the effects, but ultimately they were horrible. And the combination of a story that was not working, it just wasn’t commercial, the effects were terrible – we almost killed the franchise, it almost died.”

Definitely watch the other 2 Indy movies!!! Temple of Doom has always been my least favorite- pretty dark compared to the others - but it's still a very good movie.

Scotty getting hit on the head was one the funniest moments I have ever seen on a movie theater PREVIEW trailer, but you can, of course, only see that scene the FIRST time once. A lot of fans think that scene and some of the others were very disrespectful to the more minor Trek characters.

Personally, Temple of Doom has more momentum than Crusade. Both sequels are a step down from Raiders. Temple's script falls back on some hoary tropes and broader humour. Crusade is showing signs of the series' running out of steam, despite some inventive ideas and the Ford & his co-star's chemistry. It also goes too tongue in cheek (often winking directly at the audience). It's a bit underwhelming, but understandably more popular than Temple. Biggest drawback......one of the Raiders' cast doesn't appear in either sequel....

Fun fact from Memory Alpha: When Kirk returns to the bridge of his ship for the first time, he is given his uniform jacket by a yeoman. The yeoman is played by Shatner's youngest daughter, actress Melanie Shatner, and had been credited for it as such. Incidentally, her two older sisters, Lisabeth and Leslie, had already had uncredited cameo appearances as two of the Only girls in Star Trek: The Original Series episode "Miri". Upon the conclusion of the movie, daughter Lisabeth wrote a book on her father's experiences making the movie, Captain's Log: William Shatner's Personal Account of the Making of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

I still find this movie pretty tiresome, and the bad outweighs the decent. For the record, this movie "won" 3 Razzie Awards. Shatner won Worst Actor and Worst Director, and the film won Worst Picture.

The Scotty bumping his head was a bit silly, but I thought it worked in the context of the story. The Enterprise-A while still the same class of ship, it is still a different ship. That bulkhead could have been something new that he wasn't expecting to be there.

The entire original Indy trilogy is wonderful. I think many will agree that out those great three movies, Raiders and Crusade are the best of the best. Well worth a watch.

Absolutely watch Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, Josh. I think Temple of Doom goes a little too hard in areas where it shouldn't, but Last Crusade is just a delight.

The talk about Kirk's previously unmentioned son just reminds me of the great line from MST3k: "I didn't tell the audience because I didn't think they needed to know."

The special effects were not done by ILM, and even in 1989, the effects in Trek V were considered horrible.

This is absolutely the hardest Alex has laughed during the whole Trek journey lol. Great video guys

Temple of Doom is great. Last Crusade is the last one worth watching.

Temple of Doom is my favorite Indy movie and I'm fully in agreement of how amazing and legendary 'Raiders' and 'Last Crusade' are. Still, 'Temple' just Indy-s the hardest yes let's get them into the Audience Cuts (even if you've both seen it, I'd urge you guys to do Raiders too, have the trilogy on the channel, no skipsies)

There are some people who hate Temple of Doom. We call them COWARDS.

Yes, watch INDIANA JONES MOVIES! Culture him, Alex! Almost all of the Enterprise sets, except for the brig, turboshaft, and service passage that Scotty bonks himself out in are Enterprise D sets. The main corridors, are the D corridors(they were the Refit Enterprise halls, but they were changed for TNG to a more tan color and resized slightly.), the transporter room is the TNG transporter room with a barrier between the transporter pads and the console. The Enterprise A bridge for this movie is where a chunk of budget ended up going to, because the original bridge was destroyed in a rain storm. Saccharine is something that is "excessively sweet" 49:56 "You love me!? YOU REALLY LOVE ME!?" No. We're just counting the days until we can trap you at a convention. This is for making fun of the bagpipes. *Lights match, hard cut to Breaking Bad Intro* I told Josh this earlier, but, I honestly got choked up watching the youtube cut of the Trek V reaction. When Josh pointed out there was now only one piece of TOS live action media left... I jumped in with episode 4 of the TOS reactions as they were first going up, and now, that era is almost over. Granted, it'll probably be about six months to a year before we get there, but... Still. We're going to have to make Star Trek Vi a special event methinks. This is where, not only Star Trek sprank from, but where the Target Audience really found its wings and took flight.

Such a wonderful discussion! I actually enjoyed the part after the movie discussion more! You two are great, and I'm glad I get to hang out with you...virtually.

Shatner wanted Sean Connery to play Sybok. But Connery joined the cast of Indiana Jones 3 instead. Then Shatner went on to name the planet “Sha Ka Ree,” which sounds like “Sean Connery.” Yes, intentional.

Finally, whilst this is a good addition to the character of "Captain Spock", the best with regard to duty vs family, there is still one more to go thus I shall not ask the differential question. That being said, I do believe that this is a strong addition to how "Captain Spock" thinks for himself, as opposed to Mr Spock who was more in-line with the rules and regulations.

It made no sense that Kirk exerted effort to get Sybok on board his ship (past the Klingons)…. Just to deliver the ship into his hands. Compare that to the opening of “The Day of the Dove,” where he tells Kang to “go to the devil.” That was very out of character. He never would’ve risked his ship like that. He would’ve accepted death.

Also, I think Uhura is the best example of Sybok's power, where it not only removes one's fear, but also one's own inhibitions, as demonstrated by her interaction with the unaffected Scotty whilst he is trying to fix the Transporter.

Josh, your point about knowing it's not going to be God is exactly why I was disappointed with this movie since I first saw it. You know they are not going to find the GOD, just a god-like entity, so as soon as Sybok reveals his plan, the story just collapses for me.

Loved the discussion. Please add Indiana Jones 2 and 3 to your list for sure. They'll get a lot of views.

One thing I think we can all agree upon: Captain Chekov!!! =D

Your observation that the audience KNOWS it's not going to be "actual God" is interesting, because that's exactly what Harve Bennett said to Shatner. He knew right away that the audience wouldn't buy it. They tried to shy away from that in rewrites, showing the "many faces" stuff, but I don't think they went far enough. I think one thing that might have helped was if we had seen Sybok's vision at some point earlier. All we have is his blurting out that he had a vision, and Kirk's "you ARE mad!" but that's not enough. It's just thrown out. If we'd seen it, maybe the monster's "a vision you created" line might have hit harder and Sybok's cult leader status brought out more.

I think it would have made a better movie to just make Sybok a childhood friend of Spock who rejected Vulcan logic and have him get on board the Enterprise with the intent of hijacking it and taking it to the Klingons, with the crew then trying to take the ship back. There's your story. The half-brother and going to meet God stuff just did not fly with me at all.

I don't recall any marketing revealing Sybok was Spock's brother until seeing the film in the theaters. However, I saw Walter Koenig at a local sci fi convention a few months before the film came out, and I think he made some mention or hint about Spock's brother. I know he did mention that Sarek would appear, but not the Mark Lenard Sarek that we were used to (without going into detail about that meant).

The first comment is the best comment

Sweet! Late night snack

Looking forward to this reaction for literally minutes! I'm the first! Yay!