To say nothing of a less wobbly opening title. Did they ever determine who was responsible for that?
Could Star Trek V been saved?
- Thread starter tim0122
- Start date
"As close as brothers" is still brothers. That works for me
Sybok could've been Stonn, who goes off the deep end after T'Pring dumps him. He's probably the only prominent Vulcan from a previous Trek work without making up a new one. Spock's connection to him wouldn't be over some contrived "brother" relation like we got, but over shared heartbreak, adding dimension to the whole 'removing pain' bit.
Not every character needs to be a callback. Should Kruge be Kor? Should Chang be Kang?
Reportedly, Bob Justman hated recurring off-ship characters and scotched the return of Kor for later episodes because in the vastness of space, meeting the same person stretched plausibility. I'm with Bob. Khan made sense as a one-off for a movie follow up, but that's it.
Although, in the case of TUC, I would have been okay with Kang...mostly because Ansara would have been amazing.
And Spock doesn't give a flying pancake monster about Stonn. He certainly wouldn't betray Kirk over him. And Spock was well over T'Pring by then. That was the one thing that made sense, Sybok had to be someone realistically close to Spock for him to make that choice. Amanda wasn't about to go on a search for God, so they went to the brother.
Thing is....the betrayal scene was ill conceived. Kirk ordered Spock to shoot. Since the Vulcan heart isn't where Spock had the gun pressed, firing a rock into Sybok's chest would have injured him but not necessarily killed him. Spock saying Kirk ordered him to kill his brother is off the mark. Having said that, that damned pipe gun was pressed directly up to Sybok's chest. I wouldn't trust it to not backfire.
"Never heard of him. That's not quite true; we were like brothers."
My earlier attempt at fixing TFF's problems had Sybok be Spock's cousin whom he never knew existed, from an uncle he knew about as a boy but never met. The thing is, your point is well taken that even this link would not really be as strong as having Sybok actually be Spock's (half) brother whom he held no animosity toward, but could possibly test Spock's loyalties. The inherent problem of course is that I find it very hard to believe that Spock would not have told Kirk & McCoy about the existence of said brother. I've heard people make excuses about Spock keeping stuff hidden in the past, but by this point in their relationship, I highly doubt that those three had any secrets left between them. If anything, once they were captured and Spock revealed who Sybok was, Kirk should have made a comment to the effect of, "You mean THIS is the brother who was exiled from Vulcan?" It's awkward because it implies that Kirk & McCoy know something we the audience don't, but then they also knew who David Marcus was, and the audience didn't, until that was made clear. The issue is that they simply didn't make the sibling bond between Spock and Sybok all that powerful or realistic, and as was mentioned above, Sybok was portrayed as a nice but extremely misled person with a paper-thin motive (did the audience really think he was actually going to find God?) instead of someone who was more of a threat to Spock's loyalty to Kirk. Perhaps if, at the beginning of the film, we saw younger versions of Spock, Sybok and Sarek (heck, they even had a younger Sarek in the movie already!) and a flashback scene provided some context about why Sybok left (but not necessarily revealing his relationship to Spock), then maybe the character would have worked better. But we got the forced-laughing Vulcan scene instead.
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IIRC, Sybok being Spock's brother was not a part of the original story but was added at Harve Bennett's suggestion to provide an easily explainable plausible reason why Spock would refuse to shoot him. Really, it all stems from Shatner's notion that Kirk (of course) should be the only one on the ship to resist Sybok and that everyone else, including Spock and McCoy, betrays Kirk. Fortunately, Nimoy and Kelley simply refused to play that.
TFF was always regarded as pretty lame, and was the first and only time TOS movies disappointed me. That said, it’s grown on me an lot over the years for what it is, warts and all. I’d actually rather watch it than any of the Kelvin or TNG movies (even the one with the Borg sex lady). It kind of captures the spirit of latter TOS, both the good and the bad.
Some great suggestions on this thread. For a start, tone down the slapstick humour and all the nonsense about the Enterprise being a gitchy mess (did starfleet suddenly forget how to build ships?). No rocket boots—absolutely NO ROCKET BOOTS! Keep the warm character scenes though, loved seeing them interact off duty. Still weirded out by the Scotty/Uhura heavy flirting though.
Far too much of the budget spent in the earlier scenes on Paradise City. Let’s cut the three boobed cat lady who Kirk, completely unfazed, actually kills by simply throwing her into a shallow vessel of water. Uhura’s fan dance is also very embarrassing and, to me, demeaning to the character. I’m still amazed Nichelle Nichols actually loved the scene.
Sybok had such potential and I like the fact he’s not your standard villain but actually is the hero of his own tale. But he really needed development. Let’s see the “God entity” commune with him in visions throughout, and be convincing too. Make us wonder if he’s not actually right, after all. As someone said, make it so he’s been planning this for years and knows how to modify a starship to get through the Great Barrier—and make that scene far more dramatic than just ten seconds of characters looking somewhat nervous.
The finale needed more and better sfx but it also needed to be fleshed out significantly. It’s incredibly rushed. We never explore exactly what this being is, or how and why it locked onto Sybok. It’s just so undeveloped and reads like a rushed first draft. It’s not a particularly satisfying story and the payoff isn’t quite there. The best thing about it was the discussion about Kirk not dying there because he was “never alone”. I swear, it’s the interaction between Kirk, Spock and McCoy that gives this some real heart.
I’ve never read the novelisation but it sounds like it does address some of the scripting deficiencies and adds to the story.
Some great suggestions on this thread. For a start, tone down the slapstick humour and all the nonsense about the Enterprise being a gitchy mess (did starfleet suddenly forget how to build ships?). No rocket boots—absolutely NO ROCKET BOOTS! Keep the warm character scenes though, loved seeing them interact off duty. Still weirded out by the Scotty/Uhura heavy flirting though.
Far too much of the budget spent in the earlier scenes on Paradise City. Let’s cut the three boobed cat lady who Kirk, completely unfazed, actually kills by simply throwing her into a shallow vessel of water. Uhura’s fan dance is also very embarrassing and, to me, demeaning to the character. I’m still amazed Nichelle Nichols actually loved the scene.
Sybok had such potential and I like the fact he’s not your standard villain but actually is the hero of his own tale. But he really needed development. Let’s see the “God entity” commune with him in visions throughout, and be convincing too. Make us wonder if he’s not actually right, after all. As someone said, make it so he’s been planning this for years and knows how to modify a starship to get through the Great Barrier—and make that scene far more dramatic than just ten seconds of characters looking somewhat nervous.
The finale needed more and better sfx but it also needed to be fleshed out significantly. It’s incredibly rushed. We never explore exactly what this being is, or how and why it locked onto Sybok. It’s just so undeveloped and reads like a rushed first draft. It’s not a particularly satisfying story and the payoff isn’t quite there. The best thing about it was the discussion about Kirk not dying there because he was “never alone”. I swear, it’s the interaction between Kirk, Spock and McCoy that gives this some real heart.
I’ve never read the novelisation but it sounds like it does address some of the scripting deficiencies and adds to the story.
In the context of the show as established at the time, it does seem unlikely that Kirk would be meeting the same people when he was just some ordinary starship captain.
All the subsequent retcons we have now though, with SNW establishing that Enterprise was considered the "flagship" of Starfleet and Kirk being the youngest captain in the fleet (he was originally a bit older than Shatner as 'Conscience of the King' cut lines had Kirk a young officer at the time of the Tarsus IV massacre--when Deadly Years locked Kirk's age to around Shatner's, Kirk was retconned to be a kid at the time of the Tarsus massacre), make Kirk basically a VIP in space. And as large as the real world is, the same famous people keep running into each other all the time so with Kirk being retconned by post-TOS works into being a super-important guy, it's not implausible he'd keep running into the same important people in the large galaxy.
Call backs should serve a story purpose. Stonn would not. Kor would not. Kang would not.
Personally, I liked the portrayal of Kirk as just a working captain among many in Starfleet, rather than the idea of the Enterprise being the "flagship" and Kirk being somehow special. Sure, I can understand he and his crew might have gained some notoriety over time, particularly with things like V'Ger and the whale probe that directly threatened Earth's existence, but it wasn't that way during TOS and I liked it better that way.
Also more Zeppelin.That's it!
ST: V NEEDS MORE ZEPPELINS
Zeppelins fix everything
I'm kind of on the midpoint here. I'm okay with Kirk and Co. being "the best of the best" of their time, but I don't like it when everyone else feels explicitly dumbed down by comparison. Esteban and Styles in particular.
Exactly, Kirk and crew were excellent at their jobs - and had to be since the show was about them - but Kirk's Enterprise was out there doing their work as one of a dozen starships doing the same. And at no time were they considered The Flagship.
Retcons shmetcons. None of that impacts TOS.
FYI, in their continuing effort to make their show more like TNG, SNW retconned the Enterprise as the flagship. Yeah, it makes little sense, but there you are.
But back to TFF: Even if Starfleet thought Kirk was the most awesomest captain ever and only he could accomplish the mission, it still made no sense to send him out in the Enterprise-A when a perfectly good ship (the Excelsior) was sitting right next to the Enterprise in Spacedock.
Staefl
Starfleet's mission management skills suck.
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