Speaking of Sybok, I addressed the narrative problems with him in my tongue-in-cheek piece 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, notably as #1 out of 14.
Sybok. Do you think he was doing the right thing?
- Thread starter urrutiap
- Start date
Thanks for the link! Always loving your overviews!
Sybok was underused, though when the energy not-a-god thing took Sybok's form, that would have been that much stronger had Sybok's character been given that much more use/depth.
B for Barricade - the opening of the movie did have characters saying the ship had something like a skeleton crew aboard. Granted, would getting a proper ship to spacedock and the 6 hour delay or whatever involving the rescue of the hostages be too much of a risk with the old countdown timer trope in play (albeit not really made big mention of), especially as said scene also has Bob saying there will likely be a confrontation with Klingons -- so sending out a ship in an untested state would be... dumb. Going back to Scotty; if anything, aside from the "'I know my ship' quote but then bangs his head" scene, Scotty is treated fairly decently and consistent with his work ethic to get the systems repaired in time if possible - in a movie that gave far more of the cringe comedy to Chekov and Sulu... but comedy is subjective and some in the audience probably got a thrill from it, so it's all good...
Vixis was probably buttering Klaa's proverbial bread about the probe being worth his time (and, yep, how long the probe took at infraluminal speed and all...) The Klingons may have broken the coded signal from the communications console - the fact said console is in an atypical part of the ship suggests that security coding could be standard issue? If nothing else, a distress or other call sent to any nearby starship may not be the best practice anyway yet there are many times when that's done. Vagra II had a beacon telling others to stay away, though Federation adversaries would love to know why... the Lantree had a beacon as well - there's some juicy details waiting there too, until they blew up the ship... As for Kirk -- other movies and later ones (VI) definitely paint Kirk as being something of a major pest to them, so any chance to wipe him out - with or without the thrill of a target that fights back - seems to be something they would do.
Yup. Spock vs Sybok was a dodge, required for the sake of the plot. The gun has no stun setting, but even then - like you said, just shoot Sybok in the leg to get him subdued and bring down the medics. B+ for script effort, but it doesn't hold up. On the flip side, Spock telling Kirk that he was not obligated to discuss his parents' marital proclivities and all hints at something more -- or it's another shoehorn. Coin toss for that. (Good bit of continuity in referring to TVH as well...)
The Yosemite climb was pretty much made for a series of dumb ha-ha-bonk jokes. McCoy's lines were decent, but Spock's were atrocious. I'm sure the gravity of the situation would not have helped as, based on his velocity while falling, Spock grabbing his ankle would have not ended pretty either. If they wanted to paint the town red, get a truck full of red #5 paint instead.
78 decks - we see #78 but I got the impression there was another deck above. #79 is the sort of in-joke "easter egg" they'd be aiming for too. I'll look up the screencaps or re-load the blu-ray and do pauses... either way, 78, 79, or 80 decks is way too many. And numbered backwards too.
One would think their sensor systems would have an audible alarm... there's no way that nobody would be distracted from the splendor on the viewscreen...
The camera angle from the shuttle was instantly noticeable as well. Good callouts to the other movies BTW. In-universe, there's no cogent explanation for any.
Hiking to heaven - the energy fritter knew they could benefit from a nice stout walk. It's lovely cinematography, if nothing else...? He did control it, but for whatever reason it couldn't be put in too-close proximity. Like how everyone says never to keep a smartphone closer than 1/2" to your head while making calls, the gadget emits something that the creature otherwise can't handle, despite needing it in other ways. Now imagine it stuck in a starship...
Now I did not notice Sybok's haircut. I was too enamored with the ponytail style that was popular in the late-80s... maybe they had to do a retake during post?
And, yup, the studio's insistence for comedy did more to ruin this movie than any of the other points - of which some were palpable. The movie had a visceral feel to it when playing things sincerely, but the comedic elements would be quick to take a person out of it. Heck, a lot of the nitpicks would be easier to swallow if it were able to convincingly sell on other points.
I still like the movie, it deserved to have been better, but the nitpicks - yeah, they drag the story down a lot. Individual scenes were still cool, though.
Still kills me that they had the largest descender fall in the US (at the time) and ruined it with terrible green-screen insert shots.
I always compare it to the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me, where Bond skis off the edge of a cliff and we get twenty uninterrupted seconds of the stuntman falling before he pulls his chute.
Twenty seconds to appreciate how far he's falling because the camera never cuts. Twenty seconds of the audience holding its breath. We don't need a closeup or a POV. Just a stuntman falling seemingly endlessly in space. That's a skilled and experienced director at work. Next to that, this is just... silly.
Ken Bates' fall in Yosemite might as well have been just fifteen feet, with the way they break it up and kill the drama.
I always compare it to the opening of The Spy Who Loved Me, where Bond skis off the edge of a cliff and we get twenty uninterrupted seconds of the stuntman falling before he pulls his chute.
Twenty seconds to appreciate how far he's falling because the camera never cuts. Twenty seconds of the audience holding its breath. We don't need a closeup or a POV. Just a stuntman falling seemingly endlessly in space. That's a skilled and experienced director at work. Next to that, this is just... silly.
Ken Bates' fall in Yosemite might as well have been just fifteen feet, with the way they break it up and kill the drama.
Awesome comparison. (And is proof that drowning the audience in incessant incidental music isn't always necessary, as TSWLM quickly reveals when that jump starts... though if this were Trek, expect a transporter effect or shuttlecraft or some other 80s stunt worthy of corny 80s action shows/movies...)
It didn't help that Paramount wanted all that comedy thrust in, which kills TFF far more for me than anything else (and am glad they changed the literal God-vs-Satan idea with the metaphorical approach as well). The cliff-face fall scene is straight out of Looney Tunes, except that's not Wile E Coyote with a tiny sign reading "OOPS". If there's a plus side, at least Kirk ended up being the butt of a joke along with most of the other bridge crew too.
Having any of the characters revisit moments we'd already seen, choices we experienced with them, would have been much more interesting than what we got.
I have a feeling that this thread might be about to explode...
It seems as if we may be finally getting some backstory and context for Sybok and his actions. I think now is a good time for Star Trek to be exploring things like religious fanaticism and reintroducing and exploring Sybok seems to be the most natural way to weave it into the storyline and make it personal to one of the main characters.
I hope they make a good story of it. Sybok has intrigued me for a very long time. I passed on David Goodman's Autobiography of Captain Kirk because it treated Star Trek 5 as an apocryphal aside. Even not being a fan of the movie, I didn't care for the disrespect thrown at the movie in that book. Conversely, the reason I pre-ordered the autobiography of Mr Spock by Una McCormick is expressly because we knew up front that she would be dealing directly with subjects such as Michael Burnham and Sybok.
To my mind, Sybokis was one of Star Trek's two biggest hanging unexplored plot threads, the other being the Eugenics Wars.
I hope they make a good story of it. Sybok has intrigued me for a very long time. I passed on David Goodman's Autobiography of Captain Kirk because it treated Star Trek 5 as an apocryphal aside. Even not being a fan of the movie, I didn't care for the disrespect thrown at the movie in that book. Conversely, the reason I pre-ordered the autobiography of Mr Spock by Una McCormick is expressly because we knew up front that she would be dealing directly with subjects such as Michael Burnham and Sybok.
To my mind, Sybok
Last edited:
I think any hope of Sybok being a standin for real life religious fanatics went out the window as soon as it was established he was dating a non-binary person. A real life religious fanatic--well, we all know what their usual take on non-binary people is (again, the extreme religious people we see on the news, not most of the religious population in general).
I have the same issues with that other star franchise. Since the Disney buyout the Empire is shown to be more tolerant of other races, genders, and aliens. The showrunners are missing the point that having the villains be bigoted is part of why they are villains, and portraying them as bigoted is not an endorsement of their bigotry but a condemnation of it.
Yet already we have religious fanatic Sybok obviously very open minded. I think any hope of him being a representation of actual real life religious fanatics is over before it began.
I have the same issues with that other star franchise. Since the Disney buyout the Empire is shown to be more tolerant of other races, genders, and aliens. The showrunners are missing the point that having the villains be bigoted is part of why they are villains, and portraying them as bigoted is not an endorsement of their bigotry but a condemnation of it.
Yet already we have religious fanatic Sybok obviously very open minded. I think any hope of him being a representation of actual real life religious fanatics is over before it began.
Nah, because the danger in portraying bigotry is some bigots will see it as affirmation, not condemnation. I think Schitt's Creek handled it just right: they just decided in this town no one cares, because why even acknowledge it unless the point is to demolish it?
Besides, Jim Jones was far from a bigot. An early civil rights advocate. It didn’t keep him from going off the deep end, sadly. If anything it might have played into a savior complex. He could have been a force for good. Sybok also got too into himself…just not as badly. That’s what dogma does.
With what, that beard? Sorry, that's the only thing I remember about the character.
This would have worked a lot better
1) without Shatner's "whoooooooaaaaaaaa!"
2) without the "Superman IV" style music
3) without the really bad "close ups"
We are told Sybok began to hear voices. How sad. If he had consulted me I would have taught him how to raise his vibration and get out of The Lie. The Lie is real and we all live in it. You know who the Father of Lies is. Sybok became clairaudient and yes, it's dangerous.
Jehovah, right?
Not a question of right or wrong. It was understandable and plausible. Sybok's quest was not the film's shortcoming. Everything else was.
Not a question of right or wrong. It was understandable and plausible. Sybok's quest was not the film's shortcoming. Everything else was.
Jones was not the color-blind, everyone-is-equal advocate he packaged in his early years. Throughout the height of People's Temple from Indiana to Guyana, he purposely filled administrative / finance / legal positions with white people, while the majority of his followers (and laborers) were black, a clear racial hierarchy which stood until the end. Further, as he attained a certain level of political power through local governments (notably Mendocino County and San Francisco), he openly professed his atheism, routinely defacing Bibles, spitting on them (and other things I will not mention) and completely condemning religion (giving him the "benefit" of not being able to be called out on his less-than-Christian lifestyle, since he did not believe or answer to God).
So, despite the entertainment business forever linking people like Jones to the idea of characters like Sybok (not saying Shatner, et al., did that) the truth is that Sybok (seeking truth about existence / higher power. etc.) was the polar opposite of a Jones, who--in no surprise--was once supported by innumerable people in the entertainment business.
Similar threads
