The fundamental flaws: Kirk's crew being turned against him The whole idea of finding God is a dramatic dead-end; you can't actually do it or you break the premise of the show, and so you're left doing a soft shoe to avoid the subject Shatner's original inspiration was evangelical preachers manipulating people, a premise they basically lost in the shuffle Addressing all those things requires restructuring the whole premise. This is low level stuff in the DNA of the story.
While I agree with one, I should point out that "cult leader worshiping a false god" is one of the most consistently used villains in TOS. Landru The hippie guy searching for Eden who was insane The giant snake computer The computer in the "Earth is Hollow and I have touched the Sky" Really, the surprising thing is Sybok is mostly sympathetic and NOT a hypocrite.
And? Good enough for a TV episode is good enough for a 30 something million movie? It's not. Sybok is an underdeveloped character who is little more than a plot device. His whole search for God is a dramatic dead end. Kirk and company's story climaxes with the "I need my pain" scene and nothing that happens on the planet tops that or is of any dramatic consequence except to get Sybok out of the way and let Shatner get his moment as the man alone. It's dramatically and thematically inert. The script required a page one rewrite.
I like though the last shot of Star Trek the Undiscovered Country. That was a very nice ending as well.
Actually I think the quote was "I've always known, I'll die by falling off a bridge and then the bridge will fall on me".
I REALLY wanted to love this movie I have the enamel keychain and pin to show it. I really did. If there's one thing I can pinpoint that made me say, "Nope. That's it. I'm done," is Spock saying "Marsh Melons." I mean, really?!?
Deleted scene and no reshoot or dub to fix the line. McCoy messed with ships computer to make sure Spock got Marshmellows wrong when he went and researched camping prior to the trip.
This is a long thread and for all I know I've already logged this sentiment, but I think the real problem with Trek V is that there was no compelling reason to make it. Each subsequent Trek film seemed to spawn from loose threads of the prior one, at least from II onward as II was kind of a soft reboot. By the time you get to the end of Trek IV there is a hard break. Also, from a franchise perspective, Trek IV would have been the best time to call it a day as all energy was being directed towards TNG. The combination of not really having more story to tell with the original crew and mindshare shifting to TNG made it incredibly difficult to give people a compelling reason to head back to the theaters to watch the old guard. Now if Trek VI had been released instead of Trek V, complete with the linkage to TNG through Worf's ancestor and all, then that probably would have worked, because the huge difference between the TOS and TNG era was the peace made between the Klingons, whereas Kirk suffered the most at the hands of Klingons when his son was murdered. For whatever reason, they didn't come up with that story then and instead produced a glorified TV episode. There are three Trek movies that feel like glorified TV episodes, Trek V, Insurrection, and Beyond, and none of them did very well. The film medium is just different from TV. You expect something...higher stakes. TMP was the most pretentious in that regard, and Trek V at times I think was shooting for that, but injecting Orville like humor in a way that subverted it. But seriously, even if ILM had done all the effects, even if the sets were flawless, the shuttle bay in perfect proportion, Spock said "marshmallows", Uhura not done the embarassing feather dance, it still would have been nothing but a "just another day at the office" TV episode sort of story at a time when people were starting to tune into TNG each week for that. If they really wanted the TOS crew to take the Enterprise-A out for a new extended mission they should have launched a new series around them instead. I was hoping they'd have done that myself because it would have made far more use out of the aging cast than we wound up getting with the movies spaced 2+ years apart. So I've got nothing against more TV series like stories, but they belong on the small screen. But you just can't do Trek movies for the sake of just pushing out an obligatory product. They have to be a story that feels like it needs to be told.
After Kirk gets a new enterprise, another day at the office is precisely the loose thread you describe.
Not really. Trek IV was the same sort of riding off into the sunset ending as the first film's "thataway". Ending it that way leaves your imagination to concoct whatever final adventures they met. It's a happily ever after sort of thing.
The thing is, after four films where there is always SOMETHING wrong with Captain, Ship, or Crew, we were really looking forward to an old fashioned Boldly Go with Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise. Then they had to make the Enterprise Not Ready for Primetime. Honestly, this is why the first ten minutes of Into Darkness is my favorite Star Trek in nearly 50 years. (Followed by my least favorite for the next hour and half or so.) It's Kirk and Crew GETTING STUFF DONE.
Star Trek V is somewhat underrated in my opinion. It's a very flawed film with a flimsy story and lackluster script but it does have some really good character moments. To me it's the only six of the original films that really taps back into the dynamic between Kirk/Spock/McCoy. I rate it as the second weakest of the TOS film only because I can actually watch it in one sitting unlike TMP which I can never sit through.
TFF had problems with the special effects miniatures including the miniature shuttlecrafts. The TFF full-scale sets were great including the new bridge and hangar deck. I always have a fondness for the 1701-A hangar deck set and two full-scale shuttlecrafts.
They were very "fuzzy" on the dimensions of the hangar doors. Or (more likely) they were well aware and hoped that the audience would be "fuzzy" because they didn't have the budget to do otherwise.