Shatner's turn
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER
by William S. Kowinski
It was during the feature films---around Star Trek III and IV---that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy became close friends. These days (in 2005) they're often seen on stage together at Star Trek conventions, doing a kind of comedy improv, answering questions, baiting and teasing each other. (At the Farewell Scotty convention last summer, Shatner took lavish advantage of Nimoy apparently not knowing that a moon is not a planet.) Towards the end of their DVD conversation, '>Mind Meld, Nimoy spontaneously says to Shatner, "you're my best friend." Nimoy has come to appreciate the "bad boy" in Shatner, and Shatner clearly admires Nimoy.
The seeds of their friendship were planted years before, during the TV series, by none other than Issac Asimov. As Nimoy tells it in '>I Am Spock, Gene Roddenberry was at his wits end trying to defuse the rivalry growing between the two. Spock was becoming such a popular character that Shatner felt Kirk's importance was being reduced, and he was being slighted. Memos flew, there were tiffs and strains inevitably involving the other actors and people working on the show, and Roddenberry as producer had to be the peacemaker. So finally he asked his new friend Asimov what he should do. Asimov suggested that stories should show that Kirk and Spock are close friends, so the audience couldn't think about one without thinking about the other. For Nimoy it was the perfect solution.
It also became an enduring part of the Star Trek ethos, especially as it included the third member of the trinity, DeForrest Kelley as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. Apparently it worked for Shatner, too, because the relationship, the camaraderie among these three, would get its fullest expression in Star Trek V, the film he directed from his own story.
The friendship of Nimoy and Shatner also had an important business component: they decided that for their contracts to do Star Trek films, what one got, the other got also. So when Nimoy got to direct Star Trek III and IV, it was a condition of Shatner's contract to appear in IV that he get to direct '>Star Trek V. (According to Nimoy, both had lobbied to direct Star Trek on TV starting in its second season.) So this is William Shatner's film: he came up with the story, worked on it to its final form, and directed the motion picture, as well as starring again as Captain Kirk. Harve Bennett produced and got story credit, along with David Loughery, who got sole credit for the screenplay.
by William S. Kowinski
It was during the feature films---around Star Trek III and IV---that William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy became close friends. These days (in 2005) they're often seen on stage together at Star Trek conventions, doing a kind of comedy improv, answering questions, baiting and teasing each other. (At the Farewell Scotty convention last summer, Shatner took lavish advantage of Nimoy apparently not knowing that a moon is not a planet.) Towards the end of their DVD conversation, '>Mind Meld, Nimoy spontaneously says to Shatner, "you're my best friend." Nimoy has come to appreciate the "bad boy" in Shatner, and Shatner clearly admires Nimoy.
The seeds of their friendship were planted years before, during the TV series, by none other than Issac Asimov. As Nimoy tells it in '>I Am Spock, Gene Roddenberry was at his wits end trying to defuse the rivalry growing between the two. Spock was becoming such a popular character that Shatner felt Kirk's importance was being reduced, and he was being slighted. Memos flew, there were tiffs and strains inevitably involving the other actors and people working on the show, and Roddenberry as producer had to be the peacemaker. So finally he asked his new friend Asimov what he should do. Asimov suggested that stories should show that Kirk and Spock are close friends, so the audience couldn't think about one without thinking about the other. For Nimoy it was the perfect solution.
It also became an enduring part of the Star Trek ethos, especially as it included the third member of the trinity, DeForrest Kelley as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. Apparently it worked for Shatner, too, because the relationship, the camaraderie among these three, would get its fullest expression in Star Trek V, the film he directed from his own story.
The friendship of Nimoy and Shatner also had an important business component: they decided that for their contracts to do Star Trek films, what one got, the other got also. So when Nimoy got to direct Star Trek III and IV, it was a condition of Shatner's contract to appear in IV that he get to direct '>Star Trek V. (According to Nimoy, both had lobbied to direct Star Trek on TV starting in its second season.) So this is William Shatner's film: he came up with the story, worked on it to its final form, and directed the motion picture, as well as starring again as Captain Kirk. Harve Bennett produced and got story credit, along with David Loughery, who got sole credit for the screenplay.
William Shatner has written several nonfiction books that concern Star Trek, but none is the kind of book all of his crewmates have published (except the late DeForest Kelley): the memoir or autobiography. He's written almost nothing about his life before Trek.
But several years ago he cooperated with filmmaker Harvey McKinnon in a Bravo television biography. After showing Shatner at the large pond on his tranquil farm musing about the moment (just after Star Trek went off the air and a divorce settlement depleted his funds) that he almost sold it and realized he couldn't bear to, the movie follows him to the snowy streets of Montreal where he spent his childhood. He pauses outside his old elementary school to recall that his was one of the few Jewish families in the neighborhood, and that he was regularly jumped by two or three other kids because he was Jewish. "I used to fight---I won most of them. I had to struggle."
He visits the very house where he was born in 1931. The recollections he shares (or at least the ones included in the film) are striking: of cutting up a new living room couch with scissors, and sawing the legs off the new dining room table. He recalls these guilelessly, with a sense of thoughtless wonder. But clearly young Bill had some bad boy in him, and though not exactly in the same league as today's inner city mean streets, his childhood knew some violence and turmoil.
Like Nimoy's, Shatner's introduction to theatre came very early. He attended a children's drama school, and played Prince Charming in Snow White at the age of six or seven. (As one of the few boys in the school, he recalled, he got all the big hero parts.) He learned the power of theatre, he said, at that same age, when he was in a play about Germans taking away Jewish kids in World War II, and he saw people in the audience weeping, and felt the waves of love and admiration.
Shatner pointed out where he had gone to movies, and where the bookstore was where he had read his first science fiction (both now gone.) In his Foreword to C.J. Henderson's The '>Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, Shatner writes that he spent his youthful Saturdays seeing movies, racing from one movie theatre to another, seeing from two to six movies in a day. He recalled mostly the DeMille epics, with "a magnificent leading man and a juicy leading lady" and thousands of extras.
Though his parents wanted him to pursue a business career (his father had a successful clothing business) Shatner spent most of his time and energy at McGill University in the theatre. (His best academic subjects, he said, were English, psychology and music.) After college, he "ran away to Toronto to act." He was told there was no way to make a living in Canada acting, but he learned that it might be possible if he was accepted as an actor for radio.
In the film, Shatner emphasizes that he went to Toronto knowing no one there, and had a hard time breaking into the "clique" of actors and writers working for Canadian Broadcasting, the CBC. As he made his way from job to job, in radio and in Canadian theatre and ultimately to New York, he did so without a mentor, and "never had friends in the acting community...I don't remember anyone offering me a hand up."
All of this may help explain the complexities of Shatner's public image. Though there's a good deal of presumption in these speculations, since I don't know him and have never spoken with him, there do seem to be in this background possible sources for the conflicting stories and images about him. The bio film in particular shows a thoughtful, sensitive, driven, generous and good-hearted man with a lot of insecurities, wounds and anger under the surface.
As is well known, other actors on Star Trek apart from Nimoy and Kelley held long-simmering resentments for his careless treatment of them. They believed he insisted on script changes to take away from their parts and put the focus on him. Shatner was amazed to learn of these grievances, and still seems baffled by the bad feeling. He insists he only tried to clarify the stories, and it does seem to be true that his skillfulness and intelligence in dramaturgy and storytelling is underrated. Though he doesn't carry the mantle of fluency in Shakespeare the way that Patrick Stewart does, he was trained in the classics, especially after college. In fact he first came to Hollywood's attention for a Shakespeare performance.
But it is also likely that a combination of his way of working (concentrating more on the effectiveness of the production than the establishing relationships with the people in it) and the blind spots created by his shadow insecurities, competitiveness and pugnacious defensiveness, got expressed in ways he didn't consciously see or understand. Which may be partly why he could portray Kirk's shadow (in the Star Trek's famous "The Enemy Within" episode) with such conviction, and why Kirk could speak with such authority about inner demons and the struggle to control them and use their energies.
He created several long-running characters on television, and is in the process of creating one now---Denny Crain on Boston Legal is probably his finest creation, with the exception of Captain Kirk. But it was as Captain Kirk that William Shatner became one of the best known actors on the planet. It was estimated in the 1990s that a quarter of the world's population recognized his face, which was a higher proportion of the world's people that had ever used a telephone (at least until cell phones.)
But aspects of his reputation made his choice as the director of a Star Trek feature less than universally heralded. Though some of his blind spots probably contributed to the problems he encountered, he was more clearly successful in areas that probably surprised some people who expected him to have his difficulties there.
But several years ago he cooperated with filmmaker Harvey McKinnon in a Bravo television biography. After showing Shatner at the large pond on his tranquil farm musing about the moment (just after Star Trek went off the air and a divorce settlement depleted his funds) that he almost sold it and realized he couldn't bear to, the movie follows him to the snowy streets of Montreal where he spent his childhood. He pauses outside his old elementary school to recall that his was one of the few Jewish families in the neighborhood, and that he was regularly jumped by two or three other kids because he was Jewish. "I used to fight---I won most of them. I had to struggle."
He visits the very house where he was born in 1931. The recollections he shares (or at least the ones included in the film) are striking: of cutting up a new living room couch with scissors, and sawing the legs off the new dining room table. He recalls these guilelessly, with a sense of thoughtless wonder. But clearly young Bill had some bad boy in him, and though not exactly in the same league as today's inner city mean streets, his childhood knew some violence and turmoil.
Like Nimoy's, Shatner's introduction to theatre came very early. He attended a children's drama school, and played Prince Charming in Snow White at the age of six or seven. (As one of the few boys in the school, he recalled, he got all the big hero parts.) He learned the power of theatre, he said, at that same age, when he was in a play about Germans taking away Jewish kids in World War II, and he saw people in the audience weeping, and felt the waves of love and admiration.
Shatner pointed out where he had gone to movies, and where the bookstore was where he had read his first science fiction (both now gone.) In his Foreword to C.J. Henderson's The '>Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, Shatner writes that he spent his youthful Saturdays seeing movies, racing from one movie theatre to another, seeing from two to six movies in a day. He recalled mostly the DeMille epics, with "a magnificent leading man and a juicy leading lady" and thousands of extras.
Though his parents wanted him to pursue a business career (his father had a successful clothing business) Shatner spent most of his time and energy at McGill University in the theatre. (His best academic subjects, he said, were English, psychology and music.) After college, he "ran away to Toronto to act." He was told there was no way to make a living in Canada acting, but he learned that it might be possible if he was accepted as an actor for radio.
In the film, Shatner emphasizes that he went to Toronto knowing no one there, and had a hard time breaking into the "clique" of actors and writers working for Canadian Broadcasting, the CBC. As he made his way from job to job, in radio and in Canadian theatre and ultimately to New York, he did so without a mentor, and "never had friends in the acting community...I don't remember anyone offering me a hand up."
All of this may help explain the complexities of Shatner's public image. Though there's a good deal of presumption in these speculations, since I don't know him and have never spoken with him, there do seem to be in this background possible sources for the conflicting stories and images about him. The bio film in particular shows a thoughtful, sensitive, driven, generous and good-hearted man with a lot of insecurities, wounds and anger under the surface.
As is well known, other actors on Star Trek apart from Nimoy and Kelley held long-simmering resentments for his careless treatment of them. They believed he insisted on script changes to take away from their parts and put the focus on him. Shatner was amazed to learn of these grievances, and still seems baffled by the bad feeling. He insists he only tried to clarify the stories, and it does seem to be true that his skillfulness and intelligence in dramaturgy and storytelling is underrated. Though he doesn't carry the mantle of fluency in Shakespeare the way that Patrick Stewart does, he was trained in the classics, especially after college. In fact he first came to Hollywood's attention for a Shakespeare performance.
But it is also likely that a combination of his way of working (concentrating more on the effectiveness of the production than the establishing relationships with the people in it) and the blind spots created by his shadow insecurities, competitiveness and pugnacious defensiveness, got expressed in ways he didn't consciously see or understand. Which may be partly why he could portray Kirk's shadow (in the Star Trek's famous "The Enemy Within" episode) with such conviction, and why Kirk could speak with such authority about inner demons and the struggle to control them and use their energies.
He created several long-running characters on television, and is in the process of creating one now---Denny Crain on Boston Legal is probably his finest creation, with the exception of Captain Kirk. But it was as Captain Kirk that William Shatner became one of the best known actors on the planet. It was estimated in the 1990s that a quarter of the world's population recognized his face, which was a higher proportion of the world's people that had ever used a telephone (at least until cell phones.)
But aspects of his reputation made his choice as the director of a Star Trek feature less than universally heralded. Though some of his blind spots probably contributed to the problems he encountered, he was more clearly successful in areas that probably surprised some people who expected him to have his difficulties there.
In their different ways, both Nimoy and Shatner had tried to distance themselves from the Star Trek universe for a time. By the time of Star Trek V, both had accepted and embraced it more fully than ever. Shatner was writing books about Star Trek and its fans, and (with the help of veteran writers, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens) authoring novels set in the Star Trek fictional universe. So by this time, Shatner not only felt comfortable playing Captain Kirk but making his contribution to the Star Trek story universe.
In '>Star Trek Movie Memories, Shatner describes the inspiration for his Star Trek V story: the televangelists like Jim and Tammy Fae Baker who were extremely popular at the time, and whose credibility seemed to depend on the claim that God (Shatner wrote) "was now speaking directly into their heavily hairsprayed heads." "Was this the ultimate narcissism? A sure-fire money-grabbing scheme? Psychosis?"
In true Star Trek fashion, Shatner conceived of such a character in cosmic proportions: a self-proclaimed holy man who believed God was speaking to him, and he would be the instrument to spread God's word throughout the universe, if he could only get the use of a starship.
According to Shatner, the first half of Star Trek V adheres pretty closely to the story he originally outlined: the Kirk-Spock-McCoy shore leave at Yosemite to the action at Paradise City. "However, from midpoint to finish my original storyline bears almost no relation to that of the actual theatrical release."
At this stage there were two major problems. The one-sentence "high concept" of the story was: "The Enterprise goes to find God and meets the Devil." Shatner was deadly serious about this, and when the premise was changed, he felt it detracted from the movie's power. But even Leonard Nimoy, even Gene Roddenberry (who had toyed with a similar story for the first movie) didn't think it could work. But instead of scrapping the idea and starting with a fresh premise, Shatner accepted various tweaks and compromises.
As odd as it seems that Shatner would not have seen the pitfalls of this premise, the second problem was even more inexplicable. Shatner's story had every member of the crew fall under the holy man's spell, except Kirk. The entire crew, including Spock and McCoy, essentially abandon and betray him. In the climactic scene, everyone is captured or wounded except Kirk, who instead of escaping, and despite the attacks of frightening satanic figures, decides to go back to rescue his friends.
Even considering Shatner's strong convictions about how the hero protagonist carries a drama, this story is breathtaking in its singular concentration on Kirk and its apparent cluelessness about the other characters. Asked in an interview on the set of a previous film--- Star Trek IV I think- how the character of Kirk had changed over the years, Shatner said something to the effect that he was perhaps more cynical, due to his experiences in Hollywood. If movie stories are always eventually about Hollywood, here is a story about someone betrayed by everyone he trusts, as they are swayed by fake prophet of a false god. The possible interpretations of this as psychodrama are themselves breathtaking.
But even with Kirk at the helm, Nimoy and Kelley had the same power to protect their characters as they did with any other director. They both refused to have their characters betray Kirk, as it was entirely inconsistent with everything that came before.
Shatner was also hearing from the studio, delightfully surprised by the success of Star Trek IV and convinced it was because the tone was lighter and the character byplay more humorous. Shatner couldn't disagree,especially since (as he said in Mind Meld) Shatner's first observation about Star Trek's first pilot was that everyone took themselves too seriously and the show lacked humor.
There were a couple of other factors that eventually came into play. With an inexperienced director, and with the previous movie having done so well, the spending wasn't as well controlled and utilized. There wasn't vast overspending; Trek films were always so tightly budgeted that it took substantial creativity to make them work. This time there wasn't enough left over by the time they got near the end of the film.
And there was a crucial error, though not a new one: using the wrong visual effects house. It had happened at the beginning of the original series, but they were able to change in time. It happened during the first movie, but Paramount spent enough money to get the effects more or less done. This time, perhaps believing that Star Trek movies were now automatic winners, Paramount didn't fix what became an evident problem on the screen. Not only were planned special effects for the film's climax scrapped, but ordinary visual effects were allowed on the screen in an unfinished state.
When it came time to do the new DVD, Shatner asked Paramount to put up a relatively modest amount for CGI effects that weren't available when the film was made. This had been done extensively for the DVD of the first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and in his brief appearance in a short documentary on the Director's Cut DVD of that film, Shatner praises Paramount for allocating the funds to allow director Robert Wise to improve and essentially to finish the movie. Unfortunately, this pointed remark didn't reap the desired dividends, when Paramount refused to give Shatner the chance to make changes on V for its DVD release, even when he proposed to match their investment out of his own pocket.
The previous three Star Trek films---the accidental trilogy-- had benefited from an amazing serendipity. But on Star Trek V, a lot of that kind of luck ran out. Harve Bennett's judgment failed him. The ideas that seemed daring but doable fell flat.
Still, we can see today that Star Trek V has many virtues, and they are enough to make this a credible contribution to the Star Trek saga.
In '>Star Trek Movie Memories, Shatner describes the inspiration for his Star Trek V story: the televangelists like Jim and Tammy Fae Baker who were extremely popular at the time, and whose credibility seemed to depend on the claim that God (Shatner wrote) "was now speaking directly into their heavily hairsprayed heads." "Was this the ultimate narcissism? A sure-fire money-grabbing scheme? Psychosis?"
In true Star Trek fashion, Shatner conceived of such a character in cosmic proportions: a self-proclaimed holy man who believed God was speaking to him, and he would be the instrument to spread God's word throughout the universe, if he could only get the use of a starship.
According to Shatner, the first half of Star Trek V adheres pretty closely to the story he originally outlined: the Kirk-Spock-McCoy shore leave at Yosemite to the action at Paradise City. "However, from midpoint to finish my original storyline bears almost no relation to that of the actual theatrical release."
At this stage there were two major problems. The one-sentence "high concept" of the story was: "The Enterprise goes to find God and meets the Devil." Shatner was deadly serious about this, and when the premise was changed, he felt it detracted from the movie's power. But even Leonard Nimoy, even Gene Roddenberry (who had toyed with a similar story for the first movie) didn't think it could work. But instead of scrapping the idea and starting with a fresh premise, Shatner accepted various tweaks and compromises.
As odd as it seems that Shatner would not have seen the pitfalls of this premise, the second problem was even more inexplicable. Shatner's story had every member of the crew fall under the holy man's spell, except Kirk. The entire crew, including Spock and McCoy, essentially abandon and betray him. In the climactic scene, everyone is captured or wounded except Kirk, who instead of escaping, and despite the attacks of frightening satanic figures, decides to go back to rescue his friends.
Even considering Shatner's strong convictions about how the hero protagonist carries a drama, this story is breathtaking in its singular concentration on Kirk and its apparent cluelessness about the other characters. Asked in an interview on the set of a previous film--- Star Trek IV I think- how the character of Kirk had changed over the years, Shatner said something to the effect that he was perhaps more cynical, due to his experiences in Hollywood. If movie stories are always eventually about Hollywood, here is a story about someone betrayed by everyone he trusts, as they are swayed by fake prophet of a false god. The possible interpretations of this as psychodrama are themselves breathtaking.
But even with Kirk at the helm, Nimoy and Kelley had the same power to protect their characters as they did with any other director. They both refused to have their characters betray Kirk, as it was entirely inconsistent with everything that came before.
Shatner was also hearing from the studio, delightfully surprised by the success of Star Trek IV and convinced it was because the tone was lighter and the character byplay more humorous. Shatner couldn't disagree,especially since (as he said in Mind Meld) Shatner's first observation about Star Trek's first pilot was that everyone took themselves too seriously and the show lacked humor.
There were a couple of other factors that eventually came into play. With an inexperienced director, and with the previous movie having done so well, the spending wasn't as well controlled and utilized. There wasn't vast overspending; Trek films were always so tightly budgeted that it took substantial creativity to make them work. This time there wasn't enough left over by the time they got near the end of the film.
And there was a crucial error, though not a new one: using the wrong visual effects house. It had happened at the beginning of the original series, but they were able to change in time. It happened during the first movie, but Paramount spent enough money to get the effects more or less done. This time, perhaps believing that Star Trek movies were now automatic winners, Paramount didn't fix what became an evident problem on the screen. Not only were planned special effects for the film's climax scrapped, but ordinary visual effects were allowed on the screen in an unfinished state.
When it came time to do the new DVD, Shatner asked Paramount to put up a relatively modest amount for CGI effects that weren't available when the film was made. This had been done extensively for the DVD of the first film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and in his brief appearance in a short documentary on the Director's Cut DVD of that film, Shatner praises Paramount for allocating the funds to allow director Robert Wise to improve and essentially to finish the movie. Unfortunately, this pointed remark didn't reap the desired dividends, when Paramount refused to give Shatner the chance to make changes on V for its DVD release, even when he proposed to match their investment out of his own pocket.
The previous three Star Trek films---the accidental trilogy-- had benefited from an amazing serendipity. But on Star Trek V, a lot of that kind of luck ran out. Harve Bennett's judgment failed him. The ideas that seemed daring but doable fell flat.
Still, we can see today that Star Trek V has many virtues, and they are enough to make this a credible contribution to the Star Trek saga.
The story that made it to the screen began with a prophet, a man riding in the desert, with a plan to find God.
While the inner workings of the new starship Enterprise are being completed in earth orbit, much of the bridge crew is on shore leave below. Kirk is free-climbing the El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Spock is apparently playing with a levitation device (reminiscent of Commando Cody's jet backpack, from the era of space opera serials that included Zombies of the Stratosphere, featuring a quite young Leonard Nimoy) and hangs suspended in the air chatting with Kirk, causing him to fall, and then to be rescued in the nick of time by Spock. McCoy is watching the whole show through binoculars, which inspires his timeless line, "You really piss me off, Jim."
But meanwhile on the remote "planet of Galactic peace," a desert wasteland, the prophet with strange powers to affect minds and hearts plots to bring a starship there, to complete his holy mission. The starship is the Enterprise, the mission is to find Sha Ka Ree, the fabled planet of God. The prophet is Sybok, a Vulcan who turned against his culture's insistence on "logic," because he believed the way to truth was through feeling. He also turns out to be Spock's half-brother.
Sybok captures the Federation, Klingon and Romulan representatives to the planet of peace, in the hellhole known as Paradise City. When Captain Kirk and the Enterprise rescue them, they turn out to be Sybok converts and co-conspirators. Soon most of the crew sides with them.
The Enterprise confronts the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy, and passes through it, an apparent miracle. Kirk, Spock and McCoy had been thrown in the brig, but a jailbreak by Scotty temporarily frees them.
Sybok confronts the Star Trek trinity, and makes one last attempt to convert them. His technique involves revealing the sources of an individual's deepest pain. He tries this on McCoy and Spock, but even after they re-experience the most painful moments of their past, they remain loyal to Kirk, who refuses Sybok's intervention. But the Enterprise penetrates the Great Barrier that guards the center of the galaxy, and is approaching Sha Ka Ree.
Sybok, Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam to the surface, where they encounter the massive visage and booming voice of a being who first claims to be the God of many planets' prophesies. But when he inquires how they got there, and asks them to bring their starship closer, Kirk impudently inquires, "What does God need with a starship?" The answer is a searing bolt of ire to the chest. God is revealed to be a prisoner on this planet, with the implication that this is a criminal imposter.
Sybok realizes his error and arrogance and sacrifices himself to give the others time to escape. Spock and McCoy are beamed to the Enterprise, but Kirk is left to deal with the non-god's wrath. A subplot involving a pursuing Klingon ship pays off in Kirk's rescue. The last scene repeats the situation of one of the first: Kirk, Spock and McCoy are back around a campfire at Yosemite National Park, singing "Row, row, row your boat" to the accompaniment of Spock's Vulcan lute.
While the inner workings of the new starship Enterprise are being completed in earth orbit, much of the bridge crew is on shore leave below. Kirk is free-climbing the El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Spock is apparently playing with a levitation device (reminiscent of Commando Cody's jet backpack, from the era of space opera serials that included Zombies of the Stratosphere, featuring a quite young Leonard Nimoy) and hangs suspended in the air chatting with Kirk, causing him to fall, and then to be rescued in the nick of time by Spock. McCoy is watching the whole show through binoculars, which inspires his timeless line, "You really piss me off, Jim."
But meanwhile on the remote "planet of Galactic peace," a desert wasteland, the prophet with strange powers to affect minds and hearts plots to bring a starship there, to complete his holy mission. The starship is the Enterprise, the mission is to find Sha Ka Ree, the fabled planet of God. The prophet is Sybok, a Vulcan who turned against his culture's insistence on "logic," because he believed the way to truth was through feeling. He also turns out to be Spock's half-brother.
Sybok captures the Federation, Klingon and Romulan representatives to the planet of peace, in the hellhole known as Paradise City. When Captain Kirk and the Enterprise rescue them, they turn out to be Sybok converts and co-conspirators. Soon most of the crew sides with them.
The Enterprise confronts the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy, and passes through it, an apparent miracle. Kirk, Spock and McCoy had been thrown in the brig, but a jailbreak by Scotty temporarily frees them.
Sybok confronts the Star Trek trinity, and makes one last attempt to convert them. His technique involves revealing the sources of an individual's deepest pain. He tries this on McCoy and Spock, but even after they re-experience the most painful moments of their past, they remain loyal to Kirk, who refuses Sybok's intervention. But the Enterprise penetrates the Great Barrier that guards the center of the galaxy, and is approaching Sha Ka Ree.
Sybok, Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam to the surface, where they encounter the massive visage and booming voice of a being who first claims to be the God of many planets' prophesies. But when he inquires how they got there, and asks them to bring their starship closer, Kirk impudently inquires, "What does God need with a starship?" The answer is a searing bolt of ire to the chest. God is revealed to be a prisoner on this planet, with the implication that this is a criminal imposter.
Sybok realizes his error and arrogance and sacrifices himself to give the others time to escape. Spock and McCoy are beamed to the Enterprise, but Kirk is left to deal with the non-god's wrath. A subplot involving a pursuing Klingon ship pays off in Kirk's rescue. The last scene repeats the situation of one of the first: Kirk, Spock and McCoy are back around a campfire at Yosemite National Park, singing "Row, row, row your boat" to the accompaniment of Spock's Vulcan lute.
After the great success of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the Trek film franchise was at or near its high point of popularity. So there were great expectations for this film, and for awhile it seemed they might be fulfilled. Previews were good, and the first reviews---especially in the Los Angeles Times---were ecstatic. But audience response during its first run was tepid, and it made less money than any previous Trek film. At least until the last two Next Generation films, this was the movie a plurality of the most vocal fans liked least.
The movie was released in the summer of 1989 in formidable and relentless competition with other blockbusters, including an Indiana Jones movie, a Back to the Future, and the first Batman. But it also had internal problems. It's evident from the DVD that the impression I remember from seeing it the first time---that some of the effects were shockingly shoddy, like those in the last Christopher Reeve Superman movie---was pretty accurate. Even simple shots of shuttlecraft and starships in flight weren't "finished": given the subtle details and shading that makes them look dimensional and "real."
But in other ways, the DVD shows off its virtues, one of which was pretty solid storytelling, which was a hallmark of the original cast movies as it was of the original series. Shatner believed that the main problem is the ending, where his planned special effects didn't work and his money ran out. In Star Trek Movie Memories, he calls the last ten minutes of the film (meaning the God on the planet scenes) "horrendous" and "the ruination of that film." I wouldn't go that far. In fact, viewing it in the continuum of Star Trek films, or even as a DVD experience, it doesn't have that strong a negative impact. It's not visually strong, nor the kind of effects "payoff" you get in, say, Close Encounters. But every film doesn't have to end with that kind of bang. My reaction after seeing it several times is that it passes quickly, and doesn't induce cringing.
Why not? Because the story itself is resolved, and its various threads are tied together. There are elements more important than special effects.
This was Shatner's first theatrically released feature film as a director, and as is unfortunately common for star actors whose first effort as director is commercially disappointing, it was his last, at least so far. And like a lot of these efforts, the banishment is not deserved. In particular, Shatner was strong in the shooting itself.
Careful viewing on DVD revealed to me an impressive visual efficiency and imagination, very appropriate for Star Trek. In many ways this film most resembles the original Star Trek series of any of the features, in conception and story, and in some visual elements. Shatner and company had good ideas for visually opening up the imagery to wide screen size and feature dimension in these pre-CGI days, primarily with extreme outdoor settings (soaring mountains, arid deserts) and, well, horses.
But where Shatner unexpectedly excels is in making pictures with small numbers of people (notably the Trinity) and moving the camera in the Enterprise and other enclosures. The elegant two shots and three shots in the original series have helped make it classic as television as well as storytelling, and Shatner learned this lesson very well. All in all, viewing this film on DVD, and after all this time since its first release has passed, greatly improved my impression of it.
Probably the most surprising to some is how well he worked with the actors. Regardless of how they felt about him otherwise, or about the movie, they generally thought he was a good director.
Now some detailed musing concerning the two main themes of the movie---the spiritual and psychological threads of the "God" theme, and the theme of loyalty and creative camaraderie that this film so notably expresses in content and style.
The movie was released in the summer of 1989 in formidable and relentless competition with other blockbusters, including an Indiana Jones movie, a Back to the Future, and the first Batman. But it also had internal problems. It's evident from the DVD that the impression I remember from seeing it the first time---that some of the effects were shockingly shoddy, like those in the last Christopher Reeve Superman movie---was pretty accurate. Even simple shots of shuttlecraft and starships in flight weren't "finished": given the subtle details and shading that makes them look dimensional and "real."
But in other ways, the DVD shows off its virtues, one of which was pretty solid storytelling, which was a hallmark of the original cast movies as it was of the original series. Shatner believed that the main problem is the ending, where his planned special effects didn't work and his money ran out. In Star Trek Movie Memories, he calls the last ten minutes of the film (meaning the God on the planet scenes) "horrendous" and "the ruination of that film." I wouldn't go that far. In fact, viewing it in the continuum of Star Trek films, or even as a DVD experience, it doesn't have that strong a negative impact. It's not visually strong, nor the kind of effects "payoff" you get in, say, Close Encounters. But every film doesn't have to end with that kind of bang. My reaction after seeing it several times is that it passes quickly, and doesn't induce cringing.
Why not? Because the story itself is resolved, and its various threads are tied together. There are elements more important than special effects.
This was Shatner's first theatrically released feature film as a director, and as is unfortunately common for star actors whose first effort as director is commercially disappointing, it was his last, at least so far. And like a lot of these efforts, the banishment is not deserved. In particular, Shatner was strong in the shooting itself.
Careful viewing on DVD revealed to me an impressive visual efficiency and imagination, very appropriate for Star Trek. In many ways this film most resembles the original Star Trek series of any of the features, in conception and story, and in some visual elements. Shatner and company had good ideas for visually opening up the imagery to wide screen size and feature dimension in these pre-CGI days, primarily with extreme outdoor settings (soaring mountains, arid deserts) and, well, horses.
But where Shatner unexpectedly excels is in making pictures with small numbers of people (notably the Trinity) and moving the camera in the Enterprise and other enclosures. The elegant two shots and three shots in the original series have helped make it classic as television as well as storytelling, and Shatner learned this lesson very well. All in all, viewing this film on DVD, and after all this time since its first release has passed, greatly improved my impression of it.
Probably the most surprising to some is how well he worked with the actors. Regardless of how they felt about him otherwise, or about the movie, they generally thought he was a good director.
Now some detailed musing concerning the two main themes of the movie---the spiritual and psychological threads of the "God" theme, and the theme of loyalty and creative camaraderie that this film so notably expresses in content and style.
The God thing
Star Trek has often boldly gone where few general audience TV shows and films have gone before, but sometimes its explorations are less than thorough, or perhaps a better metaphor is, sometimes the log is less than complete. Even though Shatner's initial concept for this story was compromised, elements of an extraordinarily profound exploration of the inner frontiers, the spiritual dimensions, are rather thoughtfully assembled.
The problem for the viewer is that the connections aren't made. At times it would have taken just a line or two of dialogue. But in the end the problem might have been that to make the connections would be to make explicit a point of view that not everybody involved could agree on, or would want to lay bare to the general public.
Judging from Shatner's statements, especially the extraordinary interview filmed just before the first day of the Yosemite shoot and included in the DVD package, there was quite a lot that he consciously intended to present. But it's one of those curious and often wonderful things about creativity that when you get to really profound issues, the unconscious will toss in elements that the conscious (usually somebody else's) will connect only much later.
Viewed simply as irony, the journey to find God that ends up finding the devil is pretty trivial. But there's more here, thanks to a line Shatner insisted on keeping in the film, over opposition. Near the end of the film when he answers McCoy's question of whether God is 'out there' somewhere: "Maybe he's not out there. Maybe he's in here---in the human heart."
That's really a Star Trek answer, consistent with the original series and The Next Generation. Looked at one way, it says that the search out there is the search in here; that in the search for meaning we don't need a starship.
But if God is in the human heart, so is the Devil. Just as the God and the Devil of this movie are the same on the same planet, so too are both good and evil within us. Obviously a Star Trek idea, alluded to already from the two-Kirks episode, but repeated in various ways many times.
Here it is given stark visual confirmation when Sybok, who believes he has been guided by God's voice to find Him, asks how he can do violence to his friends. Then Sybok sees the final Image and Likeness of God/Satan is his own face.
This idea is carried out as well when Sybok tries his magic on the trinity. (In the novelization, by the way, this is revealed as a Vulcan mind technique, now banned because in the past it had been used to brainwash victims.) Sybok has the power to extract the source of someone's deepest pain, and in this case, to bring it to life for all to see, like a psychic holodeck. He reveals McCoy's secret pain when he was confronted with the choice of watching his father suffer as he slowly but inevitably died, or heed his father's wishes and deny his doctor's oath by pulling the plug. He pulled the plug and his father died, but soon a cure for his father's disease was found.
Having expressed this pain fully---as perhaps only an emotionally available McCoy could have---he felt relief. "Release this pain" Sybok said. "You have taken the first step. The rest we will take together."
Perhaps some audience discomfort with this scene was that, at the time of the film's release, both McCoy's dilemma and Sybok's therapeutic technique had come and gone as fashionable talk show/magazine items of discussion. In fact, the issues surrounding euthanasia are still very real, and the idea of releasing buried "pain" or trauma is central to any number of psychiatric and therapeutic techniques.
But the idea that merely remembering past abuse or expressing and acknowledging suppressed pain constituted a sudden miracle cure was widely popular for awhile, a misunderstanding of what well known proponents like John Bradshaw actually meant---even if their TV and personal appearances lent themselves to such an impression. At least Sybok suggests that further steps are necessary.
Then it's Spock's turn, and Sybok resurrects the moment of his birth, when his father expresses dismay that he looks so human. But Spock says that he has already acknowledged and dealt with this pain, or at least has found a different life, where it no longer matters. This is the crucial self-understanding that is so much a part of the Star Trek message.
Then Sybok scores a point by getting Kirk to admit that he didn't know that his closest friends had this core of pain. But Kirk refuses to undergo the process. Is he afraid? "I'm afraid of nothing," he says with such conviction that we have no choice but to believe him. Is this the arrogance of the self-deluded, the person without the skills or the will to examine himself? Maybe not. "I know what my weaknesses are...they're things we carry with us-the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I need my pain."
Again, the two-Kirks episode. Star Trek fans will be reminded that this is a captain who once experienced being split literally into two people, the good Kirk and the evil Kirk, in a transporter accident. Neither Kirk was able to really function; the good Kirk needed the energy, boldness and decisiveness of his dark side. (Though interestingly, it was the dark side Kirk who lacked courage.)
In context of this film, the God and the Devil in the human heart may cause conflict, but how that inner conflict is dealt with, how it is reconciled through the mind and through the activities some identify with the soul, is the nature of being human.
The literal search for a literal God is a stand-in for the human search for a spiritual dimension Clearly something like this was intended, in a film about a search for God that's called "The Final Frontier." Shatner has said as much, though the idea was most clearly expressed in a different context by David Gerrold, who wrote for the original series and the Next Generation: " Space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul."
Of course this is an analogue to Kirk's contrast of looking for God in outer space, or in the inner recesses of the human heart. Merging the two---the spiritual quest as part of the exploration of space---is very much a Star Trek theme.
Star Trek has often boldly gone where few general audience TV shows and films have gone before, but sometimes its explorations are less than thorough, or perhaps a better metaphor is, sometimes the log is less than complete. Even though Shatner's initial concept for this story was compromised, elements of an extraordinarily profound exploration of the inner frontiers, the spiritual dimensions, are rather thoughtfully assembled.
The problem for the viewer is that the connections aren't made. At times it would have taken just a line or two of dialogue. But in the end the problem might have been that to make the connections would be to make explicit a point of view that not everybody involved could agree on, or would want to lay bare to the general public.
Judging from Shatner's statements, especially the extraordinary interview filmed just before the first day of the Yosemite shoot and included in the DVD package, there was quite a lot that he consciously intended to present. But it's one of those curious and often wonderful things about creativity that when you get to really profound issues, the unconscious will toss in elements that the conscious (usually somebody else's) will connect only much later.
Viewed simply as irony, the journey to find God that ends up finding the devil is pretty trivial. But there's more here, thanks to a line Shatner insisted on keeping in the film, over opposition. Near the end of the film when he answers McCoy's question of whether God is 'out there' somewhere: "Maybe he's not out there. Maybe he's in here---in the human heart."
That's really a Star Trek answer, consistent with the original series and The Next Generation. Looked at one way, it says that the search out there is the search in here; that in the search for meaning we don't need a starship.
But if God is in the human heart, so is the Devil. Just as the God and the Devil of this movie are the same on the same planet, so too are both good and evil within us. Obviously a Star Trek idea, alluded to already from the two-Kirks episode, but repeated in various ways many times.
Here it is given stark visual confirmation when Sybok, who believes he has been guided by God's voice to find Him, asks how he can do violence to his friends. Then Sybok sees the final Image and Likeness of God/Satan is his own face.
This idea is carried out as well when Sybok tries his magic on the trinity. (In the novelization, by the way, this is revealed as a Vulcan mind technique, now banned because in the past it had been used to brainwash victims.) Sybok has the power to extract the source of someone's deepest pain, and in this case, to bring it to life for all to see, like a psychic holodeck. He reveals McCoy's secret pain when he was confronted with the choice of watching his father suffer as he slowly but inevitably died, or heed his father's wishes and deny his doctor's oath by pulling the plug. He pulled the plug and his father died, but soon a cure for his father's disease was found.
Having expressed this pain fully---as perhaps only an emotionally available McCoy could have---he felt relief. "Release this pain" Sybok said. "You have taken the first step. The rest we will take together."
Perhaps some audience discomfort with this scene was that, at the time of the film's release, both McCoy's dilemma and Sybok's therapeutic technique had come and gone as fashionable talk show/magazine items of discussion. In fact, the issues surrounding euthanasia are still very real, and the idea of releasing buried "pain" or trauma is central to any number of psychiatric and therapeutic techniques.
But the idea that merely remembering past abuse or expressing and acknowledging suppressed pain constituted a sudden miracle cure was widely popular for awhile, a misunderstanding of what well known proponents like John Bradshaw actually meant---even if their TV and personal appearances lent themselves to such an impression. At least Sybok suggests that further steps are necessary.
Then it's Spock's turn, and Sybok resurrects the moment of his birth, when his father expresses dismay that he looks so human. But Spock says that he has already acknowledged and dealt with this pain, or at least has found a different life, where it no longer matters. This is the crucial self-understanding that is so much a part of the Star Trek message.
Then Sybok scores a point by getting Kirk to admit that he didn't know that his closest friends had this core of pain. But Kirk refuses to undergo the process. Is he afraid? "I'm afraid of nothing," he says with such conviction that we have no choice but to believe him. Is this the arrogance of the self-deluded, the person without the skills or the will to examine himself? Maybe not. "I know what my weaknesses are...they're things we carry with us-the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I need my pain."
Again, the two-Kirks episode. Star Trek fans will be reminded that this is a captain who once experienced being split literally into two people, the good Kirk and the evil Kirk, in a transporter accident. Neither Kirk was able to really function; the good Kirk needed the energy, boldness and decisiveness of his dark side. (Though interestingly, it was the dark side Kirk who lacked courage.)
In context of this film, the God and the Devil in the human heart may cause conflict, but how that inner conflict is dealt with, how it is reconciled through the mind and through the activities some identify with the soul, is the nature of being human.
The literal search for a literal God is a stand-in for the human search for a spiritual dimension Clearly something like this was intended, in a film about a search for God that's called "The Final Frontier." Shatner has said as much, though the idea was most clearly expressed in a different context by David Gerrold, who wrote for the original series and the Next Generation: " Space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul."
Of course this is an analogue to Kirk's contrast of looking for God in outer space, or in the inner recesses of the human heart. Merging the two---the spiritual quest as part of the exploration of space---is very much a Star Trek theme.
Another problem some viewers had with this film is how easily the crew was "brainwashed" or "blissed out" by Sybok. (Though Sybok sometimes fits the role of a fundamentalist televangelist, Shatner said the model for him was LSD guru Timothy Leary. ) But if the spiritual dimension is as least as mysterious to humanity as is outer space, the exploration of the spiritual is largely unacknowledged.
There are all kinds of reasons for this in contemporary western society, but one is the rise of science and technology, which historically battled clerics of various churches for the correct explanations of realities in the outside world. This clash of religion and science is symbolized by the Catholic Church's oppression of the astronomer Galileo (which coincidentally or not, is the name of the Enterprise shuttle used in this film) and later, even today, the Christian churches opposing Darwinian evolution.
In our technological society, science has won the copyrights to external realities, while spiritual matters deal only with the inner person, and are considered private matters. In some ways, science and technology (and in our time, consumerism) have virtually become religions for many people. They rule both outer and inner life.
But some schools of psychology say that elements of our psyches that are suppressed or repressed, become all the more powerful when they are finally released. And some psychologists and other social scientists will point out that when a person or a society lacks knowledge and experience in a certain area--when their knowledge is unsophisticated, and their skills in dealing with this area are simple and undifferentiated--- they are apt to be easy prey to simple but powerful ideas that a more knowledgeable and sophisticated person would see through. And this vulnerability is emotional as well as in the realm of thought.
As a technological society, we are much less sophisticated in the spiritual realms we don't know a lot about, but which were very much part of the thought and everyday life of our ancestors of the seventeenth century or even of many thousands of years ago. This seems to be true of the technologically dependent society---especially of Starfleet personnel dependent on and responsible for such a machine as a starship---in Star Trek's 23rd century. Or more to the point, in our own present day technocratic society.
So this is the answer to why the Enterprise crew was easy prey: because they are technological and scientific sophisticates, and spiritual innocents. They act like children because in spiritual matters, that's just what they are. (This can also be a contributing factor to how contemporary people are absorbed into cults, or a partial explanation for the surprising cases of people whose extreme beliefs suddenly change into the opposite extreme.)
All of this was controversial then, and strangely perhaps, is even more controversial now, with feelings on these matters rather intense. Of course, science and the spirit are not necessarily at odds, and that's also true on the Enterprise, where the science officer is the only person shown meditating. That the logical Vulcans meditate is another intriguing if undeveloped suggestion that mind and spirit aren't opposed. These scenes of Spock's meditations are another indication of Star Trek's fleeting, sideways, elusive attempts to reconcile the spiritual with the technological future.
There are all kinds of reasons for this in contemporary western society, but one is the rise of science and technology, which historically battled clerics of various churches for the correct explanations of realities in the outside world. This clash of religion and science is symbolized by the Catholic Church's oppression of the astronomer Galileo (which coincidentally or not, is the name of the Enterprise shuttle used in this film) and later, even today, the Christian churches opposing Darwinian evolution.
In our technological society, science has won the copyrights to external realities, while spiritual matters deal only with the inner person, and are considered private matters. In some ways, science and technology (and in our time, consumerism) have virtually become religions for many people. They rule both outer and inner life.
But some schools of psychology say that elements of our psyches that are suppressed or repressed, become all the more powerful when they are finally released. And some psychologists and other social scientists will point out that when a person or a society lacks knowledge and experience in a certain area--when their knowledge is unsophisticated, and their skills in dealing with this area are simple and undifferentiated--- they are apt to be easy prey to simple but powerful ideas that a more knowledgeable and sophisticated person would see through. And this vulnerability is emotional as well as in the realm of thought.
As a technological society, we are much less sophisticated in the spiritual realms we don't know a lot about, but which were very much part of the thought and everyday life of our ancestors of the seventeenth century or even of many thousands of years ago. This seems to be true of the technologically dependent society---especially of Starfleet personnel dependent on and responsible for such a machine as a starship---in Star Trek's 23rd century. Or more to the point, in our own present day technocratic society.
So this is the answer to why the Enterprise crew was easy prey: because they are technological and scientific sophisticates, and spiritual innocents. They act like children because in spiritual matters, that's just what they are. (This can also be a contributing factor to how contemporary people are absorbed into cults, or a partial explanation for the surprising cases of people whose extreme beliefs suddenly change into the opposite extreme.)
All of this was controversial then, and strangely perhaps, is even more controversial now, with feelings on these matters rather intense. Of course, science and the spirit are not necessarily at odds, and that's also true on the Enterprise, where the science officer is the only person shown meditating. That the logical Vulcans meditate is another intriguing if undeveloped suggestion that mind and spirit aren't opposed. These scenes of Spock's meditations are another indication of Star Trek's fleeting, sideways, elusive attempts to reconcile the spiritual with the technological future.
There's another undeveloped aspect to this theme, involving Nimbus III, the Planet of Galactic Peace. Apparently begun with idealism, it couldn't be sustained. The planet is an apparent wasteland, though the television playing in the Paradise City bar advertises it as Eden, a not very subtle joke concerning real estate flimflam of the present as well as the future. Lacking the means to be prosperous, it has become prey to thieves and cutthroats. The delegates sent by two of the great powers, the Federation and the Klingons, are washed-up and discredited men. The Romulans have just sent an idealistic and inexperienced young woman. The sign over the entrance to this broken down Dodge City/ Paradise City has a whitewashed addition, making it Paradise Lost.
Is the inference that paradise fails, that galactic peace will fail, because of human nature, now extended to our counterpart species? That we are scientific but violent, smart but not smart enough? Or that our sort of being will never attain heaven on earth, or any other planet?
Perhaps. But perhaps the reason this planet is in this movie (apart from its place in the plot) is that what is lacking for this place to be a paradise of peace is spiritual development. That development, that exploration of the inner frontier, has been neglected in the headlong pursuit of the outer frontiers, and the material scientific and technological development it requires.
There are religious traditions on earth, notably Buddhism, that address this need without requiring an omnipotent God of the kind that everyone in this film seems to assume is the sole definition of the Creator God. There are aspects of more familiar religions that also address these issues, and that do posit such a God (though variously defined, especially these days). They link the inner and outer, and they also, in their way, deal with the role of human pain in our motivations and spiritual lives.
There's one other aspect of the spiritual theme that also isn't well articulated or connected within the film, but that Shatner evidently intended. That's the various relationships of spirit and nature. Shatner talks quite eloquently in an interview on the DVD about the spiritual meanings he finds in the Yosemite scenes, especially the climbing scene. Climbing, of course, can symbolize aspiration, and also suggests a climbing upward to the spiritual dimension (even the words "aspiration" and "spirit" are related-they both refer to breath, the essential element of animal and human life, and in a way, all organic life.) Star Trek is about aspiration, about climbing, as well as about testing oneself, which is self-discovery as well as discovery of new places, new worlds.
It's interesting and perhaps pertinent that Yosemite is so lush and beautiful in the film, while both the planet of peace and the planet of God, which looked very similar (and in fact were landscapes just a few miles apart) were arid rocky deserts. Is that the point of having the supposed God be an evil if psychologically smart being? Of rocks surging from the planet to form a primordial cathedral, and a cage? Could this have been a mostly unconscious commentary on the aridity and emptiness of the contemporary "desert religions" or at least the concepts of a human-like supreme being that's shared by Christians, Jews and Islamic faiths? Is this the kind of God thing that needs to be redefined in different terms of spirituality? The ancient gods and the spirits of Native American and other indigenous cultures, even those that live in Celtic tales (and the Lord of the Rings, sort of) are basically nature spirits, or derived from them.
Maybe this is a stretch, but consider this detail. What finally turns everyone against the supposed God figure---not just Kirk and Spock, but also Sybok---is that when Kirk asks a question and expresses doubt, the God figure shoots a bolt of lightning into his chest and he falls back, smoldering. Why have you hurt my friend? Sybok cries. But anyone who has read the Old Testament knows that its God is often angry and vengeful, and regularly smites doubters and disbelievers. Even the God of the New Testament presumably favored the burning of heretics and witches. But this time, such behavior is evidence of an imposter. An authentic God is a God of love, not of violence, their actions seem to say. A God, moreover, who honors questioning and dissent.
As Spock might say, fascinating.
Is the inference that paradise fails, that galactic peace will fail, because of human nature, now extended to our counterpart species? That we are scientific but violent, smart but not smart enough? Or that our sort of being will never attain heaven on earth, or any other planet?
Perhaps. But perhaps the reason this planet is in this movie (apart from its place in the plot) is that what is lacking for this place to be a paradise of peace is spiritual development. That development, that exploration of the inner frontier, has been neglected in the headlong pursuit of the outer frontiers, and the material scientific and technological development it requires.
There are religious traditions on earth, notably Buddhism, that address this need without requiring an omnipotent God of the kind that everyone in this film seems to assume is the sole definition of the Creator God. There are aspects of more familiar religions that also address these issues, and that do posit such a God (though variously defined, especially these days). They link the inner and outer, and they also, in their way, deal with the role of human pain in our motivations and spiritual lives.
There's one other aspect of the spiritual theme that also isn't well articulated or connected within the film, but that Shatner evidently intended. That's the various relationships of spirit and nature. Shatner talks quite eloquently in an interview on the DVD about the spiritual meanings he finds in the Yosemite scenes, especially the climbing scene. Climbing, of course, can symbolize aspiration, and also suggests a climbing upward to the spiritual dimension (even the words "aspiration" and "spirit" are related-they both refer to breath, the essential element of animal and human life, and in a way, all organic life.) Star Trek is about aspiration, about climbing, as well as about testing oneself, which is self-discovery as well as discovery of new places, new worlds.
It's interesting and perhaps pertinent that Yosemite is so lush and beautiful in the film, while both the planet of peace and the planet of God, which looked very similar (and in fact were landscapes just a few miles apart) were arid rocky deserts. Is that the point of having the supposed God be an evil if psychologically smart being? Of rocks surging from the planet to form a primordial cathedral, and a cage? Could this have been a mostly unconscious commentary on the aridity and emptiness of the contemporary "desert religions" or at least the concepts of a human-like supreme being that's shared by Christians, Jews and Islamic faiths? Is this the kind of God thing that needs to be redefined in different terms of spirituality? The ancient gods and the spirits of Native American and other indigenous cultures, even those that live in Celtic tales (and the Lord of the Rings, sort of) are basically nature spirits, or derived from them.
Maybe this is a stretch, but consider this detail. What finally turns everyone against the supposed God figure---not just Kirk and Spock, but also Sybok---is that when Kirk asks a question and expresses doubt, the God figure shoots a bolt of lightning into his chest and he falls back, smoldering. Why have you hurt my friend? Sybok cries. But anyone who has read the Old Testament knows that its God is often angry and vengeful, and regularly smites doubters and disbelievers. Even the God of the New Testament presumably favored the burning of heretics and witches. But this time, such behavior is evidence of an imposter. An authentic God is a God of love, not of violence, their actions seem to say. A God, moreover, who honors questioning and dissent.
As Spock might say, fascinating.
Shatner also felt that simply showing that Yosemite still exists in the 23rd century is a testament of hope, for it could only survive if humanity got control of its consumerist excesses, the expansion of industrial development and tract houses, highways and motor vehicle trails to every corner, the pollution and climate crisis that threatens life and our vital needs for water, and so on. This is always a tricky part of Star Trek, for while it is good to sponsor hope for the future, it's irresponsible to suggest it will happen automatically, and certainly not if we keep on doing what we're doing now. To its credit, Star Trek doesn't do this, or at least not very often.
Why should Yosemite even symbolize hope? Because even as our industrialization continues to threaten the natural world, we are beginning to realize how essential the natural world is to us, not only as the only source for much of what we need physically, but as sustenance for the human spirit. We grew up as a species in nature, we are utterly part of the earth.
Though there's nothing said in the film to indicate this, the fact that the Star Trek bridge crew shown on shore leave are all spending it in natural surroundings, speaks to the need for humans to renew their spirit in nature. That Yosemite exists suggests also that the technological 23rd century still values the natural world---one hopes more practically and more fervently more than we do.
More could have been done and should have been done with this idea in this film. It treats nature a little too much like a combination of scenery, extreme sports venue and Boy Scout nostalgia. Still, there's more here to support a connection with nature than in most Trek films. Star Trek IV may have had a stronger ecological message, but the essential human relationship to nature wasn't really dramatized.
Here we see humans in probably the most ancient social setting, the small group gathered to eat, tell stories, laugh, make decisions, sing, and wonder together about the meaning in their world, the animals around them, and the stars above them, in the light and warmth they gathered against the darkness and the cold...around the fire.
Why should Yosemite even symbolize hope? Because even as our industrialization continues to threaten the natural world, we are beginning to realize how essential the natural world is to us, not only as the only source for much of what we need physically, but as sustenance for the human spirit. We grew up as a species in nature, we are utterly part of the earth.
Though there's nothing said in the film to indicate this, the fact that the Star Trek bridge crew shown on shore leave are all spending it in natural surroundings, speaks to the need for humans to renew their spirit in nature. That Yosemite exists suggests also that the technological 23rd century still values the natural world---one hopes more practically and more fervently more than we do.
More could have been done and should have been done with this idea in this film. It treats nature a little too much like a combination of scenery, extreme sports venue and Boy Scout nostalgia. Still, there's more here to support a connection with nature than in most Trek films. Star Trek IV may have had a stronger ecological message, but the essential human relationship to nature wasn't really dramatized.
Here we see humans in probably the most ancient social setting, the small group gathered to eat, tell stories, laugh, make decisions, sing, and wonder together about the meaning in their world, the animals around them, and the stars above them, in the light and warmth they gathered against the darkness and the cold...around the fire.
Comrades
When I think of camaraderie I've experienced in my life, two examples come to mind first, one of which is directly related to Star Trek. I've told this story before, so here's the short version. While Star Trek was becoming really popular in syndication, I was writing and editing for a weekly alternative newspaper in Washington, D.C. I don't know who started calling me "Spock" at the newspaper office, but I was second in command at the time (the Arts section editor), and I did keep a reasonable, rational demeanor in what was a frenetic and emotionally charged scene.
But it was a great group and we had a great time together. We were all in our twenties, we worked hard and played hard and usually did both together. I remember a party many of us attended, and wound up on one side of the room, talking to each other. The Spock thing reached its apex one day when I was walking across the editorial office---which was one big room in an old 3 story frame house in Adams-Morgan that doubtless was later gentrified into the real estate stratosphere, but then was a cheap rent among derelict buildings. As I walked I saw ahead of me two guys, both fellow editorial staffers, standing toe to toe and shouting at each other. Their argument was attracting notice as I got closer to them, and it was getting louder. But just as I was about to pass them, I gave them each a Vulcan neck pinch. Immediately, without a word, they both sank to the floor.
That's how powerful Star Trek was in our world, and that's what our camaraderie was like. Soon I became editor of the whole paper, so I also became Captain Kirk. And I began to act like him at times---I actually threatened to expose a congressional secret when a source got cold feet and wanted to withdraw a story we already had at the printer. It would have ruined us. I had to save my ship! The source backed down, there was no real reason for his second thoughts, no harm would be done, as I knew. One of my staff then asked me if I had been bluffing. I just gave my best enigmatic Kirk-like grin.
But my second memory of camaraderie is maybe more pertinent to the subject at hand. It was my relationship with two friends, one of whom I'd known since grade school, the other since we began high school. In high school we started hanging out together and formed a comedy and music group one summer. At first I wrote skits we did on tape, mostly topical satires in the early 60s style of Stan Freeberg and "That Was the Week That Was," using my father's discarded reel-to-reel. Then we branched out to live performances for church groups in the summer. Finally we became a musical group, first with folk music, and then something like folk-rock. We spent a lot of time together, working out songs, teaching each other guitar parts, experimenting with singing parts. The three of us wrote songs, too, sometimes in different collaborations of two, sometimes alone. But then the songs were never really finished until the three of us had worked on them. (We knew this was how the Beatles worked.)
Looking back (and actually I think I knew this at the time), we got to know each other in ways that most people don't, who don't work together on creative endeavors. Simply because we did this weird thing of making music together, and this was so important to us, we were different. We would communicate with each other through the songs we wrote or chose, and how we sang and played them. We were creating and developing both as individuals, and as a group. We had to trust and support each other. At the same time, that also meant that we had to trust and support who we were as individuals. We had our differences (and rivalries over girls) and our bad patches. But our friendship has endured---Mike and Clayton remain my closest friends, the ones I know I can always depend on. And the camaraderie has endured as well. We've gone our separate ways, we live very different lives, and right now there are thousands of miles between us. But whenever we get together, it's as if time and space never existed.
Maybe it was this experience that has made theatre so attractive to me. I'm basically an introvert and extraverted actors tend to exhaust me. Yet they are also so enlivening, so expressive, I love being with them, and I love working with them---as long as I can eventually go home. I work mostly in solitude as a writer, but I love the idea of collaboration and wish I'd had more opportunity to do it on imaginative, creative projects. Not just collaborative writing, but working with actors and directors. This is perhaps a long way, and certain a personal way, of getting to this point: camaraderie is very attractive in itself, and it is strongest and most special when it emanates from creative collaboration.
The model for camaraderie, this combination of fierce loyalty with high spirited play, is usually among soldiers, or sailors. They spend all their time together in close quarters, usually under bad conditions, and often in grave danger. They share boredom, they share tension, they depend on each other for information, for counsel, for entertainment, sometimes for their daily bread, and in the most fraught situations, for their very lives.
This is the side of camaraderie we have seen in Star Trek: depending on each other, risking and willingly sacrificing one's life for one's comrades. In a way it is the essence of human society, which is what the King in the third Lord of the Rings movie essentially tells his troops before their final desperate attack---that someday men will cease to be men and not fight for their comrades, but not today. In a way, this is also the horrible tragedy of war, when old men with all the power sit safe at home while they send young men to fight and die for each other in some distant land, in some usually unnecessary war. For in the end this is what men at war fight and die for---even after king and country and the girl back home have begun to fade: they fight and kill and die for each other. This is their last certainty.
In Star Trek V we see that kind of camaraderie still present, but less solemnly so. As Shatner says somewhere in the commentary, there's always been an energy and an urgency in the acting in Star Trek, and the subjects are essentially serious. By this time, though, they were free to express that other side of camaraderie, the affection and the fun.
And by this time, the cast was clearly up to it. From the small moments of the supporting cast regular crew to the rich byplay among the trinity, the humor in Star Trek V is freer and more skillfully accomplished than ever before. And it was made possible by the basic seriousness of the saga. The series established this credibility and trust, both among the characters and by the audience in the characters. These characters earned that trust over time, so these new elements were like flowers blooming in wild new colors. They knew their characters so well that they could express these new colors, with wonderful ease.
Shatner especially had redefined Kirk. His human humor and his aging seemed to go together naturally as the character's growth. The humor and its timing that was still a bit awkward at times in Star Trek II had found the right rhythm in IV and it never faltered in V, and hardly ever afterwards. As a director as well as actor, Shatner turned this humor of camaraderie into the pacing of group scenes. These are a joy to watch now. They're classic.
When I think of camaraderie I've experienced in my life, two examples come to mind first, one of which is directly related to Star Trek. I've told this story before, so here's the short version. While Star Trek was becoming really popular in syndication, I was writing and editing for a weekly alternative newspaper in Washington, D.C. I don't know who started calling me "Spock" at the newspaper office, but I was second in command at the time (the Arts section editor), and I did keep a reasonable, rational demeanor in what was a frenetic and emotionally charged scene.
But it was a great group and we had a great time together. We were all in our twenties, we worked hard and played hard and usually did both together. I remember a party many of us attended, and wound up on one side of the room, talking to each other. The Spock thing reached its apex one day when I was walking across the editorial office---which was one big room in an old 3 story frame house in Adams-Morgan that doubtless was later gentrified into the real estate stratosphere, but then was a cheap rent among derelict buildings. As I walked I saw ahead of me two guys, both fellow editorial staffers, standing toe to toe and shouting at each other. Their argument was attracting notice as I got closer to them, and it was getting louder. But just as I was about to pass them, I gave them each a Vulcan neck pinch. Immediately, without a word, they both sank to the floor.
That's how powerful Star Trek was in our world, and that's what our camaraderie was like. Soon I became editor of the whole paper, so I also became Captain Kirk. And I began to act like him at times---I actually threatened to expose a congressional secret when a source got cold feet and wanted to withdraw a story we already had at the printer. It would have ruined us. I had to save my ship! The source backed down, there was no real reason for his second thoughts, no harm would be done, as I knew. One of my staff then asked me if I had been bluffing. I just gave my best enigmatic Kirk-like grin.
But my second memory of camaraderie is maybe more pertinent to the subject at hand. It was my relationship with two friends, one of whom I'd known since grade school, the other since we began high school. In high school we started hanging out together and formed a comedy and music group one summer. At first I wrote skits we did on tape, mostly topical satires in the early 60s style of Stan Freeberg and "That Was the Week That Was," using my father's discarded reel-to-reel. Then we branched out to live performances for church groups in the summer. Finally we became a musical group, first with folk music, and then something like folk-rock. We spent a lot of time together, working out songs, teaching each other guitar parts, experimenting with singing parts. The three of us wrote songs, too, sometimes in different collaborations of two, sometimes alone. But then the songs were never really finished until the three of us had worked on them. (We knew this was how the Beatles worked.)
Looking back (and actually I think I knew this at the time), we got to know each other in ways that most people don't, who don't work together on creative endeavors. Simply because we did this weird thing of making music together, and this was so important to us, we were different. We would communicate with each other through the songs we wrote or chose, and how we sang and played them. We were creating and developing both as individuals, and as a group. We had to trust and support each other. At the same time, that also meant that we had to trust and support who we were as individuals. We had our differences (and rivalries over girls) and our bad patches. But our friendship has endured---Mike and Clayton remain my closest friends, the ones I know I can always depend on. And the camaraderie has endured as well. We've gone our separate ways, we live very different lives, and right now there are thousands of miles between us. But whenever we get together, it's as if time and space never existed.
Maybe it was this experience that has made theatre so attractive to me. I'm basically an introvert and extraverted actors tend to exhaust me. Yet they are also so enlivening, so expressive, I love being with them, and I love working with them---as long as I can eventually go home. I work mostly in solitude as a writer, but I love the idea of collaboration and wish I'd had more opportunity to do it on imaginative, creative projects. Not just collaborative writing, but working with actors and directors. This is perhaps a long way, and certain a personal way, of getting to this point: camaraderie is very attractive in itself, and it is strongest and most special when it emanates from creative collaboration.
The model for camaraderie, this combination of fierce loyalty with high spirited play, is usually among soldiers, or sailors. They spend all their time together in close quarters, usually under bad conditions, and often in grave danger. They share boredom, they share tension, they depend on each other for information, for counsel, for entertainment, sometimes for their daily bread, and in the most fraught situations, for their very lives.
This is the side of camaraderie we have seen in Star Trek: depending on each other, risking and willingly sacrificing one's life for one's comrades. In a way it is the essence of human society, which is what the King in the third Lord of the Rings movie essentially tells his troops before their final desperate attack---that someday men will cease to be men and not fight for their comrades, but not today. In a way, this is also the horrible tragedy of war, when old men with all the power sit safe at home while they send young men to fight and die for each other in some distant land, in some usually unnecessary war. For in the end this is what men at war fight and die for---even after king and country and the girl back home have begun to fade: they fight and kill and die for each other. This is their last certainty.
In Star Trek V we see that kind of camaraderie still present, but less solemnly so. As Shatner says somewhere in the commentary, there's always been an energy and an urgency in the acting in Star Trek, and the subjects are essentially serious. By this time, though, they were free to express that other side of camaraderie, the affection and the fun.
And by this time, the cast was clearly up to it. From the small moments of the supporting cast regular crew to the rich byplay among the trinity, the humor in Star Trek V is freer and more skillfully accomplished than ever before. And it was made possible by the basic seriousness of the saga. The series established this credibility and trust, both among the characters and by the audience in the characters. These characters earned that trust over time, so these new elements were like flowers blooming in wild new colors. They knew their characters so well that they could express these new colors, with wonderful ease.
Shatner especially had redefined Kirk. His human humor and his aging seemed to go together naturally as the character's growth. The humor and its timing that was still a bit awkward at times in Star Trek II had found the right rhythm in IV and it never faltered in V, and hardly ever afterwards. As a director as well as actor, Shatner turned this humor of camaraderie into the pacing of group scenes. These are a joy to watch now. They're classic.
I believe that the camaraderie of the characters is so affecting partly because it emerges from the working camaraderie of group creativity. That experience is perhaps less storied and less well known than that of soldiers, but it has qualities in common with it---often long hours, bad conditions, uncertain fates, and even physical danger now and then---and it has special qualities I tried to indicate in my little personal tale.
Plus these actors worked together over so long a span of time. In some ways their lives and careers were so different from that of anyone else, even other actors, that they had no one but each other to understand much of what they experienced and felt. They had a common history, which involved overt battles, simmering feuds, grudges and misunderstandings, perhaps even some reprehensible behavior. But it also involved real caring and mutual support. Shatner once stopped production and carried Nichelle Nichols to get medical attention. Cast members supported each other when one lost a loved one.
The friendship of Shatner and Nimoy is a fine example. Probably as different personally as their characters are in Trek, they have grown more loyal to each other. It was Nimoy, after all, who woke Shatner up with a very early morning telephone call, to read to him the laudatory review of Star Trek V that just appeared in the L.A. Times. Just as the comradeship of Spock and Kirk helped the friendship of Nimoy and Shatner develop, their friendship deepened their characters and gave them more dimension. It was a feedback loop that seems to have fostered growth all around.
And perhaps by this time, some old lessons were learned that helped to salve old wounds. I noticed for instance that some crucial lines spoken by Captain Kirk in the novel version of V were spoken in the film by Uhura, the reversal of a chief complaint against Shatner by some cast members. All the accounts by others I've seen laud Shatner as a director who respected the creativity of others, and worked with them in a caring way. (Though there were some complaints about what they were asked to do in the film, the supporting cast all got their moments. And as DeForrest Kelley once wisely noted, a Star Trek film depends on those moments.) It also helps that they were all playing characters who live, work, play and risk their lives together.
The naturally self-mocking quality of camaraderie gives verisimilitude to that kind of humor in this movie, while the somewhat ironic quality adds a dash of surprise and energy and daring to what could have become too predictable. Could you really predict a scene in which Kirk says, "I miss my old chair," and Spock tilts his head in sympathy just so? Or as Kirk is about to embrace Spock for saving his life and Spock demurs: "Not in front of the Klingons?" This is well-delivered, well-directed comedy which adds dash but doesn't diminish the characters or story.
Shatner's account of the making of Star Trek V is full of stories of creative camaraderie among not just the cast but the crew and staff, which is the other aspect of it: like soldiers in war, creative people can rise to another level, to do greater things together than are otherwise possible, if they care enough about the creative work they are doing, and about each other. Creative people too can be heroes.
It's my belief that it's impossible to understand the meaning of Star Trek without at least some understanding of the power and importance of shared creativity---of different talents coming together, and with of a strong idea strongly felt, from their individual creativity, their interplay, even their conflicts and misunderstandings--- that is, from everything human about them, they create something beyond anyone's understanding. I've called this the Many Hands Theory, but it is also in many ways not only a key to the soul of Star Trek, it is the soul of Star Trek.
Plus these actors worked together over so long a span of time. In some ways their lives and careers were so different from that of anyone else, even other actors, that they had no one but each other to understand much of what they experienced and felt. They had a common history, which involved overt battles, simmering feuds, grudges and misunderstandings, perhaps even some reprehensible behavior. But it also involved real caring and mutual support. Shatner once stopped production and carried Nichelle Nichols to get medical attention. Cast members supported each other when one lost a loved one.
The friendship of Shatner and Nimoy is a fine example. Probably as different personally as their characters are in Trek, they have grown more loyal to each other. It was Nimoy, after all, who woke Shatner up with a very early morning telephone call, to read to him the laudatory review of Star Trek V that just appeared in the L.A. Times. Just as the comradeship of Spock and Kirk helped the friendship of Nimoy and Shatner develop, their friendship deepened their characters and gave them more dimension. It was a feedback loop that seems to have fostered growth all around.
And perhaps by this time, some old lessons were learned that helped to salve old wounds. I noticed for instance that some crucial lines spoken by Captain Kirk in the novel version of V were spoken in the film by Uhura, the reversal of a chief complaint against Shatner by some cast members. All the accounts by others I've seen laud Shatner as a director who respected the creativity of others, and worked with them in a caring way. (Though there were some complaints about what they were asked to do in the film, the supporting cast all got their moments. And as DeForrest Kelley once wisely noted, a Star Trek film depends on those moments.) It also helps that they were all playing characters who live, work, play and risk their lives together.
The naturally self-mocking quality of camaraderie gives verisimilitude to that kind of humor in this movie, while the somewhat ironic quality adds a dash of surprise and energy and daring to what could have become too predictable. Could you really predict a scene in which Kirk says, "I miss my old chair," and Spock tilts his head in sympathy just so? Or as Kirk is about to embrace Spock for saving his life and Spock demurs: "Not in front of the Klingons?" This is well-delivered, well-directed comedy which adds dash but doesn't diminish the characters or story.
Shatner's account of the making of Star Trek V is full of stories of creative camaraderie among not just the cast but the crew and staff, which is the other aspect of it: like soldiers in war, creative people can rise to another level, to do greater things together than are otherwise possible, if they care enough about the creative work they are doing, and about each other. Creative people too can be heroes.
It's my belief that it's impossible to understand the meaning of Star Trek without at least some understanding of the power and importance of shared creativity---of different talents coming together, and with of a strong idea strongly felt, from their individual creativity, their interplay, even their conflicts and misunderstandings--- that is, from everything human about them, they create something beyond anyone's understanding. I've called this the Many Hands Theory, but it is also in many ways not only a key to the soul of Star Trek, it is the soul of Star Trek.
Connective Tissue
In the last ten minutes or so of this film is a little-noticed scene that actually connects Star Trek V to Star Trek VI. A subplot involving a very young Klingon captain (and his female second in command) that runs through most of the picture, continues the Klingon story from II and III. When news reaches the brash young Klingons that their representative on Nimbus III was captured, they warps off to confront whatever Federation starship shows up.
But when they learn it is the Enterprise their captain redoubles his efforts: Kirk is now a specific enemy of the Klingon empire, and a special prize. (Kirk's bitter response to those "Klingon bastards" also flows from II and III, and links to VI.) However, the captured Klingon turns out to be an exiled but still high-ranking officer, and a hero known even to Federation officers. He is aboard the Enterprise when Sybok and the others beam down to Sha Ka Ree. After Spock and McCoy beam back to the ship, he is persuaded to order the young Klingon's ship to rescue Kirk from the angry non-God's rampage.
This results in a scene of small reconciliation, in which Klingons and Federation officers celebrate together. "I never thought I would be drinking with a Klingon," Scotty says, but he will again. The possibilities and perils of rapproachment between these two galactic powers will become the major theme of Star Trek VI (and even the drinking together will recur in a more elaborate and central way.) This scene also connects the Klingons to the theme of how do you create peace, implied in Star Trek V by the failed Planet of Galactic Peace and its relation to the theme of internal (including spiritual) frontiers, and internal change.
In the last ten minutes or so of this film is a little-noticed scene that actually connects Star Trek V to Star Trek VI. A subplot involving a very young Klingon captain (and his female second in command) that runs through most of the picture, continues the Klingon story from II and III. When news reaches the brash young Klingons that their representative on Nimbus III was captured, they warps off to confront whatever Federation starship shows up.
But when they learn it is the Enterprise their captain redoubles his efforts: Kirk is now a specific enemy of the Klingon empire, and a special prize. (Kirk's bitter response to those "Klingon bastards" also flows from II and III, and links to VI.) However, the captured Klingon turns out to be an exiled but still high-ranking officer, and a hero known even to Federation officers. He is aboard the Enterprise when Sybok and the others beam down to Sha Ka Ree. After Spock and McCoy beam back to the ship, he is persuaded to order the young Klingon's ship to rescue Kirk from the angry non-God's rampage.
This results in a scene of small reconciliation, in which Klingons and Federation officers celebrate together. "I never thought I would be drinking with a Klingon," Scotty says, but he will again. The possibilities and perils of rapproachment between these two galactic powers will become the major theme of Star Trek VI (and even the drinking together will recur in a more elaborate and central way.) This scene also connects the Klingons to the theme of how do you create peace, implied in Star Trek V by the failed Planet of Galactic Peace and its relation to the theme of internal (including spiritual) frontiers, and internal change.
The novelization and the DVD
In her first Star Trek movie novelization, J.M. Dillard adds some character moments and subplots to the film story, and closes some holes in how the Star Trek universe works that the on-screen version leaves gaping open, to the chagrin of perfectionist fans. The most prominent example here is the Great Barrier. If every starship that tried to penetrate it before has failed, how did the Enterprise succeed? Was it the sheer faith of Sybok? But if that was the reason, how could the Klingon ship also get through it?
That's not really explained in the film version, but in Dillard's novel, it turns out that Sybok has worked for years to design a new shield configuration, specifically to penetrate the Great Barrier. Though in the movie and the book, Scotty has been unaffected by Sybok and so rescues the trinity from the brig, the novel departs from the film by having Sybok convert Scotty soon afterwards (the pain he resurrects is familiar to readers of her novelization of Star Trek II, and now to viewers of the DVD version that restores previously shorn footage, for it is the death of his nephew when Khan attacked the Enterprise.) Healed and released of this pain, Scotty gratefully accedes to Sybok's orders to reconfigure the Enterprise shields to his specifications.
But what about the Klingons? In the course of presenting a neat subplot of intrigue aboard the Klingon ship, Dillard reveals that the change in the Enterprise shields was noticed, studied and duplicated (partly because the Sybok-sodden Enterprise crew was lax in maintaining defensive protocols.)
The novel also fills out the final reception with the Klingons, shows Sybok's pain-clearing efforts to leave permanent good effects, and provides hope that the rededicated representatives on Nimbus III will return to really turn it into a planet of galactic peace.
The DVD contains some intimate footage of Shatner talking very articulately about some surprisingly strong beliefs that involve nature and the sacred, filmed just as the movie itself was going into production. (This was probably meant to be the first of many such moments, but the omnivorous time and energy eater of feature filmmaking likely soon made that impossible.) The documentary retrospective on the film is interesting, and the two additional short films, one on "cosmic thoughts" and the other on environment, are very good.
The commentary track by William and Lizabeth Shatner (his daughter, who followed the production and wrote a book on it) is pleasant and occasionally insightful, but what Shatner writes in his Movie Memories book on the experience of making this movie is perhaps more informative and evocative (I haven't read Lizabeth's book.) That Paramount didn't spring for CGI to fix up the film as they did for Robert Wise and Star Trek I remains disappointing, but aside from that, this is a generous DVD package.
Maybe you'll come away feeling as I did, that this was a better film than I remembered, perhaps made better in our perception partly by the aesthetic distance of the intervening time. It's especially satisfying as part of the saga and the film series, for the addition of William Shatner's vision as director as well as an actor in complete command of the fascinating character he created.
In her first Star Trek movie novelization, J.M. Dillard adds some character moments and subplots to the film story, and closes some holes in how the Star Trek universe works that the on-screen version leaves gaping open, to the chagrin of perfectionist fans. The most prominent example here is the Great Barrier. If every starship that tried to penetrate it before has failed, how did the Enterprise succeed? Was it the sheer faith of Sybok? But if that was the reason, how could the Klingon ship also get through it?
That's not really explained in the film version, but in Dillard's novel, it turns out that Sybok has worked for years to design a new shield configuration, specifically to penetrate the Great Barrier. Though in the movie and the book, Scotty has been unaffected by Sybok and so rescues the trinity from the brig, the novel departs from the film by having Sybok convert Scotty soon afterwards (the pain he resurrects is familiar to readers of her novelization of Star Trek II, and now to viewers of the DVD version that restores previously shorn footage, for it is the death of his nephew when Khan attacked the Enterprise.) Healed and released of this pain, Scotty gratefully accedes to Sybok's orders to reconfigure the Enterprise shields to his specifications.
But what about the Klingons? In the course of presenting a neat subplot of intrigue aboard the Klingon ship, Dillard reveals that the change in the Enterprise shields was noticed, studied and duplicated (partly because the Sybok-sodden Enterprise crew was lax in maintaining defensive protocols.)
The novel also fills out the final reception with the Klingons, shows Sybok's pain-clearing efforts to leave permanent good effects, and provides hope that the rededicated representatives on Nimbus III will return to really turn it into a planet of galactic peace.
The DVD contains some intimate footage of Shatner talking very articulately about some surprisingly strong beliefs that involve nature and the sacred, filmed just as the movie itself was going into production. (This was probably meant to be the first of many such moments, but the omnivorous time and energy eater of feature filmmaking likely soon made that impossible.) The documentary retrospective on the film is interesting, and the two additional short films, one on "cosmic thoughts" and the other on environment, are very good.
The commentary track by William and Lizabeth Shatner (his daughter, who followed the production and wrote a book on it) is pleasant and occasionally insightful, but what Shatner writes in his Movie Memories book on the experience of making this movie is perhaps more informative and evocative (I haven't read Lizabeth's book.) That Paramount didn't spring for CGI to fix up the film as they did for Robert Wise and Star Trek I remains disappointing, but aside from that, this is a generous DVD package.
Maybe you'll come away feeling as I did, that this was a better film than I remembered, perhaps made better in our perception partly by the aesthetic distance of the intervening time. It's especially satisfying as part of the saga and the film series, for the addition of William Shatner's vision as director as well as an actor in complete command of the fascinating character he created.
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