Star Trek Fest - Star Trek V The Final Frontier (1989)

Welcome back, midnight. Viewers to the Greatest Star Trek Fest. Because we're talking about the greatest Star Trek movie. It's the one that every Star Trek fan agrees is the best of the best. Star Trek five, the Final Frontier.

Here's the trailer. From a relaxing vacation on Earth. Greetings, Captain, I do not think you realize the gravity of your situation. To the most perilous reaches of space. Only one crew dair travel where no man has ever gone before.

We'll need all the power, even muster mister. On a desolate planet, a renegade vulcan seeks ultimate knowledge. To find it. I'll lead a starship and he will stop at nothing to get it. I don't that a madman had taken over the Enterprise.

You look like you've just. In a ghost. Perhaps I have, Captain. Our destination is the planet's your carry at the center of the galaxy. The center of the galaxy can't be reached.

If you asked me, and you haven't. I think this is a terrible idea. We're bound to bump into the klingons aint on course to Kirk. He's a fanatic to be fought, you know, we'll never make it. For the Great Barrier.

I see the danger is. An illusion to the crew. He's a mystic to be followed. If the fire box is simply put us in touch with feelings that we've always been. I have to back to the transporterer to Spot.

He's the past. He must confront you know. I'm right, Spot. My only concern is getting the ship back. And you're either with me or you or not.

Put him in the brig with Captain Kirk. I'm a prisoner on my own ship. What are you standing around for? You don't know, jail blick. When you see one scot you're amazing.

It's nothing amazing about it. I know this ship like the back of my hand. Emergency channel open Hostile force has taken control of our vessel. Put us on a direct course with a great Barrier. Understood enterprise, We are dispatching a rescue ship immediately.

Burn of pre bearing one zero five, mark two. Let me do something. It's so full ahead. Thanks for power to walk, thrive forpe speed. In there.

The greatest enterprise of all his adventure Star Trek five, the Final Frontier. Oh my god, that sounds so exciting. Are you excited. Do you know why they're putting seat belt in movie theaters? HP?

How you doing, buddy, I'm good. I don't know whether I'm looking forward to this or I'm a little You are reluctant? Yeah, no, this is Star Trek five. Work. Can you say?

Here's the production story? Everybody right? Star Trek four The Voyage Home is easily the most successful financially of any of the Star Trek films, and honestly critically as well. Critics love it, audiences love it. Almost immediately, we need a Star Trek five.

William Shatner is reminded by Leonard Nimoy of the favored Nations clause in their contract and says, you ought to direct one Bill, And Bill goes to Frank man Cso, who's the head of Paramount Pick says, hey, I'd like to direct the next Star Trek movie, and he goes, Captain Kirk direct Star Trek perfect, go do it. The first mistake is saying yes to William Shatner. The second mistake is giving him input on the screenplay. Because William Shatner watching late night TV, so he says, starts looking at all these televangelists and things That's an interesting thing we haven't covered in Star Trek. What this whole televangelism thing.

Do these people believe what they're saying? Do they not? And I can't believe that they're putting it over on all of these people and using religion in such a mercenary way. Let's make a movie about that. And then, of course he doesn't make that movie anyway, but he calls for a screenwriter.

He calls Eric von Lustbatter, author of The Ninja. He's a terrible author, and he doesn't have time to make the movie. That can't be his real name, right, von Lustbatter. Who cares he belongs with the giants like Jacqueline, Suzanne and VC Andrews. Yeah, he's up.

So Shatner now has to find a second screenwriter, So he calls the only person he can really trust, Nick Myers, by the way, is busy. Doesn't want to do it. One doesn't want to do this movie. So Shatner calls Harv Bennett. I don't think I would call Harve Bennett for screenwriting duties.

He calls Harve Bennett in an attempt to rope him in as his producer. Harve Bennett had such a tough time on part four because he kept cow towing to the studio over his director. So his director was a little sick of him. So Harve Bennett's soured on this process, doesn't want to come back, and I think as a carrot, he Shatner allows him to write the screenplay. Big mistake, because all this idiot knows is his one movie that he tried to have made for Star Trek two, which is a religious leader taking over in a religious revolution, which just so happens to dovetail with what Shatner's doing, except they're only both just remaking Star Trek the motion picture, because that what this story is.

Again, it was a hunt for God. Okay, So in its initial conception, let's just say, if you read the original draft Shatner's treatment of the script, it is as we get here, right, except originally it wasn't Cybock. It was this charismatic leader named Czar, and it was much more epic. Honestly, Shatner was not He wasn't lacking in scope when he started. When he started down the path of making this movie, he really wanted to make Lawrence of Arabia, and he intended that to be giant armies coming over dunes and everything you got from a David Lean adventure.

Unfortunately he was making a Star Trek movie. So the plot plays out pretty much as it is in the film, except from the get go the character of Czar, who eventually becomes Cybock, is clearly attempting to find God. It's no like he announces it from the opening scene, We're going to God. And then eventually he brainwashes the rest of the Star Trek crew, the Enterprise crew. They're all on his side, except for Kirk because Shatner wrote this, and of course he has to be the only hero in this.

And they eventually get to that planet where it's a hellscape, right, and they approach the God character, who then everything the hellscape sort of becomes heavenly and all of these angels appear and you realize that this is God after all, and then the sort of plays out as is with the what does God need with a starship line, at which point the God creature reveals its true self. It is actually Satan. This is actually Hell. Those are demons who all swarm and attack our three leads, who have run off in different directions because they're fighting At this point, remember they both turned on Captain Kirk, right, Kirk can clearly get away, but chooses to go back because he's the real hero here. He saves spak who and then they both have to go save Bones who broke his leg in a fall and the demons are carrying him off to Hell, and then they shoot the fucking God monster and they go or Satan.

It's actually Satan, right. So when they start revising the script, the first thing to go is, you can't have them actually meet God or Satan, right, because what Harve Bennett says, what he brings to this script is he says, no matter what we give the audience the end, it's going to be a disappointment anytime you do a thing where you're going to meet God or some unknowable question that we have as humans. If you're going to make a movie about that, you don't have a satisfying ending if you can't deliver the goods. Right, So he says, let's not make it Satan. Let's make it an alien, which cuts the legs out from everything Shot is trying to do here, because now it's just vegure.

But not only that, because the budgets on all these Star Trek movies that are notoriously lean and cut to the bone. Any epic tendencies that Shatner might have or hopes for his movie are completely undercut by the threadbare budget. And it's so clear. I mean, if I have any sympathy about the production of this movie, it's that script acide and story aside. It's it must have been so disheartening for Shatner to have these to want to make this epic adventure but be limited to what he could afford.

And this is this is not a movie known for its wonderful special effects and for its grand visuals. It's just not It looks It honestly looks worse budget wise than many Next Generation episodes that I've seen. It just looks silly. There's parts of this that we'll get into that just look downright silly from a very similitude perspective or anything that's supposed to look genuine. I have sympathy for him as well, except when you get down to brass tacks, they were still make this movie.

Even if they made the movie that Shatner wanted, it would still be this boneheaded nonsense of how many creatures have they encountered over the years who are trapped on planets that are pretending to be omnipotent, Like this is like Starfleet one oh one at this point, like Sybock comes on see and that's the thing. That's the other thing Harve Bennett did right when he said you can't give them a satisfying ending. His solution to that was, so we need to obfuscate that this is a quest to see God, which is why Sybock doesn't reveal it until the third act of this movie. If you're not going to go and find God, then don't bother. Don't give us the fucking alien again.

But Harve Bennett is limited, so is Shatner, so is David Lowry, the fucking screenplay writer that they eventually got to wrangle this bullshit, all these bullshit sequences into a hole. Speaking of Next Generation, a lot of these, a lot of the enterprises of the corridors are just the enterprise d redressed slightly. This was, I believe, just as a side note. So this was being produced. Was it the first season of Next Generation or the second season?

I think it was in the second season too. There was an infamous story that will Wheaton told where I think it was actually this. I think he snuck onto the set because he wanted to meet William Shatner. It was his dream to meet William Shatner. And do you remember you've ever heard the story?

Oh yeah, audience where he goes to. Meet William Shatner. He so excited to meet him. He's let's remember that will Wheaton was still a kid at this point. And William Shatner kind of looks him up and down and says, oh, they let you on the bridge?

Huh? And he says, yeah, whatever, and he says I would says I would never let a kid on a bridge. What do you wear? And what is that your space clothes? And he basically belittles the kid, makes him feel makes wil Wheaton feel like this big and will Wheaton goes off and he tells the story.

It relates the story back to Gene Roddenberry on the set of Next Generation, and Roddenberry is so incensed by what because he says to him, look, don't worry about that. Shatner's an asshole. I think he actually says that, literally, don't worry about it. Shatner's an asshole. But he's so incensed by this roddenbery, goes and basically tells Shatner, you apologize to this kid.

For you, right. So the PostScript on that is I think Shatner sends him a handwritten apology. I'm sorry. I could have you on my bridge anytime, and I look forward to whatever the success on next generation. But what a fucking asshole to be such a prick to this young kid who just idolizes you.

He's part of this Star Trek family. Why the fuck would he have to be such an asshole. I don't know. You hear so much about what an asshole Shatner is, but you also hear he's actually I've heard people say he's a nice guy and he's funny, he's charming. I'm sure he's very charming, but I think he's an asshole.

I think that to me cements it. I told you my friend's interaction with William Shatner. Share it with the audience. I had a buddy named Jeff who was walking down a sidewalk and Shatner was coming in the opposite direction, and my friend did not stop him or interrupt him or call attention to him. He just said out loud.

Oh my god, William Shatner just it was involuntary, like a reflex. Yeah, It's like, hey, wow, could. Not believe Captain Kirk was standing there and my friend Jeff was a huge treker. Oh my god, William Shatner. William Shatner stops, turns and says, hey, this is my time.

Don't bother me, kid, at which point lifelong trekker buddy Jeff says fuck you, William Shatner and walks away. Well good on him for having the presence of mind to collect his thoughts and go, you know what, You're a fucker, get out of my face. I wasn't even talking to you, honestly, I was really talking to myself. I just said what I was thinking out loud. I'm sorry I bothered you, sir.

This is my time. What a dick. I like I said, I say. I have sympathy for him from purely from the perspective of an individual trying to get the best movie that he could get made and in the face of what every director deals with. I'm sure, unless you're on a Marvel movie, which is the budgetary constraints or at the agendas of the different people involved in the production.

So I don't sympathize with the man himself because, like I said, I'm pretty sure he's an asshole. But I don't sympathize with him as a filmmaker either, because, yeah, it's great to have these ambitions, but basically, he just wanted to make Lawrence of Arabia where he gets to play Peter Roe tool. Guess what, motherfucker when you remember when Leonard Nimoy took over the directing reins and did not appear in his film, like, he crafted this story where it's just James Kirk is a fucking national hero and we're carrying him on our shoulders for two fucking hours. Get the fuck out of here. He this movie, by the way, not that I'm fan fictioning or anything, but based on its best scene and the fact that we've already gotten the movies about Spock and about Kirk, this movie should have been about Leonard Bones McCoy.

Yeah, because that is you talk about the scene where you learned about his father. Yeah, yeah, it should have been. This should have been Bones against Cybog. This should have been religion versus science, and the idea of this guy who heals people and that somehow casts a spell over them or something. Look, I know that was in the air too.

Remember the whole Iron John movement that was going on at first point, Jesus Christ, we're all supposed to run with the wolves. Now we're supposed to get naked with other men and go out and be men, but not in a gay way. But that was only the latest in the long line of this bullshit. Remember Leo Buscaglia, that was all hugging, that was all like, come here, you have to love. I hate all that bullshit.

It's like the stuff that can't John Candy talks about his character talks about in stripes. Right, But I'm speaking specifically about that sort of the first sort of iterations of masculine movement, like the get out there and shun the women folk and we're gonna be in sweat lodges and we're just gonna be out in nature and like in loincloths together. There's just so much that's wrong about this movie, even when you get past the actual like the framework of the story is not good. It's not original, and it doesn't contain the best of what a Star Trek movie can do, which we've seen. We saw it in Star Trek two, we saw it in Star Trek four.

These are give us some action, give us some human interest, give us some fun stuff, and some dramatic stuff. Maybe some broadsides between two ships. We don't need. It's not rocket science. But like the feel of this movie and the themes that run through it, just the it leans so heavily on con This is probably one of the more comedy heavy entries in the original series movies.

I think without a doubt it is, but it comes off goofy. It doesn't feel like there's any real gravitas. This should be very there should be very heavy situations that they get themselves into. There's a guy who effectively brainwashes the whole fucking crew and steals the enterprise. Those are huge steaks, and yet it never feels that way.

It just it never The jeopardy for me is missing from this, The conflict is missing, and all we're left with are a bunch of lame jokes and bad effects. Because he didn't give us a villain. He wanted to give us a charismatic guy that we and you can do that, and that's fine. But at the same time, yeah, there are no stakes here because let's just get into the plot, because this will all come out what I'm about to start fucking piling on with the sort of lack of not only steaks, but just lack of like internal logic, the lack of motivation, the lack of characters reactions to one another. It's all so dumb, starting with this fucking, stupid, misguided, fucking opening scene.

Let me just say this because I've read a lot of reviews and I know the way a lot of the fans feel, and look, this movie is obviously not well liked. I was joking at the start of this was the most this was the most hated of the Star Trek movies until the next generation got involved. And then there's some few candidates there that people think are worse than this movie. Those people are wrong. This remains the worst movie.

If you think anything that happens in this prologue at Yosemite or El Capitan is in any way amusing or exciting or captivating or funny, You're out of your fucking mind. You've got some sort of derangement going on, because none of this is good. It's not good. So what we have is it's sure leave and Kirk and McCoy and Spock are Bruppel. They're roughing it.

They're camping in the middle of Yosemite. And what we're presented with during the credits, the opening credits a mountains Kirk is free climbing l CAPA ten sure and which is just a sheer mountain face. It's ridiculous. Someone half Kirk's age would be mightily struggling against this force of nature. We're expected to believe that pudgy, old, fucking old ass Kirk is going to be free climbing up this sheer rock face like smiling all the way as he's doing it.

It's ridiculous. It's patently ridiculous. I remember, so we talked about this a little bit offline a few weeks ago. We this came out in eighty nine, and Father Malone and I, being the cool dudes that we are and were, we were in the sci fi club in high school and the moderator was our biology teacher, who was a great guy, wonderful guy, great, great teacher, and great influence in other ways. So he happened to be a very big trek fan.

He was a trekker also, probably in retrospect probably got into them through the original series during their original broadcast. He was old enough to have been around during the sixties. I remember him coming in and talking about seeing the Final Frontier, and he called out specifically the ridiculousness of Captain Kirk free climbing El Cape Tan, this teacher of ours. He've never seen him so much, he was so incredulous. And bearing in mind that this teacher was a runner, he was athletic for his time, he would do marathons.

He was a healthy guy. For him to get up there and go how he didn't say it in these words, but basically, how fucking ridiculous is that William Shatner is portraying himself free climbing l Capy ten, while McCoy frets by the campsite, and while Spock is hovering there on these ridiculous rocket boots. It was like an insult to him, how stupid this all was, and the fact that this property that he held so dear had let him down so drastically. Just what the opening scene. This whole movie is.

Just look how virile I am. It really is? He does paint himself. Now, having said that, I do know that he took it upon himself to convince folks like George Takay. I don't think he was especially looking forward to working with Shatner as an actor, let alone as a director.

So there's something to be said about the fact that Shatner took it upon himself to convince a lot of these ancillary crew members to join in this movie. So that's commendable that he at least realized that you got to have every buddy in this It's not just about him. Having said that, and I said that probably five too many times. This is all about Shatner, despite the fact that all these other crew members are in it and they have all their little business to do. He is always the hero of every scene.

He never met a horse shot of people horse riding. He never met a horse riding shot that he didn't love, because this movie is full of all that bullshit riders coming off these oh desert hills and all this. I guess we should say we jumped right to l Camp of ten, but the movie actually begins on the planet of Galactic Piece. Oh what the guy looks like the singer from Midnight Oil. He's my favorite part of this whole movie.

Actually, it's a good scene. Actually, if this if we had gotten this movie, it might have been really good. In fact, I could have enjoyed a movie without the Enterprise crew if it was this gallivanting vulcan and him out there raising an army, because we get Signbuck, Lawrence Luckinbill standing in first Sean Connery. Apparently, that's what Shatner says. The part was originally written for Connery, and if you look at the way they styled him, oh yeah, yeah, I definitely went for Sean Connery.

Now, Shatner says, of course that Sean Connery's schedule was in conflict because he was filming Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. And I say, there's no way Sean Connery was ever going to do this movie. What are you talking about, William Shatner. It wasn't a scheduling conflict. You're lucky there was a scheduling conflict to hide behind.

There's no At that point in Sean Connery's career, he had such a career resurgence that really that was the capstone to it at that time, was him being in Glass Crusade. I mean, it was all gravy to him at. That he just won an Academy Award for The Untouchables. You think he's going to do this piece of shit Star Trek five where he's like the most milk toast, boring villain that the series has ever produced. Impossible.

But let me ask you, let me put it this way before I give my my opinion. What did you think of Lawrence Luckinbill as cybok Oh? I think great. I thought he was really charming, and I think there are moments where I was on his side for this movie. But the problem is, the character is a nothing character.

It's is he a messiah? Is he not? Is he ruthless? Is he not? He's just some guy.

It's all like happenstance. Everything just seems to be falling along. There doesn't seem to be any grand design going on here. We don't even understand what his relationship is with this alien. Is he receiving?

We don't know anything about the character. Basically, it is weird. But I do the idea that Spock had a half brother who had rejected all of the logic of his because it's easy to forget that it's Cannon in the original TV series that the Vulcans weren't always these logical, emotionally repressed people. They were actually very passionate and very emotional, and that almost led to their the race's downfall, right, They almost killed themselves out of existence. So I actually thought, I'm not suggesting that the way it's implemented in the movie is very good, but I think the idea that there's this rogue Vulcan who has rejected all of those teachings and is potentially more much very dangerous as a result, somebody who would be looked at as a heretic or worse, I think there's something that could be done there.

This isn't the movie to do that with, but I agree. I thought Laurence Luck and Bill did as good a job in that part as anybody could expect anyone to. He was funny. He wished that they could have done more with the underpinnings of the story to make it worthwhile. I think the sight of a gregarious Vulcan is muted by the fact that we're used to seeing Spock laughing and Glad handing back on the old series way too much, so it's not a shocking thing to see a Vulcan laugh.

The other thing is a Vulcan who has eskewed logic and embraced passion. They've got a word for that, star Trek Romulin. This should be a Romulant. He shouldn't be Spock's brother. First of all, why is he Spock's brother?

What the fuck? Well, and we'll get to how ridiculous it is as we get to the plot quote unquote machinations, but this audit, if you're going to do that, then just give us the Romulins, because where have the Romulants been this entire film series. We've gotten the Klingons multiple times. The actual threat in the fucking universe are the Romulan. One of the.

Ambassadors on the planet of Galactic Piece is meant to be a Romulan. Gindn't read very Romulin to me, like, not at. All, like a zero L. But I agree he didn't. He shouldn't have been Spock's brother because it's just it's too convenient and there's no way, no matter the shame that Spock supposedly felt about this situation, there's no way that he wouldn't that Kirk wouldn't have known about this half brother, or the fact that because he was banished from Vulcan that you're not gonna you're not telling me.

That wouldn't have been big news. For lack of a better term, that wouldn't have been a big deal, especially if Spock is applying to Starfleet to know that he has a family member that is a heretic and potentially dangerous at that there's no way that the family history on that would have been hidden. Nor do I think, by the way, that everyone I don't and. The Bridge crew would have received a dossier about their crew member Spock and his family member once it happened. Yeah, and I'm Admiral.

Kirk doesn't know Spock's brother is a fucking heretic running around out there trying to raise armies. It It just doesn't. It seems so unlikely. And also I don't necessarily buy that Sarah would have because they don't really talk about who or how that all happened. He seemed pretty devoted to his wife, his human wife.

I don't necessarily buy the idea that he had some fling before he found his true It seems all too coincidental. Well, seeing you're assuming things, what actually happened was Amanda just really loves fucking Vulcans, she says. So she's just, for lack of a better term, starfucker. So she's just like a groupie, like a Vulcan groupie. That's it.

She's a contra fucker. So it's unfortunate because I agree that Luck and Bill gives a good performance for what he's supposed to do. Everything else around the movie lets him down every way you can imagine. Yeah, let's talk about some stupid things. Let's talk about the boots, the rocket boots.

Yeah, that's your first indication by the way that we're in We're in big trouble. Absolutely, because Kirk is free climbing and loving it and enjoying the sites, and out of nowhere, Spock pops up, Hey, greetings, captain, and he's floating on these rocket boots. I guess these things are a thing. To hit you with a puns, so they have. And incidentally, as a side note, Leonard Nimour could not be sleepwalking any deeper than he does through this whole fucking movie.

There's nothing compelling or interesting. I hate to say it about Spock or about Leonard Nimoy's performance as Spock. I just get the sense that he's going through the motions on this he's got nothing. He should have plenty to do because it's his fucking half brother that is taking over the enterprise. But just I never again.

The gravitas is missing, the heft is missing. For me, that's true. But you know what, the fish rots from the head down right, So maybe he's just take taking his cues from air Director Shatner here. Maybe so. But so he's got these rocket boots, getting back to the rocket boots and they have a little conversation, so stid.

And in the midst of this conversation, Kirk loses his footing or he falls off the edge of this mountain. And he calls Admiral Kirk, let them die. So he's plummeting and we have this prodigious site of spot. He basically does. And and you remember years ago, those those gravity inversion chairs were a big deal, Father alone, where you'd get into this thing and you would go from a vertical position all the way so that your head was now on the ground.

Supposed to be therapeutic. That's essentially what we get here. Spock puts his arms up, does a swivels at his hips. So all of a sudden, now his feet are above his head, like he's gonna die. If you took a twelve inch action figure and you held him in the middle and went and now he's gonna go down, and he went whoop and just turned him upside down, that's what it looks like.

That's how ridiculous it looks. It looks like Spock is on a pinwheel, like like Leonard Meimoy, and they've just gone flip and up come the boots. Like a literal pivot right at his hips. Makes it worse is he puts his arms straight up, Oh, like a drinky bird or something like. Imagine for a minute, everybody, I'm betting everybody who's listening to this has seen at least one iron Man movie.

Think about how the thought and care they put into how iron Man moves in the suit, and how he flies and how he uses his repulsors and so forth. There's none of that here. There's an absolute lack of physics when you're dealing with and I know we're making a lot of this, but it's so symptomatic of the whole movie. This one moment is almost like a microcosm for everything that's wrong with this movie, and That's why it burns me so much to see it. We should have stopped right there, right like, collectively, as an audience, we should have gotten up and left the theater.

And so so Kirk plummets and they have the requisite sort of pun and he's falling, but then they make it worse by having this terrible matted in shot of it's this green screen shot of Shatner. Ooh, like he's floating, but he's supposed to be plummeting to his doom, and it just looks so cheap. It looks like something you would see in cable access, like some bad movie. And all the while mccolus. Worse than the original series effects.

Oh, it's unquestionably because we should have we have higher expectations, because this is not the sixties, this is we're almost into the nineties. The special effects were only a few years away from fucking Jurassic Park, and this is what they're giving us. This should be a nothing shot of him falling and getting rescued by Nimoy, And yet at every turn we're flummoxed by the amateurishness of everything we're seeing. What's not helping is Shatner needing to have his goddamn face in every shot, because if you just took a stunt man and had him go jump off a fucking high cliff, they could have something really cool here. But they're not thinking of that.

They're thinking, what's the best way that they can make me look as if I'm in this shot, That's all he's thinking. Every fucking scene. It just looks so goofy. So Spock saves him at the very last second with his rocket boots, which would. By the way, if you were to stop somebody from falling at that speed by just grabbing them and jarring them to a stop, you would rip their fucking leg out of his socket.

You would at least dislocate, like any number of their knee would be gone. They would basically be ripped off. It's just one of a litany of boneheaded scientific bullshit on the way. And all the while, I was saying, McCoy has been watching this all play out nervously on these little like space binoculars or whatever, and he's fretting about it. Mama.

Hen He's like, oh, this would be relaxing. He said, this isn't relaxing. I'm in a nervous wreck. So they finally they all gather around the campfire and McCoy is passing around the whiskey. The good Kentucky wiking Forrest Kelly is working mightily here because he's not bad, but everything they've given him to do and somehow he's still seeming to be good.

He feels McCoy always the forest Kelly always felt authentic. Let's not forget he worked on I think he did like Bonanza. He was a Western actor for a time before Star Trek, and he was from I believe he was from Virginia, so this kind of like down home pattern is nothing new to him. Is from Mississippi, right, so all of that is it feels lived in his parts. His part of this scene is fine, but it's just I don't.

Know how down home country Mississippi is going to be in the twenty third century. But okay, no. But I'll give him a pass because he just I don't know. Maybe maybe it is still pretty southern, I don't know. But nevertheless, it leads to a conversation it's a bunch of bullshit where again Kirk has to pain himself out to be this badass and he's.

Like ulstor polls. So he says, this is bullshit about like, oh, you almost died, and Kirk's like, no, I knew I wasn't going to die. He said, why, I've always had this premonition that I was going to die alone. It's like, you're not a bad You're not a badass. Chat don't keep painting yourself out to be this oh nozzled hero.

No, this isn't badass. This is romantic, Captain Kirk. This is forlorn. Oh boy is me? I know I'm going to dialogue.

By the way, lots of Star Trek fans have taken this as a premonition for what happens in generations. It's not. It's him being fucking melodramatic. This little speech pays off at the end of this movie, such as it is. I want to ask you one thing that's bugged me about the scene for a long time.

Fallom alone. It's a mystery, if you will. And so they're on there around the campfire, they're having this deep conversation if we really. You're mystified by Spock and his inability to behave like a fucking normal, fucking character. Here a fucking we watched this guy receive this barrage of tests about philosophy and science and poetry.

And here he's understand what this roll roll your boat means? Life isn't a dream? Why are we singing these songs? You're on the right track. But specifically, he pulls out this device that looks like a lightsaber hilt, which produces what he calls a marsh melon.

But let me ask you, father Blone, is that supposed to be Spock's naivete at work or is it possible that Leonard Nimoy just didn't know how to pronounce marshmallow. That is Leonard Nimoy mispronouncing marsh accidentally and Chatner thinking it's hilarious. And then that became a joke on the set quote unquote marsh melons. So then crew like props would make marsh melons and they would put up little signs about marsh mellons. Somehow, this in joke they thought we all will think would be hilarious as well.

And what it doesn't happen, yes, And what it does is make me hate Spock all the more. In this film, they. Produced those marshmallow canisters you could buy those. That was a tie in promotional product for Star Trek five. Shit, now I want one purpose.

He would have to fill the thing with marshmallows so you could poke them out like a lightsaber hilt. It was ridiculous anyway, I wondered about that. Thank you for clearing that up. I didn't. It was so vexing to me why he would call them marsh melons that I was starting to question my own.

I think they've actually got if you go, because you can retro fit anything in the Star Trek universe and have it actually make sense. And now in the Star Trek universe, marsh melons are a thing. There are Okay, I guess I stand corrected, But you. Could really what I just told you is actually what happened. Okay, now it makes sense.

Now it's no longer a mystery for me. So thank you for that. So that's just a slip of the ton. The fucking bullshit of Spock not being able to understand song lyrics is that's to me. It's also weird that so they finally decide let's have a sing along.

That's what we're driving at here. Hey, but is there a public domain song we could all get into right now? What's infuriating is three out of the four songs or whatever they come up with, are just old timey songs from our time, camptown races or row your boat. They only make a passing sort of glance at what would probably be an old timey song in their time period, because I think he says, oh moon over Reigal seven, which I'd like to hear that song. Actually, I wish they pick I wish they picked that.

But what are the odds that these well. Let's do let's do an Old Earth classic. How about black Hole Sun? Everybody, black Hole Sun. That's what I mean.

It's so convenient that they would pick these, you know, what we consider camp campfire classics. But they would you like to lead? Yes, of course, Captain. I'm the king of rock. There is none higher sucker.

MC should call me, sire, good one, Spock. I love this tune. We're nitpicking a little bit here, admittedly, but this is again all symptomatic of just a terrible experience you're about to undergo. I won't stop rocking till I retire. I'm just going to keep saying.

But here's the worst thing. So here's the worst thing. The navigator and the helmsman are lost. Get it. Oh when Chekhov and Sulu and I don't think they're meant to be in Yosemite at the same time as Kirk and everybody else, but they're in this woody area.

I have to imagine that they just figured, well, we're in Yosemite already, let's just do a pickup shot and show them lost. And what makes it worse is Chekhov is trying to cover up for it, so he's doing things like, oh, it's very windy here, and he starts to blow into the communicator, like that's going to fool Ahura on the other side of the car. It's just that sort of. Refinery went out after Marconi invented the goddamn thing. Listen, pad, What are they doing?

Why my phone right now has a GPS in it. This is the twenty third century. We're lost. We've got a paper map. If you fell off a fucking mountain in the twenty third century and you don't have some sort of technology that's immediately going to save you, what the fuck is going on?

These authors are terrible. They don't think beyond the fucking sixties TV series. It's the sort of television writer like Journeyman writer going from series to series. Oh what am I doing now? Western's okay, I can do that sci fi?

Oh I know sci fi shit. Sure, no thought to actual scientific advancement or just everyday usage that would be going on amongst these people. It's all just it's all mired in the fucking twenties cent. The fucking row your boat is a perfect example. These guys can't think beyond nineteen eighty eight.

Another bad sign to this whole thing is that they we get to the Enterprise. This is the new Enterprise that they recommissioned at the end of Star Trek four. Remember is there something I hate more than Spock not understanding shit? It's broken Enterprise. Yeah, so apparently the Enterprise is still in this state of disrepair.

Nothing works. Scotty is is wits end trying to fix the computer and the transport. Basically, I think part of the reason for this is that they have to figure out a way to take the transporter out of commission because there's plot developments that require people to be in shuttle craft going to and from the planet. So the easiest way for Good to know this is all plot based. The idea that the Enterprise is all fucked up.

Okay, let you know what, Let's let me vent my spleen about this, because this is what bothers me the most in any of the Star Trek movies, because they've already done this to us. Kirk, You're the only one who can do it. You're the closest ship. You're the only thing that can get there. Where is the fucking Starfleet?

I've said this before in earlier episodes. Where is the starfleet? They're going to the neutral zone? That okay, First of all, there are two neutral zones. They don't tell us which is which.

I'm assuming they go to the Romulin one because the Romulin ain't going to show up to the fucking kling On neutral zone. That's just not going to happen. So let's say they're in the Ramula neutral zone. Do you have any light years away? That is?

I don't know specifically, it's more than one hundred. It's more than one hundred, which means at Warp nine. I know this is super nerdy. Everybody nerd alert ensign. At Warp nine, it would take them thirty five days to get to the neutral zone.

There's no ship closer. How about this. Okay, we'll go, but this ship is fucked, so have another ship meet us there. Yeah, this ship is not in any shape to do anything. Our transporters aren't even working.

You're sending us on a rescue mission with a ship that has no transporters. You know what our rescue mission is. We're going to drop into orbit, We're going to target the fucking the hostages, and we're going to beam them out. That's our mission. There is no other mission.

Yeah, but they can't even accomplish that because the transporters aren't working. Because that's because somebody said, why don't they just transport them out? And Harve Bennett or William Shatner said, the transporters aren't working as opposed to they have a shield up around the city. We can't beam in. It's just that simple, I think beyond what would you do in this situation?

Dummies? Oh, I don't know. I just let's just make them broken. I can't believe these people were hit. After the fucking super duper success of Star Trek four, hand it to the fucking egomaniacal actor and the fucking out of touch, fucking producer, go make us another great movie.

Guys, don't kill the franchise. By the way, what happened now that I am. You know, it's completely warranted and I share your grievances on this clearly, so they what's happened is Cybock, the guy who is trying to make his we we find out, is trying to find God on this planet. He has effectively he's gathered a group of followers, an army, if you will. And there's this planet called the Planet of Galactic Peace.

It's some Nimbus three. It was a failed experiment where representatives from Klingon, from the Klingon government, the Federation, and the Romulan government, we're gonna co habitate the planet and co develop it basically, but. It's a subtle swipe at the United Nations, is what this is? Yeah, basically, but it's the planet itself is like it's just a rock of nothing. It's just like desert and rock and there's nothing going on there that the representatives that are there are all basically like worthless and without hope at this point because they're just marking time at a bar, just getting drunk because the dream has failed.

Basically, so Cybock has taken these ambassador's hostage in the hopes that a starship will come from one of the governments and he can take over that starship and take it to where he wants to meet God. We find out what a stupid plan because two of those potential rescuers, we're just going to show up and bomb you for orbit. Yeah. In the meantime, by the way, there now and this is I feel like what you said before, which is this is the worst thing. I feel like I keep saying that, but everything is the worst thing in the midst of all of this.

Once, once it's clear that all of these representatives have been taken hostage, there's effectively a rogue klingon Bird of Prey out. Oh here is the worst thing. He's and the commander is bored. He's basically spending his time blowing up pieces of space junk that float by the ship. He's got to subtle fuck you to Gene Rodenberry.

They blow up a satellite, an Earth satellite, the Pioneer ten. Yeah. So he's bristling for something, some action, and he catches wind that there's this thing going on the planet of the Galactic Piece and he finds out that Kirk is one of the ships that's been dispatched to free the hostages. He says, that will make this Klingon Commanderer says, that's now I know what I want to do. I'm going to go to this planet.

I'm going to take out Kirk. That's going to make my reputation. So he goes with his crew basically for no good reason other than I need to make my bones as a Klingon. I'm going to go get into a fight with Kirk. So he goes off.

This is happening all parallel to everything else that's going on. Klingon Empire has just giving away birds of prey like Candy. I guess, because this guy's just out there fucking around in the universe. How about the Klingon government has sent him to that planet because they're involved. How many people read the screenplay before they went and built sets and hired actors.

Nobody went, why not just make him this That makes more sense, right, no rogue element. Got to have a chaos element going on there. That makes more sense. And by the way, let's not involve the Romulens at all. And it has to be said, we've seen Krug, we've seen Christopher Lloyd is he was a pretty scary, badass Klingon.

We've seen our favorite John Shuck, who is the best Klingon. I think we all agree this Klingon, I don't know who the actor is or what the name of the Klingon commander is. He is so terrible, non threatening. He doesn't strike fear in me as a rogue element in this whole thing happening. I'm not fearful for Kirk to get into a fight with this Klingon because he's so patently ineffectual, and he just seems like a bored character just sitting out there much like the audience, like he's just bristling for something to do.

It's not a good motivation for the character. It doesn't fill me with dread for what he might or might not do. In the case of Krug, you never knew what Krug was going to do in the name of honor, so it was just a misbegotten notion to have it have his Like you said, go to this planet out of sheer boredom, it should have been, hey, Clingon, bird of Prey number five, you go to this planet and help out these hostages because it's our ambassador by the way, it's this guy Cord, who is a big war hero in the Klingon Empire at one time. So you take this on that. It's simple as that.

How about even simpler? No prisoners, so we know that he's going to eradicate them. Yeah, this, but now it's a race against time. The Enterprise has to get there to actually save these people because the fucking Klingons are definitely going to kill them as opposed to know. I hear that Kirk is a he's a pretty pretty high prize.

Let's go get him. They could have done that. You know what, we deem the planet to be a failure. Go leave, no prisoners, take it out. We're done.

Klingons don't take prisoners. That's what they always say. Make it so. So anyway, Kirk and his Jalopia of an enterprise make their way to this planet. Hey, can you have at least five other star ships meet us there?

The last time you guys pulled this shit, my son got killed. Apparently they're busy doing other things in the universe. It's a very big universe, Father Malone. No one is close to the fucking neutral zone than Kirk on Earth in a ship that doesn't work. I know, listen, I'm sorry to be a broken record here, but I can't get past that.

That is really where the movie ends for me. But there's more the bullshit contrivance of getting him there in a ship that will. It's like at the end of Superman two, where he's like, suddenly he can pull a fucking cellophane s off of his chest, he can disappear and make multiple versions of himself. Have you guys ever read a Superman comic? He doesn't do this shit?

Yeah, well, let's not forget. Also, there's little things that aren't so grand or sweeping, like the idea that suddenly Scotty and Ahura are amorous for each other, and they're like making not so subtle remarks about, for lack of a better term, making whoopee things like that. It's just they're playing lovey dovey. It's all very discomforting. Yeah, you know what's funny?

Hbing This movie comes out and Gene Roddenberry quietly declares this movie to be apocryphal. He says, this movie is just a what if it doesn't actually exist in canon, And now I agree with him, because this is not that I have a thing against Michelle Nichols and James Doing having a thing and everything. It's just so out of the blue, and it's just so they can have a scene where she seduces him later into the cult. It's it doesn't it's never organic. It's just it's two things.

It's what I just said, it's a plot device and it's a oh you know what worked in part four? Everyone gets a moment. We got to give everybody a moment. They but not everybody gets a moment because no, that's true, because a moment. Because Doing get gets his little comedic moments and he's like a hero in the rest of the movie.

And Michelle Nichols gets the fan dance. But at least they get that, because what does Sulu do? Honestly, Sulu is well, let's say, George ta kay is. I mean, I hope he got paid well for a star Trek five, because it must have been downright humiliating to have to do this movie when he's got nothing, literally nothing to do. Even Chekhov has an ounce more to do here and there.

At least Chekhov gets to pretend that he's the captain of the ship just to buy time for the rescuers on the planet as they're trying to evacuate the hostages. But Sulu is m I A for large portions if I stop and think of it, aside from them getting lost at the beginning, what the hell does Sulu have to do? He chases engaged while denied. He just has I just I feel for Like I said, I'm hoping he got paid really well, because at least then he has something to show for it. But it's just it's a bummer because I know that they all felt short changed throughout the Trek history.

This is a really good example of that. Anyway, they has this plan to go rescue these hostages, but they have to use shuttles to go down to the surface. Eventually they mount. They basically they sneak into this paradise city which. Is Central Sert joke.

It's an infiltrate, yes, But the tavern. The defining feature of this tavern, this sort of Cantena esque tavern, is there's this game that it's clearly a pool table that they've put about two inches of water. It's a tool table. R apun What a humorous they are. But it's supposed to be like space pool.

But They've changed nothing about the game except put two inches of water in a pool table and see what happens. They're hitting the ball. They've got cues, the balls are exactly the same, but they're. Actually a designer. What was Bill Murray from ed Wood Cat's Eye?

How about some glitter? No, it just feels like I said, it's so cheap. It's and by the way, it's a waste. We haven't even talked about the fact that the Federation ambassador to the planet of blacky Piece is played by none other than David fucking Warner. Sark of eventual gor Khan right.

Were they make it up to him in the next movie, for sure? But yeah, because he's fucking wasted here. I got so excited when he showed up. I'm like, oh, wow, this is gonna be interesting. Why, by the way, do we even have three ambassadors who gives a shit?

They don't do anything. Nobody comes for them like that. They don't The Klingon Empire doesn't respond, the Romulan Empire doesn't respond. Shouldn't it just be we need to go save David Warner pretty much? Shouldn't it be we need to go save the diplomat who's been taken by taking hostage by this things.

Oh my god, the diplomat is the fucking hostage taker? How about that? How about anything? How about do something? Yeah, he's he is.

I just said a few favor triple titted catwoman, I don't want her. A minute ago, when I said that George tak K was the worst at being short changed, I think maybe David Warner might be competing for. That Night'sulu because Sula was due. He was due in the next one. Honestly, Yeah, at least he's eventually made a captain, which he should have been two movies prior.

He saves the day, he really does. Nicholas Meyer probably saw this movie and went, let's fix that. Well, and it does right a lot of the wrongs of this movie, But we digress. So they turns out they try to pop the hostages out, but they've already been brainwashed, essentially brainwashing maybe a harsh term. He's they Sybok does this thing we haven't really talked about where he looks into a person and sees their hidden pain and he says, I see you have pain, and share it with me, and in the sharing you will gain strength.

So what he effectively does is he makes you face up to your worst memory or worst pain that you have in life. It might be a dying relative or some secret shame that you've harbored all your life, and somehow, working his healing magic, he cleanses you of that pain. It's almost like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, only you don't really forget about the memory, you just don't have the pain associated with it anymore. But by doing that, he's able to convert people to his cause. So I guess it's a form of brainwashing.

But it's not as if it's really stupid and ill defined, because here's the thing. They want it both ways. They don't want him to be manipulating people. They want it to be this thing where he pulls the pain out of you and then you're so thankful, and you're not only so grainful, but now you see that this helped you and will help everyone, So you're part of the cause. Now you believe in him and his cause.

Right, but everyone is still a fucking member of starfleet. I don't care what this guy did for you. You feel happier now, great, get back in line, and the thing is as it turns out it's totally fucking arbitrary because when at the end they when they finally reveal what Cybock actually does, when we get the visual representation of him, it doesn't change Spock or it doesn't change McCoy. They don't change, They don't turn against Kirk. No, and at least McCoy and Spock, who have gone through this procedure whatever you want to call it, they don't automatically decide to drop everything and follow this.

That's what I'm saying. So it's obviously voluntary whether or not you do it, which now because we know that at the end it makes Zulu and Chekhov and Uhura and fucking Scotty all look like dopes. Well, the other weird thing, as you said, it's ill defined what it does and how it all works because a certain point he does this exercise with McCoy and with Spock, and this is while the other two, well, Kirk and Spock and McCoy are all together and it they make it seem like they're meant to see this as it's transpiring. In other words, it's not just this intimate connection, like a mind meld between two people. Somehow Kirk can see when Spock is going through this process, and they can see when McCoy is going it's all makes It's like suit.

It makes no sense to me, how because at the very beginning, when Midnight Oil lead singer does it with him, you don't see anything transpire other than the guy weeps in Cybox's arms and says thank you. That makes more sense to me, Like it's just a mental thing, like a form of mind meld. But I don't get how other people around you can observe this illusion as it's It was so ill defined it was ridiculous. Yeah, if you want to have these characters following him, then that he does need to brainwash them. Sorry, And you can still make that morally ambiguous and complex.

You can have it be once we see what he does, that it's easy to understand what he's trying to do, Like you could make it so tantalized. Instead, what they do is they do this sort of bullshit attack on fucking pop psychology, which is all this is really this people talking about their pain. This movie is so queasy, like in every direction and every sort of theme and analogy, because what this really is as an attack on therapy. Yeah right, because this evil man is going to twist you to his will by taking away your pain, by making you face your traumatic events in your past. Like it's all well and good to have Kirk declare, I need my pain.

It defines me. Yes, of course, we all need our pain. It did define us. Nevertheless, it shouldn't fucking dominate us. And that's what Cybock is trying to do here.

All of these questions, by the way, are never dealt with in the most non star trek way possible, because these should be the central premise of the film. These conversations should be happening from the beginning to the end. Everything should be funneled in this direction. And instead it's all just tossed off and it's all happenstance and none of it actually coalesces into any thesis. Having said that, the best thing that I can say about any of that is the bit with McCoy when you find out.

What his Oh yeah, that's why this movie should be about McCoy, because that's actually affecting. It's actually really interesting, and it deepens the character and it enriches him because what you learn is that as a young doctor, his McCoy's father had some sort of incurable disease, and he was in a lot of pain, and he begged, he begged bones to end his life, to commit euthanasia, and he wrestled with that problem, that's that's the root of his pain, until ultimately deciding that I need to release my father from this horrible situation. So he in fact does mercifully kill his own father, only to find out that a short time later they evidently found a cure for whatever it was that was afflicting him.

So he's been wrestling with this dilemma probably for decades. I released him, But at the same time, did I do the wrong thing because he could have survived, He didn't have to die. That's compelling to me. That's interesting. That's something that we've I don't think we've ever really seen out of McCoy, at least throughout all of these original series movies.

I want to explore that. That's interesting. I love your idea about him being the sort of folk crum around which this science versus religion debate is rotating, right, That would have been so interesting and so unique and so innovative for a Star Trek movie. Yeah, if Shander could have put his fucking ego aside for a second and realized that it would have been appropriate for Captain Kirk to be one of the fucking converts. How scary would that have been?

Even Kirk has fallen under this guy's spell and McCoy is the only hold out. Oh my god, give me that movie have been great. What a rug pull that would have been. For viewers who are conditioned to thinking that Kirk is the hero, He's going to save the day. Oh my fucking god, you're telling me that he's one of these religious zelots that wants to take the enterprise god knows where, and McCoy, who's the eternal cynic, is the one who has to figure out how to Wow.

That would have been incredible. It's like when Indiana Jones turned on Short Round and you're like, oh, no, Andy's gonna fuck him up. No. For those of you who might enjoy a Leonard McCoy a centered thing, I'd recommend this novel here. It's called a Choice of Catastrophes.

It's a Star Trek novel about McCoy as the center of the of the plot line. It's a medical mystery to really good choice of catastrophes. Interesting. I will have to check that out. But it's way better than everything we're talking about, So.

I don't We could continue to there's a lot that happens here. I don't want to. Let's find all the other stupid shit that happened. Well, that's every thing, isn't it? Pretty much everything?

So I don't want to go through the menus. Let's point out some things that are important. If you throw a catwoman into two inches of water, she will immediately die. We learned that, Yeah, three titted catwoman? Yes?

What else do we talk about the fan dance? We didn't talk about the fan dance? Okay, before we get there. It's Nachelle nicholls idea. She wanted to do it.

So it's not like this was creepy exploitation on Shatner's part or Harve Bennett or anything like that, even though they were like, yeah, we're gonna have some sex appeal in this. So I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with this as a fucking distraction. Are we assuming that none of these people are fucking and that all of these people are male, hetero interested in this woman from Earth? What the fuck is happening here?

It's weird because she is doing effectively like a burlesque dance with fans, and she's meant we're meant to believe that she's naked, and imediately when these sort of mad Max rejects see her, it's like it's like a cartoon where you know the cartoon where the cat is following the scent lines to the pie that's on the window sill. They can't help themselves. They have to go see what's going on. Oh my god. Now having said that, it's my understanding.

So and she's singing too. But the problem is they didn't use Michelle Nichols's voice for the singing for some reason. She's a very good she was a very good singer. I think she was a nightclub singer at one point. Definitely was that was a little weird.

And by the way, she agreed to do the fan dance thing because she wanted to have her voice on the soundtrack, singing way. To Go, Thanks thanks Bill, So that you look great. You look really virile and young. Yes, so that's bad. There's a the rocket Boots come back during a jail break with chat with McCoy and Kirk and Spock.

That's not good, by the way. Okay, so Sidebar has to engage with you and dredge up your pain and then release you from it. How long a process would you say? That would be maybe ten to fifteen minutes, twenty minutes an hour? Well, no, according to Midnight Oil at the beginning, it was.

Two minutes, two minutes. So how does he how does he convert the entire crew of the starship Enterprise? Does he have them line up? Do they have a number system? Do they call you down to the office.

I had the same reaction because it's a single threaded process. There's no one else who can do what he does, so you have to have a line of people waiting outside the dentist's office, like, okay, Bajora, your turn, come on in. It makes no sense. And when other Federation officers are finding out that this is happening, why they wouldn't just hide somewhere in the ship, take up arms and try to take the ship back from this crazy guy is beyond me. And by the way, so all the Paradise City stuff and the El Capitan stuff, that's their on location stuff.

Right now, this is where they were running into the most trouble as far as budget. They would say, we're gonna do this, and Studio would say, you're not doing that, You're doing this instead, and they would cut the budget and cut the budget and cut the budget right, And if you read Shatner's book Movie Memories, you can potentially feel bad for him that they kept cutting the legs out from him. And at the same time you will also witness perhaps the least organized film since the last Terry Gilliam production, where they're showing up at sets and their fucking trucks are breaking down and they don't have a backup truck. Shatner is waving down fucking pickup trucks and getting the camera crew in there and racing the sets before the fucking sun goes down.

It's what are you guys doing? This is a big budget motion picture, this is a tent pole. And it's a stab production. That's another aspect of this feature. At the time that this movie went into production, the teamsters were on strike, the teamster drivers.

So Star Trek decides, well, we're just going to hire scabs, and at one point one of their trucks blows up in the parking lot on the on the Paramount lot. So instead they caravan out at night in the cover of darkness, is to get their scabs out of these locations. So there's that aspect of fuckery as well. That's a problem. And by the way, like you reminded me, this was a summer eighty nine blockbuster, would be whoops.

Now let's go look at some of the other pictures that were going to premiere that summer. We have Batman, the Original Batman. We have you talked about Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade. We have License to Kill, the Bond movie. We have Lethal Weapon two, which was huge, and we have Ghostbusters too.

How did the Final Frontier, under the best of circumstances even stand a chance? Fatherm alone, I'm sorry, my computer just did a weird thing where it opened up this like look what else windows can do for you fucking thing and like it's gone, I'm behind you. I don't know how they possibly if thought they were going to contend with any of those movies. Look, that is the blockbuster summer. Let's face it.

Nobody expected the sheer volume of studios attempting to grab your cash that year, and it was going to be no place for Star Trek in that pile. Just move it to the end of the year, pull it back to the beginning of the year. Also make a better movie. Well that it starts there, right, because if it's a better movie, it should compete with anyone. But because all those movies you named all did really well, and we all went to see them because they were good, we didn't go see Story more than once because it sucked.

Because it sucked. What else did we We haven't quite gotten to the planet yet, But is there anything else between the capturing the Enterprise and making it to shaka Ree that we want to call. Out shaka Ree sounds a lot like Sean Connery. And then. You think that was intentional?

Yes, I do the planet. Oh yeah, they gotta get they gotta get to the They gotta get to the Great Barrier. How are they going to get through the Great Barrier? HB This first thing, the first time we've ever heard of the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy. How long is it going to take to get to galactric central point by the way from the neutral zone?

Another thirty five days? No way longer. But that doesn't matter. Because it's Star Trek. They just beam out there right.

Oh, no, the teleporters are broken. No, they're fixed now, because we just make shit up as we go along. They just it's one long handwave of yeah, let's not worry about that. This is it's like the reasoning when they killed Spock for the first time. Right, this is science fiction.

We can bring it back. It's we can get it all fixed. Fantasy basically, that's what it is. This is science fiction in the hands of people who can't understand sci fi more than fantastical, Like you just science it. Yeah, there's just a.

Bunch of technobabble, and then there's the thing that we wanted to happen. It happens. It's just it's so lazy and just a it feels in the midst of it, it feels like a waste of your time because there's better movies that you could be watching than that. And I hate to come down on it like this, but it is what it is. This is probably the I don't know, the fifth time I've seen this movie in the last couple of years.

It may be the last, because I find less and less reason to return to it as over the years it's just it's a waste. Life's too short. At this point. Do you know this film like the back of your hand funk funk. It's also slapsticky and goofy, and the comedy is just always undercutting everything that has any heft in this It should they should be philosophical.

There should be philosophical arguments to be made and struggles to be had, and that we get none of that. Before we know it, the Enterprise has been taken over and it's pushing through this supposedly impenetrable great barrier. I think they get through the Great Barrier in about a minute and a half. If that, like, what was preventing any ship from just going through there before? Well, I think, what is this?

I think we're meant to? The only thing I can come up with that makes any sense is I think we're meant to. This is supposed to be one of those things where it's actually not hard, but people's preconceived notions and biases and mental blocks lead them to believe that there is this great barrier at this center, whereas maybe the route to enlightenment is supposed to be much easier than that. If I'm being charitable, that's my reading of that, but either way, it's lazy writing. So they get to this planet.

Let's talk to God, shall we? Yeah, I've got a little gold phone that Andy Warhol gave to me, and we're going to talk to God. You want to talk to God, HP, let's do it together. I've got nothing better to do. There's a transmitter.

Well, speaking to God. All of that. The end of the Raiders of the Lost Ark is a much more satisfying portrayal of the actual influence of a divine spirit than what we get here, which is just another petulant thing that's been fucking trapped on a planet as an imprisonment. Man, you know what you just called out that the conclusion to Raiders is so great because it's almost like having your cake and eating it too. Because initially they take the arc out and the guy does all the prayers Bellock, and he reaches in.

Nothing happens, and he reaches in and realizes that those stone tablets the Ten Commandments are gone, and the Nazi starts laughing at him like this is ridiculous. Of course, this is all supernatural mumbo jumbo. And then what happens all the cameras go haywire and holy shit, it is the real fucking deal. That, to me is how you end a movie about these types of philosophical arguments. Right, Yes there is a god.

Yes you will still know nothing about him, but don't fuck with him. Yeah, some things you should should man should not be meddling with. That to me is that's the central thesis behind that scene. Right. The Nazis are fucking with forces that they don't have any knowledge of, and they pay the ultimate price for that.

Satisfyingly, I might. Add, yeah, because they sat down and wrote a script and thought about that ending, and then they plotted out an entire sequence because they wanted it to be grand and magnificent. Here it was going to be one thing. And then they said no. They said, you can have an alien and he won't become Satan, and he won't have a bunch of angels that become demons.

You can have a bunch of rock men. You can have a dozen rock men who come out in Menace Shatner or come out in Menace Kirk. Right, And then they said that's going to cost about three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, And this is about ten minutes of screen time. You can have one rock man, and if you've looked at the footage of the rock men that they created, which is embarrassing, you got to wonder what the fuck they were thinking because you listen to that. I listened to the audio book of him, like detailing the list of indignities he's suffered at the hands of the studio here.

But when they're saying, you can't have this, you can't have that, you can't have that, and it's the climax of your movie, you got to put your foot down as a filmmaker if you're a filmmaker, and say we'll cut other stuff out. Or we'll find the money elsewhere, we'll do so anything. This has to be captured on. Film, right because it's the climax of the movie. And if that's not satisfying, then your movie didn't work and nobody's coming back for a second viewing.

It's the most important part of your blockbuster. Honestly, this climax goes over like the proverbial fart in church. There's nothing interesting about it. It's just I might get a laugh out of that through maybe, But what what we get is they make their way to the central circle. That's that these stone pillars come out and basically and trap them in this space.

And within this space we see what we're initially led to believe is the face of God. It's a terrible makeup job of a guy in sort of looks like the old timey vision of the white beard, the long hair, the bushy eyebrows. It's supposed to be the stereotypical face of God from any number of religious paintings and things, but from when he reveals himself to the point at which you figure out this is not God, but this is just some weird alien who needs a starship to get out of his prison. Effectively, it's so fast that you have no time to absorb the possibility that this might actually be God. It's so abrupt that any of the dramatic underpinning of the scene is gone almost immediately.

Well, there wasn't any to begin with, honestly, because the question that Kirk eventually asks, the one that everyone remembers from the movie, what does God need with a starship? Should have been asked on the star to Cybock, you're talking about the omnipotent God that created everything. We're going to meet him. Why do we have to go to meet him? Call him here now it's God, right, Oh we're not going then, sorry, Cybock.

Well, even like you said before, the idea of why Sybock is on this religious pilgrimage. Did he have a vision, did he have a dream, Did he read something in some text somewhere that told him that this all takes place in the center of the universe? None of that is explained at all. So I don't even know, aside from maybe this generic idea of acquiring knowledge, why is Sybox so worked up over this? What is he hoping to gain?

Ultimately one of those mysteries will just never know for this basically thrown together bullshit of a screenplay. Right, So, this Kirk's sort of refusal to go willingly into this fantasy of it being God angers the alien who starts shooting people with beams out of his eyes, This vexus Cybock, who's upset understandably at his his his religious sort of quest being invalidated almost immediately by this mundane alien creature. So he does he sacrifices himself to this creature to battle him so that the rest of the crew can escape. McCoy bones and Kirk. Scotty can only transport too at a time because the transporter is still on the fritz, so HeSE of course, Kirk is the one who says, I'll stay behind.

You guys go, so he stays behind and at. That way the focus of the movie completely totally right now, the climax belongs to me. Boys beat him up, Scotty. And while this is all taking place, the Klingon ship that's been making its way to Kirk through the whole movie finally gets there. But the Klingon ambassador from the from Paradise City somehow convinces him not to kill Kirk and in fact fire on this alien and save It's all just terrible, and for some reason they make Spock the gunner on the Klingon ship.

The hits just keep on coming. Follow it's just so I'm exhausted, Really I am too. We haven't even mentioned the scene where Kirk inexplicably orders Spock to murder Syebock and then Spock doesn't do it because he is still yet to reveal that's actually his brother and nobody has said anything about that, and he just lets him go. He just goes just take over the ship go ahead Sidebock and like, I can understand not killing your brother, but how about you incapacitate him so he doesn't take over your starship. So here's something I want to bring up tangential to that, sideways to that.

So after Kirk is saved and he is reunited with Spock and everything. Oh yeah, I know where you're going with this. So eventually, now we cut to this sort of lounge where all of these main characters are breaking bread together and it's meant to be this new beginning with the Klingons in the Federation and so forth, and Kirk is talking with Spock and McCoy and Spock is upset because he says he lost his brother, and Kirk says something to the effect of, well, I lost the brother once too, and I'm so lucky that I got him back, meaning Spock. What he's overlooking is the fact that in the original series there was an episode called Operation Annihilate Brother George. They established that Kirk has an actual brother, Sam Kirk, who is who is found dead at the beginning of the episode.

It's in fact, it's William Shatner with a mustache. All you see is this dead corpse that they roll over and go, oh my god, that's Sam, that's my brother. So you're telling me that, I mean. He Shatner doesn't remember that. Shatner and Harve Bennett do not know that Kirk has a brother already.

I guarantee you if you called William Shatner right now and says, does James Kirk have a brother, he'd go yes, of course, buck. Like I get it that to Kirk or to Shatner. Rather, this is a job, right, and maybe he's not expected to remember every single episode that he filmed. But at this point in the life span of Star trek Like, there are people there. We have trekkers and big fans, people who study these shows like they're the Talmud and know everything about it and nitpick these details.

I it didn't take much for me to connect those dots on this, and I'm not necessarily the biggest Trekker in the world. I just don't understand why someone couldn't have taken a pass at this script and say, you know what, let's change this line because it doesn't make any sense because he did lose a brother. I get what you're saying with this, but it's not true. Now most Star Trek fans will call like goofs or fuck ups. They'll call them nits because of those very popular series of books, The Nitpicker's Guide to whatever the particular Star Trek things.

There's an entire ream of books. How about you turn the tables on that guy who's fucking with your franchise and hire him to read your Star Trek five script and go what's wrong with it? And then it's on him. If he wants to release a book about all the fuck ups, it'll don't have to be about himself. But anyway, point being, it's just that easy.

Any one of us could have read that script and gone, you know, he's got a brother, right. Yeah, the line makes no sense because he did lose a brother. I understand that I too. Have lost a brother. You remember Sam.

You served with him for a while on the Enterprise Spock, didn't They. They brought back the character for some of the more recent like Star Trek series, right. I mentioned it on Father Malone's weekly round up Strange New Worlds. The character of Sam Kirk is my favorite character on the show Mustache All. So he's not just some ancillary character they've if they've made him part of this new show.

It indicates to me that he's not a footnote, like someone thought of him and made him part of the show. Just I don't know. Again, it's the cherry on top of this sunday of medioctude and mediocrity. H absolutely, and then we go back to Yosemite. By the way, after all of this has said and none, but what's great is we get to see Spock jamming again on the vulcan harp, which I always love onneronically.

I love when he breaks that thing out. But they finally perform row your Boat with him accompanying them on the vulcan harp. That's it. Thank you. By the way, I do want to mention one thing.

The best thing that I can call out from this whole picture you just reminded me is the return of Jerry Goldsmith doing the score. The score does so much fucking heavy lifting in this movie. If you're feeling any sort of emotional impact from any scene, I can almost guarantee it, it's because the music beneath that scene is outclassing anything that's happening on screen. I agree with you, but I will say they should have made him come up with a new theme. Probably by now it was second year of Next Generation, we as fans were now down with that being the next generation theme.

So to hear it, here felt like this weird limbo thing. And it doesn't really have any effect on the movie itself other than here's the Star Trek theme that he already come up with, and I get it, and it's a great theme. And yes, why would you come up with a new one when you already created such a fucking masterpiece. I'm just saying, each of the Star Trek films since then have had their own specific theme. Why not give us one?

Sure? And that's a very good point. And at the same time, I would say, good for you, Jerry Goldsmith, cash that check. This movie was a piece of shit and you worked way too hard already on it. It's the classic example of putting perfume on a pig.

It's it's trying to class it up and make it seem a little more epic and a little more Star Trek than it actually is. It doesn't really, it doesn't save the picture in any way, shape or form. I'm just saying, if you do end up feeling anything seen to scene, there's a good chance, it's because the music is guiding you towards that emotion. It's certainly not what's happening on screen. You can tell a man who boozes from the company he chooses, and the pig got up and he slowly walked away.

Is that a Tom Waite's lyric. No, that's from one of those Canadian animated films from the early eighties, remember the Canadian Film Board when they were as pumping out animated things, And it was a It's this old joke about this guy being drunk with a pig, and the pig doesn't want to associate with this guy. He's such a fucking disaster that even a pig doesn't want to associate with him. So he said putting lipstick on a pig, or perfume on a pig, And that's what comes to mind every time I think of that, And the pig got is actually slowly walked away. I think I meant to say put lipstick on a pig, but I think perfume works.

Just as well. Absolutely, Petunia, all right, listen, let's get out of here. I'm done with this goddamn movie. I just want to put it in the rear view and never want you to think about it again. I'm agreeing with you, Gene Rodenbury.

For once this was apocryphal, except I do like the backstory for Bones McCoy, that he killed his own dad and then months later found out he could have saved him, except that would have meant months more in agonizing pain and he might have died. Anyway. You can solaced yourself with that, Bones, You don't have to follow the stupid vulcan half brother anyway. Well, maybe there's some way he could have been put in suspended animation until they found a cure like Walt. Business yay, some weird kind of futuristic thing, like if only somebody on the screenwriting staff had thought of some future stuff rocket boots.

Until next time? Where can people find you if they're looking for you? Mister h P. I'm here, Well, when I'm not here, though, I co host the Night Mister Walters and Taxi podcast the lung esteemed companies such as Yourself, fatom Alone, my co host and I also host the Noise Junkies music podcast occasionally, and I also have a bandcamp site Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. As for me, you're here, and what you hear and we're on the midnight viewing, Hello patrons, and months later Hello everybody.

No, I'll just be a couple of weeks anyway. Next week is going to be a Hammerhouse of Horrors. The week after that it's going to be Star Trek six, The Undiscovered Country Nicholas Meyer's original title for Star Trek two and the last. Of the original series movies, right. The last of the original full cast and on the enterprise as it were in the twenty third century.

We're going to be jumping ahead about seventy five years for the next film. Yeah, st conduct