Rating:
For the fifth voyage of the Starship Enterprise, Leonard Nimoy, who directed the two excellent previous outings, turned over the helm to William Shatner. This is not the first time that a first officer has known more about running the ship than the captain, but things go well enough until the crew meets the real Man in Charge:
A force that might be the Almighty.
The road to heaven is paved with good intentions, and the theme that each person - and, for that matter, each species - tends to create a maker in his or her own image is not easily visualized, let alone dramatized. That's even more true when things turn out to be less than they seem. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier makes the mistake of putting that image on the screen in a sequence that rivals the burning bush in Cecil B. DeMille's second reading of The Ten Commandments for ungainly pomposity.
The Enterprise may boldly rove the cosmos, but the people who put this enjoyable series back on track with the third installment should have shunned the temptation to be cosmic. Theology and thrills are not the most congenial companions and the uneasiness of the alliance is compounded by a climax in which key points of exposition and even explanation are missing. These absentees are apparently the result of hasty revisions just before the film's release.
All of which is a pity because Shatner, who debuts as a director here, brings some strengths to the daunting task of shepherding a high-tech, big- budget movie from conception (the idea for the story was his) all the way to the final cut. He establishes an easy rhythm from the start, with Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy teaching Mr. Spock the mysteries of camping in Yosemite National Park and trying to get the perplexed Vulcan to take part in an a cappella sing-along of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat. "
When they are summoned back to the ship and the Enterprise is dispatched to the planet Nimbus to break up what seems to be a terrorist hostage-taking incident, Shatner brings out the banter and the good-natured feuding that is such an engaging and important part of these films. Unlike Robert Wise and Nicholas Meyer, who directed the first two Star Trek films, Shatner knows that this series has always been about men, not machines.
In the two Treks he directed - The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home, the fourth and best in the series - Nimoy attended to the chemistry among the crew members and restored a balance to the films. If there is a signal difference to those two excellent pieces of science fiction and Shatner's effort, it is a distinction between heart and soul.
The search for the latter begins on Nimbus, which boasts some homages to George Lucas - let's be kind and not call them steals from Star Wars. Nimbus is a run-down planet in the neutral zone where the Klingons and the Federation are represented by consuls. The diplomats are captured by Sybok, a renegade Vulcan all too well known to Spock. The price of freedom is the Enterprise.
Sybok, done with a fine edge of religious lunacy by Laurence Luckinbill, wants transportation through a barrier that no creature has traversed to a place where he fervently believes the ultimate, eternal truths can be confronted and understood. The sad truth is that this is where Star Trek V veers off course.
The strength of the television series - both old and new - and Nimoy's contributions lay in their ability to air provocative discussions of issues such as racism, pollution, moral responsibility, freedom and political systems in compact, entertaining stories. More important, they were the kind of issues that were accessible and relevant. The Voyage Home, for instance, raises, among other things, the theme of pollution and our obligation to future generations.
