50 Years Ago: Survivors (1975)

For those of you who have never seen it, Survivors is an absolutely grim and thoroughly fascinating British program about an insidious pandemic which wipes out modern civilization and leaves the shattered survivors to re-learn all the old trades in order to build a new -- and hopefully better - world.

In other words, Survivors is sort of The Walking Dead, only without the periodic threat of rampaging zombies.   

Here, the true enemies are modern mankind's ignorance of his own technology and history; and the threat of dangerous, power-hungry men and women who see only opportunity in global tragedy.  The series is set in a new Dark Ages of sorts, with (some) humans afforded a second chance to get things right.

Survivors first aired on the BBC beginning in April of 1975, and was conceived and written by Terry Nation, the man behind Dr. Who's pepper-pot Daleks as well as the classic cult-tv series, Blake's 7 (1978-1981).  

Produced by Terence Dudley, the first series of Survivors stars Carolyn Seymour (Space: 1999, Star Trek: Voyager, Otherworld)  as Abby Grant, a not-terribly special or notable middle-class housewife living outside London.

But Abby's life changes forever in "The Fourth Horseman," the inaugural episode of Survivors.  After the opening credits, we find ourselves in Abby's comfortable country home as she deals with the inconvenience of a "couple dozen cases of the flu" in nearby London.

In short order, the inconveniences pile atop each other, and snowball  The phone lines become jammed.  The trains from London are not arriving on time, or have been canceled all together.  The radio tells an even worse story in America.  There's no electricity in New York, and a State of Emergency has been declared.  There are rumors that millions of people have already died in India and in secretive China.

Before long, the episode cuts to another main character, a single woman named Jenny (Lucy Fleming), whose roommate is suffering from the mysterious illness.  While her roommate is succumbing to lumps under the arms, fever and chills, Jenny goes to the hospital to seek help, and it's a scene of a modern health system in chaos, overrun and failing.  This is one of the most chilling moments in the entire episode.  A line of scared citizens are lined up in the halls, getting flu vaccines in their arms while an understaffed facility attempts to deal with the frightening and fatal unknown.

A doctor soon informs Jenny that the flu-like sickness has a six day incubation period and almost inevitably results in death, but that certain people appear to possess a "natural immunity" to the "mutant virus, not yet identified."  The doctor also implores Jenny -- who appears to be immune -- to escape while she still can, before the cities become "like open cesspits."   

Soon, he warns, garbage and corpses will line the untended streets...

The remainder of "The Fourth Horsemen" is every bit as bleak as this initial act.  

Abby grows ill but after several days unconscious, awakens "cured."  She promptly  finds her husband (Peter Bowles) dead on the sofa, and civilization, essentially, destroyed.

While Jenny wanders the  London streets alone and deals with thugs and looters, Abby sets off in search of her son, Peter, at his boarding school.  

Instead, she finds only an old man with a hearing aide, a teacher, who discusses the state of the world and a possible future. His perspective proves valuable. 

"The aftermath will be worse than the disease," he tells her.  "What is important is learning again," he establishes, pointing out that most 20th century people would not know how to make a candle from scratch, let alone create a machine to generate electricity.  

As this man stresses, "you need to know every part of every process" and "all the old skills and crafts must be learned."

This is difficult and frightening for Abby to accept at first, as part of the "generation that first put man on the moon," but soon she starts to see the wisdom of her mentor's words; and begins formulating, even in this pilot episode, a way forward.  

I admire this aspect of Survivors very much, and it fits in well with Space:1999, which also premiered in 1975 and concerned a global apocalypse of sorts. Both series very much involve what Science Digest editor Arielle Emmett called (in regards to 1999) "the downfall of 20th century technological man."

What remains most shocking, perhaps, about Survivors is that this pilot episode has not aged significantly in fifty years. Any fan of Dr. Who will immediately recognize the 1970s era visual aesthetic: film for exterior location work and videotape for interior studio work. But the important thing is that the ideas have not aged a day, and indeed, the teleplay and its presentation are rather artful in presentation

For instance, "The Fourth Horseman" opens with a shot of an automated tennis ball machine, one that "serves" tennis balls to a human player, in this case Abby.  Thus the very image that the Survivors story commences on is one of, if not excess, let's say "leisure technology."  

Abby spends her afternoon staying fit, playing tennis with a recreation machine. This idea fits in with the theme of the story: that the technological man of the 1970s, faced with a population-destroying pandemic, will no longer have access to such leisure pursuits, nor the wherewithal to construct such machines.  

Later, close-ups and insert shots of radios, televisions and other modern conveniences appear, making the idea of the soon-to-be-lost technology a leitmotif of "The Fourth Horsemen.'

Another great moment comes late in the show, when Abby cuts off most of her long hair and burns down her house, making a clean separation from the lost past. She's living in a new world now, and her first act in this world is, appropriately, to re-shape her appearance to a more practical, less glamorous one.  Her second act is to destroy the symbols of the old world's leisure and convenience: the fully powered, air-conditioned modern home.

An absolutely riveting premiere, "The Fourth Horseman" has some nice visual touches beyond these, including a drastic pullback from Abby -- right up into the sky -- as she begs God not to let her be the only survivor.  The episode also gains significant frisson and impact from its deliberate comparison of this 1975 pandemic to the 1918 Influenza, which killed 50-to-100 million people worldwide (some 3% of the population).Over 500 million people were infected in what was once termed "the greatest medical holocaust in history."

Terry Nation's implication with this 1918 comparison is obvious and important. Something like this deadly plague has happened before (in 1918) and it could easily happen again, on even more catastrophic scale.  

And, of course, today, in 2025, we have indeed seen this horrible history repeat itself in the COVID-19 era.  Basically, Survivors predicted it in the 1970's, at least after a fashion. 

The fear -- which the series got right -- is that with modern air transport, a person could do precisely what a clumsy scientist does in the opening credits of Survivors: bring a fatal disease from country to country before anyone is even aware there is a problem.

Later episodes of Survivors, such as "Genesis," find Abby preaching the cause of "re-learning" old skills to the other ragtag survivors of the plague.  She also clashes with men and women who see opportunity in doomsday, including a governmental official who fancies himself a Feudal Baron, and an aristocratic woman who wants to hoard goods because cash has no value, and people will work for her in exchange for food.  It is her goal to get a piece of the pie, and live in comfort...and goddamn the other unfortunates.

Survivors was remade by the BBC in 2008 -- following up on the contemporary fears of SARS and other viruses -- and was cancelled following a second season.  I have not seen the new series, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the original 1970s series to fans of post-apocalyptic science fiction.   Still, I don't know if too many people are willing to "go there" with COVID in our recent history.

The original Survivors is bleak, devoid of Hollywood bullshit, and intensely frightening.  

The writing is superb, and Terry Nation artfully utilizes the end of the world  scenario to raise questions about human nature, and issues such as law enforcement, allocation of resources and other post-apocalyptic, existentialist obsessions. 

Nimoy Day: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), directed by Leonard Nimoy, proved such a sensation at the box office in the mid-1980s that its success led directly to the development of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 – 1994) in syndication.  

At the time, the fourth Star Trek film won rave reviews from general audiences and mainstream critics, both of whom praised the film’s fish-out-of-water humor and the inventive time-travel narrative.  

Hardcore Star Trek fans admired the film’s droll sense of humor too, as well as the jovial character interaction, though some percentage of this demographic also felt that the movie did not adequately tie-up all the loose ends of the Wrath of Khan/Search for Spock story-arc.

Today, The Voyage Home remains an enjoyably “light” installment of the franchise, though it seems to have lost a bit of its luster. For one thing, The Voyage Home is more flatly-directed than its unsung predecessor, The Search for Spock.  

Some sequences -- particularly those involving the alien probe “talking” to the rescued whales in San Francisco Bay -- would benefit from some judicious trimming. This dialogue between whale probe and whale goes on and on, to such great and unnecessary length that it feels like the audience is being excluded from an important conversation.

But where it ultimately counts, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home re-captures the magic of the Star Trek TV series. This Harve Bennett production showcases the camaraderie between the characters to touching and comedic effect, and perhaps more importantly, serves as a response to the burgeoning “death” culture emerging in the punk movement of the 1980s. 

In the film, the beloved Star Trek characters encounter a 20^th century culture of wanton cussing (or “colorful metaphors”), meet gentle life-forms hunted to “the brink of extinction” and tangle with Mohawk-adorned rockers singing “we’re all bloody worthless” and answers such challenges, simply, with the reminder that mankind will outgrow this violent and emotional adolescence, correct its mistakes, and -- at long last -- reach for the stars…

“They say the sea is cold but the sea contains the hottest blood of all.”

Set sometime after Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), The Voyage Home (1986) commences with Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew (DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei and Walter Koenig) electing to return to Earth from Vulcan in their captured Klingon bird of prey, which McCoy has renamed the Bounty. 

Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who is still recovering his memories after the trauma of Fal-Tor-Pan, elects to return to the Federation Council with his former shipmates so that he can testify on their behalf regarding the controversial Genesis Planet matter.

En route, however, the former Enterprise teams learn that a strange but extremely powerful alien probe is nearing Earth.  It has “neutralized” starships in its path, and is transmitting a strange signal.  Spock detects that the signal resembles the songs of Earth’s humpback whales, an extinct species, and that the probe specifically seeks a response. 

Realizing that only humpback whales can answer the probe, Kirk attempts time travel in the Bird of Prey.  He returns to the 20^th century, circa 1986, and attempts to locate and recruit two humpback whales, George and Gracie, to bring back to the future. 

Along the way, Kirk also meets a cetacean biologist, Gillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks), who doesn’t know quite what to make of the out-of-their-element crew of the Enterprise…

“The only choice we’re given is how many megatons!”

At its core, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is very much about one important idea: the sins of the father being passed on to the children.  

Here, 20th and 21^st century man is responsible for destroying the humpback whale, an act which, in the 23^rd century, imperils the very future of the human race.  The script acknowledges this fact when Kirk notes it that it is “ironic” that by destroying these creatures of the Earth, man has imperiled his own future there as well.  

Perhaps the most remarkable and disturbing footage in the film is a documentary of whale slaughter that Kirk and Spock view at the Cetacean Institute.  Here, we watch -- without gimmickry or fakery -- as men wantonly massacre whales, rip-apart their bodies, and stand in a veritable sea of blood. It’s grotesque and gruesome behavior, and yet the real-life footage establishes well that we are, in fact, hunting an inoffensive species to extinction for, essentially, no reason at this juncture.

When this documentary footage of whale slaughter is considered in tandem with some of the other examples of mankind’s behavior in the 20^th century portions of the film, it isn’t a very pretty picture of human nature.  

A garbage man likes how his wife “fights.”  

A driver calls a pedestrian “a dumb ass.”  

Newspaper headlines in San Francisco reveal the world on the edge of a nuclear precipice. “It’s a miracle these people ever got out of the 20^th century,” Bones quips.

And last but not least, a punk on a bus rudely and aggressively plays his loud, nihilistic music, without thought or regard for his fellow riders.

The lyrics of the song the punk plays go:

“Just where is our future? 

The things we’ve done and said!

Let’s just push the button, we’d be better off dead!”

‘Cause I hate you.”

And I berate you.”

And I can’t wait to get to you!”

“The sins of all our fathers, being dumped on us – the sons.

The only choice we’re given is how many megatons?”

And I eschew you!

And I say screw you!”

And I hope you’re blue too!”

This scene with the punk rocker on the bus is especially important in regard to The Voyage Home’s ultimate message and social commentary.  

The lyrics even mention the “sins of all the fathers” being “dumped on us,” the sons.”  More trenchantly, it espouses a belief that the world is going to tend in self-destruction, and that this destruction, in fact, may be the best thing for mankind…and the planet. 

Importantly,America in the early span of the 1980s was enmeshed in a deep economic recession, locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and our elected government saw Armageddon around every corner.

On the campaign trail in 1980, candidate Ronald Reagan had noted (to televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Baker) that ours "might be the generation" that sees the Biblical Judgment Day. His belief was reinforced in a People Magazine interview in December 1983 when the Gipper noted that the eighties were "the first time in history" that so many Biblical prophecies were coming true. 

Even President Reagan's appointed Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, didn't believe the world was going to last. On February 5, 1981, he said that America's natural resources didn't necessarily need to be safeguarded by government because he did not know "how many more future generations" could be counted on before "the Lord Returns."

Again, these were elected government officials making claims about the pending end of the world. 

So throw in TV movies such as The Day After (1984), Reagan's joke about bombing Russia in "five minutes" and bluster about Russia as the “Evil Empire,” and it is no wonder that America's pop culture (especially genre films) became virtually-obsessed with the End of Life as We Know it.”

The great thing about Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is that it gazes into this cultural darkness and responds not by going “into darkness” in kind.  

Instead, the film responds…with lightness.  

With humor and humanity.  

Kirk, Spock and McCoy reflect (with amazement and surprise) on this “primitive” time period in human history and remind us that -- 20^th century behavior to the contrary -- we will survive and endure.  

We will grow up.  We will do great things.  The world is not going to end in this generation. No, the human adventure is just beginning…

This is the great optimistic spirit of Star Trek, and the very factor that differentiates from many other movie and TV franchises.  It doesn’t tell us that the future is going to be a dystopia.  Rather it says that our present dystopia now is simply a result of our species’ “growing pains” and that the future is a day worth living for. 

The Voyage Home vividly and humorously makes this argument, and indeed there’s something quite inspiring about the whole affair. The film ends on a high-note of uplift and satisfaction as Kirk once again takes the center seat of the starship Enterprise (to the nostalgic sound of 1960s sound effects “chirping”…) and once more sets out for the great unknown, to expand the frontiers of human knowledge.

Regarding the whale probe and its final scene over San Francisco Bay, I credit the filmmakers for not wanting to “spoon feed” us information about the whales’ conversation.  Subtitles would have reduced the conversation to a joke, even. But still, the scene goes on far too long, and the sight of the probe leaving orbit doesn’t seem like resolution enough for the crisis.  

Was the probe just checking in?  Visiting?  I would have loved for instance, if special effects were affordable, to see the probe land in the bay and humpback whales spill out…colonizing the Earth all over again.  That would have been a beautiful statement that mankind is now grown up,  ready and willing to share his world with other peaceful creatures.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home also gets a little carried away with it sense of humor in my opinion.  It’s as if everyone – including the writers – is so caught up in the spirit of fun that some corners get cut. For instance, Scotty and McCoy share the futuristic formula of transparent aluminum with a 20^th century engineer without knowing for certain that he is the actual, historical inventor. 

At another point, the Bird of Prey goes to warp speed while still in Earth’s sky, which seems abrupt at best and dangerous at worst. There are a number of moments like this in the film where it feels like the Star Trek world has been set aside for getting an easy laugh, or for moving the plot-line along.

And again, I just have to state that the film is directed almost listlessly.  There are fewer close-ups here (in direct opposition to Nimoy’s technique apparent in Search for Spock) and many wide-shots that, while capturing great locations like the Golden Gate Bridge, somehow distance us from the characters and their situation this time around.  There’s something about the editing and selection of shots that make the film feel almost unfinished, or half-complete.

Despite such drawbacks, Star Trek: The Voyage Home overall oozes a sense of joy, fun and optimism.  It’s a happy, forward-looking movie in the Trek canon, and there’s not a super-villain or terrorist in sight to motivate the action or the relationships.  

Nimoy Day: Baffled! (1973)

Early this week, I celebrated William Shatner's birthday, and today I want to draw attention to some of his co-star, Leonard Nimoy's great work too. Of course, Shatner is still with us. We lost the amazing Mr. Nimoy a decade ago, and still feel that loss a decade later.

Like Sweet, Sweet Rachel before it, Baffled! concerns a person from our Modern Age of Reason and Technology (The 20^th and 21^st century) who becomes unexpectedly engulfed in a psychic “mystery” and must solve a crime related to it.  These films are as much detective stories (or film noirs, I suppose you could argue) as they are horror pictures. They involve murder, robbery, and other criminal activity.

And also like that earlier film, Baffled! is a bit slow-paced and over-long. The pacing seems off at points, and some action beats don’t succeed, either because of inadequate staging (bad rear projection) or a lack of suspense.

Finally, Baffled! too was designed to be the pilot for an ongoing TV series.  Sweet, Sweet Rachel went on to become The Sixth Sense (1972), a series that starred Garry Collins and lasted two seasons. 

Baffled! never went on to series format, even though the movie boasts some promise

What, exactly is that promise?

It’s in the performances, specifically. Leonard Nimoy and Susan Hampshire star as the duo investigating the unusual supernatural events, and there’s some good, interesting chemistry between the performers. For those of you who are familiar with Nimoy primarily as the unemotional Spock on Star Trek (1966-1969), Baffled! is a remarkable counterpoint. He’s charming, laidback, and quite funny in the telefilm. Susan Hampshire, playing an occult expert, is surprisingly sweet and innocent in the role, which is an interesting twist too.  Where Alex Dreier and Gary Collins both performed their “psychic” support roles with utter solemnity and seriousness, Hampshire plays it all sincerely, but gently. 

In all, Baffled! is intriguing, but not great.

“Evil forces do exist. Always have…”

During a competitive car race at the Pennsylvania Run, ace driver Tom Kovack (Nimoy) runs off the road when he experiences a psychic vision of a woman in trouble, in a manor house in England.  An expert in psychic phenomena and student of the occult, Michelle Brent (Hampshire) meets with him later, and suggests to him that his vision was true; that he possesses a “rare and mysterious insight.”

At first, Kovack dismisses this possibility out-of-hand, but soon experiences a second and a third vision.  In one such vision, he falls from the manor house -- which Michelle has identified real place, Wyndham House in Devon -- into s turbulent ocean over the cliff-side.  After the startling vision, Kovack discovers that he is actually soaked.

Realizing he needs help to understand better what is happening to him, Kovack teams up with Michelle, and they had to England together, to stay at Wyndham House and investigate. 

There is another guest staying there too, a famous movie star, Andrea Glenn (Vera Miles). She is waiting for her estranged husband, and has brought their twelve-year old daughter, Jennifer (Jewel Blanch) to the house as well.  

After Jennifer receives a necklace with a wolf-head pendant from her mysterious, absent father, the girl seems to age dramatically in a day, acting like a fifteen-year old, surly teenager. 

Mrs. Farraday (Rachel Roberts), who runs the house, however, starts to appear much younger.

Tom becomes convinced that Andrea was the woman in danger in his first vision, and that some dark force has taken control of her daughter, Jennifer, and is plotting against her.

Baffled! is one of those cases in which a movie’s set-up is more intriguing, finally, than the actual plot or resolution of the plot. After all is said and done, the psychic plot is just a gimmick and the real motive here is for someone to acquire Andrea Glenn’s fortune.

The best part of this telefilm is the first half-hour, wherein Tom Kovack experiences his first psychic visions, and encounters Michelle, who encourages him to pursue them.  The writing is strong, the performances a good, and there’s even a bit of a cinematic feel to the production.

Once the film has settled down in the British manor house, by contrast, the movie loses some of its interest, and comes to a near stand-still in terms of pacing. Unlike Sweet, Sweet Rachel and its follow-up, The Sixth Sense, the visuals in Baffled! aren’t even particularly stylish. Stylish, colorful murder sequences enlivened both earlier productions, and yet are absent here.

The movie’s real virtue is, frankly, Leonard Nimoy, who is so un-Spock-like here it is astounding.  Tom Kovack is a mellow seventies bachelor (and race car driver), trying to make time with the ladies and commenting ironically on everything that happens to him. I wouldn’t say that Nimoy is Shatner-esque in the film, but he seems is downright effusive compared to his buttoned down, controlled performances as the half-Vulcan.

The mystery itself is a bit odd, and uninspiring, and director Philip Leacock fails to wring substantial suspense from the action, even when Kovack and Michelle become trapped in the bottom of the elevator shaft in Wyndham House. The film’s ending -- and restoration of order -- can be seen coming a mile away, and reflects the laws of the occult established as far back as The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

Baffled! also ends with a plug for a series that would never come. After the mystery is solved at Wyndham House, Kovack and Michelle decide to go their separate ways. But then -- just as he is getting in his car – Tom conveniently experiences another vision that shows someone (strangers) in danger. He summons Michelle, she jumps into his car, and they’re off to solve another psychic case.

So, they’re a team!

There’s a part of me that is sorry that Baffled didn’t make it to series so we could see that team solve more intriguing mysteries. I would have loved to see Nimoy and Hampshire work together again, and feel that if the episodes were an hour instead of 90 minute, there would be less chance for the tediousness that impacts some moments here.

Today, Baffled! is more of a curiosity than an artistically satisfying endeavor, and I can’t help but wonder how history would have been different if the concept had become a hit, and Nimoy became well-known not just for Star Trek, but for playing a groovy, 1970s psychic investigator.

Shatner Day! Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is widely-regarded as the worst Star Trek film ever made. 

Of course, that's wrong.  

These days we have Section 31 (2025) to take that title, but more importantly...Nemesis (2002)? Insurrection? (1998), Generations? (1994)

I'd submit they are all worse than The Final Frontier.

Okay, okay, I am a Star Trek fan, and can see the silver-lining in every Star Trek movie. 

So I am happy to enumerate the aspects I appreciate and admire about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

However, for the record, it is also necessary for me to note where and when things go dramatically wrong with the movie. So this review isn't going to be all "hugs and puppies."

That fact established there are indeed many components of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier worth lauding and I will explain in detail below why I feel that way.

Let's start, however, with a brief re-cap of the plot. The fifth Star Trek picks up with Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew on vacation on Earth -- in the paradise-like setting of Yosemite -- when a dangerous hostage situation unfolds in the Neutral Zone. 

There, on Nimbus III -- on the "planet of Galactic Peace" -- a Vulcan renegade named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) has taken hostage the Romulan, Klingon and Federation counsels. He has done so with an army of devout "believers." Sybok's gambit is to capture a starship so he can set a course for the center of the Galaxy and find the mythical planet Sha Ka Ree (named after Sean Connery), where he believes "God" awaits.

An unprepared U.S.S. Enterprise, with only a skeleton crew aboard, is assigned to rescue the hostages. The attempt fails, and Sybok commandeers the Enterprise using his particular brand of Vulcan brainwashing to persuade the crew to follow him. In particular, he frees each man he encounters of his "secret pain." Kirk soon learns that Sybok is Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) half-brother, a heretic who rejected Vulcan dogma and came to believe that emotion, not logic, is the key to enlightenment.

With a Klingon bird of prey in hot pursuit, the Enterprise passes through the Great Barrier at the center of the galaxy and encounters a mysterious planet. There, on the surface, awaits a creature who claims to be "God." Kirk questions the Being, and soon a vision of Heaven goes to Hell.

Because It's There: The Search for the Ultimate Knowledge; The Search for a Film's Noble Intentions

From Captain Kirk's effort to climb El Capitan at Yosemite National Park in the film's first scene to Sybok's probe through the foreboding and mysterious Great Barrier, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier concerns, in large part, a typically-Star Trek conceit: the human quest to reach a higher summit and to find at that apex a new or deeper truth about our existence.

When Mr. Spock asks Kirk why he would involve himself in an endeavor as dangerous as climbing a mountain, Kirk answers simply, "because it's there." That's an apt shorthand to describe one of our basic human drives. What our eyes detect, we want to explore, to experience. Enlightenment, for us, is often attained on the next plateau.

Sybok terms his search for "God" the search for the "ultimate knowledge" and he too seeks to climb a mountain after a fashion: penetrating the Great Barrier which protects a secret at the center of our galaxy. The means by which Sybok conducts his quest are not entirely kosher, however (kidnapping diplomats and hijacking a starship). But his quest, though coupled with his vanity, is sincere. An outcast among his Vulcan brethren, Sybok believes that if he can "locate" God, his beliefs will be validated, and thus perhaps re-examined by those who made him a pariah.

At one point late in the film, Kirk seems to suddenly realize that Sybok and he share a similar drive; that he has stubbornly refused Sybok the same liberty he affords himself, not merely to "go climb a rock," but to see, literally, what awaits at the mountain-top. Upon this realization, Kirk gazes knowingly at an old-fashioned captains' wheel in the Enterprise's observation deck. His hand brushes across a bronze plaque engraved with the legend "Where No Man Has Gone Before," a re-iteration of the franchise's "bold," trademark phrase.  In a world where so many sci-fi movies depend on black-and-white portrayals of "good" and "evil," it's quite bold that The Final Frontier actually establishes a connection --- and one involving the meaning of life itself -- between protagonist and antagonist.

It should be noted here, perhaps, that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is not out on some wacky limb, franchise-wise, in exploring the existence of "God," or a planet from which life sprang. On the former front, the Enterprise encountered the Greek God Apollo in the second-season episode "Who Mourns for Adonis" and on the latter front, discovered the planet "Eden" in the third season adventure "The Way to Eden."  In a very real way, The Final Frontier feels like a development of this oft-seen Trek theme, as much as The Motion Picture was a development of themes featured in episodes such as "The Changeling" and "The Doomsday Machine."

What remains laudable about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, however, is that screenwriter David Loughery, with director Shatner and producer Harve Bennett, carry their central metaphor  -- discovery of the ultimate knowledge -- to the hearts of the beloved franchise characters. Star Trek V very much concerns not just the external quest for the divine, but a personal and human desire to understand the meaning of life. 

Or, at the very least, the path to understanding the meaning of life.

What that desire comes down to here is one lengthy scene set in the Enterprise observation deck. There are no phasers, transporters, starships, Klingons, or special effects  to be found. Instead, the scene involves Kirk, Spock, Bones and Sybok grappling with their personal beliefs, with their sense of personal identity and history, even. Sybok attempts to convert Spock and McCoy to his agenda by using his hypnotic powers of the mind. "Each man hides a secret pain. Share yours with me and gain strength from the sharing," he offers. One at a time, Kirk's allies crumble under the mesmeric influence. Then Sybok comes to Kirk, and the good captain steadfastly refuses Sybok's brand of personal enlightenment.

In refusing to share his pain, Kirk notes to Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) that "you know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

This specific back-and-forth is the heart of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The Kirk/Sybok confrontation embodies the difference between Catholic Guilt (as represented by Kirk), and New Age "release" (as represented by Sybok). In terms of a short explanation, Catholic guilt is essentially a melancholy or world-weariness brought about by an examined life. It's the constant questioning and re-parsing of decisions and history (some call it Scrupulosity). And if you know Star Trek, you understand that this sense of melancholy is, for lack of a better word, very Kirk-ian.

As a starship captain, James Kirk has sent men and women to their deaths and made tough calls that changed the direction of the galaxy, literally. But he has never been one to do so blindly, or without consideration of the consequences. "My God, Bones, what have I done?" He asks after destroying the Enterprise in The Search for Spock, and that's just one, quick example of his reflective nature. In short, Kirk belabors his decisions, so much so that McCoy once had to tell him (in "Balance of Terror") not to obsess; not to "destroy the one called Kirk."

What Captain Kirk believes - and what is crucial to his success as a starship captain -- is that he must carry and remember the guilt associated with his tough decisions. He must re-hash those choices and constantly relive them, or else, during the next crisis, he will fail. His decisions are part of him; he is the cumulative result of those choices, and to lose them would be -- in his very words here -- "to lose himself."  Pain, anguish, regret...these are all crucial elements of Kirk's being, and of the human equation.

By contrast, Sybok promises an escape from melancholy. His abilities permit him to "erase" the presence of pain all-together. This a kind of touchy-feely, New Age balm in which a person lets go of pain (via, for example, ACT: Active Release Technique) and then, once freed, suddenly sees the light.

Sybok's approach arises from the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (the era of the Original Series), and might be described -- albeit in glib fashion -- as "Do what feels right" (a turn-of-phrase Spock himself uses in the 2009 Star Trek). But Sybok is a master of semantics. He doesn't "control minds," he says, he "frees" them. Left unexamined by Sybok is Kirk's interrogative: once freed from pain, what does a person have left?  What remains when a person's core is removed?  An empty vessel? 

Isn't pain, borne by experience a part of our core psychological make-up? The New Age depiction of Sybok in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier led critic David Denby to term this entry "the most Californian" of the Star Trek films (New York, June 19,1989, page 68).

In countenancing the false god of Sha Ka Ree, these belief systems collide. Sybok -- freed of pain and self-reflection -- is unaware of his own tragic flaws. Eventually he sees them, terming them "arrogance" and "vanity." But Kirk, who has always carried his choices with him, is able to face the malevolent alien with a sense of composure and entirely appropriate suspicion. Kirk is able, essentially, to ask "the Almighty for his I.D." because he has maintained his Catholic sense of guilt. He's been around the block too many times to be cowed by an alien who wants to appropriate his ship.

The lengthy scene in the observation deck, during which Sybok attempts to shatter the powerful triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is probably the best in the film. Shatner shoots it well too, with Sybok intersecting the perimeters of this famous character "triangle" (of id, ego, and super-ego) and then, visually, scattering its points to the corners of the room when doubt is sewn.

And then, after Kirk's powerful argument and re-assertion of Catholic Guilt, the triangle (depicted visually, with the three characters as "points") is re-constructed. Sybok is both literally and symbolically forced out of their unified "space."

In point of fact, Shatner uses this triangular, three-person blocking pattern a lot in the film. Variety did not like the movie, but noted the power of this particular sequence in its original review: "Shatner, rises to the occasion," the magazine wrote, "in directing a dramatic sequence of the mystical Luckinbill teaching Nimoy and DeForest Kelley to re-experience their long-buried traumas. The re-creations of Spock's rejection by his father after his birth and Kelley's euthanasia of his own father are moving highlights."

While discussing Shatner, I should also add -- no doubt controversially -- that Shatner boasts a fine eye for visual composition. The opening scene on the cracked, arid plain of Nimbus III, and the follow-up scene set at Yosemite reveal that he has an eye not just for capturing natural beauty, but for utilizing the full breadth of the frame. 

As a director, Shatner came out of television (helming episodes of T.J. Hooker), but his visual approach doesn't suggest a TV mentality. On the contrary, I would argue that there are moments in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that are the most inherently cinematic of the film series, after Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Abrams' big-budget reboot of 2009.

What Does God Need With a Starship? Pinpointing the Divine inside The Human Heart and in the Natural World

I've noted above how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier involves the search for the ultimate knowledge, and uses two distinctive viewpoints (Catholic Guilt embodied by Kirk and New Age philosophy embodied by Sybok) to get at that knowledge.

What's important, after that "quest" is the film's conclusion about the specific "ultimate knowledge" gleaned from the journey.

In short order, in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the angry Old Testament-styled God-Alien reveals his true colors and demonstrates a capricious, violent-side. After Kirk asks "what does God need with a starship," "God" is wrathful and violent. And this is what the site Common Sense Atheism suggested was really being asked by our secular, humanist hero.

"One might ask, "What does God need with animal sacrifice? With a human sacrifice? With a catastrophic flood? With billions of galaxies and trillions of stars and millions of unstoppably destructive black holes? What does God need with congenital diseases and a planet made of shifting plates that cause earthquakes and tsunamis? Isn't the whole point of omnipotence that God could make a good world without all these needlessly silly or harmful phenomena?" 

Moreover, why should humans obey the commands of someone as capricious, jealous, petty, and violent as the God of the Jewish scriptures?

This critical line of thought reminds me of my experience seeing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in the theater with my girlfriend at the time, a devout Jew.

Afterwards, she was utterly convinced that Kirk and company had indeed encountered the Biblical, Old Testament God. And that they had, in fact, destroyed Him. Her reasoning for this belief was that "God" as depicted in the film actually looked and acted in the very fashion of the Old-Testament God.

On the former, front (God's appearance), The Journal of Religion and Film, in a piece "Any Gods Out There?" by John S. Schultes, opined: "This being appears in the stereotypical Westernized figure of the "Father God" as depicted in art. He has a giant head, disembodied, depicting an older man with a kind face, flowing white hair and booming voice."

On the latter front -- behavior -- there are also important commonalities. The Old Testament God was cruel, self-righteous, unjust, demanding, and acting according to a closely-held personal agenda (moving in a mysterious way?) without thought of courtesy or explanation to humans. Consider that the Old Testament God destroyed whole cities (like those of Sodom and Gomorrah), and that it's his plan to kill us by the billion-fold in the End Times, if we don't believe in him. The Old Testament God is indeed one of violence and punishment.

And this is precisely how Star Trek V: The Final Frontier depicts this creature. He wants to deliver his power -- his violence and judgment -- to "every corner of creation." Naturally, Kirk can't allow this brand of subjugation...even it comes from God.

Over the years, I have come to agree more and more with my former-girlfriend's assessment. The alien portrayed in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier may indeed be the Old Testament God of our legends. Just as Apollo was indeed, Apollo of Greek Myth in "Who Mourns for Adonis."

And, in fact, Captain Kirk kills God here. (Or rather, it's a cooperative venture with the Klingons...). In doing so, Kirk frees humanity (and the universe itself) from the oppression of superstition, judgment and tyranny.  Ask yourself, keeping in mind Gene Roddenberry's visions of humanity and religion (expressed candidly in the TNG episode "Who Watches the Watchers"): is that Star Trek V’s ultimate message?

The ultimate knowledge, according to this Trek movie is that God only exists "right here; the human heart," as Kirk notes near the film's conclusion. Accordingly, The Journal of Religion and Society explains that this conclusion represents a narrative wrinkle true to "the collective history of Classic Star Trek," a re-assertion of Roddenberry-esque, secular principles. In his essay, "From Captain Stormfield to Captain Kirk, Two 20th Century Representations of Heaven, scholar Michel Clasquin concludes:

"In "Final Frontier", Heaven turns out to be Hell: the optimism is deferred until the heroes have returned to the man-made heaven of the United Federation of Planets. The film ends where it began: with Spock, Kirk and McCoy on furlough in a thoroughly tamed Earth wilderness. This, the film tells us, is the true Heaven, the secular New Jerusalem that humans, Vulcans and a smattering of other species will build for themselves in the 24th century, a world in which the outward heavenly conditions reflect the true Heaven that resides in the human heart."

Clasquin's point here absolutely demands a re-evaluation of the book-end Yosemite camping scenes of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Many critics complained that the film takes a long time to get started, since the crew must "laboriously" be re-gathered from vacation. 

However, if Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's point is that "God" resides in man's heart (and is, in fact, man himself) and that the Garden of Eden, or Heaven itself is "a tamed Earth wilderness," -- a finely-developed sense of responsible environmentalism, in fact -- then these two sequences of "nature" prove absolutely necessary in terms of the narrative. Heaven on Earth is within our grasp, the movie seems to note. We don't have to die to get there. We merely must act responsibly as stewards of our planet (or in Star Trek's universe, planets, plural). The human heart, and the Beautiful Earth: these are Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's (atheist) optimistic views of where, ultimately, Divinity resides.  If you desire a Star Trek movie with some pretty deep philosophical underpinnings, look no further than William Shatner's The Final Frontier.

"All I Can Say is, They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To: A Movie Shattered (not Shatnered...) by Poor Execution"

William Shatner handles many of the visual aspects of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with flair and distinction. His impressive efforts are badly undercut, however, by three weaknesses. The first such weakness involves studio interference in the very story he wanted to tell. The second involves inferior special effects, and the third involves slipshod editing.

On the first front, William Shatner sought initially to make a serious, even bloody movie concerning fanatical religious cults and God imagery. His plan was shit-canned by Paramount Studios.  Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) had just proven a major success, and the Powers That Be judged this was so because the movie evidenced a terrific sense of humor, particularly fish-out-of-water humor. The edict came down that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier had to include the same level of humor.

Frankly, this edict was the kiss of death. The humor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home grew organically out of the situation: advanced people of the 23rd century being forced to deal with people and activities of the "primitive" year 1986.  The scenario there called for fish-out-of-water humor, and no characters were sacrificed on the altar of laughs.

Above, I described the thematic principles of Star Trek V: seeking the ultimate summit both externally and internally, and discovering that the Divine is inside us -- or is, actually, the Human Heart. So how exactly, does Scotty knocking himself out on a ceiling beam, or Uhura performing a fan dance, or Chekov rehashing his "wessel" shtick fit that conceit?

The short answer is that it doesn't. Such humor had to be grafted on here, and it shows. It's forced, awkward, and entirely unnecessary. The inclusion of so much humor actually runs counter to the grandeur and seriousness of the story Shatner hoped to tell.

And then -- in a typical bout of bean-counter nonsense -- what does Paramount do next? 

Well, it advertises and markets Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with the ad-line "why are they putting seat belts in theaters this summer?" suggesting that the movie is an action-packed roller-coaster ride! This is after they demanded the movie be a comedy! 

Talk about assuring audience dissatisfaction. Tell audiences that the movie they are about to see is super-exciting and action-packed, and then give them Vulcan nerve-pinches on horses, Uhura and Scotty flirting with each other, and crewmen singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."  Quite simply, The Final Frontier's marketing campaign didn't do a good job of managing audience expectations.

The second aspect of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that damages it so egregiously involves the special visual effects. A movie like this -- about the search for God, no less -- must feature absolutely inspiring and immaculate, awesome visuals. We must believe in the universe that includes Sha Ka Ree, and the God Creature. 

Originally, Shatner envisioned Sha Ka Ree turning into a kind of Bosch-ean Hell, featuring demons and rivers of fire. But what we get instead is a glowing Santa Claus-head in a beam of light, and...a much too familiar desert planet.

What's worse is that many visuals don't match-up. When Kirk's shuttle flies over the God planet initially, the surface of the world looks like a microscopic landscape (a sort of God's Eye view of the head-of-a-pin, as it were). But when the shuttle lands the planet just looks like a terrestrial desert. This is Heaven?

Perhaps Star Trek V could have surmounted this problem, since the TV series was never about special effects anyway, but about ideas. But the special effects in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier fail to even adequately render believable and "real" such commonplace Star Trek things as starships in motion or photon torpedo blasts. Watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a little bit like watching Golan and Globus's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1986): the cheapness of the effects make you wince, and stands in stark contrast to a franchise's glory days.

And the editing! 

Oh my, to quote Mr. Sulu. 

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is edited -- in polite terms -- in disastrous fashion. During Kirk, Spock and McCoy's escape on rocket boots through an Enterprise turbo shaft, the same deck numbers repeat, in plain view. 

When Kirk falls from his perch high on El Capitan the movie cuts to a lengthy shot of Shatner -- in front of a phony rear-projection background -- flapping his arms. 

And just take a look at how Kirk's weight, make-up, hair-cut, and disposition shift back-and-forth in his final scene with General Koord and General Klaa aboard the Klingon Bird of Prey. This mismatch was due to post-production re-shoots when the original ending was deemed unacceptable.

Forget the script (which might have worked without the studio-demanded humor). Forget the acting (which is pure Star Trek-- and, in my estimation, perfect for a futuristic passion play), it's the editing that scuttles this film. 

Whether it's allowing us the time to notice that Sybok's haircut and outfit change on Sha Ka Ree, or permitting us to linger too long on visible wires in two fight scenes, Star Trek V's cutting is just not up to par.

Shatner should get to do a director's cut, and trim his misbegotten film down to a mean, lean eighty-five minutes. The worst editing, effects, and jokey moments would be excised, and audiences would be surprised, perhaps, how visually adroit, how dynamic, how meaningful and even spiritual this Final Frontier could be sans the theatrical release's considerable problems.

Let's face it, modern criticism often thrives on hyperbole, so it's fun and dramatic to declare that Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is one of the ten worst science fiction films EVER! The only problem is, it's not  true. 

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier conforms to Muir's Snowball Rule of Movie Viewing. Allow me to explain. Because Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is perceived by the majority of critics and Star Trek fans as "bad," everything about the film gets criticized, when -- in point of fact -- many other Star Trek movies feature many of the same goofy errors. 

For instance, I have read some Star Trek fans complain vociferously about the fact that the Enterprise travels to the center of the galaxy here in a matter of hours. The fact that in First Contact, the Enterprise gets from the Romulan Neutral Zone to Earth in time to join a battle against the Borg, already in progress, goes unnoticed or at least uncommented upon. So, the starship got there in like, you know, a few minutes, I guess. But because First Contact is beloved and generally evaluated as good, it generally doesn't garner the same level of negative attention or scrutiny. When it fails in a spot here or there, it gets a pass.

Whereas, by contrast, the details in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier definitely draw heavier scrutiny. The "bad movie" snowball, once rolling down a hill, just grows larger and larger. We forgive less and less.  Every aspect of the film is nitpicked and called into question, deservedly or not.  

It becomes harder, then, to register and recognize the good.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is an ambitious failure. But ambitious may be the operative word here. The movie certainly aimed high, and hoped to chart some fascinating spiritual and philosophical ground that feels abundantly true to the Star Trek line and heritage. 

But plainly, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. 

Again, I renew my call for a Shatner-guided 85 minute version.  One closer to his original vision, with improved special effects, and better editing.  A new official release, re-modulated as I suggest, may be the only way for opinion-hardened Star Trek fans to see the good points of this admittedly problematic entry in the film canon.