Just shy of 30 years after the fact, William Shatner has acknowledged in a new memoir that directing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier may have been a mistake. While the franchise is enjoying a bit of a resurgence with Star Trek: Discovery and an upcoming Emmy Governor's award, it's had some rough spots along the way. The odd-numbered entries in the long-running film series have always suffered a reputation for lack of quality, but most agree that the fifth film represented the bottom of the barrel for the original crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise.
Criticized both for being too religious for a Trekfilm and bearing too many similarities to the not-well-received Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this outing saw the Enterprise forcibly commandeered by Spock's long-lost half-brother Sybok (Laurence Luckenbill), to undertake a literal quest for God. While some of the comedy bits and the relationships between the characters drew praise, most dismissed the film as a mess that tried to answer a question that no one asked, "What does God need with a starship?"
Ahead of Shatner's new book Live Long And... What I Might Have Learned Along The Way hitting shelves, the website Trek Movie has offered up some tidbits gleaned from its pages. Among them is a recollection that when producers rejected Shatner's original idea (which was inspired by televangelists, and would have revealed "God" as actually being the devil), they offered him a deal: compromise on the script and he could still sit in the director's chair. Shatner now believes that his willingness to alter the story "doomed the picture from the beginning."
While whether or not keeping the original idea of having Kirk square off with Satan in order to rescue Bones and Spock from Hell would have saved the film from infamy is debatable, at least Shatner now acknowledges that he bears some responsibility for an entry that almost killed the franchise. Along with that admission, the article describes some other interesting selections from Shatner's memoir, including an experience with magic mushrooms in Australia. Of course, there's absolutely no indication that those two stories are in any way related, but one does have to wonder.
These days Shatner seems to be doing just fine, whether he's angling to do a cameo in Quentin Tarantino's proposed R-rated Star Trek movie, or pressing on Twitter for Star Wars's Carrie Fisher to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. While CBS is intent on restoring the franchise to it's former glory, and another Enterprise captain is set to reprise his role in a new show on the network's All Access streaming service, Shatner seems content to enjoy a less hectic pace of life than a regular TV role would allow. After a lifetime of adventures (and misadventures) both in front of and behind the camera, he's probably earned the break.
TAGS: Star Trek
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