Rewatching the Star Trek movies! Here’s The Final Frontier (1989) in all its broken glory. Shatner directs! Script disagreements galore! Paramount slashed the budget! Sybok! Row your boat! God needs a starship! The fan dance! This one has it all.  

Here’s what happens: Kirk, Spock, and Bones are called in from vacation to the still-being-built Enterprise A following a hostage situation on a hostile desert planet. But the kidnapping is a ruse by Sybok, a Vulcan who’s very in touch with his emotional side. Sybok’s plan is to seize control of the Enterprise and take into the center of the galaxy on a search to find… God. Also, Sybok is Spock’s never-before-mentioned long-lost brother!

Captains courageous: Sybok has this telepathic power to take away everyone’s pain. Kirk refuses, asserting that he accepts his flaws and past mistakes, asserting “I need my pain!” In Trek, our innate humanity is what wins out over alien weirdness. Therefore, Kirk’s refusal to undergo Sybok’s treatment is what allows him to see through the B.S. at the movie’s climax and famously ask, “Why does God need a starship?”

Ol’ pointy ears: Spock’s whole life-death-rebirth journey across these films has been about accepting his emotional/human side in contrast with his hardline Vulcan/logical side. Now he’s put up against Sybok, who all the emotional side. Spock refuses to kill Sybok when Kirk orders him to, but then Spock sides with Kirk against Sybok throughout the rest of the film. Sybok departs the plot abruptly, leaving his and Spock’s issues forever unresolved.

Welcome aboard: Many fans over the years have been disappointed by how Star Trek V introduces a never-before-heard-of brother for Spock. But Trek continuity – including the original series’ “Journey to Babel,” the animated series’ “Yesteryear,” TNG’s “Sarek,” the 1994 novel “Sarek” by A.C. Crispin, and SNW’s “The Serene Squall” – is wildly inconsistent when describing or depicting Spock’s birth and childhood. Spock’s true origins, therefore, are unknowable.

Continuity café: In the TNG episode “Disaster,” a little girl says her favorite nursery rhyme is “The Laughing Vulcan and His Dog.” Writer Ronald D. Moore has said in multiple interviews that this was not a reference to Sybok, though it sure seems to be. The fan speculation and debates continue.

What you leave behind: At its best, Star Trek V has some real visual splendor and a fun, “Gee whiz, let’s go on an adventure!” feel to it. But then, the story is unfocused. The searching-for-God business isn’t well thought out. Sybok’s power to mesmerize people by taking away their pain is one gimmick too many. I don’t know. For as much as we all love Trek, there’s no denying the franchise has a camp element to it, so why not lean into the camp once in a while?

Next: Goopy pink blood!

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