Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989, 108 min, PG) – Directed by William Shatner & written for the screen by David Loughery, featuring Laurence Luckinbill
Generally considered to be the weakest film in the series and nominated for multiple Razzies, “The Final Frontier” exemplifies my earlier statement that “watching ‘Star Trek’ is like an afternoon with your friends: sometimes they’re entertaining, sometimes they’re boring, but they’re always reassuring.” It’s pleasant to see the guys in action, even if they’re not doing anything interesting. The bits of “The Final Frontier” in which Kirk, Spock, and McCoy pound back a few while on vacation and bicker are genuinely entertaining, and the flirting between Scotty and Uhura is all the more funny because there never seemed to be a hint of it anywhere else in all the movies and episodes. Gentle comic leftovers from “Star Trek IV” aside, “The Final Frontier” is a clumsy narrative about a rogue Vulcan who has rejected logic (Luckinbill) and become a kind of terrorist on a neutral planet. His plan is to take hostages, then hijack a starship (the Enterprise), and then go where no man has gone before. Too much time is spent with the shenanigans on the neutral planet and when we finally do get where no man has gone before, it’s a disappointment. Undue blame for “The Final Frontier” has been placed on Shatner’s direction—he handles things calmly and efficiently, as has been the style of the “Trek” films from “Khan” on—when more blame should be put on the script he co-wrote.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991, 109 min, PG) – Directed by Nicholas Meyer & written for the screen by Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn, featuring Christopher Plummer, Kurtwood Smith, and Kim Cattrall.
In many ways, this last film of the series is the consummate and most perfect “Star Trek” movie. It has the tight adventure plotting, outer space battles, scenery-chewing heavy, questions about aging, and the director of “The Wrath of Khan;” it has the Klingons of “The Search for Spock,” as well as a touch of that film’s quiet melancholy; and it has the self-aware humor and ease with years of character development that made “The Voyage Home” so much fun and “The Final Frontier” barely bearably. “The Undiscovered Country” also carries on the series’ long-standing tradition of asking the big questions and drawing parallels between the present and the speculative future. As if all that weren’t enough, it also has a crackerjack Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, a mystery that only works because we’re intimate with the rules of the “Star Trek” universe (rules that are about to hemorrhage in “The Next Generation,” “Deep Space Nine,” etc.). Throw in humans and aliens alike quoting Shakespeare and a terrific stuff-happening-in-ten-places-at-once action movie ending and presto! A good time is had by all.
The Federation’s long-time nemesis the Klingons have suddenly suffered economic catastrophe. Their empire is on the verge of ruin. Some within the Federation say “exterminate the brutes!” while others urge reconciliation. Kirk finds himself standing with the former instead of the latter, but the Federation sends him to escort the Klingon diplomats. Yeah, as if that’ll go well. Before you can say “beam me up Scotty,” Kirk and McCoy are wrongfully imprisoned, Spock is having to uncover a conspiracy, people are getting shot in zero-gravity, and there’s an invisible spaceship on the loose. “The Undiscovered Country” also has the best usage of what Roger Ebert calls “The Fallacy of the Talking Killer,” in which all the bad guy has to do to win is shoot the good guy, but instead he explains things. The instance begins with a heavy literally saying to Kirk “since you’re going to die anyway, I’ll explain…” but watch how amusingly the scene is resolved. From beginning to end, “The Undiscovered Country” is intended to be the final voyage for the original crew, and it works marvelously.
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