(cam) Star Trek V Considered

In the annals of science fiction cinema, there is no case study more mystifying than that of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Even the subtitle itself is a bit of a mystery: what and where exactly is the frontier most final? The opening credits of every Star Trek show to date feature the famous phrase: “Space—the final frontier.” Star Trek V would have us believe otherwise. Its blithely casual invocation of that august apothegm seems to say “space was a pretty nice frontier, but here's the real deal.” Our appetites are thus whetted for a grand adventure on the highest of scales, scales whose balances and counterweights are hung with nebulae, galaxies, and, though here we reach the limits of mortal measurability, Captain Kirk's ego.

Those readers not familiar with this piece of work should peruse the cinematic trailer to familiarize oneself with the premise.


Let me say right off that there is virtually nothing in this preview that lives up to the epic expectations set by the title. The final frontier itself—the planet Sha Ka Ree at the center of the galaxy—is slightly exciting. For the Vulcans it is a mystic place of pure idyll, analogous to Eden or Heaven. It is surrounded on all sides by a force called the great barrier, which has heretofore resisted all attempted incursions. Sha Ka Ree is a trans-cultural ideal. All races in the galaxy believe in a heaven and are awed by the prospect of finding it. Within may be found enlightenment, the meaning of existence, and perhaps the True Creator: God. It is easy to see why the mythical conduit from our universe to heaven might well be considered “the final frontier”

Yet even looking at the preview we can see that these ideas are, at best, not treated with the respect they deserve, or at worst badly shoehorned into a slapstick comedy ride through space. Please observe this scene from the opening of the film:

I was unable to locate any additional scenes, but from the trailer I think it is clear what kind of film we're dealing with. Star Trek V is nominally about a group of people trying to realize the impossible dream of transcending the physical world and entering the presence of a deity, yet most of it spent falling down mountains, sand-dunes, or turbolift shafts. There's lots of getting hit with stuff and one-liners. This worked pretty well in Star Trek IV but sometimes I want drama in my sci-fi.

The real conundrum of the film, though, comes at the end. That is where we witness what happens when this shenanigan of a movie is forced to confront its own premise.

At the end, Enterprise inexplicably penetrates the great barrier (I'm not really sure what stopped everyone else) and comes face-to-face with Sha Ka Ree.


Already, we may be getting a bad feeling about this. Everyone on board is awed by this glowing blue jellyfish of a planet. Clearly human, Klingon, and Romulan minds are too ill-equipped to perceive the omnifaceted glory of True Heaven and instead interpret it as the above. Still, they press on and Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Sybok, the slightly-off-his-rocker, Sha Ka Ree-obsessed Vulcan who has charmed the crew via a weird power to “show people their pain”, visit God's own dwelling in a shuttle craft. If I recall this correctly, the planet's surface looked like a barren, rocky desert. The intrepid team runs into this fellow who states, fairly unequivocally, that it is God:

It certainly looks like God well enough, but its first request as the King of Kings, Progenitor of Time and Reality, Omnipotent and Possessed of Infinite Perfection, is that Kirk order the Enterprise closer so it can “join” with it. Sybok, who at this point is on the verge of ecstasy, is all ready to give the command but Kirk then utters the apt yet weird statement “what does God want with a starship?”

At this point it's pretty clear to everyone except for McCoy and Sybok that this giant head, despite its somewhat grandiose appearance, is not God. To the viewer it was clear about half an hour ago when he looked at the clock and realize there were only thirty minutes left in the movie and there was no way that even science fiction writers could handle an encounter with divinity in so short a timespan. God tries to blow Kirk off and the Captain becomes even more adamant. You get the feeling that this is how Kirk would behave around the real God, too, though his belligerence is warranted in this case. Kirk shoos everyone else out of there while Sybok, crestfallen, uses his pain-showing ability on God to distract him while the Enterprise comes down and shoots it, destroying the impostor.

There are two ways to interpret this ending. Interpretation the first is that of profound atheism and disillusionment with religion. In this view, Sybok is the protagonist of the film. He is a reveler in the midst of deniers. Unlike other Vulcans, he rejoices in his emotions rather than denying them. The rest of his species has replaced the divinely given feelings and joys with mechanical, profane logic. Sybok is the Christian amid the unbelievers. He converts people, including the crew of the Enterprise to his own belief, and succeeds in the ultimate goal of the proselytizer: pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden. Through his faith he has led even the ultimate apostates, Kirk and Spock, to Heaven. Yet when he arrives there he finds it throned by an pretender, a deity whose magnificence is illusory and insubstantial. God is a fake. He is consumed with sadness and loses his life to the malevolent entity that masqueraded as the Holy Father while Kirk and the rest are reaffirmed in their atheism and lay waste to the King of Heaven with corporeal weapons. The entire film is a parable for the emptiness that is God, and the futility and, in the end, perniciousness in the pursuit thereof.

Interpretation the second is that of profound lack of ideas. I imagine the writers sitting around saying to each other something like this. “Okay, we've gotten to the big part where the crew meets God . . . what next?” “Well, it can't actually be the real God, that'd be too weird. Let's have it be a fake and just get blown up. What does everyone want for lunch?”

Which interpretation is correct I leave as an exercise to the reader.