The Shat Apologies for STV

It never would have been acclaimed, but it could have been passable like TSFS.

I'll give STV credit for at least trying to have a little meaning.

In a lot of ways, it's the most episodic of the movies. It isn't really connected to the other films in the series.

It even opens with a teaser like an episode.

I'm not so sure SFX wouldn't have made it a much better movie. The problem was that discovering the god creature was a letdown because it didn't have the awesome powers one would expect.

Now imagine how different the movie would have been if, after the scene where they start having doubt, the thing strikes with all the power and fury of an entire Borg fleet, times ten. It reaches out and just crushes nearby planets. The star wobbles and seethes. It temporarily disables have the crew with beams of psychic energy. The Klingon ships are crushed like cans and twisted into pretzels. But the Enterprise uses every trick, every bit of genius and luck, to hang in the fight for ten or fifteen minutes of screen time, finally tricking the god into destroying himself.

If they did that, then all the prior scenes would seem like the rather silly adventure story of how the Enterprise ended up in the fight to end all fights.

Instead, the show never really had much of a point, or much of a climax. It was more like a run-of-the-mill TOS episode.

But if it had that kind of power, why was it stuck on the planet?

You have to read the crappy relaunch books.

Restraining order from his ex-wife.

Okay, let's think of a scenario where a being with that kind of power can't get out of his own star system.

Most obvious is that although he can reach out and crush nearby planets, his "grip" drops with the square of the distance. So although he can disrupt his local star, he would have only a trillionth that power on a star a few light years away. That could still cause some upset, but beyond his local star group, he's relatively powerless. His force loses focus with extreme distance.

Secondly, he can't actually fly through space very well. He can crush things, he can push on things, and by equal and opposite force can propel himself in space as long as there's something within range to push against with his local field powers. In deep space, that doesn't accomplish much of anything. Perhaps think of him as a massive EM field machine. Unlike a Q, he's not omnipotent in terms of being able to do anything imaginable, he's just very, very powerful in his local domain, where he could perhaps rip a Q in half at the subatomic level.

So he needs a ship. He can't build his own ship because building a ship is a precise and delicate operation, and although he can exert tremendous forces and manipulate psychic energies at extreme distances, he couldn't build a watch, much less a star ship. Nor can he control a star ship in any special way, other than pushing the same buttons we would or using his mental powers to con someone else into pushing the buttons.

His backstory could be that he was doing just that when some rebellious crewman on some ancient vessel decided to crash their ship, with the being on board, onto some desolate hell-hole of a planet, hidden behind the wall at the center of the galaxy to help distort is perceptions of outside species and limit his mind's influence over sentient beings.

So you have a locally omnipotent, nearly immortal, hyper-intelligent energy being that lacks the ability to fly through deep space and who lacks the hand-eye coordination and dexterity to build a ship that can.

As some Indian guy probably noted, an elephant can uproot a tree, but even a really smart elephant won't be able to build an ocean-worthy boat no matter how long he works at it because he can't make an ax or a nail.

So the basic story elements are there, with a demon waiting to unleash forces that could trash an entire solar system, except that he was destroyed in a hail of fire from a dinky Klingon warbird. That means that instead of some nearly omnipotent being that is as exotic and dangerous as a black hole, he wasn't much more than King Kong, and wouldn't have amounted to much of a threat to anyone even if they did drop him off on a star base - because any ship could kill him.

To be a proper, movie-worthy threat to civilization, he would have to be worthy of an awesome fight.

Story option #2: Better if he escapes

Suppose he did escape to the Klingon bird of prey and the Klingon captain realizes that the god is the most powerful weapon anyone could field. Just fly into a star system and he can thrash whole planets, or even cause a star to nova. The god loves thrashing civilizations, and so do the Klingons, so they strike a deal and form a partnership. The god strikes a mighty blow to Enterprise as they depart the prison planet, and the Bird of Prey blasts away toward Federation space with the damaged Enterprise in a badly lagging pursuit.

The rogue Klingon captain, drunk on power, being manipulated by a god, and being, well, a Klingon, unleashes tremendous fury on several star systems as the Enterprise tries to catch up. Kirk realizes he doesn't have to defeat the virtually indestructible god, he just has to disable the Bird of Prey so it can't fly anywhere. The god would be stuck in the middle of deep space instead of on a rock. The trick is how to get in close enough to get a shot in without the god ripping the Enterprise in half.

So Kirk contacts the Romulans, obviously the first target the Klingons would attack, and they send one of their cloak ships in for a fast pass. It disables the war bird's warp drives systems before the god crushes it in a vortex of demon fire. Enraged at the attack and that his ship is damaged, the god lashes out at the Klingon captain in anger. The Enterprise crew is relieved because at least they've got the problem contained to a sub-light Bird of Prey, buying some breathing time before the god can strike at another star system.

But then two Klingon ships arrive to act as escort for the Empire's new super weapon, and the crew realizes that the god will just transfer to a fresh warship and continue on, with the rogue Klingon fleet gathering more escorts and becoming unstoppable with the god's local powers. So before the Klingon ships can get close to the damaged bird of prey, he Enterprise engages them, sustaining serious damage but likewise disabling their drive systems.

Enraged, the god rips the damaged Klingon ships apart to remind the bird of prey's crew of his awesome powers, and then he rages that he will destroy all the lesser life forms who fail to worship him.

One of the Klingons still on the bird of prey's bridge, horrified at what they've gotten in bed with, opens an audio stream to the Enterprise so they can listen in on what's going on the bird of prey's bridge. The god keeps raging at the Klingon captain, telling him what a cowardly worm he is and demanding to know when they can get underway. The captain promises the god that he'll get them to their home world and he'll be given a fleet. The god comments that he only needs the fleet, and will crush the worthless Klingon slackers who aren't fighting at his side.

Meanwhile, Kirk asks Spock for options on how to destroy the being, and Spock notes that they're quite close to a black hole which should definitely destroy the god. Kirk has an idea. He sends a text message to the Klingon who opened the audio channel, laying out a plan and telling him to relay to his captain that he intercepted a message from the Enterprise to Star Fleet, saying their warp drive was damaged in the Klingon attack and that he's going to use impulse drive to get to a nearby stargate and execute a hyperspace jump back to Federation space.

This is relayed to the Klingon captain, who looks confused for a moment. He talks to his comm officer and then returns to his chair, saying they will pursue and destroy the Enterprise, then use the hyperspace stargate themselves to get to the Klingon home world, where the god will be worshiped and given a powerful fleet so all their enemies can be destroyed.

The Enterprise sets a course for the black hole, and the Klingon's relay the distances, to the Enterprise and to the star gate. The god apparently believes what the Klingons are showing him on the view screen, and he seems to lack the senses to detect the approaching danger. Spock keeps up a private dialog with the Klingon comm officer, and as the Enterprise approaches the point of no return, the Klingon ship drops shields and the Enterprise beams their crew over, then jumps to warp. The Klingon ship flies straight into the black hole as the god screams in terror.

Yeah, that could work. I'd change the stargate to a top-secret Federation starbase that would be able to effect speedy repairs.

Sean Connery as sybok would have been cool. So, leanord nimnoy gets director and producers stuff and shatner only gets to act.

That could work, too, although the stargate line shows that the "god" really doesn't have a clue about things. I figure it would make the ruse a little more obvious to the audience.

Or you could come up with some other clever way to trick the god into killing itself.

Oh, and one thing I forgot in my script is that some of the Klingon crew, after the destruction of their escorts and witnessing the unstable god's wrath, realize that destroying their own ship to strand the god in deep space, while perhaps honorable, is also pointless because once the Klingon Empire became aware of their awesome new weapon, there's no way their Empire, or the Romulan Empire, won't keep sending warships to rescue the god.

But instead of something like what I wrote, the studio went with

"Crew questions the being's godhood. It gets pissed. Klingon war bird kills it with a phaser blast. The end."

But they saved screen time for lots of psychotherapy, crying, fan dancing, and horseback riding.

Ah, I see. I was thinking in terms of fooling the Klingon captain.

I don't. I've read the ending as Shatner envisioned it and even with 100 million dollars it still would've been a crap movied.

I think The Final Frontier marks the beginning of Shatners deevolution into the "Shat" (similar to the word "shit") persona and a hugely exaggerated sense of his own importance and abilities.

No, Shat had that while the original series was running. Just ask anyone involved in the series.

I've just provided a much better ending, though a lot of the crap in the original movie will have to be cut for time. We just need to shoot the new scenes and splice them in, and then we'll have a Star Trek V that will be worth watching.

A guy had online a redone Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with several relatively minor script and scene changes and some relatively inexpensive special effects work that made it a much, much better movie.

For one the climatic "death of the god creature" isn't nearly as easy as in the original. Instead it takes the combined firepower of the Bird of Prey and the Enterprise to destroy it.

Same problem. If it can be destroyed by the combined fire of two ships then the god was only one percent as dangerous as a single Borg cube. A curiosity, not a threat to even a single planet, much less the Federation.

In my rewrite he could be a multi-dimensional being that can't even be hurt by our weapons. But the fact that he needed a ship to leave his rocky world tells Spock that gravity can defeat him.

I don't think your "rewrite" is doable with existing footage.

Well of course not. They'd have to remake it with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, and Zoe Saldana.

JJ Abrams would be like "In your face, Shatner!"

I remember many groans, and people walking out of the theater. I waited in a line wrapped around the building with my parents to see it.

McCoy's Mexican hallucination beans.