Why Star Trek V Is Actually Not as Bad as You Remember

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▶Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
05:35 - A Snarky Paraphrase of Star Trek V
21:01 - Not a Good Movie, But . . .
23:17 - . . . It Gets Off to a Good Start
24:40 - . . . It’s Got Good Bones
27:42 - . . . It’s Got a Great Villain
31:53 - . . . Shatner Is Better Than You’d Expect
34:16 - . . . And, It Depicts the Camaraderie of the Enterprise Crew
39:01 - Conclusion
40:09 - Shoutout, Plugs, and Announcements

#startrek #videoessay #startrek

[oxygencrossroads]

23:19 I remember my friend saying, “I wish Sybok had been in the movie theater with me to share *my* pain.” 😂

[Mallory-Malkovich]

A 45 minute video about how an old movie isn't good, exactly, just not as bad as you remember? This is the kind of video essay I live for

[silmarian]

One of the things I like about 5 is that Sybok is the antagonist but he's not the kind of villain that every movie seems to have today. He doesn't stay 'evil' until the bitter end, he admits he's wrong when faced with the truth of the moment.

[gregorybaker]

I am surprised you did not highlight the scene where McCoy confronts his guilt over his father’s death. I think it is one of the best and most insightful McCoy scenes in the franchise.

[davidpumpkinsjr.]

Nimoy: When I directed Star Trek IV, I got a magnificent performance out of Bill because I respect him so much.
Shatner: And when I directed Star Trek V, I got a magnificent performance out of me because I respect me so much.

[TheTerryGene]

Trek Trivia: Laurence Luckinbill, who plays Sybok, is the husband of Lucy Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball, whose studio, Desilu, produced STTOS.

[glamourweaver]

V is fun. It’s dumb but it’s fun. And “why does God need a starship?” is a quintessential Kirk moment.

[philipfoster]

"Jim, you don't ask the almighty for his I.D!" is one of my all time favourite Bones quotes

[acerumble]

"I need my pain!" is the best Kirk moment and one of the most meaningful scenes in all of Trek, and I will die on that hill.

[OnceandFutureShane]

One of my favorite Spock lines is when he says to the Klingon general: "Damn you, sir, you will try." I like the contempt that Nimoy summons up there.

[gregorybaker]

Kirk: “There aren’t any more never-before-mentioned siblings of yours running around out there right now, are there?”

Spock: “Not right NOW…”

[chrisblake]

33:44 Shatner probably ended up understated because as director he had tired himself out. Instead of sitting around stewing between takes like an actor, a director has a bunch of stuff to do. So unless the AD was in charge when he was on the call sheet, he was pretty busy.

[jeffnorris]

We also attended the Shatner led screening at GalaxyCon. Bill started talking about it during his panel earlier in the day, and hesitantly told us that he wasn't sure what emotional impact seeing it after all these years was going to have. He still has a ton of regrets and anger about how he was treated by the studio and Harve Bennett (cutting a huge portion of the budget when already in production!) and he said he sees this film as a major failure of his life. In recent years Bill has been more vulnerable in public, so we had no idea whether this was a good thing for him.

During the screening, he was describing what he was trying to do compared to what showed up on screen. As the movie rolled without stopping it was necessarily brief, but his self disappointment was evident from the beginning. He never tore down his cast, although he said they were surprisingly resistant to him as a director. The one scene he loved was doing the landing on ShaKaRi, with the sunrise coming from behind Trona Pinnacles. And just after that scene he said, "This is where I ran out of budget".

We the audience could clearly see his struggles and disappointments. The Treksperts were saying all the time, "We see your vision. We understand. You did what you could." We were all participating in a giant therapy session as he poured out his emotions. He was an artist who wanted to make something great, and he painfully, publicly failed.

At the close, we stood up and applauded. A lot because the movie really was not as bad as it's been portrayed, but also to thank him for being so open and letting us see him in what must have been a tremendously vulnerable state. He quickly left the stage. As we were leaving, a bunch of us approached the Treksperts and begged them to give him a message: He tried, he did the best he could, and that's all we could ask.

[silverharloe]

Hey! Shatner's complaint that if he had had the budget, he would have had a stupid fight scene with rock monsters was a set up for a truly great pay off!
Years later,
in a different movie,
when the captain had to fight a rock monster in Galaxy Quest.

[fatenabu]

The camping scene and the "what does God need with a starship" scene are some of the best Trek ever. Just the bonding between the main three throughout the film make it great.

[thbthttt]

The stand-out moment for me is McCoy's time with his father. A superb performance from Deforest Kelly.

[Waffletigercat]

I don't even think Spock never mentioning Sybok before is unreasonable. Not only is Spock in general a closed-off individual who tends not to share much in the first place, but we're directly shown in this movie that Sybok is the source of his most deeply-rooted pain. Why would he mention Sybok before?

[IvanDobski]

"I don't want my shitty Star Trek taken away. I need my shitty Star Trek" is the most Steve Shives thing I think I've ever heard in all my years listening to you. I love it. 😂

[HBHaga]

I actually have fond memories of when this movie came out. It was at the height of my convention days. Mark Lenard, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan were regulars at the convention and often talked friends of theirs into coming to visit with us. The year after this came out we had our usual crowd plus Spice Williams and Todd Bryant (Vixis and Klaa respectively) as guests. I remember them being quite cool with the fans. Yvonne Craig was also a guest around then. Her story about the time she ran over Vincent Price's foot was great.

During one of his visits Mr. Doohan pretty well summed up a number of his fellow cast members' feelings towards Shatner. On the convention floor Doohan was almost always in Scotty mode because, as he said, he knew who people were there for. At a panel he was asked about his relation ship with Shatner and he answered as Scotty would, "I'd walk through fire for Jim Kirk. It's the other fella I cannae stand."

[rmeddy]

What was a bit puzzling about this movie for me, is Spock died and was resurrected and it never comes up in conversation in a movie about faith