A Brief Guide to Star Trek

life in the holiday period leading up to Christmas.
    The fourth
Star Trek
movie was a huge crossover success with the plight of the whales, the contemporary setting and the accessible character humour all attracting a sizeable non-fan audience to the film. The
Washington Post
dubbed the picture ‘immensely pleasurable Christmas entertainment’, while the
New York Times
felt the latest instalment had ‘done a great deal to ensure the series’ longevity’. Again, there was much comment on how the film was true to the critics’ memories of the TV series, while having the characters play up to their reputations in the popular imagination proved a masterstroke in bringing in a wider audience. An easy to engage with contemporary issue in the possible extinction of the whales (and other species) made the film relevant to broad 1980s audiences, without being environmentally preachy. Above all,
The Voyage Home
was a great slice of entertainment that would be well remembered by all who saw it.

    Following
The Voyage Home
was always going to be difficult. Given that Leonard Nimoy had directed two hugely successful entries in the franchise, it might have been expected that he’d continue with the fifth. However, due to the parity between Nimoy and his
Star Trek
co-star, it was clearly now Shatner’s turn to be the driving force behind a
Star Trek
movie. It seems likely this was part of the negotiation that had brought Shatner back on board to star in
Star Trek IV
– that he’d be the one behind the camera on
Star Trek V
. Shatner also took the opportunity to develop the storyline for the fifth movie, as Nimoy had done for the fourth. Overseeing the production, as on the previous movies, was Harve Bennett, even though he had attempted to opt out of the series after
The Voyage Home
.
    In developing his storyline, Shatner was inspired by the sight of growing numbers of tele-evangelists prospering in American culture. Shatner was entranced by the fact that people like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and Jimmy Swaggart were not only hoodwinking (in his opinion) millions ofAmericans into believing their Christian-inspired storytelling, but also getting many of them to part with their hard-earned cash so the tele-evangelists could live high on the hog. Shatner combined the figure of a preacher who hears the word of God with one of Gene Roddenberry’s earliest ideas for a
Star Trek
film – the
Enterprise
’s quest for God – to come up with a plot for
Star Trek V
. The ‘God’ eventually discovered would be an all-powerful alien being that Kirk and company would have to defeat.
    This idea, and the resulting script from writer David Loughery (
Dreamscape
), did not meet the same positive reception from the studio and
Star Trek
cast members as the previous movie. Under Shatner’s initial direction Loughery had crafted a story that promoted Kirk at the expense of the other main characters: while they fell for the proselytising of the unicorn-riding, Vulcan mystic Zar (later revised to be Sybok, the previously unknown half-brother of Spock), Kirk was the sole hold-out for reason and the only one who could save them all. Specifically causing discontent were the scripted actions of Spock and McCoy, who allow Sybok to take command of the
Enterprise
because they buy into his mystical vision. In the process they betray Kirk, although he has to rescue them from themselves by the climax. Naturally, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley were not impressed by this take on their characters and (as Shatner had done on
Star Trek IV
) they asked for substantial script revisions.
    Having previously objected to the death of Spock in
The Wrath of Khan
and the destruction of the
Enterprise
in
The Search for Spock
, this time Roddenberry objected to the entire basis for William Shatner’s
Star Trek
movie in a series of memos and letters. Writing to Shatner, Roddenberry stated, ‘I simply cannot support a story which has our intelligent and insightful crew mesmerised by a 23rd-century religious charlatan.’ In a memo to Harve Bennett, Roddenberry was even blunter in his assessment of the proposed storyline: ‘It is not
Star Trek
! [This] will destroy much of the value of the
Star Trek
property.’ He also sent a summary of his feelings on the matter to his lawyer,Leonard Maizlish, to prepare him for any dealings with Paramount. ‘The errors of property format, science and fact in this movie story are nothing less than shocking’, wrote