Star Trek V. The movie that every Trek fan has tried for years to forget. A film so poorly received that it almost crashed the entire Star Trek franchise until Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country saved it's bacon in 1991.

Well, I watched it the other night just to see what the fuss was about. And yeah, it definitely lives down to it's reputation. Below are my thoughts, pros and cons because I actually already had this set up as a comment on somebody else's review.

So here we go.

Pros:

-I love the look of the Enterprise-A’s bridge. It’s actually my favorite bridge look out of all six of the original movies. The new touch-screen consoles look great, I like the lighting and the new chair styles, and the whole thing looks very much like an upgrade from the tech seen in the previous movies, and it’s a decent half-way point between TOS and TNG tech styles. I like it quite a bit.

-I like the new shuttle design as well. It’s a decent TMP-era upgrade from the classic design we’ve seen in TOS.

-Jerry Goldsmith’s music, while not quite as good as his scores for TMP and the Next Generation films from First Contact to Nemesis, is still pretty good all the same. Hearing his Klingon theme make a comeback was a treat for the ears, and the score for the initial discovery of “Sha Ka Ree” is almost–pun completely intended–heavenly.

-Y’know, Sybok may have been a crackpot, but he never really comes across as a bad person. He’s just misguided. And yeah, taking the delegates on Nimbus III and stealing the Enteprise-A wasn’t very cash money of him, but at the end of the day he doesn’t really want anybody to get hurt. He even goes so far as to call Kirk a “friend” when the Sha Ka Ree entity attacks him. It’s actually nice to see a Star Trek antagonist who isn’t really all that malicious for once.

-This exchange between Kirk and Spock, respectively: “I thought I was going to die.” “Not possible. You were never alone.” The initial set-up at the camping scene felt a bit clumsy, but man did the payoff tug at my heartstrings.

-DeForest Kelley’s acting when McCoy relives his “secret pain”. The script may have been a hot mess, but man did he turn in a good performance. I actually felt my eyes getting a bit wet when he said that they found a cure after he’d let his father go.

-I don’t know about anybody else, but the brief gag of Sulu and Chekov being lost in the woods and trying to cover for it made me laugh. The kicker was Chekov’s deadpan: “Sulu, look. The Sun’s come out. It’s a miracle.”

-Shoddy special effects aside, the scene where the crew thinks they’ve found God is actually kinda awe-inspiring. The shot of the shaft of light eclipsing Enterprise is beautiful, and with the music and the atmosphere, you almost believe you’re meeting the Almighty Himself.

-“What does God need with a starship?” It’s like that was the moment where the movie woke up and started thinking rationally.

-I actually kinda like the Star Wars-esque scenes of Kirk and the security team going down to Nimbus III. It’s not every day you see Star Trek adress the more combat-related aspects of Starfleet.

-The opening shot of Sybok riding through the duststorm actually has a kind of creepy tone to it before we see him more clearly. For the briefest of moments, it almost looked like a Ringwraith from The Lord of the Rings or something.

-Less of a legitimate pro than the others, but I will give the movie points for at least making it an alien entity and not actually God at the center of the galaxy. And hey, at least it ain’t the original version where it turned out to be Satan and Kirk and Spock had to rescue McCoy from Hell. Because that was a thing that almost happened.

Cons:

-THE SPECIAL EFFECTS. Good LORD, they’re terrible! Even the original effects from TOS looked better, and this movie was made in flippin’ 1989! And it’s a doggone shame, too, because some of this movie’s scenes could have been really memorable in spite of the shoddy script if they had better effects, like the shuttle crash-landing or the Great Barrier or the “God altar” sequence.

-Klaa and the Klingons really don’t add anything to the story, and they feel like they’re just there to have the Deus ex Machina moment at the end. When you get down to it, he’s only causing trouble because he’s bored. And honestly, I think the movies could have used a break from the Klingons. In fact, you know what? With Caithlin Dar being the new girl on Nimbus and all, I would have had the Romulans be a part of things just to shake it up a little.

-Starfleet: “We’re gonna send you out in your crummy lemon of a starship because even though we do actually have other ships in the area, we don’t have any experienced commanders.” I. Call. Horseapples. It was bad enough that they used the stupid “Enterprise is the only ship in range” cliche in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (my only legit plot-related grievance about the movie, might I add), but it gets taken to new levels of stupid here. And even assuming that Kirk really is somehow the only commander suitable for the job, then here’s a bright little idea: why not temporarily transfer him to the Excelsior? You can see it sitting right there next to Enterprise-A in Spacedock in that stock footage from Star Trek IV. Even if the transwarp drive is a bust, everything else presumably works. Working ship, full crew compliment, and experienced commander all in one fell swoop.

-The “quest for God” plot is just all kinds of stupid. Why would he be camping out on some rinky-dink planet at the center of the galaxy? Isn't he supposed to be omnipresent? And why does he need people to find him? I guess we could give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's a Vulcan interpretation of God, but even so, I'd be questioning this whole crazy thing long before Kirk asked what he wanted with a starship.

-It slowly occurred to me over the course of the movie that Sybok is supposed to be some kind of pseudo-space Jesus figure. It finally hit me in the scene when he comes riding into Paradise City on horseback with crowds cheering him on. Hamfisted symoblism at it’s absolute (not) finest.

-Sybok is Spock’s long-lost half-brother who we’ve never heard of before and will never hear of again. I’ll let that speak for itself. Well, at least we can all take solace in the fact that Star Trek’s writers have learned from this mistake and will never pull something like this agai–OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

-Taking the Enterprise-A from Federation space to the center of the galaxy in just 6.7 hours at Warp 7 (according to Sulu). Even if we assume that the Nimbus system is on the very edge of the Neutral Zone facing the galactic core, it would still take them far longer than that to get there.

-And besides that, the center of the galaxy is far from paradise. Cosmic radiation, exploding stars, and a supermassive black hole about 31.5 times the diameter of the sun. The galactic core is a hellscape.

-Speaking of which, for all the build-up of how dangerous the Great Barrier is supposed to be, both the Enterprise-A and Klaa’s ship seem to go through it with no trouble whatsoever. The novelization apparently explains it away as Sybok–apparently knowledgable in astrophysics or whatever–modified the Enterprise-A’s shields to be able to withstand the forces of the barrier, and Klaa’s crew hacked their computers before they went in to figure out how to do it themselves. But that explanation just leaves you wondering how effective Starfleet’s computer firewalls are.

-Aside from being kinda pointless, the scene where Klaa blows up the old Pioneer 10 probe doesn’t make sense. Even in the future of the 23rd Century, the probe still wouldn’t be far enough out of our solar system to be near Klingon territory. Which means that for this scene to work, we have to assume that Klaa went across the Neutral Zone into Federation space just to blow up one measly bit of space junk.

-Hey, Science Officer Spock? Why don’t you just, y’know…tilt the gun down, maybe? Just shoot Sybok in the leg or the shoulder or something, and then McCoy can take out the bullet later! You don’t have to shoot to kill for goodness’ sakes!

-How on Earth did Sybok’s forces manage to ground the Galileo?!

-There is no way that shuttle could fit that many people. And there are even less during the interior shots in the emergency crash-landing sequence. And what happened to the security squad that went down? Did they get left behind on the planet? (according to the script, yes, they did. Stinks to be them, I guess.)

-Look, I get that Enterprise is supposed to be under-manned, but are you seriously trying to tell us that nobody tried to stop Sybok and co. from getting to the bridge? Nobody caught on that he was sorta-brainwashing people and just wide-angle-stunned him and his other converts? Nobody at all?

-The turboshaft that Kirk and co. climb up is completely wrong. For one, Constitution-class ships only have 21 decks. The turboshaft lists 78 at most. And the numbering is all wrong as well; decks are labelled from least to greatest as they go down, not up. And they pass by Deck 52 twice!

-The furry fandom is still alive and kicking if the three-breasted catgirl dancer is any indication.

-“I know this ship like the back of my hand.” (CLANG!) Is it any wonder that James Doohan hated doing that bit?

-Speaking of Scotty, him and Uhura are a thing now? Where did that come from??

-And while we’re on the subject of Lieutenant Uhura…the naked fan-dance. (facepalm)

-When you stop to thinking about it, Spock’s automatic “marshmellon” dispenser takes more time to spit out marshmallows than it takes to simply reach into a bag and pull one out.

-Rocket boots. In an age where artificial gravity carrying devices are a thing, why? And how did Spock get them during the elevator shaft scene?

-So the Enterprise-A shoots a photon torpedo from orbit, mere meters away from Kirk and co., and they're not hurt by the blast at all? Suuuuuuuuuure...

-The Galileo shuttlecraft skids farther than should be possible given the obvious size of the hangar deck. If it had been the combined hangar/cargo bay layout seen in TMP, it might have been more plausible. I actually made an edit of my own in an attempt to fix this mistake.

-Why does the Klingon Bird-of-Prey have a hatch over the photon torpedo tube? Seriously, what purpose would it serve other than being a time-waster to open up during a combat situation?

-Sha Ka Ree from orbit just looks like the sun recolored blue. And the surface looks almost exactly the same as Nimbus III, just with more rocks and tinted purple. So much for an Eden-like paradise.

-A YouTube comment I once saw pointed out that “God” looks kinda like the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz. They’re not wrong.

-Isn’t it just a bit too convenient that it’s William Shatner–writer, director, and starring actor in this picture–his character who seems to be the smartest guy in the movie? Resisting Sybok’s mind therapy, calling out the fake God? Or how Starfleet “needs Kirk” because he’s the only experienced commander qualified for the job? Don’t think we don’t see you, Bill…

-Wait a minute…a nonsensical plot, out-of-character stupidity, long-lost relatives that come out nowhere, OP self-inserts, crack shipping, fanservice, catgirls…holy Sha Ka Ree, Star Trek V is a fanfic on the big screen!!!

All that being said...I was surprised to find that, for all the negative hype that I've heard over the years, I didn't find it quite as painfully bad as I thought it was going to be. Probably because I knew what was coming, so my expectations were suitably lowered to meet it. In fact, I found myself kinda enjoying it in a "so-bad-its-good" sort of sense.

Not exactly the way a film should be enjoyed, but I try to find the best in everything.

2/5. One point for the pros, and another for the "so-bad-it's-good" factor.

Also, random fun fact, I actually got a printed version of this movie's script as a birthday present last week.