BACK COVER SYNOPSIS: It's Stardate 8454.130 and vacationing Captain Kirk faces two challenges: climbing Yosemite's El Capitan and teaching campfire songs to Spock. But vacations are cut short when a renegade Vulcan hijacks the Enterprise, and pilots it on a journey to uncover the universe's innermost secrets. The Star Trek stars are back for one of their most astonishing voyages ever, with all the fun and excitement fans have come to love. So buckle up for a thrilling leap into the unknown that's "as much a spiritual odyssey as a space adventure, and it's all the richer for it" (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times).

FILM REVIEW: 'Star Trek V' is the only creative stumble in the series featuring the cast of the original television show. Although there are some admirable moments in this film, there are so many misguided elements, starting with the central idea itself which needed much more care and attention than director William Shatner ultimately gave it to make it compelling. Perhaps that is a little unfair as the documentaries on this DVD and other reports suggest that he had a lot of things working against him that were out of his control, but he does need to cop his fair share of the blame for originating the idea in the first place. To break it down simply, the crew of the starship Enterprise go in search of God. If the film had been about a symbolic search and a study of what it all means and the consequences of following your faith too blindly, you might have had a film. Unfortunately, this direction is only hinted at and instead, you get a mess of a film that ends up being a blimp on the resume of the Star Trek franchise.

Let's have a look at some of things that worked. The opening sequences featuring Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and the subsequent scenes through the film featuring these three characters alone are perhaps the strongest of the entire film series. A large part of this has to do with the fact that we hardly ever get to see them being who they are without having some sort of galactic crisis to worry about. As a result, you get to see a different side to these characters, especially as they play the theme that they are each other's family. As McCoy says to Kirk, "we spend all that time in space, and what happens when shore leave comes along? We spend it together!".

After you look at that aspect of the film, things really start to head south. The remaining Star Trek recurring characters are portrayed in almost comic book fashion, particularly Scotty who gets banana-peel style jokes. This is a tragedy and really should have been worked in better, particularly when it was done so successfully in the previous two entries in the series. The main guest star, Laurence Luckinbill who plays the religious zealot Sybok, who is coincidentally Spock's half-brother, is a terrific actor but the character itself is just plain weak. He seems more like a misguided soul rather than a man who could do terrifying things in the name of God, and his lack of apparent insanity in his eyes seems out of place, particularly as he's modelled after TV evangelists. The whole subplot about him being Spock's brother is meant to create a sense of friction between Kirk and Spock as the latter has to decide who he will help; an odd thing to happen really as you can't really see any situation where Spock would betray Kirk, especially on such an illogical quest such as the one Sybok is going on. And don't even get me started on the Klingons in this film; they are silly caricatures arbitrarily inserted at specific points in the film to deliver on action sequences. Best left out I would have thought.

The story telling and pacing of this film is downright clunky and uninspired. A film likes this really needs a strong ending to make this journey worthwhile and unfortunately we have a complete anti-climax. William Shatner has gone on the record stating that his original ending was cut due to budgetary reasons but his descriptions of what he wanted to do wouldn't have really made much difference to be perfectly honest. He talked about having lava and fire and nasty rockmen who would chase the crew across the Eden-like landscape but that's all just window dressing. At the end of the day, there's an alien masquerading as God who tries to lure people like Sybok to his planet so he can trick them in to freeing him. From a thematic perspective, this actually could have made for a very strong ending without all that other stuff and would have played entirely in to the theme of what the consequences of when you follow your faith to blindly. If Shatner had spent more time driving that point home throughout the film, he would have had a great movie, but instead nothing is ever really focused. In his defence, he had things working against him, including a studio that constantly wanted to cut the budget and who kept insisting to include humour at every turn (because it worked in Star Trek IV), a directive which was out of place for the type of story Shatner was trying to tell. These kinds of interferences will always do damage to a film and you have to wonder why studio executives would inflict harm like this, even though at the time they think that they're doing their best to protect the creative interests of the franchise. Also, the special effects work on this film is the worst of the entire series, and if any film needed some decent effects, it was this one.

Star Trek V is an unfortunate disappointment. William Shatner really got to be the Captain this time and unsurprisingly, he would get no second chance as did Leonard Nimoy. Although there are some sporadic moments in this film which go back to the heart of what Star Trek is all about, this film is without a doubt the weakest of the films featuring the original Star Trek cast. Oh well, I guess they had to have at least one clunker.

TECHNICAL REVIEW: The transfer of this DVD is for the most part quite reasonable but it does represent a bit of step backwards in quality, particularly compared to the previous films. The transfer contains film scratches, little jumps and mpeg artefacts which are noticeable in quite a few places. The soundtrack is better, and it does goes the home theatre setup a good work out on a few of the action sequences. Jerry Goldsmith's score is also delightful to listen to and wonderfully captured in the soundtrack. A decent transfer, but probably should have been better.

EXTRAS REVIEW: The extras on this disc are far more entertaining than the main feature, largely because the documentaries featured here give an honest account of why this film didn't turn out as well as the filmmaker's hoped and what they're opinions were on why it went wrong. It is still sugar-coated, but you do get some frank assessments, surprisingly as well from William Shatner who you could tell was quite passionate about the story but perhaps didn't have the vision to see it through. There are numerous featurettes covering the making of the production which are great and insightful, deleted scenes, trailers, image galleries and unfortunately, a rather uninspired director's commentary by Shatner who brought in his daughter Liz to talk with him about it. Overall, this is a solid collection of extras which accomplish the rare feat of being more entertaining than the feature!

BOTTOM LINE: Rent it, unless you're a Star Trek fan in which case it's probably worth having to round out the collection.