Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Released	April 15, 2013
Running time	30:24
Previous review	Power Pachyderms 1
Next review	Dragnet 4
Tagline	Life is but a dream... if only the movie this comic is based on was one, too.
Link	http://atopthefourthwall.com/star-trek-v-the-final-frontier/

(For The Nostalgia Critic's review of the actual movie, click here)

Linkara: (wearing a Starfleet uniform) Hello, and welcome to Atop the Fourth Wall, where bad comics burn. Well, it's time once again to review a Star Trek movie comic, and this time, it's a movie that's pretty universally reviled.

(Footage of that movie, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is shown)

Linkara (v/o): Although, I've got to admit, this movie is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It's a train wreck, to be sure, but one that I kind of enjoy in a bad movie kind of way. It aspires to greatness, but is full of plot holes, characterization issues, bad jokes, and weak villains. You know that Mystery Science Theater 3000 clip I'll play from The She-Creature?

(Cut to a clip of that episode)

Mike Nelson: Space is warped, and time is bendable.

(Cut back to the Star Trek movie)

Linkara (v/o): Yeah, that's the one. Star Trek V's a movie so bad that Euclidian geometry collapses so that someone can not only go past the number of floors on the ship, but past the same floor twice while going up. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was incredibly boring, but it's got its defenders as a slow cerebral story. Star Trek V, though? The only cerebral thing you get out of this movie is the headache that results from some of the bad comedy and dollar store psychology. It is the movie that almost killed the Star Trek film franchise.

Linkara: Mind you, plenty of problems with the film were a result of the production getting screwed over again and again by bad luck, but in the end, some people are capable of making a great film, even with a bad production. (smiles smugly) William Shatner is not one of those men.

Linkara (v/o): The earliest draft of the film, by Shatner himself, would have had Kirk literally fighting Satan and trying to rescue his crewmates from being taken to Hell.

Linkara: (looking up in thought) I've gotta admit, though, after "One More Day", the idea of Captain Kirk fighting Satan? (gives a thumbs-up) Nice!

Linkara (v/o): I won't go into the film's troubled production much in this review, since it's actually pretty well documented, except to say that the effects in the finished movie were... yeah, not very good, to put it kindly. However, that just makes me more curious about this comic as an adaptation, since one of the great things about comic books is that there is no special effects budget to worry about. If an artist can conceive it and draw it, it'll be done. Plus, the condensed format of a comic book one-shot means that some of the stupider or superfluous bits might end up getting cut. By that same token, however, as we saw last time with Star Trek IV, lots of good stuff might end up getting trimmed.

Linkara: So let's dig into Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and see if the comic is better or worse than the movie it spawned from.

(AT4W title sequence plays, and title card has music from Star Trek V playing in the background. Cut to a closeup of the comic's cover)

Linkara (v/o): The cover is... blecch! It's a nice rendition of the Enterprise and Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but as a cover that's meant to evoke the epic nature of the story or even as a movie poster or the like, it's just dull: three heads and the Enterprise. Oh, but at least we have that filmstrip logo coming across the top and informing us that this is a "DC Movie Special".

Linkara: As opposed to those movie comics that are not special.

Linkara (v/o): We open on the planet Nimbus III, "the planet of galactic peace", where some guy in a robe [Sybok] has found a bald guy [J'Onn] in the middle of the desert and is touching his forehead. (as Sybok) Does this bug you? I'm not touching you.

Sybok: Each man hides a secret pain.

Linkara: Yyyyeah, no, they don't. I know I don't, at least, unless you count the time I tried to eat the spicy chicken nuggets at Wendy's instead of the regular ones? Those things are nasty! (raises index finger) Stick to the regular nuggets, my friends.

J'Onn: Where did you get this power?

Sybok: The power was within you.

Linkara: (as Sybok) In other words, (holds up fist) the power is yours!

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