Symptom 29: Dear God, Why?

It is the movie that fans like to forget. Trekkie's pretend it never happened and there are running arguments that if you struck it from the canon nothing changes and there is zero lasting impact. They are right, but the movie did happen and it is canon. Of course, I am talking about William Shatner's tour de crap, Star Trek 5 The Final Frontier. This is the movie that almost killed Star Trek on the big screen. It certainly is a terrible, with a rambling and non-sensical plot full of holes and special effects that look like a graduate student with a C average was contracted for this film. THe thing is though, if you can push all of that aside, there is some amazing stuff in this nightmare and with a re-write or five and an Earnest Hemingway approach of removing unneeded garbage, this film could have an amazing discussion of religion versus humanism. Unfortunately this filmed failed to accomplish that and we would have to wait until the mid 90's with Deep Space Nine for Star Trek to truly tackle this one. 

So here is Symptom 29, a discussion of the steaming pile of garbage that is Star Trek 5 and how close it came to being truly epic. Its the amazing movie we almost got but didn't. Thanks Bill.