Movie Gazette

The new version of the starship Enterprise has performed poorly on its shakedown run and Captain James T Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew must put her into spacedock for repairs. In the meantime, on the planet Nimbus III a renegade Vulcan cult leader named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) has taken hostage a number of important ambassadors. Sybok, it turns out, is half-brother to Captain Spock (Leonard Nimoy). In spite of the condition of the Enterprise, Starfleet orders Kirk to mount a hasty rescue mission. To complicate matters, an ambitious Klingon captain hears of the situation and is determined to make his name by killing Kirk.

Unfortunately, during the rescue mission, Sybok and his rag-tag army of loyal followers manage to hijack the Enterprise, locking Kirk, Spock and McCoy (DeForest Kelly) in the brig. Eventually managing to escape, Kirk and his crew discover that Sybok is obsessed by his life-long search for the planet Shaka-Ri which is supposed to be the source of all life, and is planning to take the Enterprise to the centre of the galaxy in his quest to find the Supreme Being.

Promoted before its theatrical release as a titanic battle with God, this movie turned out to be more of a damp squib. The pace and timing of the film are completely off-target, taking an age to get to the points of interest and then skimming over them entirely too quickly. The plot is weak, the religious overtones are dubious, there is little excitement, and at no point do we really get to see any of the familiar characters at their best. The technical aspects of this film are also poor – production values are all but overlooked and in terms of special effects the movie looks cheap. If it has one redeeming feature, it is that there are some good humorous moments between Kirk, Spock and McCoy.