MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*
One might have thought that after the box office debacle of 1987's SUPERMAN IV THE QUEST FOR PEACE, Hollywood producers would have learned one lesson-- even in the short term-- that they should not allow actors to conceive story ideas unless said actors had proven histories of professional writing.
Just as QUEST was hobbled from the beginning by Christopher Reeve's idea of the Man of Steel enforcing nuclear disarmament, FRONTIER is just as compromised by director William Shatner's lamebrain notion of using a TREK movie to satirize televangelists. I'm tempted to think that none of the Paramount suits in the late eighties had any cognizance of what sort of stories had transpired in the run of the Original Series, not least "Who Mourns for Adonais," in which the Enterprise crew met an ET masquerading as one of the Greek gods. If any of them had possessed such knowledge, wouldn't one of them said to Shatner, "Let's not repeat old plot-ideas like having the TREK-heroes 'meet God.' Bad enough that they started calling the 1979 movie 'Where Nomad Has Gone Before!'"
But no one told Shatner to go back to the drawing-board; they just handed off his ramshackle notion off to journeyman writer David Loughery, and what emerged wasn't close to being any sort of commentary on televangelists' hubris, or whatever that would have looked like in the TREK-verse. The publicity attempted to sell the film on the idea that FRONTIER toyed with the possibility of the space-travelers might actually encounter the Judeo-Christian deity. Yet one didn't have to have seen a single TREK episode to know nothing like this would transpire. Even a basic knowledge of science fiction would have told anyone that metaphysically valid deities simply don't appear in the genre; they're always just alien impostures or psychic constructs. At least "Adonais" plays fair: from the first the Enterprisers don't believe that Apollo is the genuine article. And because that writer played fair, he was able to make the "false god" resonant in ways Willaim Shatner never dreamed of.
Before Shatner made his directorial deal with Paramount, the only cinematic direction he'd accomplished were episodes of T.J. HOOKER. While he may have only kibitzed on the finished script, FRONTIER has the piecemeal construction of a TV show-episode. The action starts when Sybok (Lawrence Luckinbill), apparently a terrorist of Vulcan heritage, takes three diplomats-- human, Klingon, and Romulan-- as his hostages. However, this is just a feint, so that he can lure a Federation starship into his clutches and dominate the crew with his weird "let me heal your pain" power. The Federation responds to this diplomatic emergency by sending to the site the newly reconstructed Enterprise-- though it isn't even fully functional.
Needless to say, after a very cheap-looking action-sequence, Sybok and his buddies take over the Enterprise. Sybok then reveals to Kirk his purpose: to penetrate a mysterious "barrier" at "the center of the galaxy," where, according to this illogical Vulcan's vision, they will meet some sort of "God of all people." Oh yes, and Sybok is Spock's half-brother, which merely distracts from the main theme: the risks of claiming to have revelatory experiences. The script tries to goose this static situation with some failed escape-scenes and a Klingon ship tailing the Enterprise, but it all leads to a depressingly predictable resolution: the travelers meet an alien who's just pretending to be God, Sybok dies, and all the regular characters escape.
About the only thing salvageable from this farrago is the opening scene-- before all the nonsense gets started-- wherein Kirk, Spock and McCoy are camping out in Yosemite National Park. Shatner might not be any kind of real writer, but here he does manage a good chemistry with his colleagues Nimoy and Kelley. (The latter is the only performer to contribute any decent humorous moments.) All the other regulars, though, have to get by on random bits of unimpressive business.
About the only thing Shatner accomplished here was to make STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE look a whole lot better by comparison.
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