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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Stardate: 8454.1

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Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Captain Kirk and his crew must deal with Mr. Spock's long-lost half-brother who hijacks the Enterprise for an obsessive search for God at the center of the galaxy. Captain Kirk and his crew must deal with Mr. Spock's long-lost half-brother who hijacks the Enterprise for an obsessive search for God at the center of the galaxy. Captain Kirk and his crew must deal with Mr. Spock's long-lost half-brother who hijacks the Enterprise for an obsessive search for God at the center of the galaxy.

• William Shatner
• Gene Roddenberry
• Harve Bennett
• Leonard Nimoy
• DeForest Kelley
• 382 User reviews
• 86 Critic reviews
• 43 Metascore
• 5 wins & 5 nominations

• St. John Talbot

• Caithlin Dar

• Captain Klaa

• (as Spice Williams)

• "God"
• Young Sarek
• High Priestess

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia During pre-production meetings, screenwriter David Loughery jokingly proposed to have Commander Uhura appear as an erotic dancer in order to lure away the hostage takers from the Paradise compound. He was surprised when the producers approved of the idea right away.
• Goofs When Kirk, Bones and Spock are flying up the turbolift shaft, the deck number gets higher as they go upwards. However Star Trek ships are numbered the opposite way round with the higher decks having lower numbers. For instance, the bridge (at the top of the ship) is on deck 1.

Kirk : Damn it, Bones, you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

• Crazy credits "Highest descender fall recorded in the United States: Ken Bates." (I.e., Kenny Bates .)
• Alternate versions The CBS broadcast premiere removed a number of scenes from the movie. 1) All scenes featuring the dancing triple-breasted catwoman were removed. 2) The campfire scene was trimmed, ending with Spock producing the 'marshmellon' - effectively removing the much criticized 'Row Row Row Your Boat' sing along between Kirk, Spock and McCoy. 3) The scene between Uhura and Scotty on the bridge as they receive new orders from Starfleet Command. 4) The "I could use a shower" scene between Kirk and Spock in the turbolift.
• Connections Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Star Trek V/No Holds Barred/Dead Poets Society/Let's Get Lost/Renegades (1989)
• Soundtracks Fanfare From Star Trek TV Series by Alexander Courage

User reviews 382

• TheLittleSongbird
• Jul 19, 2017
• How long is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier? Powered by Alexa
• Why was J'Onn digging holes on Numbus 3 at the beginning? Also, what was his pain?
• What was the creature pretending to be "God"?
• What is 'The Final Frontier' about?
• June 9, 1989 (United States)
• United States
• Star Trek: The Final Frontier
• Owens Lake, California, USA (the dry lake bed stood in for the desolate Nimbus III)
• Paramount Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $27,800,000 (estimated)
• $52,210,049
• $17,375,648
• Jun 11, 1989

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Published Jul 27, 2020

The Story Behind Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's Musical Moment

Dan Kuramoto of the band Hiroshima explains how he got involved with Uhura's big number.

StarTrek.com | Getty Images - MICHAEL TRAN / Contributor

There’s a bizarre moment midway through Star Trek V: The Final Frontier , the William Shatner-helmed feature film enjoyed as much ironically as sincerely by Trekkies since its release in 1989. During a mission to rescue a trio of diplomats from the zealot Sybok, Captain James T. Kirk and company need a way to divert a group of armed revolutionaries so that our heroes can steal their horses and ride into combat. This diversion takes the form of Commander Uhura performing a live, nude cabaret act on a hilltop.

This scene tends to provoke a lot of questions from viewers. “Is that really Nichelle Nichols dancing dressed in nothing but two decorative fans and convenient lighting?” Yes, it is. “Is that her singing voice?” No, it isn’t, though she was promised it would be . And, finally, “What’s that song she’s singing?”

The voice belongs to Machun, then-vocalist for the band Hiroshima, and the song is “The Moon’s a Window to Heaven,” arranged and performed by Hiroshima both here and in the full-band version that features at the end of the film’s original soundtrack album. “The Moon’s a Window to Heaven” is one of only a handful of original songs ever written for Star Trek , a series that typically sticks to orchestral scores and time-tested catalog music. It’s first heard as the instrumental tune playing in the dive bar in Paradise City, where Romulan diplomat Caithlin Dar meets her Human and Klingon counterparts, days before being highlighted by Uhura’s live rendition. Its recurrence implies that the song is either a recent hit or a popular standard in the Federation, a rare glimpse into the state of pop music in the 23rd century.

StarTrek.com

The song is credited to legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith and lyricist John Bettis, but belongs just as much to Dan Kuramoto, composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader for Hiroshima. Formed in 1974 in Los Angeles by Dan Kuramoto, June Kuramoto and Danny Yamamoto, Hiroshima has long represented the core Star Trek principle of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, augmenting the typical mid-century pop instrumentation of guitar, bass, keyboard, and drum kit with Japanese instruments like koto, shakuhachi, and taiko to create a unique and inimitable sound. Hiroshima has toured the world and sold over four million records , making a brief detour into the Star Trek universe along the way.

StarTrek.com recently interviewed Dan Kuramoto about the experience of creating this unique piece of deep Star Trek lore.

StarTrek.com: For readers unfamiliar with Hiroshima, how would you define your genre of music? You’ve been described as smooth jazz, jazz/rock fusion, you’ve got a Grammy nomination in the R&B Instrumental category, but when a stranger asks you what kind of music you play, what do you tell them?

Dan Kuramoto: We like to think we play American music, which is non-categorical/diverse/inclusive/evolving. Most of us grew up in minority communities that were very multicultural. Since most of the band is Japanese-American we are heavily influenced by Japanese music and musical instruments. In fact our ’star’ is June Kuramoto. She was born in Japan, came to the US at [age] 6 and is widely considered the greatest koto player in the world. She was raised in an African-American community in Los Angeles, so along with her lifetime of classical training she was also deeply influenced by R&B, Soul and Jazz. Our second Grammy nomination was in the contemporary jazz category, so even the Grammys see us in various styles.

By 1989, Hiroshima had a gold record and a Grammy nomination under their belts. How did you become involved in Star Trek V ?

DK: I honestly think Star Trek was looking for a music that was truly different—but relatable. I think because we are so different stylistically, but popular enough to have sold millions of records, [that] made us interesting. I had no idea that we would get to work with the brilliant Jerry Goldsmith, who was an amazing mentor. He liked our blending of cultures in our music.

What was your level of familiarity with Star Trek before working on the film?

DK: We were huge fans of the TV series, and George Takei was a big supporter of our band.  And we saw all the movies. Our friends — the jazz group, Yellowjackets — had done some music in the film that preceded ours.

What was the state of “The Moon’s a Window to Heaven” when you first heard it? Was it just words and music on a page, were there demos? I’d love to know how the arrangement came together.

DK: We had a song title. We were told we’d do a song and some music cues. It all came together pretty quickly… I really don’t recall at this point when we got the final melody and lyrics. John [Bettis] did the lyrics and we worked together on the rest. John is a total pro. Just chilled with his pipe, he really understood working with the studios and made life easy. And very talented.

What was your personal impression of Jerry Goldsmith?

DK : Man, Jerry was a very heavy cat! I was very familiar with his scores—he was one of the true pioneers of combining the orchestra with electronics and synthesizer and creating new sounds. A genius who really “cracked the whip.” Made us understand that you had to work fast and be adaptable. Gave me so much good advice!

You’re a very prolific composer, credited with the bulk of the Hiroshima catalog. Was working within the framework of someone else’s words and melody more freeing, or more confining?

DK: Actually I was surprised they gave me almost total freedom. They let me cut the rhythm tracks on my own at the studio of my choice. Later we finished up on the lot and Bill Shatner — who directed — just sort of hung out with us! At one point he took off his Star Tre k pin and pinned it on my jacket. I still have it.

Did you receive any specific notes or direction from William Shatner about what he wanted out of the track, or the purpose he wanted it to serve for the film?

DK: Bill was pretty new to directing and he pretty much left the music up to us and Jerry.

“The Moon’s a Window to Heaven” is, theoretically, a pop song from the distant future. Was there any effort to try and be predictive or conjectural about what a Top 10 hit from 2287 might sound like?

DK: Ha! No. We were trying to just make the scene work.

What was your first reaction when you heard the song in the context of the film? It is a, uh, well, it’s a talked-about moment.

DK: Well, we were very honored to be a part of a Star Trek film. I recall at the time we were on tour playing Wolf Trap in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia and we saw the movie.

Did being featured on a Star Trek film soundtrack have an effect on widening your audience?

DK: Not noticeably, but we haven’t featured “The Moon’s a Window to Heaven” in a Hiroshima live set yet.

Hiroshima continues to tour the United States and is currently working on a new album expected to be released in Fall 2020. For more information about the band, visit hiroshimamusic.com.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Dylan Roth (he/him) is a freelance pop culture writer and one quarter of the NY-based rock band The Hell Yeah Babies. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanRoth.

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There was a moment in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" - only one, and a brief one, but a genuine one - when I felt the promise of awe. The Starship Enterprise was indeed going where no man had gone before, through the fabled Great Barrier, which represents the end of the finite universe. What would lie beyond? Would it be an endless void, or a black hole, or some kind of singularity of space and time that would turn the voyagers inside out and deposit them in another universe? Or would the Barrier even reveal, as one of the characters believes, the place where life began? The place called by the name of Eden and countless other words? As the Enterprise approached the Barrier, I found my attention gathering. The movie had been slow and boring until then, with an interminable, utterly inconsequential first act and a plot that seemed to exist in a space-time singularity all its own. But now, at last, the fifth " Star Trek " movie seemed to be remembering what was best about the fictional world of "Star Trek": those moments when man and his ideas are challenged by the limitless possibilities of creation.

As I've said, my awe was real. It was also brief. Once the Enterprise crew members (and the Vulcan who was holding them hostage) landed on the world beyond the Barrier, the possibilities of god or Eden or whatever quickly disintegrated into an anticlimactic special effects show with a touch of " The Wizard of Oz " thrown in for good measure. I do not want to give away important elements in the plot, but after you've seen the movie, ask yourself these questions: 1) How was it known that the voyagers would go beyond the Barrier; 2) what was the motivation behind what they found there; 3) how was it known that they would come to stand at exactly the point where the stone pillars came up from the Earth; 4) In a version of a question asked by Capt. Kirk, why would any entity capable of staging such a show need its own starship; and 5) is the Great Barrier indeed real, or simply a deceptive stage setting for what was found behind it? (What I'm really complaining about, I think, is that "Star Trek V" allows itself enormous latitude in the logic beneath its plot. If the Barrier is real, what exactly are we to make of the use to which it is put?) Before we get to ask those questions, "Star Trek V" spends much of its time meandering through some of the goofiest scenes in the entire series. The movie opens with the taking of three hostages on a desert planet, who have been captured for the sole purpose of luring Capt. Kirk and his starship to the planet so that the ship can be commandeered for the voyage through the Barrier. I have explained these plot details in one sentence. The movie takes endless scenes, during which the key crew members of the Enterprise need to be summoned back to their ship in the middle of a shore leave. And that process, in turn, requires interminable scenes of Kirk, Spock and Bones on a camping trip in Yosemite, during which they attempt to sing "Row, row, row your boat" and nearly succeed in sinking the entire movie. If there is a sillier and more awkwardly written scene in the entire "Star Trek" saga than this one, I've missed it.

After the pointless opening scenes, the movie begins to develop a plot of sorts, but it is so confused and inadequately explained that there are times when we simply give up and wait for what's next. That was particularly the case during the inexplicable closing scenes, where the humans and the Klingons seem to join sides after an off-camera speech by a former Klingon leader who had been put out to pasture. Since this leader is identified as having been badly treated by the Klingons in his retirement, how did he suddenly regain the authority to negotiate a truce? And do we really want to see the mighty Klingons reduced to the status of guests at a cocktail party? One of the trademarks of the "Star Trek" saga has been the way the supporting characters are kept alive in little subplots. In "Star Trek V," the Enterprise starts its voyage while the shop is suffering a series of mechanical failures, and that involves countless brief scenes in which Scotty, the chief engineer, emerges from beneath a piece of equipment, brandishes his wrench and says he'll have things fixed in a moment. Two or three of these scenes might have been enough.

Another irritation is the way in which we meet apparently major characters, including those played by David Warner , Laurence Luckinbill and Cynthia Gouw, who are introduced with fanfares of dialogue and then never developed or given anything to do. The entire movie seems crowded with loose ends, overlooked developments and forgotten characters, and there are little snatches of dialogue where some of these minor characters seem to be soldiering on in their original subplots as if unaware that they've been cut from the movie.

"Star Trek V" is pretty much of a mess - a movie that betrays all the signs of having gone into production at a point where the script doctoring should have begun in earnest. There is no clear line from the beginning of the movie to the end, not much danger, no characters to really care about, little suspense, uninteresting or incomprehensible villains, and a great deal of small talk and pointless dead ends. Of all of the "Star Trek" movies, this is the worst.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

108 minutes

William Shatner as Capt. Kirk

Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock

Deforest Kelley as Dr. McCoy

James Doohan as Montgomery Scott

Walter Koenig as Pavel Chekov

Nichelle Nichols as Cmdr. Uhura

George Takei as Sulu

Photography by

• Andrew Laszlo
• Peter Berger
• David Loughery From

From A Story by

Produced by.

• Harve Bennett

Directed by

• William Shatner
• Jerry Goldsmith

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Star Trek V Opening Music

I remember seeing Star Trek V: The Final Frontier on opening night in Edgartown with my friend Jonah Walker. I’ll try to keep things positive: the opening scene was cool!

When we did the expanded Star Trek V CD, we were surprised to learn that Jerry Goldsmith had scored the first appearance of Sybok on horseback.

What I didn’t know is that the first two cues were meant to play continuously—if this YouTube video is accurate (it seems to be):

Interesting to see after all these years how it would have worked! But I do like the unscored presentation in the finished film.

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DOWN WITH LOGO PLASTERING. Paramount you don't need to follow Warner Bros. into the trap of sticking your current logo onto every one of your library at any given moment... oh the music. I'm good either way. (I'd take "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" over ANY TNG movie not called "Star Trek: First Contact".)

I'm absolutely gaga for this score, but I also prefer the nonscored opening -- up to the mild meld where those unmistakable Goldsmith harmonics wash over you. Sigh... Some days I feel like the only person who likes this film despite it's obvious flaws.

Welcome to my world, Jordan. I feel like that, too!

Star Trek: The Next Generation opening title sequences

• View history

Title screen for Star Trek: The Next Generation

The opening title sequences for Star Trek: The Next Generation followed the tradition of the Star Trek: The Original Series opening title sequences closely, highlighting the series lead ship, the USS Enterprise -D , and reprising the opening narration read by the series' new captain , Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard .

Robert Justman claimed ownership for being the first to draft a new "main theme" description, on a hot day at his home computer on 2 November 1986 . ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 1, Issue 5 , p. 9)

" FADE IN as Camera rapidly pulls back from a close shot of Earth and tracks through our entire solar system showing the Sun and its planets in their relationship to each other in a continually changing perspective. As we continue to pull away and our solar system diminishes in size, our Camera executes a 180 degree turn and forges faster ahead through our Galaxy... "

Later, in a memo to Gene Roddenberry dated 5 March 1987 , Justman added more emphasis on the series' new ship, the Enterprise -D. ( Star Trek: The Magazine  Volume 1, Issue 5 , p. 10)

Starting from Season 3, the beginning of the sequence no longer depicted Earth's solar system, instead panning through views of various nebulae, stars, planets, and other celestial objects before revealing the Enterprise.

Season 5 "streaked version"

For TNG Season 5 , Rick Berman had Dan Curry design a "streaked" version of the opening logo to emulate the Superman films. ( Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry , p. 189)

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Star Trek: Discovery reveals season 5 first look and on-set Easter eggs

See a photo of Sonequa Martin-Green's Captain Burnham, plus a video set tour of season 5 with Wilson Cruz.

Following the reveal of Star Trek: Picard 's first season 3 teaser trailer, Star Trek Day turned its attention to Star Trek: Discovery , bringing forth a first look at season 5.

Sonequa Martin-Green 's Captain Michael Burnham gets her Mad Max Furiosa moment as she races away from a sandstorm threatening to engulf her.

"Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery uncover a mystery that sends them on an epic adventure across the galaxy to find an ancient power whose very existence has been deliberately hidden for centuries," says the official season 5 summary. "But there are others on the hunt as well… dangerous foes who are desperate to claim the prize for themselves and will stop at nothing to get it."

The Star Trek Day celebration, which took place in Los Angeles and was livestreamed for fans globally, also came with a behind-the-scenes tour of the Discovery season 5 set, led by star Wilson Cruz (Dr. Hugh Culber). The video shows Martin-Green begin to film a scene involving Burnham on the bridge, as well as some Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the set.

Cruz points out some of the items in Burnham's captain's quarters that are "indicative of Africa and the diaspora." He says, "You feel like you're in Michael Burnham's world, her private sanctuary, if you will." He also highlights a Federation Headquarters plaque and a costume fitting with Cruz's "TV husband," actor Anthony Rapp (Paul Stamets).

Also spotted in the video are actors Mary Wiseman (Sylvia Tilly) and Blu del Barrio (Adira), and series costume designer Anthony Tran.

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 doesn't currently have a premiere date, but it's currently in production in Toronto.

Watch the set tour in the video above.

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