Q&As About 'Star Trek': Were the films Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country the two worst Star Trek films with the original cast?

On Quora, Justin Mihalick asks:

Were the films Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country the two worst Star Trek films with the original cast?

No. I do not agree with that supposition, at least not as far as Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is concerned.

Of the six Star Trek feature films released between December 1979 and December 1991, actor-director William Shatner’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is considered by most fans and film reviewers to be the weakest of the bunch. It got low marks for its low-budget special effects, an uneven script, a story twist that the late Gene Roddenberry disliked intensely (although, to be fair to Harve Bennett, David Loughery, and William Shatner, Roddenberry disliked many of the movies’ concepts, such as the more militaristic aspects of Starfleet introduced by Nicholas Meyer in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), and cheesy humor that was added into the script because Paramount wanted Star Trek V to be more like the previous film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

I was at Vulkon ’89 in Tampa, FL, attending my first (and, so far, only) Star Trek convention. I attended a few panels that weekend in March of 1989. but the one that I remember the most was the one in which Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov) was the featured guest speaker.

Koenig talked about many topics during his time on stage, including some candid reveals about The Original Series and the spin-off films. He was quite entertaining (naturally, because he is a writer and an actor), funny (“When we were supposed to be looking at the main viewing screen on the bridge set, there really was no viewscreen for us to look at. There was just a bare studio set wall in front of us, with a Playboy centerfold taped to give the actors a visual reference and an eye line that would show up on camera. So it was really funny when George (Takei) or I had to say a line like, “Captain, I’ve never seen anything like that before!” when we were looking at a picture of Miss June or Miss July from Playboy.”

Of course, during the Q&A session after Walter finished his presentation, some fans were, as Spock might say, “understandably curious” about the upcoming Star Trek V. The movie was just three months away from its premiere, and although Koenig was duty-bound to promote it as best he could, he did seem to be…uncomfortable about discussing it with fans.

He didn’t reveal much about the plot, just said a cryptic remark about there being quite a few surprises in store for fans. He also did not say anything unkind about William Shatner as a director. But he did say that Paramount had asked the writers to make the script less serious and more funnier like “the last picture.”

He ended his answer with something along the lines of “I know that Bill (Shatner), Leonard (Nimoy) and the rest of the cast didn’t think Star Trek V needs to be like The Voyage Home, but you’ll just have to judge the results when the movie opens in June.”

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, on the other hand, is a good and entertaining film. Not as great as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which even today is my favorite Star Trek movie, but it was co-written and directed by Nicholas Meyer. Meyer, of course, co-wrote and directed Star Trek II, and he also wrote the San Francisco-set segment of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. So not only is Star Trek VI well-written and expertly-directed, but it was also deliberately tied into Star Trek: The Next Generation in ways that were subtle and overt.

If I were to rank the six "original cast" Star Trek features from best to worst, my chart would look like this:

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (tie)
2. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
3. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
5. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

That having been said, even the worst of the Star Trek films has its good elements. Star Trek V just happened to have the least amount of good bits versus bad ones. Partly it was because the producers were coming off, as Ralph Winters admits in the “making of” featurette in Star Trek V’s DVD and Blu-ray releases, the success of The Voyage Home, and partly because Paramount asked Harve Bennett to cut the budget, especially for the ambitious special effects that the original script for Star Trek V called for.