Star Trek V: The movie that doesn't know what it wants to be

I'm not as familiar with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as I am with the other movies featuring the original series cast. Growing up, we had 3 Trek movies on VHS: Wrath of Khan The Search for Spock The Voyage Home I think we rented The Motion Picture before eventually owning it in VHS as well, and had The Undiscovered Country recorded from TV. Still, those 3 movies got the most mileage on the VCR than any others. I only remember seeing The Final Frontier on TV and we never recorded it. I've never been tempted to re-visit the movie until the podcast Transporter Room 3 mentioned it as one of the great Chekov moments (when he briefly pretends to be Captain as a ruse to cover a rescue operation). That was enough to give me a reason to re-watch it, this time. The movie is surprisingly short: 1 hour and 45 minutes, which includes credits. This surprised me even more than when I re-watched Search for Spock and discovered it was an hour and a half. I can only guess the budget was dialed back…

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