William Shatner Admits “I Failed Horribly” Directing Star Trek V

William Shatner shoulders the blame for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’s failure as the director who also came up with the central story of the USS Enterprise crew meeting ‘God’. Star Trek V was the lone Star Trek movie directed by Shatner, who was following up his friend, Leonard Nimoy’s, back-to-back successes as director of Star Trek III: The Search For Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Unfortunately, the reviews and box office for Star Trek V were disastrous, and Shatner’s film nearly sank the Star Trek movie franchise.

Speaking to THR about his new autobiographical documentary, William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill, the 92-year-old Shatner reflected on his inexperience as a feature film director and the mistakes he made with Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, admitting, “I failed… In my mind, I failed horribly.” Read his quotes below:

I wish that I’d had the backing and the courage to do the things I felt I needed to do. My concept was, “Star Trek goes in search of God,” and management said, “Well, who’s God? We’ll alienate the nonbeliever, so, no, we can’t do God.” And then somebody said, “What about an alien who thinks they’re God?” Then it was a series of my inabilities to deal with the management and the budget. I failed. In my mind, I failed horribly. When I’m asked, “What do you regret the most?,” I regret not being equipped emotionally to deal with a large motion picture. So in the absence of my power, the power vacuum filled with people that didn’t make the decisions I would’ve made.

It is on me. [In the finale,] I wanted granite [rock creatures] to explode out of the mountain. The special effects guy said, “I can build you a suit that’s on fire and smoke comes out.” I said, “Great, how much will that cost?” They said, “$250,000 a suit.” Can you make 10 suits? He said, “Yeah.” That’s $2.5 million. You’ve got a $30 million budget. You sure you want to spend [it on that]? Those are the practical decisions. Well, wait a minute, what about one suit? And I’ll photograph it everywhere [to look like 10].