Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

The crew of the Enterprise (or, more accurately, the Enterprise-A) finds religion – or at least boldy goes in search of it – in this fifth installment of the sci-fi series. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and McCoy (DeForest Kelley) have to cut short their camping trip at Yosemite National Park when the Enterprise crew is called upon to deal with a hostage situation on Nimbus III; upon arriving, they find a renegade Vulcan named Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill) had conjured the crisis to lure a starship to the planet, one he can use to travel to the mythical world of Sha Ka Ree, where all of creation began – and where God himself can supposedly be found. Using his mental powers of revealing and mending a person’s innermost pain, Sybok (who also happens to be Spock’s half-brother) gains the trust of most of the Enterprise‘s crew and convinces them of his quest, though Kirk remains skeptical about the existence of a physical deity and insists that his pain is what makes him human. En route to Sha Ka Ree (named after Sean Connery, who was the first choice to play Sybok), the Enterprise is pursued by hotheaded Klingon captain Klaa (Todd Bryant), who’s become bored with destroying space junk and is aching for a real battle. The climax was originally scripted to feature the ground opening up to reveal the nine circles of hell, crawling with demons; budget constraints reduced the scene to Kirk taking on a rock monster … and even that was eventually scrapped and replaced with (much cheaper) shots of George Murdock’s angry glowing eyes.