Star Trek 5 is an abysmal movie. No, no, Star Trek Nation, don’t bother defending it–you only make yourself look ridiculous. The plot is stupid, the action is boring, and the vast majority of the movie is pure drivel. There are only two moments worth remembering. I am going to include them here (courtesy of YouTube) so you don’t need to see the movie.

 The first is the camping scene:

The second is this:

These two scenes, essentially, sum up what this film is about (despite the filmmakers best efforts to the contrary, apparently). It’s about death and pain and just how important they are to who we become and who we aspire to be.

One of the things that science does badly is explain motivation. Yes, it can tell us that we eat because we need materials to continue breathing, or that we are afraid because we fear harm or destruction. What it can’t do is explain to us why it should matter that we are harmed or destroyed. This is because, by every logical measure, it doesn’t matter. There are very, very few living things that, were they to die, it would actually matter. Hell, there’s even a really healthy debate to be had about what ‘matters’ at all, if anything.

Life comes hand-in-hand with pain, death and a lot of other things that we might not want. We try like hell to avoid them, but we can’t. We make mistakes, we are hurt or hurt others, we make poor decisions and are buried in regret, and so on. This stuff is inevitable. Do we wish to undo it? Are we the less for such experiences?

The pat answer, and the go-to sideplot to most if not all time travel ventures, is ‘yes, let us undo the badness that has occurred.’ Let’s go back in time and catch so-and-so’s cancer before it’s too late. Let’s patch up that relationship we had before it is irreversibly gone. Let’s go on that vacation and keep a keen eye on our passport. Let’s have a do-over and do things ‘right’ this time. Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. We’ve all cursed the skies and said ‘if only I’d _______’.

The thing is, though, is that by going back and fixing those problems–by erasing them from our souls, whether actually (via time travel) or mentally (via what Spock’s Brother offers Kirk)–we erase who we are. Star Trek shows this to us time and again, and not just in Star Trek 5, but through Picard’s interactions with Q, through Sisko’s negotiations with the Prophets of the Wormhole, and in many other instances, too. Yeah, maybe you can go back and fix things, but that won’t make you any better. It probably just makes you different and, possibly, a lesser person for it.

So, Kirk’s question at the conclusion of ST5 (and, seriously, don’t see it), when he asks the ‘Supreme Being’ “What does God need with a Starship,” can be looked at metaphorically, I suppose. The starship is a journey–a promise of adventure or ordeal, depending on perspective–and God might ‘need’ it not to get around, but to show us something that we need to understand: Change is inevitable, pain is assured, and the only thing that really matters is how you chose to deal with it. Are you Captain James T Kirk, hero of the Federation and savior of worlds?

Or are you this dope:  

Doc! Doc! My world is DIFFERENT!