Development During the 1966–1969
Star Trek television series,
William Shatner and
Leonard Nimoy's lawyers drafted what Shatner termed a "
favored nations clause", with the result that whatever Shatner received—e.g., a pay raise or script control—Nimoy also got and vice versa. Nimoy had directed
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Shatner had previously directed plays and television episodes; when he signed on for
The Voyage Home following a pay dispute, Shatner was promised he could direct the next film. Shatner conceived his idea for the film's story before he was officially given the director's job. His inspiration was
televangelists; "They [the televangelists] were repulsive, strangely horrifying, and yet I became absolutely fascinated," he recalled. Shatner was intrigued that, not only did these personalities convince others God was speaking directly to them, but they became wealthy by what Shatner considered false messages. The televangelists formed the basis for the character Zar, later Sybok. Shatner's first outline was titled
An Act of Love, Shatner had presented his idea to
Paramount studio head
Frank Mancuso while filming
The Voyage Home. Mancuso liked Shatner's idea and agreed to hire a writer to draft a
film treatment. Shatner wanted novelist
Eric Van Lustbader, but negotiations between Lustbader and Paramount failed over the author's requested $1 million salary. Shatner dictated the story himself and gave it to Paramount's production president
Ned Tanen for input. When Shatner tried to convince Bennett to reconsider, the producer insisted on a meeting at his home. After several hours of discussion Bennett agreed to return. Bennett disagreed with several elements of Shatner's story, feeling that, because no-one could assuredly answer the question of God's existence, the ending of the film would never be satisfying. Bennett also told Shatner that the film had the feeling of a
tone poem rather than an adventure story. The studio agreed with Bennett, reasoning that the subject matter could be too weighty or offensive to theatergoers. Shatner and Bennett began reworking the story. Concerned that knowing the renegade Sybok's motivation from the beginning of the story was anticlimactic, the team moved the revelation to later in the story. Shatner said that Bennett also suggested turning the God entity into an "evil alien pretending to be God for his own gain". Having satisfied themselves and Paramount with the adjustments, Shatner and Bennett approached
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan writer and director
Nicholas Meyer to pen the script, but he was unavailable. Bennett found a script by
David Loughery and showed his work to Shatner, who agreed that he would be a good fit for the task of scripting
Star Trek. Roddenberry, Nimoy and
DeForest Kelley all disagreed that Spock and McCoy would betray Kirk, which Loughery explained was done to give a conflict in which "one man stands alone" from the rest. During this time, Shatner reconsidered elements of the
Star Trek V story; he made Sybok's character softer and more sympathetic. When the writers' strike ended, Loughery returned to work on the script, while Shatner flew to the Himalayas for a job. When he returned, he felt betrayed by Loughery's revisions, which he felt transformed the search for God into the search for the mythical paradise Sha Ka Ree—a word play on "
Sean Connery", whom they wanted for Sybok's role. Though Shatner convinced Bennett and Loughery to revise much of the script, Sha Ka Ree remained; it was changed to a place of ultimate knowledge of which Sybok had received visions. The script was also rewritten to address Nimoy and Kelley's concerns. Concerned that the franchise's momentum following
The Voyage Home had disappeared,
Design Nilo Rodis, who had worked on two previous
Star Trek features, was appointed as
art director, and worked with Shatner to establish the film's visual design. Shatner sought a grittier and more realistic feel to the
Star Trek universe, and so the two worked together to visualize the film from start to finish. After Shatner explained the entire story in a day-long session, Rodis went home and sketched out each scene from the script. Shatner was pleased with the results, especially with Rodis' designs for Shatner's most expansive or dramatic shots. Rodis' input in developing the early character and costume designs was significant. Shatner praised his costume designs as being futuristic but plausible and in keeping with the continuity established in previous
Star Trek films. After being disappointed by the costume designers approached to realize Rodis' ideas, Shatner suggested that Rodis become the costume designer as well. Bennett hired Dodie Shepard as the costume supervisor; Shepard's role was to oversee the costume fabrication and keep track of the clothes during filming. To save on costs, Shepard clothed extras with existing items from
Western Costume's warehouses. The constrained budget meant Shatner could not completely redesign the
Starfleet uniforms, but Rodis created new brown field uniforms for the film's location scenes as well as the leisure clothes the crew wears during shore leave. Rodis and Shatner also drew up sketches of what the various aliens seen in the film would look like. Shatner picked Kenny Myers as the special-effects makeup artist. Myers discussed the sketches with Shatner and made casts of actors' faces using dental
alginate. These casts were used for close-up, high-quality "A" makeups, as well as less complicated masks for far-away and background characters. Shatner hired
Richard Snell as makeup supervisor, advising him to make each
Klingon forehead distinct. Shatner hired
Herman Zimmerman as production designer. Zimmerman was immediately put in charge of designing all-new sets for the bridges of
Enterprise and the Klingon Bird-of-Prey, elevator and access shafts, and Nimbus III interiors. At one point, he was building five sets at once. Art department head
Michael Okuda created
LCARS backlit controls on the Klingon ship and
Enterprise. The corridors for the
Enterprise were the same as those used in the
Next Generation television series. The bridge set alone cost $250,000. The Nimbus III city of Paradise was one of the last locations to be designed and created, because its design relied on what exterior location and terrain was used. Zimmerman created a sketch of the town's layout over three days, drawing inspiration from a circular Moroccan fortress. Creation of the city cost $500,000 and took five weeks of construction in heat. Tim Downs scouted possible areas for location filming. He looked for a location that could stand in for three different venues without the production having to move or change hotels: the film's opening scene; the God planet's establishing shots; and the Nimbus III Paradise City. Downs was familiar with the
Mojave Desert and thought that locations near
Ridgecrest, California, would serve the production's needs, so he took photos based on sketches Rodis had provided of what the locations might look like. Downs also shot photos with filters and tried to accomplish dust effects with his car to replicate ideas for how some sequences would be shot. When Downs returned with the photos, Shatner felt that the locations the scout found would be perfect for the film.
Filming Principal photography began in October 1988, in and around
Los Angeles, California. Shortly before the beginning of location shooting, Hollywood union truck drivers or
teamsters went on strike With deadlines looming, the production searched for non-union drivers, aware that the Teamsters might retaliate by sabotaging equipment or flying airplanes above the filming to ruin audio recordings. After one of the production's camera trucks exploded in the studio parking lot, the non-union drivers headed to
Yosemite National Park under cover of darkness with a police escort. The film's Yosemite scenes were all shot on location. Laszlo scouted out a tall peak on which the production created a rock face with safety net. The overhead shot gave the impression Kirk was climbing at a great height, while unnatural background features such as swimming pools were camouflaged. In the scene, Spock watches Kirk's ascent, levitates up behind him as a pest giving suggestions with the outcome that Kirk slips and Spock saves him using levitating boots. In reviewing the
dailies of the first two days of shooting, the production realized that a pine tree in the frame during Kirk and Spock's mountain dialogue ruined the illusion of height, while a shot of Shatner clinging to the face of El Capitan appeared muddy due to clouds obscuring the sun and ruining the depth of field. The scenes had to be reshot later. After the Yosemite shots, location shooting moved to desert locales. Nimbus III and its town, Paradise City, were recreated in the Mojave. The town was created as a haphazard collection of spaceship parts and futuristic scrap. Shatner "cracked" during the filming in heat, insulting the head electrician and ignoring Laszlo's request for additional setup time. At Paramount, the crew filmed all the scenes that would take place on soundstages, including the
Enterprise and Bird-of-Prey sets, the Paradise City interiors, and the campfire location. Production was smoother on set, and the crew shot scenes ahead of schedule. The crew fabricated a stand-in set for the God planet location, where additional scenes were filmed to combine with the location footage. Spock's catching of Kirk as the captain falls off El Capitan was filmed against a set that replicated the forest floor and was rotated ninety degrees. Shatner scheduled the campfire scenes to be the last ones shot, after which the cast and crew had a small celebration before a traditional wrap party later. The cast celebrated the end of filming in the last week of December 1988, and gave a press conference on the set of the
Enterprise bridge on December 28. Shatner returned to Paramount Studios a few days after principal photography had wrapped to organize the film's post-production schedule. This included showing a rough cut of the film—minus the special effects—to studio personnel. Shatner recalled that the film received praise and left the screening "reveling" in its reception; it turned out to be a "momentary victory" once he saw the special effects. To save time and money, he planned to create as many effects as he could either on stage, or through camera trickery. The producers solicited test footage from various effects houses to judge which was best able to create the film's main effects, including the planet Sha Ka Ree and the godlike being which resided there.
Bran Ferren's effects company, Associates and Ferren, was chosen. Ferren had worked on films such as
Altered States and
Little Shop of Horrors. Associates and Ferren had three months to complete the effects work—around half the usual industry timeframe. Shatner insisted on viewing much test footage before he proceeded with each shot, requesting time-consuming changes if he did not like an effect. Winter recalled that the production had budgeted $4 million for the film's effects, slightly more than
The Voyage Home. "The first pass", he said, "with all the things [Shatner] wanted, was [$5 or $6] million". Combined with Ferren's figures, the film's budget climbed to $33 million. The studio called a meeting with executives and began cutting out effects shots. To reduce the optical effects workload, Ferren rejected
bluescreen compositing, opting instead for
rear projection. This cheaper process, he reasoned, would save time, and would make sense for elements such as the
Enterprises bridge viewer, where compositing would lack the softness of a real transmitted image. Designer Lynda Weinman used a
Mac II to create the
animatics cut into the film during production, which were eventually replaced by the film's finished effects. The rock monster climax of the film was ultimately dropped due to difficulties during filming. loading it with smoke that it would slowly emit, obscuring some obvious rubber parts. On the last day of location shooting, the Rockman began suffering mechanical problems; the suit stopped breathing fire, and the desert wind dissipated the smoke. The result, Shatner wrote, was that "our guy in the silly rubber suit ultimately just looked like ... well, a guy in a silly rubber suit." With no time to return to the location, Shatner was forced to get wide shots and hope that the setting could be reproduced in the studio, but admitted that it was likely not going to work for the film. Once back at the studio for non-location filming, Shatner and Ferren met to discuss how to replace the Rockman. The agreed-upon idea was an "amorphous blob of light and energy" that would rise up and chase after Kirk, shape-shifting while in pursuit. The
Enterprise model had been damaged when it was loaned out for touring purposes, meaning the 30,000 panels on the model had to be repainted by hand. While production wrapped, Ferren continued work on the miniatures and other optical effects at his New Jersey studio. The opticals were completed in Manhattan before being sent west; for example, bluescreen footage of the motion controlled miniatures was filmed in Hoboken, New Jersey. In New York, the blue screen was replaced by a moving starfield—a single finished shot of a ship moving through space required as many as fifty pieces of film. The Great Barrier effects were created using chemicals, which were dropped into a large water tank to create swirls and other reactions. The "God column", in which the false god appeared, was created by a rapidly rotating cylinder through which light was shone; the result appeared on film as a column of light. Ferren used a
beam splitter to project actor George Murdock's head into the cylinder, giving the appearance that the false god resided within the column.
Editing Days after filming was completed, Shatner returned to Paramount to supervise the film's edit, soundscape creation and score, and integration of optical effects. Editor
Peter E. Berger had already assembled rough cuts of various sequences, and with only weeks before the film's scheduled completion, the production team set about the task of salvaging the film's ending through editing. The false god's screen time was reduced, and Ferren's "god blob" effect was replaced with a closeup of the actor's face, along with shots of lightning and smoke. At the time, Shatner felt that the edits "pulled a rabbit out of a hat", solving many of the film's problems. Shatner's cut ran slightly over two hours (not including end credits or the opticals), which Paramount thought was too long. Their target runtime was one hour forty-five minutes, which would guarantee twice-nightly theatrical screenings. Bennett was handed the task of shortening the film's running time, despite Shatner's view that nothing could possibly be removed. Shatner was horrified by Bennett's edit, and the two haggled over what parts to restore or cut. In early test screenings, the film received negative reviews. Of the first test audience, only a small portion considered the film "excellent", a rating that most other
Star Trek films had enjoyed. Segments of the film were re-edited for the theatrical release. Five minutes of footage was excised to improve the film's pacing, and an additional scene was included on the Bird-of-Prey to make the circumstances of Kirk's rescue clearer. ==Audio==