William Shatner Says Directing Star Trek V Was A Big Mistake

They say hindsight is 20/20, and for William Shatner, there’s only one feeling he experiences while looking back on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier – regret.

The Star Trek mainstay and all-around industry legend has been opening up about his time as Captain James T. Kirk, not to mention that ill-fated voyage behind the lens, as part of his newly-released book, Live Long and… What I Might Have Learned Along The Way.

Now, the good folks at TrekMovie have relayed one or two fascinating tidbits for us to peruse, including the fact that Shatner actually felt unwelcome at Leonard Nimoy’s funeral. When it comes to the Final Frontier, though, William Shatner is the first to admit that he made a mistake in choosing to direct a film that was so deeply embedded in the Star Trek franchise.

I had a choice. I could accept the compromise or refuse to direct the movie. I made a mistake; I accepted the compromise, which doomed the picture from the beginning.

Put it this way; Shatner directing a mainline installment in the Star Trek saga is akin to Mark Hamill stepping behind the lens on a Star Wars movie without much previous experience. Evidently, it wasn’t Shatner’s finest choice, and The Final Frontier suffered as a result, with one producer even going so far as to say that it almost killed the franchise outright. Yeesh.

Through time, Star Trek was able to bounce back, and even if Paramount’s core series is still on ice for the foreseeable future now that Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth have dropped out, over on CBS, the franchise is as healthy as ever. Long may that continue. Or as the Trekkies say, live long and prosper…