Star Trek V: The Final Frontier cut one of the movie's planned villains, a fearsome rock monster, and this contributed to the diminished overall quality and poor reception of William Shatner's directorial debut. Released in the summer of 1989, Star Trek V introduced Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), the half-brother of Spock (Leonard Nimoy), who hijacked the Starship Enterprise on his mad quest to find God. Star Trek V ended up as the lowest-grossing and worst-reviewed of the Star Trek movies starring the classic cast of The Original Series.
In his 1994 memoir, Star Trek Movie Memories, William Shatner revealed the multitude of troubles he encountered directing Star Trek V. Faced with the pressure of following up the incredibly successful Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home directed by Leonard Nimoy, Shatner drew inspiration from televangelists preaching salvation and imagined a tale where Captain Kirk and his crew encounter a holy man seeking God. Shatner's ambitious concept was admittedly problematic; in the original climax he wanted, Kirk, Spock, and Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) were chased by fiery angels and demons but Shatner quickly realized such blatant Judeo-Christian imagery would be out of place in a Star Trek movie.
Instead, Shatner decided Star Trek V's climax would feature Kirk chased by a half-dozen rock monsters on the mythical planet Sha-Ka-Ree, which was named for Sean Connery, where "God" lived. However, when the director found out the cost of six rock monster costumes would be in excess of $300,000, Shatner reluctantly hoped that one rock monster would suffice. This was heartbreaking for Shatner since his original script came in way above budget and he had to slash the spectacular visuals he envisioned for Star Trek V's final confrontation with "God." Still, even the compromise of a lone rock monster proved unworkable on-screen when Shatner and the producers saw how stiffly the stuntman moved in the creature's costume and how the visual effects just weren't up to par with what fans would expect from a Star Trek movie.
Along with having a limited budget, Shatner's Star Trek V was facing unprecedented competition at the box office, and the best special effects houses in Hollywood were already committed to summer 1989's many blockbusters like Tim Burton's Batman, Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters 2, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In fact, Shatner's first choice to play Sybok, Sean Connery, decided to play Indiana Jones' father instead. Without Industrial Light and Magic to provide Star Trek V's VFX, Shatner instead hired an effects house run by a man named Bran Ferren out of Hoboken, New Jersey, to create Star Trek V's visuals.
The Star Trek V's producer Harve Bennett said the rock monster "looked more like a lobster man than a rock man," when he saw the footage of the creature in action. Shatner had no choice but to cut the rock monster from Star Trek V and brainstorm a different climax for the movie after "God" was revealed to be an evil, alien imposter. Ultimately, Shatner settled on "God" attacking Kirk himself until the Captain of the Enterprise is saved by Spock, who worked with the Klingons to destroy the false diety with their Bird-of-Prey. Unfortunately, the special effects of God were also underwhelming and were merely passable.
In The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years oral history of Star Trek by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman, Leonard Nimoy summed up William Shatner's problems directing Star Trek V: "Bill's picture... had its own built-in problems... which he was never going to be able to surmount." As a very successful director, Nimoy plainly saw the problems with Star Trek V from a story standpoint even before cameras rolled. But even if the rock monster had worked and looked spectacular on-screen, it wouldn't have solved the conceptual issues Star Trek V had from the get-go. Losing the rock monster was just one of a number of compromises William Shatner was forced to make that lessened Star Trek V: The Final Frontier from his original vision.