Shatner reveals when Star Trek failed

From filmstalker, William Shatner has been speaking out about two things, the first and most important is his view on the fifth outing of the Star Trek film franchise and where it went wrong, and the second is his open disappointment that he's in the new Star Trek film from J.J. Abrams.

Personally I think that he shouldn't be in the new Star Trek film, but then I agree with what he's implying, that Star Trek should have moved on a long time ago, and although it has perhaps the studios should have had the guts to make the previous Star Trek stories stick.

Speaking about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier William Shatner seems to have a new outlook on the film as he reveals on MTV Movies Blog that:

"The extraordinary disappointment was that before the special effects went in, I asked the producer: Is this as good as I think it is? I thought it was pretty good, and the heads of the studio were saying 'good job'...The problem of that movie [was too many] compromises. The original compromise was: Let’s make it an alien who thinks he’s God. Soon, I realized I had compromised the whole movie."
Sounds like an all too common problem, bowing to studio and producer pressure to change the film when they are the business people behind the film providing cash and logistics, they aren't the artistic side.

I have to agree though, that was the first poor film of the franchise, but I don't think that Shatner should blame himself for that. Although the film may have been weaker than the rest it never really harmed the love of Star Trek, not really.

Then he goes on to talk about the new Star Trek and does reveal that he's disappointed not to be in the new film. His following insight into the success of the film is the way I've been thinking for some time now:

"Passage of time, for sure; that was me a long time ago...It’ll be interesting to see whether [the new movie] is successful or not. If anyone can make ‘Star Trek’ live, [Abrams] can do it. The question is: Is it still alive, or is it time for all of us to move on?"
Well it's moved on a good few times since then, in both film and television form, however no one has made the change stick and had the guts to keep going with it, I think that's why we find ourselves right back here.

Enterprise was perhaps the closest to that, and the one that seemed like it was going to make it, after all it was taking similar queues from series like Babylon 5 with the huge story arcs and it could be said that it was an early attempt at something akin to a reimagination like Battlestar Galactica, although much less so in it's vision.

I really enjoyed that series and it was going from strength to strength, and I do believe if the series had been given stronger scheduling and more backing that it could well have taken off and we could have seen a few films from it.

However here we are back at square one, and while I believe Abrams can deliver something exciting and interesting with Star Trek, I do wonder if going backwards is really the right direction.