MONDO EXTRAS

The pilgrims hike for a while until Sybok gets a bit frustrated, raises his arms in supplication, and shouts, "We have traveled far!" "Far...far...far" echoes back. "By starship," Sybok almost whispers in disappointment. Aw -- you gotta feel sorry for the zealot, even if his hair has flouted visual continuity and unaccountably taken eight inches off of itself. Kirk starts to tell the Enterprise of their lack of a divine sighting. Spock makes like he's going to offer sympathy to his brother. He gets as far as "perhaps" when the planet rumbles. The sky goes black, and huge stalagmites shoot out of the ground all around them. Lucky, none of them happens to be standing on the spot of one of those eruptions. Once the rocks are done erecting themselves, the formation surrounding them sort of looks like a huge rib cage. Gasp! It's the rib cage of a white whale, and now they're in the belly of the beast! Eh, whatever. Some mist, sparkles, and blue light begin to amass in the center of the stone rib cage until suddenly a blue column of light shoots up off the planet, past the Enterprise, and into space. A voice -- Dr. Salik from Battlestar Galactica, to be exact -- booms out, "Brave souls, welcome." Bones asks, "Is this the voice of God?" "God" answers, "One voice, many faces," and some rather large masks zoom forward. Squinting hard, I think I see Lawrence Olivier, George Burns, and Cecil B. DeMille, but if I close my left eye and stand on my head while gargling, I can make out a few God masks that don't look like they were dreamed up by a Eurocentric writer.

But "God" decides to choose the face of George Murdock as Zeus cum Santa Claus, and zooms in so big and close you can see his pores. "Does this surpass your expectations?" "God" asks them. All I can think of here is Ghostbusters when that freaky chick asks Dan Ackroyd: "Are...You...A...God?" Sybok speaks Vulcan in reverence. "God" talks about their long arduous journey to him and asks how they managed it. Sybok tells him of their starship. "This starship, could it carry my wisdom beyond the barrier?" "God" asks. Sybok tells him, "It could, yes!" "Then I will make use of this starship," "God" says. Sybok is so excited he nearly wets himself. Kirk interjects, "Excuse me." "God" ignores the Mighty Kirk and talks about his wisdom. Pay no attention to that Shatner behind the curtain! "Excuse me," Kirk says, louder this time, "I just need to ask a question: what does God need with a starship?" "Bring the ship closer," "God" says. "I said, 'What does God need with a starship?'" Kirk repeats. Bones grabs Kirk and asks him what he's doing. "God" asks who Kirk is. "Who am I?" Kirk asks, "Don't you know? Aren't you God?" Sybok tells "God" that Kirk has his doubts. Kirk says he wants proof. Bones tells Kirk, "You don't ask the Almighty for his ID." Blue lightning shoots out of "God's" eyes, and he gives Kirk his "proof" and gives it to him good. The people watching from the ship -- wait, watching from the ship? How in heck-fire are they doing that? Kirk et al. have traveled over large rocks and big piles of sand; how is any camera still trained on them? Oh, I give up. This movie is one big mess of inconsistencies and implausibilities. A disaster of Shatnerian proportions.