William Shatner wanted ten rock-creatures to fight on the 'God' planet Sha Ka Ree in his directorial pitch-in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). The video here shows the one that he actually got. These tests were enough to convince all concerned that the movie's ending should be rock monster-free.

Quite why the film's effects were so variable in quality remains open to dispute; some say that the major effects houses were booked up with Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and other pending blockbusters; others that Paramount had vanishingly little faith in Shatner's script, even though it had been re-worked by other writers. Others maintain that too much pre-production time was lost to the WGA strike.

To those who nixed this monster: I think you're all dumber than a bag of hammers. This could have been one of the best creepy prosthetic creatures of the 1980s.

Personally I think the reason it got axed was a possible lawsuit from Marvel comics, because the creature depicted is very Ben Grimm, isn't he? This is the kind of suit that might have brought The Thing a new level of interest in the Fantastic Four movies.

The suit cost $350,000 to make, so it's little wonder that Shatner's legion shrank from ten to one. Below are some production sketches and promo stills taken during the costume's creation.

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