>>520
The original Shatner version would have been better. The story was supposed to be about a space televangelist who convinces people he’s found heaven, and convinces the Enterprise crew (except Kirk) through that power of his. McCoy, Spock, and Kirk all wind up at each others’ throats over him.
They wind up on the planet where instead of God, it’s Satan, who needed a vessel to escape the barrier and summoned the televangelist. They get attacked by a legion of demons and have to fight their way out. Kirk escapes, but goes back and rescues the other two.
The studio flipped its lid over the God and Satan references (because fedora and circumcision), and made Kirk tone it down to be a fake alien. He was going to have rock men instead of demons, but the costumes were expensive and so only one was built, and it wound up looking terrible. Ultimately they had the alien chase Kirk around, which diminished it and having it get shot by a bird of prey that just made the whole movie silly and undercut the threat of it getting out of the barrier.
Instead of some epic sequence with demons - either so awesome or so cheesy - a bunch of easily triggered fedoras made it forgettable.