Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

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Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Directed by	Nicholas Meyer
Produced by	Steven-Charles Jaffe Ralph Winter Leonard Nimoy (executive producer)
Written by	Leonard Nimoy (story) Lawrence Konner (story) Mark Rosenthal (story) Nicholas Meyer (story & screenplay) Denny Martin Flinn (screenplay) Gene Roddenberry (creator)
Starring	See table
Music by	Cliff Eidelman
Cinematography	Hiro Narita
Editing by	William Hoy Ronald Roose
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	December 6, 1991
Running time	113 min.
Language	English
Budget	$30,000,000
Preceded by	Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Followed by	Star Trek: Generations
IMDb profile

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Paramount Pictures, 1991) is the sixth feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series. It is often referred to as ST6:TUC or TUC. It is the last of the films based solely on the original series cast and it presents their final mission together.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot summary

The Klingon homeworld of Qo'noS (pronounced Kronos) is thrown into turmoil after the explosion of their homeworld’s moon, Praxis, a key Klingon energy production facility, damages their homeworld’s atmosphere. Estimates are made that the Klingons will have depleted the Klingon Homeworld's atmosphere in 50 years. No longer able to maintain a hostile footing, the Klingon Empire sues for peace with the Federation. Starfleet chooses to send the USS Enterprise to meet with Chancellor Gorkon and escort him to negotiations on Earth, a decision that doesn’t sit well with Captain James T. Kirk, whose son was murdered by Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Christopher Plummer as the Klingon General Chang

Captain Kirk, upon rendezvousing with Gorkon’s battlecruiser Qo'noS One at the Klingon border, invites the Klingon Chancellor along with his guests to dinner aboard the Enterprise. The dinner does not go well, as the humans and the Klingons spar on the eventual course of the projected peace, discussing, among other things, the possible annihilation of Klingon culture. (Kirk, later: “Note to galley: Romulan ale no longer to be served at diplomatic functions...”)

While en route to Earth, some time after the ceremonial dinner, the Enterprise appears to fire upon the unguarded Qo'noS One with a pair of torpedoes. The hits are scored in strategic spots on the ship’s underbelly, and, among other things, artificial gravity aboard the Klingon vessel fails. During the calamity, two people wearing Starfleet atmospheric suits and magnetic boots beam aboard Kronos One, and fight their way through to the Chancellor’s private room. Chancellor Gorkon is assassinated, although General Chang is notably absent. Captain Kirk, after surrendering the Enterprise, beams aboard Qo'noS One with Dr. Leonard McCoy in an effort to save the Chancellor’s life. They fail, are arrested, accused of the crime (in Kirk’s case, ordering the attack; in McCoy’s case, failing to save the Chancellor’s life) and taken to Qo’noS for trial while Gorkon’s daughter, Azetbur, becomes the new Chancellor, and wishes to push forward with diplomatic negotiations, this time, for reasons of security, on a neutral world, the location of which is kept a secret from the general public and from most Starfleet and Klingon Defense Force officers.

Kirk and McCoy, after a show trial on Qo’noS, are taken to the gulag planetoid Rura Penthe, a forced labor camp. After a brief time there, they meet a shapeshifter by the name of Martia, who conveniently offers them a method of escape. After making their way across the frozen wasteland that is the prison world, they are betrayed by Martia, who is killed by Klingon guards upon arriving at the scene. The Enterprise, however, manages to con its way past bored Klingon border guards, beam up the two in time, and escape across the border unmolested.

Valeris, on bridge

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The image above is a candidate for speedy deletion. It will be deleted on 2007-03-29.

Kirk proceeds to contact the USS Excelsior, commanded by Captain Hikaru Sulu. Unbeknownst to him, but revealed in the Star Trek: Voyager episode “Flashback”, the Excelsior had just been forced to retreat from Klingon space after Sulu had also decided to stage a rescue attempt. Kirk learns of the location of the peace conference. Both ships, at opposite ends of Federation territorial space, head for the conference, at Camp Khitomer, at maximum speed. As it nears the planet, the Enterprise is intercepted by Chang’s modified Bird of Prey, which can fire while cloaked, and was responsible for firing on Kronos One. Chang fires upon the Enterprise multiple times, and then upon the Excelsior when Sulu arrives midbattle, until a specialized torpedo, modified by Captain Spock and Dr. McCoy to track engine emissions from the Klingon ship, impacts Chang’s vessel. Excelsior and Enterprise then fire repeatedly on the ship, completely obliterating it.

Parties from both ships beam to the conference, halt an assassination attempt on the Federation President, kill the assassin, and arrest several conspirators. Afterwards, the Enterprise heads back for Earth, to be decommissioned, but not before the crew takes one last defiant joyride.

[edit] Themes

The final shot of the cast together (sans George Takei) in The Undiscovered Country. The shot was designed to look like a “yearbook portrait.”

TUC is an allegory for the fall of communism in Eastern Europe circa 1990 and the recent peace movement which was happening while the film was being made (the Soviet Union itself had not yet dissolved during the filming or even at the film’s release). An apt reference is made by Spock, when he confronts Kirk’s apprehension of dealing with the Klingons, by quoting what he refers to as a “Vulcan proverb”: “Only Nixon could go to China.”

According to the movie, the Federation and the Klingons have been engaged in a cold war for seventy years (as portrayed in the episode “Errand of Mercy” in the original series).

TUC’s portrayal of the explosion of Praxis resembled the Chernobyl Accident which was one of the largest embarrassments of the Soviet Union and shed a bright light on how quickly the Soviet system was decaying.

In the movie, there is a plot to end the peace movement by removing the leaders. This somewhat resembled the attempted coup d’état against Gorbachev in the summer of 1991 to stop his movement toward the formation of a more federal and less centralized Soviet Union.

Kirk states “Some people think the future means the end of history. Well, we haven’t run out of history just yet.” This is a reference to Francis Fukuyama’s essay “The End of History” (1990), which interpreted the fall of Communism as the triumph of liberal democracy, and thus the end of history.

During the dinner on board the Enterprise, the two sides debate about the loss of Klingon culture, which some in Eastern Europe feared with the “invasion” of Western culture as a result of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

By far, the major theme of TUC is the idea of overcoming one’s own prejudice. In the film, many characters on both sides must face the fact that peace has come and they will need to learn to accept one another. This is most evident with Kirk who struggles morally between his duty to his ethics and dealing with the loss of his son.

The film’s dialogue contains an enormous number of historical and cultural references. These include many lines of Shakespeare (most of which are quoted by Chang).

[edit] Trivia

William Shatner’s signature shown on screen before the end credits roll

• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was dedicated to the memory of Gene Roddenberry, who never lived to see its release, having succumbed to cardiac arrest on October 24, 1991 at age 70 (he did, however, view a version of the film two days before his death).
• The Undiscovered Country was Meyer’s original title for Star Trek II before the studio changed it without his consent. The title comes from a line in Hamlet’s third Soliloquy:

  “But that the dread of something after death, / Th’undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns, puzzles the will, / And makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of?”

• The film is a sort of prologue to Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the Klingons and Federation are allies. Michael Dorn, who plays Lieutenant Worf in TNG, plays Colonel Worf, in this film. Colonel Worf is the attorney who defends Kirk and McCoy in court. Although Kirk and McCoy’s trial is very obviously a show trial, it appears that Colonel Worf at least was genuinely (and hopelessly) interested in getting them a fair trial.
• The character of Valeris (Kim Cattrall) was originally supposed to be that of Saavik (played by Kirstie Alley in The Wrath of Khan), but this was changed for several reasons: Alley was unavailable, Cattrall nor the production team was interested having a third actress to play Saavik, and fans had not cared for Robin Curtis’ portrayal of the character in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.^{[citation needed]} Moreover, Gene Roddenberry had requested the removal of Saavik as he thought she was too well liked to be turned “evil” (according to Shatner, this was one of the few times during a production of a Trek movie that a suggestion that Roddenberry advanced was actually followed). Meyer, creator of the character, held that a betrayal by Saavik would come as more shocking and unexpected, but was forced to change the character.
• Kim Cattrall personally chose the name Valeris for her character. It incorporates the name of Eris, the Greek goddess of discord and strife - a hint at the effect Valeris would have on the film's plotline.
• Christian Slater, in his cameo appearance as a Starfleet officer on the Excelsior, wore the uniform pants originally worn by William Shatner in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In an interview with the BBC, Slater joked that "it was an honor to get into Shatner's pants." He also had the pay-check for TUC framed (he made scale).
• Harve Bennett’s original story idea for the sixth Star Trek film was to a prequel involving Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy.
• According to Cinefantastique, actress Kim Cattrall allegedly had nude photos taken of herself on the bridge of the Enterprise, which were, again allegedly, destroyed by Leonard Nimoy.
• The story of the film was actually conceived by Leonard Nimoy and Nicholas Meyer, but a string of lawsuits forced them to credit Konner and Rosenthal.
• According to reference works such as the Star Trek Chronology, Roddenberry stated before his death that he considered elements of this film to be apocryphal. (See Canon). Exactly what he objected to has never been confirmed, though it is believed that it might have something to do with the subplot involving the assassination attempt on the Federation President^{[citation needed]}or, given suggestions in Shatner’s movie memoir, it may involve Roddenberry’s dismay at the racism expressed by Uhura, Scott, and Chekov during the film and the film’s overall militarism.
• The character of Colonel West, the officer (who some speculate is a Starfleet Marine) who conducts the Operation Retrieve briefing, was intended as an inside joke reference to a real United States Marine officer: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Colonel West only appears in the extended home video (and DVD) version of the film, not in the original theatrical cut, and is played by the same actor (René Auberjonois) who would later play Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• While venting his frustrations to the computer via the “Captain’s Log” early in the film Kirk is heard saying “I’ve never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy.” However, when the same excerpt is played at the trial, Kirk is quoted as saying “…I’ve never been able to forgive them for the death of my boy.”
• A Klingon claims that one has never “experienced Shakespeare” (specifically, Hamlet) until it has been read in “the original Klingon.” A few years later, the Klingon Language Institute actually published The Klingon Hamlet (ISBN 0-671-03578-9), a translation of the famous play. This Klingon boast is akin to actual Nazi efforts to demonstrate that William Shakespeare was a German-speaking Aryan. However, it is a common literary joke for Germans to insist that August Wilhelm Schlegel's translations of Shakespeare are actually improvements on the original, so no racist intent need be inferred.
• The major cast members’ signatures are shown on screen before the end credits roll. Shatner, Doohan and Koenig would later reprise their roles in Star Trek Generations, and Takei would reappear as Sulu in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. The film was also in production concurrently with the Next Generation two-part episode “Unification” guest-starring Leonard Nimoy as Spock, so that the episode makes reference to the film. Doohan reappeared as Scott in the TNG episode “Relics” in 1992. Kelley also had a cameo, as an aged Dr. McCoy in “Encounter at Farpoint,” which was the first episode of the series (1987).
• The shots of the Excelsior racing to Khitomer and, later, of Chang’s ship exploding were both reused in the film Star Trek: Generations.
• The distinctive special effects created to depict the explosion of Praxis, especially the expanding planar “energy rings,” made their debut in this film and have been widely copied wherever a “mega-explosion” is required. This effect is often referred to as the “Praxis Effect” or “Praxis Explosion Effect.” A similar effect was added to the detonation of Alderaan and the Death Stars in the “Special Edition” releases of the Star Wars films, and can also be seen during the explosion of Ra's ship in the movie Stargate.
• The color of Klingon blood in the assassination scene aboard Kronos One is depicted as pink (and indeed in the extended version this is a plot point). In TNG and later representations it appears red. The blood in TUC was changed to pink to avoid a harsher MPAA rating. However, in the commentary for the 2004 DVD release, screenwriter Denny Martin Flinn states that the blood was originally meant to be green, and director Meyer replies that it was changed to pink in order to avoid a comparison with the green-blooded Vulcans.
• Kirk’s last line of dialogue on the Enterprise bridge, “Second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning” (a quote from Peter Pan), was originally going to be Kirk’s last line in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (also directed by Nicholas Meyer), but the dialogue ended up being deleted from the final version of that film. Director Nicholas Meyer finally got a chance to use the line at the end of this film. It had also been used previously in the context of the Kirk-era Star Trek by writer Peter David in the spinoff comics produced by DC Comics, and can be seen in the “Who Killed Captain Kirk?” collection.
• Many of the sets for the movie are redresses of sets from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Notable re-dresses include: the Enterprise-A transporter room, sickbay, main engineering, crew quarters, and the distinctive curved corridor which actually interconnected the sets. Ironically, this sprawling “deck” of the Enterprise had been built originally for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and used in every Star Trek film before it was modified for The Next Generation, but because of the TV show’s ongoing production, the “visiting” movie crews were not free to fully undo the modifications. Other important re-dresses are the Enterprise-A’s dining room—which was the Enterprise-D’s observation lounge—and the Federation President’s office set—which is a re-dress of the set of the Enterprise-D’s Ten-Forward lounge from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Some of the set modifications for Star Trek VI, such as wall lighting fixtures added under the dining room/observation lounge windows, became permanent features of The Next Generation’s Enterprise-D.
• During Captain Kirk’s trial, General Chang (Christopher Plummer) asks Kirk a question and then shouts, “Don’t wait for the translation, answer me now!” This is a reference to U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson’s confrontation at the United Nations with Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin over Cuban missile bases during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Plummer uses the exact same line nine years later in the TNT television miniseries Nuremberg while his character, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, is cross-examining Nazi Hermann Göring.
• In this film, Spock attributes the following quote to an ancestor of his: “When you eliminate the impossible, that which remains—however improbable—must be the truth.” In reality, this quote is attributed to the fictional character Sherlock Holmes. Coincidentally, Leonard Nimoy has played the role of Sherlock Holmes.
• Footage from this film, along with additional footage of William Shatner reprising his role as Kirk, have been spliced for a DirecTV advertisement.
• In the closing credits, the role of Commander Uhura played by actress Nichelle Nichols is misspelled as "Uhuru".
• Before entering the mines of Rura Penthe, the warden tells the prisoners that "There is no stockade, no guardtowers.." This is a reference to the film Bridge On the River Kwai where prisoners of war are forced to work in a similar labor camp.
• In 2007, Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame released a humorous audio commentary for the film on their RiffTrax service.

[edit] External links

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Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at the Internet Movie Database
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• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country article at Memory Alpha, a Star Trek wiki.
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