Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Paramount Pictures, 1991) is the sixth feature film based on the popular 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 The Original Series cast and it presents their final mission together.

Cast

Actor	Role
William Shatner
Leonard Nimoy
DeForest Kelley
James Doohan
George Takei
Walter Koenig
Nichelle Nichols
Grace Lee Whitney
Mark Lenard
Kim Cattrall
David Warner
Rosanna DeSoto
Christopher Plummer
Kurtwood Smith
Brock Peters
John Schuck
Iman
Michael Dorn
Rene Auberjonois
Christian

Captain James T. Kirk Captain Spock Dr. Leonard McCoy Captain Montgomery Scott Captain Hikaru Sulu Commander Pavel Chekov Commander Uhura Commander Janice Rand Ambassador Sarek Lieutenant Valeris Chancellor Gorkon Chancellor Azetbur General Chang Federation President Fleet Admiral Cartwright Klingon Ambassador Martia Colonel Worf Colonel West (uncredited) Slater Excelsior Communications Officer (cameo)

Plot summary

The Klingon economy is thrown into turmoil after the explosion of their homeworld's moon Praxis, a key Klingon energy production facility, ruins their homeworld's atmosphere. Estimates are made that the Klingon Homeworld has only a 50-year supply of oxygen remaining. 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 to open negotiations, a decision that doesn't sit well with Captain James T. Kirk, who lost his son to Klingon commander Kruge in The Search for Spock.

Captain Kirk, upon rendezvousing with Gorkon's battle cruiser Kronos 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...")

Whilst en route to Earth, some time after the ceremonial dinner, the Enterprise appears to fire upon the unguarded Kronos One with a pair of torpedoes. The hits are scored in strategic spots on the ship's underside, and, among other things, artificial gravity on board the Klingon vessel fails. During the calamity, two men 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 Kronos 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 Defence Force officers.

Kirk and McCoy, after a show trial on Qo'noS, are taken to the gulag planet 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.

Kirk proceeds to contact the USS Excelsior, commanded by Captain Hikaru Sulu. Unbeknownst to him, but revealed in the 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. Shortly before reaching it, 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. The Excelsior and the Enterprise then fire repeatedly on the ship, which succumbs to the assault.

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.

Themes

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). The Soviets and Americans had been engaged in a Cold War for just as long from the Western involvement in the Russian Civil War in 1918 and the first Red Scare in the early 1920s until the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 almost 70 years later.

The Undiscovered Country'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 to just how fast 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 against Gorbachev in the summer of 1991 to stop his movement towards the formation of Commonwealth of Independent States.

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 so the end of History.

During the dinner on board the Enterprise, the two sides debate about the loss of Klingon culture, which conservatives 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. See The Undiscovered Country.

Trivia

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, / The 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 The Next Generation, in which the Klingons and Federation are allies. Michael Dorn, who plays Lieutenant Worf in TNG, plays Worf's grandfather, Colonel Worf, in this film. Colonel Worf is the attorney/JAG who defends Kirk and McCoy in court.
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 was not interested in being the 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. 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.
Harve Bennett's original story idea for the sixth Star Trek film was to a prequel involving Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy.
There have been rumors among fans that actress Kim Cattrall had nude photos taken of herself on the bridge of the Enterprise. These rumors also state that they were ordered to be 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 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 (whom some speculate is a Starfleet marine) who conducts the Operation Retrieve briefing, was intended as an in-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 (Rene Auberjonois) who would later play Odo in 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." An obvious production oversight.
Perhaps one of the film's funniest scenes occurs when a Klingon claims that one has never "experienced Shakespeare" (specifically, Hamlet) until it has been read in "the original Klingon" language. A few years later, linguists actually published The Klingon Hamlet (ISBN 0671035789), 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.
It is widely suspected in fanon that the conspiracy in this film was linked with Section 31, particularly Admiral Cartwright and Colonel West.
The sudden decommissioning of the Enterprise literally moments after the conclusion of a very successful mission remains an unresolved puzzle in the Trek canon. The order to decommission comes as an obvious surprise to Kirk and his crew when such orders are usually given with advance notice. A possible reasoning is a history of "bugs", highlighted in Star Trek V, though more fictionalized during Star Trek VI to buy the Enterprise crew time to rescue Kirk and McCoy. A more likely theory, is Enterprise was decomissioned along with a whole range of older ship designs as a result of the peace treaty (references to 'mothballing the starfleet' are made during the briefing at the beginning of the film). However the decommissioning may refer to only the ageing senior staff (who were mentioned as having only 3 months left to retirement) and Kirk did say in his final log that "this ship" would pass to another crew.
This is DeForest Kelley's final Star Trek film appearance before his death on June 11, 1999.
This is the final Star Trek film to feature the entire cast of The Original Series. The major cast members' signatures are shown on screen before the end credits roll.
The shots of the Excelsior racing to Khitomer and, later, of Chang's ship exploding were both reused in the film 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 as the "Praxis Effect" or "Praxis Explosion Effect". Controversially, a similar effect was added to the detonation of the Death Star in the Special Edition releases of the Star Wars films.
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.
Kirk's last line of dialogue on the Enterprise bridge, "Second star to the right, and straight on 'till morning" (a quote from Peter Pan), was originally going to be Kirk's last line in The Wrath of Khan (also directed by Nicholas Meyer), but that film's last scene ended up being reshot with different dialogue. 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 spin-off comics produced by DC Comics, and can be seen in the "Who Killed Captain Kirk?" collection.
The President's office is in fact the Ten-Forward lounge from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

External links

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at StarTrek.com
Five-Minute Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country — Parody version

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Cast

Plot summary

Themes

Trivia

External links