Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Screenplay by: Nicholas Meyer & Denny Martin Flinn
Story by: Leonard Nimoy and Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal
Produced by: Steven-Charles Jaffe & Ralph Winter
Directed by: Nicholas Meyer
Release date: December 6, 1991
Stardate: 9521.6
Mission Summary
A mining accident destroys Praxis, a Klingon moon where energy for the entire Klingon Empire is produced. With only 50 years of life left to the Empire as a result, the Klingons open a dialog with Vulcan ambassador Sarek about ending hostilities with the Federation and dismantling all bases around the Neutral Zone. Spock has recommended Kirk for the diplomatic honor of escorting the Klingon High Chancellor Gorkon to a peace summit. This enrages Kirk, who has come to despise the Klingons for killing his son David.
Kirk makes few attempts to cozy up to the High Chancellor and his men, and after a particularly tense dinner, an unknown ship fires on the Klingon bird-of-prey while two assassins beam aboard and shoot several Klingons. The High Chancellor suffers mortal wounds but urges Kirk to continue the peace process. Kirk and McCoy, who had beamed over to help, are promptly arrested for the assassination, found guilty in a Klingon kangaroo court, and sent to Rura Penthe, a frozen gulag. They are tricked and nearly led to their deaths by a shapeshifting inmate named Martia, but ultimately saved by a tracking device Spock had planted on Kirk.
As the clues aboard Enterprise come together, Valeris, a promising young lieutenant whom Spock had mentored, is revealed as the main conspirator. They extract the names of other conspirators from her via mind meld, fight some Klingons with the help of Sulu on the Excelsior, and hurry to the secret location of the peace conference to prevent the assassination of the Federation president. A Federation admiral, a Romulan ambassador, and a Klingon general are revealed as the conspirators and arrested. In the end, just a few months from retirement, Kirk and his crew hear that the Enterprise has been decommissioned. They hijack it for one last ride.
Analysis
I question myself when I re-watch Wrath of Khan or even, sometimes, The Voyage Home, but The Undiscovered Country is my favorite of all the Star Trek films.
I saw it for the first time only a few years ago and fell deeply in love with it. From Sulu’s initial voiceover as he contentedly sips his tea (what a wonderful moment!), to the final reveal of the conspiracy (which still shocks me a little, despite knowing how it all plays out), this film is masterful. Phenomenal direction, excellent performances, a serious and thought-provoking premise, and a bittersweet ending come together to create the very best of the Star Trek films and one of my favorite movies of all time.
How do I count the ways in which I love this movie? It’s two hours of brilliant little moments: Martia’s wookie-ish disguise (and her superbly done shapeshifting effect), Chang sitting down to dinner and having no idea how to use a napkin (brilliant!), Uhura trying to speak Klingon. I always feel a twinge of a smile when Chang rants about Kirk as an “an insubordinate, unprincipled, career-minded opportunist with a history of violating the chain of command whenever it suited him.” That’s our boy! Then there are the powerful moments: Kirk feeling betrayed by Spock (“You should have trusted me!”); McCoy trying so hard to save Gorkon and watching him die anyway. I still find it difficult to watch Spock’s mind-meld with Valeris. He is so angry and he’s obviously hurting her, but the worst part isn’t even watching her cry under his hand: it’s watching the camera cut to reaction shots from the crew and seeing your own revulsion reflected back on you through the characters.
Maybe it’s just because it’s the most recent of the films and thus has the benefit of more advanced technology, but it feels slick and polished where the others didn’t. The special effects take my breath away. I really love the new Klingon outfits and the aesthetic in general, which feels a lot more military-chic than previous installments. I absolutely love the zero gravity assassination scene, which doesn’t look cheesy or stupid even twenty years later. I love the faceless suits that seem to exist in a different world from the Klingons, and I love the moment when the gravity is reinstated and all of the Klingon blood splashes to the ground. As a political thriller (which doesn’t seem like a genre suited to Star Trek) the intrigue works and the mysteries unfold in a way that feels natural and satisfying. We’re a lot farther from the fall of the Berlin Wall today than audiences were in 1991, but the Cold War allegory still succeeds by tapping into an element of the original series oft-mentioned and yet not oft-explored. (I do wish Spock hadn’t exactly spelled it out with his “only Nixon can go to China” line, but I’ll give it a pass.)
All of those things make a film good, but they are not the reason it is great. Eugene and I have repeatedly examined Star Trek’s progressive history of dealing with race, and yet none of those episodes come close to tackling the subject like TUC does. In the series, Kirk was always the paragon on the right side of the issues. If he felt it, it was the right way to feel. He was open-minded, flexible, and compassionate. Here, he starts out in the wrong. He’s our hero and we’ve seen and felt all the things he’s been through. We understand his grief and his anger, and we sympathize with his distrust of the Klingons. When Admiral Cartwright stands up and says that this is our chance to really win the war by wiping them out, we’re with him, too, because Kirk is with him. It’s not until Kirk’s full rage boils over the surface that we realize how poisonous that kind of thinking is. “They’re animals,” he says. “Let them die,” he says. And suddenly, it’s clear that this Kirk has become too bitter to see clearly.
If Kirk’s wrong, then aren’t we wrong, too?
If this were any other film or any other series, it would end there. Kirk would become a villain, the audience would reject him, and Spock would be our new hero. We’d all pat ourselves on the back that we were always on Spock’s side anyway, you know. But the movie doesn’t do that. We’re still with Kirk even if he’s being pig-headed because we know this guy. He’s been our friend for decades now, and our heroes–good people–can’t be so casually racist…can they? Prejudice is so pervasive, so innate to human experience, that even the best of us can succumb to it. Good guys can be racist. In fact, everyone can be. At the end, Uhura says she felt the same way as Valeris. McCoy points out that they don’t arrest people for having feelings, and Chekov responds: “And it’s a good thing, too. If they did we’d all have to turn ourselves in.”
Everyone has these biases, but what’s important is not letting them get in the way. Kirk risks becoming a “bad guy” not because he hates, but because he nearly allows that hatred to stop a peace process. Kirk only musters the courage and maturity to re-evaluate his feelings when Gorkon dies. The Klingon leader’s last words are “Don’t let it end this way, Captain.” Imagine, would Kirk have said the same thing had he been the victim? Gorkon is the better man, and for the first time Kirk is able to see how close his irrational antipathy came to destroying something so much bigger and more important than one man’s grudge. I think it’s that reason he regrets those captain’s log entries played during his trial–not because they’re incriminating.
Now I said earlier that if this had been any other film, we would have rejected Kirk as the obvious villain (movies can’t seem to understand that prejudice is a flaw even heroes can have) and embraced Spock. Yet where Kirk is prejudiced against the Klingons, Spock is blinded by his faith in Vulcans. He begins the movie as the moral center, preaching peace and acceptance and a new age. He is so eager and so willing to believe that Valeris, a Vulcan, feels as he does and shares his values. But Valeris is an individual with her own motives (and, yes, feelings), and Spock never should have assumed to understand them simply because they are both Vulcans. I love the moment when he unmasks her as a conspirator in Sickbay. With her phaser aimed point blank at him, he knocks it away with anger. The emotion he feels is raw and passionate. Like Kirk, he feels betrayed, and yet that betrayal is unmerited. She owed him nothing. She did nothing to him. They are not the same, and if he had truly listened to her instead of hearing only that which reinforced his pre-conceived notions, perhaps he could have seen through her earlier.
There’s another kind of prejudice at play in the film and that’s the prejudice of old age. Kirk’s generation contributes most by simply not obstructing progress. Even Spock acknowledges it, asking Kirk, “Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness?” What is most heartbreaking about this film is that it implies–rightly or wrongly, that’s really up to the viewer–that sometimes the only way to forge ahead is to push aside those too old to adjust. Think of who the conspirators are: Admiral Cartwright, the Romulan ambassador, Chang. (They do enlist Valeris but it wasn’t her idea.) These are men who cannot imagine a place for themselves in this future. They have nowhere to go when there is no Neutral Zone, no common enemy. All they can do is try to stop it, and preserve the world that has been familiar and comfortable. There’s a really lovely moment when Gorkon first arrives on the Enterprise and confronts Kirk about his (not well-hidden) distaste. “You don’t trust me, do you?” he says. “I don’t blame you. If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.”
The world is changing without Kirk and his friends. It will evolve and he’ll have no active role. He wonders, “How on earth can history get past people like me?” But the real question is, how on earth can he get past being history? It’s a question that the film, as the last one, needed to address. The Next Generation had been on the air for years now and yet Kirk’s crew has never, in its own continuity, had to confront its own impermanence. I think my favorite scene is Spock’s conversation with Valeris about the inevitability of the future (even if I find the Chagall painting a little ridiculous). He tells her that all things must end, but one must have faith that “the universe will unfold as it should.” It’s a hopeful moment, not a despairing one. The world goes on and on, and sometimes the best thing you can do is know when to step aside.
The worst mistake the franchise ever made–and I say this as someone who has seen “Spock’s Brain” a hundred times and Star Trek V twice–was bringing these people back in Generations. TUC ends as our heroes learn that the ship (and let’s be honest, its crew) have been decommissioned, but Star Trek itself will (and has) continued. Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the gang cannot stand in the way of the future, but their contributions in history have made the future possible. It’s a beautiful, touching end to their story. I cannot imagine, not anywhere in my creative soul, a better sendoff than they got here.
The message of course is twofold. As an audience, we cannot be the men too old and inflexible to allow the future to unfold as it should. Yet when the credits roll and their names are signatures written in ink across the stars, I still tear up a little, every time.
Torie’s Rating: Warp 7
Eugene Myers: As I’ve mentioned before, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is the first Star Trek I watched. Before I saw it on HBO in junior high, I associated the franchise with campy, low-budget science fiction, but this film showed me that there was more to Star Trek, that maybe camp was the exception and not the rule. It convinced me that it was worth giving the series a chance. In short order, I was catching up on the other films, tuning into TNG each week (then in its sixth season), and watching DS9 from the premiere on. My friends and I tracked down every episode of the original series and TNG on VHS with remarkable drive, and the rest, as they say, is history.
TUC is probably a weird entry-point to Star Trek, as I was introduced to the characters at the end of their journey. Despite their iconic status in pop culture, I had no idea who these characters were—both in name and in terms of their backgrounds, motivations, and relationships. One thing the original series had going for it was that the characters were so broadly painted, you could start watching at nearly any point. This is true to a lesser degree in the films, but TUC has a fairly standalone plot, and it’s pretty easy to follow along.
By the time I stumbled across TUC, I was already a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, and I assume that the unique blending of Star Trek with a mystery story helped to convert me. Now I know that Nicholas Meyer, with his pedigree as writer of the Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, was particularly suited to directing this film. Even today, I find the mystery plot one of the most intriguing aspects of TUC, although it is no longer the most satisfying one.
I continue to marvel at how many details are introduced with some subtlety early in the film only to be recognized as important clues later on, such as the droplets of Klingon blood that disappear in the transporter and the tracker Spock places on Kirk (which I completely failed to notice my first time watching). But I can’t watch the film with fresh eyes any longer, so I’m not sure if they still work for new viewers. Each carefully placed clue now seems obvious to me, and the Enterprise crew comes off as incompetent at solving this case. Despite its condensed timeframe, the “CSI: Starfleet” sequences are drawn out and require them to make many manual counts and sweeps of the ship, missing the important stuff and drawing the wrong conclusions. On the other hand, many of the best comedic moments come from their bumbling efforts, so perhaps it’s all worth it. (In fact, despite its inherent seriousness, this is a great comedic film, a much underplayed version of TVH.)
Most disappointing of all is the realization—not my own, originally—that the climax of the film depends solely on a continuity error: Excelsior, not Enterprise, was doing a survey of gaseous anomalies. D’oh!
That isn’t to say that Enterprise might not also have been running such a survey, but…it wasn’t. Because every other clue is tightly introduced, this oversight is an incredible disappointment.
Some possible loose threads: Did Chancellor Gorkon know Kirk didn’t have anything to do with his assassination? On his death, uh, table, Gorkon tells him, “Don’t let it end this way.” Perhaps he’s just imploring him to change his evil ways? Or making a case for Kirk to come back in Generations? What was Enterprise doing before this mission? It looks like it was chilling in spacedock, waiting to be decommissioned. Why is the entire bridge crew retiring at the same time? Isn’t Chekov much younger than the rest of them? What’s a Romulan ambassador doing at Starfleet Headquarters? How did Kirk know that Spock put a tracer on him?
My other disappointments are ones of character, primarily the overt racism in the Enterprise crew, and Spock’s forced mind meld of Valeris (who, by the way, is a terrible Vulcan in every sense of the word). It’s not that these aren’t believable elements—and I do believe that they were probably necessary for the plot—but that it was upsetting to see these characters I love behave in this boorish way. The Klingons largely come off as cultured and polite intellectuals in comparison!
In most other ways, the crew characterizations are pitch perfect, particularly McCoy, who really shines in the movie, and Sulu, who kicks all kind of ass as captain of the Excelsior. I loved one particular moment, when Sulu tells Kirk his message is breaking up, which shows that everyone on Kirk’s team knows the same tricks, and also demonstrates the loyalty that he attracts from his officers.
But overall, this movie has a solid, well-written script; wonderful performances by everyone except Kim Cattrall; and terrific direction. After the impressive battle sequences were pointed out in TWoK, I noticed the same directorial touches in this film, where each hit on the ship immediately shows internal damage. And each time I see the movie, I marvel at the way the “Law and Order: Qo’nos” courtroom scenes are directed—especially the way the film elegantly transitions from spoken Klingon with English subtitles to English dialogue in translation.
Like McCoy, I could do with fewer quotations from English literature, Star Trek’s great burden, but I have to overlook most of the film’s flaws because it just feels like the perfect send-off for the original series and her crew. And the last line of Kirk’s captain’s log is a far better passing of the torch to TNG than Star Trek Generations managed.
Eugene’s Rating: Warp 6
Background Information
After the disappointing returns of Star Trek V, producer Harve Bennett wanted to say goodbye to the current cast and do a Starfleet Academy prequel, an idea that had been floating around for at least a decade. Negative reactions to the idea from the cast (who obviously wouldn’t be involved) and fans (many of whom already disliked the new generation of Trek) scuttled that. Walter Koenig submitted his own proposal, in which the Romulans team up with the Federation against the Klingons. In that story the main ST crew is too old to pass physical fitness tests, save Spock. By the end, the TOS crew must save Spock’s new crew, which has been kidnapped by evil worm aliens, and everyone dies but Spock and McCoy. This was perhaps a less popular idea than even the Academy one.
Star Trek‘s 25th anniversary was coming up, and Nimoy got the idea to do something related to current events: the fall of the Berlin Wall. A Cold War story emerged, with Gorkon based on Gorbachev (Gorbachev and Lincoln), and a space version of Chernobyl. They also wanted it to be a swan song to the cast members. Initially, an elaborate opening sequence revealed each character in his or her retirement: Spock as Polonius in Hamlet; Sulu driving a taxi; Kirk married to Carol Marcus and living a quiet life; McCoy drunk at a medical reception; Scotty teaching at Starfleet Academy; Uhura hosting a call-in show; and Chekov playing chess or whatever Russians do. The many locations needed made the opening too expensive, so the whole thing was nixed, probably for the better.
The budget was smaller, but a darker mood was the aim, with moodier music and tighter sets. Hallways were thinner to give a more cramped, submarine feeling, and lighting was spotty and dim to create atmosphere. The Klingons were re-designed and the makeup department was given a hefty chunk of the budget: a team of 25 crew made over 300 prosthetics. DeForest Kelley was 71 when this was made, and Nimoy ensured that he earned $1 million for the role, so that it could be his last film and he could retire comfortably.
It was a commercial and critical success, earning nearly $100 million worldwide and saving the franchise as we know it. The studios smelled money and hoped to squeeze out a Star Trek VII, but the three principle actors said they were all done. (The rest happened to be interested.)
Best Line: MCCOY: What is it with you, anyway?
Other Favorite Quotes:
RAND: Do we report this, sir?
SULU: Are you kidding?
SPOCK: History is replete with turning points, Lieutenant. You must have faith.
VALERIS: Faith?
SPOCK: That the universe will unfold as it should.
VALERIS: But is this logical? Surely we must…
SPOCK: Logic? Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end.
CHANG: In space, all warriors are cold warriors.
KIRK: I can’t believe I kissed you!
MARTIA (as Kirk): It must have been your lifelong ambition.
SPOCK: Is it possible that we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness?
KIRK: Do you want to know something? Everybody’s human.
SPOCK: I find that remark insulting.
KIRK: Once again we’ve saved civilization as we know it.
MCCOY: And the good news is, they’re not going to prosecute.
Trivia: The title refers to Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy (Act III, Scene 1). (Spoilers! The undiscovered country is death.) It was originally supposed to be the title for Wrath of Khan, for which it may have been more appropriate:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause – there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
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?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
That is, of course, one of many Shakespeare quotes in the film. Chang seems a particular fan, quoting The Tempest (“Our revels now are ended”), Richard II (“Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings”), Henry IV, Part II (“We have not heard the chimes at midnight”), Henry V (“Once more unto the breach, dear friends” and “The game’s afoot”), Julius Caesar (“Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!” and “I am constant as the northern star”), Romeo and Juliet (“Parting is such sweet sorrow”), The Merchant of Venice (“Tickle us, do we not laugh? Prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?”), and, of course, Hamlet (“To be or not to be”). Gorkon toasts to the “undiscovered country” and it appears that Martia’s also a Hamlet fan: “I thought I would assume a pleasing shape” (regarding her sexy Iman look).
The animation of the explosion of Praxis appeared in many later films, including Stargate. It became known as “the Praxis effect.”
Rura Penthe is a reference to War and Peace, where it is a Siberian penal colony. It’s also referenced in the animated version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where it is an island penal colony.
During the trial, Chang barks that Kirk answer a question without waiting for the translation. This may reference a real-life exchange at the United Nations between U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. While addressing the U.N. Security Council, Stevenson demanded an answer to his question: “All right, sir, let me ask you one simple question: Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no! Don’t wait for the translation! Yes or no!”
The speech that the Klingon warden gives when they arrive on Rura Penthe mirrors closely the speech that Colonel Saito gives to the British POWs in Bridge over the River Kwai: “A word to you about escape. There is no barbed wire, no stockade, no watchtower. They are not necessary. We are an island in the jungle. Escape is impossible. You would die. Today you rest. Tomorrow you will begin. Let me remind you of General Yamashita’s motto: ‘Be happy in your work.’ Dismissed!”
Spock’s line that “An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the solution” is a reference to Sherlock Holmes. (If the Klingons get Shakespeare and the Vulcans get Holmes, what does that leave us puny humans with??)
Gene Roddenberry died about six weeks before the film’s release. He did see a near-final print in his last days and the film was dedicated to him.
Nichelle Nichols got the short end of the stick, again. A dramatic speech in Klingon planned for the end was scrapped, and a humorous scene of her struggling with the language was used instead. She also became uncomfortable with some of the not-at-all-subtle racial undertones of the dialogue, and at one point was supposed to say, “Guess who’s coming to dinner” (in reference to the Klingons) but refused, and the line was given to Chekov. She also refused to speak a line about whether you’d want your daughter to marry a Klingon. That line and one in which Scotty refers to Azetbur as “that Klingon bitch” were both cut from the movie entirely.
Gorkon was modeled to look like the bastard lovechild of Captain Ahab and Abraham Lincoln. Mission accomplished!
Valeris was originally intended to be Saavik, but Roddenberry objected to her well-liked character becoming a villain and they didn’t want to cast the part for a third time.
Cinefastique reported that Kim Cattrall, who played Valeris, did a private photo shoot on the bridge of the Enterprise wearing nothing but her Vulcan ears. Rumor has it that Nimoy burned the photos and negatives, fearful of harming the franchise.
The role of Chang was written for Christopher Plummer, who initially turned it down. The role of Gorkon was offered to Jack Palance (who turned it down for City Slickers) before David Warner accepted it.
Mary Jo Slater, the casting director, is Christian Slater’s mother. Slater reportedly framed the $750 paycheck he got for his walk-on role.
While Martia was intended to be a kind of Han Solo character, Iman decided to use Sigourney Weaver as her inspiration.
The dinner scene was one of the most difficult to shoot. The colored food sitting under hot film lights for hours at a time meant none of the actors wanted to touch it. Director Meyer offered $20 per bite of food if they would eat it on film. Only Shatner did it, and he did it 17 times, earning $340.
The day before the film’s release, the actors got their stars on the Walk of Fame before Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Nichelle Nichols became the first African-American woman to get a star.
Nimoy guest-starred on TNG’s “Unification” two-parter as a way to boost interest in the film.
Brock Peters, who played Fleet Admiral Cartwright, found his anti-Klingon speech so personally repugnant that he couldn’t do it in one take. He went on to play Sisko’s father in Deep Space Nine.
Other Deep Space 9 alumnae are René Auberjonois, who plays the would-be assassin of the Federation president (a scene cut from the theatrical release but included on home video) and went on to play Odo; and Michael Dorn, who plays an ancestor of his TNG/DS9 character Worf (the ancestor is Kirk and McCoy’s public defender).
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I want to, but try as I might I can’t appreciate this film as well as I should. It is sometimes a little heavy-handed with its theme of prejudice, occasionally even more than the original series was. It starts well and I love the diplomatic bits with the Klingons, but the air goes out on the prison planet. It wanders around aimlessly for a while before rushing to the action of the climax. I have also always been deeply disturbed by Spock’s treatment of Valeris. In effect, he raped her. It’s wrong on far too many levels. Spock especially is above that sort of approach.
I can certainly see the themes of Hamlet working in Klingon culture, but they had one major problem. The language was originally developed for STIII, based on some phrases James Doohan invented for TMP. The problem was that the language was created not to have a verb “to be”. Makes the soliloquy tough.
I haven’t managed to re-watch this one yet, and, as I really don’t remember it all that well, will reserve judgement until I have. But I have a feeling that if Torie and Eugene liked it that much, it can’t be too bad.
Is he? Gorkon is kind of a cipher– as far as I recall, we’re not given any of his history, and he has a handful of lines at a diplomatic dinner. On the other hand, the one thing we do know is that he became Chancellor of the Klingon Empire, and everyone else we ever see in that hierarchy over decades falls in a range from oily backstabber to honorable brute.
We can’t know if the various corrupt and violent methods of succession to that office shown in the TNG era were typical the better part of a century earlier, but it seems safe to guess that Gorkon didn’t achieve his prominence through leading health care initiatives or shepherding a tax reform. He was at least a product of the system that ordered mass execution on Organia and attempted mass poisoning on Sherman’s Planet. Depending on when he took over, he may have been commander-in-chief of the force that destroyed a Starfleet science vessel and kidnapped and murdered other Federation citizens– during peacetime– on the Genesis Planet. And then used Kirk’s survival of that incident as justification for not pursuing peaceful relations with the Federation.
When does he finally try to make a change in Klingon policy? When he absolutely has to, because the central planet of the Empire is doomed. For him, the choice is between a peace with the Federation that will prop up the Empire, and its utter destruction. He’s a step up from Kruge: when he’s hanging from a cliff he’ll ask for and accept help, instead of trying to drag them both down. (Which may make him the savviest Klingon politician till Martok. :-) ) But his seeking peace isn’t the sign of greatness that it would have been if it had happened before the explosion.
(“Don’t let it end this way.” Does he mean the potential peace? Or the Empire?)
It would, of course, be a betrayal of Federation principles to do anything but accept the proffered peace, as Kirk eventually realizes. But as a matter of what was better for the Federation it’s not a simple question. Barring their sentimentality about the sacrifice of the Enterprise C, the Klingons would have returned the favor by obliterating the Federation in 70-odd years time, at a cost of 40 billion lives (and counting) at the time of “Yesterday’s Enterprise”. (Even with that averted, the Klingons did invade the Federation during the DS9 era.)
That’s not something they could have known, and Trek is about trying to live up to ideals even if they’re costly. Still, it’s an interesting question whether agreeing to peace with the Klingon Empire, as constituted, was the idealistic choice. Compared with “Let them die!”, sure. But was there no way to help the people of Qo’nos without ensuring that this particular brutal tyranny survive into the next century? (Kirk, in particular, wasn’t exactly chary about encouraging– or sometimes forcing– social change on regimes, and it might have been interesting to see him argue for that, rather than for Klingon extinction.)
They had to save the Klingons– but did they have to save the Empire? That they did is arguably Gorkon’s ultimate victory.
I count this as the second best Trek Film, right after Wrath of Khan. The film works in general but it has enough flaws and issus that it kept throwing me out of the story and that’s not good.
I dislike the heavy handed metaphor for the cold war, esp Parxis really being Chernobl in space. (Half the energy for a stellar empire generated one a single moon? How is that power transmitted around the empire, oil tankers?)
The whole captured tried enprisoned escape turns on the bug Spock puts on Kirk. A bug that is about the size of a coin and can transmit across lightyears and is undetectable. (well I guess the klingons don’t search their prisoners since the jailbirds get to keep their clothes.)
“She’s Listing!” It’s bad enough that the klingon ship lists, it’s worse someone in character points it out.
However the charm and vitality of the crew is here, something that was sadly lacking in the last — ahem – film.
@ Eugene
Spock’s half human, clearly he’s related to Holmes on his mother’s side.
The only flaw that troubled me about this one is that Roddenberry’s squeamishness robbed the film of it’s other major tragedy–the Spock/Saavik rift. Valeris is clearly supposed to be her and made the mind-meld sequence all the more wrenching.
VI is my second-favorite of the films, and I appreciated the fact that they once again had TWoK’s military feel. (Maybe a little too much naval atmosphere when “right standard rudder” is ordered–a touch never used previously or since, at it makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.) It was good to see more Starfleet enlisted, and I liked the fact that the ships were compartmented and had fire extinguishers.
Watching this recently, I’d forgotten how many big names turn up in it.
@4 bobsandiego
I actually assumed he was related to Doyle on his mother’s side. In the Star Trek universe, Holmes is still fictional, at least when you bring in the TNG canon. And we will.
Though also a wink across the fourth wall at Holmes being Spock’s literary ancestor, I’d think.
A quirky but watchable film, and among the best of the franchise. I agree that what unfolds in Generations is unfortunate, given this dignified send off of the original crew.
The grade inflation/compression that plagues Starfleet grows particularly toxic in this film. How many captains does it take to run the Enterprise? Is it plausible the Star Service would waste/risk such high ranking materiel on a single ship?
In the U.S. Navy they had to invent the rank of admiral just to “promote” those old codgers off the bridge, some of who had been stomping around since 1812. Meanwhile you had midshipmen in their 40s because there was nowhere to advance. So it goes here.
@ 1 DemetriosX
I don’t mind the prison planet, if only because it gets them off the ship for a bit, and I do enjoy Iman’s shapeshifting. As for Spock and Valeris, that scene strikes me less as rape than it does 24 style terrorist torture porn. In any case I obviously agree it’s repulsive and awful and, well, unforgivable. The fact that he does it so swiftly in anger says to me that it’s his base, human side. It’s beneath him, and that’s kind of the point. So I don’t like watching it, but I find it interesting.
@ 2 NomadUK
Give it a shot! I doubt you’ll like it as much as we did, but it’s still a good film.
@ 3 Michael S. Schiffer
I think you’re reading too much into it. Just because the TNG-era Klingon council is a hive of scum and villainy (and breast-revealing body suits) doesn’t mean that extends backward into history. Gorkon has a blunt, open nature that I respected. He strikes me as rather Kirk-like, really. His daughter remarks several times that her father’s vision was of peace, so I feel pretty confident that what he’s projecting is sincere.
That said, I don’t find any inherent contradiction in being against peace before he was for it. Times change. A good leader changes with them. What made sense before the destruction of Praxis would not make sense now.
@ 4 bobsandiego
I didn’t even notice Spock putting the patch on Kirk until Eugene pointed it out on this viewing.
@ 5 S. Hutson Blount
I’m definitely on the anti-Saavik, pro-new character side. I think it would have been a huge mistake to bring her back, mostly because she’d be too old. It’s important that Valeris is a young lieutenant fresh from the Academy. She does exactly as she’s told and believes exactly what she’s been told to believe. There’s a naivety there crucial to the execution of the plot that Saavik lacks.
@ 8 Lemnoc
Yeah, I don’t understand this promotion system. If Kirk got to be captain at 35, why is Chekov barely a commander when he’s nearing retirement? You’d think they’d all be post-captains with five tours of duty under their belts.
The biggest disappointment I had from this film was nothing in the film itself, but rather that that went from this to solely next gen films. Yeah, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy earned their rest and retirement but I would have LOVED to see me some Captain Sulu movies! (I even had a few plot idea bouncing around in my empty skull.)
Personal opinion on the continunity error at end. I suspect they originally werte going to have Sulu and company work out how to kill the warbird, but someone (an executive suit, a star with an ego the size of the galaxy) killed it in favor of Enterprise and there by Kirk saving the day.
@ 10 bobsandiego
I would pay mucho buckos for some Captain Sulu movies, even if they made them right now. I know they had talked about giving him a series but eventually balked–anyone know why?
I don’t think I understand the so-called continuity error. Why is it weird that Enterprise would have stellar cartography equipment onboard?
Torie@11:
Too much peace? :-) 19th century British junior officers reputedly had a toast: “To a bloody war and fast promotion”, and that’s not really the Federation’s situation during the Kirk era. (Though maybe if that conspiracy had succeeded…) Starfleet mostly seems to suffer its losses among lower-ranked redshirts. (Or entire ships at a time, which doesn’t create a lot of career opportunities.)
Though, to be fair, there are presumably openings at the top as its captains and flag-ranked officers inevitably go round the twist: Garth of Izar, Commodore Decker, Captain Tracey, probably others I’m forgetting. (And what with unceremoniously bumping his successor out of the command chair after the refit, then hijacking the Enterprise and scuttling it, one suspects there were those in Starfleet not too sure about Kirk.)
@9 Torie: Well, you have to remember those were the days when Americans could still say, “We don’t torture.” 24 and all that was still well into the future, so the perception was less on the torture side of things. Also, the intimacy of the mind-meld as it is meant to be used versus what Spock does here is a much closer parallel to the relationship between sex and rape. Either way, I still think it’s totally out of character for Spock and in a lot of ways blights what is meant to be the end of his arc. (OTOH, it does give a slightly different flavor to the stuff he does later in TNG; you could see that as atonement.)
Add me to the list of those who would have loved a Sulu-oriented series or something. Unfortunately, I can think of a couple of reasons why they never happened and it says a lot about Hollywood. The first is the fact that he’s Asian. It was still a couple of years before Jackie Chan really broke out and the overall perception was that audiences just didn’t care about Asian actors. Just think about how often Asian characters were played by white actors, even then. The second “problem” was his homosexuality. It was an open secret in Hollywood and Trek fandom. The suits probably just assumed it was only a matter of time before he tested positive, which they would have figured would permanently damage the franchise. Hollywood suits are some of the most conservative people in the country when it comes to business decisions; they use box office as an excuse for a lot of regressive attitudes and assuage their guilt by supporting causes with lip-service. It’s kept a lot of good stuff from ever getting in front of a camera.
Torie@9
I’d think that if it had been Saavik, then her reasons would have been somewhat different, possibly including her recent direct personal experience with the Klingons.
My gut feeling is that they should either have kept the character as Saavik, or else cut her entirely and worked the attack some other way. Saavik’s betrayal would have had real impact– maybe too much, and maybe not enough like Star Trek, but it would have mattered.
A comparison from another strain of geekdom: back in the 80s, DC Comics did a big crossover event in which every book had to have one ongoing cast member who would turn out to have secretly been part of an evil robot conspiracy. Never mind the details, but the tag line in all the ads was “One of these people has waited a thousand years to betray humanity”, with three characters from the featured book.
But some of the writers, understandably, didn’t want to burn a major character for the purpose. So they cheated. For example, the Justice League ad offered, as the three candidates, something like:
Wonder Woman (one of DC’s top marketing properties)
Black Canary (nearly as old and established a character, and something of a fan favorite)
Rocket Red #7 (a member of a recently introduced corps of Russians who all wore identical, face-concealing power armor)
Three guesses as to which one turned out to be the robot traitor. :-) Similarly, when it turns out there’s a traitor in the Enterprise crew, just how affected are we supposed to be when it’s the one character we have zero previous investment in? (“No! Not… wait, what was her name again?”)
Granted, having something dramatic happen to someone on the ship we’d never seen before and would never again is straight out of TOS, so they came by it honestly. But in the capstone to our long farewell to the main crew, I don’t think it works all that well.
@14 Michael S. Schiffer wrote:
I think one of the reasons this plotline worked as a mystery is we hadn’t really seen an ignoble Vulcan at this point—y’know, except maybe T’Pring. In Agatha Christie terms, Valeris was the one with an airtight alibi.
@15 Lemnoc: You have a point. (I have a read of T’Pau that’s somewhat less than noble– her contempt for “outworlders”, her ingenuous delivery of “this fight is to the death” after Kirk’s already committed, a few other things– but I doubt that was Sturgeon’s intent when writing her.) Maybe the intent was for the impact to be not “Valeris?!?”, but “A Vulcan?!?”
(I don’t think that was my own reaction at the time, but that was many years ago, so who knows?)
@16 Michael S. Schiffer:
Actually Sturgeon had the gift of making that whole blooming race a bit too cunning and calculating in their basic approaches. I give him credit for that.
I imagine life among Vulcans would be grating and insufferable for those of lesser faculties or discipline. Amb. Sarek threw out the tart barbs along with the best of them. They certainly are arrogant and unyielding beings.
My guess is Spock’s essential humanity shaved off the hardest ice from his personality.
@17 Lemnoc Yeah– on some level it says everything about the Vulcans that Sarek was renowned for his diplomacy.
Granted, looking at his competition among the Tellarites, or the Klingons (with Gorkon, actually, as a notable exception)– or decades later among the Betazoids– one begins to see just what it was that humans brought to the interstellar table. (And maybe why we wound up as the backbone of the Federation.)
@13 DemetriosX
One of the few episodes of Voyager that justifies the show’s existence was its 100th episode, “Flashback,” which featured Tuvok remembering his time on Excelsior under Captain Sulu’s command. There was also at least one audio story with Captain Sulu starring George Takei.
@15 Lemnoc
The other thing that deflected suspicion from Valeris (who my friend pointed out during the movie kept popping up everywhere on the ship) was the fact that Spock implicitly trusted her. He was grooming her to be his replacement! (Whatever that means… As what, a Vulcan in Starfleet while he wanders off to broker peace with the Romulans?) How often is Spock wrong about someone? No wonder he was so pissed.
@11 Torie because right at the start Sulu is making his log entry about cataloging gaseous anomalies, hence it was established and ready to use that Sulu’s ship had the equipment. There’s your first act gun all ready for the third act.
@20 bobsandiego
Thanks for backing me up! :)
It’s really interesting that both of our bloggers saw the movie so long after it was initially released. I’m young enough that I wasn’t alive for the original TV series but old enough to remember all the movies except TMP in the theater. I became a die-hard fan when “The Voyage Home” came out and was in the theater on opening night to see “The Undiscovered Country.”
At the time I absolutely loved it. In re-watching it later (and still now) I still really like it but can’t find it in me to love it. Valeris irritates the hell out of me (and I’m damned glad Roddenberry had his way with Saavik) and some of the comedy falls flat for me in the same way that the comedy in “The Final Frontier” did.
The thing that bothered me the most was Spock’s assault on Valeris. I agree with DemetriosX @ 1 that it was essentially a mind rape and I don’t believe that he’d ever have done that no matter how great his anger. Just too disturbing.
And the old literary quotes are definitely a little too heavy handed for me. But I love McCoy all the way through and it was definitely much better than ST:V.
@22 Weirman
I didn’t see it very long after release. It was in theaters in December of ’91 and was probably on HBO around a year later, where I saw it, a little before DS9 premiered. Since this was the movie that made me a fan of Star Trek, I didn’t see it or any of the previous movies in theaters even though I could have!
I kind of think this movie is awesome. It was my first Star Trek on the big screen, and my first real taste of TOS crew (I got the 1-5 box set for Christmas of ’91, right after I saw VI). This one is really good at being hammy and silly, and yet striking a serious tone at certain points when its needed. While some of the sets and production values are pretty weak (the fakest snow EVER is when they first enter rura penthe), I really agree with the visual effects totally rocking out. The Enterprise model looks like a million bucks in every shot, and I adore the final battle with the cloaked BOP. This one really does tap into some original series energy too…Bones and Kirk are great in the prison sequences, and Spock is pretty consistently awesome. Definitely a favorite, probably second to The Wrath of Kahn, and by far superior the TNG crew films.
@ 12 Michael S. Schiffer
Good point! I had forgotten about Crazy Commodore Syndrome. I bet that knocks enough out for some promotions.
@ 13 DemetriosX
You’re right, of course. It doesn’t stain Spock in my eyes the way it does yours, but that may not be rational.
And as Eugene said, I once had an audio story of one of Captain Sulu’s adventures. It featured him going back in time to ancestors in feudal Japan, though, so I never bothered to listen to it.
@ 14 Michael S. Schiffer
See, that Saavik plot wouldn’t have worked for me. We already have Kirk bitter at his experiences in STIII as the basis for his hatred of the Klingons. It would’ve just been more of the same if Saavik were operating on similar motives. I find it more interesting that they took advantage of the idealism of a young officer. The conspirators exploited the very patriotism that you think would have put her on Spock’s side. I think it’s clever and well-done.
@ 15 Lemnoc
Ha, good point! The Ignoble Vulcan would have been a great STV plot.
@ 19 Eugene
I vaguely remember that Voyager episode. Doesn’t Tuvok make Sulu’s tea?
@ 20 bobsandiego
Yeah but isn’t that all any of these ships do all day? Catalog gaseous anomalies? It’s not weird to me that the Enterprise has all that stuff, too.
@ 22 Weirman
The Shakespeare grates on me as well which is why it’s hilarious when McCoy says he’d give real money if Chang would shut up.
The only movie I saw frequently when I was younger was STIV, and sometimes STII. I was a TNG fan first and only discovered the original stuff much later. I don’t think I ever saw any of the ST movies in theaters, now that I think about it. I didn’t get really into the whole thing until after First Contact, and I knew better than to see Insurrection or Nemesis in theaters.
@ 24 glorbes
YAY! Thanks for backing me up! :) That snow looks pretty terrible, but the rest of the effects are so good! And you have to hand it to the make-up departments’ 300 prosthetics, because the Klingons look better than they ever did or ever will.
The first Star Trek movie I saw in theaters was Generations, and I’ve been to every one since, for better or worse. I did, however, get to see a screening of TWoK on the big screen, which was quite an experience!
Great comments, all. I’m afraid it may be a bit before I post anything … real life has caught up to me, and not in a good way, and it’s a little difficult right now to muster up the enthusiasm.
But I’ll be reading. So, thanks in advance for the re-watches yet to come!
@ 27 NomadUK Here’s hoping that things improve for you.
@25 Torie
If there had been no mention of Excelsior’s mission at the start of the film I’d be with you on this, however the writers and filmmakers DID make the explicit point of establishing the fact and so in my opinion good writing demand that it is Excelsior and not Enterprise that reveals the warbirds location.
One the blu-ray audio commentary Nicholas Meyer recounts that he once met a German who insisted that Shakespeare was actually German and the plays are originally in German and that this is the inspiration for the Klingon/Shakespeare bit.
@27 NomadUK
Sorry to hear about your troubles, but we’ll still be here when things hopefully settle down. Best wishes for a happy outcome. Hang in there.
Thanks, everyone.
@ 26 Eugene
Wow, all of them? I remember Nemesis came out the same weekend as one of the LOTR movies. Talk about abysmal timing.
@ 27 NomadUK
Best wishes from me, too. We’ll be here when you get back.
@32 Torie
That isn’t too surprising, is it? I started watching TNG at the end of the 6th Season, so of course I could keep up with the new movies. I couldn’t be sure they would suck until I saw them, right?
It’s far more shameful that I stuck with Voyager to the end through many terrible episodes and lasted into the second season of Enterprise… Even worse, I kind of want to re-watch Voyager, and will probably finally see the rest of Enterprise one of these days.
@ 33 Eugene
I stuck with Voyager to the end, too, though I barely remember the series arc let alone any particular episodes. Since it got me into Star Trek there had to be something redeemable there, right? I’d re-watch it.
I watched the pilot of Enterprise and said “No.” I guess I should give it a shot, if I want to keep my Trekkie card.
I watched the whole first season of Enterprise on DVD. When the season finale came to an end, and I realized I didn’t care one bit what happened next, I decided to stop. That being said, I am curious about the episode that ties into the Tholian Web, if only to see the Constitution Class in action one more time.
@35 glorbes
I did tune in to the fourth season for that two-part episode, and I was surprised to find I mostly liked it–largely due to the nostalgia factor. It’s total fan service, but they did a number of things really well in that episode. I heard good things about several other episodes in the last season, that give me hope that it improves. Then again, I also saw the series finale, which was a disappointing, even embarrassing, mess.
The only Star Trek movie I didn’t see on the big screen was Nemesis. I could tell just from the previews that Nemesis was going to be a disaster. I’ve sat through it twice on DVD and despised it even more the second time than the first. The only reason I watched it a second time was to properly tie off a complete Next Gen re-watch.
That’s what they get for breaking their every 2 years pattern.
I couldn’t stand Voyager for more than three episodes, but I actually have seen all of Enterprise. I actually liked that show, except for Season 3. Season 4 was really quite good except for the first two episodes (tying up Season 3) and the finale which was just a really bad idea all around.
I never got past the pilot for Enterprise and only about three episodes in Voyager (though I did come back to Voyager for two episodes that a friend of mind had written.) I have never seen Nemesis at all and I’m told I am missing nothing.
I loved this movie, and really got choked up at the end when they were called back to be decommisioned. Now, some nitpicks and points ( in no particular order ):
– I found it hard to believe that the Klingons would allow Kirk and McCoy to keep their uniforms…all the way through the trial and on to the prison planet. Of course, if they didn’t, Spock would have had to stick that patch somewhere more intimate on Kirk ( Ewww ).
– I found myself less than thrilled with the scene in the galley, for several reasons:
1) throughout the series we always saw “food synthesizers” ( early replicators, if you like ). There was mention in “Charlie X” of a galley and a ‘Chief’ cook (and bottle washer, no doubt ), and in “The Making Of Star Trek” there was mention of food preparation facilities for the crew to use, but not as a mess hall for the crew. It seemed a bit ‘retro’ for Trek.
2) Also a bit retro for Trek; the frantically scrambling for books to translate Klingon scene. Yes, it’s cute, it’s amusing, and a fun bit for Uhura… but a bit anachronistic. Note the obvious overdub of Walter Koenig saying “The universal translator would be recognized!”. Apparently, someone convinced Nick Meyer that an explanation needed adding, thankfully. If I remember correctly, in the novelization, the author used the macguffin that the translating computer had been sabotaged as well as the torpedo logs, adding a further, more convincing note of conspiracy to the scene.
3) Valeris decides to demonstrate that firing an unauthorized phaser will set off an alarm. So she selects a gun from the WEAPONS LOCKER IN THE GALLEY? Um… I’m not in the Military, but I did grow up around it, and I can’t ever recall seeing unlocked weapons lockers installed in random, non combat areas of Naval ships. This seems a bit aggressive for Trek. Also, since when has firing off a phaser in a ship set off an alarm? I guess that’s why they tossed in the word “unauthorized”… to cover that little gaffe. Finally, on the same subject, does it seem logical for a trained command officer to pull out and cavalierly fire a dangerous weapon in a room full of people to prove a point?
4 ) As to the Spock mind meld/rape scene. As unsettling as it is to watch, I did not have as big a problem with it as some. Ever since Spock’s mind melding epiphany with V’Ger, he seemed much more comfortable with allowing a hint of emotion to peek out. His slapping the phaser out of Valeris’ hand was a startling, but believable extension of this. To me, the forced meld was a sign that he had reached his limit. Valeris had betrayed his trust, very nearly destroyed the prospect of peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, which he himself had worked so hard for, and nearly gotten his friends condemned to life in prison. To top it off, time was running out, and she was smugly refusing to cooperate. In that moment, he seems very much like a disappointed parent who knows he has no choice but to take drastic measures with a recalcitrant child. Spock’s demeanor immediately after the meld makes it quite clear that he has found what he has had to do every bit as distasteful as the audience and spectators, and I think Nimoy’s acting during that scene is brilliant in showing Spock’s sorrow and regret, before he regains his composure.
5) Curiously, I unlike some fans, and indeed some cast members, did not find the Enterprise crew’s blatant racism towards the Klingons completely out of character. From the first introduction of the Klingon Empire in “Errand Of Mercy” Kirk has had a barely concealed contempt for them that seems to go beyond simple dislike for their ways of doing things. After all he’s experienced at their hands ( and at his age ) it did not seem unbelievable to me that his dislike would have solidified. While the rest of the crew’s reactions may have been a bit exaggerated, hidden prejudices were brought to the surface and magnified before in “The Day Of The Dove” ( and, okay…I agree that it’s not the best episode to use as a comparison ). But, the point is, our Trek heroes are not perfect ( thank god, or they would be terribly uninteresting ). Beneath the surface each of them, no doubt, has SOME prejudices… no matter how enlightend they are. It may not be against the Klingons because they ARE Klingons, but because of the actions and aggressions of their Empire in the past. Remember, these characters are no longer idealistic youths, but older and more set in their ways, which can be a dangerous foible… A point this movie makes beautifully.
@39 Dep1701
Thanks for reminding me about that phaser scene. It’s dramatic, yes, and it shows rather than tells (actually, it does both), but it annoyed the hell out of me. Valeris says, “As you know, Commander Chekov, no one can fire an unauthorized phaser aboard a starship.” There are two things wrong with this: 1) Clearly Chekov doesn’t know this, for some reason, even though his fellow bridge officers do, and it commits the sin of being an “As you know, Bob,” statement. 2) As she just demonstrated, you can fire an unauthorized phaser on the ship, but you’ll probably get caught afterward. Which might be small consolation to whichever poor red shirt just got vaporized. It would make more sense to either lock all phasers so they can’t be fired and trigger an alarm when accessed, or just don’t leave phasers lying around where unauthorized personnel can get at them. By the time children are allowed aboard starships in later Trek, this kind of protocol would never fly.
As for Valeris’s unorthodox teaching moment, she is a traitor after all, so her judgment is suspect. There has to be some kind of penalty for firing an unauthorized phaser, even to make a point.
Re: the prejudice toward the Klingons, the Enterprise crew seemed fairly chummy with the Klingons in the previous movie–Chekov and Sulu even follow around one of the Klingon women like horny schoolboys. But I’ll accept that the previous film was an aberration.
@40 Eugene
Eugene said “1) Clearly Chekov doesn’t know this, for some reason, even though his fellow bridge officers do, ”
This is another goof. Of all people, shouldn’t he know? Wasn’t he chief of security in “Star Trek The Motion Picture”? Even if he isn’t currently a security officer aboard Enterprise at this point, I figure he would be up on any new protocols.
In fact, Chekov seems seems to be a bit dumbed down in this movie, for the sake of advancing the plot. I’m guessing the character is supposed to be in his late 40’s – early 50’s at the point of this film ( being perhaps generous, given the somewhat screwy chronology of the movie series ). What might have been excusable as youthful naivete when he was introduced at the age of 22, comes across more like a “you big dummy” moment as a seasoned veteran ( maybe it’s no wonder he never advanced to Captain ).
I first saw this movie in a ‘Trek Marathon’ showing in London, when it was first released – all 6 movies on the big screen in one day. Fantastic to see it with a cinema-full of fellow-trekkies and I loved it. Still love it, despite its flaws, and the ‘sign-off’ at the end always chokes me up.
Re the ‘overt prejudice’ of the Enterprise crew: yes, we do see that they don’t like the Klingons much, BUT when they are hosting that dinner, they try. They really try. Uhura attempts to make polite conversation about Shakespeare; Scotty observes, astutely, that “perhaps we are seeing something of that future here”. That the whole thing goes pear-shaped is not down to anything they do or say, and at the end of the film they are all prepared to fight the people who have let their prejudices get in the way.
It’s a great send-off, and that last shot of the Enterprise heading toward the star is just perfect.
@ 37 Weirman
The AbramsTrek actually reminded me of Nemesis a lot. Taken out of the franchise, they could be fun, explosion-y action movies. But they both make ATROCIOUS Star Trek, largely by fundamentally misunderstanding both the characters and ideals of the series.
@ 38 bobsandiego
I feel the need to justify my vague fondness for Voyager. Perhaps a re-watch is in order…
@ 39 Dep1701
-The uniforms: that actually makes sense to me, particularly in the trial. Chang wants the Klingons to see them as embodiments of the Federation, not as individual “rogue” units.
-The translation scene is funny but nonsensical. Surely the universal translator can at least piece together the INCOMING signal?
– The weapons locker in the galley: maybe they use it for the final touch on creme brulee?
-The racism of the characters: exactly how I feel about it.
@ 42 EngineersMate
I read that scene entirely differently. I think half the point is that they’re not really trying at all. They have no genuine desire to make peace with these loathsome creatures, so they do their duty to be polite but no more. Note the faces that they make. Uhura makes a look of disgust when the Klingons eat with their hands, she doesn’t try to hide it. Kirk’s doing no favors by Godwin-ing the dinner. It’s clear that their pretensions to kindness are just that, pretensions. I think it actually adds authenticity to the scene. Breaking bread with the enemy is no easy feat.
This was probably the first Star Trek film I saw in theaters, certainly the first one I remember. I was at a summer day camp/daycare when it was released, and one day they took us to the movies (out of boredom or whatever for the other field trip options, I have no idea). Naturally I picked this film. And then it happened again a few weeks later and I saw the same one again. And I think again with my parents, if I remember correctly.
So naturally I love this movie immensely. It is certainly my favorite Star Trek movie, especially now that I appreciate it more (I think I was earlier more partial to IV).
That said, the racism angle doesn’t work for me. I agree that this is something the film is trying to do, and that it’s very brave to show Kirk as having these prejudices and so on. But:
– First off, nobody — and I mean nobody, prior to DS9 or possibly some TNG alien-of-the-week bad guys — in Trek treats other aliens as different *races*. They’re more like different *nationalities* and that seems more how the prejudice fault lines read to me. This may seem like a trivial distinction, but:
– TOS Klingons are clearly Russians. Well, okay, they started out as the Commie Chinese I suppose in Season 1, but they pretty quickly moved to be Russians — if it weren’t tradition enough, you have Gorbachev making a peace offer and then a show trial sending our boys to Siberia, yadda yadda. As such I never really read this as a racial distinction… that sounds like a Stephen Colbert-ish thing to say, I suppose, but there it is.
– Doesn’t Kirk say that “everybody’s human”? It seems to me that he doesn’t necessarily dehumanize the Klingons, so much as due to them being cast invariably as villains, they’re a race that, for no discernible reason, has done nothing but kill and loot and pillage and try to rip up everything he stands for. At what point can one legitimately say that maybe Kirk’s right? Have we, or he, EVER seen a Klingon up to this point who wasn’t about to backstab a good-faith agreement, enslave a planet, kill a hostage, or blow up his girlfriend because, you know, deus/plot bunny vult? Contrast with the Romulans, who Kirk can respect, because their culture as presented in the stories so far at least makes sense and has rules other than “Pick the most evil thing you can think of, and do something more evil.”
But you know. We have to trust them this time. Because this time it’s really going to be peace.
– And to top it all off, the whole diplomacy-dinner thing? That totally wasn’t Kirk’s fault. The Klingons show up and, aside from the chancellor, every single one of them is knives-out antagonistic, from the insulting “Listen to Shakespeare in the original Klingon” to Chang almost literally asking for Lebensraum, to Kerla baiting them by accusing them of hypocrisy — everybody from the Starfleet side is perfectly polite until the Klingons go roughing it up, even Azetbur taking needless offense at the phrase “human rights” — which any competent Universal Translator would have rendered into something more culturally specific. Kerla goes off about how Klingons will become a new Federation underclass…
All that aside, though, I absolutely love this movie. It is definitely my favorite of Trek movie, hands down (even though TOS is only my second-favorite Trek series).
Speaking of the Dinner scene: It’s always seemed rather disjointed to me, and not in a “this is an awkward meeting of the cultures” way…has anyone else noticed this? It doesn’t seem to ‘flow’ correctly, as though dialogue was rearranged, and there was much more trimmed out from the bits that we saw onscreen. I almost expected this scene to be expanded on the special edition DVD, but it wasn’t…nor was any deleted dialogue included as an extra.
For example, Chang’s sudden query to Kirk about giving up Starfleet. Another jarring one is after Uhura asks Chang is he is fond of Shakespeare, Chekov suddenly jumps in with the notably non-sequiter bit about the Federation believing that “…all planets have a sovereign claim to inalienable human rights”. After some more dickering, Chang suddenly states, “To be, or not be…that is the question that preoccupies our people…” etc ( and Kirk is seen still holding his goblet aloft with a polite smile on his face until he replies “Earth, Hitler, 1938” – clearly from earlier in the scene before the arguing begins ). To me that exchange more properly belongs right after Chang jokingly recites “To be, or not to be” in Klingon. I can understand that Meyer probably rearranged the scene to end with that punchy line about Hitler, but I think the flow of the scene suffers as a result.
Its been decades since I read the novelization, but I seem to remember the conversation proceeding much more naturally in the book.
BTW, Rather off-topic; Has anyone noticed how many Star Trek productions W. Morgan Sheppard has appeared in now? He was Dr. Ira Graves on Next Generation, the Klingon prison warden in this movie, a character named Qatai on Voyager and One of the heads of the Vulcan Science Academy in “Star Trek” (2009).
He’s giving Mark Lenard a run for his money.
Good spotting Dep1701. I had missed that.
DeepThought @ 44:
You actually make a good point about the “evil” of the Klingons. I remember at the time this movie first came out that I hadn’t thought of the Enterprise crew were so much racist as realists. Gorkon was the first Klingon we’d ever met (at that time) who wasn’t a complete barbarian. Sure, there’s Worf in TNG but even he was set up as an aberration, a Klingon raised by humans.
I suspect a number of watchers totally agreed with Kirk when he said “Let them die.” Because what had they done previously to suggest that they could ever be trusted to hold to peace?
But that’s actually part of the genius of the film. From Gorkon to the Klingon who defend Kirk and McCoy you get the idea that not all Klingons live to kill and destroy and by the time you reach the end of the movie not only do you realize that the crew truly were rather unreasonable in their fixed opinions, but so were you.
I remember walking out of the theater feeling as though the world had changed. It certainly made me understand the power of ignorance and I think the overall effect has stayed with me throughout the years since.
So in that respect, I certainly applaud the movie and everyone involved in the making of it.
@ 44 DeepThought
I read the “everybody’s human” line as a way to indicate that the strengths, flaws, and values humanity is known for are more universal than humanity. I don’t think it’s a rib at the Klingons.
@ 45 Dep1701
I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. The dinner scene is a little abrupt and disjointed all around. I tend to give it a pass because who really wants to sit through a tedious diplomatic dinner, but the directing there is uneven. I find it most interesting that the scene feels so claustrophobic. I mean surely there’s a nice hall they can use, instead of this extremely narrow little space?
And Star Trek seems to recycle actors a lot, especially in TNG/DS9/Voyager. I mean how many characters did Jeffrey Combs play again?? Sometimes in the same episode?
@ 48 Weirman and DeepThought
I think the “evil” of the Klingons is an effect of circumstance, not reality. Kirk has only ever interacted with some pretty nasty, war-loving Klingons. But… those are the Klingons on anti-Federation missions! Of course they’re not going to be nice! The Enterprise is only ever going to encounter antagonistic, ideological militants if their job in space is to stop antagonistic, ideological militants. It’s selection bias, and I love the way that for once Kirk has to confront the fact that his experiences have been narrow and limited.
@Torie #49
I agree about the “Everybody’s human” line — I was interpreting it as you suggest, and citing it as an example of why the “Kirk is racist” plot didn’t work for me : )
As for all the Klingons they encounter being on anti-Federation missions, wasn’t Christopher Lloyd more of a freelance world-destroyer or something? I got the impression a lot of these guys were acting as independent entities rather than on orders from High Command…
There was something else I wanted to say, but now it completely escapes me. Although on the Varis phaser firing incident, I do think it makes sense not to have a centrally controlled ship-wide de-activator field or whatever; given how often strange alien entities have managed to take over the ship with almost no effort, having them be able to shut off the anti-boarder weapons from a central location would probably be a low-percentage move. I think it’s satisfactory that any phaser fired at a setting high enough to disintegrate (say, above stun) while on board ship would result in an alarm…
@42 EngineersMate
I really loved Scotty’s line in that dinner scene. The others really seemed to be trying to be polite (or passively aggressive), but Scotty sounded sincere. I hadn’t thought about this before, but I wonder how much, if at all, the Romulan ale might factor into how the Enterprise crew behaved there. If their inhibitions were down and they weren’t thinking clearly, they might have said some things they wouldn’t have otherwise, even if it’s what they truly felt.
@44 DeepThought
What about the TNG episode where Worf refuses to donate blood to a Romulan?
@46 Dep1701
W. Morgan Sheppard has been in practically every science fiction show ever, though I didn’t recognize him in this until a friend pointed him out. The Russian accent threw me off. His son Mark Sheppard seems to be following in his footsteps, appearing in a ton of recent SF shows, most notably BSG, as well as an episode of Doctor Who with his father.
@48 Weirman
I remember walking out of the theater feeling as though the world had changed. It certainly made me understand the power of ignorance and I think the overall effect has stayed with me throughout the years since.
That is a great testimonial about Trek at its best: opening our minds to possibilities and questioning things we’ve always believed in.
@44 DeepThought & @49 Torie
Re: the “everybody’s human” line, earlier Azetbur also accuses them of racism for their concept of “inalienable human rights.” Here, Kirk seems to be confirming that narrow view, rather than recognizing the Klingons or Vulcans as other. But for a moment I wondered if his correction in his final log entry, “where no man–or no one–has gone before” was more than a callout to TNG. It might have been intended to be more inclusive: an acknowledgment of other races, as well as gender.
Torie@49 Still, the Klingons Kirk is dealing with are both a species, which it’s fair to say Kirk’s had only limited experience with, and a specific political unit whose foreign policy Kirk has reasonably broad experience with.
It’s seems arguably reasonable for him to make some judgments about the Klingon Empire, at least, and possibly on the dominant Klingon culture as it currently stands, on that basis. Not to the extent of writing them off as a species– that’s wrong, and he eventually realizes that. But does Gorkon really change our understanding of how Klingon culture and government work?
Particularly given how Gorkon’s term ends: Federation involvement aside, he was betrayed by his trusted right-hand general, backed by a Klingon organization sufficient to produce a secret bird-of-prey and its crew to carry out the assassination.
And who’s Gorkon’s successor? Do we know? (Is it Azetbur, who at least shared Gorkon’s dream, or some unknown?)
Having uncovered the conspiracy, Kirk trusts (we assume reasonably) that the Federation isn’t so shot through with corruption that the conspirators will get off and return to power. Believing the same on the Klingon side arguably demands that Kirk rely more on hope than on experience– the last Klingon leader to reach out, even under the most desperate of circumstances was killed by his own officers.
That’s a fair enough Trek sentiment going forward, but I think it suggests that we shouldn’t be *too* harsh about Kirk’s starting out suspicious and hostile. There is some justification there.
Wierman@48
I always wondered why they made that decision. It seemed to really detract from the initial symbolism of having a Klingon on the Enterprise bridge. I also seem to recall that early TNG episodes implied the Klingons had actually joined the Federation, before later deciding that it was an alliance (and one that grew increasingly shaky as that era of Trek progressed).
Trek does love its “between two worlds” characters: Spock, Data, Torres, etc. (And IIRC, the novelization had Saavik as a Vulcan/Romulan hybrid, though I don’t think that was in the movie.) But a raised-Klingon Worf adapting to Federation and Starfleet expectations could have been torn between demands without actually giving him a human upbringing. And the result seems to have been to shift the Klingons of the Empire back in the direction of space mongolvikings, rather than a more complex and changing culture.
I wonder if there is a bit of a general divide on the way we react to the original crew’s opinions about the Klingons.
I have memories as a child of watching ther series when it was broadcast, but the majrity of Trek for me is the weekday afternoon stripping of the shows. So my foundation for Klingons is John Calcos executing 100 prisoners per hour until he got what he wanted.
For younger people their inroduction to Klingons is very likely to be Worf and Next Generation Klingons which in my opinion had become space going Viking/Samurai.
I think which you experienced first may be a serious factor and how feel when someone habors ill wil towards Klingons as a whole.
Kirk’s remarks about the universality of the human condition hearken back to his eulogy for Spock (“his [soul] was the most human”) and seems to be the undercurrent of everything this is Star Trek, perhaps down to the very notion that we can even understand what it means to be alien. In Star Trek, no one is really an alien….
@43 Torie Atkinson:
Agreed, you’d want them tried in their Starfleet uniforms as an indictment of Starfleet; you’d want to disgrace the flag along with the patriots of said flag. Whether you’d then send them to a penal colony in those uniforms is another issue. And how many weeks between Spock’s sleight-of-hand, trial, and imprisonment?
@52 Michael S. Schiffer
TMP establishes that Admiral Kirk was head of Starfleet Operations, which suggests he probably knew everything knowable about Star Trek’s dangerous major races and their antagonisms.
@53 Michael S. Schiffer
I recall Roddenberry was ambivalent about the presence of a Klingon in TNG, and his pressures to keep Worf far back as a background character. He didn’t link their rancorous one-dimensionality. Worf’s original presence served as a set piece to affirming Roddenberry’s conceit that “in my universe there is no conflict (drama) because all human problems are resolved.” My, how far we’ve come! Alas, Dorn was not given much else to do early on other than scowl and growl and mutter his grievances with the Roddenberry way of doing things.
Grafting the Code of Bushido on to the Klingon Way probably helped Gene stomach their presence….
I think we have to see Klingons as symbols of the Cold War and TUC as allegory to Glasnost. TNG occupies that odd era where America as sole Superpower had no discernible enemy abroad (hence you could have Picard making his very remarkable and prescient bold condemnations against torture in “Chain of Command”–truly, what a powerful episode in hindsight). If TNG were being made today, the Klingons would no doubt be cast as Arabs.
@54 bobsandiego
Ibid. When Thing A is analog to Thing B, Thing A alters along as our perceptions alter about Thing B.
bobsandiego @ 54: That’s my thinking too. And the example of the Klingon executing 100 people per hour is a damned good one.
—-
I’ve always been kind of offended by Kirk’s statement that Spock was the “most human.” To me, that’s not a celebration of diversity but comes more across as, “Well sure, he was an alien but he was such a *great* alien that he’s worthy of being human.”
I’ve always believed that the Star Trek message is a bit hampered by the celebration of humanity as kind of the best of everything. After all, it’s humanity that created Starfleet and were the truly original founding members of the Federation. It was Earth that led the conciliation between Andorians and everyone else (and with Enterprise, brought peace between them and the Vulcans). It’s Kirk who is able to save the day and makes peace with the Klingons possible. And virtually every conversation with Spock seems to result in the concept that logic is all good and well but it’s good ole human instinct and passion that saves the day in the end.
I realize that in a big way Star Trek is all about celebrating humanity and embracing our potential. But sometimes it seems to go a bit overboard.
So when ST:VI came along and Chekov made the inalienable human rights comment, I thought the Klingon response was perfectly justified and I really appreciated that someone else was pointing that out.
@56 Weirman
“So when ST:VI came along and Chekov made the inalienable human rights comment, I thought the Klingon response was perfectly justified and I really appreciated that someone else was pointing that out.”
The thing about that is, I never really took the word “Human” is this context to be meant as a racial statement, more than as a synonym for any kind of “intelligent life”… at least I feel that’s the way Chekov meant it. Of course, the Klingons did take offense at it so it’s clear that they did take it racially.
Then again, we have to remember that this is fiction written in English for a mass audience. If they’d used a term other than “human” it probably would have gone over the average viewer’s head, so it provided a perfect way for the writers to comment on racial sensitvity ( without being too real-world, racially specific ).
Or, perhaps I’m overthinking it.
Eugene@51
I always had a problem with that when TNG adopted it. Obviously, they were trying to avoid the gender-specificity of “no man”, and “no human” doesn’t flow as well. (And “no one from the Federation”, which is probably the sense they really wanted, sounds even worse. :-) )
But at least was frequently true that no man (or woman) had gone to the places the Enterprise visited. (Well, aside from the Federation colonies and outposts they frequently went to. Or the planets contaminated by some previous spaceship crew. Or the ones where some trader or ambassador had gotten into trouble. Or… I suddenly want to count the number of times the Enterprise did enter completely new territory.) But in both TOS and TNG, they almost never went anyplace that no one had gone. Romulans, space-douches, Borg… nine times out of ten, someone had gotten there first.
Pretty much the only possible exceptions would be the occasional trip to see a space phenomenon, or exploring pre-spaceflight cultures where the locals didn’t go to the planet, but grew there. (And sometimes they were seeded there by the Preservers, or the Klingons were already on the scene…)
I don’t know if there was an answer– the phrase really needs a monosyllable, and there aren’t a lot of choices. But by making it all-inclusive, there’s a risk of making it meaningless. In a thoroughly-inhabited galaxy, there are very few places no one has gone before.
Dep1701 @ 57: Well I think it’s obvious that the writers intended human to stand out because it really is exclusive and most humans don’t tend to think of that. When you get right down to it, there’s no reason to put any specifics into that statement. Chekov could have simply said, “…an inalienable right.”
@ 52 Michael S. Schiffer
I don’t think you can say “Federation involvement aside.” Having Gorkon’s right-hand General involved is certainly no worse than having the Federation’s right-hand ADMIRAL involved.
I wound up really loving Worf as TNG went on, though I’m a sucker for between-two-worlds characters. At first he’s entirely one-dimensional, though, just as most of the Klingons we meet in TOS are–angry, brutish, violent. I like that Gorkon rounded them out as a little more nuanced than that.
Plus, one of my absolute favorite moments in the whole series is when you finally get to meet his (adoptive) parents–and they’re these totally adorable, friendly Russians.
@ 56 Weirman
The “most human” line (and the general jingoistic human patriotism) used to bother me, too, but I’ve changed my mind having seen TOS. I think part of the magic of the show is that we go out there and meet these creatures that seem so different from us and discover that we share so much. It’s not so much that curiosity, compassion, the pursuit of knowledge, and all the other wonderful things that humans embody are special–I mean, they are–but they’re not unique. They’re unique to sentient, intelligent life, but all sentient, intelligent life seems to be more or less united by these principles, and that’s what’s so special. I find it very inspiring.
@ 58 Michael S. Schiffer
Excellent point, actually. But I should note the new tag line always worked for me.
Torie@60
On the other hand, we have reason to believe that the Federation side of the conspiracy was an aberration. Unless we’re assuming that all those crazy commodores were pushing for a more aggressive foreign policy all along. (Which we could do: after all, they had a teacher at the fricking Academy– Kirk’s favorite!– who liked to natter on about Nazi efficiency, and evidently took it really seriously. And it probably says something that the main occupational illness in Starfleet is megalomania.) But that’s the sort of cynical retcon that makes a hypocrite of TOS-era Kirk, if we care about that.
By contrast, murderous aggression pretty much describes every Klingon in a position of power we ever see. Some of them channel it better– “only a fool fights in a burning house!”– but the same guy calmly explained his plans to torture the Enterprise crew to death, one by one, till Kirk yielded. That makes it harder to see Gorkon’s fate as an exception in the same way that the Starfleet conspiracy implicitly was. It looks more like he was the best they could produce, and even that best could only sue for peace after noticing his house was on fire. Even that idea was so intolerable that his best general killed him for it.
The Federation negotiated for peace when it didn’t have to, when the pragmatic argument ran the other way. It did so with the broad commitment of its dominant, presumed-representative leadership, rather than depending on a specific authoritarian ruler. There was a failed attempt to subvert that by some high officers, and those officers were uncovered, arrested, and disgraced by other, loyal Federation officers.
(Rather than their defeat depending on escaped alien convicted war criminals, the way the Klingons’ conspiracy did. ;-) )
And in addition to the conspirators, we have multiple examples of honest, loyal, peace-seeking Federation types (to the point that they’re mocked for it by the other powers by TNG). For the Klingons… well, we have Gorkon. Who’s dead at Klingon hands.
Question for people who know their Klingons better than me: Are there any other (Empire-raised) Klingons in Star Trek, before or after, who ever suggest that peace is preferable to war? (I seem to recall an enclave who’d opted out, but as I recall they were basically the descendants of prison camp inmates, not part of mainstream Klingon culture.)
Re the tagline: I’ve never really warmed to the new version, but I don’t know what they should have done, short of completely recasting the opening narration.
In his Uplift books, David Brin tried to reclaim what we might call “inclusive Man” by using “mel” and “fem” as gendered singular terms instead of “man” and “woman”, and using “man” to mean individual humans regardless of sex. (Equating it to Latin homo instead of Latin vir, basically.) But like most attempts at artificial gender terms, it just doesn’t sound right. And that sort of juggling isn’t going to remove the sex implications of the word “man” in the ears of contemporary readers anyway.
@39 Dep1701
Also a bit retro for Trek; the frantically scrambling for books to translate Klingon scene. Yes, it’s cute, it’s amusing, and a fun bit for Uhura… but a bit anachronistic.
I never liked this scene. I found it way too reminiscent of Scotty’s “I know this ship like the back of my hand” bit from V: getting comedy by showing someone being incompetent. Someone in Uhura’s position should damn well speak Klingonese. I think the scene would have made more sense, and made Uhura look more profession, and been funnier, if Uhura had been able to just rattle off Klingonese and intimidated the border guards into letting them pass.
@62 Johnny
Now that I think about it, that scene also makes the Klingon look supremely incompetent. I agree that Uhura should have been much more capable, and it might have been funny for her to give the Klingon a dressing down. I suppose when you get down to it, that scene has a lot of things wrong with it… It’s a credit to Nichelle Nichols that I enjoy it anyway.
#62 Agreed, I would have assumed a couple of languages would have been minimum requirement for a communications officer, especially as the Chief Engineer has taken the trouble to learn some basic Klingon!
I wonder whether it was intentional that the scene gave a nod to ‘Star Trek IV’ where Scotty says “reading Klingon, that’s hard!” – which I’ve always interpreted as meaning he’s got a working knowledge of the written language; and here he is in VI, leafing through English-Klingon dictionaries.
Or maybe it was an unspoken reference to James Doohan’s invention of the Klingon language for The Motion Picture?
This is the only Star Trek movie I watched upon its original release. I remember liking it although Spock’s forcible mind-scan of Valeris sat poorly with me from the start; I hardly need to explain why because it’s been better explained already. It doesn’t help that the mind-scan isn’t merely deeply disturbing, but also a too-convenient plot device. Surely it must have been possible to uncover the conspiracy in some less facile way?
Poor David Warner. It seems to be his mission, or his curse, to add a touch of class to rubbish movies. We all agree that he’s first-rate but he’s never been in first-rate material more than once or twice. I’m trying to think of anything truly superlative he’s been in and all I can think of is Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. I can’t bring myself to call Straw Dogs “superlative”. (And Tron just sucks, sorry.)
@49 Torie:
“@ 45 Dep1701
I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. The dinner scene is a little abrupt and disjointed all around. I tend to give it a pass because who really wants to sit through a tedious diplomatic dinner, but the directing there is uneven. I find it most interesting that the scene feels so claustrophobic. I mean surely there’s a nice hall they can use, instead of this extremely narrow little space?”
Ooh…Oooh! I just happened to be flipping channels today, and the Biography channel was re-running the “Star Trek – 25th Anniversary Special” from 1991, which ended with a behind the scenes ‘preview’ of Trek VI. Further evidence of the disjointed editing of the dinner scene was found in this show. One unused exchange of dialogue spoken by at the dinner party was:
Kerla: “You hypocritically presume that your democratic system gives you the moral prerogative to force other cultures to conform to your politics.”
McCoy: ” That’s not true!”
Kerla: “No?!”
McCoy: “No!”
Obviously, the only thing to survive from this exchange was McCoy saying “That’s Not True!”, Kerla replying “No?!” and McCoy’s negative rebuttal. This was placed after a different line from Kerla; “In any case, we know where this is leading…the annihilation of our culture.” This may have been another line culled from that same bit of dialogue, or it might have been a revision, but I would still love to see the complete original scene with it’s dialogue intact, and in order.
As to the claustrophobic feel, well, Nick Meyer said he wanted the inside of the Enterprise to be more like a submarine. Although I don’t necessarily agree with his take on the ship, it’s still a terrific movie overall.
[“As to the Spock mind meld/rape scene. As unsettling as it is to watch, I did not have as big a problem with it as some. Ever since Spock’s mind melding epiphany with V’Ger, he seemed much more comfortable with allowing a hint of emotion to peek out. His slapping the phaser out of Valeris’ hand was a startling, but believable extension of this. To me, the forced meld was a sign that he had reached his limit. Valeris had betrayed his trust, very nearly destroyed the prospect of peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, which he himself had worked so hard for, and nearly gotten his friends condemned to life in prison. To top it off, time was running out, and she was smugly refusing to cooperate. In that moment, he seems very much like a disappointed parent who knows he has no choice but to take drastic measures with a recalcitrant child. Spock’s demeanor immediately after the meld makes it quite clear that he has found what he has had to do every bit as distasteful as the audience and spectators, and I think Nimoy’s acting during that scene is brilliant in showing Spock’s sorrow and regret, before he regains his composure.”]
In other words, you’re saying that Valeris asked to be mind raped. [The ad hominem attack is completely inappropriate and has been removed. – Moderator]