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This page is a rewrite in progress of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Directed by	Nicholas Meyer
Written by	Nicholas Meyer Denny Martin Flinn
Produced by	Steven-Charles Jaffe Ralph Winter
Starring	See table
Cinematography	Hiro Narita
Edited by	William Hoy Ronald Roose
Music by	Cliff Eidelman
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release dates	December 6, 1991
Running time	113 min.
Language	English
Budget	$30,000,000

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a 1991 science fiction film based on the popular Star Trek television series. It is the sixth feature film of the Star Trek series, and the last of the films based solely on the Original Series cast. After the original Star Trek television series ended without a series finale, the producers of the film intended it to serve as a closure to the saga, and to present their final mission together.

The story of The Undiscovered Country is closely tied to the 1986 Chernobyl accident and ultimate peace between the United States and the Soviet Union. This was played in the Star Trek universe by the having the Klingon Empire experience a similar cataclysmic accident, and having to seek refuge with their main enemies, the United Federation of Planets.

Plot

{{spoiler}} 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 Star Trek III: 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.

[[Image:Movie star trek valleris.jpg|right|275px|thumb|[[Spock]] uses a [[mind meld]] on [[Valeris]].]] 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 an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, 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.

Cast

[[Image:STARTREK6 D1-1.jpg|thumb|275 px|The final shot of the cast together in ''The Undiscovered Country''. The shot was designed to look like a "yearbook portrait".]]

Actor	Role
William Shatner	Captain James T. Kirk
Leonard Nimoy	Captain Spock
DeForest Kelley	Dr. Leonard McCoy
James Doohan	Captain Montgomery Scott
George Takei	Captain Hikaru Sulu
Walter Koenig	Commander Pavel Chekov
Nichelle Nichols	Commander Uhura
Grace Lee Whitney	Commander Janice Rand
Mark Lenard	Ambassador Sarek
Kim Cattrall	Lieutenant Valeris
David Warner	Chancellor Gorkon
Rosanna DeSoto	Azetbur
Christopher Plummer	General Chang
Kurtwood Smith	Federation President
Brock Peters	Fleet Admiral Cartwright
John Schuck	Klingon Ambassador
Iman	Martia
Michael Dorn	Colonel Worf
René Auberjonois	Colonel West (uncredited)
Christian Slater	Excelsior Communications Officer (cameo)

Background

Political basis

The Undiscovered Country is an allegory for the fall of communism in eastern Europe during that late 1980s and early 1990s, and the recent peace movement which was happening while the film was being made At the time of the film's release, the Soviet Union itself had not yet dissolved. According to the film, the Federation and the Klingons have been engaged in a cold war for seventy years (as portrayed in the Original Series episode "Errand of Mercy"). The Soviets and the Americans had been engaged in a Cold War for approximately the same amount of time, 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 film 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. Also included is a reference to the Nixon in China metaphor.

By far, the major theme of The Undiscovered Country 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. During the mid and late 1980s, many Americans and Soviets alike were resentful of the peace movement. On the American side, some nationalists were resentful of the idea of compromising with the Soviet Union, wanting to see the Soviet Union forced into treaties with the west, forcefully capitalized, or even wiped off the map entirely. At the same time, many Russian/Soviet nationalists feared the westernization of Eastern Europe. Since the beginning of the middle ages and even through 200 years of Mongol rule, Eastern Europe has held together its own unique personal and cultural identity, in spite of numorous attempts to westernize it. In the film, the Klingons feared the destruction of their culture as was evident clearly during the dinner on board the Enterprise between the two delegations. Along side this, many Soviet military leaders also felt betrayed, feeling the Soviet Union was submitted to western demands without even firing a gun or being given a fighting chance.

The film's dialogue contains an enormous number of historical and cultural references. These include many lines of Shakespeare.

Production

After 1989's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier became a major critical and financial flop, the future of the Star Trek film series was uncertain. Many premises for a sixth film were proposed, such as a prequel about Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy. Eventually it was decided to make a final film starring the Original Series cast, and to conclude their story together.

Box office and critical reception

The Undiscovered Country debuted in North America on December 6, 1991. Originally scheduled to open a week later, the film was moved up one week to the post-Thanksgiving weekend, typically one of the slowest box office weekends of the year. The film opened with $18,162,837 from 1,804 theatres, and went on to gross $74,888,996 by the end of its run.

Trivia

• The Undiscovered Country was Meyer's original title for Star Trek II before the studio changed it without his consent.
• The film is a sort of prologue to Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which the Klingons and Federation are allies. Michael Dorn, who plays Lieutenant Worf in TNG, plays 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" (this was an indication of the power Roddenberry had come to wield in the Trek universe by this time, since his involvement with the Saavik character had previously been nonexistent). 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.
• The sixth Star Trek film was initially to be about 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 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.
• 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 (René Auberjonois) who would later play Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
• 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 actually 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).
• This is DeForest Kelley's final Star Trek film appearance before his death on June 11, 1999. He did however make a cameo appearance in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Farpoint", as Admiral Leonard McCoy.
• This is the final Star Trek film to feature the entire cast of Star Trek: 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 Star Trek: Generations.
• The distinctive special effects created to depict the explosion of Praxis, especially the expanding planar "energy rings", made their debut in this film and have been widely copied whereever 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 remastered releases of the Star Wars DVDs.

Notes

References

• All box office figures from Box Office Mojo.

Related

References in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

External links

• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at IMDb
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at Memory Alpha
• Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country at StarTrek.com