Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country 1991

[5.6/10] Star Trek is probably the wrong place to go for subtlety. The television show that spawned this six film series ended more than a few episodes with Captain Kirk waxing philosophical about what the lesson or message of that week’s installment was. It was full of garish colors, larger than life figures, and fantastical locales. So expecting the franchise to use a light touch when it comes to what it’s trying to say is probably a fool’s hope.

But maybe I just expected something different in 1991. It’s odd for me to think of the adventures of The Original Series cast coexisting in real time with those of The Next Generation. The latter show was what I grew up, and had hit its stride by the time The Undiscovered Country debuted. In that successor series, Michael Piller and his collaborators had evolved Star Trek, making it still bombastic at times, but also, oddly enough a little more down to Earth.

Which is why Star Trek VI feels like such an odd duck. It was released nearly a quarter century years after the original show made its debut, and it’s not quite the four-color adventures of the weekly series; it’s not quite the political and character drama of The Next Generation; and it’s not quite the blockbuster big screen dramas we’d seen from Star Trek on the silver screen previously. It’s a strange amalgamation of all three of these things, and it never fully works.

It might work better if Star Trek VI weren’t so heavy-handed about its themes. The film series had been contemplating the aging and impending mothballing of its cast since at least The Wrath of Khan, but whether it was the success of TNG leading to that show taking the Star Trek mantle, or the inevitable running out of gas that comes when you’ve made six movies in twelve years, The Undiscovered Country is very self-consciously about the end of the adventures of Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest of the original Enterprise crew.

That’s a fact that the film is not at all shy about reminding you. There are repeated mentions of our heroes being “three months from retirement,” a pronouncement that can only elicit snickers from Simpsons fans attuned to the cliché of “retirony.” There are endless, hokey discussions about what the future holds, what “tomorrow” will bring, nominally talking about the future of the Federation (and seemingly hinting toward the TNG era), but also talking about the end of this generation of the Enterprise crew. And if that weren’t enough, the final sequence of the film has on-the-nose dialogue like “I guess this is goodbye” and benedictions for whatever’s to come that feel a little too unnatural.

That lack of subtlety is shared by the film’s heavily-signposted Cold War allegories. You don’t need to hear Kirk wax rhapsodic about declarations of “the end of history” to understand what Star Trek VI is getting at with its various ruminations on the difficulties inherent in an end to hostilities between the Federation and the Klingon Empire after the latter is on the verge of collapse.

There’s nothing wrong with being topical. The Original Series made its bones (no pun intended) reflecting on Cold War metaphors and nuclear anxieties. But The Undiscovered Country spends so much time nudging the audience in the ribs and going “Do you get it?” that it grows tiresome. Rather than baking those themes into the picture, the film is constantly reminding you, in its dialogue and story beats and clumsily written dinner table scenes, what it’s trying to say.

Part of that comes from the way that Star Trek VI is both trying to Say Something™ and be a theme park ride. The premise of the film is that the Klingons are in dire straits and potentially making peace with The Federation, to the shock of both parties. After an awkward diplomatic meeting between the officers of the Enterprise and the Klingon Chancellor’s entourage, something goes terribly wrong. In the aftermath, Kirk and Bones are trapped in Klingon territory, Spock and the rest of the crew have to try to solve the mystery of what exactly happened, and eventually, the whole kit and kaboodle has to stop a plot to prevent that sort of peace from ever happening.

But along the way, things turn much more Star Wars than Star Trek. Kirk is basically banished to the ice planet Hoth, where he meets a motley collection of aliens fit for the Mos Eisley Cantina. Spock uses his mind-melding abilities like they’re part of some Jedi mind trick. And overall, the film leans much more into its weightless adventuring side than its contemplative sci-fi side.

Still, it tries. It’s interesting watching this film in the middle of Star Trek Discovery’s first season, where the latest Star Trek series is very much concerned with the same issues in the same terms as The Undiscovered Country is. There’s the same concern about mutual distrust and what amounts to racism between humans and Klingons. There’s the same questions about whether the two cultures could ever find common ground and coexist. And there’s the same worries about the Federation transitioning from what it used to be into something new as what patrolling the frontier means begins to change.

That change gets consumed in the film’s slow start, the empty calories of its rock ‘em sock’em middle, and the tepidly-built tension of its grand finale and final bow. There’s bouts of questionable 90s CGI, a murder mystery that loses its luster when you can play Roger Ebert’s good old “who’s the most famous guest actor” game, and lord knows we can’t leave The Original Series orbit for good without William Shatner fighting himself on screen again. Sure, there’s some cool production and design and minor thrills in seeing Worf’s Grandfather go full-on John Adams during Kirk and Bones’s trial. But the plot of the episode just isn’t compelling enough on either the “Kirk escapes the Klingons” front or the “Spock uncovers the saboteur” front to make it work.

Part of that comes from the performances. Maybe it’s just the film’s sense that our heroes are aging getting to me, but it felt like most of the regular Enterprise cast were sleepwalking through their parts here. Spock felt out of character and downright emotional at times. Shatner looks tired. And the rest of the cast vacillates between “okay” to “unremarkable.”

The lack of subtlety makes its way to the guest performers as well. Kim Catrall lacks any and all of the reserve or dignity that Nimoy brought to the table as she plays his Vulcan protege, Lt. Volaris. There’s an untenable amount of overacting for a Vulcan and it serves the character poorly. Christopher Plummer fares a bit better as the Klingon General Chang, managing to bring with him a Patrick Stewart-like ability to make hokey dialogue sound convincing. But even he is reduced to just spitting out an endless stream of out-of-context Shakespeare quotes by the end of the film. (“See! We’re cultured and profound!”)

And yet there’s something to the ideas of the film that grabs you, even if the execution leaves plenty to be desired. The notion that Captain Kirk and General Chang are warriors of a different time, each wary about letting the old ways go and trusting the new age, while their more stoic counterparts, Spock and the Klingon Chancellor, take chances for peace, creates an interesting dynamic. The film undercooks it, but there’s a solid arc for Kirk, and to a lesser extent, the whole cast here, in learning when times have changed and you need to change with them or step aside, no matter what your reservations are.

But Star Trek had changed too by 1991, and even compared to a little less than a decade earlier, when Star Trek VI director Nicholas Meyer first joined the final frontier with The Wrath of Khan, the franchise had moved toward a bit more realism, a bit more nuance, a bit more of hinting at what you meant to say instead of beating the audience over the head with it.

It’s nice that The Original Series cast gets a proper send-off. It’s nice that the show grapples with the end of an era of Star Trek and couples it with the end of an era in history that often informed the franchise. And it’s nice to see the heroes who burst onto the scene in 1967 get one last standing ovation. But that goodwill comes from the years of seeing other adventures, not something earned by this last outing, which goes for bombast, profundity, and a throwback vibe, while never being able to synthesize it all into something that works.

A welcome return to form after the debacle of V, this is a wonderful send off for the original crew and a fitting tribute to Roddenberry. Here Trek does what it does best, and looks at a real life issues through science fiction. The exploration of the "Cold War" between the Klingons and Federation and attempts to bring about peace after a Klingon disaster may be a little too on-the-nose in its reflection of Chernobyl and Soviet/American relations of the late 90s, but it's message is just as relevant today, perhaps even more so. It also allows Meyer to pick up threads from prior entries and use them to great effect as Kirk struggles to accept the idea of peace. Using Kirk as the lynchpin whose reluctance is relatable and understandable in the context of the previous stories allows the film to emphasise the difficulties of peace after years of mistrust and bloodshed. A standout action sequence in zero gravity together with a great final battle with the Enterprise (Meyer again bringing his naval references to the fore to make these battles relatable and understandable to an audience) ensure the films go out with a bang and it's great to see Spock in full deduction mode once again as he investigates a crime on the Enterprise.

One last ride with Kirk. It was my 2022 task to watch all episodes of the original series plus the subsequent six movies. I'm a big fan of the franchise. It was a difficult task to accomplish though. It wasn't fun. There's perhaps only a handful of recommendable episodes of the TV show and perhaps only one movie I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm glad it's over and this movie certainly won't make me a Kirk fan (Spock was great most of the time though).

This is another mediocre movie. A better finale than the show's finale but not a great conclusion for the original crew. Trying to find bits and pieces of the TNG stages was perhaps the most entertaining part. In theory that's not even a bad plot. It's a tale of overcoming hate, racism, produced and peace making. Before retirement, (a very old) Kirk's supposed to become a diplomat and burry his personal hatchet. The Klingons and their culture are much more fascinating than in any of the Kirk stories before (all while TNG doing a much better job already). Something is off though. Can't even why I'm that indifferent. It's often boring. It's worse than many regular TNG episodes which aired successfully at the same time. I wonder who had the idea to "pit" Kirk against Picard. He could only loose.

PS: never forget that this is the same Kim Catrall from SATC. Can't get my head around this fact.