NBC debuted a daring science-fiction television show called Star Trek, and after the subsequent,
ground-breaking success of Star Wars, the decision was made to develop Star Trek into a feature film.
The film made a worldwide box office gross of $139 million. Despite this, critics were unimpressed,
dismissing the film as ploddingly slow and weak on thrills. Paramount, too, considered Star Trek:
The Motion Picture to be more failure than success. However, fans were vocal in their
support of the film, and the studio saw enough potential in it to continue the franchise.
Gene Roddenberry had already written a sequel, but Paramount, blaming Roddenberry for many of
the first film's problems, rejected it outright. As a lead producer, they hired Harve Bennett,
a recent acquisition known for developing television series such as The Mod Squad,
The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Bionic Woman. With Paramount eager to get the ball rolling,
Bennett began looking for a director who could reconcile the various, troubled scripts. He turned
to the relative newcomer Nicholas Meyer, writer of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent
Solution who'd made his directorial debut with the well-received Time After Time.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan opened on June 4th, 1982. In its initial run,
it made a domestic box office gross of $79 million, and though that was less than Star Trek:
The Motion Picture had made, it was enough for Paramount to consider it a resounding success.
The day after Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan hit theaters, Paramount greenlit a
third entry in the franchise, with Harve Bennett still on board to not only produce the film,
but also write the script. Nicholas Meyer, who had written and directed the previous film,
chose not to return. In its initial run, it made a total domestic gross of $76.5 million,
more than enough to justify the green light for Star Trek IV.
For a brief while, Bennett and Nimoy considered producing a prequel set in Starfleet Academy, with
young actors replacing the main cast. However, Bennett and Nimoy scrapped the prequel idea and
started coming up with plans for a continuation of the plot of Star Trek III. Bennett agreed to
rewrite part of the script himself and asked Star Trek II's Nicholas Meyer to come in for the rest.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home released on November 26th, 1986,
and it earned $133 million in worldwide gross, making it one of the biggest earners of the year.
Paramount was eager to move forward with a new film in the series. After getting a green light
from Paramount head Frank Mancuso, Shatner created a film treatment and took it to Harve Bennett.
Bennett had grown tired of Star Trek by this point and was vocal in his desire to leave the
franchise behind, but Shatner convinced him to stay for at least one more film.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier released in June of 1989. It received pretty poor reviews,
with critics calling it a massive step down from the previous entry. Poor word of mouth
and a crowded summer release schedule lead to a very quick drop off, and the film only ran wide
for ten weeks and only earned a total domestic box office of just under $50 million. Sufficed to say,
it was a massive disappointment for Paramount and nearly killed the film franchise.
The Klingon Empire is facing extinction and has reached out to the Federation with an olive
branch for peace. When Captain Kirk and crew are sent on a diplomatic mission to retrieve
the Klingon Chancellor of the High Council, however, unknown forces align to assassinate
the idealistic Chancellor, dashing the hopes for an end to a bloody, generational conflict.
Kirk and McCoy are arrested and convicted for the murder, while Spock and the remaining crew
of the Enterprise must race against the clock to not only save their friends but also figure
out who is truly responsible and what they can do to marshall the Chancellor's dream into reality.
Before we go any further, if you could hit that like button, it will go a long way
towards making peace in our time. If you really do like this video, please subscribe as well.
Thank you in advance. With that out of the way, let's get back to the subject at hand.
In the summer after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Leonard Nimoy went to Nicholas Meyer
with an idea for a new Star Trek film. Despite the box office disappointment of Star Trek V,
Paramount Pictures wanted to make one last film with the
original cast to be released alongside the twenty-fifth anniversary of the franchise.
For over a year, Harve Bennett had done pre-production work on his much-discussed
prequel film, but the plug was pulled, leading to Harve Bennett walking away from Star Trek.
In the wake of this, Nimoy, who took a leading role as executive producer, envisioned a
political film that carried through the recurring motif of Klingons as stand-ins for the Soviets,
and he wondered if there could be a story behind "the fall of the Berlin Wall in outer space."
That was the idea he pitched to Meyer, who was quite receptive and eager to hire his
occasional screenwriting assistant, Denny Martin Flinn. Due to messy studio politics, Paramount
instead hired the writing duo of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, who never produced anything
anybody was happy with. Eventually, the studio, after dealing with its own myriad headaches,
reluctantly agreed to let Meyer and Flinn write a new screenplay, which Meyer would
eventually insist be titled "The Undiscovered Country," his original title for Star Trek II.
Meyer and Flinn, with finished script in hand, faced two immediate hurtles. The first was Gene
Roddenberry, who, even though he had no actual authority over the production, called a meeting
with all involved in which he expressed his severe unhappiness with it. Roddenberry was
vehemently opposed to the idea of inserting any kind of prejudice into the Federation characters--
"Guess who's coming to dinner."
--and he continued to disapprove of the more militant style that Meyer had pioneered with
The Wrath of Khan. Meyer vented his frustrations with Roddenberry at this meeting and would later
deeply regret his behavior, especially considering the fact that Gene Roddenberry died a few months later.
Ultimately, Roddenberry was unable to affect any changes to the script, and Star Trek VI went ahead
without his blessing. However, with preproduction underway, the film came to a sudden halt when it
hit its second hurtle, when Meyer was informed that the forty million dollar budget he'd asked
for had been turned down. The new bottom line was twenty-seven and a half million dollars,
the exact budget of Star Trek V. Meyer and Flinn did what they could to trim the script and many
of the cast and crew agreed to deferments on their wages, but it still wasn't enough. After
making an impassioned plea to Paramount that it would be impossible to make the film under such
a constraint--mostly because he would need to completely rebuild the Enterprise bridge,
which had been damaged--Nicholas Meyer was told that the project was canceled.
Fortunately, the same studio politics that had been wreaking havoc behind the scenes
actually turned in Star Trek's favor for a change. The interim studio head Stanley R. Jaffe
overruled the previous decision (and, indeed, would ultimately fire the man responsible for
it) and agreed to thirty million dollars, which was still lower than Meyer had hoped
for but was in line with what he'd been told to expect when he was first approached.
Thus, Star Trek VI was given an official green light. Meyer did have to make some
compromises to achieve the revised budget, such as cutting an extensive "roundup" sequence in
which the crew of the Enterprise is brought out of retirement one at a time, but the
director had enough to make the film, reminding himself that art thrives under restrictions.
All of the regular cast agreed to return, but one sticking point was the character of Saavik,
who played a significant role in the script. Meyer wanted Kirstie Alley to reprise the role from Star
Trek II, but Alley turned it down for reasons that we can only speculate on but which probably have
a lot to do with her role in Cheers at the time. He instead turned to Kim Catrall, the same actress
he'd originally wanted for the part in The Wrath of Khan. Catrall only agreed once the character
was changed, once Saavik was replaced with a new but very similar character named Valeris.
Perhaps unfairly, Robin Curtis, who had played Saavik in Star Treks III and IV, was never approached.
The primary villain, Chang, had been written with Christopher Plummer in mind.
Plummer initially turned down the part, but with some coaxing from Nimoy and Meyer--and
no doubt some contract negotiations--he eventually came around to the idea.
In subsequent years, the actor has said that Star Trek VI was one of his favorite
filmmaking experiences and that Chang was a delightfully fun villain to play.
"Cry 'havoc!', and let slip the dogs of war."
For the critical role of Chancellor Gorkon, whose name is a none-too-subtle nod to Mikhael
Gorbachev, they approached Jack Palance. When he turned them down, Meyer asked David Warner,
who'd not only appeared as a human in Star Trek V but had also played Jack the Ripper in Meyer's
first feature film, Time After Time. Warner modeled his performance on Abraham Lincoln,
who also served as a visual and thematic template for his character.
Other notable actors include Brock Peters reprising his role as Admiral Cartwright,
Iman as the shapeshifting Martia--
"Not everybody keeps their genitals in the same place, Captain."
"Anything you wanna tell me?"
--Michael Dorn playing Worf's grandfather, René Auberjonois as Colonel West, whose scenes were
cut from the theatrical release but then put back in for home video, Grace Lee Whitney and Mark
Lenard as Janice Rand and Sarek, respectively, Kurtwood Smith as the Federation president--
"This president is not above the law."
--William Morgan Sheppard as the Klingon prison warden,
Walter Koenig's wife Judy Levitt as this Starfleet military aide, and Christian Slater,
who was a Trekkie that managed to get a cameo because his mother was the casting director.
Filming took place over five months in mid-1991, which mostly fell inbetween seasons four and five
of Star Trek: The Next Generation and utilized redressed versions of many of the television
show's sets. There was some location shooting done in Alaska and at Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park,
and some sets were built from scratch, including the bridge set--which was used for both the
Enterprise and the Excelsior--and the spectacular Klingon courtroom.
ILM was brought back to do the visual and special effects, but the budget only allowed
for the use of existing models that had to be repaired and repainted. Over half of the planned
effects shots had to be cut out at the script stage, but ILM managed to make up for the loss
by including some truly memorable sequences, including the zero gravity assassination and
the climactic fight between the Enterprise and General Chang's cloaked Bird of Prey.
For the music, Meyer tried to get James Horner or Jerry Goldsmith to return,
but both turned him down. Instead, the film was scored by Cliff Eidelman,
a young and lesser known composer for whom this was a big break.
While Eidelman's score is not my favorite of the Star Trek film scores, it is memorable
for being moody and mysterious, riffing on Holst's The Planets and Wagner's The Valkyrie.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country released in December of 1991 to a warmer critical response
than its predecessor and a domestic box office return of $75 million, a big success for the
troubled Paramount Studios in a year that was generally disappointing throughout the industry.
It has remained a favorite among Trekkies and is widely considered a good send-off
for the original cast members, even though it really wasn't an end for most of them.
In my list of favorite original Star Trek films, The Undiscovered Country is a very close second
behind Star Trek II, as it does justice to the characters and universe in a way that only seems
to have been possible because of Nicholas Meyer. He gives a remarkable amount of humanity to these
familiar players and pushes the envelope further than Roddenberry was ever comfortable with.
For example, he wasn't afraid to insert a lot of casual racism into Starfleet.
"Klingons would become the alien trash of the galaxy."
"The Klingons have never been trustworthy."
"They're animals."
"Jim, they are dying."
"Let them die!"
"They all look alike."
"What about that smell? You know even top of the line models can even talk in--"
"Did you see the way they ate?"
"Terrible table manners."
"They don't place the same value on life as we do, Spock. You know that."
While Roddenberry--and even some of the cast members--were deeply uncomfortable with this
aspect of the plot, it leans heavily on the themes Meyer is trying to express,
and it is fitting for a real world in which the Cold War had just come to an unexpected end.
Of course Kirk would have a blind spot for the Klingons following the death of his son,
and of course Spock would let logic cloud his personal judgment. It also leans into the age
of the characters in a way that the previous film had tried to avoid, and it demonstrates how
the stubborn bigotry of old age can often infect the younger generation in ways we don't intend.
"Did you not wish Gorkon dead? 'Let them die,' you said. Did I misinterpret you?"
It also isn't afraid to be a blatant product of its time,
replete with historical references like Nixon going to China and
Adlai Stevenson being unwilling to wait for a translation during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Heck, even the inciting incident that literally starts the movie with a bang is an obvious take on
how the Chernobyl disaster marked the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. Meyer also
leans heavily on his knowledge of Shakespeare, including a brilliantly ironic use of the title--
"The undiscovered country.
The future."
--which comes from Hamlet's famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy. In Hamlet,
"the undiscovered country" doesn't actually refer to the future, but to death, and the fact
that the man who makes a toast to it in this film dies shortly thereafter can't be a coincidence.
Gorkon's death sparks a Sherlock Holmes-style whodunnit,
which is fitting considering Meyer's long history with Holmes, and Spock gets a subtle
nod referencing a heritage to the famous detective that had long been speculated about in the fandom.
"An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
While some critics have complained over the years that the film is trying to be
too many things at once, I think it succeeds in all aspects,
in being simultaneously a political thriller, a jokey sci-fi action flick--
"You know anything about a radiation surge?"
"Sir?"
"Chekov?"
"Only the size of my head."
a prison escape movie, a complex mystery,
and an exciting adventure in keeping with Star Trek tradition.
But at its heart, I think where Star Trek VI shines brightest
is in its recognition of how broad sociopolitical changes bring about fear and resentment,
which is a massive obstacle on the path to Gene Roddenberry's utopic vision of the future.
History is replete with examples of those who looked for peace and found an assassin's
bullet for their trouble, and even though Chancellor Gorkon's fate is no different,
at least his death is a catalyst for Kirk and company to correct their failings and fight for
the ideals that Star Trek has always represented. That's why Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
is not only a satisfying capstone for the original franchise but also a sci-fi classic.
And that's all for today, my fellow Earthlings. What's your favorite thing about Star Trek VI? Let
me know in the comments and, while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe if you haven't
already. Also consider joining my Patreon to get access to bonus content, vote on future topics,
and more, and be sure to check out my podcast, The Streaming Heap, available wherever you get your
podcasts, along with my interplanetary time travel novel, Paradox, available through Amazon. If all
else fails, I also have a website at emagill.com, where you can find written reviews of plenty more
sci-fi classics in both film and literature. Until next time, though, when we'll discuss the
full-length version of Wim Wenders' definitive road movie, this is The Unapologetic Geek,
telling you to never be ashamed of what you love, as long as you're not hurting anybody.
[hearty belly laughs]