Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

(watched as part of a broadcast-order franchise group-watch)

Starting off with the good old text on starfield opening titles. Pink-tinged text this time round, and then cutting to a pink explosion! Very pink movie, this, along with the pink-purple Klingon blood!

Imagine being a Trekkie going to watch this at the time. In the middle of a TNG season, getting a TOS movie. You've just seen Sarek die on tv, then Mark Lenard's name comes up! And what's this, Michael Dorn?! And directed by Wrath Of Khan's Nicholas Meyer!

Oooh, is that Rand? Again, nice to have her back although it's a shame she doesn't get more to do.

Funny watching this in the midst of TNG, and despite it being a movie it kind of looking worse in some ways, or perhaps just less sophisticated because they're sticking to the established TOS movie design elements, like the uniforms and the screen UIs. Perhaps comparing it to the TNG remasters is a little unfair, though, especially as some effects got redone. Presumably this would have looked great on the big screen after getting used to watching TNG on a poky little CRT telly.

Ahhh, young(ish) Spock! But played by same-age Nimoy! Such a headfuck! Can't think of any other franchise that has ever had this kind of thing going on.

Everyone's hair game is on point. A bit more timeless, more sci-fi. McCoy, Chekov and Uhura in particular.

I do like the old pre-CG spaceship model shots, though, there's something so warm and soft about the,. They almost look painterly, like there's an internal glow to them.

Ooh, a white Klingon ship. I wonder if this is a textbook Trek Moby Dick reference or just a fun detail.

This feels strangely like a TNG story, concerned with galactic diplomacy and mixing it in with a mystery plot. I wonder if any of the writers/producers had been watching the show and fancied trying their TOS hand at this kind of thing or at least were subconsciously influenced in their conception of what Star Trek "is".

A Romulan on (what I think is) the Federation council! Klingons talking about war becoming obsolete! It's so cool to see the interplay of this stuff with what we know from TNG. It's like they cracked the 'good prequel' code.

Having said that, the Worf thing is very weird!

Though I suppose Trek does often re-use actors, I don't think it ever really does it for different members of the same family, Back To The Future style. Shatner playing his own dead brother (iirc) is about the only example I can think of, and that's not quite the same... (edited) 

That court case sequence is great. All the wonderful production design and showboating and intercutting between dramatic close-ups and then returning to the sombre quiet of the Enterprise bridge.

Funny little quirk of the writing that they keep attributing Earth sayings to other cultures, like Shakespearian in the original Klingon, or Spock referring to the Nixon and China saying or the Holmes quote as Vulcan.
I guess you could maybe head-canon the Shakespeare as Gorkon making a diplomatic gesture by learning it, and Chang either having been forced to or deciding to as a way to know his enemy and then only quoting it mockingly. One line from Chang at the dinner about how he hates Shakespeare and is being ironic would really help with the Shakespeare overload in this movie!

Ha ha, some cheesy effects for the asteroid exterior - a scary alien hound which is clearly a dog with a rubber mask stuck on its face, and very obvious fake snow which is presumably soap flakes or shredded asbestos or something.

It's great that they've taken the opportunity to put so many character actors in Klingon make-up and give them all different looks.

Similarly, I enjoy it when they go a bit Star Wars and just come up with a bunch of different never-to-be-seen-again alien designs. The asteroid feels like Jabba's palace in the same way that bar in Final Frontier felt like the Mos Eisley cantina. I'll be interested to watch Star Trek '09 again after all this and see how well it fits in, how accurate the 'Abrams just made a Star Wars movie in Trek clothing' criticisms are, if at all.

I'm going to choose not to read the Martia gag in the elevator through a trans panic lens...

The score feels a bit more contemporary than the previous movies', very Danny Elfman/Basil Poledouris.

I didn't find the Valeris reveal particularly compelling, as I didn't really feel very invested in her. The Martia one probably worked better! The brutally invasive mind-meld was affecting, though again it seemed to assume a greater audience affection for Valeris than I had personally developed!

If they'd not recast Kirstie Alley and then they had brought her back for a betrayal here, now that would have had the desired effect.

The final space battle feels a little rushed; it's a little wonky how they wait until they're being shot to pieces before thinking to scan for exhaust. The peace summit climax is great though, very fun to see Scotty take out the assassin and Sulu beam in to stop the admiral.

Then a lovely wrap-up where they pretty much look at camera and say 'now we pass the torch to TNG'. Very classily done, with the change from 'no man' to 'no one' and the signatures and all that.

Funnily enough, because of Avengers Endgame, I'd assumed that we got those signatures over footage or at least stills of the actors!

Also, I'd misremembered 'the undiscovered country' as referring to peace, not the future. I think my version is maybe a little better..!

I do think this movie is a little too comfortable to be truly great, but also maybe that's more dignified than aiming for something more lofty and meaty and stumbling. I prefer it to Final Frontier, certainly - that movie had ambition but didn't even get close to realising it imo.

Just looking at Wikipedia now and "Initially, the character of Saavik, who appeared in the second through fourth Star Trek films, was intended to be the traitor, but Gene Roddenberry objected to making a character loved by fans into a villain"! I was right, that would have been great, and fucking Roddenberry ruined it!

"The underground prison was shot in real caves left by mining at Griffith Park" - that's funny, I almost made a comment about how the lighting made that look so obviously a set!

"Meyer said the idea for having the Klingons claim Shakespeare as their own was based on Nazi Germany's attempt to claim the Bard as German before World War II"

I've just realised that because Spock is half-human, that Arthur Conan Doyle could feasibly be an ancestor of his, so it's only his Nixon/China reference that is truly odd!

Okay, onto memory-alpha now.

Citation needed, apparently, but: "Rand was supposed to be the character that wakes up Sulu to inform him that Starfleet was looking for the Enterprise instead of Christian Slater's character. Slater was a huge fan of the show and his mother – Mary Jo Slater, the movie's casting director – petitioned heavily to get him a part." Booo, Christian Slater, booo! A true huge fan of the show wouldn't have stolen a scene from Rand!

"According to George Takei's autobiography To the Stars, early drafts did feature the Excelsior discovering the Bird-of-Prey's weakness and using their gaseous anomaly equipment to find it. According to Takei, William Shatner asked that the scene be re-written, arguing that Captain Kirk would never need anyone to come charging to his rescue." Oh, Bill.

Okay, last comment: fun that the meaning of the word sabotage is explained here, and then 18 years later the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage" would be used prominently in two Trek movies!