Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country
Kronos One under escort
Series	The Original Series
Production Details
Producer(s)	Steven-Charles Jaffe Ralph Winter
Story by	Leonard Nimoy Lawrence Konner Mark Rosenthal
Script by	Nicholas Meyer Denny Martin Flinn
Directed by	Nicholas Meyer
IMDBRef	tt0102975
PreviousProduction	(Films) Star Trek V The Final Frontier (Overall) A Matter of Time
NextProduction	(Films) Star Trek Generations (Overall) New Ground
Release Details
Film	06
OriginalRelease Date	6 December 1991
PreviousRelease	(Films) Star Trek V The Final Frontier (Overall) A Matter of Time
NextRelease	(Films) Star Trek Generations (Overall) New Ground
Continuity Details
StoryDate(s)	Stardates 9521.6-9529.1
PreviousStory	Star Trek V The Final Frontier
NextStory	Star Trek Generations (23rd Century segment)
Source

Summary

After the disastrous explosion of their moon Praxis that has led to an ecological disaster on their homeworld, the Klingons offer peace talks to the Federation. The Enterprise welcomes a Klingon delegation aboard, but after their return the Klingon ship is fired upon and Chancellor Gorkon is shot by assassins. McCoy attempts to help the dying chancellor in vain. He and Kirk are arrested and convicted by the Klingons. After the Enterprise has freed them from the penal colony on Rura Penthe, they head for the Khitomer peace conference. Here, with the help of the USS Excelsior and Capt. Sulu, they defeat the Bird-of-Prey of the treacherous General Chang and save the life of the Federation President, who was the next on the assassination list. It turns out that it was a joined conspiracy of Klingon and Starfleet officers together with the Romulan ambassador, who all wanted the cold war to continue.

Errors and Explanations

Internet Movie Database

Continuity

1. When the shock wave from the Praxis explosion is first detected by the Excelsior's Science Officer, he informs Captain Sulu that the wave is approaching on the port side. At this point we see an exterior view of the Excelsior as the shock wave hits the ship from the starboard side. Not quite - After the officer (Valtane) reports the shock wave, and activates the setting for it to be shown on the viewscreen, the shot cuts to a close up view of the approaching wave, before cutting back to Sulu calling for shields, by which point there has been sufficient time for Excelsior to turn enough for the shockwave to hit the starboard side.
2. The name of the character "Uhura" is misspelled "Uhuru" in the end credits. Uhuru is the Swahili word for freedom, and Uhura is the "girly" variant created by Gene Roddenberry for the original Star Trek.
3. At roughly four minutes in, Sulu's tea cup is about to fall off the stand in the close up. However, in the shot of Sulu and the crew struggling with the turbulence, the cup is close to the center. It may have shifted back slightly.
4. When McCoy is giving CPR to Chancellor Gorkon, General Chang changes position between shots. He probably wanted to get a better view of what McCoy is doing.
5. When Kirk and McCoy are arrested, one of the Klingon guards put Kirk's hands into the handcuffs twice. Kirk probably tried to move them out of the way.
6. Spock's hands after the mind meld with Valeris. He constantly adjusted their position during the meld.
7. When Lieutenant Valeris admits her guilt, stands in front of, and slightly to the left of, the main viewscreen where Kirk is talking to Sulu. Lieutenant Valeris appears in one shot, disappears in the next shot which is slightly closer to the screen, and then reappears on the third shot of the viewscreen at the original distance from it. She is standing in a position where she would not be visible in the second shot.
8. During the battle over Khitomer, Scotty is dressed in his engineering uniform, but moments later when the crew beams down to save the President he has changed into his standard uniform. He must have grabbed it and put it on while en route to the transporter room.
9. In the briefing room of Kronos 1, after McCoy performed CPR on the Chancellor, the Chancellor is briefly revived. After he talks to Captain Kirk, and then dies, about 24 seconds lapse while everyone contemplates what has happened. Then the General clapped his hands to take Kirk and McCoy into custody. During the next couple of seconds, you see McCoy wearily collapsing down in a chair to the left of the Chancellor and the table his body was on. Yet in the next scene, a second later, McCoy is standing up and being placed into hand restraints. The guard probably dragged McCoy out of the chair.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs

1. In the opening scene, Sulu's tea cup faces its printed side toward the camera which looks at Sulu, then Sulu drinks from it, we do not see him place it down. We see the cup next from Sulu's perspective, which is clear because not only is the printed text missing, but the handle is now on the other side. Other than the text and the handle, there is no other reference in either frame to determine which way the cup is facing, so there is no goof.
2. Whenever Martia changes shape, her voice always remains the same. Yet when she becomes Kirk, her voice changes to match Kirk's. She can presumably control her voice at will.
3. When Valeris is being questioned after her discovery, she quotes Kirk's "Let them die" line, despite the fact that only Kirk and Spock were present in the briefing room when the line was originally spoken. She could've learned that from her co-conspirators, who might have been eavesdropping on Kirk and Spock (after all they just left that room a minute earlier). Also, Spock could've told Valeris about Kirk's opinions for any number of reasons.
4. The recording of Kirk's log entry, heard during the trial, does not exactly match what Kirk says during the actual scene. He originally says, "I've never trusted Klingons and I never will, I could never forgive them for the death of my boy." In the trial it is played as, "I've never trusted Klingons and I never will, I've never been able to forgive them for the death of my son." It's possible this was deliberately altered for some reason.

Revealing mistakes

1. When Lt. Valeris slides down the pole to join Spock and Scotty on the lower deck, she strikes the bulkhead behind her as she reaches the bottom of the pole and it flexes, considerably. It's probably designed to do this.
2. Outside the trap door on Rura Penthe, the snow ripples under the characters' feet, making it obvious it is actually solid pieces of fake snow. More likely patches of snow that has frozen solid.
3. The large Wookiee-like prisoner with the feminine voice has long claws that look quite threatening, but a closer look shows that they are made of a soft rubbery material. This could be a naturally occurring protective covering.

Character error

1. At Kirk's trial, the Klingon officer who lost an arm in Gorkon's assassination testifies "After the first shot we lost our gravitational field." However, only after the second torpedo hit on Kronos One are the Klingons shown to lose gravity. He may not have recognised the first shot for what it was.

Plot holes

1. Uhura points out that Enterprise has "all that equipment" for cataloging gaseous anomalies, some of which Spock and McCoy use to modify a torpedo to find Chang's cloaked ship. However, it was Excelsior that had been cataloging gaseous planetary anomalies in the Beta Quadrant, not Enterprise. The cataloging of gaseous planetary anomalies was probably being carried out by more than one ship.
2. Kirk and McCoy are on trial for the death of Chancellor Gorkon. Yet, in The Voyage Home, the Klingons were demanding the extradition of Kirk for the death of Commander Kruge and his crew in The Search for Spock, as well as the theft of a Klingon vessel. These charges are not mentioned at the trial. (The film makers wanted to include this plot element, but couldn't for practical reasons - namely the non-availability of the actor who portrayed Maltz, the lone survivor of Kruge's crew.) The Empire were most likely persuaded to drop these charges, possibly as part of the peace talks, due to the illegal nature of Kruge's mission.

The Nitpicker's Guide for Classic Trekkers

Plot Oversights

1. After the explosion on Praxis, the shock-wave radiates in a flat plane, even though in space we should expect a spherical propagation (in all directions). Although the filmmakers were obviously more concerned with visual impact than physical correctness, a flat shock-wave is not impossible, if the exploding device had proper dynamical characteristics (and for all we know it might have). Even in nature highly non-spheric explosions do occur. One example is an eruption from a black hole, which propagates in just one dimension (in the form of two polar jets) rather than three.
2. Spock claiming that the peace initiative will end seventy years of unremitting hostility with the Klingons, despite the imposition of the Organian Peace Treaty twenty six years earlier. The treaty did not completely eradicate the hostility, and may have actually made some individuals on both sides feel more hostile, due to the circumstances in which it was implemented.
3. Kirk and his command crew being informed of the situation, and the escort assignment, in a large briefing instead of a discreet meeting. The conspirators probably wanted it that way, in order to control the flow of information.

Nit Central

1. tim gueguen on Monday, October 13, 2003 - 10:44 pm: The scene where Spock probes Valeris' mind makes me wonder what kind of legal limits there would be on Vulcan mind melding against one's will. After all things like wire taps are legally limited, and information taken from them will not be legally acceptable if the taps weren't put in place legally. So its not hard to imagine some of the Federation conspirators having charges dropped against them because the evidence comes from the mind meld with Valeris, and this evidence gets thrown out of court because Spock didn't have the legal permission to perform the mind meld. Brian Fitzgerald on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 9:09 am: It's just torture, so it could render evidence inadmissible in court, but it was necessary to do it to find out what was going on, so they could stop it. To put it in perspective for the modern day - if some military officers had a suspect who could tell them info on a presidential assassination attempt, they'd probably do it, so they could save the president's life, no matter what that would do in court later on.
2. Derf on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 5:45 pm: Azetbur: Mr. President, let us come to the point. You want this conference to go forward and so did my father. I will attend in one week on one condition. (1) We will not extradite the prisoners, and (2) you will make no attempt to rescue them in a military operation. We would consider any such attempt an act of war. ONE condition!!?? ... hhumph! Brian Fitzgerald on Thursday, January 15, 2004 - 10:49 pm: Meaning one condition, we get to keep Kirk here.
3. Jesse on Thursday, November 11, 2004 - 4:30 pm: It occurred to me suddenly that McCoy & Kirk's handcuffs (given to them on Kronos One) seem rather pointless. Yes, they keep their arms together. But their hands are free to, say, grasp a weapon, esp. being cuffed with their hands in front. In fact, I'd think that you could kill someone with a blow to the head from those heavy cuffs. What's the point of them? (I understand that Klingon cuffs might need to be much beefier than the steel bracelets in use today, but....) R on Thursday, November 11, 2004 - 6:38 pm: I thought I read in one of the books that Klingon cuffs have built into them a form of agonizer or other pain inducer. This would make sense in Klingon culture.

Ex Astris Scientia

1. Bernd Schneider: The senior officers' approach to look up Klingon words in a book and to try to pronounce them half-way correctly is not just awkward but plain stupid. If the Klingons would recognize the universal translator, as Chekov says, why doesn't Uhura simply use the device to create the translation offline, and then repeat the same sound to the Klingons? That would have taken even longer!
2. The movie insinuates that the conference is on Federation territory. The President welcomes the delegates on Khitomer on behalf of Federation. Also, Sulu describes it as "Camp Khitomer, near the Romulan border." We know that 40 years later it will be a Klingon outpost though. Although it can be explained, it is lapse that Khitomer, a planet that has been said to be Klingon in TNG, seems to belong to the Federation here. Either it passed to Klingon control as part of the negotiations, or it ewas temporialy classified as Federation territory for the duration of the peace talks.
3. Why are delegates from various civilizations attending the conference (once again including the Romulan Ambassador)? Isn't this ust about peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire? Technically speaking, yes, but the outcome of the talks would affect the stability of the entire Alpha and Beta quadrants.
4. While Azetbur has bodyguards who quickly gather around her, not a single security officer protects the Federation President when the turmoil breaks out and Kirk "assaults" him. The Klingons were quicker to react!
5. Pat Damato Lt. Valeris was ostensibly a Vulcan, but the fact that her actions (taking part in the conspiracy), her attitudes ("Klingons cannot be trusted"), and her overall emotionalism and militarism, are atypical for Vulcans leads me to doubt her status. She could be a Romulan spy in Starfleet masquerading as a Vulcan, as her behavior is more consistent with the Romulans. Perhaps she was not raised in the traditional Vulcan manner.

Notes

The Movies

Original Series: The Motion Picture I The Wrath of Khan I The Search for Spock I The Voyage Home I The Final Frontier I The Undiscovered Country

Next Generation: Generations I First Contact I Insurrection I Nemesis

JJ Abrams Reality: Star Trek I Star Trek Into Darkness I Star Trek Beyond