Star
Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a 1991 American science fiction
film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the sixth installment in
the Star Trek franchise and was directed by Nicholas Meyer and
written by Meyer with Denny Martin Flinn. After the destruction of
the moon Praxis leads the Klingon Empire to pursue peace with their
long-time adversary the Federation, the crew of the USS Enterprise
must race against unseen conspirators with a militaristic agenda.
The Undiscovered Country
was initially planned as a prequel to the original series, with
younger actors portraying the crew of the Enterprise while attending
Starfleet Academy, but the idea was discarded because of negative
reaction from the cast and the fans. Faced with producing a new film
in time for Star Trek's 25th anniversary, Flinn and Meyer, the
director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, wrote a script based on
a suggestion from Leonard Nimoy about what would happen if "the
wall came down in space", touching on the contemporary events of
the Cold War.
The plot involves an
interstellar cataclysm that cripples the Klingon Empire's homeworld,
leading to their Chancellor seeking peace with the Federation. But
covert acts attempt to thwart the peace process with the
assassination of the Klingon Chancellor. With Captain James T. Kirk
and Dr. Leonard McCoy as the prime suspects, the Starships
Enterprise-A and Excelsior must attempt to uncover the truth before
the conspirators can plunge the Federation and the Klingon Empire
into war. The film marked the final appearance together of the
original series' cast. It also marked the last appearance to date of
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura in an actual Star Trek movie or TV episode,
and the final appearance of DeForest Kelley, who died in 1999, as Dr. McCoy.
The Undiscovered Country's
cast includes the final group appearance of the major characters from
the original television series, and new actors and characters.
Casting director Mary Jo Slater loaded the film with as many
Hollywood stars as the production could afford, including a minor
appearance by Christian Slater, her son who also happens to be a big
Star Trek fan. Meyer was interested in casting actors who could
project and articulate feelings, even through alien makeup. Producer
Ralph Winter said, "We were not looking for someone to say
'Okay, I'll do it', but people who were excited by the material, and
would treat it as if it was the biggest picture ever being made."
William Shatner returns as
Captain James T. Kirk; Shatner felt that though dramatic, the script
made Kirk look too prejudiced. Kirk's second-in-command, the Vulcan
Spock, is portrayed by Leonard Nimoy. DeForest Kelley plays Leonard
McCoy, the chief medical officer of the Enterprise; Kelley's
appearance as the doctor in The Undiscovered Country was to be his
last. With Leonard Nimoy the film's executive producer, the 71-year
old Kelley was paid one million dollars (US) for the role, assuring a
comfortable retirement for the veteran actor. Kelley and Shatner shot
their prison scenes over the course of six to eight nights; the two
actors got to know each other better than they ever had.
Other members of the
Enterprise crew include James Doohan as chief engineer Montgomery
Scott, Walter Koenig as navigator Pavel Chekov, and Nichelle Nichols
as Uhura, the communications officer. Uhura was supposed to give a
dramatic speech in Klingon during the film, but midway through
production the element was scrapped and a scene where Uhura is
speaking garbled Klingon, surrounded by books, was added for extra
humor. Nichols protested the scene, wondering why there were still
books in the 23rd century, but accepted the change since it would be
the last Star Trek film she would appear in. Nichols was more
uncomfortable with some of the dialogue's racial undertones. Her
character was originally to speak the line, "Guess who's coming
to dinner," as the Klingons arrive on the Enterprise, but
refused to say the part and it was given to Koenig's character
instead. Nichols also refused to say the line "yes, but would
you like your daughter to marry one [a Klingon]", and it was
dropped from the film altogether.
Kim
Cattrall (left) plays Valeris, the Enterprise's new navigator and
the first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at Starfleet
Academy. Valeris becomes the protégé of Captain Spock,
who intends her to be his replacement. 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. Cattrall was
unwilling to be the third actress to play Saavik (a part she had
originally auditioned for), but accepted the role when she became a
different character. Cattrall chose the Eris element of the
character's name, for the Greek goddess of strife, which was
Vulcanised by the addition of the "Val" at the behest of
director Nicholas Meyer. Cinefantastique Magazine reported that
during filming, Cattrall participated in a photo shoot on the empty
Enterprise bridge, where she wore nothing but her Vulcan ears. The
story claimed Nimoy personally ripped up all of the photographs and
negatives when he learned about the unauthorized photo session,
because he feared harm to the franchise if it ever came to light.
The main Klingons are
portrayed by Christopher Plummer as Chang, David Warner as Gorkon,
and Rosanna DeSoto as Azetbur. As young actors, Plummer and Shatner
had performed together in various performances at the Stratford
Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada and before that on early
radio programs at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in Montreal.
Shatner was Plummer's understudy for a production of Henry V at the
Stratford Festival. During the festival, Plummer fell ill (kidney
stone) and Shatner was forced to take the stage, giving him his first
big break. According to Plummer's memoir In Spite of Myself, Shatner
"scored full marks as Henry" and made the role his own.
"Ignoring all my moves, he had made sure he did everything I
didn't do - stood up where I had sat down, lay down where I had stood
up," wrote Plummer. "I knew then that the SOB was going to
be a 'star'" Shatner gives his own version of the story,
according to a Stratford Shakespeare Festival spokesperson.
Apparently, Shatner was called up to play Henry before he had had a
full run as an understudy, so it wasn't that he was trying to perform
different movements than Plummer's Henry, but that he had no idea
what movements he was supposed to be doing. Still, Shatner got good
reviews and scored a success with the performance. They also
co-starred together in a 1957 Omnibus production of Oedipus, the King
(with Plummer in the title role) and the 1979 made-for-television
movie Riel.
Meyer
wrote the role for Plummer (right), who was initially reluctant to
accept it. The role of Gorkon was initially offered to Jack Palance.
The part went to David Warner, who had appeared in Meyer's first
film, the 1979 science-fiction film Time After Time, and had played a
human ambassador in The Final Frontier. The actor's make-up was made
to resemble Abraham Lincoln, as another way of humanizing the
otherwise alien Klingon leader. When filming his character's death, a
large lamp exploded and rained down in pieces on Warner and Kelley;
one heavy piece barely missed striking Warner's head, which Kelley
was sure would have killed him.
Iman plays the role of
Martia, a shapeshifting alien on the prison planet Rura Penthe who
leads Kirk and McCoy into a trap. When Flinn originally developed the
character, he had in mind a space pirate which he described as the
"dark side of Han Solo". Flinn imagined an actress like
Sigourney Weaver in the role, who was "as different as night and
day" from Iman. Meyer described Martia as "Kirk's dream
woman", and when the makeup artists learned Iman was cast for
the role they decided to enhance her graceful bird-like appearance
with feathers. Yellow contact lenses completed the look.
Other Starfleet officers
include Brock Peters (below) as Fleet Admiral Cartwright, a
high-ranking officer in Starfleet who vehemently protests Klingon
immigration into Federation space. Peters had previously appeared as
Cartwright in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Director Nicholas Meyer
chose Peters for Star Trek VI partly based on his acting as the
wrongly convicted black man Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird.
Meyer thought that Cartwright's vitriolic speech would be
particularly chilling and meaningful coming from the mouth of a
recognized minority. The content of the speech was so repugnant to
Peters that he was unable to deliver it in one take. Peters later
went on to play Joseph Sisko, father of Benjamin Sisko in the series
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
René Auberjonois
(below right) plays Colonel West, the would-be assassin of the
Federation president. Meyer was a friend of Auberjonois and offered
him a chance to cameo months before filming. His part was cut from
the theatrical version but reinstated on home video. Auberjonois
would later portray security chief Odo on the series Star Trek: Deep
Space Nine and co-star with Willian Shather in Boston Legal. Also, in
a nod to the Next Generation series, Michael Dorn (above) plays
Colonel Worf, who defends Kirk and McCoy at their trial.
The
Final Frontier, the previous film in the series, was a critical and
financial disappointment; the cast and crew were worried that the
franchise would not be able to recover from the blow. With the
looming 25th anniversary of the original series in 1991, producer
Harve Bennett revisited an idea Ralph Winter had for the fourth film:
a prequel featuring young versions of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet
Academy. The prequel was designed to be a way of keeping the
characters, if not the actors, in what was called "Top Gun in
outer space". Bennett and The Final Frontier writer David
Loughery wrote a script entitled The Academy Years, where Dr. Leonard
McCoy talks about how he met Kirk and Spock while addressing a group
of Academy graduates. The script shows Kirk and Spock's upbringing,
their meeting McCoy and Montgomery Scott at the Academy and defeating
a villain before parting ways. The script would have established that
George Kirk, James T. Kirk's father, was a pilot who went missing,
presumed dead, during a warp experiment with Scott. The script is set
before the "enlightenment" of the Federation; slavery and
racism are common, with Spock being bullied because he is the only
Vulcan student. Nurse Christine Chapel cameos in the script's climax.
Actor
James Doohan (Scotty, left) claimed that Paramount chief Frank
Mancuso had fired Bennett following negative reaction from the core
cast, Roddenberry, and fans. Bennett claimed that after he rewrote
the script to include Shatner and Nimoy, Paramount had still rejected
it and that he decided it was time he left the franchise. He said,
"My term was up. I was offered $1.5 million to do Star Trek VI
and I said 'Thanks, I don't want to do that. I want to do the
Academy." Actor Walter Koenig approached Mancuso with a new
script outline codenamed "In Flanders Fields"; in it, the
Romulans join the Federation and go to war with the Klingons. The
Enterprise crew, except Spock, are forced to retire for not meeting
fitness tests. When Spock and his new crew are captured by a
monstrous worm-like race of aliens (which Koenig described as
"things that the monsters in Aliens evolved from"), the old
crew must rescue them. In the end, all of the characters except McCoy
and Spock die.
Mancuso asked Leonard Nimoy
to conceive the new film to serve as a swan song for the original
cast. Nimoy, Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner suggested Kirk
meeting Jean-Luc Picard, but Star Trek: The Next Generation's
producers refused to end their show. Nicholas Meyer (below), who
directed The Wrath of Khan and co-wrote The Voyage Home was also
approached for an idea for the sixth film, but had none. Ralph Winter
was brought on to the project as producer shortly after Bennett's
departure, and said Paramount's mandate was to produce a 25th
anniversary film that would not cost a lot of money.
Nimoy
visited Meyer's house and suggested, "[What if] the wall comes
down in outer space? You know, the Klingons have always been our
stand-ins for the Russians... " Meyer recalled that he replied
"'Oh, wait a minute! Okay, we start with an intergalactic
Chernobyl! Big explosion! We got no more Klingon Empire...!' And I
just spilled out the whole story!" The story deliberately
included references to the contemporary political climate; the
character of Gorkon was based on Mikhail Gorbachev, while the
assassination storyline was Meyer's idea. He thought it was plausible
that the Klingon leader who turned soft towards the enemy would be
killed like similar peacemakers throughout history: Anwar El Sadat,
Gandhi, and Abraham Lincoln. Nimoy's hiring of Meyer was not only
beneficial because Meyer knew the material and could write fast
(having produced The Wrath of Khan's screenplay in twelve days), but
if Meyer was to direct it would offset any acrimony from Shatner,
whose ire would have been aroused if Nimoy returned to direct his
third Star Trek feature after The Search for Spock and The Voyage
Home. Meyer said that when he started work on the screenplay it did
not occur to him that he would direct the film. Meyer's wife was the
first person to suggest that he should direct.
Meyer and his friend Denny
Martin Flinn wrote the screenplay by the nascent means of e-mail;
Meyer lived in Europe while Flinn was based in Los Angeles. The pair
worked out a system where Flinn would write all day and then send the
draft to Meyer, who would read and make revisions. The script
constantly changed because of demands made not only by the core cast,
but also the supporting players. Flinn was aware that the film would
be the last to feature the cast of the original television series, so
he wrote an opening that embraced the passage of time. In the
opening, each of the crew was to be rounded up out of unhappy
retirement for one final mission.
Flinn recalled that
"the scenes demonstrated who [the characters] were and what they
did when they weren't on the Enterprise. [...] It added some humanity
to the characters. In early drafts, Spock plays Polonius in a Vulcan
version of Hamlet, while Sulu drives a taxicab in an overcrowded
metropolis. The revised opening featured Captain Sulu bringing his
friends out of their retirement: Spock's whereabouts are classified;
Kirk was to have married Carol Marcus (played by Bibi Besch in The
Wrath of Khan), the mother of his late son, leading a settled life
before a special envoy arrives at his door. McCoy is drunk at a posh
medical dinner; Scott is teaching Engineering while the Bird of Prey
from The Voyage Home is pulled from San Francisco Bay; Uhura hosts a
call-in radio show and is glad to escape; and Chekov is playing chess
at a club.
The opening was rejected as
too expensive to film; Flinn mentioned the exotic locales would have
pushed the budget to $50 million. While they tried to hold onto the
opening as long as they could, Paramount threatened to cancel
preproduction unless a few million dollars were cut from the budget.
The script was finished by
October 1990, five months after Nimoy was approached to write the
story. Several months were spent working out the budget; because of
the disappointing box office returns of The Final Frontier, Paramount
wanted to keep the sixth film's budget approximately the same as the
previous installment, although the script called for space battles
and new aliens. Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley's salaries were cut with
the understanding that they would share in box office profits. Meyer
estimated that almost two months were spent fighting with the studio
about the budget. "To some degree, almost every area of the
production was affected by the cuts, but the script was the one thing
that did not become a casualty," Meyer said. The original budget
hovered around $41 million. While not expensive for a Hollywood
production, this would have presented a risk due to Star Trek films'
niche audience and lower international appeal. The final budget came
in at $27 million.
Star
Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, who wielded significant influence
despite his ill health, hated the script. Meyer's first meeting with
Roddenberry resulted in Meyer storming out of the room within five
minutes. As with Meyer's previous Star Trek film (The Wrath of Khan),
the script had strong military overtones, with a naval theme present
throughout. Far from being idealized, the characters were shown as
bigoted and flawed. In contrast to Roddenberry's vision of the
future, Meyer thought there was no evidence that bigotry would
disappear by the 23rd century. When Roddenberry protested about the
villainization of Saavik, Meyer replied that "I created Saavik.
She was not Gene's. If he doesn't like what I plan on doing with her,
maybe he should give back the money he's made off my films. Maybe
then I'll care what he has to say." Lieutenant JG Saavik first
appeared in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and was
played by Kirstie Alley (right). Robin Curtis took on the role for
the sequel, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), and in the
next film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). After the stormy
first meeting, a group including Meyer, Roddenberry, and producer
Ralph Winter discussed the revised draft. Roddenberry would voice his
disapproval of elements of the script line by line, and he and Meyer
would square off about them while Winter took notes. Overall, the
tone of the meeting was conciliatory, but the producers ultimately
ignored many of Roddenberry's concerns. By February 13th, 1991, the
film was officially put into production with the agreement it would
be in theaters by the end of the year.
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AV
CLUB FEATURETTE DEPARTMENT
Untitled
Star Trek V left us nowhere to go but up, and with the return of Star Trek II director Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek VI restored the movie series to its classic blend of space opera, intelligent plotting, and engaging interaction of stalwart heroes and menacing villains. Borrowing its subtitle (and several lines of dialogue) from Shakespeare, the movie finds Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and his fellow Enterprise crew members on a diplomatic mission to negotiate peace with the revered Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner). When the high-ranking Klingon and several officers are ruthlessly murdered, blame is placed on Kirk and McCoy. Add
Star Trek The Undiscovered Country to your DVD collection.
As he had when he directed
The Wrath of Khan, Meyer attempted to modify the look of Star Trek to
fit his vision. Cinematographer Hiro Narita's previous work had been
on effects films such as The Rocketeer, where he had time and money
to make a lavish period fantasy; with The Undiscovered Country, he
was constantly under time and budgetary pressures. Though Narita
confessed that he knew nothing about Star Trek, Meyer replied that he
did not want him to have any preconceived notions about the look of
the series.
Effects supervisor Scott
Farrar said that Narita did a "good job of keeping [the set]
dark. When you get into a stage situation of aluminum walls and shiny
metal, it can be a problem. But by keeping the light down, you see a
little less and it becomes more textural. Hiro was very keen to avoid
that over-bright stage look." The budget meant that many of the
Enterprise sets were redresses of those used in Star Trek: The Next
Generation. Meyer and production designer Herman Zimmerman were only
able to make minor adjustments to these sets, as the television
series was still in production at the time of filming.
The set used for Spock's
quarters was the same as the one for Kirk's, but with the addition of
a central column. The set was being used at the time for Data's room
in The Next Generation, and had originally been built as Kirk's
quarters for Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979. The transporter
room set was also reused from The Next Generation, with alterations
that included the addition of a glowing pattern along the
transporter's walls inspired by one of Zimmerman's sweaters; the set
had previously been used on The Final Frontier. The galley was the
set used for Deanna Troi's office, while the Federation president's
office was a redesign of the Ten-Forward lounge, the exterior doors
to which accidentally retained their USS Enterprise-D markings. Alien
costumes in the Rura Penthe prison were reused from The Next
Generation's premiere episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". The
Excelsior bridge was a redress of Enterprise's command center, with
consoles taken from the battle bridge of the Enterprise-D to convey
the impression that the Excelsior was a more advanced ship.
Meyer had never been happy
with the brightly lit corridors and feel of the Enterprise, a
dissatisfaction that extended to his work on The Wrath of Khan. For
The Undiscovered Country, Meyer wanted the Enterprise interiors to
feel grittier and more realistic; the metal was worn around the edges
to look used without looking beat up. Narita's plans to transform the
look of the Enterprise on a scale not seen since The Wrath of Khan
were complicated by the necessary use of existing sets.
The corridors were reduced
in width and included angled bulkhead dividers, with exposed conduits
added to the ceiling to convey a claustrophobic feel reminiscent of
the submarine film The Hunt for Red October. Narita changed the
bright, smooth look of the Enterprise bridge that had been created by
Zimmerman for The Final Frontier by lighting the set as spottily as
possible. "I didn't want to use too much smoke on the
Enterprise, because I didn't want it to end up looking too much like
the Klingon starship. For that reason I decided to keep the look of
the Enterprise pretty clean, but with a little more contrasty
lighting," Narita said. Meyer acknowledged that had he been the
creator of the franchise, "I would have probably designed a much
more claustrophobic world because it's much more dramatic."
The director was insistent
that panel labels contain descriptive instructions that might be
found on a starship, rather than made-up gibberish, greeking, or gag
text. Designer Michael Okuda had finished a schematic of the
Enterprise's decks when Nimoy pointed out he had misspelled
"reclamation"; while Okuda was fairly certain no one else
would notice the single spelling error on the print, he had to fix
it. Meyer also made a contentious decision to feature a kitchen in
the film, a move that attracted fan controversy. Although the
original series mentioned a galley in the episode "Charlie
X", only machines able to synthesize food had been shown before.
Paramount made a decision
early on to use existing ship models for filming, meaning the old
models, some more than a decade old, had to be refurbished, adapted,
and reused. As some ships had not been examined for some time,
electrical problems had developed. The Klingon cruiser first seen in
1979's The Motion Picture was altered to suggest an important
flagship, with a flared design applied to the underside of the
vessel. Effects supervisor William George wanted to make it distinct
from the earlier ships, since it was one of the few models that could
be altered: "We did some research into military costuming, and
came up with the concept that when these ships return victorious from
battle, the Klingons build some sort of epaulet onto their wings or
paint a new stripe on." The model was repainted brown and red
and etched with brass.
Despite representing a new
vessel, the Enterprise-A was the same model that had been used since
1979. Poorly regarded by earlier effects artists because of its
complicated wiring and bulk, the Enterprise's hairline cracks were
puttied and sanded down, and the internal circuitry was redone. The
new model's running lights were matched to similar intensities,
saving the effects artists time because the lights would look correct
with only a single pass, instead of three passes required previously
(for the sensor dome, running lights, and window lights). One
unfortunate byproduct of the fixes was the loss of the model's
distinctive pearlescent finish. The elaborate sheen was never visible
on screen (lighting schemes prevented reflections while filming so
the ship could be properly inserted into effects shots) and so when
the model was repainted with conventional techniques the effect was
lost. The Bird of Prey had been damaged from work in The Voyage Home,
where the ship was supposed to fly around the sun. To suggest singes,
the model had been painted with black-tinged rubber cement, with the
expectation that this application would rub off. The cement instead
sat on the model and baked itself to the model surface, which then
had to be scrubbed off.
Greg Jein, best known as
the builder of the alien mothership from Close Encounters of the
Third Kind, was called on to build props for the film. Jein was a
longtime Star Trek fan who had constructed the props for The Final
Frontier, but was forced to remake props that had since mysteriously
disappeared. Jein added references to the original television series
and other science fiction franchises throughout the prop designs; the
Rura Penthe warden's staff contained parts of a spaceship from Buck
Rogers, while the frong was detailed with a prop from Buckaroo
Banzai. Elements from The Final Frontier were modified and reused; a
medical implement from the film became Chekov's blood tester, and the
assault phasers first seen in The Final Frontier became standard
issue. Gorkon's staff was intended to be a massive bone from an alien
creature he had killed, with the designs shaped out of green foam and
approved by Meyer. Two copies were strong enough to support David
Warner's weight; another two were designed to be light enough to be
hung from wires for the zero gravity scenes. Since the Klingon
phasers were redesigned for the third film, the original holsters no
longer fit the weaponry; as a result, no Klingons had ever been seen
drawing a phaser. Meyer was adamant about having the actors be able
to unholster their weapons, so the existing pistols had to be
redesigned. The Klingon sniper rifle was broken into sections, with
parts modeled from real weapons.
The
Klingons received their first major revision in design since their
appearance in The Motion Picture. Dodie Shepard designed new red and
black uniforms for Chancellor Gorkon and his staff, as it was judged
that it would be unseemly for the chancellor to wear common warrior
garb. Another concern was that there was not enough of designer
Robert Fletcher's The Motion Picture uniforms for all the Klingons in
the film. While the important Klingons were given multi-layered
prosthetics and unique head ridges, background characters wore
ready-made masks, with minor touch-ups on the eyes and mouth. Since
it was important for the actors' expressions to be visible through
the makeup, the appliances were made very thin using the latest glues
and paints. Transforming an actor into a Klingon took
three-and-a-half hours. Hairstylist Jan Alexander designed braids and
jewelry that suggested a tribal people with a long and treasured heritage.
The main reason for the
diversity of Klingon designs, hairstyles, and appliances stemmed from
the fact that there were more Klingons featured than in all the
previous films combined. Eighteen unique designs were used for the
main characters, with another thirty "A" makeups, forty
"B" foam latex makeups, and fifty polyurethane plastic
masks for background extras. Makeup artist Richard Snell was in
charge of the principal Klingon actor's appliances. The designs for
the foreheads came from Snell's own ideas and co-workers, but the
actors were also allowed input into their character's appearances.
Christopher Plummer requested his character's forehead have more
subdued spinal ridges than Klingons in previous films, to look unique
and to humanize his character. During makeup tests, Snell was about
to apply Plummer's wig when the actor muttered that he wanted no wig,
with Chang's small amount of hair swept back into a warrior's topknot.
Snell worked through
several nights to redesign the back of Chang's head and add more
detail. This design change meant only Plummer's front could be
photographed during the first few days of filming while the makeup
department created appliances to cover the back of his head. Azetbur,
portrayed by Rosanna DeSoto, was initially conceived as very
barbaric, but Meyer insisted on a more refined look. Like Plummer,
DeSoto requested more subdued ridges, and the result was, according
to artist Kenny Myers, a "very regal woman who just happened to
be Klingon".
The
design changes forced Kenny Myers to abdicate his other makeup job,
that of Warner's Gorkon, to Margaret Bessera. Gorkon's appearance was
of special concern to Meyer, who had two specific role models: Ahab
and Abraham Lincoln. "[Meyer] loves to play the classics,"
Kenny Myers explained, "and incorporating these two images was
really genius on his part. He wanted there to be uncertainty about
Gorkon's true intentions. Did he want peace, or was there something
sinister in his mind? From his appearance, it was impossible to tell
if he was friend or foe. Subliminally, there were aspects of both."
Along with Klingon
cosmetics, makeup supervisor Michael J. Mills was kept busy preparing
the large number of other aliens called for in the script. Mills and
his team created the largest makeup endeavor ever seen in a Star Trek
film until then; custom makeup was applied to 22 principal actors,
and as many as 126 prosthetic makeups each day. Because the alien
creatures played such an important role in the film, there was a
concerted push to provide enough money to the makeup department to
make sure the complex work was finished.
According to Mills,
"[if] we could prove to [Ralph Winter] that we needed something
to get the shot done, then we'd have it." The makeup lab
employed a staff of 25 and produced over 300 prosthetics, from
Klingon foreheads to Vulcan and Romulan ears. Work on the many extras
began as early as one o'clock in the morning to be ready for the
eight o'clock call. The large, hulking form the shapeshifter Martia
assumes while on the surface of Rura Penthe was dubbed "The
Brute" by the production team. The creature's Yeti-like
appearance was based on a Smithsonian cover of a marmoset. Also
created for the Rura Penthe shoot was a frozen Klingon with a
horrified expression.
Makeup
artist Ed French found a spare Klingon headpiece in Richard Snell's
possession and attached it to his own head. A cast of his tortured
expression was used as the foundation for the dummy used on location.
The designers used striking colors and new techniques for some of the
aliens; ultraviolet pigments were used to create a particularly
hostile alien that fights Kirk in Rura Penthe.
As it was intended to be
Nimoy's last portrayal of Spock, the actor was adamant that his
appearance be faithful to the original 1960s Fred Phillips and
Charlie Schram design of the character. Mills consulted photos from
the original television series as reference, and created five ear
sculptings before Nimoy was satisfied. The result was tall ears with
the tips pointing forward. This is considerably different from
Richard Snell's swept-back look for The Voyage Home. The character of
Valeris was designed to be more ivory-hued than Spock's yellow tone,
with sleeker eyebrows and a severe haircut favored by Meyer. "We
went to great pains to establish that this is the way a Vulcan woman,
a sexy Vulcan woman, would look," said Mills.
Untitled
Star Trek V left us nowhere to go but up, and with the return of Star Trek II director Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek VI restored the movie series to its classic blend of space opera, intelligent plotting, and engaging interaction of stalwart heroes and menacing villains. Borrowing its subtitle (and several lines of dialogue) from Shakespeare, the movie finds Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and his fellow Enterprise crew members on a diplomatic mission to negotiate peace with the revered Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner). When the high-ranking Klingon and several officers are ruthlessly murdered, blame is placed on Kirk and McCoy. Add
Star Trek The Undiscovered Country to your DVD collection.
Principal photography took
place between April 16th, 1991 and September 27th, 1991, using a mix
of fixed sets and on-location footage. The production suffered from a
lack of available set space because of shortages; the Starfleet
Headquarters set was actually built a few blocks away from Paramount
Pictures at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Meyer copied a
technique used during filming of Citizen Kane, where the filmmakers
let the set fall into darkness to save money on construction. The
film was shot in Super 35 instead of anamorphic format, because of
the former's greater flexibility in framing and lens selection,
larger depth of field, and faster lenses.
Because of budget cuts,
plans for filming were constantly revised and reduced, but in some
cases this proved to be an asset rather than a hindrance. Meyer would
often say that "art thrives on restrictions", and Zimmerman
agreed, saying that the design and filming created a rich environment
that supported and enhanced the action.
The dinner scene was shot
in a revamped version of the Enterprise-D's observation lounge. Along
the wall are portraits of historical figures including Abraham
Lincoln, Spock's father Sarek (Mark Lenard), and an unnamed Andorian
ambassador. The food prepared for the scene was colored blue so it
would look alien. None of the actors wanted to eat the unappetizing
dishes, especially after they grew ripe under hot studio lights, and
it became a running joke among the crew during filming to make them
sample their food.
Because of the multiple
angles and takes required for a single mouthful of food, Meyer
offered a bounty of $20 per every shot of a character eating. For
Shatner, the incentive was enough that he became the only cast member
to consume purple dyed squid. The shoot lasted several days because
of what Plummer called the "horror" of filming the dinner.
The Klingon courtroom where
Kirk and McCoy are sentenced was designed like an arena, with high
walls and a central platform for the accused. Originally planned for
construction on the largest soundstage, cutbacks in location footage
for Rura Penthe forced a smaller set to be constructed. Sixty-six
Klingons were used for the scene, with six actors in custom makeups
and an additional fifteen in "A-level" makeup; the high
quality designs were used for the Klingons in the first row of the
stands, while those actors to the rear used masks.
The illusion of endless
rows of Klingons was created by brightly lighting the accused in the
center of the room with a bright blue light, then letting the rest of
the set fall into shadow. To give the set a larger appearance, a shot
from high above the courtroom was created using miniatures. Inspired
by a scene in Ben-Hur, matte supervisor Craig Barron used two hundred
commercially available Worf dolls sent by Ralph Winter. Angry
Klingons were created by rocking the dolls back and forth with
motors, waving sticks lit by twelve-volt light bulbs dyed red. The
resulting courtroom miniature was ten feet long.
Flinn conceived the penal
colony Rura Penthe as on an arid, undeveloped world with odorous
aliens; Meyer suggested that it be turned into an ice world instead.
The exterior shots of Martia, Kirk, and McCoy traveling across the
frozen wastes were filmed on top of a glacier in Alaska, forty
minutes east of Anchorage. Because of budget and time constraints,
the second unit was tasked with getting the footage. The location was
accessible only by helicopter, and was scouted months before filming began.
The main problem the crew
faced was the cold; in the morning, the temperatures peaked at around
-22°F, while by mid-afternoon it often dropped to -50°. The
stuntmen, dressed in woolen costumes, were in danger of catching
pneumonia. Batteries drained after minutes of filming in the cold,
and the lack of snow was compensated by dropping fake precipitation
into the scene by helicopter.
Scenes featuring the main
characters at Rura Penthe were filmed on a soundstage. Massive fans
blew dusty fake snow that, according to Shatner, got into "every
orifice", as well as into the camera. Creating a fake blizzard
was challenging; two types of plastic snow were mixed together to
provide flakes and powdery accumulation. Camera magazines were
changed off the stage so that there was no chance the snow could get
into the film; crewmembers found the snow in their socks for weeks afterwards.
The underground prison was
shot in real caves left by mining at Griffith Park, in the Bronson
Canyon, previously used as the Batcave and in the 1930s Flash Gordon
serial. Shots of the interior of the mine were captured at night so
it appeared like the setting was underground. Since Narita and his
crew weren't allowed to drill holes for lights in mine shafts,
illumination had to come from practical lights that appeared to be
part of the set. The elevator descent into the bowels of the mine was
simulated by pasting fake rocks to a canvas being cranked in the
background of the scene. While Zimmerman believed Shatner would hate
the fight between Kirk and his doppelgänger, the actor enjoyed
the theatrical sequence, and contributed to the choreography with his
knowledge of judo and karate.
The battle above Khitomer
was one of the last sequences to be shot, which proved fortuitous as
the bridge of the Enterprise was damaged by the simulated sparks and
explosions. The officer's mess set was blown up for a sequence where
the Enterprise's hull is compromised by a torpedo. When the set was
rebuilt for use on The Next Generation, the forward wall was rebuilt
and redesigned. While the Khitomer conference interior and exteriors
were filmed at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in California, the
window from which Colonel West prepares to assassinate the president
was a separate set built at Paramount. Footage from Brandeis, matte
paintings, and the backlot were combined to create an open outdoor view.
The division of labor for
shooting the starship models was decided early on by effects
cameramen Peter Daulton and Pat Sweeney. There was an equal amount of
work if one crew did all the Enterprise shots and another did the
Bird of Prey, Klingon cruiser and Excelsior shots, so the cameramen
flipped to decide who worked on which models. Old and new techniques
were applied to shooting the models. To make sure the vessels were
seamlessly inserted into star fields in postproduction, the crew
filmed second passes in overexposed yellow light, which reduced light
spillage onto the bluescreen backdrop. The yellow overcast was
removed by filtration in the optical process, with the result being a
clean edge around the ships.
Using a technique pioneered
on Back to the Future II, another shot with a different lighting
scheme was filmed. By combining separate key light and fill light
passes, optical effects could generate any amount of contrast they
wanted without causing spillage. Because Paramount continued to add
new shots to the busy schedule and tight budget, some elements were
flipped for reuse, including the star fields and a shot of the Bird
of Prey firing. Whenever possible, the ships were filmed from below
to reinforce the nautical theme, with their movements intended to
remind the audience of galleons or other large seafaring vessels.
The
approach to Spacedock was filmed from below the station model, which
Bill George found visually interesting and appropriate. He felt that
the tracking of a shuttle from the planet evoked 2001: A Space
Odyssey. The shuttle used in the scene was the only new model created
for the film. It measured twelve inches and was fabricated in less
than a week. The shot of the Enterprise leaving Spacedock was
difficult to produce because the interior dock miniature had
disappeared. Stock footage from The Voyage Home was used for one shot
to compensate. Since the only other shot needed was the Enterprise's
point of view leaving Spacedock through the doors, it was the only
section recreated for the film.
The last scene in the film
was arranged for the last day of filming. Initially, the language was
supposed to be more somber and classical, but Meyer made some last
minute changes. Flinn said that Meyer "was in an optimistic
mood", and the director suggested that Kirk quote Peter Pan for
the last lines: "Second star to the right, and straight on 'till
morning." Emotions ran high as the last shots of the cast were
captured; Shatner said, "By the time we finished the last scene,
which extended longer than we expected, there was a sense of
irritation. We raised a glass of champagne, but everybody was
actually a little antsy."
The majority of the visual
effects were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) under the
supervision of Scott Farrar (who served as visual effects cameraman
on the first three Star Trek films). After receiving the script, ILM
created storyboards for the effects sequences before meeting Meyer
and producers Winter and Steven-Charles Jaffe to discuss the planned
scenes. These discussions began before the film was greenlit. ILM's
initial cost estimates were over Paramount's budget, so to save money
the filmmakers redesigned some shots and outsourced some to other companies.
Elements
of the zero gravity scenes were handled by Pacific Data Images,
while phaser beams and transporter effects were generated by Visual
Concept Engineering, an offshoot of ILM that had contributed to The
Wrath of Khan and The Final Frontier. Despite the overall count of
effects shots being dropped from over 100 to 51, the project was
still large, and required virtually the entire ILM staff to complete.
Farrar's goal was to economize the remaining effects; if three shots
were similar, they would try to tell the story with only one. Cheap
animatics provided Meyer with placeholders to cut into the film and
avoid costly surprises. Stock footage from previous films were used
whenever possible, but it was often infeasible to do so; as the
original USS Enterprise had been destroyed in The Search for Spock,
all shots of the USS Enterprise-A had to feature the updated ship registry.
Meyer
came upon the idea of having assassins in special boots kill a
weightless Gorkon after searching for a novel way to "blow
away" the character in space that had not been seen before. The
final sequence married physical effects and stuntwork with computer
graphics. Responsibility for shooting the live action footage fell to
the second unit under Jaffe's direction. While the sequence read well
on paper, there was not enough time or money to do the effects
"the right way". For example, shooting the actors on a
bluescreen and then inserting them into the Klingon corridors.
Jaffe noted that the
low-tech method of suspending actors by wires helped the final
effect, because as photographed by John Fante, very few wires had to
be removed digitally in postproduction; sets were constructed so that
the harsh lighting obscured wires, and entire sets were constructed
on their sides so that by pulling actors up and down on the rotated
sets, the characters appeared to float sideways. These sets were on
gimbals so that the movement of the actors and sets created a
floating effect. The shot of two Klingons killed and thrown back down
a corridor by phaser blasts was simulated by positioning the camera
at the bottom of a corridor set. The set was placed on its end in the
tallest soundstage at Paramount, so that the camera looked up towards
the ceiling. In this position, the wires were hidden by the actors as
they ascended the corridor.
The blood that spurts out
of the Klingon's wounds was created using computer generated imagery;
the animators had to make sure that the blood floated in a convincing
manner while still looking interesting and not too gory. The effects
artist looked at NASA footage of floating globules of water to inform
the physics of the blood particles. Initially, the blood was to be
colored green, but the filmmakers realized that McCoy had referred to
Spock as green-blooded.
The final color was violet,
a color Meyer disliked but had to go ahead with, because his first
choice, red, would almost certainly earn the film an "R"
rating from the MPAA. The initial killing of the Klingon in the
transporter room as the assassins beam aboard was the testing ground
for tweaking the color of the blood and how it would move around the
room. Most of the blood droplets were "blobbies", groups of
spheres smoothed together by computer, creating a continuous shape.
The farther apart the spheres, the more the shape could stretch and
even break apart. The phasers used in the scene and throughout the
film were redesigned versions of earlier models and were first used
in The Final Frontier. The props featured blue lights that turned on
when the trigger was pressed, so effects artists knew when to add the
phaser beam effects.
For the zero gravity
sequences, the ILM team matched Visual Concepts Engineering's phaser
blasts by hand-painting the effect in Photoshop. ILM also did minor
touchup to the scenes as required, adding clothing tears where the
phaser blasts hit the actors and adding the hazy Klingon atmosphere
to the computer-rendered objects. These zero gravity scenes were the
most expensive sequences to complete.
ILM's computer graphics
division was responsible for creating three sequences, including the
explosion of Praxis. Meyer's idea for the effect was influenced by
The Poseidon Adventure; Farrar used imagery of an immense wave
hitting the Poseidon to inform the scale of their shock wave. The
department built on a lens flare simulation to create a plasma burst
composed of two expanding disc shapes with swirling detail texture
mapped to the surface.
Farrar settled on the
preliminary look of the wave, and graphics supervisor Jay Riddle used
Adobe Photoshop on a Macintosh to establish the final color scheme.
Initially the team thought they would be able to use the same methods
to create the wave that hits the Excelsior, but found that it did not
convey the scale of the wave, in Riddle's words, "this thing had
to look really enormous." The shot was created by manipulating
two curved pieces of computer geometry, expanding them as they
approached the camera's view. Textures that changed every frame were
added to the main wave body and over top of it to give the impression
of great speed. Motion control footage of the Excelsior was then
scanned into the computer system and made to interact with the
digital wave. ILM's "Praxis effect" shockwave became a
common feature in science fiction films depicting the destruction of
large objects.
Rura Penthe was created
with a mixture of on-set and location shots, along with an
establishing sequence created by Matte World. The characters were
shot on a San Francisco beach, with a white plastic underfoot. Sun
elements were layered onto the shot along with a double-exposed snow
effect. Additional passes were made on fiberfill clouds with lights
behind them to create a lightning storm underway in the background.
Martia (above) was not the
first shapeshifter on Star Trek, but the character was the first to
be created using computer-generated digital morphing technology. The
effects, dubbed "morfs", were more advanced revisions of
the technology used for films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
Animator John Berton attempted new, more complicated morfs, including
moving the camera and morphing two characters talking; special care
had to be taken to line up the characters properly in plate
photography. Martia becomes Kirk while talking, requiring similar
line deliveries from Iman and Shatner; Farrar supervised the set
photography for the morfs and had the actors speak their lines in
sync via a loudspeaker.
Kirk's fight scene with
Martia in the form of Kirk was mostly filmed with a double dressed in
similar clothes; in the majority of the shots the camera allowed only
one of the combatants' faces to be seen. When Kirk talked with his
double directly, two separate takes of Shatner facing opposite
directions were combined, with the camera motion carefully controlled
so that the resulting image looked realistic.
For the final space battle,
Bill George redesigned the photon torpedoes to have a hotter core and
larger flare, because he felt that the weapons in earlier films
looked "too pretty". The torpedoes also moved like guided
missiles rather than cannonballs. George told Farrar that he had
always wanted to see something penetrate the thin saucer section of
the Enterprise, so a replica of the saucer was recreated and blown
up; the model was hung upside down so that the explosion could be
flipped to approximate the zero gravity effects. Rather than destroy
the Bird of Prey model in the climax, pyrotechnic footage was reduced
and placed in the appropriate locations to simulate rippling
explosions throughout the vessel.
A special "pyro
model" was created from a rubber cast of the Bird of Prey and
exploded instead, with a lap dissolve making the transition from the
motion control ship to the pyro vessel. ILM knew that there was
already footage of Chang reacting to the torpedo hit, but knew Meyer
was unhappy with the result. Using footage of Plummer as reference,
the effects team created a dummy that was detonated in the same
position. Steve Jaffe said, "[Editor] Ron Roose and I pored
through the footage to find what amounted to three usable frames that
we could use to tell the audience 'we got him!'"
Meyer's original plan for
the score was to adapt Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets.
The plan proved unfeasibly expensive, so Meyer began listening to
demo tapes submitted by composers. Meyer described most of the demos
as generic "movie music", but was intrigued by one tape by
a young composer named Cliff Eidelman. Eidelman, then 26, had made a
career in composing for ballets, television, and film, but despite
work on fourteen features, no film had been the hit needed to propel
Eidelman to greater fame.
In conversations with
Eidelman, Meyer mentioned that since the marches that accompanied the
main titles for other Star Trek films were so good, he had no desire
to compete with them by composing a bombastic opening. He also felt
that since the film was darker than its predecessors, it demanded
something different musically as a result. He mentioned the opening
to Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird as similar to the foreboding sound
he wanted. Two days later Eidelman produced a tape of his idea for
the main theme, played on a synthesizer. Meyer was impressed by the
speed of the work and the close fit to his vision. Meyer approached
producer Steven Charles-Jaffe with Eidelman's CD, which reminded
Jaffe of Bernard Herrmann; Eidelman was given the task of composing
the score.
The Undiscovered Country's
Cold War allegory and references to literary history were recognized
among researchers and cultural historians. According to scholar Larry
Kreitzer, The Undiscovered Country has more references to William
Shakespeare than any other Star Trek work to date. The title itself
alludes to Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1. Meyer had originally intended
The Wrath of Khan to be called The Undiscovered Country. Whereas the
undiscovered country referred to in Hamlet (and its intended meaning
in The Wrath of Khan) is death, Star Trek VI's use of the phrase
refers to a future where Klingons and humans coexist in peace.
A phrase from The Tempest
is mentioned by Gorkon as representing the new galactic order, that
of a "brave new world". Chang recites most of the lines
from Shakespeare used in the film, including quotes from Romeo and
Juliet and Henry IV, Part 2 in his parting words to Kirk after
dinner. During Kirk's trial, Chang also mocks Kirk with lines from
Richard II. The final battle above Khitomer contains seven references
to five of Shakespeare's plays. Two references are drawn from the
title character's lines in King Henry V ("Once more unto the
breach"/"The game's afoot"), while two more quotations
are from Julius Caesar ("I am as constant as the Northern
Star"/"Cry 'havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war").
There is a single reference to Prospero from The Tempest ("Our
revels now are ended"), and Chang shortens the wronged Shylock's
speech from The Merchant of Venice: "Tickle us, do we not laugh;
prick us, do we not bleed; and wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
The
final lines spoken by Chang before he is obliterated by torpedo fire
are lifted from Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "to be, or not to
be..." Flinn was initially unsure about the numerous classical
quotations, but when Plummer was cast, Meyer enthusiastically added
more. He said, "Whether it's pretentious or not, I think it
depends on how it's used. I don't quite agree with using too much of
that sort of thing, but once you get Plummer, suddenly it's
working." Plummer and Shatner had both begun thier careers
performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada.
In the 2011 documentary, The Captains, Shatner sat down with his
friend Christopher Plummer (above), and talked about their time
together at Straford and working on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Scholars have noted that
the Klingons, not humans, are the ones who quote Shakespeare; Gorkon
claims at one point in the film that "You have not experienced
Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."
Translating Shakespeare into Klingon proved problematic because Marc
Okrand had not created a verb for "to be" when he developed
the language. Shakespeare scholar Paul A. Cantor argues that this
association is appropriate, the warlike Klingons find their literary
matches in the characters Othello, Mark Antony, and Macbeth, but that
it also reinforces a claim that the end of the Cold War means the end
of heroic literature such as Shakespeare's. 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.
According to Kay Smith, the use of Shakespeare has meaning in itself
and also derives new meaning (underscoring cultural politics in the
film) by its rearticulation in a new form.
The association of General
Chang with the politics of the Munich Agreement that involved
attempted appeasement of Nazi Germany are brought up twice in the
film. The first is with Chang with other Klingon officials at a
dinner with Kirk and Federation officers, where Chang declares that
the Klingon Empire needs "breathing room", to which Kirk
responds by imitating Spock's earlier quoting of Hamlet, saying that
Chang's reference is "Earth, Hitler, 1938". Later when Kirk
confronts Chang's warship, Chang mocks the historic British Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain who attempted to appease Hitler; with
Chang saying that there will be "no peace in our time".
A
major theme of the film is change, and people's response to that
change. Meyer considered Valeris and Chang "frightened people,
who are frightened of change", who cling to old ways despite the
changing world. He hoped that the fictionalization of a current
events story allowed for an objective look at the issues, rather than
being blinded by personal bias. At the beginning of the film, Kirk
operates under a similar bias, calling the Klingons
"animals" and putting him at odds with Spock. The Vulcan
sees the Gorkon peace initiative as logical, responding to the sudden
change in the status quo in a collected manner; he even opens the
peace dialog at the behest of his father.
Kirk, meanwhile, is willing
to "let them (the Klingons) die", unwilling to listen to
Spock's words because of his biased understanding. Kirk undergoes a
transformation through the film by way of his incarceration;
realizing that his hatred is outmoded he allows for a cleansing that
restores his son to him in some way.
While Star Trek in general
features few overt references to religion, there is a clear
recognition that a laying aside of past hurts is necessary for peace,
similar to the concept of shalom in Judaism. Shatner regretted that
Kirk's angst at being outmoded was minimized in the final print. A
scene where Spock asks Kirk if they have grown so old and inflexible
they have outlived their usefulness had two meanings: it was as much
Nimoy asking Shatner as it was their characters.
The
Undiscovered Country was released in North America on December 6th,
1991. The film was initially planned for release a week later on
December 13th. To promote the film and the 25th anniversary of Star
Trek, Paramount held marathon screenings of the previous five films
in 44 select U.S. and Canadian cities. The 12-hour showings also
included footage of The Undiscovered Country. The day before the
film's release, the core cast was inducted into Grauman's Chinese
Theatre, and signed their names on Hollywood Boulevard. Nichols
became the first African-American woman with a star on the
Boulevard's Walk of Fame. Nimoy, who had earlier requested $1 million
to cameo on The Next Generation, appeared in the episode
"Unification" that aired during November 1991 to increase
interest in the feature film. The previous five films were released
in collectors' box sets with new packaging; retailers were offered
the chance to photograph their retail setups for a chance to win an
expenses-paid tour of The Next Generation's set and tickets to an
advance screening of The Undiscovered Country.
Roddenberry did not live to
see the film's release, dying of heart failure on October 24th, 1991.
Before the film's release he viewed a near-final version of The
Undiscovered Country, and according to the film's producer and
Kelley's biographer, approved a final version of the film. In
contrast, Nimoy and Shatner's memoirs report that after the screening
he called his lawyer and demanded a quarter of the scenes be cut; the
producers refused, and within 48 hours he was dead. Paramount
considered spending close to $240,000 to send Roddenberry's ashes
into space, a move that had the backing of fans, but decided against
it; his remains would make it into space along with 22 others in
1997. The film's opening included a note to Roddenberry's memory; at
early showings, the crowds of Star Trek fans applauded loudly. While
the producers had begun work on the film anticipating it as the last
film, by the premiere it was obvious the film would make money and
that a Star Trek VII would soon be in the works. The cast was split
on the possibility of a sequel; Shatner, Nimoy and Kelley said that
the film would be their last, while the supporting cast strongly
lobbied for another film. The consensus was for the next film to star
the cast of The Next Generation. The seventh Star Trek feature, Star
Trek Generations (1994), would blend the old and new cast.
The
Undiscovered Country opened in 1,804 theaters in North America and
grossed $18,162,837 in its opening weekend; the showing was a record
for the film series and was the top-grossing film of the weekend. The
film grossed $74,888,996 in North America, for a total of $96,888,996
worldwide. The Undiscovered Country's strong showing was one of the
big successes of 1991, a year in which the film industry experienced
disappointing box office results overall. The film was nominated in
the Sound effects editing and Makeup categories at the 64th Academy
Awards. The film also won a Saturn Award for best science fiction
film, making it the only Star Trek film to win the award. The film's
novelization by J.M. Dillard was also a commercial success, reaching
the Publishers Weekly mass market paperback bestsellers list.
The Undiscovered Country
received a much kinder reception from reviewers and audiences than
The Final Frontier. Critics approved of the blend of humor and
adventure in the film. The dialogue and banter was considered a
positive and defining aspect of the film; Janet Maslin of The New
York Times said that "Star Trek VI is definitely colorful, but
even more of its color comes from conversation, which can take some
amusingly florid turns." Critic Hal Hinson commented that Meyer
"[is] capable of sending up his material without cheapening it
or disrupting our belief in the reality of his yarn," and called
the one-liners an organic part of the film's "jocular,
tongue-in-cheek spirit". Susan Wloszczyna of USA Today said that
with Meyer directing, "this last mission gets almost everything
right, from the nod to late creator Gene Roddenberry to in-jokes
about Kirk's rep as an alien babe magnet."
Kim
Cattrall (left) plays Valeris, the Enterprise's new navigator and
the first Vulcan to graduate at the top of her class at Starfleet
Academy. Valeris becomes the protégé of Captain Spock,
who intends her to be his replacement. 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. Cattrall was
unwilling to be the third actress to play Saavik (a part she had
originally auditioned for), but accepted the role when she became a
different character. Cattrall chose the Eris element of the
character's name, for the Greek goddess of strife, which was
Vulcanised by the addition of the "Val" at the behest of
director Nicholas Meyer. Cinefantastique Magazine reported that
during filming, Cattrall participated in a photo shoot on the empty
Enterprise bridge, where she wore nothing but her Vulcan ears. The
story claimed Nimoy personally ripped up all of the photographs and
negatives when he learned about the unauthorized photo session,
because he feared harm to the franchise if it ever came to light.
Meyer
wrote the role for Plummer (right), who was initially reluctant to
accept it. The role of Gorkon was initially offered to Jack Palance.
The part went to David Warner, who had appeared in Meyer's first
film, the 1979 science-fiction film Time After Time, and had played a
human ambassador in The Final Frontier. The actor's make-up was made
to resemble Abraham Lincoln, as another way of humanizing the
otherwise alien Klingon leader. When filming his character's death, a
large lamp exploded and rained down in pieces on Warner and Kelley;
one heavy piece barely missed striking Warner's head, which Kelley
was sure would have killed him.
The
Final Frontier, the previous film in the series, was a critical and
financial disappointment; the cast and crew were worried that the
franchise would not be able to recover from the blow. With the
looming 25th anniversary of the original series in 1991, producer
Harve Bennett revisited an idea Ralph Winter had for the fourth film:
a prequel featuring young versions of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet
Academy. The prequel was designed to be a way of keeping the
characters, if not the actors, in what was called "Top Gun in
outer space". Bennett and The Final Frontier writer David
Loughery wrote a script entitled The Academy Years, where Dr. Leonard
McCoy talks about how he met Kirk and Spock while addressing a group
of Academy graduates. The script shows Kirk and Spock's upbringing,
their meeting McCoy and Montgomery Scott at the Academy and defeating
a villain before parting ways. The script would have established that
George Kirk, James T. Kirk's father, was a pilot who went missing,
presumed dead, during a warp experiment with Scott. The script is set
before the "enlightenment" of the Federation; slavery and
racism are common, with Spock being bullied because he is the only
Vulcan student. Nurse Christine Chapel cameos in the script's climax.
Actor
James Doohan (Scotty, left) claimed that Paramount chief Frank
Mancuso had fired Bennett following negative reaction from the core
cast, Roddenberry, and fans. Bennett claimed that after he rewrote
the script to include Shatner and Nimoy, Paramount had still rejected
it and that he decided it was time he left the franchise. He said,
"My term was up. I was offered $1.5 million to do Star Trek VI
and I said 'Thanks, I don't want to do that. I want to do the
Academy." Actor Walter Koenig approached Mancuso with a new
script outline codenamed "In Flanders Fields"; in it, the
Romulans join the Federation and go to war with the Klingons. The
Enterprise crew, except Spock, are forced to retire for not meeting
fitness tests. When Spock and his new crew are captured by a
monstrous worm-like race of aliens (which Koenig described as
"things that the monsters in Aliens evolved from"), the old
crew must rescue them. In the end, all of the characters except McCoy
and Spock die.
Nimoy
visited Meyer's house and suggested, "[What if] the wall comes
down in outer space? You know, the Klingons have always been our
stand-ins for the Russians... " Meyer recalled that he replied
"'Oh, wait a minute! Okay, we start with an intergalactic
Chernobyl! Big explosion! We got no more Klingon Empire...!' And I
just spilled out the whole story!" The story deliberately
included references to the contemporary political climate; the
character of Gorkon was based on Mikhail Gorbachev, while the
assassination storyline was Meyer's idea. He thought it was plausible
that the Klingon leader who turned soft towards the enemy would be
killed like similar peacemakers throughout history: Anwar El Sadat,
Gandhi, and Abraham Lincoln. Nimoy's hiring of Meyer was not only
beneficial because Meyer knew the material and could write fast
(having produced The Wrath of Khan's screenplay in twelve days), but
if Meyer was to direct it would offset any acrimony from Shatner,
whose ire would have been aroused if Nimoy returned to direct his
third Star Trek feature after The Search for Spock and The Voyage
Home. Meyer said that when he started work on the screenplay it did
not occur to him that he would direct the film. Meyer's wife was the
first person to suggest that he should direct.
Star
Trek's creator, Gene Roddenberry, who wielded significant influence
despite his ill health, hated the script. Meyer's first meeting with
Roddenberry resulted in Meyer storming out of the room within five
minutes. As with Meyer's previous Star Trek film (The Wrath of Khan),
the script had strong military overtones, with a naval theme present
throughout. Far from being idealized, the characters were shown as
bigoted and flawed. In contrast to Roddenberry's vision of the
future, Meyer thought there was no evidence that bigotry would
disappear by the 23rd century. When Roddenberry protested about the
villainization of Saavik, Meyer replied that "I created Saavik.
She was not Gene's. If he doesn't like what I plan on doing with her,
maybe he should give back the money he's made off my films. Maybe
then I'll care what he has to say." Lieutenant JG Saavik first
appeared in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and was
played by Kirstie Alley (right). Robin Curtis took on the role for
the sequel, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), and in the
next film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). After the stormy
first meeting, a group including Meyer, Roddenberry, and producer
Ralph Winter discussed the revised draft. Roddenberry would voice his
disapproval of elements of the script line by line, and he and Meyer
would square off about them while Winter took notes. Overall, the
tone of the meeting was conciliatory, but the producers ultimately
ignored many of Roddenberry's concerns. By February 13th, 1991, the
film was officially put into production with the agreement it would
be in theaters by the end of the year.
The
Klingons received their first major revision in design since their
appearance in The Motion Picture. Dodie Shepard designed new red and
black uniforms for Chancellor Gorkon and his staff, as it was judged
that it would be unseemly for the chancellor to wear common warrior
garb. Another concern was that there was not enough of designer
Robert Fletcher's The Motion Picture uniforms for all the Klingons in
the film. While the important Klingons were given multi-layered
prosthetics and unique head ridges, background characters wore
ready-made masks, with minor touch-ups on the eyes and mouth. Since
it was important for the actors' expressions to be visible through
the makeup, the appliances were made very thin using the latest glues
and paints. Transforming an actor into a Klingon took
three-and-a-half hours. Hairstylist Jan Alexander designed braids and
jewelry that suggested a tribal people with a long and treasured heritage.
The
design changes forced Kenny Myers to abdicate his other makeup job,
that of Warner's Gorkon, to Margaret Bessera. Gorkon's appearance was
of special concern to Meyer, who had two specific role models: Ahab
and Abraham Lincoln. "[Meyer] loves to play the classics,"
Kenny Myers explained, "and incorporating these two images was
really genius on his part. He wanted there to be uncertainty about
Gorkon's true intentions. Did he want peace, or was there something
sinister in his mind? From his appearance, it was impossible to tell
if he was friend or foe. Subliminally, there were aspects of both."
Makeup
artist Ed French found a spare Klingon headpiece in Richard Snell's
possession and attached it to his own head. A cast of his tortured
expression was used as the foundation for the dummy used on location.
The designers used striking colors and new techniques for some of the
aliens; ultraviolet pigments were used to create a particularly
hostile alien that fights Kirk in Rura Penthe.
The
approach to Spacedock was filmed from below the station model, which
Bill George found visually interesting and appropriate. He felt that
the tracking of a shuttle from the planet evoked 2001: A Space
Odyssey. The shuttle used in the scene was the only new model created
for the film. It measured twelve inches and was fabricated in less
than a week. The shot of the Enterprise leaving Spacedock was
difficult to produce because the interior dock miniature had
disappeared. Stock footage from The Voyage Home was used for one shot
to compensate. Since the only other shot needed was the Enterprise's
point of view leaving Spacedock through the doors, it was the only
section recreated for the film.
Elements
of the zero gravity scenes were handled by Pacific Data Images,
while phaser beams and transporter effects were generated by Visual
Concept Engineering, an offshoot of ILM that had contributed to The
Wrath of Khan and The Final Frontier. Despite the overall count of
effects shots being dropped from over 100 to 51, the project was
still large, and required virtually the entire ILM staff to complete.
Farrar's goal was to economize the remaining effects; if three shots
were similar, they would try to tell the story with only one. Cheap
animatics provided Meyer with placeholders to cut into the film and
avoid costly surprises. Stock footage from previous films were used
whenever possible, but it was often infeasible to do so; as the
original USS Enterprise had been destroyed in The Search for Spock,
all shots of the USS Enterprise-A had to feature the updated ship registry.
Meyer
came upon the idea of having assassins in special boots kill a
weightless Gorkon after searching for a novel way to "blow
away" the character in space that had not been seen before. The
final sequence married physical effects and stuntwork with computer
graphics. Responsibility for shooting the live action footage fell to
the second unit under Jaffe's direction. While the sequence read well
on paper, there was not enough time or money to do the effects
"the right way". For example, shooting the actors on a
bluescreen and then inserting them into the Klingon corridors.
The
final lines spoken by Chang before he is obliterated by torpedo fire
are lifted from Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "to be, or not to
be..." Flinn was initially unsure about the numerous classical
quotations, but when Plummer was cast, Meyer enthusiastically added
more. He said, "Whether it's pretentious or not, I think it
depends on how it's used. I don't quite agree with using too much of
that sort of thing, but once you get Plummer, suddenly it's
working." Plummer and Shatner had both begun thier careers
performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada.
In the 2011 documentary, The Captains, Shatner sat down with his
friend Christopher Plummer (above), and talked about their time
together at Straford and working on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
A
major theme of the film is change, and people's response to that
change. Meyer considered Valeris and Chang "frightened people,
who are frightened of change", who cling to old ways despite the
changing world. He hoped that the fictionalization of a current
events story allowed for an objective look at the issues, rather than
being blinded by personal bias. At the beginning of the film, Kirk
operates under a similar bias, calling the Klingons
"animals" and putting him at odds with Spock. The Vulcan
sees the Gorkon peace initiative as logical, responding to the sudden
change in the status quo in a collected manner; he even opens the
peace dialog at the behest of his father.
The
Undiscovered Country was released in North America on December 6th,
1991. The film was initially planned for release a week later on
December 13th. To promote the film and the 25th anniversary of Star
Trek, Paramount held marathon screenings of the previous five films
in 44 select U.S. and Canadian cities. The 12-hour showings also
included footage of The Undiscovered Country. The day before the
film's release, the core cast was inducted into Grauman's Chinese
Theatre, and signed their names on Hollywood Boulevard. Nichols
became the first African-American woman with a star on the
Boulevard's Walk of Fame. Nimoy, who had earlier requested $1 million
to cameo on The Next Generation, appeared in the episode
"Unification" that aired during November 1991 to increase
interest in the feature film. The previous five films were released
in collectors' box sets with new packaging; retailers were offered
the chance to photograph their retail setups for a chance to win an
expenses-paid tour of The Next Generation's set and tickets to an
advance screening of The Undiscovered Country.
The
Undiscovered Country opened in 1,804 theaters in North America and
grossed $18,162,837 in its opening weekend; the showing was a record
for the film series and was the top-grossing film of the weekend. The
film grossed $74,888,996 in North America, for a total of $96,888,996
worldwide. The Undiscovered Country's strong showing was one of the
big successes of 1991, a year in which the film industry experienced
disappointing box office results overall. The film was nominated in
the Sound effects editing and Makeup categories at the 64th Academy
Awards. The film also won a Saturn Award for best science fiction
film, making it the only Star Trek film to win the award. The film's
novelization by J.M. Dillard was also a commercial success, reaching
the Publishers Weekly mass market paperback bestsellers list.
