Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country - taH pagh taHbe’
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
"taH pagh taHbe’. To be, or not to be."
For the latest episode in our Patreon Star Trek mini-series, we’re closing out the original cast’s cinematic journey with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
And what better way to send off Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the Enterprise crew than by bringing back one of the franchise’s secret weapons: Nicholas Meyer.
After helping reshape Star Trek on the big screen with The Wrath of Khan, Meyer returns to the director’s chair for the original crew’s curtain call, just before the franchise hands the keys over to Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D.
But the old guard goes out with a bang.
The Undiscovered Country is not just “one last mission”. It is an alien diplomacy thriller, a political conspiracy story, a courtroom drama, a detective mystery, a prisoner-of-war escape movie and a space opera adventure all rolled into one.
It is also absolutely stuffed with Shakespeare. Klingons quoting Hamlet. General Chang turning battle into theatre. Chancellor Gorkon declaring that you have not truly experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon. Somehow, this is both completely ridiculous and completely perfect.
Set against the end of a long cold war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, Star Trek VI asks one of the franchise’s most interesting questions: what happens when your enemy wants peace, but you are not sure you are ready to stop hating them?
That gives the film a surprisingly sharp emotional spine. Kirk is older, angrier and more openly prejudiced than we are used to seeing him. Spock is trying to guide the future into existence. The Klingons are facing collapse. Starfleet is full of people who would rather preserve the conflict than accept change.
For a film full of photon torpedoes, shape-shifting prison aliens and Christopher Plummer chewing scenery through an eyepatch, it is also one of the most politically loaded Star Trek movies.
In this episode, we talk about why Nicholas Meyer is such an important ingredient in cinematic Trek, how The Undiscovered Country turns the end of the Cold War into space opera, and why this feels like a more fitting goodbye to the original crew than The Final Frontier.
We also get into the film’s odd mix of genres, the Shakespeare obsession, the murder mystery structure, the trial of Kirk and McCoy, the brilliant absurdity of Rura Penthe, and whether Star Trek works best when it is secretly a submarine movie, a courtroom movie, a spy movie, or all of the above.
Fun fact: the title The Undiscovered Country comes from Hamlet, where it refers to death. In Star Trek VI, the phrase is reworked into something more hopeful: the terrifying unknown future of peace. Another fun detail: Christopher Plummer’s General Chang is one of Trek’s great theatre-kid villains, with much of his dialogue drawing directly from Shakespeare. The man essentially fights a space battle like he’s auditioning for the RSC.
So, does the original crew get the send-off they deserve? Is this the best political thriller in Star Trek history? And how many Shakespeare quotes is too many Shakespeare quotes when Klingons are involved?
Join us on Patreon as we boldly go into Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Listen now on Patreon as part of our Star Trek mini-series.
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