ST6 TUC

[Wingsley]

There are many things to like about Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It did provide a superior ending to the "TOS movies", passing the baton to TNG with style and an engaging story. It showed how the Klingon-Federation relationship evolved from one of Cold War enemies to eventually being allies. It certainly did a better job of bringing Kirk's career to a close than the subsequent Generations.

But there are aspects of it that never made sense to me, or worse, never sat well...

In the final battle with Chang's stealth-scout, why do Enterprise-A and Excelsior never fire their phasers? I understand that there's an inhabited planet nearby, but we've seen that Federation starships have computers. And Spock's and McCoy's "surgery on a torpedo" should make it clear that torpedoes are smart little weapons that can be programmed to steer clear of the planet. Kirk and Sulu could have easily ordered random firing to at least take a chance. Instead, it was like Chang was shooting ducks in a gallery. This seemed very out of character for both Kirk and Sulu. And if Kirk knew Chang wasn't going to let Enterprise-A near Khitomer, why did he stick around? Enterprise-A is a warp-driven starship. Kirk could have ordered an evasive, high-speed game of cat-and-mouse outside the Khitomer system until Excelsior arrived. Chang was already committed to stopping Kirk, so Chang would've followed for sure. One thing the TOS and TNG movies never showed was a battle at warp speed.

"I've been dead before" / "If they did, we would all have to turn ourselves in". The characters, especially the TOS regulars, kept doing comic send-ups on their characters throughout the movie. That's one thing I intensely disliked about all the TOS- and TNG-derived movies: The main characters kept spitting out lines that were out of character compared to what we saw in their respective TV shows. It's as if the movie's writers and directors wanted the actors to "sweeten the deal" with a broader movie audience by make little parodies of the characters. All the actors did was make fools of themselves.

If Chang's objective was to use the sneak attack to help the Federation spies kill Gorkon to eliminate the peace process, why did Chang not kill Azetbur as well? He was right there plotting with all of them, including her, aboard Kronos One after Kirk was arrested.

If the Klingons were capable of building a prototype super-bird-of-prey, then they were capable of building more. That would seem to be a galactic game-changer. Why did they not do so?

I never understood how Kirk formed such an attachment for David Marcus when he barely got to know the young scientist. He asked Carol: "Is that David?" and yet in TUC, he mourns the death of "my boy", a son he never knew.

In the beginning of TUC, we hear Sulu's log aboard Excelsior, about how the ship just finished cataloguing gaseous anomalies. Yet during the battle over Khitomer, Uhura brings up that Enterprise-A is carrying the gaseous anomaly-cataloging equipment. But was there ever a hint that Enterprise-A was doing the same work as Excelsior? I don't think so.

These issues don't completely ruin the movie, but they do detract from it being as satisfying as it could have been.

TUC still stands head and shoulders above Generations, to be sure.

 

[Kor]

This should go in Star Trek Movies I-X.

But anyway...

In the final battle with Chang's stealth-scout, why do Enterprise-A and Excelsior never fire their phasers? I understand that there's an inhabited planet nearby, but we've seen that Federation starships have computers. And Spock's and McCoy's "surgery on a torpedo" should make it clear that torpedoes are smart little weapons that can be programmed to steer clear of the planet. Kirk and Sulu could have easily ordered random firing to at least take a chance. Instead, it was like Chang was shooting ducks in a gallery. This seemed very out of character for both Kirk and Sulu. And if Kirk knew Chang wasn't going to let Enterprise-A near Khitomer, why did he stick around? Enterprise-A is a warp-driven starship. Kirk could have ordered an evasive, high-speed game of cat-and-mouse outside the Khitomer system until Excelsior arrived. Chang was already committed to stopping Kirk, so Chang would've followed for sure. One thing the TOS and TNG movies never showed was a battle at warp speed.

Space is vast. Shooting random phaser beams everywhere would have been a waste of time and energy. The altered torpedo was the only way to lock onto the cloaked ship.

"I've been dead before" / "If they did, we would all have to turn ourselves in". The characters, especially the TOS regulars, kept doing comic send-ups on their characters throughout the movie. That's one thing I intensely disliked about all the TOS- and TNG-derived movies: The main characters kept spitting out lines that were out of character compared to what we saw in their respective TV shows. It's as if the movie's writers and directors wanted the actors to "sweeten the deal" with a broader movie audience by make little parodies of the characters. All the actors did was make fools of themselves.

Yes.

If Chang's objective was to use the sneak attack to help the Federation spies kill Gorkon to eliminate the peace process, why did Chang not kill Azetbur as well? He was right there plotting with all of them, including her, aboard Kronos One after Kirk was arrested.

This never bothered me. In fact, it never occurred to me at all. Maybe he didn't expect Azetbur to be named Chancellor. Or maybe he thought that Azetbur could be more easily influenced than Gorkon. Or maybe he thought that Azetbur would never seek peace with the Federation if she thought her father was murdered by Starfleet officers.

If the Klingons were capable of building a prototype super-bird-of-prey, then they were capable of building more. That would seem to be a galactic game-changer. Why did they not do so?

According to some other background info or publicity materials, Chang personally oversaw the prototype project in secret. It wasn't something the Klingon Empire was actively pursuing (yeah, yeah, not "cannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnon", but it's the same deal with Col. Worf being the grandfather of TNG Worf)

I never understood how Kirk formed such an attachment for David Marcus when he barely got to know the young scientist. He asked Carol: "Is that David?" and yet in TUC, he mourns the death of "my boy", a son he never knew.

It's funny how parenthood works sometimes.

In the beginning of TUC, we hear Sulu's log aboard Excelsior, about how the ship just finished cataloguing gaseous anomalies. Yet during the battle over Khitomer, Uhura brings up that Enterprise-A is carrying the gaseous anomaly-cataloging equipment. But was there ever a hint that Enterprise-A was doing the same work as Excelsior? I don't think so.

Sloppy writing. Or maybe several ships were engaged in similar work.

Kor

 

[STEPhon IT]

Shouldn't this be in the movie section??? Hello, Moderator?

 

[Tracy Trek]

As for why they didn't lead Chang's ship on a game of cat and mouse throughout the system, it was my understanding that it was imperative they beam down and stop the assassination of the Federation president and Chang was standing in the way of that objective. Plus maybe the Excelsior might not have been able to have got there in time (although it did).

If Chekov was supposed to be the chief of security, they wrote him as one who didn't have a clue about his job. A chief of security doesn't know that a phaser set to vaporize is going to set off the alarms.

I think an important question is why Valeris did what she did? Conspiring with others to assassinate people in power and derail a peace treaty. I think there may have been something from the novelization of the movie as to her motivations, but I can't recall exactly what it was. Any ideas? But what ever it was, it was not brought up in the movie.

 

[1001001]

Shouldn't this be in the movie section??? Hello, Moderator?

Relax. It's not the end of the world.

Moving to Movies.

 

[Wingsley]

Has anyone ever written a TOS-era prequel novel with Kirk (and/or others) facing a younger Chang?

 

[Shawnster]

Has anyone ever written a TOS-era prequel novel with Kirk (and/or others) facing a younger Chang?

Starship Exeter's first fan production featured Chang as the villain

 

[BillJ]

And Spock's and McCoy's "surgery on a torpedo" should make it clear that torpedoes are smart little weapons that can be programmed to steer clear of the planet. Kirk and Sulu could have easily ordered random firing to at least take a chance.

They had to install the component to track the Bird-of-Prey's gas emissions.

 

[Kor]

Has anyone ever written a TOS-era prequel novel with Kirk (and/or others) facing a younger Chang?

TUC was clearly the first time Chang and Kirk ever met... unless somebody writes a story in which they have a ship-to-ship battle but never communicate for some reason, so they don't know who is in command of the other ship. Chang loses his eye in this battle, and he finds out the Starfleet vessel was commanded by James Tiberious Kirk, and spends the next thirty years "so wanting to meet him."

Kor

 

[Timo]

Valeris' motivation sounds obvious: she's a Vulcan, so she would be cold and calculating when it comes to war and peace, just like Sarek was cold and calculating about murder in "Journey to Babel". It would simply sound like a good idea to her to have a war the UPF was certain to win. Since the other heroes aren't Vulcans, the audience will be doubly aghast at this callousness, but it's what one would expect of a Trek character of these specifications.

The invisible ship didn't appear all that hot: when firing, she became visible anyway. Firing back and destroying her would be a matter of reaction time only, and combat involving proper decloaking before firing has never suffered from excessively good Starfleet reaction times, so why bother with this only marginally better tech?

As for Chekov's professional shortcomings, it's not as if he really doesn't know about the alarm. He just wonders why the boots weren't vaporized - but Valeris' "Like this?" is a deliberate non sequitur, as clearly vaporization unlike that would have been the assassins' first choice. It's Valeris' "argument" that makes no sense, as the boots could have been incinerated in a regular waste vaporizer, or vaporized by transporting them out, or disposed of when all sorts of alarms were going off anyway.

It's just too bad that Valeris' grandstand stunt is not made better use of. Perhaps the assassins used that very gun, and Valeris preempted any hope of the heroes finding out that this particular weapon had been recently fired? Perhaps setting off the alarm would have allowed the assassins to vaporize all evidence unnoticed?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Wingsley]

Did anyone ever notice from the closing credits that Uhura is misspelled "Uhuru"?

 

[Wingsley]

TUC was clearly the first time Chang and Kirk ever met... unless somebody writes a story in which they have a ship-to-ship battle but never communicate for some reason, so they don't know who is in command of the other ship. Chang loses his eye in this battle, and he finds out the Starfleet vessel was commanded by James Tiberious Kirk, and spends the next thirty years "so wanting to meet him."

Kor

I would say that if Chang is a general at the time of TUC, it's possible he was as much of a starship commander / tactician as Kirk, Cartwright, Wesley, etc., were for the Federation. So it may be true that Kirk and Chang never had a face-to-face encounter, but may have still been familiar from a distance. It's entirely possible that Chang could have commanded or deployed starships to confront Starfleet at one time or another.

 

[Kor]

Did anyone ever notice from the closing credits that Uhura is misspelled "Uhuru"?

Yeah, but "Uhuru" is actually the real Swahili word for freedom.

Kor

 

[Leto_II]

In the beginning of TUC, we hear Sulu's log aboard Excelsior, about how the ship just finished cataloguing gaseous anomalies. Yet during the battle over Khitomer, Uhura brings up that Enterprise-A is carrying the gaseous anomaly-cataloging equipment. But was there ever a hint that Enterprise-A was doing the same work as Excelsior? I don't think so.

There was, in a deleted scene -- after Gorkon and his party beam aboard the Enterprise-A and Kirk says, "Well, perhaps there's time for a quick tour," a scene that followed immediately afterward showed Gorkon's party visiting one of the Enterprise's science labs during the tour, where they're very prominently shown how the gaseous anomaly cataloguing-equipment operates.

However, this would've obviously telegraphed the entire final end-battle resolution ("Anton Chekhov's Gaseous Planetary Anomaly-Sensors") far ahead of time, so it was wisely deleted by Nicholas Meyer during the editing-process.

That said, even without that deleted sequence, why would the Enterprise possessing the same scientific equipment as the Excelsior be any real surprise to anyone who's watched the various TV shows over the decades? As we've been shown, Federation starships often have overlapping mission-profiles, and a cruiser as large as the Enterprise-A would have the same superb science-lab facilities as its predecessor, which would likely include equipment for cataloguing gaseous anomalies, if it was ever called for.

 

[Timo]

Since Meyer loves his Cold War references, it's pretty simple to connect this one with the International Year of Geophysics, an excuse for the superpowers to do military snooping under various scientific pretenses. Sulu would obviously have been "cataloging gaseous anomalies" right next to the Klingon Empire for the past three years, and every other Starfleet vessel would be more or less likewise equipped and tasked!

Yeah, but "Uhuru" is actually the real Swahili word for freedom.

But not the name of the character... Supposedly. Then again, do we ever see "Uhura" in writing in any of the episodes or movies?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Leto_II]

Since Meyer loves his Cold War references, it's pretty simple to connect this one with the International Year of Geophysics, an excuse for the superpowers to do military snooping under various scientific pretenses. Sulu would obviously have been "cataloging gaseous anomalies" right next to the Klingon Empire for the past three years, and every other Starfleet vessel would be more or less likewise equipped and tasked!

Exactly. You just know that Starfleet of that era wouldn't be deploying one of its newest, most powerful advanced battleships on something as mundane as a planetary survey mission so close to the Klingon border (for three whole years!) without the mission profile also likely doubling as intelligence-gathering (at the very least). Sulu undoubtedly had orders to patrol and show the flag, etc.

 

[Oso Blanco]

TUC was a movie that didn't make any sense whatsoever ... in every single aspect!

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Then again, do we ever see "Uhura" in writing in any of the episodes or movies?

The credits for every other episode and movie that she appeared in?

 

[Timo]

If credits count, then Kirk is an impostor, a cover identity for a Klingon agent named William Shatner...

Does the actual Trek universe have visual references?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jaime]

If credits count, then Kirk is an impostor, a cover identity for a Klingon agent named William Shatner...

Does the actual Trek universe have visual references?

Timo Saloniemi

They do tend to pronounce it with an a. Including Spock, who would presumably never mispronounce a word. This is, granted, dependent on me not having a clue how the swahili would be pronounced.
It is also possible, that the 'a' variant in Trek is the name, or female variant name, of the word. (either in our universe or theirs. It certainly was spelt that way everywhere else, presumably including in front of every line of hers in the script. And possibly in any subtitles. Of course, if subtitles aren't canon, deaf fans must have an easier time with reboots as their experience of Trek must be less 'canon' ;p)