Star Trek VI. the stupidity of Starfleet and Spock for choosing Kirk to meet with Gorkon

I suppose the question is at what point does hatred of a nation and prejudice against its peoples become racism or can be separated from it?

 

That's an interesting question. It's laughable to claim that the internment of Japanese-Americans wasn't motivated in large part by racism, even if Korean-Americans were not subject to the same horrors.

I think it's theoretically possible that hatred of a nation populated by a different ethnic group could be separated from racism against that group, but in practice the two are almost certainly going to be intertwined and conflated. We saw it after 9/11, when justifiable anger against the few religious fanatics who committed the crime almost instantly spilled over into racist attacks on anyone even remotely similar to the fanatics', regardless of whether they were from the same region or even followed the same faith.

And in TUC, there is no attempt to separate the Klingon people from the Klingon government or Klingon military or even Klingon society. Our Starfleet crew speaks of Klingon individuals as being sub-human animals, in the exact same words used against Black people in our country not that long ago.

 

That would have been worthwhile enough to keep in... with it removed, one can headcanon it but the story feels more clunky in having to do that. I don't mind certain subtle hints, such as Kirk's log being used against him - which is a giveaway for Valeris and her fellow conspirator Cartwright, and was told a bit before the mindmeld where it's confirmed... and note that Valeris and Cartwright are stuck in the middle just as much as everyone else. Spock talked of some of the Klingons being too paranoid about peace to instead resort to dying fighting, he didn't notice some in the Federation were doing the same thing - and for the same reasons. And to Valeris, the nuances were all logical. Cartwright, a staunch supporter of the Federation and status quo, clearly didn't disagree. Also note that Valeris was bringing up the grand idea of having everyone drink booze (Romulan Ale) at the dinner. Is it no wonder that inhibitions were let loose during said dinner.

Still amazed they had kept Colonel West (no relation to Adam!) being a traitor for the director's cut - it's okay for more than just Chang to be a villain on the Klingon's side of the skirmish line too. (A small splotch of red on the sniper's corpse goes by too quickly to really pick up on for the most part...)

 

Chekov was in admiration of Vixis in the previous movie's end where everyone seemed to be at ease... But now Chekov's muttering that line with a bizarre sense of veiled frustration. VI felt like whiplash in some ways.

VI was probably trying to hold a mirror to society regarding racism all while dealing with "The cold war wall coming down -- in space!!!", but I'm not sure it all hit the messages as intended. It's definitely uneven and some dialogue definitely doesn't fit. But I then re-read your first paragraph there, and maybe the writers had to tweak things. If some scenes filmed had Kirk being less outlandish and stayed on the cutting room floor to paint Kirk in a worse light... the one scene where Kirk bellows suddenly "DON'T BELIEVE THEM!" definitely feels like there was something of context chopped out in between as well...

 

That's the thing I most profoundly dislike about this film. All the established characters are suddenly virulent racists because... plot contrivance. Regardless of everything we've seen from them to this point, which for some of them is a quarter-century of character development, all tossed out the airlock.

There's definitely a way they could have effectively told that Cold War story. But creating an effective analogy to contemporary events requires a much subtler touch than they exhibited. The film is so ham-fisted, so clunky. All the story deftness Meyer showed in TWOK is missing in this installment. Most of the established characters act wildly out of character, their dialogue stilted because it's motivated solely by plot necessity. New characters are one-note and without any nuance whatsoever. There are no stakes, because audiences had already seen how the larger storyline would unfold and knew that the dire predictions would never come to pass. There's not even a passing attempt at misdirection in our "murder mystery", as the villains clearly twirl their moustaches and broadcast their culpability from the first reel. Story elements are set up but then paid off incorrectly, Chekhov's Next-Door Neighbor's Gun That We Had Never Seen Before. Shockingly amateurish from this crop of very talented and experienced filmmakers.

I would love to have seen the movie they thought they were making. Or the movie they wanted to make. Instead of the movie they actually gave us.

 

It's almost as if people can have two conflicting opinions at the same time. It's in line with "Day of the Dove" too.

 

Interesting read:

https://www.planetary.org/articles/20161215-star-trek-vi-retrospective

That depends on if the story is designed to be followed, or interpreted. If not both. Not to mention, was Chancellor Gorkon's line about "If there is to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it" a wink and a nod to Huxley? Probably not, at least beyond a superficial loose association, if not mere parroting.

Usually. A couple lines did feel awkward at best, and more likely unnecessary. But watch and re-watch the movie enough and other bits and pieces do come to mind; this movie isn't as shallow as many other Trek flicks are. Indeed, involving all of the historical references and some definitely have the feel of being put there to deliberately invoke a shocking response to think of things differently:

Indeed, as well as a tangent, harking back to the director's edition where he puts back Colonel Adam West's deleted scenes where, oops, he's the sniper revealed -- I suspect the scene was omitted to begin with because too many on the Federation side (and not the number of non-humans in the background throughout the movie, too) were baddies and more than just General Chang had to be villains outright for the other side.

Not to mention the reinstated footage of Scotty and his using the B-word so rabidly.

 

The movie didn't need it, I'm glad they didn't use it for numerous reasons, and also in-universe I doubt enough people remembered STV when the moment with Chekov drooling over Vixis and seemingly wanting to chat her up/ask her out.

Not to mention how the Bridge crew and Klingon, Romulan, and Terran representatives were in the briefing room and seeming quite amicable; even Captain Klaa realizing Kirk may not be as evil as all that. Possibly in part because nobody wanted TFF to remain canon (Roddenberry hated it even more than he had VI, which suggests a lot as well), or because STVI was eschewing this continuity for the sake of its own narrative. All these events feel out of place with VI's massive 180-degree turn on the coda of V's.

Ambivalence is a wonderful thing. Well, half the time, the other half the time I find it aggravating...

Could Meyer have not been so sledgehammery on the issue? Completely agreed. As much as some plot points were of some importance, making the Federation leaders and Enterprise crew so vile just feels out of place. Would that really be Meyer's point?

The battle scenes and score do a lot of lifting for this movie, as do the strong emotions. The more the visceral is removed, the more some of the lack of subtlety begins to show. I rewatched the movie yesterday and some scenes were "Damn, they actually filmed this?!" Maybe, and this is stretching things, the fact they're so used to Klingons being baddies clouded their judgment whereas they never had an issue with other alien beings before. Especially as Chekov states "human rights", which may have been just a slip of the tongue - Azetbur's response is fitting, but many scenes show non-human characters, leading to numerous thoughts as a result. Clunky or not, it still is thought-provoking and on multiple levels.

Valeris (Saavik in all but name) is a giveaway. Cartwright, like Kirk, had started out being disagreeable but remaining seemingly professional and going above and beyond his kneejerk emotional reaction. As the plot went along, clues were given that Cartwright was no better than his other associates. Kirk is just shy of being a caricature in the regard as well...

And now "Wolf in the Fold" comes to mind as Scotty was said to hate all women because an accident caused by his peer had him hitting his head. By 1991, scripting should have had more nuance... unless that's the point. Azetbur and Gorkon certainly show more and different beliefs than Chang, et al. Maybe I'm perceiving undeserved complexity in a script that clearly has moments of hamfisted dialogue thrown in. Maybe the movie would have been helped if we had more dialogue showing the same level of disgust of humans, as actionary instead of reactionary (ala Chekov's ignorance-induced bit on "inalienable human rights".)

Agreed. Bits are solid, others are way out there for sure.

 

From Kirk near the end of the Klingons' first appearance (uttered in the heat of passion)

 

Yup.

Indeed, and it's more understandable than the lionized caricature the TOS characters became. They have flaws, and some of them run very deeply (cue I need my pain meme here). I get that seeing heroes struggle with very ugly attitudes is hard, but it still isn't from nowhere with these characters.

 

The biggest difference is that Chekov was also under the influence of a floating whirlygig that had the ability to manipulate peoples' emotions for the sole sake of feeding itself with the energy produced. It's almost like "The Naked Time" only more warped, akin to a horror movie.

 

There's obviously a scene missing before Kirk reflects on his blind, out of character racism with McCoy. He never gets an opportunity to experience Klingons who were not what he thought they were. I think that missing moment is what hurts this movie the most, Meyer was desperately seeking a thriller vibe but needed more of the sensitivities from "Dances with Wolves".

 

But what's really bad is that we just had that moment. In The Final Frontier, Kirk had an opportunity to work with honorable Klingons. At least one Klingon he genuinely respects. You can't go from the end of TFF to the beginning of TUC without a remarkable level of whiplash, especially since it's only supposed to be a couple of years in-universe. The story just flat-out contradicts all the character development to that point because.... plot reasons.

Nothing Kirk said in that episode was racist, though. He disparages the Klingon government, their military dictatorship, he says the Federation has "legitimate grievances" with the Empire.

He didn't call all Klingons "animals", he didn't advocate their mass extinction.

If the Kirk presented in TUC was half as nuanced as the Kirk of "Errand of Mercy", the movie would have been much better.

 

He does advocate, for a time want, fullscale war against them, even admitting that it includes killing millions including innocents, even then he's indignant at that their right to do it against them would be infringed.

At least two years in-universe is quite a long time and I think it's implied that at least that time but probably quite a bit more time passed. And respecting a few military leaders or former leaders is very different from being expected to trust the whole Empire.

 

Two years is hardly enough time for characters to go from "hey, we like hanging out with these Klingons!" to "they're sub-human animals and we should exterminate every last one of them". It's just not.

Nobody's expecting them to trust the whole Empire. In universe, the filmmakers used to draw a line between hating the Klingon empire and hating the Klingon people. The former is much more justifiable in context, but for some reason the TUC creative team decided that they needed the latter for emotional oomph. Which is why it comes off as forced and amateurish, because they had to suddenly jettison decades of character work up to and including the most recent film to get there.

Yes, because he bristles at the notion that anyone would presume to tell the Federation how to handle its "interstellar relations", as he puts it. He doesn't want a war but doesn't want anyone to tell him he can't wage war. He also articulates "legitimate grievances" against the Klingon government, their military dictatorship.

That's not anywhere near the same thing as "they're animals" and "let them (all) die".

 

^^this

I'd almost argue that Meyer had plenty of venues to amp up the thriller vibe and without straining the characters in the process - maybe he found no other way than to use Kirk's subplot and shoehorn it in there as it would be the least controversial way of moving forward...

...Which is still sad, since Kirk in ST3 did try to save Kruge after Kruge murdered his son and in pursuit of a terraforming tool misperceived as being a weapon... there are discontinuities in that alone, on top of ST5 where the last scenes seemed very amicable as if they all had an epiphany... which was short-lived, it seemed. It took ST6 to more fully turn things around for the better.

As for McCoy - for me he could go either way. He otherwise was trying to be a positive influence in 6 (after his initial "I wouldn't" about congratulating Kirk) in saying how the Klingons would not lose their culture*, but in 4 he made a comment about the Klingon ship's interior that felt much out of character too. McCoy is often used for "edgy jokes", but it didn't work for me in 1986 or now. The Spock/McCoy banter worked because we know they supported each other when it counted, Spock always took the high road and knew McCoy was just a weirdo at times, who never truly meant his jibes toward him in bad spirits. It's not like Spock never made jibes against humans either and he did it knowing it was just as much a wind-up of the sort McCoy used.

* though note ST6 just loves to use the word "assimilate" despite that one TNG two-part episode, "The Best of Both Worlds", using it incessantly, which must have made the heads of fans of both crews in 1991 explode big-time...

 

Assimilate is not exactly an uncommon word.

 

Speaking of stupid...my latest bit for WhatCulture is all about The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (link).

 

He might respect individuals. He has little regard for the group as a hole. And yes, that does happen with people. This isn't "whiplash" as much as Kirk facing down the very real idea of not just one or two Klingons he could "get along with" but a full change in the relationship between the two powers.

That's a much bigger pill to swallow than a light reception dinnner with a Klingon crew, or sharing a sensible chuckle with Kang.