As a shock to absolutely no one, I'm a Trekker. I prefer Next Generation to the Kirk series and I do enjoy DS9, and a few episodes of Voyager. As a Trekker, I do ascribe to the Even Number Theory when it comes to the Trek films. The better Star Trek movies are the even numbered sequels: Wrath of Khan (Star Trek II -- the one with Ricardo Montalban), The Voyage Home (Star Trek IV -- the one with the whales), First Contact (Star Trek VIII -- the one with the Borg). Along those lines, I'm a fan of number six.
The plot of the film is a thinly-vieled take on Glasnost. In the original series, the Klingons were the Russian stand-ins -- a militaristic, ugly crew who were all about domination and aggression. The Undiscovered Country starts with a Chernobyl-like disaster. Praxis, the Klingon moon that supplies the bulk of their energy resources explodes and severely damages the atmosphere of their main planet, Kronos. The Federation then comes to help them, and this starts to bring the end of 70 years of galatic war. Furthering this, there are a lot of lines that make this analogy fairly obvious.
Spock: There's an old Vulcan proverb. Only Nixon can go to China.
Klingon General Chang: All warriors in space are cold warriors.
The ending of the cold war is a good metaphor to frame the action of the movie, which is about a conspiracy to end the war between the Klingons and the Federation. But the film is entertaining first, and cold war screed second. It moves very well and quick enough. The acting is hammy where it needs to be and restrained for the rest of the time. While it's rather obvious the budget on the film is rather meager in sci-fi terms, the film looks good and is designed well. And it's the only film I can think of that features some alien flirting between Leonard Nimoy and a pre-Sex and the City but post-Porky's Kim Catrall as the new Vulcan helmsman. And since his mom was the casting director, Christian Slater pops up in a 3 line role as an ensign serving under Sulu on The Excelsior.
It's fun, it's funny at times, thrilling in others, and hey, they quote a lot of Shakespeare. What's not to like?
During the trial scene when all the Klingons are chanting, "Kirk! Kirk! Kirk!," my friend Scott asked, "Do you think there's one Klingon at the back going, 'McCoy! McCoy! McCoy!'?"
"As if his family had a long-standing feud with Dr. McCoy's?" I asked. "Wouldn't that make him 'Hatfield the Klingon'?"
: )
Get it? Anybody?.....
Never mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield-McCoy_feud
Posted by: Shane | May 15, 2006 at 02:33 PM