- 2 days ago
The original Star Trek crew's final adventure redeemed the franchise but still suffers from dumb.
Category
đź“ş
TVTranscript
00:00The critical and box office failure of 1989's Star Trek V The Final Frontier was almost the
00:06final installment for the original series' crew movies, but with Trek's 25th anniversary in 1991,
00:12Paramount was eager to cash in with a better swan song. The resulting The Undiscovered Country aims
00:18high with its end-of-the-Cold War allegory, moments for all the regular cast, an innovative
00:23zero-gravity assassination sequence, characters facing their various prejudices, a scenery-chewing
00:29performance by Christopher Plummer as Klingon General Chang, and a tense cinematic space battle
00:35intercut with a second assassination plot. What's not to like? Well, for all the pluses, there are
00:41minuses. In addition to some heavy-handed and arguably out-of-character bigotry, and literary
00:46quotes laid out with the subtlety of a photon torpedo, there are also some things that are just
00:51plain dumb. So, with all that being said, I'm Bree from Trek Culture, and let's discover 10 of the
00:57dumbest things in The Undiscovered Country. Number 10, Mighty Morphin Moronic Martia.
01:04Camiloid Martia says that her shapeshifting takes a lot of effort, and she's part of the plan to set
01:09Kirk and Bones to get killed while trying to escape, which means she knows the Klingons are coming,
01:14so why is she so stupid as to take the form of one of the assassination targets right before the
01:21axe is
01:21about to come down? And when the baddies arrive, why doesn't she shapeshift into something else when a Klingon
01:27commandant shows apparent confusion? Doesn't she have enough Mighty Morphin Mojo to do so? And if she
01:33doesn't, then it's doubly stupid that she took on Kirk's form in the first place. Furthermore, in all three of
01:39the other
01:40forms we saw her in, she spoke in her own voice. So then why did she choose to imitate Kirk's
01:45voice while
01:46doppelganger-ing him? And when the chips are down, why not revert to her own voice? No witnesses!
01:52The script makes plain that the commandant knows who he's shooting, but as played, he appears confused,
01:58which makes Martia's behaviors appear not just dumb, but hopelessly thick. We suspect this whole
02:05business exists entirely to have the whole Kirk getting vaporized shot for the trailer.
02:10Number nine. Officer thinking, start your drinking. Kirk. Would you and your party care to dine this
02:18evening aboard the Enterprise with my officers as guests of the United Federation of Planets?
02:25After Klingon Chancellor Gorkhan accepts, Lieutenant Valeris offers. Valeris. Captain, there's a supply of
02:31Romulan ale aboard. It might make the evening pass more smoothly. Kirk. Officer thinking, Lieutenant.
02:38And yeah, about that. How can Kirk possibly believe Romulan ale will make the evening go more smoothly?
02:45Intoxication tends to lower inhibitions and loosen tongues. Or does Kirk think getting hammered will
02:51make him personally feel better and damn the consequences? It's not as clear as is played in
02:57Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, but Romulan ale is supposed to be an instant drunk, which explains
03:03Kirk's odd change of expression on first sip. And here you thought he was reacting to the taste.
03:08Instant drunk or not, in a precarious political situation over a formal dinner with an enemy of
03:1370 standing years, how could anyone possibly see loosened inhibitions as a good idea? It doesn't help
03:20that the scene is edited badly. So number eight, holy ozone. Spock. The moon's decimation means a deadly
03:29pollution of their ozone. They will have depleted their supply of oxygen in approximately 50 Earth
03:33years. Say what? What does pollution of their ozone even mean? Is it akin to the human produced
03:40chemicals responsible for the Antarctic ozone hole in the late 20th century on Earth? If so, such depletion
03:47increases the amount of ultraviolet radiation that reaches a planet's surface with corresponding
03:51physical ailments and genetic and immune system damage. But it doesn't deplete oxygen. It comes
03:57across like they just tossed a word salad from some environmental lingo heard on a news report
04:02of the era. And yeah, I can attest to that. Having a degree in that field, this makes no sense.
04:08This
04:08makes no sense at all. This is a case where they definitely should have dropped the buzzwords and said
04:13something more science fictiony and direct. Like that the resulting subspace shockwave caused
04:19tremendous and lasting environmental damage, requiring them to move the entire population
04:24of the planet, Kronos, to another world. This isn't even technobabble. It's just dumb science.
04:31Number seven, the Viridium Patch. From the film's premiere, fans complained that there's no way the
04:37Klingons would send Kirk and Bones to the Gulag in their Starfleet duds, complete with the
04:42viridium patch that Spock coolly stuck to Kirk's jacket as they left the bridge. But this is
04:47actually somewhat believable and has earthly historic precedent. Under the terms of the Geneva
04:52Convention, prisoners of war cannot be stripped of their uniforms, insignias, etc. And there was some
04:59controversy at the Nuremberg trials when accused Nazi defendant uniforms were stripped of insignia and
05:04medals. As such, it's not unbelievable there's some Organian peace treaty or whatever terms which would
05:10allow Kirk and Bones to stay in their monster maroon uniforms. The thing that is unbelievable is that
05:17the Klingons would not go over these duds with a nanometer tooth comb looking for anything out of
05:22the ordinary. Do they not notice that Kirk has the thing stuck to his shoulder? Something absent from
05:29Bones' uniform and any other they've ever seen? Would this not be seen as even a bit suspicious? Or did
05:36Kirk tell them it was some fuzzy metal? And how is a patch of fuzz detectable at a distance of
05:42two
05:43sectors? Also, does Spock just happen to keep one of them at ready in his pocket at all times, ready
05:49to
05:49slap on Kirk at the event he does something impulsive? The original series often portrayed Spock as an
05:55all-purpose Swiss army knife, but this is really pushing it. Number 6. Gravity Boobs
06:02One of the film's most striking sequences is the zero-gravity assassination of Chancellor Gorkhan.
06:08As good as the sequence is, it's got some stupid stuff in it and we're not talking about the pink
06:13blood. Kronos-1's artificial gravity is knocked out by the second photon torpedo hit and in Chancellor
06:19Gorkhan's stateroom he and two aides immediately, but slowly, drift out of their chairs and one's weapon
06:26conveniently pops out of its holster and spins off. What's wrong with this picture? First of all,
06:31absence of gravity is not negative gravity. Unless these men pushed off against their bolted down
06:37chairs, the table, or the floor, they'd pretty much stay put. Same goes for the holstered weapon.
06:43Friction would have held it in place. Second, if they were concerned about free-floating helplessly
06:48around the room, they ought to have just grabbed ahold of the seemingly fixed table. And if they sense
06:53betrayal, deliberately push off and try and get to the nearest door and escape. That these boobs just
06:58flail about helplessly shows no smarts at all. Interestingly, one of the two aides in the stateroom
07:04with Gorkhan somehow manages to get outside of that room by the time the assassins arrive,
07:09and they phaser his arm off on their way in. If he could do that, then why did Gorkhan and
07:15his other
07:15aides just hang around? Near the end of the sequence, some unidentified Klingon pushes a random button on
07:22a wall and the gravity snaps back on. Was it that easy? Did he have a role in the conspiracy
07:28to delay
07:29switching the gravity back on until the assassins beamed away? Because if there's no inside man,
07:34what would have happened to the assassination had the Klingons managed to turn the gravity back on sooner?
07:39Finally, who beamed Burke and Samno to and from the Klingon ship? Valeris was on the bridge. Can the transporter
07:46be programmed to beam people out and back one remote signal? Great sequence, though it's still dumb.
07:53Number 5. Cloaking Plot Devices Spock. Gas. Gas, Captain. Under impulse power,
08:00she expends fuel like any other vessel. We call it plasma, but whatever the Klingon designation is,
08:07it is merely ionized gas. Uhura. Well, what about all the equipment we're carrying to catalog gaseous
08:13anomalies? Well, the thing's gotta have a tailpipe. And thus, utilizing surgically altered photon
08:18torpedoes, the Enterprise is able to hit General Chang's invisible prototype bird of prey and,
08:24with the Excelsior, blow it to kingdom come. Exciting. But does it make any sense? Fans have long pointed
08:31out an error in the narrative that it's Sulu's USS Excelsior that's established as cataloging gaseous
08:37planetary anomalies. They're right, but it's not the screenwriters being dumb. A brief deleted scene,
08:43on the Enterprise contained this dialogue. Gorkhan. Your research laboratory is most impressive.
08:49Kirk. Starfleet's been charting and cataloging planetary atmospheres. All vessels are equipped
08:55with chemical analytics sensors. Which would have made clear that it wasn't just Sulu's ship which
09:01had equipment on board, but that's not the problem. The real issue is it's clumsy. Nothing anyone does in
09:08the story works as a setup for this. In fact, it feels like someone imagined a way for a torpedo
09:13to hone in on a cloaked ship, then went back and put in a couple throwaway lines to rationalize it.
09:19It doesn't show our heroes being smart by figuring out a solution based on things that have happened
09:24in the story. They're just handed a solution that Spock conveniently remembers when the narrative
09:29requires it. It doesn't feel earned. And in a franchise sense, the dumbest thing here is that
09:34it took so long for anyone to think about tracing a cloaked vessel's exhaust in the first place.
09:40Number 4. Intercom Idiocy. Chang. I am as constant as the Northern Star. McCoy. I'd give real money for
09:48him to shut up. You and me both bones. What McCoy really should be questioning is just how Chang's voice
09:54is getting on the Enterprise's ship-wide public address system in the first place. And in the second
09:59place, why can't Ohura switch it off? Any comm system open enough for an outside force to broadcast
10:05through to your crew is a serious flaw and breach of ship safety. If they can force signals into your
10:11comm system, they could flood it with noise to interfere with valid orders being given.
10:15Number 3. Lost in Universal Translation. Since the 2009 Star Trek film, Ohura has been
10:22depicted as a polygot with an affinity for languages. But this wasn't the case in the original series or
10:28the movies with the cast. She was, as they used to say, a radio man. Her expertise was demonstrated
10:34to be with communications equipment, not with languages. So it makes sense that she wouldn't
10:39necessarily know the Klingon language, especially with the Universal Translator handy. In this film,
10:45she must communicate with some Klingons at a listening post and fool them into thinking the
10:49Enterprise is the freighter Ursva, doing so with the assist of eight of her shipmates,
10:54including Scottie and Chekhov, and not employing the aforementioned Universal Translator. Well,
10:59sorta. On a screen, she's looking at the Universal Translator translating Klingon into Federation
11:04Standard, aka English, but for some stupid reason, the reverse isn't true. An off-camera and obviously
11:11dubbed line by Chekhov claims a Universal Translator will be recognized as an excuse. So is its translation
11:18less believable than a bunch of people paging through ancient textbooks fumbling for the right
11:23thing to say? Okay, fine, maybe the Universal Translator has some tells that can be detected,
11:29but why not have it spit out a translation that you can check against the books? Or, hey, given someone,
11:35presumably Valeris, altered the databanks to show they'd fired torpedoes, why not say that someone has
11:40sabotaged the Universal Translator and it only translates to Pig Latin? Honestly, that would be less dumb
11:46than the scene that we got. Number 2. Space Battle? What's Space Battle?
11:53Let's consider the Enterprise's pummeling by Chang's Bird of Prey on approach to Camp Kitomer.
11:58They're representatives of the three major powers present, Federation, Klingon, and Romulan,
12:03which suggests at least three spaceships brought all these people to the planet. Where are they,
12:08though? And how is it that none of those ships spot the renegade and implicated in Gorkhan's
12:13assassination, USS Enterprise, racing towards the planet, and then inexplicably being hammered by
12:19photon torpedoes? And then the Excelsior shows and gets similarly hit. Does no one see any of this?
12:27Undetectable firewall-cloaked bird of prey aside, two Federation starships bearing down on these secret
12:32space talks ought to have been spotted by someone. Were the only ships allowed to come to the conference
12:38unarmed civilian space liners that either all landed or warped away? Does the Kitomer outpost have no
12:44means of detecting ships in space? Or is it a dumb oversight on the part of the filmmakers?
12:50We're gonna go with the last one. Number 1. Starfleet Groupthink?
12:55One of the least believable things in the first six Star Trek movies is that seven members of the
13:00crew have stuck together for 20 years with only two exceptions, largely staying in the same roles.
13:06And at the same damned stations for all that time. Those exceptions? Chekov went from navigation to
13:13weapons and defense in the motion picture, and then served as first officer on the USS Reliant in
13:18The Wrath of Khan, but by the third film was back navigating at his old post. Sulu never budged from
13:24the helm until his sixth movie where he is inexplicably the captain of the Excelsior. But six movies in,
13:30Uhura is still opening hailing frequencies, Scotty is still making the ship go, and Chekov is still plotting
13:36courses and substituting Vs for Ws. It all feels static. The static dynamic gets even more preposterous
13:44in the Undiscovered Country, where we learn that, with the exception of Sulu, they are all going to
13:49stand down in three months. The lot of them, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, and Chekov are all going
13:55to be decommissioned, seemingly at once. Why? They didn't all join at the same time, their officer
14:01commissions weren't all issued at once. The story treats them as if they're joined at the hip,
14:06as some fixed unit which cannot function unless all parts are there. It doesn't really make sense
14:10why they're all exiting the service at once. The real reason, of course, is it's the actor's
14:16retirement from their roles being literally reflected in the narrative, and that's kind of
14:20dumb. And those are the ten dumbest things in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country. Did we miss
14:26anything dumb in the Undiscovered Country? Let us know in the comments section below. If you enjoyed
14:31this video, then go ahead and give us a like, and subscribe to the channel if you aren't already.
14:36You can find us on Twitter and Blue Sky at trekculture, and on Instagram at trekcultureyt.
14:42You can also find me across various social media platforms by simply searching Trekkie Brie.
14:47And with all of that being said, I hope you all have a great rest of your day,
14:51and don't forget to live long and prosper.
Comments