The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2020: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), directed by Nicholas Meyer

 

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Where No Man Has Gone Before", by Leonard Nimoy

      Talk about a legacy, huh? When I covered Star Trek: The Motion Picture all the way back in Marathon ‘15, that I would even do the other films was still a vague concept in my mind. You never really know what your situation is going to be in the future after all, and it’s certainly possible that in the intervening time between Octobers I could have lost interest in Star Trek, or found some other film to fill that spot on the card, or just covered them in a separate review altogether, or just fucking died and never got to watch them.  But no, every year the Marathon has come and gone, and every year for the past five years we have borne witness to the adventures of Captain Kirk and the USS Enterprise, for better or for worse (looking at you Star Trek V). Now, after three seasons, an animated series, a couple albums and a shipload of homoerotic fanfiction, we’ve reached the end of the road. This is the end, my beautiful friends, the end.

      Released in 1991, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country shows it’s not kidding right out of the gate by putting Nicholas Meyer in the director’s chair, who had previously brought great success to the franchise through Wrath of Kahn (Marathon buffs will also known him from Time After Time). With a tip of the hat to the then-recently departed Gene Roddenberry at the start, we join the USS Excelsior, where Captain Sulu is enjoying his ‘three days away from retirement’ status. Those good vibes are soon interrupted by the Excelsior being rocked by an energy wave, which as it turns out was the Klingon moon Praxis blowing the fuck up. Praxis was the main power source for the entire Klingon Empire as it turns out, their entire civilization is set to collapse in a couple decades with it gone, so with the sword of Damocles looming above their head they finally sit down to talk. The long conflict between the Klingons and the Federation seems to be coming to an end, but there are some among Starfleet that balk at the thought of diplomacy. Folk like Captain Kirk, who seems to be leaning towards the ‘genocide’ option, and thus the natural choice to break the ice with Chancellor Gorkon (played by David Warner is his second Trek role in a row) of the Klingon High Council before transporting him to a peace conference. When Gorkon is later assassinated and all the evidence points to the Enterprise being responsible, Kirk and McCoy (who was with him at the time) are arrested and put on trial for the crime. Yet if the Enterprise was not responsible for the attack, as the crew seem absolutely certain of, then that begs the question of who did? With the clock ticking ever closer to the start of the peace conference, it’s up to Spock and the rest of the crew to discover the true culprits behind Gorkon’s death, rescue Kirk and McCoy, and save both the Federation and the Klingons from falling back into war. All in a day’s work.

      With this film being released the year it was, it’s impossible not to draw parallels between the situation between the Federation and the Klingons with that of the United States and the Soviet Union, with the destruction of Praxis resembling the Chernobyl disaster and Gorkon being a stand-in for Gorbachev. What I appreciate about this story though, especially with the benefit of hindsight, is that Leonard Nimoy, Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal do not make the Federation pure-hearted heroes or the Klingons dastardly bad guys, and in fact give the Klingons many reasons not to trust the Federation. Kirk outright advocates for the extinction of the Klingon race near the beginning of the film (I guess a dead son you talked to twice is equal to a couple million dead infants), and most of the crew is casually racist towards Klingons even up to the end of the film. The Klingons bring up how the Federation is a ‘humans-only club’, mirroring that of the U.S. and certain European countries influencing world affairs, and indeed as we see from later Trek series about 90% of the people we see are humans. The Klingons bring up that collaborating with the Federation will destroy their culture, and while they’re still going strong later in the Trek verse, in real life the U.S.-backed Boris Yeltsin regime caused such economic chaos and widespread misery that Russia to this day has never fully recovered, to say nothing of the other former Soviet Republics. Really the worst thing you could say about the Klingons in this film are their penal colonies, a reference to the infamous Soviet gulags, but considering the Federation also has penal colonies it seems like something of a moot point, and we’ve talked on the blog before on the United States’ hypocritical views on prison. You could argue that this goes against Gene Roddenberry’s vision of utopian human society, but I do prefer a Federation that isn’t perfect but is willing to do the right thing and go for peace over the Federation in The Final Frontier, who half-ass a planet-sized vanity project and then leave its citizenry to basically live like animals in a blighted wasteland.

 

      Speaking of The Final Frontier, hoo boy, what a difference a change of directors makes. I’ve heard that William Shatner had requested and was denied an increase of budget for Star Trek V, which was why the special effects by the end weren’t that spectacular, but that doesn’t explain all the shitty attempts at comedy and the fact that a movie titled Star Trek spends most of its time in a desert. Not only does The Undiscovered Country look better all around (the Enterprise looks sleek and futuristic rather than a broken hunk of shit), not only does the story flow better, not only is there a bigger & better cast, not only do the crew actually get some dialogue, but Nicholas Meyer did it all for 6 million dollars less than Shatner. Hell, Wrath of Kahn, often regarded as the best Star Trek film, only cost 12 million! It worked, just as Star Trek VI works, because Meyer tells simple stories in extraordinary settings. Wrath of Kahn was a revenge story combat inspired by submarine combat, Star Trek VI is a mystery story and a political thriller. There are still the trappings of science fiction there, you’re still dealing with outer space and aliens and what have you, but the special effects are more enhancing the story than dominating it. Which has always been a major point of contention in the argument between Star Trek and Star Wars, but I think that sixth Star Star Trek movie has got me more invested in the political drama it was telling than the sixth Star Wars movie ever did, even if it had less pew pew lasers. 

      Hell, Nicholas Meyer even gets Kirk better than Shatner did during his time in the chair. Kirk in The Final Frontier was in full-on smarm mode for most of the film, and after a while he came across as a jackass. Kirk in The Undiscovered Country not only gets the denouement of his arc that’s been brewing since the second film, dealing with his son’s death and his feelings towards the Klingons, but in general he just feels more in line with the character we know as James T. Kirk. Stuff which doesn’t really play as well in 1991 than it did in 1969, like him beating 7 foot tall aliens and making out with sexy ladies, but since was to be the last ride for the OST crew you can forgive trotting out a bit of nostalgia.

      Of the rest of the main cast, Spock is the only other person to come out of this series a different person/Vulcan than when he went in, having mastered the ability to express his emotions without becoming a nutbar like other Vulcans (also Sherlock Holmes is real in the Trek universe and Spock is related to him). McCoy is just McCoy, and the rest of the crew, while more active this time around are just the crew, quirks and all. Again, if the intent is to play on OST nostalgia then it would be fine if we returned to the old characterization, but we never left it! In fact in some ways we’ve gone backwards, as that whole Uhura/Scotty romance thrown around in earlier movies has been completely dropped. It’s nice to see Sulu the captain of his own ship, even though it’s also a convenient excuse to write him out of most of the film, but one of the major things I wish these films had done was to utilize the opportunity to deepen those characters which might have been considered shallow in the original series rather than devote so much attention to Kirk and Spock. Trek has always been an ensemble-based show and I believe the writing should have reflected that in the transition to film, especially if they were planning on making half a dozen of them.

      I admit I also wasn’t all that impressed with our two major non-main cast characters in the picture, helmsman Valeris (played by Kim Cattrall) and the *SPOILER* antagonist General Chang. Apparently Kim’s direction on how to play a stoic alien zen buddhist was ‘regular person speaking at a formal function’, way too similar to Spock in temperament without having earned that development. As for Chang, visually he continues the theme of nostalgia by making him an OST-style Klingon, which means he basically looks like a dude dressed as a pirate in a room full of dudes dressed like aliens. His whole ‘quoting Shakespeare’ gimmick makes him more memorable than Christopher Lloyd’s character in Star Trek III, but he does it so often it gets tedious, and comes across as kind of a Kahn-lite. While the story itself has multiple layers to it, Star Trek VI opts instead to undercut that by making Chang into the tired ‘dastardly Klingon’ cliche. They could have easily used the mutual enmity between the Federation and the Klingons to make Chang a nuanced villain, a dark mirror of Kirk perhaps, but instead they have him twirling his metaphorical mustache (as opposed to his actual mustache) doing bad things for seemingly no other reason than that he’s an asshole. Rather bland when you consider that you could see more interesting Klingons just by staying at home and turning on TNG.

      It could be that extreme dislike of Star Trek V is causing my brain to overcompensate, but I’m going to give Star Trek VI the recommendation. Nicholas Meyer doesn’t blow the roof of the joint but he does manage to close this series out on a high note, and while I might have personally wanted more, it’s nice to see the crew of the old Enterprise ride off into the sunset one last time. Overall I’d say my experience with the OST Trek films hasn’t strayed too far from the popular consensus: I liked Star Trek: The Motion Picture (the only one on the planet seems like), liked Wrath of Kahn, can barely remember anything about Search for Spock, liked The Voyage Home, hated The Final Frontier, and now liked The Undiscovered Country. An above average experience! Does that mean then that next year’s Marathon will see us digging into the Next Generation Trek films? Maybe, but before that we’ve got one more book that needs closing…

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016 -- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), directed by Nicholas Meyer

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Difference Between Us", by Leonard Nimoy

     So the last time we discussed Star Trek in the Marathon, which was Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I believe I said something along the lines of not being sure whether or not I was really a Trek fan. After all, I was a fan of The Next Generation and mostly of TOS (still am), but I never really felt much of a desire to explore much beyond that. I wasn’t very interested in the games or the expanded universe, I didn’t really feel a need to watch the films beyond the first,and I had read enough bad press about Enterprise and Voyager that I was probably better off marathoning the last two season of Sliders instead (don’t try that at home folks). I dunno, is it just a symptom of our modern times that to be a fan of something, you must absorb all the media connected to that thing? Is sitting through Voyager some kind of test to prove my opinion is worthwhile, even if I would ultimately regret the experience? Is my enjoyment of Trek invalid, am I a lesser person because I work within a certain amount of material and content to leave things at that? The answer would generally be no, but you never can tell in these modern times. You either love it or you hate it, and no one is allowed to hear the end of it until everyone is sick of it.

     Still, since I’m close to finishing up Deep Space 9 and thus closing the book on Star Trek for the time being, I decided to try out what is probably the most well-regarded film in the series: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also directed Time After Time earlier on this list. Normally I try to avoid things like that, having multiple films by the same director on the same list, but it is the unexpected bits of whimsy that make the days bearable, am I right?

     In the entire Federation of Planets, there are few names that are respected as highly as that of James Kirk and the crew of the USS Enterprise. It’s been years since those halcyon days however, and the aging Admiral can’t help but wonder if the advancement of his career was worth giving up command of a starship, of the Enterprise for the safety of a desk. This realization happens to coincide with the discovery of a blast from Kirk’s past: Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically-engineered megalomaniac from Earth’s past (1996, to be precise) who had been thawed out by the Enterprise crew, defeated, and left on a deserted planet to make do with what he could find. Which might have worked, if only the planet next door hadn’t exploded and turned Khan’s planet into a wasteland, which ultimately lead to his wife’s death. Khan is not a forgive and forget kind of guy, and it doesn't take long before he procures a ship and starts on his path of vengeance. A path that involves a mysterious device known as Project Genesis, a fantastical that would be able to bring life to dead worlds and death to living ones. It’s up to Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise to stop Khan, get back Project Genesis and save the known galaxy one more time. It’s not like they aren’t used to it by now.

     Although they are both Trek films, in many ways Wrath of Khan is a sharp contrast to its predecessor, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Whereas TMP could be considered a more traditionally minded science fiction film, heavily influenced by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Golden Age sci-fi, WoK is very much an action movie, packed full of all the explosions and starship combat (which is remarkably like fighting in a submarine) that you might have missed. Similarly, the story in Khan is also far more streamlined and far more direct than it was in the original, which was much more slower-paced and interested in building atmosphere. Simplifying the ploy and focusing on action makes Khan a relatively easier film to get into than TMP, and I can see why pop culture would gravitate towards it as the ‘first good Trek film’, even if I don’t quite agree with it. Personally, I see Wrath of Khan as more of a companion piece: Star Trek: The Motion Picture represents the wonder of discovery, the drive for knowledge and understanding that has pushed humanity to progress further and become better (hopefully) as the years go by. Wrath of Khan looks back at our past, a history of war and hatred and self-destruction that needs to be overcome for us before life can begin to move forward (or so I theorize). The metaphysical(some might say spiritual) and the corporeal, both channeled through Gene Roddenberry’s idealistic vision in the potential of mankind, and the importance of working for the future. And maybe I’m at optimist at heart, because that’s how I like to view it, instead of believing they dumbed things down in order to sell more tickets.

     Wrath of Khan has its flaws, of course. The titular Khan has a tendency to come off as a bit of a dunce despite being a genetically enhanced super-genius (that’s called situational irony folks) and it doesn’t really feel like they make full use of the TOS cast aside from Kirk. Even Spock, despite being one of the most important characters in the film, feels far more ephemeral than you might expect given what happens. Maybe they didn’t really feel the need to do anything like that, because just getting to see the original cast was enough? I dunno, it’s not really a damning criticism, but it was obvious enough that I noticed it.

     If you’re looking for a film that captures that unique beauty of the late 70s/early 80s sci-fi aesthetic without getting bogged down too many messages and themes, then it’s hard to go wrong with Wrath of Khan. You don’t even have to watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture if you don’t want to, since there’s nothing that carries over plot wise as far as I can recall, so there’s no excuse not to see it. Unless you have an extreme phobia of insects crawling into your ear canal, but that only happens a couple times, and they only linger on it squirming into a person’s brain for a couple seconds at most. It’s fine.

     Totally fine.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2016: Time After Time (1979), directed by Nicholas Meyer

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Time After Time", by Chet Baker

     You ever notice how in TV and such, I’m looking at you Quantum Leap, that whenever you’re dealing with historical figures they really hit you over the head with the whole ‘this is what they’re famous for’ thing? Like if they do something with Albert Einstein, they always have a moment where he figures out the Theory of Relativity or atomic energy and what not. Or it’s Arthur Conan Doyle, they have him solving mysteries or playing Watson to somebody. As though it’s not enough for our protagonists (if they aren’t the figures themselves) to interact with these people, we always have to be on the stepping stones of history, to see the moment of inspiration that sets these people off on their life’s journey. I mean, is there anyone the Doctor doesn’t know at this point? Because I’m pretty sure he’s saved every major novelist and the Queen of England at least 5 times.

     It makes sense then that eventually the bottle would land on H.G. Wells. He was the grandfather of science fiction after all, even if he didn’t establish the literary genre he certainly brought such concepts into the public eye, while embodying the progressive spirit that the genre would be based on. Plus the wealth of material you get to work with; alien invasions, time travel, grotesque animal men (manimals, if you’re from the 80s), future wars, invisible killers, the possibilities are endless. Not to mention that, as an avid pacifist, women’s right advocate and all around nice guy, you can use him as a benchmark for how great we are as a society for having progressed. Wanna remind people how awesome women’s liberation or children not working in sweatshops is? Throw some dude from the Victorian era into the future and have him be all like ‘woah man, women can vote and Little Jimmy didn’t have his fingers ripped off in a textile factory? I am flabbergasted, to say the least’. Really makes us modern folks feel like we accomplished something, when in reality we just take this stuff for granted and actively work against other people trying to share those same freedoms.

     Anyway, that mindset, and the whole ‘novelists live out their books’ thing is what fueled the creation of 1979’s Time After Time, starring Malcolm McDowell (whom you might remember from A Clockwork Orange), David Warner (whom you might remember from Brazil, The Omen, Tron or Batman: The Animated Series) and Mary Steenburgen (whom you might remember from Back to the Future Part III, Elf, or the award winning film Melvin and Howard). Directed by Nicholas Meyer, who was also the director/writer for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the writer for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and The Prince of Egypt. A solid wellspring of talent to work from, seems like.

     The story goes as follows: In a Victorian era London not entirely unlike our own, a not-yet-famous writer known as H.G. Wells has stepped beyond the realm of theories and into the world of super-science when he constructs an honest to goodness time machine. The greatest scientific discovery since that guy figured that if you dumped your shit away from your drinking water you wouldn’t get typhoid some might say, but before Wells is able to test his extraordinary invention, it is stolen by his former friend John Leslie Stephenson, who just so happens to be the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper. Jack ends up in San Francisco in the far flung year and Wells, feeling a bit responsible for allowing a sociopathic murderer free reign over the entirety of human history, decides to go after him. Wells was an idealist however, a utopist who genuinely believed that humanity was one step away from reaching a Golden Age of peace & prosperity. How does a man who believes in the universal goodness of man deal with a world that’s already been through two world wars? A world where books are gone in favor of televisions, where horse-drawn carriages have been replaced with fantastical motorized vehicles, and women do things other than push out kids and die of tuberculosis? Well, presumably you’d watch the movie if you really wanted to find that out, because I’m not telling you.

     Now you’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘a movie where H.G. Wells tracks Jack the Ripper across time & space? That sounds fucking awesome!!’, and you’d be right in the sense that that is basically what the movie is about and that the idea sounds cool as hell, but Time After Time falls a little bit short of expectations. Here’s a handy bulleted list to address the major points:

• Despite being a movie that prominently features a time machine, and the actual Wells’ novel The Time Machine taking place at several points in the future, Time After Time deals almost entirely in one place (San Fran) and one time (1979). Might seem like a bit of a ripoff, but I guess the fact that Frisco is technically a the future to Wells they get away with it. 

• Despite being a movie about H.G. Wells tracking down Jack the Ripper, it doesn’t really feel too much like anything resembling a suspenseful thriller. In fact, most of the movie is spent dealing with the romance between Wells and modern day woman Amy (Steenburgen), and the ultimate confrontation with Jack, the clashing of ideologies, is treated more as an afterthought when compared to the ‘relationship’. Take that as you will. 

• Despite being the major driving force of the film (you know, aside from that whole ‘time traveling serial killer’ thing), Amy just rubs me the wrong way as a character. Like they make it a major point of the film that women’s liberation is great and that women are independent and can do things for themselves, but then she doesn’t do anything on her own terms aside from screwing H.G. Wells. She’s the damsel in distress, she does everything Wells asks her to do, and at a time when her life is in danger and she needs to stay alert she gulps down booze and valium like she’s Lucille Bluth. While still pushing this ‘I am woman hear me roar’ line. I dunno, seems a bit hypocritical. 

• Plenty of ‘stranger in a strange land’ humor, which can be good or bad depending on your preferences. ‘Look, he doesn’t understand telephones!’ or ‘Tee hee, look at him try to work an electric toothbrush!’ type stuff. If you’ve seen Encino Man, My Favorite Martian or about hundreds of other movies over the years, then you get the jist of it. I never really found Time After Time all that funny though, despite the scenes of Malcolm McDowell being mystified at the sight of Mickey Mouse. Whimsical maybe, but never really funny. 

• The runtime. Time After Time clocks in at about 2 hours long, which isn’t an uncommon thing in modern movies, but it just doesn’t utilize it well. You really start to feel the drag at the start of the second half, and considering that this isn’t a movie with a lot of action in the first place, expect your mind to wander while the Victorian bonefest plays itself out. Would it have been better if Meyer had lopped a few minutes from the final cut 

     Time After Time is a charming film though, in spite of those issues. Wells’ wide-eyed wonder at this strange world that we call the present can be a bit infectious too, even if he ends up becoming a little jaded by the end. Maybe not jaded, maybe it’s more that he becomes a bit more grounded in his beliefs. And in so doing, maybe we modern cynical types can learn to be a bit more hopeful. If you’re looking for something light this Halloween season, then this might be the film for you. Recommended.