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The original Star Trek crew's final adventure redeemed the franchise but still suffers from dumb.
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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,
01:15so why is she so stupid as to take the form of one of the assassination targets right before the axe 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 the
01:39other forms we saw her in, she spoke in her own voice. So then, why did she choose to imitate Kirk's voice
01:45while doppelganger-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 9. 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
02:31of Romulan 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 make
02:51him personally feel better and damn the consequences? It's not as clear as is played in Star Trek II,
02:57The Wrath of Khan, but Romulan ale is supposed to be an instant drunk, which explains Kirk's odd
03:03change of expression on first sip. And here you thought he was reacting to the taste. Instant drunk
03:09or not, in a precarious political situation over a formal dinner with an enemy of 70 standing years,
03:15how could anyone possibly see loosened inhibitions as a good idea? It doesn't help that the scene is edited
03:21badly. So number eight, holy ozone. Spock. The moon's decimation means a deadly pollution of their ozone.
03:30They will have depleted their supply of oxygen in approximately 50 Earth years. Say what? What does
03:36pollution of their ozone even mean? Is it akin to the human produced chemicals responsible for the
03:42Antarctic ozone hole in the late 20th century on Earth? If so, such depletion increases the amount of
03:48ultraviolet radiation that reaches a planet's surface with corresponding physical ailments and
03:53genetic and immune system damage. But it doesn't deplete oxygen. It comes across like they just
03:58tossed a word salad from some environmental lingo heard on a news report of the era. And yeah, I can
04:04attest to that having a degree in that field. This makes no sense. This makes no sense at all. This is a
04:10case where they definitely should have dropped the buzzwords and said something more science fictiony and
04:15direct. Like that the resulting subspace shockwave caused tremendous and lasting environmental damage,
04:22requiring them to move the entire population of the planet, Kronos, to another world. This isn't even
04:27technobabble. It's just dumb science. Number seven, the viridium patch. From the film's premiere,
04:35fans complained that there's no way the Klingons would send Kirk and Bones to the gulag in their
04:40starfleet duds complete with the viridium patch that Spock coolly stuck to Kirk's jacket as they
04:45left the bridge. But this is actually somewhat believable and has earthly historic precedent.
04:51Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, prisoners of war cannot be stripped of their uniforms,
04:56insignias, etc. And there was some controversy at the Nuremberg trials when accused Nazi defendant
05:02uniforms were stripped of insignia and medals. As such, it's not unbelievable there's some Organian
05:08peace treaty or whatever terms which would allow Kirk and Bones to stay in their monster maroon uniforms.
05:14The thing that is unbelievable is that the Klingons would not go over these duds with a nanometer
05:20tooth comb looking for anything out of the ordinary. Do they not notice that Kirk has the thing stuck to
05:26his shoulder? Something absent from Bones' uniform and any other they've ever seen? Would this not be
05:33seen as even a bit suspicious? Or did Kirk tell them it was some fuzzy metal? And how is a patch of fuzz
05:41detectable at a distance of two sectors? Also, does Spock just happen to keep one of them at ready in his
05:47pocket at all times, ready to slap on Kirk at the event he does something impulsive? The original series
05:53often portrayed Spock as an all-purpose Swiss army knife, but this is really pushing it.
05:59Number 6. Gravity Boobs One of the film's most striking sequences is the zero-gravity assassination
06:06of Chancellor Gorkhan. As good as the sequence is, it's got some stupid stuff in it and we're not
06:12talking about the pink blood. Kronos-1's artificial gravity is knocked out by the second photon torpedo
06:17hit and in Chancellor Gorkhan's stateroom, he and two aides immediately, but slowly, drift out of their
06:24chairs and one's weapon conveniently pops out of its holster and spins off. What's wrong with this
06:30picture? First of all, absence of gravity is not negative gravity. Unless these men pushed off against
06:36their bolted down chairs, the table or the floor, they'd pretty much stay put. Same goes for the
06:41holstered weapon. Friction would have held it in place. Second, if they were concerned about free floating
06:47helplessly around the room, they ought to have just grabbed ahold of the seemingly fixed table,
06:52and if they sense betrayal, deliberately push off and try and get to the nearest door and escape.
06:57That these boobs just flail about helplessly shows no smarts at all. Interestingly, one of the two aides
07:03in the stateroom with Gorkhan somehow manages to get outside of that room by the time the assassins
07:08arrive, and they phaser his arm off on their way in. If he could do that, then why did Gorkhan and his
07:15other aides just hang around? Near the end of the sequence, some unidentified Klingon pushes a random
07:21button on a wall and the gravity snaps back on. Was it that easy? Did he have a role in the conspiracy
07:28to delay switching the gravity back on until the assassins beamed away? Because if there's no inside
07:34man, what would have happened to the assassination had the Klingons managed to turn the gravity back
07:38on sooner? Finally, who beamed Burke and Samno to and from the Klingon ship? Valeris was on the
07:44bridge. Can the transporter be programmed to beam people out and back when remote signal?
07:50Great sequence, though it's still dumb. Number 5. Cloaking Plot Devices
07:56Spock. Gas. Gas, Captain. Under impulse power, she expends fuel like any other vessel.
08:03We call it plasma, but whatever the Klingon designation is, it is merely ionized gas.
08:09Uhura. Well, what about all the equipment we're carrying to catalog gaseous anomalies? Well,
08:14the thing's gotta have a tailpipe. And thus, utilizing surgically altered photon torpedoes,
08:19the Enterprise is able to hit General Chang's invisible prototype bird of prey and, with the
08:24Excelsior, 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 on
08:43the 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 analytic 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 to
09:14hone 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
09:23in 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 it took
09:35so long for anyone to think about tracing a cloaked vessel's exhaust in the first place.
09:39Number 4. Intercom Idiocy
09:42Chang. I am as constant as the Northern Star. McCoy. I'd give real money for him to shut up.
09:49You and me both bones. What McCoy really should be questioning is just how Chang's voice is getting
09:55on the Enterprise's ship-wide public address system in the first place. And in the second place, why
10:00can't Ohura switch it off? Any comm system open enough for an outside force to broadcast through
10:05to your crew is a serious flaw and breach of ship safety. If they can force signals into your comm
10:11system, they could flood it with noise to interfere with valid orders being given.
10:15Number 3. Lost in Universal Translation
10:19Since the 2009 Star Trek film, Ohura has been depicted as a polygot with an affinity for languages.
10:26But this wasn't the case in the original series or the movies with the cast. She was, as they used to
10:31say, a radio man. Her expertise was demonstrated to be with communications equipment, not with languages.
10:37So it makes sense that she wouldn't necessarily know the Klingon language, especially with the
10:42Universal Translator handy. In this film, she must communicate with some Klingons at a listening post
10:48and fool them into thinking the Enterprise is the freighter Ursva. Doing so with the assist of eight of
10:53her shipmates, including Scottie and Chekhov, and not employing the aforementioned Universal
10:58Translator. Well, sorta. On a screen, she's looking at the Universal Translator translating Klingon
11:03into Federation Standard, aka English, but for some stupid reason, the reverse isn't true. An off-camera
11:10and obviously dubbed line by Chekhov claims a Universal Translator will be recognized as an excuse.
11:16So, is its translation less believable than a bunch of people paging through ancient textbooks,
11:22fumbling for the right thing to say? Okay, fine, maybe the Universal Translator has some tells that
11:27can be detected, but why not have it spit out a translation that you can check against the books?
11:33Or, hey, given someone, presumably Valeris, altered the databanks to show they'd fired torpedoes,
11:39why not say that someone has sabotaged the Universal Translator and it only translates to Pig Latin?
11:45Honestly, that would be less dumb than the scene that we got.
11:48Number 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 though?
12:08And how is it that none of those ships spot the renegade and implicated in Gorkhan's assassination,
12:14USS Enterprise, racing towards the planet and then inexplicably being hammered by photon torpedoes.
12:21And then the Excelsior shows and gets similarly hit. Does no one see any of this? Undetectable
12:27fire while 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.
12:52Number 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
13:35plotting courses and substituting Vs for Ws. It all feels static. The static dynamic gets even more
13:43preposterous in the Undiscovered Country, where we learn that, with the exception of Sulu, they are
13:48all going to stand down in three months. The lot of them, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, and Chekov,
13:54are all going to be decommissioned seemingly at once. Why? They didn't all join at the same time,
14:00their officer commissions weren't all issued at once. The story treats them as if they're joined
14:05at the hip, as some fixed unit which cannot function unless all parts are there. It doesn't
14:10really make sense why they're all exiting the service at once. The real reason, of course,
14:14is it's the actors' retirement from their roles being literally reflected in the narrative,
14:19and that's kinda dumb. And those are the 10 dumbest things in Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country.
14:25Did we miss anything dumb in the Undiscovered Country? Let us know in the comment section below.
14:30If you enjoyed this video, then go ahead and give us a like, and subscribe to the channel if you
14:35aren't already. You can find us on Twitter and Blue Sky, at Trek Culture, and on Instagram,
14:40at Trek Culture YT. You can also find me across various social media platforms by simply searching
14:46Trekkie Brie. And 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!
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