Review of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) by Gordon C — 27 Nov 2009

Plot discrepancy alert: when about to fight the invisible Klingon bird of prey towards the end of the film, Uhuru makes a suggestion, "What about all the equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies?".

But in the beginning of the film, it's the Excelsior under the command of Captain Sulu, not the Enterprise, which has been on a mission to catalogue gaseous anomalies.

Boy, I sure hope someone got fired for that one.

But then, maybe the film makers felt that, if you can ignore the idiotic trial sequence, the ham-fisted ruse used by Kirk and Spock to trap the traitor, and the reputedly "inescapable" prison colony from which Kirk and McCoy manage to abscond without even breaking a sweat, then you're probably not going to worry about a little inconsistency in the plot.

That trial scene is really quite a laugh, actually. Kirk and McCoy appear to have a Klingon lawyer assigned to defend them, but all he does is stand around shouting, "Objection!" at everything the prosecutor says. Why does he bother? I mean the judge doesn't deign to rule on most of his objections, and even when they are sustained, the prosecution carries on regardless, without any censure from the bench. Perhaps, since the prosecution offers nothing by way of evidence other than opinion, it doesn't matter. It's obviously intended to be a kangaroo court anyway - I just think it would have been nice if they'd put a bit more thought into what a Klingon trial might be like.

Having said all that, this film is considered by many to be the best of the Star Trek movies (unless perhaps you count the latest one). That probably says something about the overall quality of the whole series, really.