Well it was. Following along that old time tradition of labeling the odd-numbered Star Treks as inferior to the even-numbered ones, I set myself up for failure with the 1st, 3rd, and 5th, and got varying degrees of just that.
But I may have been far too generous in watching this film, due to its being even-numbered, and made by the same director who made Wrath of Khan.
I can't precisely point out just where or why, but this entire film felt like it was missing several hours of exposition, perhaps backstory from episodes of "The Next Generation" I never saw, and I end up feeling completely lost and confused, even in the face of the obvious.
The story claims to be some sort of "Cold War in Space!" idea, yet perhaps my being born in 1988 and never experiencing the Cold War leads me to not really understand this concept. I can definitely see it, but I can't FEEL it.
The story involves some kind of planetary explosion that threatens to destroy the Klingon Empire, so a Klingon ambassador goes to the Federation to try to negotiate a lasting peace treaty and an opening of the two nations to work together and help them. For reasons of "DRAMA!", Kirk is inexplicably racist against Klingons. This is explained via that old Red Herring, David, his son who was killed by the Klingons. In my original review for Search for Spock, I praised this as a show of Christopher Lloyd's Klingon guy's menace and its immediate effect on Kirk, which of course could not be as powerful as the loss of Spock, given that Kirk never really knew David.
But after watching the entire Original Series, and seeing Kirk's almost friendly relationship with enemy Klingons, this sudden fanatic, racist hatred of them in Star Trek VI really does seem to come out of nowhere. I mirrored Spock in feeling sudden confusion and shock at Kirk's inexplicable hatred of Klingons.
And for some reason, I never really feel as though this hatred is anything more than a Red Herring, or otherwise a plot device that never really ends up fully utilized by the script. He hates Klingons, yes, but this never in any way forces him to confront his racism or compromise his principles due to racism (or overcoming that racism), and in the end Kirk just handsomes his way through the events without really learning anything beyond the cheap and tawdry after-school special "Well I know now that Klingons don't ALL really want to hurt us, so I'll stop being racist!" message.
Racism is NOT a jealousy or a grudge or something cheap and tawdry that can be resolved by a single moment or sheer willpower. It can definitely be world-changing for a racist to have someone of the other race do something for or to them to completely change their view, but this movie has nothing at all like that---there are no Klingons who really affect Kirk in this way, not even the ambassador who confides in Kirk, up to his own death.
The main storyline involves an assassination of the Ambassador by people dressed as Federation crewmembers, coming after the apparent attack on the Ambassador's ship by the Enterprise, though the Enterprise did not fire. This leads to Kirk and McCoy being arrested by the Klingons (as they left the ship to go help the Ambassador afterwards) and them being sentenced to a prison planet after being incompetently defended by Colonel Worf (played by Michael Dorn, but not the same Worf as in TNG).
So we get an entire long and dreadfully dull sequence of Kirk and McCoy on a snowy prison planet, tangling with a shapeshifter, escaping, only to be betrayed by her and caught by the Klingons.
Meanwhile, Spock begins to uncover the conspiracy of the Ambassador's assassination, and for the life of me it just.. makes.. NO.. SENSE!!!
I fail to see the logic behind any of the motives behind the revealed conspirators, including a purely reverse-race based decision to cast the Admiral played by Brock Peters (who is black, btw) as the main racist against Klingons. The documentaries I saw seemed to vaguely imply that this decision was made based on some sort of attempt to show racism in an ironic sort of light, given that the black guy is one of the highest ranking people in Starfleet and is racist against similar brown (alien) people.
But the entire thing just makes NO SENSE! So he's racist, but WHY does he want to assassinate the Ambassador? Is he looking to provoke war with the Klingons? If so, WHY? Unless the Klingons are as stupid as they've been gradually shaped into being (as in, from TOS slick and smarmy clever bastards to TNG proud warrior race guys who hold honor above reason), then there's no concievable way the Federation could go to war with the Klingons and expect not to be horribly butchered, even if they win the war. Maybe the Romulans would emerge and smash the shattered remnants of the Federation? Maybe the Dominion would launch a lightning strike against them?
There's a thousand and eight logical and rational reasons NOT to go to war with the Klingons, but the racism against the Klingons is played up to a fanatical degree that is not only arbitrary (as the characters involved in this conspiracy, without revealing their identities, have absolutely nothing in their brief backstory or personality to support or justify this) but they seem to be incapable of realizing that THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE MAJORITY OF THE KLINGONS WANT!
Why else would General Chang, played by Christopher Plummer (who absolutely has a damn BLAST playing this guy, and hams it up so much he chews up more scenery than Shatner in three Star Trek films) and his group be working so closely with the heads of STARFLEET COMMAND to do this?
Star Trek Deep Space Nine had an episode called "In the Pale Moonlight" about how, in the midst of the Dominion War, the Federation was losing horribly. Casualties mounted every day, and the crew of Deep Space Nine could look horribly forward to looking through the daily casualties to find the names of friends, family, and loved ones killed in the war. This leads to Captain Sisko facing a crisis, as the Romulans have a high-ranking Senator looking to persuade the Empire to joining the Dominion in crushing the Federation.
So Sisko has a Cardassian spy work with a forger to create a false holo-recording of top Dominion officials apparently scheming to secretly attack the Romulans while they're recovering from a botched attack on the Federation before. They hope to use this lie to bring the Romulans in against the Dominion.
Unfortunately, that Senator recognizes its a fake, and leaves to go back to Romulus, undoubtedly with renewed hatred for the Federation for this latest attempt. Instead, the Cardassian spy has his ship blow up, making it look like a Dominion job, and ensuring the Romulans will find the fake holorecording.
Sisko realizes he has the blood of the Senator and others on his hands now, as he has betrayed Starfleet principles by engaging in shady dealings, bribery, threats, and indirect murder. And yet he can live with it because he did what he thought was right, and the war will soon turn with the Romulans to reinforce the Federation side.
This episode created immense controversy, as detractors claimed it went completely against Gene Roddenberry's vision of Star Trek as a peaceful, utopian future of exploration and diplomacy.
And it was one of the highest rated Star Trek episodes ever.
Shockingly, there's no such similar controversy about this movie, in which Starfleet ADMIRALS (and not just Captains) are in on a conspiracy to assassinate not only a Klingon Ambassador, but the FEDERATION PRESIDENT not out of any righteous need to end a losing war or stop a killing spree or crime, but to CAUSE a losing war, a killing spree, a crime. They seek to unleash a war between the Federation and the Klingons in which undoubtedly the Klingons would lose... and kill MILLIONS if not BILLIONS of Federation soldiers and civilians.
And all because of racism/hatred that up until then had never made itself even slightly known, and even when it was revealed, did not make a lick of sense.
Also, it was pretty boring.
Get more detail about Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
No comments:
Post a Comment