Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Growing old isn’t for the faint-hearted. Captain Kirk isn’t particularly keen on it either.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country was the sixth film featuring the original Star Trek crew, and the last to feature them together as the principal cast.

And they’re getting old.

Captain Kirk doesn’t like it.

The Klingons don’t particularly like him.

And somebody has decided that perhaps it’s time for everybody to start talking to each other.

This isn’t going to go smoothly.

An old man’s game

The film opens with an ecological disaster on the Klingon moon Praxis.

The explosion is catastrophic. The Klingon Empire doesn’t have the resources to deal with the consequences while maintaining its enormous military expenditure.

Something has to change.

The Federation sees an opportunity for peace.

Captain Spock volunteers the Enterprise and its crew to escort Klingon Chancellor Gorkon to negotiations on Earth.

Kirk is not impressed.

He’s spent much of his life fighting Klingons. His son was murdered by Klingons. Now he’s being asked to have dinner with them and help usher in a new era of peace.

Worse still, Kirk and most of his senior officers are only months away from retirement.

The universe is changing.

And it apparently hasn’t asked Kirk’s permission.

The Reluctant Patient understands the feeling.

Everybody’s getting older

There’s something rather refreshing about The Undiscovered Country.

Nobody pretends that these are still the young officers from the original television series.

They’re older.

Bones is older.

Scotty is older.

Chekov is older.

Uhura is older.

Kirk is older.

Spock is… well, a Vulcan, so he’s probably doing better than the rest of them.

The Enterprise itself is approaching the end of its service.

And there’s an uncomfortable realisation running through the film that the world is beginning to move on without them.

There comes a point when people start talking about retirement.

Doctors start taking an increasing interest in you.

Things that used to work perfectly well start making unexpected noises.

And that’s just your knees.

Bones

Fortunately, the Enterprise has Dr Leonard “Bones” McCoy.

Bones has been putting up with Kirk for decades.

Which probably qualifies him for some sort of medical award.

McCoy is grumpy, sarcastic and frequently exasperated by his patients — particularly when the patient is Jim Kirk.

The Reluctant Patient rather likes him.

At least you know where you stand.

Unfortunately, following an attack on Gorkon’s ship, Kirk and McCoy find themselves attempting to save the Chancellor’s life.

Klingon anatomy isn’t McCoy’s speciality.

He’s a doctor, but that doesn’t mean he knows everything about every species in the galaxy.

Despite his efforts, Gorkon dies.

Kirk and McCoy are arrested, tried by the Klingons and sent to the penal asteroid Rura Penthe.

This seems unnecessarily harsh for missing an appointment.

Medical status

After Chancellor Gorkon dies, Kirk and McCoy find themselves on trial before a Klingon court.

At one point McCoy is asked about his medical status.

Bones replies that, apart from a touch of arthritis, he’s pretty good.

The Reluctant Patient knows something about arthritis.

Gout is a form of inflammatory arthritis.

Welcome to the club, Bones.

Although McCoy has another problem during the trial. His competence as a doctor is being questioned because he was unable to save Gorkon.

McCoy protests that he didn’t know enough about Klingon anatomy.

Which seems reasonable.

Being a doctor doesn’t mean knowing everything about every condition — or every patient.

And being a patient who has experienced one particular condition certainly doesn’t.

The Reluctant Patient has made a note of that.

Your medical record will be used in evidence

There is something else slightly unsettling about Kirk and McCoy’s trial.

Kirk’s own words come back to haunt him.

His personal log contains evidence of his hostility towards the Klingons, and it is used against him in court.

That’s not quite the same thing as somebody reading your medical records.

But it does raise an uncomfortable thought.

There is now a surprisingly detailed written record of The Reluctant Patient’s ailments, symptoms, appointments, investigations and occasional poor decisions.

Some of it is held by the NHS.

Some of it is on this website.

Perhaps I haven’t thought this through.

Don’t wait for the translation

The dinner with the Klingons produces one of the film’s recurring themes.

Shakespeare.

The Klingons are rather fond of him.

Indeed, Chancellor Gorkon suggests that you haven’t really experienced Shakespeare until you’ve read him in the original Klingon.

Later, General Chang takes this considerably further, enthusiastically quoting Shakespeare while trying to blow the Enterprise out of space.

There is something magnificently excessive about Christopher Plummer delivering Shakespeare from the bridge of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey while firing photon torpedoes.

“Cry havoc…”

You know the rest.

The Reluctant Patient is beginning to wonder whether all medical consultations would be improved by this approach.

“Your blood-test results are back.”

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends!”

“No. Your cholesterol.”

Oh.

The undiscovered country

The title comes from Hamlet.

The undiscovered country is death.

Except Chancellor Gorkon uses it differently.

For him, the undiscovered country is the future.

Nobody knows what’s waiting there.

And that’s what frightens people.

Kirk knows the old world.

He knows who the enemy is.

He knows how things work.

Peace means stepping into something he doesn’t understand.

And, eventually, he has to recognise that the future isn’t necessarily going to belong to him.

There’s probably something in that for The Reluctant Patient.

Getting older means occasionally discovering that things have changed.

Your body changes.

Your priorities change.

People start asking questions about your health that nobody seemed particularly interested in asking twenty years ago.

You might even discover that something you had regarded as perfectly normal isn’t.

The temptation is to carry on exactly as before.

Kirk eventually realises that he can’t.

Second star to the right

At the end of the film, the Enterprise is ordered home to be decommissioned.

The crew are standing down.

This is the end.

Kirk receives the order.

And promptly decides not to go home quite yet.

Of course he does.

If there’s one thing The Reluctant Patient can respect, it’s somebody being given perfectly reasonable instructions by people who know what they’re talking about and deciding to ignore them for a little while longer.

The Enterprise heads off for one final trip.

Kirk reflects that this crew’s voyages are ending, but others will continue.

The future is coming whether he’s ready for it or not.

That’s the thing about the undiscovered country.

Eventually, we all have to go there.

Although The Reluctant Patient would quite like a second opinion first.

From the Case Files