STAR TREK: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

When I first saw COUNTRY in the theater, I was less than charmed with the script, primarily by Nicholas Meyer and Leonard Nimoy. I concede the argument made at the time, that the eighties movies needed to reflect the culture of their time, just as the original series had reflected that of the sixties. What I found problematic was the one-to-one correlation between modern events and those of a far-flung space opera. Gene Roddenberry-- who died shortly after having seen rushes of this movie, whose politics he did not embrace -- executed some very bad TREK scripts based on overly close resemblance between "the reality" and "the fictional." Yet even a ham-fisted story like "The Omega Glory" has more of the quality of a thought-experiment than anything in COUNTRY. Director/co-writer Meyer is a little too literal in transposing current history upon the TREK universe.

It's more than lame jokes like, "Only Nixon could go to China." COUNTRY starts out with a "big bang," supposedly an analogue to Chernobyl, which is made the proximate cause for the dissolution of the Klingon Empire-- which presaged the dissolution of the Soviet Union in reality a few weeks later. A Klingon diplomatic mission, headed by Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner), meets to discuss the Klingon version of perestroika. Captain Spock (Nimoy) shows little of his father's diplomatic tendencies by high-handedly volunteering the Enterprise for the duty, and Starfleet, with logic more dubious than Spock's, agrees. 

With the exception of Captain Sulu, who's off commanding his own vessel, most of the Enterprise regulars are up for the new task, but Kirk (Shatner) is something less than pleased. Roddenberry reportedly did not care for Meyer's imputation that Kirk was racist against Klingons-- which, whatever Roddenberry's reasoning, is also not supported by the characterization of Kirk in TOS. Meyer over-emphasizes Kirk's lust for vengeance due to a Klingon's having killed the captain's only son, and even stacks the deck by giving Kirk the self-denigratory line, "How on earth can history get past people like me?"

Kirk and his crew meet with the diplomatic entourage, including Gorkon's chief of staff Chang (Christopher Plummer). Following a tense dinner, the Klingons return to their ship-- and are apparently attacked by the Enterprise. Kirk and McCoy beam to the ship to render medical aid, find Chancellor Gorbachev-- er, Gorkon-- dead, and are summarily arrested by Chang. While the rest of the Enterprise crew labors to figure who masterminded the assassination and framed the captain, Kirk and McCoy are fast-tracked through a trial and sent to an icebound prison planet.

I'll give Meyer and his scripters due credit for keeping things hopping. Whereas FINAL FRONTIER looked like a patchwork of clumsy scenes despite having a higher budget, COUNTRY looks admirably streamlined, and all of the actors, even Shatner, are given valid bits of emotional business. Kirk and McCoy's escape from the Klingon prison adds a note of much-needed exoticism, and the detective-work needed to uncover General Chang as the mastermind is efficient if not much of a thought-experiment. There's also a decent space-opera battle at the end, just so that no one forgets that it's not just an episode of MURDER SHE TREKKED. And Plummer gives a lip-smacking performance as the Shakespeare-spouting conspirator; he may be the best villain to come out of any of the TREK features.

COUNTRY is far from the best of the TREK movies. Yet as a fan, I'm certainly glad the film franchise did not end with FRONTIER. Reportedly some executive helped to greenlight this film not out of any deep love for the concept, but because he knew that 1991 could be heralded as the 25th anniversary of the TV show's 1966 advent. I don't know if Meyer would have celebrated the exceptionalism of Western history as Roddenberry did-- though admittedly Roddenberry had his socialist moments. But to me it's still appropriate that the original TREK cast was allowed to shine together thanks to good old-fashioned capitalism.