Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

The idea came from Leonard Nimoy: what if the wall came down in outer space? Nicholas Meyer spilled out the whole story that evening. A mining accident breaks the Klingon empire, and Gorkon, the chancellor who turns to peace, was modelled on Mikhail Gorbachev. Meyer wrote the script with Denny Martin Flinn over electronic mail, Meyer in Europe and Flinn in Los Angeles, one writing and sending pages all day, the other reading and revising. The budget fell from around 41 million dollars to 30 million. Most Enterprise interiors were redresses of sets then in use on The Next Generation; the Federation president’s office was a reworked Ten Forward whose exterior doors accidentally kept the series ship markings. Klingon blood is violet: green was dropped because McCoy calls Spock green-blooded, and red would probably have meant an adult rating. To fill the Klingon courtroom, 200 shop-bought Worf dolls were rocked by motors. The film took 2 Oscar nominations, sound effects editing and makeup, and won neither. This is the last film with the entire original series cast. A good fit if you want the Cold War parallel said out loud and the crew written as prejudiced and fallible. Not for viewers starting the series here; Kirk resists peace because Klingons killed his son David in the third film.