page_title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country / Production / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Walter Koenig at a ceremony to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
context_page_description: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a 1991 American science fiction film directed by Nicholas Meyer. It is the sixth feature film based on Star Trek, and a sequel to the 1966–1969 Star Trek television series. Taking place after the events of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, it is the last film featuring the entire cast of the original series. The destruction of the Klingon moon Praxis leads the Klingon Empire to pursue peace with their longtime adversary the Federation; the crew of the USS Enterprise must race against unseen conspirators with a militaristic agenda.
  The sixth film in the series was initially planned as a prequel to the original series, with younger actors portraying the crew of the Enterprise while attending Starfleet Academy, but the idea was discarded because of negative reaction from the original cast and the fans. Faced with producing a new film in time for Star Trek's 25th anniversary, Meyer, who previously directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Denny Martin Flinn wrote a script based on a suggestion from Leonard Nimoy about what would happen if "the Wall came down in space", touching on the contemporary events of the Cold War.
context_section_description: The Final Frontier, the previous film in the series, was a critical and financial disappointment; the cast and crew were worried that the franchise would not be able to recover from the blow. With the looming 25th anniversary of the original series in 1991, producer Harve Bennett revisited an idea Ralph Winter had for the fourth film: a prequel featuring young versions of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy. The prequel was designed to be a way of keeping the characters, if not the actors, in what was called "Top Gun in outer space". Bennett and The Final Frontier writer David Loughery wrote a script entitled The Academy Years, where Dr. Leonard McCoy talks about how he met Kirk and Spock while addressing a group of Academy graduates. The script shows Kirk and Spock's upbringing, their meeting McCoy and Montgomery Scott at the Academy and defeating a villain before parting ways. The script would have established that George Kirk, James T. Kirk's father, was a pilot who went missing—presumed dead—during a warp experiment with Scott. The script is set before the "enlightenment" of the Federation; slavery and racism are common, with Spock being bullied because he is the only Vulcan student. Nurse Christine Chapel cameos in the script's climax.
  Actor James Doohan claimed that Paramount chief Frank Mancuso had fired Bennett following negative reaction from the core cast, Roddenberry, and fans. Bennett claimed that after he rewrote the script to include Shatner and Nimoy, Paramount had still rejected it and that he decided it was time he left the franchise. He said, "My term was up. I was offered $1.5 million to do Star Trek VI and I said 'Thanks, I don't want to do that. I want to do the Academy.'" Actor Walter Koenig approached Mancuso with a new script outline codenamed "In Flanders Fields"; in it, the Romulans join the Federation and go to war with the Klingons. The Enterprise crew, except Spock, are forced to retire for not meeting fitness tests. When Spock and his new crew are captured by a monstrous worm-like race of aliens (which Koenig described as "things that the monsters in Aliens evolved from"), the old crew must rescue them. In the end, all of the characters except McCoy and Spock die.
  Mancuso asked Leonard Nimoy to conceive the new film to serve as a swan song for the original cast. Nimoy, Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner suggested Kirk meeting Jean-Luc Picard, but Star Trek: The Next Generation's producers refused to end their show. Nicholas Meyer, who directed The Wrath of Khan and co-wrote The Voyage Home was also approached for an idea for the sixth film, but had none. Ralph Winter was brought on to the project as producer shortly after Bennett's departure, and said Paramount's mandate was to produce a 25th anniversary film that would not cost a lot of money.
  Nimoy visited Meyer's house and suggested, "[What if] the wall comes down in outer space? You know, the Klingons have always been our stand-ins for the Russians..." Meyer recalled that he replied "'Oh, wait a minute! Okay, we start with an intergalactic Chernobyl! Big explosion! We got no more Klingon Empire...!' And I just spilled out the whole story!" The story deliberately included references to the contemporary political climate; the character of Gorkon was based on Mikhail Gorbachev, while the assassination storyline was Meyer's idea. He thought it was plausible that the Klingon leader who turned soft towards the enemy would be killed like similar peacemakers throughout history: Anwar El Sadat, Gandhi, and Abraham Lincoln. Nimoy's hiring of Meyer was not only beneficial because Meyer knew the material and could write fast (having produced The Wrath of Khan's screenplay in twelve days), but if Meyer was to direct it would offset any acrimony from Shatner, whose ire would have been aroused if Nimoy returned to direct his third Star Trek feature after The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home. Meyer said that when he started work on the screenplay it did not occur to him that he would direct the film. Meyer's wife was the first person to suggest that
caption: Walter Koenig wrote a story outline for the sixth film where all the Enterprise crew members except Spock and McCoy are killed
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