Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country -- Special Edition (2 discs) DVD

With the return of director Nicholas Meyer, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country restored the movie series to its classic blend of space opera, intelligent plotting and engaging interaction of stalwart heroes and menacing villains. Borrowing its subtitle (and several lines of dialogue) from Shakespeare, the movie finds Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) and his fellow Enterprise crew members on a diplomatic mission to negotiate peace with the revered Klingon Chancellor Gorkon (David Warner). When the high-ranking Klingon and several officers are ruthlessly murdered,... blame is placed on Kirk and crew. The subsequent investigation, which sees Spock taking on the mantle of Sherlock Holmes (and even quoting some of the great detective's lines), uncovers an assassination plot masterminded by the nefarious Klingon General Chang (Christopher Plummer) in an effort to disrupt a historic peace summit. As this political plot unfolds Star Trek VI takes on a sharp-edged tone with Kirk and Spock confronting their opposing views of diplomacy and testing their bonds of loyalty when a Vulcan officer (Kim Cattrall) is revealed to be a traitor. With a dramatic depth befitting what was to be the final movie mission of the original Enterprise crew, this film took the veteran cast out in respectably high style, with the torch being passed to the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the following movie, Star Trek: Generations. --Jeff Shannon On the DVD: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a two-disc set with the main feature presented in anamorphic widescreen at the fascinating (as Mr Spock would say) ratio of 2.00:1. Sound is strong Dolby Digital 5.1. Director Nicholas Meyer and screenwriter Denny Martin Flinn provide an audio commentary and Trek-trivia gurus Michael and Denise Okuda give another of their fact-packed text commentaries. The second disc has several lengthy and interesting documentaries: The Perils of Peacemaking delves into the many deliberate parallels with the Cold War; Stories from Star Trek VI consists of eight separate chapters about the making of the film (where it's revealed that "Gene Roddenberry hated the script", and that "The studio was not ready to relinquish the original actors possibly because they were still ambulatory"!); The Star Trek Universe has various nuggets of information, including the creation and evolution of the Klingons. Finally, in Farewell there are interviews with the principal cast from the set, plus a tribute to DeForest Kelley. Nicholas Meyer, Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner all provide up-to-date contributions throughout. --Mark Walker [show more]

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