STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: FILM

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the only obstacle to peace is the forces that would profit from war.

From its inception in the 1960s, Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek had always been a thinly veiled Cold War metaphor, with alien Klingons acting as stand-ins for the Soviet empire, and with the Federation that the show's heroes belonged to an obvious match for the Western democratic world. But The Undiscovered Country expanded on that metaphor, resulting in a high point for the franchise and a picture that still feels relevant today.

Released in the winter of 1991, the movie tells the story of how the Klingon empire collapsed, due to mismanagement, resource shortages, and a cultural emphasis on preserving appearances to outsiders--even when doing so was disastrous to citizens. The movie opens...