True story: I once referenced this movie in a paper on The Merchant of Venice in popular culture.Another true story: I have two 5-page essays to write this weekend. I've started one of them.
Star Trek!
Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew are getting ready for retirement when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) announces that he has offered the Enterprise in a diplomatic mission with the Klingons. Their home world is failing and they are suing for peace in an attempt to get Federation help in relocating to a habitable planet. A lot of people have a problem with this, including Kirk who will never forgive them for killing his son. But he meets with Ambassador Gorkon (David Warner) anyway over a polite but tense dinner. Immediately afterwards, Gorkon's ship is fired upon, apparently by the Enterprise, and many of the crew killed. The second-in-command, Chang (Christopher Plummer), demands the arrest of Kirk and Bones (DeForest Kelley), leaving Spock and Scotty (James Doohan) to unravel the mystery of where the torpedoes came from.
This was one of the better films in the whole series, as far as plot. There was an actual attempt made to integrate social issues with a legitimate story, instead of just a concept stretched out to an hour and a half, like The Final Frontier.
Star Trek is at its best when it has something to say and even though the story is not new (surprise, some people don't like to see the end of a historical enemy), it's still interesting to see the effects of post-Cold War relations. It's mostly academic for me since I was so young but I'm sure my parent's generation saw this play out in real life with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sudden realization that we had avoided Mutually Assured Destruction, as well as the accompanying death throes of paranoia, wondering if it was all a feint to get us to lower our guard.
(See, kids, movies are educational. If you ever need to write a paper on the Cold War, Star Trek is there for you.)
No comments:
Post a Comment