Today, December 6th, is a day that went down in history.
That’s right.  Today is the day that something momentous happened in 1991.

 

The last Original Series Star Trek Movie was released.

People had been afraid Star Trek V was going to be the last one.  In some ways, that had been the plan.  But then Star Trek V was a critical and box office mess, and no one wanted to go out on that note.  So like REM, they decided to pull themselves together for one final outing.  Nicholas Meyer, the director and uncredited co-writer of The Wrath of Khan, was brought back to tie a bow on the franchise that he had helped to re-invent.

The script was relevant to the politics of the day, even more relevant than anyone had dreamed.  The idea when writing the film was that it was a political thriller based around the idea of “Chernobyl in space.”  The Klingons, of course, were the Space Soviets.  But just as the film was wrapping up, The Soviet Union experienced an August Coup that was even more resonant to the film’s themes about the end of the super-power.  And then while the film was still in theaters, Gorkon’s counterpart Gorbachev (even the names sound the same!) resigned and the USSR officially dissolved.

The movie just cribbed the original title of Star Trek II, and no in the original Hamlet “The Undiscovered Country” definitely refers to death, not the future.  The Klingons need to check their dictionary.

But beyond just the political beats, it’s a film that looked forward to the future of the franchise.  While being made during the height of TNG, the darker aspects of Starfleet officers working against peace foreshadowed many elements of DS9 and even Section 31.  But the movie made the argument that in the end, it doesn’t matter that people and organizations are imperfect.  The movie allowed our greatest heroes to show them at their most bigoted.  But it was a film about not getting stuck in those past prejudices, but instead recognizing and then moving past them.

(Disclaimer: this was a last minute emergency thread so I’m going off memory here.  Claims have not been fact checked.  Assume Mandela Effect for any discrepancies).