Unclear and Present Danger - Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (feat. Sam Adler-Bell)

Episode Date: April 16, 2022

Is a Star Trek movie a political and military thriller? We think so! Which is why, for this thirteenth episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John (and their guest, Sam Adler-Bell of the ���Know Your Enemy” podcast) discussed Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. They talked about the nature of Star Trek’s utopianism, questioned whether the Federation is actually a good thing, and gave a close reading of the film’s Cold War allegory.Our new logo is courtesy of the great Rachel Eck! You can find her on Instagram.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieSam Adler-BellLinks from the episode!New York Times front-page for December 6, 1991IMDB page for Nicholas MeyerThe Fifty-Year Mission: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek: The First 25 Years

Warrior to warrior. She cannot take much more of this. Cry havoc! Kiel! And let's slip the dogs of war. Fire! Star Trek 6, the undiscovered country. Welcome to episode 13 of unclear and present danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers for the 1990s and what they say about the politics of the politics of that decade.

I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I'm a freelance writer. I write a column for Gawker, and I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 1990s. And today we have a guest. We have Sam Adler Bell of the Know Your Enemy podcast and also a freelance writer who has done a lot of phenomenal work. Welcome, Sam. Hi, guys. Thank you for joining us. so happy to be here. We will talk about your familiarity with this very broad subject of this movie that we're going to discuss. But first I want to mention the movie.

Today we are talking about Star Trek 6, The Undiscovered Country, a 1991 science fiction film directed by Nicholas Meyer, who directed last episode's movie as well, and starring a pretty much everyone you would expect. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly, James Duhan, Walter Koenig, Nishel Nichols, George Sakey, Kim Cottrell, David Warner, and the great Christopher Plummer. Would you expect Kim Cottrell to be in this movie? I'm not sure if I would say that would put her in the category of... Kim control, maybe not, but everyone above Kim control, definitely. And Christopher Palmer, I mean... Christopher Plummer. Yeah, David Warner, too. I think David Wooder was in the previous movie,

so he's in there. And Plummer, Plummer is kind of made for a Star Trek role, so. That's great. Quick plot synopsis. After years of war, the Federation and the Klingon Empire find themselves on the brink of a peace summit

when a Klingon ship is nearly destroyed by an apparent attack from the Enterprise. Both worlds brace for what may be their deadliest encounter. It is easy to see why we picked this movie for this podcast. Before we get started talking about the end of the discovered country. Let's look at what happened on the front page of the New York Times. This movie was released on December 6th, 1991. Paramedical, it was a big hit. It grossed about $97 million on the $27 million budget, which is more than respectable. But the front page,

John, do you want to take a look? Let us know what's up there. Sure, sure. So really not a lot of Cold War news, which is notable because the Soviet Union is about to break up. in about two weeks. So Daily News files for bankruptcy. Yeah, Bush names new chief of staff and campaign team. This is notable to me because Bush approval rating had already tanked, and they were trying to come up with a new approach to the campaign. It looked like Buchanan was entering the race at this point,

so they were trying to take a different approach. Bush advisors give mixed signals on economic plan. I mean, at the time, there was a very nasty recession that, you know, the Bush administration just basically had nothing to answer with. So we start to see the seeds of Bush's eventual defeat. And then below the fold, it says T and Tehran, how hostage deal was born. And this appears to be an article about how, um, I don't know if this is about the hostage deal, but no, it's about some Lebanese hostages

that I think that were taken by Hezbollah, which is something that happened periodically in the 1980s. And survivors tell tales about Pearl Harbor, which was the 50th anniversary was the next day, which just from my own research, I can tell you, there was a lot of consternation. There was a lot of anti-Japanese sentiment at the time, and there's a lot of consternation in the Japanese-American community, that there was going to be, you know, a lot of hate crimes. There weren't a lot, but there were definitely some nasty incidents. So, yeah, this is not a lot of foreign policy, but definitely an interesting window into that year. I noticed some interesting headlines that are sort of like previews of inside the paper like Zionism and the UN.

U.S. and Israel are confident they have the votes to repeal a United Nations resolution equating Zionism and racism. So it goes and goes and goes. And then Mandela and Bushmeat, the black nationalist leader, sought to convince the U.S. that an interim government in Pretoria would speed transition to democracy. right yeah this i think was before i mean it very looked much looked like apartheid was was ending but i think it was actually before the referendum the all-white referendum in south africa that like officially sanctioned the end of apartheid yeah so yeah and interesting times according to me I guess if we're thinking about the movie, there is, I suppose, some thematic stuff here with, like, you know, change and everything.

But, yeah, this is unusually not all that relevant front page. So let's start talking about this film. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, one, I just turned into inside the paper. Go ahead. Just out of curiosity. And the first headline I see in the international section is Ukraine's chief to scrap nuclear arms. And so that I was saying, yeah, there you go. There you go.

Okay. So the Undiscovered Country is, again, the sixth movie in the Star Trek film series. The previous film of the series, The Final Frontier, is sort of notoriously bad, a critical and commercial flop. and basically this movie happens because Paramount doesn't want to go off on that note. And this is weirdly kind of a recurring thing for this series. Star Trek the Motion Picture was a big flop. It was a critical failure at the time.

I think since then, it's gained a lot more fans and appreciation. I, for one, I think it's great. But in fairness, I only ever watched that movie and I'm stoned out of my mind. It's sort of, I've never actually seen it not stone. So I have no sense of what it's like without the mood altering substances. And then Star Trek 3 was also sort of like not, you know, people didn't like it that much. And every, the wrath of Khan.

Star Trek 3 is the search for Spock. Oh, no. And so what happens? So the Star Trek, the motion picture was very expensive. It was a huge movie. big flop in Paramount calls in Nicholas Meyer to do a take

on a sequel with the budget chopped in half and sort of do it as bare bones as you can and that gives you wrath of Khan the search for Spock is kind of a flop and they approach Nicholas Meyer about writing the script for a fourth movie which he does he writes about

half the script and then that's a big success and then the Final Frontier which I think is another Nimoy headed film is a big flop and Paramount first goes goes to a bunch of people but then goes to Nimoy and Nimoy goes to Meyer and it's like well do you have any ideas for a sixth movie and Meyer um Meyer um Meyer says okay we start with an intergalactic Chernobyl what happens if the wall comes down in space um there's no more clinging empire and Nimoy thought this was a great

idea. And so that's sort of where they go with the script. It was very much envisioned from the start as being an explicit Cold War parallel. That was like, in a way, it's sort of a very, very old-fashioned Star Trek, sort of like taking basically ongoing current events and then saying, well, what if they're happening in space? What then? And so, yeah, the movie, the story includes sort of explicit and deliberate references to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Klingon ambassador or Kleeon Premier, who's supposed to be bringing peace, is named Gorkon, not that subtle. It's worth noting that this was also the 25th anniversary of the original series. So this was also sort of driving the desire to make a new film, something that could sort of stand

and do well and not be such a disappointment. such a disappointment like the Final Frontier was. And like Ford and Wrath of Khan before, this was very much done on the cheap. And so I think the budget was $27 million. Obviously, that includes marketing. When you take out marketing, it's probably quite a bit less. They use sets and props from the next generation,

kind of messed around with lighting to make it not seem so obvious. and to kind of to be able to make the most of what they have Meyer really leaned into something that has been a hallmark of his contributions to the series which is the kind of naval

vibe. Starfleet in Wrath of Khan and this is not so much like a big peacekeeping operation but a literal Navy with all sort of the traditions and rights and sort of all that stuff that the Navy comes with. My dad loves this movie. My parents

I love both really like Star Trek, and it's like 90% about the Navy stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I noticed, too, that like the interiors are like a little bit more cramped. It looks more like Hunt for Red October than most Star Trek movies. There's like a kind of claustrophobic vibe that you don't usually get in Star Trek in some of the scenes. And like it also looks like a little crudier, like the enterprise looks a little crudier. Like, it doesn't look like, you know, just seamless, perfectly sheen, you know, metal surfaces everywhere.

There's like, you see more pipes and stuff. And it kind of just feels more like a submarine movie than most Star Trek. Yeah, that's all Nicholas Meyer. He's sort of, you really push the set designers and everything to, to dirty everything up. And, I mean, I think the movie as a whole, I mean, not just the scenes that take place in the Enterprise, but it's a much, like, grimeier movie than most Star Trek's. and the whole alien prison planet is reminiscent of like the most iceland canteena from Star Wars more than any of the gleaming newness of Star Trek.

A fun thing about all of this, about both the look of it and the vibe and sort of the themes of change and being obsolete and especially all the stuff with Kirk and other members of the Enterprise crew being kind of like huge anti-clingon bigots. Gene Roddenberry hated all of that and was very much like, I don't want this in the movie. And they kind of just ignored him. They're like, you know, who cares you think? He was smart to ignore him. Yeah. But Gene Roder was not a fan of some of the choices made for this movie. Yeah. And the extent to which they really do, I mean, Kirk in this movie, Shatner plays Kirk as like a straight up bigot. Yeah.

Which I think is a great choice. I think it gives his character a lot of depth, actually. Yeah. But was not a fan, Roddenberry, not a fan of any of that. So that's sort of the big stuff on the making of this movie. And I think the thing I really want to get across specifically is that this is, I mean, this is just a post-Cold War movie, like straight up. a post-cold-world movie that just happens to involve a bunch of Star Trek characters.

That's how it was conceived. That's the vibe they were going for. I'm sure that if we read notes, if we could find notes from Meyer and other members of the production team, there would be references to movies like Red October. There'd be references to sort of all the Cold War cinema and post-Colware cinema of that era because that is what they were going for with this movie. And I think, I don't know about you too, but I think that this is really, really one of the best kind of like post-Cold War movies of the decade.

I think it, I think it sort of the, the, the, the, uh, the obviousness of the allegory works in its favor. Um, so what do you guys think? Well, I saw this movie when I was, I saw this movie in the theaters with my dad and I was, what, six years old? And I loved it. I, I was always like, more of a Star Wars kid. I was never a huge fan.

But now that what you guys was telling, saying about this movie now it's starting to sort of register why I may have liked this as opposed to other Star Trek movies, which is the grittiness, the griminess of it kind of is more redolent of Star Wars universe things.

You know, there's all of these kind of historical references, which I guess, no, as you were saying, Star Trek has as well. And you know, I've always been a huge fan of submarines and submarine movies and it has all these things that were submarine movie like.

The other genre that it calls back to on that prison planet is, you know, a great, the World War II prisoner of war camp escape genre, like the great escape and Bridge Over the River Kwai, which I think he actually, the speech by the warden, I think is actually like quoting Bridge Over the River Kwai when he says, like, there's no stockade. There are there are no guard towers. Like, if you try to escape, you're just going to dive of exposure. I think that was, like, almost a verbatim taken from the script of Ridge Over the River Kwai. So there's like, yeah, there's a lot of these, the movie is like, and I don't mean this in a bad way, is a pastiche of a lot of different things. First of all, you have these different genres coming together. You have, you know, this allegorical thing. But then there's like all of the, in the script, there's all of these references to shape.

Shakespeare, like the clean-ons, like, are aware of Shakespeare and they're always, they're quoting Shakespeare back and forth to each other, which, you know, is a little bit, a little bit cornery, but charming and kind of like adds something to, I mean, add something to the language of the script. There's a lot of references to history to, you know, like, there's a reference to, um, when they're doing the show trial, there's a reference to Adley Stevenson's, uh, line during the, um, Cuban Missile Crisis at the UN. Like, don't wait for the translation and answer. answer me immediately. Yeah. So there's like all these fun and I think, you know, for, for, you know, it's like one of these great movies that just like all different ages and backgrounds can enjoy it because they'll get different things out of these references. So yeah, I mean, like I watched this movie. I liked it when I was a little kid and I still like it a lot.

I mean, like, look, there are silly, I mean, it is a, it's a Hollywood movie in the best in the worst way possible. are there are um sort of silly asics of it but it's just kind of a delight and like you know it's it's i think pretty pretty smart movie i think making kirk a racist um and most of the crew actually kind of prejudiced against claynons i think was a really smart movie a move and um you know kind of like that's like it's place where it's almost i mean it has it's it has references absolutely to the Cold War, but there's a little bit of, you know, this was the beginnings of maybe the possibility of, you know, this is before Camp David, but like the beginnings of possibility

of Israeli-Palestinian peace. Yeah. So I think that that's also kind of lurking in the background here. Definitely. Yeah. So, no, I think this is like a, it's like, you know, I think it's in the tradition a little bit of Star Wars and of Indiana Jones in that it takes from the previous generation of the tropes and the of the previous generation of Hollywood like so it's like taking things from World War II movies it's taking things from you know Cold War era movies and kind of putting them in a new package which is kind of still entertaining and fun yeah yeah Sam what is your history with this movie um i i my mom is a huge star trek fan so we grew up with the whole like

vhs box set of these um these captain kirk um movies she was a she and i are both bigger fans of the um patrick stewart jean le Picard uh the next generation stuff but but we did have these movies and i watched them all my favorite was always is it four where they go back to Earth with the whales right right that's the voyage home yeah that was always my favorite growing up but honestly I didn't really remember this one that well when I saw it on the list and John I were talking about ones that I might want to do with you guys I was like well I love Star Trek and so and once I started watching and I remembered things from it but it was there were other

Star Trek. There's other Star Trek stuff that's more memorable to me. I mean, it's funny to hear John saying that he was more of a Star Wars kid, because I was definitely more of a Star Trek kid, and I, like, look down on Star Wars kids, because I thought, you know, Star Trek was, like, the more, like, serious and philosophical. Totally wrong. I know, John, I'm trying to get you going. But, like, Star, I was such a pedantic little twerk that, like, it pissed me off. Like, it was so annoying to me that Star Wars. The premise was it's a galaxy far, far away a long time ago. And they're like human speaking English. And I was just like, that doesn't make any sense. That makes no sense. I can't, I can't do

with that. And so I always prefer Star Trek because it was like, well, at least this is logical, you know, this is the future. You know, aliens doing this and humans doing this. And, you know, there's a federation and has all this. Politics. Kind of like politics and political, sort of political economy not really though right um because there's a sort of iron clear how it all works it's not clear how it all works i'd be interested you know this is getting ahead of ourselves but like to talk about like star wars or star trek's version of like you know socialism and sort of sort of the scientific utopianism and stuff in relation to what's going on with their klingon you know uh counterparts but then uh but i'd say yeah just generally i really enjoyed watching this movie again i i agree

with most everything you guys are saying. I think that like the Cold War stuff, and I'd like to talk to you guys about like what you think the allegory suggests at different moments. And like if you, if you try to do a one-to-one thing, like what do these different moments mean? I think that, I think it's, it kind of goes out of the Cold War allegory to do the like prison planet part. And it just becomes more like a traditional away team star trek episode um and i don't know if we mentioned this but um one one other uh surprising cast casting choice is um man is playing the shapeshifting alien beautiful seductive uh shape shifting alien um and so it kind of goes off the it goes goes away from the cold war plot and it goes back to it i feel like at the end um there's also a little like

Sherlock Holmesy, you know, or like a detective story with Spock trying to figure out who the yet another pastiche of genre movies. Right. I mean, the entire assassination plot is, is more or less like a, yeah, JFK, a little JFK movie in the, you know, the B plot. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

I mean, there's all kinds. It's kind of like just triggering all these historical. like you say, pastiche, triggering all these sort of historical references and genre references. I read that they deliberately did David Warner, the Gorbachev, characters, make up to look like Abraham Lincoln also. He has like a beard, like a Lincoln beard or whatever it is. And but yeah, overall, I really, I really enjoyed watching it. It was really fun.

I thought the, like the special effects. were like sort of a mixed bag of like stuff that looked you know like stuff that was really good because it was done cheaply and stuff that looked bad because it was done cheaply um but i actually ultimately really enjoyed the scene of the zero g um i love that when i was a kid i love that when i was a kid i thought it was so cool and now i can see that the computer graphics are like it's kind of like very dated there's like so there's like magenta cling on blood floating around to the little globules because they're getting shot. Anyway, yeah, overall, I really liked it.

And I'm interested to get into the kind of politics, as you guys see it. Yeah, well, let's get into the politics. I mean, the movie begins with, and I think I mentioned this earlier, with essentially Space Chernobyl, a Klingon energy planet explodes and poisons the atmosphere of the Klingon home planet. And, you know, Starfleet learned. that the Klingling Empire has 50 years to live, 50 years to survive, given the poisoning in their atmosphere. And this prompts, you know, this prompts peace talks as the Klingel Empire

seeks to end the war and redirect the resources to trying to save the planet. This is obviously, I mean, the Soviet Union is like collapsed because of Chernobyl, but sort of the sense that the Soviet system cannot, its economy can't support, but, but, obviously, I mean, the Soviet Union's support with a massive military buildup and and sort of, you know, domestic life. It's certainly, it's certainly a part of the story of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But in this movie, this is what prompts peace talks and you immediately, you know, at the Starfleet High Command meeting, it is immediately contentious. You have Starfleet officers who are like, why we're not going to, we can't. trust the Klingons. There's not going to be any, you know, meaningful, peaceful settlement with the

Klingons. I think Shatner has his sort of best moment in the film here where he, after everyone's left and him and Spock are speaking since Spock is the, is sort of the diplomat responsible for brokering the initial sort of contact between Klingon leaders and the Federation. And Kirk, you know, growls at Spock that they're animals, that you can't trust them. And Spock replies, but they're dying. And Kirk says, let them die. Which is just a great, great line reading from Shadner and a great moment and really kind of illustrating sort of what is going to be the through line of the story here, which is

Kirk learning to overcome his prejudices to achieve something. like peace. And in the whole film, I mean, on the, on the Klingon side as well, there are figures, notably Christopher Plummers, what's the character's name, Chang? Chang. General Chang. General Chang, who do not believe that peace is a thing worth pursuing. And so kind of the, similar to some of the movies we've done in the past, which have, you know, conspiracies of officers trying to prolong the Cold War, this very much, you know, begins or suggest or whatever that there's going to be some sort of conspiracy among those who don't want peace, who think that an end to the conflict between the Federation and the

Klingon Empire is bad for their interests. Now, there's no, I mean, for as much as this is a political allegory, and Sam, you alluded to this, there's not really like a politics here, right? You don't necessarily know why all these officers on both sides want the war to continue. It's not as if there's some sort of like star fleet military industrial complex that we know of um it seems like they suggest that like you know i i think this is a sort of interesting thing because there's always there's always like we talked we kind of alluded to it earlier there's always this kind of contradiction or um ambiguity in star track about whether starfleet is a scientific mission or a military mission and there's sort of this implication in this movie that if they don't have

the military mission, then maybe, like, it'll fall apart. Like, they won't do, they won't fund the start, the, the, the scientific mission anymore, um, which is kind of interesting thing to sort of call that question explicitly. Um, but it doesn't, nobody really says like, and the great danger if we don't keep having this war is X. Um, like some kind of social collapse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's basically they, there's a lot of liberal idealism in the movie as in with all star trek things which is uh the basic reason why the antagonists um are preventing the war or preventing the cold the the clean on human or claynon

federation cold war from ending is that they're afraid of the future you know this kind of vague uh you know reactionary sentiment that they have they don't have like a material interest and being like oh no they can't but i guess there is in the sense that they're you know their position are threatened by it and the same way like yeah i mean kirk chattner feels like um you know i don't know it's interesting because all these actors are aging in this movie and like they're they look i mean they're all still alive but by the time of this movie they look i mean many of them are still alive they look pretty old and yeah and the movie like uh to its credit kind of like talks about the elephant in the room and it's just like yeah this is like an aging crew and like they're kind of at

the end of it so they're dealing with their i think that makes a charm the movie kind of charming is like the way it sort of breaks the fourth wall about like oh yeah like this is sort of like we're all getting a little bit old the crew is all getting a little bit old like and and they're reaching like the end of their careers you know as federation officers or whatever so um that's kind of charming part of the movie which is like yeah like the whole franchise is slowly is coming to an end and they've kind of wrapped it up with, you know, this big change in politics and history. And it's a, it's kind of an interesting way of dealing with this cultural moment because, like, you know, Star Trek, I mean, some of these actors are a little older,

but Star Trek's consciousness is kind of like, I mean, you guys might disagree with me here, but, but, and I think especially in this movie and the way it draws on history and film genres is kind of like baby boomer the the sort of liberal optimistic half of baby boomer consciousness um you know in so far not particularly hippy kind of more envisioning something like you know nice and organized like the the uh like the you know the cold war bureaucracy um yeah and and like come on starfleet is essentially like sort of the UN or NATO or some kind of body like that this the scene at the end with where they're doing that where the peace talks are taking place yeah the symbol of whatever that organization is I don't know if a star fleet of the federation remember it just looks like

the UN symbol I mean it just it is the yeah it's like it's got the stars yeah or like now it kind of looks like the EU symbol yeah so it's like um where was I going with this so basically like yeah it's interesting and the movie is is sort of hopeful that like these sort of things can be overcome and will enter you know the undiscovered country of peace and you know it's just a matter of coming to uh of of enlightened people of people overcoming their prejudices a very liberal theme um people enlightened forces realizing that peace is the best solution to all these things overcoming the wicked interlopers who who who war mongers and you know a kind of utopian conclusion which is like peace is made and this was a very

much the optimistic vision for the end of the Cold War which as we've discussed we're sort of at the end of not that for some time I mean very quickly we saw in the post-Sovia and post-Yugoslav world world's you know pretty ugly civil wars and ethnic conflict but like I think now we're really when this sort of utopian vision of what the end of the Cold War might be like or what the end of history might be like, um, it no longer, uh, no longer is, is even a little bit plausible. But it's interesting to watch a movie where it's very optimistic and hopeful about the, at the end of the Cold War. I wonder, I wonder what like a, a person who was a little younger than us, um, how they might respond to the movie with no,

without a memory of a of a pre 9-11 90s or something like that um like if it how they would take the movie yeah that's a good question i'm not i'm not sure um i mean the the i think sort of being i think this movie really does rest on that sense of optimism that emerges at the end of the cold war the sense that the United States and whether a Soviet Union or Russia can become kind of partners put aside their differences. I'm not sure if a younger viewer, if you were in their early 20s would necessarily pick up on that subtext, even if they could see the clear allegory at work. So the thing, just thinking about the politics of this movie, the thing that I find really interesting is that this might be the first.

Star Trek thing that really at least begins to raise the question of whether the Federation is actually a good thing. There's that dinner scene with the Klingons and the Enterprise crew where some of the Klingon staff are basically saying, you know, Starfleet. Well, one says that, you know, when Chekhov mentions inalienable rights or an alienable, inalienable right to human rights. She's like, you guys have no idea how you sound, an alien, it's racist, human rights, it's racist.

I think it's an interesting moment. And then another member of the staff complains that you know, Starfleet or the Federation is just going to swallow up whatever makes the Klingon people distinct. That they're not, they're going to, they'll be

assimilated by this sort of expanding this expanding political unit. And this is something the series picks up later, especially in Deep Space 9, this question of sort of, well, is the Federation, you know, the Federation has these high-minded ideals, but its military arm is arguably dominant.

It is relentlessly expansionary. And it doesn't, it's not very happy when people try to leave. So is it actually, is it this benignant? nevolent utopian society or is it something a little more sinister? And this movie doesn't really go much further with that. But I think it's interesting, I think in the context of a Cold War allegory, it's an interesting question to raise, right? Sort of like, is American freedom actually freedom or is just another form of imperialism?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the movie kind of comes down, ultimately, even though it raises those questions, it kind of comes down as, well, in so far. as the forces of peace and diplomacy win out, it sort of redeems the Federation. But it doesn't, it doesn't preclude the notion that, first of all, there is like a militaristic aspect of the Federation, as you mentioned, or that there are racists, you know, like that it's heroes can be racist.

And, you know, they have to sort of overcome that prejudice. It's like, it's, I'm, I'm, it's interesting that, you know, the thing that I always sort of of disliked about Star Trek was its moral universe being sort of like tedious or something like that. Self-satisfied. Yeah, it's just like, yeah, we're the like I think, and I can see, I think it's interesting that Rodden, Rodden, Derry, that's his name, was not, Rodden Berry, was not happy about having Scott, Kirk be, you know, a bigot.

But like, dude, that's, as you mentioned, that's like, what makes the character. interesting like of course someone of his generation you know um involved in these interspecies wars with his experience where his son was killed by a clean on like of course he would pick up you know um uh prejudice you know prejudices and like that that just makes it more realistic and i so that's what i liked about it it's just like it does kind of begin to chip away or offer a more complicated moral picture of what the federation is i mean isn't there like there's a whole conservative like i'm vaguely aware that i don't think i've ever read about this but i've been been told about this there's a whole conservative thing about star track like kind of

a paleo con critique of star trek which is kind of funny which is basically like it's a woke empire yeah and like it's it's terrifying totalitarian woke empire where like tolerance is enforced. Yeah. And like that and that's funny because it's first of all, it dovetails very much with, you know, the paleo-con critique. I mean,

they were down for the anti-communist part of the Cold War, not so down for the empire building. The empire, well, the empire building and the pretensions to spreading democracy, which they didn't give a shit about. Yeah. And then their critique of,

you know, Western West from the right, which is just like, you know, this reign of, you know, of like, oh, it's all just about LGBT rights and, you know, creating multiculturalism and we're diluting like what actually culturally makes us individualistic. I mean, a unique civilization in the West and so on and so forth. So like the whole, I think like a lot of liberals take. It's the Star Trek universe and federation to be like the like, oh yeah, like it would be like a tolerant, exploratory, um, embracing, you know, thing. Don't really view it as an empire. And then there are like these sort of dissident, um, you know, forces in, in the, in the west that are like, no, this is like, this is a horrible totalitarian society. It's like, this is hiding a horrible totalitarian society, which I think is kind of silly. it doesn't seem that bad, but, like, that's a funny take to me on it. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that maybe the movie really is best, it best represents this kind of moment of uncertainty about what comes next and the anxiety that these sort of old cold warriors might feel about what their purpose will be. And I think that, like, John, I don't remember. which of you was pointing to this, but it's also the case for these, like, aging Star Trek actors who are like, this has been the thing that gives my life and career purpose and what's the point anymore. And there's a scene between Chang, the kind of militaristic anti-Gorka,

anti-Gorbachev figure, and Kirk, where he says, this new era is going to be hardest for people of our generation, you know, who, like, we're trained to hate each other in effect. And, I mean, even the title, like the Undiscovered Country, it's another, it's a Shakespeare reference. It's Hamlet. But the got, Gorka, when he does the, when he does a cheers to, you know, to the, a toast to the undiscovered country, everyone looks at him like, what does that mean? And he says the future. But the undiscovered country in Hamlet is death. It's the afterlife. It's the uncertainty of what comes after life. And so I think that's maybe the place where this sort of on an emotional level is most effective is kind of this anxiety about whether anybody's going to have any purpose in an era past this this Menekean struggle. Is post history the same as death? Like that's what I just made sense to me because when I was watching the movie again, there's all these references to the to be or not to be monologue in Hamlet. And I thought that was just like, oh, that's just recognizable. they're referencing it because people will know it's from but now I'm like oh well this whole

existential theme is present in the film both existential in the sense of like well what does your life mean and existential in the sense of like what is the actual stakes uh of these societies if like the uh you know if the the conflict between them is is uh is removed like the friend enemy distinction between them is removed like in what sense do they still exist yeah um as as as as coherent things. So yeah, that's all starting to come together and it's kind of interesting. Kirk actually has a line towards the end

where he says, some people think the future means the end of history. Yeah, right. He says, we haven't run out of history quite yet, he says. Well, ain't that the truth. But yeah, I mean, like, this was shortly after, you know, well, the book hadn't even come out yet.

This is the end of history essay had been released, I think. Um, the national interest in the American, yeah, I think one of those, one of those journals. And, um, yeah, I was kind of bumping around educated world was this concept of the end of history. And I think it's been, you know, it's everyone has their own understanding of what that means. But I think like the idea that people wouldn't really want history to end because it would be a, a demoralizing and depressing and even kind of a death of, of, of meaning, um, you know, is definitely something that we've seen come up in a lot of these movies and I think it's like being not to like continually bring it back but it's sort of like what's sort of at stake in a lot of the discourse right now about the end end of history like is this the return of historical meaning should we indulge in that or is that itself they're like is that itself a dangerous conceit like should we go back to the way we used to think about things can we go back to what you think

about things. So it's like, you know, one weird thought occurred to me a little while ago. And, you know, we've watched a lot of these movies about like the conspiracy between the security states of the rivals to recreate the war, the Cold War,

because like it gives the meaning. Let's just say for the sake of argument, maybe not so intentionally, but there is something like that because, look at the look at this you have the neocons which were the staffers of the cold war security state in the u.s trying to desperately recreate some kind of civilizational conflict with um with the war on terror right so we've lived through that now we have Putin who is not a neocon exactly but he is an unemployed or was an unemployed veteran of the security services of his

country that was raised on a similar notion of having a primary civilizational ideological rival and it seems almost as if these two forces in our societies are always trying to resurrect and you see it now in Russia they're trying to resurrect you know all of these old themes like anti-fascist struggle you know so it seems there is sort of a it's like an unconscious conspiracy or a just like professional deformation that the old staffs of these of the cold war are kind of trying to find ways to continue it by other means and so like I'm really critical now that I'm saying that I was you know there is a lot of warning say let's not go back to the logic of the Cold War. I understand that, but I'm like somewhat critical of some of the things

people say in that regard. But I do believe that there is a part of this, which is like a lot of people going back to their programming or like not knowing how else to think of the world and just being like, okay, great, we get to do the Cold War again. Or great, we get to do some sort of meaningful, civilizational conflict. Um, so, I think that this, weirdly enough, like, even though in retrospect, you're like, oh, what a silly idea, the militaries of these countries. Well, it's not the militaries. It's more, it's more like the intelligence servances and the bureaucratic staffs of these different nations are still kind of, yeah, they're trying to, like, prevent the Cold War from ending in a weird way. They keep on trying to find something.

Yeah. Sam, what do you think? Um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I agree with that. I think that's right. I think it, I think that, uh, there's this, yeah, this fear of being, uh, of not being able to make sense of the world in terms of categories that they are comfortable with and that in which, in, in conceptions of the world in which what they do is very important and has effects and can, can shape history and shape the future. I think it's funny that like, I also noticed that Kirk, I think Kirk at the very end, quote, it's Peter Pan, doesn't he say, like... Like, first star on the left or whatever, straight through to morning. Which is funny, because there's all this kind of, like, you know, sort of like dark Shakespearean existentialism

about, like, the future and dying and growing old. And then he's going to quote, like, the permanent youth, the boy who never grows up at the very end. Like, I think there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a sort of like peeking through of the, the naivete that might just regenerate the same problem that that John is pointing to here. And the fact is with Star Trek, right, like, they do just keep doing it over and over again. There's more and more Star Trek.

And they're engaged with a lot of the same themes in each iteration of it. And like it never ends. And they have to, you know, reset and restart. And like, you know, I don't know. Well, there is no final frontier. There is no final frontier. Yeah. That's the thing, like, I forget whose idea of U.S. history relies on this,

but the idea of the ever-moving American frontier as being, like, an organizing principle. And then once we hit the Pacific, like, we're in trouble and we have to come up with a new mission. And, like, the world of Star Trek is like, there is always a new mission. And I guess that's what I find a little bit depressing about it, is just, It's like, it never fucking ends. It's like, oh, yeah, there's like another alien race and they're weird and then, but maybe we'll get along with them. Maybe we'll, like, it's just the infinity of exploration to me, which I guess is like one post-historical horizon, which is just like science and exploration to me is sort of unsatisfying. I don't know why.

It's like, okay, that's the other thing. Like, I think culturally the world that Star Trek, and I think this is where I'm like, kind of agree a little bit with the paleo con, like, paranoia about Star Trek is like culturally, it seems really sterile. Like, I guess there are all these interesting alien races that they encounter and they have their own languages and cultures. But like, once you're in the Federation, you all wear the same outfits. Right. They all wear the same outfit. Do you notice that when they're in their fucking, what's the room? room where they go in and they can like a mat like you make a holodeck the holodeck they always go to the

20th century like in their fantasies yeah i mean in fairness that has as much to do it sort of like what props can you find on the paramount lot yeah the bottle the bottle episodes yeah that is true that is true i'll give you that but i do think it's interesting that the hollow deck fantasies are often like we're going to go back to the history of mankind like and and the pre the federation like post-historical world. So my, my, my, my, my, my grave's a star, I mean, I love this movie. I'm, I'm a defender of this movie. And I actually really enjoy the other Star Trek movies.

I think much more than the show. I like the movies more than the show. But there is something about it that's kind of tedious to me where I'm just like, this is it. This is the future. Yeah. This is going to be boring. Like, I mean, I think this is why, you know, in the years since this movie,

And really since the end of the next generation, which comes in 93, I think. That show begins earlier and ends earlier than you think. Yeah, it's 87 to 94. Yeah, yeah. But what comes next for Star Trek is Deep Space 9, which is a series that does not have any expiration. It takes place from a space station bordering sort of like a conflict zone. And the series becomes much more about sort of what does it even mean, what does the Federation mean? What is the Federation?

What does it, what does life within the Federation look like? And is this even a desirable thing? I mean, I think the series to its credit seems to be aware of exactly this criticism that this vision of, you know, kind of like a space, space communism is, it appears sterile. And so what do you, how do you deal with that? And the series's answer has either been to interrogate and subvert some of the assumptions of Star Trek. Again, the big one being, is the Federation even a good thing? And creating a whole new, you know, a whole new rival alien race, the Borg, which are kind of like a, you know, a twisted version of the Federation, right? Sort of the Borg forcibly assimilate every culture comes across.

And the Borg's explanation for this, their view is that, listen, the world is full of diverse things. We want to collect them, we want to sort of collect them and preserve them and integrate them into a greater whole. And this is how we do it. And the next generation doesn't necessarily go in this direction. But there are other Trek stories, Voyager in particular, in which the Borg play a big role in that series. and kind of one of the ongoing questions is, is the Federation really that different than the Borg? And I think that's like, I kind of think it's the only direction you can go with this series.

Like if you're not going to spend that much time on sort of the, you know, the nuts and bolts of like the Federation, then sort of questioning the Federation from either an outsider's perspective or the perspective of Starfleet members who were some, in some way disconnected from the federation. That is, I think, is the strongest approach, or you go back into the past. And so Star Trek Enterprise is the very beginning of Starfleet, which allows you to have a bit more of a utopian view. But the recent movies, the JJ Abrams and then the Justin Lynn movie, are very much on the, on the interrogating the basis and the foundations of Star Trek end of things.

And some fans find this very divisive. I don't like it very much. But I think it's actually one of the most interesting directions you can go with Star Trek, provided you're still balancing it with sort of that utopian ideal. Because I do think, I think the flip side of that is that the utopian ideal of Star Trek is important. There isn't that much science fiction these days with mass appeal that has, at its core, like fundamentally utopian vision of the future of like what human ingenuity and cooperation and perseverance can accomplish uh and i've i personally find that uh extremely appealing

i guess i just think i why don't know like the thing is why don't i find it like why did i always like Star Wars more. It was always aesthetic. I just always thought that the shittiness of the Star Wars universe, like it's, I mean, this might be just from growing up in New York and just being like, yeah, that looks like the way things are.

Just felt more convincing to me and I found like it's, I didn't even care who won in Star Wars. I was just like the universe is cool. Like the smugglers, all the underworld stuff. Like there's something very, very

like yeah there's like this big idealistic fight going on but then there's kind of like this whole world of kind of like there's more of air similitude in that world yeah like it just kind of spreads out and there's like crime and underworld and like obvious like economic problems or something like that it just seems like a very um you know like just a less a less perfect universe even though maybe like it has this like center it's centered on this kind of like fairy tale but yeah i mean no i see what you're saying i think like the utopian part of it like we have like such an obsession especially today like dystopias are so popular as a as an idea and i think they're actually kind of corrosive like even though i think dystopias are supposed to be critical and make people critical of the present

they end up actually like engendering a really destructive cynicism um and make people despair and get kind of paranoid delusions. So, yeah, I mean, like, I see what you're saying. I see that the value in kind of a pure utopianism as an art form and, like, not, like, just like, oh, yeah, we're going to do dystopia. We're going to do, like, gritty world.

Like, I think that that does engender kind of stupid cynicism, which is really all too present today. Like, so, but yeah, I don't know. I guess it's just like we do kind of live in cyberpunk dystopia, so it's kind of boring to see it. It's kind of boring to see it reflected so much. You're like, yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah. Go ahead, Sam.

Another thing that I think like the Star Trek's, I was reminded of this, Jamel, when you're talking about the Borg. Because I think you're right that like one thing about the Borg is that it's the dark flip, you know, the bizarre. Federation, like, there's one way in which it kind of exonerates the Federation because at least they're not as bad as the Borg, but on the other hand, it's like a critique of them. But then the other thing about Star Trek, a huge, you know, philosophical preoccupation is with like the relationship between like logic and emotion and like humans and machines or humans and computers. So the Bork are also this fear of a, of a, you know, a cybernetic. you know,

post-human cyborg entity. But then there's also in every single iteration of Star Trek, there's, you know,

there's the, the relationship between Spock and Kirk is one between like the sort of hot-headed emotional

Kirk and the logical, rational Spock, and then you get in next generation, you have Data who's an android who,

who's struggling with whether to be emotional and whether to have emotions is to be human. And then, as you mentioned, Voyager, there's Seven of Nine, the former Borg who's figuring out what it means to be human and what like frailty and emotional vulnerability consists of and stuff like that, which is also interesting, I think, as kind of one of the organizing principles

of this series. And it kind of relates to that, question that John you're kind of kind of getting at which is like um this kind of I don't know you could put like if you don't have like sort of conflict and disorder and irrationality do you have like the vitality and verve and that makes life interesting no like the is the is the end of history post human or post um uh war future um um um dissatisfying in particular because it tries to eliminate the kind of frail and broken and imperfect aspects of a world without passion a world about passion yeah that's that's

definitely like because it it pretty much consistently sides with the necessity that even humans are bad because they're irrational and they make kind of decisions on the basis of love instead of reason but ultimately sides with the human pretty much in every instinct in instance yeah well it's like oh we need to it's again you know a very traditional liberal theme of we need to balance the reason and emotions and you know yeah it's like it's like western rationalism you know the show is very much the philosophy of western rationalism you know being like we can work everything out we can discuss things yeah we can we can we can we We can come, we can come to a, to a, a, a, a happy medium with the, with the mind and the heart.

Yeah. And they can be, literally be friends. And east and west. Yeah. And like, you know, other cultures. It's just a matter of time before we all become friends. And, you know, I mean, I think there's actually, there's, there is, there is some truth to it. And it is an attractive, and it is an attractive vision.

Like, I do think that, like, it's nice to see in TV or movies, like, you know, it's like, it's very rare in a movie. Like, this is a nice movie because diplomacy is the center of the film. And, like, how many films, like, are, is a diplomatic victory, like, what's, like, heralded? No, it's about military victories and conquests or, you know, the bad guy's getting shot. And, like, this movie is kind of funny. and you know this is part of the whole charm of the Star Trek nerdiness is like well like this is about a diplomatic summit and the diplomatic summit actually gets to go through and they make up history like yeah I mean look I I understand especially given the world that we live in the charm and attraction of this worldview but I also and now maybe that I'm a little older I get it I'm a little bit kinder to it than I was before before, but like, yeah, I mean, the show, the movie does introduce themes, philosophical, political themes that are, you know, pretty sophisticated and tries to deal with them in a thoughtful way,

tries to introduce issues like race, issues like warfare, cultural differences, and tries to like come up with pretty thoughtful solutions to them. So maybe I'm not so hard on Star Trek is a... I mean, so you say that, but we're going to talk about at least one other Star Trek movie in this podcast that's Star Trek First Contact, which is a movie that very much low...

I think it's my favorite Star Trek movie. I absolutely love that movie, and I think it takes your perspective, John. Like, it sort of that movie, I mean, one of the one of the threads of that movie is that Picard in the face of the Borg becomes like a bloodthirsty captain Ahab. I mean, the, the, the big literary reference for that movie is

Moby Dick with Picard sort of taking the view that there will, there can be no negotiation, there can be no dialogue with an enemy like the Borg it is, you know, it is they are either defeated that they defeat us

and there's no other choice there. And it's sort of it's funny because that movie doesn't, that movie doesn't its conclusion is that Picard is wrong, right? Like the thing that they're trying to achieve is like protecting the keeping the first

contact intact, making sure that humanity and Vulcan meet each other. But this idea that there are some conflicts that simply cannot be resolved through discourse and dialogue in that the liberal values in that way fail, fail to meet the occasion. is something that's raised by first contact and is, to the extent that it's answered, it's answered in favor, it's answered against the traditional Star Trek view. It's sort of an interesting, an interesting subversion of the series that you wouldn't necessarily assume. The other thing, the other thing that's interesting about first contact is that because they

have to go back in time to make sure the first contact happens, you see what Earth is like at the moment right before this sort of you know galactic future set in motion and it's in the aftermath of World War III I guess which was like a nuclear

holocaust and so everything is really shitty and everyone's really fucked up and so there's the other thing about Star Trek is that it's like kind of canon that there's that like a period of

intense irresolvable conflict led to the moment where led to deciding to embark on this utopian future but you hardly ever see um in the series what that conflict consisted of on earth um like there's an idea that like in the in the which was maybe totally not a sound idea But, though, sort of you can relate it to things that happened in the 20th century, but like that in the wake of this like brutal, senseless war, in the traumatized people decided to do something different, but you kind of Star Trek just starts where they're already living in the, you know, the world they built from the ashes of the old. Yeah.

What was I going to say? Oh, yeah, I guess originally early on. like the clean-ons were introduced as like the enemy for which there is no uh potential understanding and then eventually that breaks down yeah we realized like actually we can't have peace that there's a clean on crew member in later series so and so forth so he actually appears in this movie wharf right yeah he's like the wolf's grandfather oh okay yeah it's not when they were writing defense attorney they wanted war they wanted warf to be the one defending kirk and uh bones but the one of the writers just like well this movie takes place 75 years before the next generation so instead of

instead of like changing up they're like well we'll still have it he'll just be a warf's grandfather yeah that's so funny i mean it's also like why do they have such a good like public defender at this trial hey hey the clinkons you know they may be a warrior race but they're not like above the law no that's what they say they have that's what they say they have yeah i mean so yeah i guess they i guess the the borg are are like more difficult to because they're not really well people i don't know they're not like the cladons are another culture like the borg is the absence of culture something right i don't know what i'm talking about but like like the it seems like you know like it would be fucked up right like from a racial perspective it would be racist

insist if Star Trek had it and I mean I guess the Romulins are always really bad but it's like it would be it would be kind of fucked up if they were like all all of these aliens are bad people and like there are enemies forever you know like that's just kind of re reifying racism through the yeah through the thing I mean I mean they I guess they are different they are actually different species not a fictional distinction but you know on the realm of the imagination it would seem to you don't kind of be reaffirming racist ideas if you're like yeah the aliens are always bad they're oh well never going to get along with them it's impossible yeah um yeah yeah well i think uh i think it's about time to wrap up we try to keep these things uh pretty breezy last thoughts sam

last thoughts uh i like this movie uh i i haven't lost faith entirely and uh post scarcity space communism but um i'm i'm you know i'm asking myself some questions about that now after having this conversation uh john last thoughts i'm charmed by the uh naive and hopeful world of this film it's nice to return to and i've always enjoyed watching this movie and i probably well in the future. Yeah, I feel much the same. I think that this movie totally works on the level of allegory. Even if it doesn't necessarily have a politics per se, it's sort of faith in the ability of people of goodwill to pursue good ends is refreshing. And I mean, it is a very well-made movie. I mean, if that doesn't come across in this conversation, it is an extremely well-made

movie. It is a fun adventure movie that is like, you know, for adults, four kids, it is, it is a real pleasure to watch. So I would highly recommend that if you have not seen it and you listen to this conversation, that you should check it out. It's available in Paramount Plus or you can rent it. Or as I mentioned in the last podcast, you can buy a box. set like I have um sitting on my shelf yeah you can watch you can watch my mom's VHS tape of it if you want I would say one other thing is a is that if you want to see Samantha from sex in the city as a gorgeous Vulcan uh you know a Helms woman uh then that's also a draw yes a very a very very different look for Kim control uh but it works all the same all the same yeah okay

That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcast, and wherever else podcasts are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and review. It does help people find the show. You can reach out to all three of us on Twitter. I am at Jay Bowie, where you can yell at me for whatever thing I said that day. John, you are...

I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. I will yell at you. And John will yell at you. And Sam, you are. At Sam Adler Bell. Don't interact with me, please. Yeah, you also are also a prone to getting yelled at. I know.

Oh, boy. Yeah. John thinks it's a kink. It's something. I wouldn't exactly go that far, but there's something psychological going on. We also have a, uh, feedback email, you can reach us over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com. Last week, I shared a little feedback. I'm going to share some again. This week, this email comes

from Fabian Smiths in Germany. It was written in response to our 10th episode on Going Under. That's the episode where we largely ignored the movie and just talked about the Ukraine conflict. Here is the email. Hello, Jamel and John. I just finished the most recent episode of the pod and thought I'd write a short note on the New York Times headline you read regarding Soviet Jewish immigration to Germany, which was the thing we did talk about very briefly. As you pointed out, much of the Soviet Jewish immigration was destined for the US and Israel. However, a significant amount of people did end up settling in Germany. Interestingly enough, this goes back to the short-lived GDR government. After its ascension, it not only apologized

for the GDR's policy towards Jewish people, like its refusal to pay reparations, and especially the state of Israel, including material support for groups like the PFLP, but also passed legislation that allowed for easier immigration to the country. After reunification, the federal government first tried to kill the policy, after only a few thousand had made use of it. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of German-descendant Soviet citizens were being admitted each year on the basis of a Latin term I do not know, a U.S. sanguineous citizens. Oh, yeah, blood citizenship.

Okay, there you go. Yeah, yeah. It took sustained civil protests led by Jewish communities in the country for the federal government to finally adopt the GDRs regulations into federal law in 1991. Until its end in 2005, over 200,000 people made use of it. To give some perspective, the German Jewish community counted around 30,000 people in 1990. Thank you for another interesting listen. Thank you.

And I'm looking forward to the next. all right interesting facts again you can always just for feedback at unclear and present feedback at fastmail.com episodes come out every other Friday so we will see you in two weeks

with a movie I'm excited to rewatch Oliver Stone's JFK a crazy bug nuts movie that somehow was gigantic critical and financial success quick synopsis Be acclaimed Oliver Stone Drama presents the investigation

into the assassination of President John Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison played by Kevin Costner When Garrison begins to doubt conventional thinking on the murder he faces government resistance and after the killing of suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald he closed

at the case later however Garrison reopened the investigation finding evidence of an extensive conspiracy behind Kennedy's death. That is a huge understatement for what transpires in that movie. Yeah. That'll be fun. It'll be fun.

We've been touching on the whole JFK conspiracy thing over a couple episodes, and this will let us really, really dig into it. Yeah. JFK is available for rental on iTunes and Amazon Prime. If you'd like to watch it beforehand, it's like three hours long, so fair warning. I think it's a very entertaining three hours. And again, it's a pretty insane movie. Okay.

For John Gans and Sam Adler-Bell, I am Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We will see you next time. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be.