Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country--Special Collector's Edition

For the final movie mission of the original Star Trek cast, Paramount demonstrated impeccable Vulcan logic by rehiring director Nicholas Meyer, whose script and direction for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (and co-writing credit on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home) endeared him to Trekkies everywhere. While remaining (mostly) loyal to Gene Roddenberry's original concept, Meyer brought Shakespearean melodrama (and numerous quotes from the Bard, including the film's subtitle) to this entertaining thriller in which Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) and the Enterprise crew face off against a formidable Klingon conspirator (Christopher Plummer, chewing the scenery) bent on thwarting a historic peace summit between the Federation and Klingon empire. Sabotage, assassination, and Starfleet betrayals weigh in the balance, with Sex and the City's Kim Cattrall costarring as an errant Vulcan protégé of Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Meyer maintains ample suspense with tight plotting, intelligent dialogue, and (as usual) a variety of space battles and dazzling special effects. This proved to be a fitting sendoff for Star Trek's original cast: their signature farewells at film's end brought elegant closure to the inaugural crew of science fiction's most durable film-and-TV franchise. Although there are only two very minor scene revisions by Meyer, this double-disc collector's edition, the set is chock full of extras, beginning with "The Perils of Peacemaking," an insightful featurette exploring Meyers' intentional parallels between Star Trek IV and then-current (1991) geopolitical events, most notably Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost. Meyers and co-writer Denny Martin Flinn provide intelligent commentary regarding plotting, their creative process, and the nature of their then-pioneering e-mail collaboration (be sure to listen to their hilarious anecdotes during the end credits), and onscreen text commentary from Star Trek experts Michael and Denise Okuda goes into fastidious detail about recycled sets, backstage trivia, humorous errors or inconsistencies, and myriad connections between STVI and the other Star Trek films and TV series. An hour-long cluster of production-related featurettes round out the package, and the career tribute to DeForest Kelley (1920-99) is a fine farewell to Star Trek's curmudgeonly Dr. McCoy. Recommended. (J. Shannon)