A Look Back: Star Trek VI – The Undiscovered Country
One of the interesting things about the cinematic Star Trek universe is that it’s considered all the even-numbered movies are good movies, and all the odd-numbered movies are considered shockers. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) was deemed a bore, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) so-so (although, as I wrote, I think this movie is under-appreciated), and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) a mess. But Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) is still considered unparalled for Trek and science-fiction movies, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) was the biggest grossing Trek movie to that time. So what did the sixth installment…
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Films, television series, and books ultimately come down to the same thing: the written story. Something that is beginning to annoy me in storytelling – particularly in film and television – is the use of flashbacks. To the best of my knowledge, JJ Abrams’ television series Lost popularised the use of flashbacks to introduce backstory. Lost has an ensemble cast of characters. In the two seasons I watched (before the constant baiting and switching turned me off), each episode would focus on somebody different. Throughout that episode, we’d get flashbacks about the character’s life before they got on the island. A younger, much-less cynical version of me enjoyed this –…