The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

2. Space Battle? What Space Battle?

Let’s consider the Enterprise’s pummeling by Chang’s Bird of Prey on approach to Camp Khitomer.

There are representatives of the three major powers present — Federation, Klingon, and Romulan (as represented by Ambassador Nanclus) — which suggests at least three spaceships brought all these people to this planet. Where are they? And how is it none of those ships spots the renegade and implicated-in-Gorkon’s-assassination USS Enterprise racing towards the planet, and then inexplicably being hammered by photon torpedoes? And then the Excelsior shows and gets similarly hit.

Does no one see any of this? Undetectable fire-while-cloaked Bird of Prey aside, two Federation starships bearing down on these secret peace talks ought to have been spotted by someone and alarms should have been sounded on the planet.

How did this not happen? Were the only ships allowed to come to the conference unarmed civilian spaceliners that either all landed or warped away? Does the Khitomer outpost have no means of detecting ships in space?

Or is it just a dumb oversight on the part of the filmmakers?