20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
6. The Show Trial And The Cuban Missile Crisis
The trial of Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy is one of the tensest scenes in the film. Quite frankly, this was to be the last film starring the Original Series crew. Was Meyer above having them executed to keep the costs down? Well, apparently, yes, thankfully!
The scene begins in Klingon, with Kirk and McCoy holding translators to their ears. It then switches to English for the ease of the audience, but in-universe still features the characters speaking their own tongue. General Chang, serving as prosecutor, gets increasingly riled before spitting a question at Kirk and demanding he answer, without waiting for the translation.
This scene parallels the exchange between Adlai Stevenson and Valerian Zorin at the UN, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As tensions rose in the room, Stevenson demanded to know if there were in fact Nuclear Missiles present on the island of Cuba, which had been denied by Zorin. He shouted at him to answer Yes or No, without waiting for translation.
Zorin cooly answered that he would not be spoken to as though being commanded by opposing council, and would answer in due course. He then implied again that there were no missiles - only for photos, taken by a U-2 rocket flying overhead, confirmed their presence on the island.