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

11. Target Practice

Star Trek Kirk
Paramount
SULU: Now we’ve given them something else to shoot at.
SOMEONE: Aye, sir!

What a truly insipid statement, and a stupid reply, leading into the one truly dumb thing in this otherwise excellent space battle.

What’s so dumb?

That the two starships don’t split up and try to get to the planet from radically different trajectories, making it harder for Chang’s ship to target them both. The goal is getting someone down to the Camp Khitomer Peace Conference, not playing clay pigeon to Bard-blathering Chang’s Bird of Prey. Instead, Sulu rushes in near the Enterprise (at least as depicted on Chang’s tactical display) and just gets walloped.

If not for the deus ex Spock-ina climax where they use the “gaseous anomaly” gear to target their invisible adversary, they’d have been busy getting hammered (and not in the fun way) instead of making a sensible effort to save the day.

 
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Contributor
Contributor

Maurice is one of the founders of FACT TREK (www.facttrek.com), a project dedicated to untangling 50+ years of mythology about the original Star Trek and its place in TV history. He's also a screenwriter, writer, and videogame industry vet with scars to show for it. In that latter capacity he game designer/writer on the Sega Genesis/SNES "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Crossroads of Time" game, as well as Dreamcast "Ecco the Dolphin, Defender of the Future" where Tom Baker performed words he wrote.