The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
8. Hole-y Ozone
SPOCK: The moon's decimation means a deadly pollution of their ozone. They will have depleted their supply of oxygen in approximately fifty Earth years.
Say what?
What does “pollution of their ozone” even mean? Is it akin to the human-produced chemicals responsible for the Antarctic ozone hole in the late 20th century on Earth? If so, such depletion increases the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that reaches a planet’s surface, with corresponding physical ailments and genetic and immune system damage, but it doesn’t deplete oxygen.
It comes across like they just tossed a word salad from some environmental lingo heard on news reports of the era.
This is a case where they should have dropped the buzzwords and said something more science fiction-y and direct, like that the resulting subspace shockwave caused tremendous and lasting environmental damage, requiring them to move the entire population of the planet Kronos to other worlds.
This isn’t even technobabble, it’s just dumb science.