Why Gene Roddenberry hated Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country released shortly after Gene Roddenberry’s death.

Nicholas Meyer had worked with Leonard Nimoy on the storyline for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and co-wrote the screenplay with Denny Flynn, and though the movie was considered successful upon its release, it had one major detractor. Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry passed away before the film was released in movie theaters, but, according to Whatculture, he viewed the final cut of it beforehand, and he hated every line of the script.

Specifically, Roddenberry didn’t like that the movie was so militaristic, and he had a big problem with the bigotry that the Federation characters had against the Klingons as he believed, by the 23rd century, the world wouldn’t be dealing with the same problems as it did in the 20th century. He also didn’t like how Lt. Saavik suddenly became a villain in the movie, which didn’t sense considering how much she’d helped Spock in Star Trek III. (Saavik was changed to Valeris in the movie.)

Nicholas Meyer defended Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Meyer and Roddenberry went head-to-head in a battle against Roddenberry’s forced line-by-line reading of the script as well as the creator’s patent dislike of the film. Meyer didn’t believe bigotry would be eliminated by the 23rd century as he’d seen nothing in Star Trek to that point that would convince him of that.

As for Roddenberry’s dislike of Saavik’s treachery, Meyer had no intentions of changing it. But Kim Cattrall, the actress who played the role of Valeris, wasn’t interested in being the third actress to play the role of Saavik as it was a role she’d auditioned for originally. So a change was made, but it was the only major change to the film despite Roddenberry’s objections.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country went on to release approximately six weeks after Roddenberry’s death. None of Roddenberry’s other notes about the script had been taken into consideration.