You know, thinking on it further...The Undiscovered Country is a far better Star Trek film than Wrath of Khan. Yes, even the Director's Cut.

HANG ON BEAR WITH PUT THE PITCHFORKS DOWN LET ME SPEAK -

After a bumpy start, TOS came to be about two key elements:

1) The triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy - one person split into three chunks (pragmatism, logic, and emotion)

2) Look at what funky cool science can do for us...but what are the moral ramifications of it?

WoK is, at its heart, a story about Kirk's fear of growing old and irrelevant, a thread that was sort of started in TMP but fizzled out. Spock dies but his death is about how Kirk feels the loss. McCoy is there to do the "we all get old now wear some fucking glasses" shtick.

The science part of WoK isn't...really touched on? It's a submarine movie in space and it's BRILLIANT, but the actual science fiction part - the creation of Genesis - is...just...there. Nobody talks about the morality of terraforming, or who should have access to the device.

They start it with David being pissed about (wrongfully) assuming Starfleet will use it for military purposes, but that's about it (and the political implications only come into play in Search for Spock...and are again unresolved).

And Khan is a genetically superior being yet there's no discussion about eugenics (arguably because Space Seed already covered that & VHS releases were a thing when WoK was made, I think?).

So WoK is often voted the best Star Trek film...but it's not really a Star Trek film.

Undiscovered Country, tho? Fuckin' perfect Star Trek film.

The triumvirate is out in force to solve the central mystery. Spock is slamming the logic down. Kirk is slamming the babes down. McCoy is slamming the ambassador's chest down oh god don't do tha-

And the film uses science fiction to reflect real world events: the end of the Cold War, translated through Klingons asking for peace and the Americ...the Federation suddenly realising peace means they won't have an enemy any more and some people not being cool with that.

THAT is Star Trek at its most powerful. That is SCIENCE FICTION at its most powerful. And fuck with what's going on in the world today it was sobering to realise how relevant most of it still was in 2020...nearly forty years later.

On top of that all of this the ancillary cast actually get to do substantial things (I think Uhura has more unique lines in this than most TOS episodes stitched together?) so as well as being a big political/scifi drama it's also an amazing TOS send off.

I'm so glad they never made another film with the TOS cast in to pass the torch and instead Scotty just got stuck in a transporter beam and turned up in TNG like WHAT'S UP MY PEOPLE WHERE THEM ENGINES AT and Kirk never got a bridge dropped on him hahahaha ha

...that went on for longer than I meant. I just. I forgot just how much I really really love Star Trek dksgjdlkhg WHEN IS THE NEXT SEASON OF DISCOVERY, PLEASE, I'M DYING HERE,