title: Phobos (moon)

text: The Soviet Union undertook the Phobos program with two probes, both launched successfully in July 1988. "Phobos 1" was accidentally shut down by an erroneous command from ground control issued in September 1988 and lost while the craft was still en route. "Phobos 2" arrived at the Mars system in January 1989 and, after transmitting a small amount of data and imagery but shortly before beginning its detailed examination of Phobos's surface, the probe abruptly ceased transmission due either to failure of the onboard computer or of the radio transmitter, already operating on the backup power. Other Mars missions collected more data, but no dedicated sample return mission has been performed.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: The Russian Space Agency launched a sample return mission to Phobos in November 2011, called "Fobos-Grunt". The return capsule also included a life science experiment of The Planetary Society, called Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment, or LIFE. A second contributor to this mission was the China National Space Administration, which supplied a surveying satellite called "Yinghuo-1", which would have been released in the orbit of Mars, and a soil-grinding and sieving system for the scientific payload of the Phobos lander. However, after achieving Earth orbit, the "Fobos–Grunt" probe failed to initiate subsequent burns that would have sent it to Mars. Attempts to recover the probe were unsuccessful and it crashed back to Earth in January 2012.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: On 1 July 2020, the Mars orbiter of the Indian Space Research Organisation was able to capture photos of the body from 4,200 km away.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: In 1997 and 1998, the "Aladdin" mission was selected as a finalist in the NASA Discovery Program. The plan was to visit both Phobos and Deimos, and launch projectiles at the satellites. The probe would collect the ejecta as it performed a slow flyby (~1 km/s). These samples would be returned to Earth for study three years later. The Principal Investigator was Dr. Carle Pieters of Brown University. The total mission cost, including launch vehicle and operations was $247.7 million. Ultimately, the mission chosen to fly was "MESSENGER", a probe to Mercury.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: In 2007, the European aerospace subsidiary EADS Astrium was reported to have been developing a mission to Phobos as a technology demonstrator. Astrium was involved in developing a European Space Agency plan for a sample return mission to Mars, as part of the ESA's Aurora programme, and sending a mission to Phobos with its low gravity was seen as a good opportunity for testing and proving the technologies required for an eventual sample return mission to Mars. The mission was envisioned to start in 2016, was to last for three years. The company planned to use a "mothership", which would be propelled by an ion engine, releasing a lander to the surface of Phobos. The lander would perform some tests and experiments, gather samples in a capsule, then return to the mothership and head back to Earth where the samples would be jettisoned for recovery on the surface.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: In 2007, the Canadian Space Agency funded a study by Optech and the Mars Institute for an uncrewed mission to Phobos known as "Phobos Reconnaissance and International Mars Exploration" (PRIME). A proposed landing site for the PRIME spacecraft is at the "Phobos monolith", a prominent object near Stickney crater. The PRIME mission would be composed of an orbiter and lander, and each would carry 4 instruments designed to study various aspects of Phobos's geology.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: In 2008, NASA Glenn Research Center began studying a Phobos and Deimos sample return mission that would use solar electric propulsion. The study gave rise to the "Hall" mission concept, a New Frontiers-class mission under further study as of 2010.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Another concept of a sample return mission from Phobos and Deimos is OSIRIS-REx II, which would use heritage technology from the first OSIRIS-REx mission.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: As of January 2013, a new "Phobos Surveyor" mission is currently under development by a collaboration of Stanford University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The mission is currently in the testing phases, and the team at Stanford plans to launch the mission between 2023 and 2033.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: In March 2014, a Discovery class mission was proposed to place an orbiter in Mars orbit by 2021 to study Phobos and Deimos through a series of close flybys. The mission is called Phobos And Deimos & Mars Environment (PADME). Two other Phobos missions that were proposed for the Discovery 13 selection included a mission called "Merlin", which would flyby Deimos but actually orbit and land on Phobos, and another one is "Pandora" which would orbit both Deimos and Phobos.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) unveiled on 9 June 2015 the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX), a sample return mission targeting Phobos. MMX will land and collect samples from Phobos multiple times, along with conducting Deimos flyby observations and monitoring Mars's climate. By using a corer sampling mechanism, the spacecraft aims to retrieve a minimum 10 g amount of samples. NASA, ESA, DLR, and CNES are also participating in the project, and will provide scientific instruments. The U.S. will contribute the Neutron and Gamma-Ray


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Spectrometer (NGRS), and France the Near IR Spectrometer (NIRS4/MacrOmega). Although the mission has been selected for implementation and is now beyond proposal stage, formal project approval by JAXA has been postponed following the Hitomi mishap. Development and testing of key components, including the sampler, is currently ongoing. , MMX is scheduled to be launched in 2024, and will return to Earth five years later.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Russia plans to repeat Fobos-Grunt mission in the late 2020s, and the European Space Agency is assessing a sample-return mission for 2024 called Phootprint.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos has been proposed as an early target for a human mission to Mars. The teleoperation of robotic scouts on Mars by humans on Phobos could be conducted without significant time delay, and planetary protection concerns in early Mars exploration might be addressed by such an approach.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos has been proposed as an early target for a crewed mission to Mars because a landing on Phobos would be considerably less difficult and expensive than a landing on the surface of Mars itself. A lander bound for Mars would need to be capable of atmospheric entry and subsequent return to orbit without any support facilities, or would require the creation of support facilities in-situ. A lander instead bound for Phobos could be based on equipment designed for lunar and asteroid landings. Furthermore, due to Phobos's very weak gravity, the delta-v required to land on Phobos and return is only 80% of that required for a trip to and from the surface of the Moon.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: It has been proposed that the sands of Phobos could serve as a valuable material for aerobraking during a Mars landing. A relatively small amount of chemical fuel brought from Earth could be used to lift a large amount of sand from the surface of Phobos to a transfer orbit. This sand could be released in front of a spacecraft during the descent maneuver causing a densification of the atmosphere just in front of the spacecraft.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: While human exploration of Phobos could serve as a catalyst for the human exploration of Mars, it could be scientifically valuable in its own right.


title: Phobos (moon)

text: Phobos is Synchronously orbiting Mars, where the same face stays facing the planet at ~6,028 km above the Martian surface. A space elevator could extend down from Phobos to Mars 6,000 km, about 28 kilometers from the surface, and just out of the atmosphere of Mars. A similar space elevator cable could extend out 6,000 km the opposite direction that would counterbalance Phobos. In total the space elevator would extend out over 12,000 km which would be below Areostationary orbit of Mars (17,032 km). A rocket launch would still be needed to get the rocket and cargo to the beginning of the space elevator 28 km above the surface. The surface of Mars is rotating at 0.25 km/s at the equator and the bottom of the space elevator would be rotating around Mars at 0.77 km/s, so only 0.52 km/s of Delta-v would be needed to get to the space elevator. Phobos orbits at 2.15 km/s and the outer most part of the space elevator would rotate around Mars at 3.52 km/s.


title: The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder

text: The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder is an American comedy live-action/animated television series developed by Christopher J. Nowak that premiered on Paramount+ on March 31, 2022. It is the sequel to Nickelodeon's original animated series, "The Fairly OddParents".


title: The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder

text: Picking up years after the original animated series, the new series follows Timmy Turner's cousin, Vivian "Viv" Turner, and her new stepbrother, Roy Raskin, as they navigate life in Dimmsdale with the help of their fairy godparents, Cosmo and Wanda, who are gifted to them by a now older Timmy when he leaves for college.


title: The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder

text: The series was announced in February 2021, with Butch Hartman and Fred Seibert returning as producers, and Christopher J. Nowak serving as both executive producer and showrunner. The series started production in July 2021. The animation was outsourced to the Tijuana-based Boxel Studio. All 13 episodes were released on Paramount+ on March 31, 2022.


title: The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder

text: Diondra Brown from Common Sense Media gave the series three-out-of-five stars, calling it "a family-friendly show with eccentric comedy and a meaningful nod to the original comedy series."


title: Open Society Foundations

text: Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a stated aim of advancing justice, education, public health and independent media. The group's name was inspired by Karl Popper's 1945 book "The Open Society and Its Enemies".


title: Open Society Foundations

text: As of 2015, the OSF had branches in 37 countries, encompassing a group of country and regional foundations, such as the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa; its headquarters are at 224 West 57th Street in New York City. In 2018, OSF announced it was closing its European office in Budapest and moving to Berlin, in response to legislation passed by the Hungarian government targeting the foundation's activities. >As of 2021, OSF has reported expenditures in excess of $16 billion since its establishment in 1993, mostly in grants towards NGOs, aligned with the organisation's mission.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: On May 28, 1984, business magnate George Soros signed a contract between the Soros Foundation (New York City) and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the founding document of the Soros Foundation Budapest. This was followed by several foundations in the region to help countries move away from Real socialism in the Eastern Bloc.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 1991, the foundation merged with the ("Foundation for European Intellectual Mutual Aid"), an affiliate of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, created in 1966 to imbue 'non-conformist' Eastern European scientists with anti-totalitarian and capitalist ideas.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 1993 open Society Institute was created in the United States to support the Soros foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In August 2010, it started using the name Open Society Foundations (OSF) to better reflect its role as a benefactor for civil society groups in countries around the world.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 1995, Soros stated that he believed there can be no absolute answers to political questions because the same principle of reflexivity applies as in financial markets.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 2012, Christopher Stone joined the OSF as the second president. He replaced Aryeh Neier, who served as president from 1993 to 2012. Stone announced in September 2017 that he was stepping down as president. In January 2018, Patrick Gaspard was appointed president of the Open Society Foundations. He announced in December 2020 that he was stepping down as president. In January 2021, Mark Malloch-Brown was appointed president of the Open Society Foundations.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 2016, the OSF was reportedly the target of a cyber security breach. Documents and information reportedly belonging to the OSF were published by a website. The cyber security breach has been described as sharing similarities with Russian-linked cyberattacks that targeted other institutions, such as the Democratic National Committee.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: Its $873 million budget in 2013, ranked as the second-largest private philanthropy budget in the United States, after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation budget of $3.9 billion. As of 2020, its budget increased to $1.2 billion.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: The foundation reported granting at least $33 million to civil rights and social justice organizations in the United States. This funding included groups such as the Organization for Black Struggle and Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment that supported protests in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin, the death of Eric Garner, the shooting of Tamir Rice and the shooting of Michael Brown. According to OpenSecrets, the OSF spends much of its resources on democratic causes around the world, and has also contributed to groups such as the Tides Foundation.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: OSF has been a major financial supporter of U.S. immigration reform, including establishing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: OSF projects have included the National Security and Human Rights Campaign and the Lindesmith Center, which conducted research on drug reform.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: The OSF became a partner of the National Democratic Institute, a charitable organization which partnered with pro-democracy groups like the Gov2U project run by Scytl.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In April 2022, OSF announced a grant of $20 million to The International Crisis Group in support of efforts to analyse global issues fuelling violence, climate injustice and economic inequality and providing recommendations to address them.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 2007, Nicolas Guilhot (a senior research associate at the French National Centre for Scientific Research) wrote in "Critical Sociology" that the Open Society Foundations serve to perpetuate institutions that reinforce the existing social order, as the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation have done before them. Guilhot argues that control over the social sciences by moneyed interests has depoliticized this field and reinforced a capitalist view of modernization.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: An OSF effort in 2008 in the African Great Lakes region aimed at spreading human rights awareness among prostitutes in Uganda and other nations in the area was not received well by the Ugandan authorities, who considered it an effort to legalize and legitimize prostitution.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: Open Society Foundations has been criticized in pro-Israel editorials, "Tablet" magazine, "Arutz Sheva" and "Jewish Press", for including funding for the activist groups Adalah and I'lam, which they say are anti-Israel and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Among the documents released in 2016 by DCleaks, an OSF report reads "For a variety of reasons, we wanted to construct a diversified portfolio of grants dealing with Israel and Palestine, funding both Israeli Jewish and PCI (Palestinian Citizens of Israel) groups as well as building a portfolio of Palestinian grants and in all cases to maintain a low profile and relative distance—particularly on the advocacy front."


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 2013, NGO Monitor, an Israeli NGO, produced a report which says, "Soros has been a frequent critic of Israeli government policy, and does not consider himself a Zionist, but there is no evidence that he or his family holds any special hostility or opposition to the existence of the state of Israel. This report will show that their support, and that of the Open Society Foundations, has nevertheless gone to organizations with such agendas." The report says its objective is to inform OSF, claiming: "The evidence demonstrates that Open Society funding contributes significantly to anti-Israel campaigns in three important respects:


title: Open Society Foundations

text: The report concludes, "Yet, to what degree Soros, his family, and the Open Society Foundations are aware of the cumulative impact on Israel and of the political warfare conducted by many of their beneficiaries is an open question."


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In November 2015, Russia banned the activities of the Open Society Foundations on its territory, declaring "It was found that the activity of the Open Society Foundations and the Open Society Institute Assistance Foundation represents a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation and the security of the state".


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 2017, Open Society Foundations and other NGOs which promote open government and help refugees were targeted for crackdowns by authoritarian and populist governments who have been emboldened by encouraging signals from the Trump Administration. Several politicians in eastern Europe, including Liviu Dragnea in Romania and right-wing figures Szilard Nemeth in Hungary, North Macedonia's Nikola Gruevski, who called for a "de-Sorosization" of society, and Poland's Jarosław Kaczyński, who has said that Soros-funded groups want "societies without identity", regard many of the NGO groups to be irritants at best, and threats at worst. Some of those Soros-funded advocacy groups in the region said the renewed attacks were harassment and intimidation, which became more open after the 2016 election of Donald Trump in the United States. Stefania Kapronczay of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, which receives half of its funding from Soros-backed foundations, claimed that Hungarian officials are "testing the waters" in an effort to see "what they can get away with."


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In 2017, the government of Pakistan ordered the Open Society Foundations to cease operations within the country.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In May 2018, Open Society Foundations announced they will move its office from Budapest to Berlin, amid Hungarian government interference.


title: Open Society Foundations

text: In November 2018, Open Society Foundations announced they are ceasing operations in Turkey and closing their Istanbul and Ankara offices due to "false accusations and speculations beyond measure", amid pressure from Turkish government and governmental interference through detainment of Turkish intellectuals and liberal academics claimed to be associated with the foundation and related NGOs, associations and programmes.


title: Diablo (series)

text: Diablo is an action role-playing dungeon crawler video game series developed by Blizzard North and continued by Blizzard Entertainment after the north studio shutdown in 2005. The series is made up of three core games: "Diablo", "Diablo II", and "Diablo III". Expansions include the third-party published "", which follows the first game, "", published by Blizzard and released after the second game, and "", which follows the third game. Additional content is provided through story elements explored in other media forms. "Diablo IV" was announced at BlizzCon 2019.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The series is set in the dark fantasy world of Sanctuary, and its characters are primarily humans, angels, and various classes of demons and monsters. The first three games in the series take place in similar geographic areas, with several common areas including the town of Tristram and the region around Mount Arreat. Other notable settings include the High Heavens and the Burning Hells, two separate realms with ties to Sanctuary. The series primarily focuses on the ongoing conflict between the humans living in Sanctuary and the demon hordes who are led by Diablo, the series' overarching antagonist. The humans are occasionally aided by angels, notably the Archangel Tyrael.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The video game series' popularity and success has resulted in the publishing of several books relevant to the "Diablo" setting, covering a wide range of timelines of the universe. There are also comics that explore various stories within the world of Sanctuary.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The universe of "Diablo" is divided into three realms: the High Heavens, the Burning Hells, and the human world of Sanctuary. Ever since their creation, the angels of the High Heavens and the demons of the Burning Hells have been at war with one another. Sanctuary was created by rebel angels and demons tired of the war, with their first children being dubbed Nephalem. The descendants of the Nephalem are humanity, and become a focal point for both angels and demons who wish to influence them for their own goals due to sharing angelic and demonic heritage.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The series' title character and main antagonist is Diablo, the Lord of Terror. According to the backstory and lore provided by Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo functions as one of the seven Great Evils presiding over the Burning Hells. Diablo eventually becomes the Prime Evil after absorbing the six other Great Evils, including his two brothers: Baal, the Lord of Destruction, and Mephisto, the Lord of Hatred. Two key characters who oppose Diablo in the series are Deckard Cain, an elderly scholar and the last descendant of the original Horadrim who serves as the core narrator of lore in the first three "Diablo" games, and Tyrael, a member of the High Heavens' ruling Angiris Council who is sympathetic to humanity.


title: Diablo (series)

text: Due to the ending of "Diablo 2" and the events of "Diablo 3", some humans begin awakening their Nephalem heritage. This awakening allows them to challenge the final Evils and eventually Diablo himself, after he manipulates events to become the Prime Evil. Though initially imprisoned, Diablo escapes and the Nephalem are perceived as a threat due to felling both angels and demons.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The setting of "Diablo" is the town of Tristram, the "de facto" capital of the Kingdom of Khanduras on the world of Sanctuary. The actual fighting takes place beneath the town in a maze of dungeons, catacombs, and caves that lead into the depths of Hell.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The plot of "Diablo" centers around a player character undertaking a series of quests to free Tristram from Hell-spawned evil, descending through twelve levels of dungeons into Hell itself (the final four levels), where the player battles the title character, Diablo, Lord of Terror — one of the seven "Evils", demon lords who once ruled Hell.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo" offers three character classes and the "Hellfire" expansion offers three more. Players can play as Warriors, Rogues (archers), or Sorcerers. Each class has its own place in the game's history, and all three classes make appearances as non-player characters in the sequel. All three classes have the same general skills and access to the same spells. Each of them has a class-specific skill (Item Repair, Trap Disarm, and Staff Recharge, respectively) that has as many drawbacks as benefits, except for Trap Disarm.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo: Hellfire" offers an additional character class: the Monk, in addition to two hidden character classes: the Barbarian and the Bard. The Monk fights best with staves or his bare hands and gains bonuses from wearing light or no armor. The Barbarian can wield two handed axes with only one hand but is entirely unable to cast spells throughout most of the game. The Bard is a character with relatively balanced statistics who can wield two single-handed weapons simultaneously. The Barbarian and the Bard can only be played using a file tweak, as they were unfinished. They utilize the art of the Warrior and Rogue, respectively, and have no lore. Additional quests and multiplayer capabilities (although not over Battle.net) are also unlockable through this simple tweak.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Hellfire" added two new dungeon environments on top of the four in the original "Diablo": the Nest and the Crypt. Each of these environments contains various new monsters to fight, but they contain no random quests or bosses and the generated levels contain no shrines or libraries. The final boss of Hellfire, Na-Krul, is found in the last level of the Sacred Crypt.


title: Diablo (series)

text: At the end of the first game, a warrior tried to contain Diablo's soul within himself. The warrior was unable to do so, and, by the beginning of "Diablo II", The Lord of Terror had taken control of the warrior's body and begun the process of freeing his two brothers, Mephisto and Baal. Players can choose from five distinct characters (seven when including the expansion) to control in their quest and explore the world of Sanctuary through four acts. At the end of each of the four acts, players face different devils, with Diablo at the end of the game.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The character classes in particular were received much better than the previous game's. Unlike its predecessor, "Diablo II" provides an explanation for each character class to pursue Diablo:


title: Diablo (series)

text: Characters from the previous game are also present in "Diablo II". The Rogues (as NPCs) are the hostesses of the player during Act I, and Sorcerers are seen regularly in Acts II and III. Unlike the original, each character has three distinct sets of skills/spells that they can use in the game. Several of the characters can also conjure magical minions, such as a Valkyrie (Amazon) or Skeletons and Golems (Necromancer). All players also have the option to hire a Rogue (Act I), a Warrior (Act II), or an Iron Wolf (a type of melee Sorcerer, Act III) to accompany them and help slay monsters. These "hirelings" have a few of their own skills and can be a great benefit to the player.


title: Diablo (series)

text: Blizzard released "" on June 29, 2001. In the expansion, set after the events of "Diablo II", players seek to destroy Diablo's brother, Baal. The expansion includes a new act, new items, and two new character classes:


title: Diablo (series)

text: Barbarians can also be hired in the new Act. The summoned units of the expansion characters are called "minions". Hirelings can be resurrected in Lord of Destruction and can be equipped with armor and weapons.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "", a remaster of "Diablo II" which also includes the "Lord of Destruction" expansion, was released in 2021 for Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Nintendo Switch and will support cross-progression between the different platforms. The remaster includes updated graphics and rerendering of the game's cutscenes, and does not change any of its item systems or game balance.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo III" was announced at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational on June 28, 2008. "Diablo III" takes place 20 years after "Diablo II".


title: Diablo (series)

text: The only directly returning class is the Barbarian. The Barbarians have a variety of revamped skills at their disposal based on the use of their incredible physical prowess. The Barbarian is able to Whirlwind through crowds, cleave through swarms, leap across crags, and crush opponents upon landing.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The Witch Doctor is a new character reminiscent of the "Diablo II" Necromancer, but with skills more traditionally associated with voodoo culture. The Witch Doctor has the ability to summon monsters, cast curses, harvest souls, and hurl poisons and explosives at enemies.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The Wizard is a version of the Sorceress from "Diablo II" or the Sorcerer from "Diablo", though it is much more than a mere elementalist. The Wizard's abilities range from shooting lightning, fire, and ice at their enemies to slowing time and teleporting around enemies and through walls.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The Monk is a melee attacker, using martial arts to cripple foes, resist damage, deflect projectiles, attack with blinding speed, and land explosive killing blows.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The Demon Hunter is a ranged rogue class. It was the last class to be introduced, and specializes in ranged attacks, setting traps for enemies, and evasion skills.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The combat system was redone as well. Instead of the previous skill selection system used in "Diablo II" there is an action bar at the bottom of the screen. This change replaces the area where the potion-belt used to be in "Diablo II". For the first time in the series, players are able to choose the gender of their characters upon creation. The gender of the characters affects only visuals and voices. "Diablo III"s release date was announced on March 15, 2012, and the game was released worldwide on May 15, 2012.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo III: Reaper of Souls" is an expansion pack for "Diablo III". It was revealed at Gamescom 2013. It was developed for the PC and Mac versions of "Diablo III" and released on March 25, 2014, for those platforms. "Reaper of Souls" has been ported to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One consoles. The "Diablo III" expansion includes a new character class, the Crusader, similar in style to the Paladin from "Diablo II".


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo III: Rise of the Necromancer" is a second expansion for "Diablo III". It was announced at BlizzCon 2016. It was released for the PC, Mac, and console versions of "Diablo III" on June 27, 2017. It introduces the Necromancer class, which prefers to strike from a distance, unleashing destruction from afar. The skeletal undead under their command overwhelm enemies before they have a chance to strike, and the horrific curses the necromancers employ cripple even the most resistant of demons. Necromancers can use their throngs of undead to create diversions, or to simply open a path for their master to escape to safety.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo Immortal" is the fourth installment in the "Diablo" franchise, released as an MMO ARPG for iOS and Android by Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase. It was announced during BlizzCon 2018 and released on June 2, 2022. It takes place in between the events of "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction" and "Diablo III". "Diablo Immortal" was met with a negative reception from fans upon announcement for its creation as a mobile game, and upon its release for the use of microtransactions.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo Junior" was the working title for a cancelled single-player-only prequel to the original game. It started development after the release of "Diablo II" and was intended to be released on Game Boy Color and/or Game Boy Advance. It was planned to be released in three different cartridges in the style of the "Pokémon" games, each featuring a different class from original "Diablo" (warrior, rogue or sorcerer). The project was eventually scrapped due to high production costs.


title: Diablo (series)

text: After the release of "Reaper of Souls", a development team led by Josh Mosqueira began work on a game that would be similar to "Dark Souls", code-named Hades. The project was developed from 2014 to 2016 and featured an increase in difficulty and an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective, rather than the isometric style of previous "Diablo" titles. The cancellation of Hades coincided with Mosqueira leaving Blizzard.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The origin of the first "Diablo" came from David Brevik while at Condor Games around 1994. Brevik was heavily inspired by the roguelike genre with turn-based combat, but with simplified role-playing game elements and a more expansive loot system. The name "Diablo" was based on Mount Diablo, which was where Brevik lived when he conceived the game idea. Condor was working alongside Blizzard Entertainment at the time on a separate title. Blizzard offered to help develop Brevik's idea as it shared concepts with their recent "", but strongly urged that they convert the game from turn-based to real-time combat, as well as later urging the including of multiplayer over their new Battle.net service. Over the course of development, Blizzard acquired Condor Games, with Condor, located in San Mateo, California, becoming Blizzard North while Blizzard's main offices in Irvine, California became Blizzard South. "Diablo" was released in January 1997.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Diablo" was a top selling game in 1997 with over a million copies sold that year, leading Blizzard to announce its sequel, "Diablo II". The sequel, while retaining much of the same gameplay as the original title, used very little of the original code, and had no formal design approach. Released in June 2000, "Diablo II" sold over 2 million copies within a month and a half of release, and reached four million a year later.


title: Diablo (series)

text: Work on "Diablo III" started in 2001 at Blizzard North, but around 2003, several key figures from Blizzard North, include Brevik and the studio's founders, Max and Erich Schaefer, left the company over a dispute with Vivendi Games, the parent of Blizzard Entertainment. While the remaining staff of Blizzard North continued to work on their version of "Diablo III", Blizzard closed down the studio in August 2005 and scrapped most of the work on the existing "Diablo III" title and restarted its development within its own teams. Even after restarting development, "Diablo III" had a protracted development, but eventually was released in May 2012. Its initial launch was met with some criticism for changes from the prior "Diablo" formula, as well as requiring players to be connected to the Internet to play, but over ongoing patches and updates, Blizzard has been said to have improved the game from this initial take.


title: Diablo (series)

text: Maps for the in-game world are randomly generated in each "Diablo" game, which increases the replayability. Due to its procedurally generated maps and hack and slash" nature, "Diablo" shares some similar mechanics as early roguelike games, though with real-time gameplay, graphics, and sound. It was in fact originally conceived and pitched to Blizzard as what amounted to a graphical roguelike. The adventurer being based in a town above the dungeon and being able to use "scrolls of town portal" is a specific influence from "Moria". The gameplay loop for "Diablo" games relies on a constant search for better weapons and armor, known as loot. Items are randomly generated and usually have many attributes assigned to them. As a video game series which developed around point and click gameplay mechanics, the mouse is traditionally used for moving and using abilities in PC versions of "Diablo" video games.


title: Diablo (series)

text: "Tales of Sanctuary" by Phil Amara, Dave Land, and Francisco Ruiz Velasco is a comic book released on November 9, 2001, by Dark Horse Comics. It features three stories:


title: Diablo (series)

text: In November 2011, DC Comics started producing a five-issue miniseries "(Diablo III: Sword of Justice)" by


title: Diablo (series)

text: Action figures for the Barbarian character class, the Unraveller monster, and the Diablo character were sold in Blizzard's online store and at retailers to complement the release of "Diablo II".


title: Diablo (series)

text: An 18-inch collectible statue of "Diablo III" Barbarian class has been produced for sale by Sideshow Collectibles.


title: Diablo (series)

text: In 2015, Blizzard released "Heroes of the Storm", a crossover multiplayer online battle arena video game, in which players can control over 15 characters from the "Diablo" universe as playable heroes. All character classes from "Diablo III", popular classes from "Diablo II", as well as notable characters from the franchise, including Deckard Cain, Diablo, Malthael, Mephisto, and Tyrael are represented within the game. "Heroes of the Storm" features two "Diablo"-themed battlegrounds, Battlefield of Eternity and Infernal Shrines. Various soundtracks from "Diablo" franchise, such as "Jungle" (Act III) and "Ancients" from "Diablo II", and "Reaper of Souls" from "Diablo III", are present as background music in the game.


title: Diablo (series)

text: Characters from the series have also appeared in "World of Warcraft", a massively multiplayer online role-playing game created and developed by Blizzard set in the "Warcraft" universe, usually as Easter egg references or in-game "pet" companions. Examples include miniature versions of Diablo and Tyrael, a flying mount usable by the player character called Tyrael's Charger, and a


title: Diablo (series)

text: The games in the "Diablo" series on all release platforms have received generally favorable reviews from critics. Both "Diablo" and "Diablo II" are considered by multiple reputable video game journalists or magazines to be among the best video games of all time. Each entry in the series have been financial successes. "Diablo II" sold 4 million copies in the year it was released. "Diablo III" sold 3.5 million copies in the first day and 6.3 million copies in the first week. Another 1.2 million copies were given to subscribers to Blizzard's Annual Pass service. The "Diablo III" release was the fastest-selling PC game of all time.


title: Diablo (series)

text: The title character of the franchise has been well received as its overarching antagonist. "Time" magazine named "Diablo" the second most influential video game character of all time, calling the character "gaming's archetypal foozle, an illimitable damage sponge into which players pour a game's worth of tactical preparation, informed by scrupulous looting, savvy inventory juggling and ability streamlining". Diablo placed #44 on a list of top 50 video game villains featured by "Guinness World Records" in 2013. "GamePro" ranked Diablo #14 on its list of the most diabolical video game villains of all time, noting that he "corrupts the soul of the hero of "Diablo I" in order to reincarnate in "Diablo II""."IGN" ranked Diablo 74th in their list of "Top 100 Video Game Villains", as well as their pick for the third best Blizzard character in a list published in 2017. "Complex" staff ranked Diablo 7th in their list of the 50 coolest video game villains of all time, describing the character as the "epitome of all evil comes in the form of a giant red behemoth that resembles the classic image of Satan as portrayed in most Judeo-Christian imagery, and he's one bad muh."


title: Diablo (series)

text: Other recurring characters in the series, such as Deckard Cain and Tyrael, have also been positively received. In 2016, "Glixel" staff ranked Tyrael the 39th most iconic video game character of the 21st century, and his unwavering opposition against the Prime Evils after they have been unwittingly released to be the character's most "iconic moment".


title: Diablo (series)

text: In May 2021, Blizzard Entertainment commenced legal proceedings against Fox Media in a dispute over the trademark rights for the name "Diablo". Fox sought to register the name "Diablo" with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in an apparent effort to market merchandise relating to a character of the same name from the adult animated sitcom "HouseBroken", which premiered on May 31, 2021. Blizzard's legal representatives sought to block Fox's application and argued in their filing that Fox's use of the term "Diablo" for the "HouseBroken" character is “likely to cause confusion or mistake or to deceive”.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a 1991 American science fiction film directed by Nicholas Meyer, who directed the second "Star Trek" film, "". It is the sixth feature film based on the 1966–1969 "" television series. Taking place after the events of "", it is the final film featuring the entire main cast of the television series. The destruction of the Klingon moon Praxis leads the Klingon Empire to pursue peace with their longtime adversary, the Federation; the crew of the Federation starship USS "Enterprise" must race against unseen conspirators with a militaristic agenda.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: After the critical and commercial disappointment of "The Final Frontier", the next film was initially planned as a prequel, with younger actors portraying the crew of the "Enterprise" while attending Starfleet Academy. The idea was discarded because of negative reaction from the original cast and the fans. Faced with producing a new film in time for "Star Trek"s 25th anniversary, director Nicholas Meyer and Denny Martin Flinn wrote a script based on a suggestion from Leonard Nimoy about what would happen if "the Wall came down in space", touching on the contemporary events of the Cold War.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Principal photography took place between April and September 1991. Because of a lack of sound stage space on the Paramount lot, many scenes were filmed around Hollywood. Meyer and cinematographer Hiro Narita aimed for a darker and more dramatic mood, altering sets originally used for the television series "". Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe led a second unit to an Alaskan glacier that stood in for a Klingon gulag. Cliff Eidelman produced the film's score, which is intentionally darker than previous "Star Trek" offerings.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" was released in North America on December 6, 1991. It garnered positive reviews, with publications praising the lighthearted acting, setting and facetious references, and performed strongly at the box office. It posted the largest opening weekend gross of the series before going on to earn $96.8 million worldwide. The film earned two Oscar nominations, for Best Makeup and Best Sound Effects, and is the only "Star Trek" movie to win the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. The film has been released on various home media formats, including a special collectors' edition in 2004, to which Meyer made minor alterations to the film.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: In 2293, a shock wave strikes the starship USS "Excelsior", commanded by Captain Hikaru Sulu, who discovers that Praxis, a Klingon moon, has been destroyed. The loss of Praxis and the destruction of the Klingon homeworld's ozone layer throws the Klingon Empire into turmoil. The Klingons can no longer afford war with the United Federation of Planets, so they pursue peace. Starfleet sends the USS "Enterprise"-A to meet with the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon and escort him to negotiations on Earth. Captain James T. Kirk, whose son David was murdered by Klingons, opposes conciliation and resents the assignment.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "Enterprise" and Gorkon's battlecruiser rendezvous and continue towards Earth, with the two command crews sharing a tense meal aboard "Enterprise". Later that night, "Enterprise" appears to fire torpedoes at the Klingon ship, disabling its artificial gravity. During the confusion, two men wearing Starfleet spacesuits beam aboard the Klingon ship, kill two Klingon crew and mortally wound Gorkon before escaping. Kirk surrenders to avoid armed conflict and beams aboard the Klingon ship with Doctor Leonard McCoy in an attempt to save Gorkon's life. The chancellor dies, and Gorkon's chief of staff, General Chang, arrests and tries Kirk and McCoy for his assassination. The pair are found guilty in the trial and sentenced to life imprisonment on the frozen planetoid Rura Penthe. Gorkon's daughter Azetbur becomes the new chancellor, and continues diplomatic negotiations; for the sake of security, the conference is relocated and the new location is kept secret. While several senior Starfleet officers want to rescue Kirk and McCoy, the Federation President refuses to risk full-scale war, even if the Federation stands a good chance of winning. Azetbur likewise refuses to invade Federation space.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Kirk and McCoy arrive at the Rura Penthe mines and are befriended by a shapeshifter named Martia, who offers them an escape route; in reality, it is a ruse to make their arranged deaths appear accidental. Once her betrayal is revealed, Martia transforms into Kirk's double and fights him, but is killed by the prison guards to silence any witnesses. Kirk and McCoy are beamed aboard "Enterprise" by Captain Spock, who had assumed command and undertaken an investigation in Kirk's absence. Determining that "Enterprise" did not fire the torpedoes and that the assassins are still aboard, the crew has begun a search for them. The two assassins are found dead, killed by yet another unknown accomplice. To bait the third accomplice, Kirk and Spock announce to the ship that the assassins are still alive and will be interrogated. When the culprit arrives in sick bay to finish them off, Kirk and Spock discover that the killer is Spock's protégé, Valeris. To discover the identity of the other conspirators, Spock initiates a forced mind-meld, and learns that a cabal of Federation, Klingon, and Romulan officers conspired to sabotage the peace talks. The torpedoes that struck Gorkon's cruiser came from Chang's ship which has the unique ability to fire its weapons while cloaked.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "Enterprise" and "Excelsior" race to Khitomer, the location of the peace talks. Chang's cloaked ship attacks and inflicts heavy damage on both ships. At the suggestion of Uhura, Spock and McCoy modify a torpedo to home in on the exhaust emissions of Chang's ship. The torpedo impact reveals Chang's location, and "Enterprise" and "Excelsior" destroy his ship with a volley of torpedoes. The crew from both ships beam to the conference and thwart an attempt on the Federation President's life.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Starfleet Command orders "Enterprise" to return to Earth to be decommissioned. Kirk decides to take his ship on one last cruise and notes in his log that a new ship and crew will carry on their legacy.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "The Undiscovered Country" includes the final group appearance of the major cast members from the original television series, plus new actors and characters. Casting director Mary Jo Slater loaded the film with as many Hollywood stars as the production could afford, including a minor appearance by Christian Slater, her son. Meyer was interested in casting actors who could project and articulate feelings, even through alien makeup. Producer Ralph Winter said, "We were not looking for someone to say 'Okay, I'll do it', but people who were excited by the material [...] and would treat it as if it [were] the biggest picture ever being made."


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "The Final Frontier", the previous film in the series, was a critical and financial disappointment; the cast and crew were worried that the franchise would not be able to recover from the blow. With the looming 25th anniversary of in 1991, producer Harve Bennett revisited an idea Ralph Winter had for the fourth film: a prequel featuring young versions of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy. The prequel was designed to be a way of keeping the characters, if not the actors, in what was called ""Top Gun" in outer space". Bennett and "The Final Frontier" writer David Loughery wrote a script entitled "The Academy Years", where Dr. Leonard McCoy talks about how he met Kirk and Spock while addressing a group of Academy graduates. The script shows Kirk and Spock's upbringing, their meeting McCoy and Montgomery Scott at the Academy and defeating a villain before parting ways. The script would have established that George Kirk, James T. Kirk's father, was a pilot who went missing—presumed dead—during a warp experiment with Scott. The script is set before the "enlightenment" of the Federation; slavery and racism are common, with Spock being bullied because he is the only Vulcan student. Nurse Christine Chapel cameos in the script's climax.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Actor James Doohan claimed that Paramount chief Frank Mancuso had fired Bennett following negative reaction from the core cast, Roddenberry, and fans. Bennett claimed that after he rewrote the script to include Shatner and Nimoy, Paramount had still rejected it and that he decided it was time he left the franchise. He said, "My term was up. I was offered $1.5 million to do "Star Trek VI" and I said 'Thanks, I don't want to do that. I want to do the Academy.'" Actor Walter Koenig approached Mancuso with a new script outline codenamed "In Flanders Fields"; in it, the Romulans join the Federation and go to war with the Klingons. The "Enterprise" crew, except Spock, are forced to retire for not meeting fitness tests. When Spock and his new crew are captured by a monstrous worm-like race of aliens (which Koenig described as "things that the monsters in "Aliens" evolved "from""), the old crew must rescue them. In the end, all of the characters except McCoy and Spock die.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Mancuso asked Leonard Nimoy to conceive the new film to serve as a swan song for the original cast. Nimoy, Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner suggested Kirk meeting Jean-Luc Picard, but ""s producers refused to end their show. Nicholas Meyer, who directed "" and co-wrote "" was also approached for an idea for the sixth film, but had none. Ralph Winter was brought on to the project as producer shortly after Bennett's departure, and said Paramount's mandate was to produce a 25th anniversary film that would not cost a lot of money.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Nimoy visited Meyer's house and suggested, "[What if] the wall comes down in outer space? You know, the Klingons have always been our stand-ins for the Russians ...". Meyer recalled that he replied "'Oh, wait a minute! Okay, we start with an intergalactic Chernobyl! Big explosion! We got no more Klingon Empire ...!' And I just spilled out the whole story!" The story deliberately included references to the contemporary political climate; the character of Gorkon was based on Mikhail Gorbachev, while the assassination storyline was Meyer's idea. He thought it was plausible that the Klingon leader who turned soft towards the enemy would be killed like similar peacemakers throughout history: Anwar Sadat, Mahatma Gandhi, and Abraham Lincoln. Nimoy's hiring of Meyer was not only beneficial because Meyer knew the material and could write fast (having produced "The Wrath of Khan"s screenplay in twelve days), but if Meyer was to direct it would offset any acrimony from Shatner, whose ire would have been aroused if Nimoy returned to direct his third "Star Trek" feature after "" and "The Voyage Home". Meyer said that when he started work on the screenplay it did not occur to him that he would direct the film. Meyer's wife was the first person to suggest that he should direct.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Meyer and his friend Denny Martin Flinn wrote the script by the nascent means of e-mail; Meyer lived in Europe while Flinn was based in Los Angeles. The pair worked out a system where Flinn would write all day and then send the draft to Meyer, who would read and make revisions. The script constantly changed because of demands made by the core cast and the supporting players. Flinn was aware that the film would be the last to feature the cast of the original television series, so he wrote an opening that embraced the passage of time. In the opening, each of the crew was to be rounded up out of unhappy retirement for one final mission. Flinn recalled that "the scenes demonstrated who [the characters] were and what they did when they weren't on the "Enterprise". [...] It added some humanity to the characters. In early drafts, Spock plays Polonius in a Vulcan version of "Hamlet", while Sulu drives a taxicab in an overcrowded metropolis. The revised opening featured Captain Sulu bringing his friends out of their retirement: Spock's whereabouts are classified; Kirk was to have married Carol Marcus (played by Bibi Besch in "The Wrath of Khan"), the mother of his late son, leading a settled life before a special envoy arrives at his door. McCoy is drunk at a posh medical dinner; Scott is teaching Engineering while the Bird of Prey from "The Voyage Home" is pulled from San Francisco Bay; Uhura hosts a call-in radio show and is glad to escape; and Chekov is playing chess at a club.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The opening was rejected as too expensive to film; Flinn mentioned the exotic locales would have pushed the budget to $50 million. While they tried to hold on to the opening as long as they could, Paramount threatened to cancel pre-production unless a few million dollars were cut from the budget.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The script was finished by October 1990, five months after Nimoy was approached to write the story. Several months were spent working out the budget; because of the disappointing box office returns of "The Final Frontier", Paramount wanted to keep the sixth film's budget approximately the same as the previous installment, although the script called for space battles and new aliens. Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley's salaries were cut with the understanding that they would share in box office profits. Meyer estimated that almost two months were spent fighting with the studio about the budget. "To some degree, almost every area of the production was affected by the cuts—but the script was the one thing that did not become a casualty," Meyer said. The original budget hovered around $41 million. While not expensive for a Hollywood production, this would have presented a risk due to "Star Trek" films' niche audience and lower international appeal. The final budget came in at $30 million.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "Star Trek"'s creator, Gene Roddenberry, who wielded significant influence despite his ill health, hated the script. Meyer's first meeting with Roddenberry resulted in Meyer storming out of the room within five minutes. As with Meyer's previous "Star Trek" film ("The Wrath of Khan"), the script had strong military overtones, with a naval theme present throughout. Far from being idealized, the characters were shown as bigoted and flawed. In contrast to Roddenberry's vision of the future, Meyer thought there was no evidence that bigotry would disappear by the 23rd century. When Roddenberry protested about the villainization of Saavik, Meyer replied that "I created Saavik. She was not Gene's. If he doesn't like what I plan on doing with her, maybe he should give back the money he's made off my films. Maybe then I'll care what he has to say." After the stormy first meeting, a group including Meyer, Roddenberry, and producer Ralph Winter discussed the revised draft. Roddenberry would voice his disapproval of elements of the script line by line, and he and Meyer would square off about them while Winter took notes. Overall, the tone of the meeting was conciliatory, but the producers ultimately ignored many of Roddenberry's concerns. By February 13, 1991, the film was officially put into production with the agreement it would be in theaters by the end of the year.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: As he had when he directed "The Wrath of Khan", Meyer attempted to modify the look of "Star Trek" to fit his vision. Cinematographer Hiro Narita's previous work had been on effects films such as "The Rocketeer", where he had time and money to make a lavish period fantasy; with "The Undiscovered Country", he was constantly under time and budgetary pressures. Though Narita confessed that he knew nothing about "Star Trek", Meyer replied that he did not want him to have any preconceived notions about the look of the series.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar said that Narita did a "good job of keeping [the set] dark. When you get into a stage situation of aluminum walls and shiny metal, it can be a problem. But by keeping the light down, you see a little less and it becomes more textural. Hiro was very keen to avoid that over-bright stage look." The budget meant that many of the "Enterprise" sets were redresses of those used in "". Meyer and production designer Herman Zimmerman were only able to make minor adjustments to these sets, as the television series was still in production at the time of filming.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The set used for Spock's quarters was the same as the one for Kirk's, but with the addition of a central column. The set was being used at the time for Data's room in "The Next Generation", and had originally been built as Kirk's quarters for "" in 1979. The transporter room set was also reused from "The Next Generation", with alterations that included the addition of a glowing pattern along the transporter's walls inspired by one of Zimmerman's sweaters; the set had previously been used on "The Final Frontier". The galley was the set used for Deanna Troi's office, the dining hall was a redress of the USS Enterprise-D's Observation lounge, and the Federation president's office was a redesign of the Ten-Forward lounge, the exterior doors to which accidentally retained their "Enterprise"-D markings. Alien costumes in the Rura Penthe prison were reused from "The Next Generation"s premiere episode, "Encounter at Farpoint". The "Excelsior" bridge was a redress of "Enterprise"s command center, with consoles taken from the battle bridge of the "Enterprise"-D to convey the impression that the "Excelsior" was a more advanced ship.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Meyer had never been happy with the brightly lit corridors and feel of the "Enterprise", a dissatisfaction that extended to his work on "The Wrath of Khan". For "The Undiscovered Country", Meyer wanted the "Enterprise" interiors to feel grittier and more realistic; the metal was worn around the edges to look used without looking beat up. Narita's plans to transform the look of the "Enterprise" on a scale not seen since "The Wrath of Khan" were complicated by the necessary use of existing sets.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The corridors were reduced in width and included angled bulkhead dividers, with exposed conduits added to the ceiling to convey a claustrophobic feel reminiscent of the submarine film "The Hunt for Red October".> Narita changed the bright, smooth look of the "Enterprise" bridge that had been created by Zimmerman for "The Final Frontier" by lighting the set as spottily as possible. "I didn't want to use too much smoke on the "Enterprise", because I didn't want it to end up looking too much like the Klingon starship. For that reason I decided to keep the look of the "Enterprise" pretty clean, but with a little more contrasty lighting," Narita said. Meyer acknowledged that had he been the creator of the franchise, "I would have probably designed a much more claustrophobic world because it's much more dramatic."


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The director was insistent that panel labels contain descriptive instructions that might be found on a starship, rather than made-up gibberish, greeking, or gag text. Designer Michael Okuda had finished a schematic of the "Enterprise"s decks when Nimoy pointed out he had misspelled "reclamation"; while Okuda was fairly certain no one else would notice the single spelling error on the print, he had to fix it. Meyer also made a contentious decision to feature a kitchen in the film, a move that attracted fan controversy. Although the original series mentioned a galley in the episode "Charlie X", only machines able to synthesize food had been shown before.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Paramount made a decision early on to use existing ship models for filming, meaning the old models—some more than a decade old—had to be refurbished, adapted, and reused. As some ships had not been examined for some time, electrical problems had developed. The Klingon cruiser first seen in 1979's "The Motion Picture" was altered to suggest an important flagship, with a flared design applied to the underside of the vessel. Effects supervisor William George wanted to make it distinct from the earlier ships, since it was one of the few models that could be altered: "We did some research into military costuming, and came up with the concept that when these ships return victorious from battle, the Klingons build some sort of epaulet onto their wings or paint a new stripe on." The model was repainted brown and red and etched with brass.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Despite representing a new vessel, the "Enterprise"-A was the same model that had been used since 1979. Poorly regarded by earlier effects artists because of its complicated wiring and bulk, the "Enterprise"s hairline cracks were puttied and sanded down, and the internal circuitry was redone. The new model's running lights were matched to similar intensities, saving the effects artists time because the lights would look correct with only a single pass, instead of three passes required previously (for the sensor dome, running lights, and window lights). One unfortunate byproduct of the fixes was the loss of the model's distinctive pearlescent finish. The elaborate sheen was never visible on screen (lighting schemes prevented reflections while filming so the ship could be properly inserted into effects shots) and so when the model was repainted with conventional techniques the effect was lost. The Bird of Prey had been damaged from work in "The Voyage Home", where the ship was supposed to fly around the sun. To suggest singes, the model had been painted with black-tinged rubber cement, with the expectation that this application would rub off. The cement instead sat on the model and baked itself to the model surface, and had to be scrubbed off.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Greg Jein, best known as the builder of the alien mothership from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", was called on to build props for the film. Jein was a longtime "Star Trek" fan who had constructed the props for "The Final Frontier", but was forced to remake props that had since mysteriously disappeared. Jein added references to the original television series and other science fiction franchises throughout the prop designs; the Rura Penthe warden's staff contained parts of a spaceship from "Buck Rogers", while the frong was detailed with a prop from "Buckaroo Banzai". Elements from "The Final Frontier" were modified and reused; a medical implement from the film became Chekov's blood tester, and the assault phasers first seen in "The Final Frontier" became standard issue. Gorkon's staff was intended to be a massive bone from an alien creature he had killed, with the designs shaped out of green foam and approved by Meyer. Two copies were strong enough to support David Warner's weight; another two were designed to be light enough to be hung from wires for the zero gravity scenes. Since the Klingon phasers were redesigned for the third film, the original holsters no longer fit the weaponry; as a result, no Klingons had ever been seen drawing a phaser. Meyer was adamant about having the actors be able to unholster their weapons, so the existing pistols had to be redesigned. The Klingon sniper rifle was broken into sections, with parts modeled from real weapons.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The Klingons received the first major revision in design since their appearance in "The Motion Picture". Dodie Shepard designed new red and black uniforms for Chancellor Gorkon and his staff, as it was judged that it would be unseemly for the chancellor to wear common warrior garb. Another concern was that there was not enough of designer Robert Fletcher's "The Motion Picture" uniforms for all the Klingons in the film. While the important Klingons were given multi-layered prosthetics and unique head ridges, background characters wore ready-made masks, with minor touch-ups on the eyes and mouth. Since it was important for the actors' expressions to be visible through the makeup, the appliances were made thin using the latest glues and paints. Transforming an actor into a Klingon took three and a half hours. Hairstylist Jan Alexander designed braids and jewelry that suggested a tribal people with a long and treasured heritage.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The main reason for the diversity of Klingon designs, hairstyles, and appliances stemmed from the fact that there were more Klingons featured than in all the previous films combined. Eighteen unique designs were used for the main characters, with another thirty "A" makeups, forty "B" foam latex makeups, and fifty polyurethane plastic masks for background extras. Makeup artist Richard Snell was in charge of the principal Klingon actors' appliances. The designs for the foreheads came from Snell's own ideas and co-workers, but the actors were allowed input into their character's appearances. Christopher Plummer requested his character's forehead have more subdued spinal ridges than Klingons in previous films, to look unique and to humanize his character. During makeup tests, Snell was about to apply Plummer's wig when the actor muttered that he wanted no wig, with Chang's small amount of hair swept back into a warrior's topknot.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Snell worked through several nights to redesign the back of Chang's head and add more detail. This design change meant only Plummer's front could be photographed during the first few days of filming while the makeup department created appliances to cover the back of his head. Azetbur, portrayed by Rosanna DeSoto, was initially conceived as barbaric, but Meyer insisted on a more refined look. Like Plummer, DeSoto requested more subdued ridges, and the result was, according to artist Kenny Myers, a "very regal woman who just happened to be Klingon". The design changes forced Kenny Myers to abdicate his other makeup job, that of Warner's Gorkon, to Margaret Bessera. Gorkon's appearance was of special concern to Meyer, who had two specific role models: Ahab and Abraham Lincoln. "[Meyer] loves to play the classics," Kenny Myers explained, "and incorporating these two images was really genius on his part. He wanted there to be uncertainty about Gorkon's true intentions. Did he want peace, or was there something sinister in his mind? From his appearance, it was impossible to tell if he was friend or foe. Subliminally, there were aspects of both."


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Along with Klingon cosmetics, makeup supervisor Michael J. Mills was kept busy preparing the large number of other aliens called for in the script. Mills and his team created the largest makeup endeavor ever seen in a "Star Trek" film until then; custom makeup was applied to 22 principal actors, and as many as 126 prosthetic makeups each day. Because the alien creatures played such an important role in the film, there was a concerted push to provide enough money to the makeup department to make sure the complex work was finished. According to Mills, "[if] we could prove to [Ralph Winter] that we needed something to get the shot done, then we'd have it." The makeup lab employed a staff of 25 and produced over 300 prosthetics, from Klingon foreheads to Vulcan and Romulan ears. Work on the many extras began as early as one o'clock in the morning to be ready for the eight o'clock call.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The large, hulking form the shapeshifter Martia assumes while on the surface of Rura Penthe was dubbed "The Brute" by the production team. The creature's Yeti-like appearance was based on a "Smithsonian" cover of a marmoset. Also created for the Rura Penthe shoot was a frozen Klingon with a horrified expression. Makeup artist Ed French found a spare Klingon headpiece in Richard Snell's possession and attached it to his own head. A cast of his tortured expression was used as the foundation for the dummy used on location. The designers used striking colors and new techniques for some of the aliens; ultraviolet pigments were used to create a particularly hostile alien that fights Kirk in Rura Penthe.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: As it was intended to be Nimoy's last portrayal of Spock, the actor was adamant that his appearance be faithful to the original 1960s Fred Phillips and Charlie Schram design of the character. Mills consulted photos from the original television series as reference, and created five ear sculptings before Nimoy was satisfied. The result was tall ears with the tips pointing forward—considerably different from Richard Snell's swept-back look for "The Voyage Home". The character of Valeris was designed to be more ivory-hued than Spock's yellow tone, with sleeker eyebrows and a severe haircut favored by Meyer. "We went to great pains to establish that this is the way a Vulcan woman—a sexy Vulcan woman—would look," said Mills.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Principal photography took place between April 16 and September 27, 1991, using a mix of fixed sets and on-location footage. The production suffered from a lack of available set space because of shortages; the Starfleet Headquarters set was actually built a few blocks away from Paramount Pictures at the Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Meyer copied a technique used during filming of "Citizen Kane", where the filmmakers let the set fall into darkness to save money on construction. The film was shot in Super 35 instead of anamorphic format, because of the former's greater flexibility in framing and lens selection, larger depth of field, and faster lenses. Because of budget cuts, plans for filming were constantly revised and reduced, but sometimes this proved to be an asset rather than a hindrance. Meyer would often say that "art thrives on restrictions", and Zimmerman agreed, saying that the design and filming created a rich environment that supported and enhanced the action.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The dinner scene was shot in a revamped version of the "Enterprise"-D's observation lounge. Along the wall are portraits of historical figures including Abraham Lincoln, Spock's father Sarek (Mark Lenard), and an unnamed Andorian ambassador. The food prepared for the scene was colored blue so it would look alien. None of the actors wanted to eat the unappetizing dishes (especially after they grew ripe under hot studio lights), and it became a running joke among the crew during filming to make them sample their food. Because of the multiple angles and takes required for a single mouthful of food, Meyer offered a bounty of $20 per every shot of a character eating. For Shatner, the incentive was enough that he became the only cast member to consume purple-dyed squid. The shoot lasted several days because of what Plummer called the "horror" of filming the dinner.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The Klingon courtroom where Kirk and McCoy are sentenced was designed like an arena, with high walls and a central platform for the accused. Originally planned for construction on the largest soundstage, cutbacks in location footage for Rura Penthe forced a smaller set to be constructed. Sixty-six Klingons were used for the scene, with six actors in custom makeups and an additional fifteen in "A-level" makeup; the high quality designs were used for the Klingons in the first row of the stands, while those actors to the rear used masks. The illusion of endless rows of Klingons was created by brightly lighting the accused in the center of the room with a bright blue light, then letting the rest of the set fall into shadow. To give the set a larger appearance, a shot from high above the courtroom was created using miniatures. Inspired by a scene in "Ben-Hur", matte supervisor Craig Barron used two hundred commercially available Worf dolls sent by Ralph Winter. Angry Klingons were created by rocking the dolls back and forth with motors, waving sticks lit by twelve-volt light bulbs dyed red. The resulting courtroom miniature was ten feet long.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Flinn conceived the penal colony Rura Penthe as on an arid, undeveloped world with odorous aliens; Meyer suggested that it be turned into an ice world instead. The exterior shots of Martia, Kirk, and McCoy traveling across the frozen wastes were filmed on top of a glacier in Alaska, forty minutes east of Anchorage. Because of budget and time constraints, the second unit was tasked with getting the footage. The location was accessible only by helicopter, and was scouted months before filming began. The main problem the crew faced was the cold; in the morning, the temperatures peaked at around −22 °F, while by mid-afternoon it often dropped to −50°. The stuntmen, dressed in woolen costumes, were in danger of catching pneumonia. Ice caverns producer Jaffe had scouted partially melted before filming; with only two-and-a-third days of time to film, the crew had to do the best they could. Batteries drained after minutes of filming in the cold, and the lack of snow was compensated by dropping fake precipitation into the scene by helicopter.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Scenes featuring the main characters at Rura Penthe were filmed on a soundstage. Massive fans blew dusty fake snow that, according to Shatner, got into "every orifice", as well as into the camera. Creating a fake blizzard was challenging; two types of plastic snow were mixed together to provide flakes and powdery accumulation. Camera magazines were changed off the stage so that there was no chance the snow could get into the film; crewmembers found the snow in their socks for weeks afterwards.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The underground prison was shot in real caves left by mining at Griffith Park, in the Bronson Canyon, previously used as the Batcave and in the 1930s "Flash Gordon" serial. Shots of the interior of the mine were captured at night so it appeared like the setting was underground. Since Narita and his crew weren't allowed to drill holes for lights in the mine shafts, illumination had to come from practical lights that appeared to be part of the set. The elevator descent into the bowels of the mine was simulated by pasting fake rocks to a canvas being cranked in the background of the scene. While Zimmerman believed Shatner would hate the fight between Kirk and his doppelgänger, the actor enjoyed the theatrical sequence, and contributed to the choreography with his knowledge of judo and karate.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The battle above Khitomer was one of the last sequences to be shot, which proved fortuitous as the bridge of the "Enterprise" was damaged by the simulated sparks and explosions. The officer's mess set was blown up for a sequence where the "Enterprise"s hull is compromised by a torpedo. When the set was rebuilt for use on "The Next Generation", the forward wall was rebuilt and redesigned. While the Khitomer conference interior and exteriors were filmed at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in California, the window from which Colonel West prepares to assassinate the president was a separate set built at Paramount. Footage from Brandeis, matte paintings, and the backlot were combined to create an open outdoor view.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The division of labor for shooting the starship models was decided early on by effects cameramen Peter Daulton and Pat Sweeney. There was an equal amount of work if one crew did all the "Enterprise" shots and another did the Bird of Prey, Klingon cruiser and "Excelsior" shots, so the cameramen flipped to decide who worked on which models. Old and new techniques were applied to shooting the models. To make sure the vessels were seamlessly inserted into star fields in post-production, the crew filmed second passes in overexposed yellow light, which reduced light spillage onto the bluescreen backdrop. The yellow overcast was removed by filtration in the optical process, with the result being a clean edge around the ships.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Using a technique pioneered on "Back to the Future Part II", another shot with a different lighting scheme was filmed. By combining separate key light and fill light passes, optical effects could generate any amount of contrast they wanted without causing spillage. Because Paramount continued to add new shots to the busy schedule and tight budget, some elements were flipped for reuse, including the star fields and a shot of the Bird of Prey firing. Whenever possible, the ships were filmed from below to reinforce the nautical theme, with their movements intended to remind the audience of galleons or other large seafaring vessels.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The approach to Spacedock was filmed from below the station model, which Bill George found visually interesting and appropriate. He felt that the tracking of a shuttle from the planet evoked "". The shuttle used in the scene was the only new model created for the film. It measured twelve inches and was fabricated in less than a week. The shot of the "Enterprise" leaving Spacedock was difficult to produce because the interior dock miniature had disappeared. Stock footage from "The Voyage Home" was used for one shot to compensate. Since the only other shot needed was the "Enterprise"s point of view leaving Spacedock through the doors, it was the only section recreated for the film.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The last scene in the film was arranged for the last day of filming. Initially, the language was supposed to be more somber and classical, but Meyer made some last minute changes. Flinn said that Meyer "was in an optimistic mood", and the director suggested that Kirk quote "Peter Pan" for the last lines: "Second star to the right, and straight on till morning." Emotions ran high as the last shots of the cast were captured; Shatner said, "By the time we finished the last scene, which extended longer than we expected, there was a sense of irritation. We raised a glass of champagne, but everybody was actually a little antsy."


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The majority of the visual effects were created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) under the supervision of Scott Farrar (who previously served as visual effects cameraman on the first three "Star Trek" films) and animator Wes Takahashi. After receiving the script, ILM created storyboards for the effects sequences before meeting Meyer and producers Winter and Steven-Charles Jaffe to discuss the planned scenes. These discussions began before the film was greenlit. ILM's initial cost estimates were over Paramount's budget, so to save money the filmmakers redesigned some shots and outsourced some to other companies. Elements of the zero gravity scenes were handled by Pacific Data Images, while phaser beams and transporter effects were generated by Visual Concept Engineering, an offshoot of ILM that had contributed to "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Final Frontier". Despite the overall count of effects shots being dropped from over 100 to 51, the project was still large, and required virtually the entire ILM staff to complete. Farrar's goal was to economize the remaining effects; if three shots were similar, they would try to tell the story with only one. Cheap animatics provided Meyer with placeholders to cut into the film and avoid costly surprises. Stock footage from previous films was used whenever possible, but it was often unfeasible to do so; as the original USS "Enterprise" had been destroyed in "", all shots of the USS "Enterprise"-A had to feature the updated ship registry.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: ILM's computer graphics division was responsible for creating three sequences, including the explosion of Praxis. Meyer's idea for the effect was influenced by "The Poseidon Adventure"; Farrar used imagery of an immense wave hitting the "Poseidon" to inform the scale of their shock wave. The department built on a lens flare simulation to create a plasma burst composed of two expanding disc shapes with swirling detail texture mapped to the surface.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Farrar settled on the preliminary look of the wave, and graphics supervisor Jay Riddle used Adobe Photoshop on a Macintosh to establish the final color scheme. Initially the team thought they would be able to use the same methods to create the wave that hits the "Excelsior", but found that it did not convey the scale of the wave—in Riddle's words, "this thing had to look really enormous." The shot was created by manipulating two curved pieces of computer geometry, expanding them as they approached the camera's view. Textures that changed every frame were added to the main wave body and over the top of it to give the impression of great speed. Motion control footage of the "Excelsior" was then scanned into the computer system and made to interact with the digital wave. ILM's ring-shaped "Praxis Effect" shockwave became a common feature in science fiction films depicting the destruction of large objects, while astronomer Philip Plait assumed that in reality a spherical wave would be more likely.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Meyer came upon the idea of having assassins in special boots kill a weightless Gorkon after searching for a novel way to "blow away" the character in space that had not been seen before. The final sequence married physical effects and stuntwork with computer graphics. Responsibility for shooting the live action footage fell to the second unit under Jaffe's direction. While the sequence read well on paper, there was not enough time or money to do the effects "the right way"—for example, shooting the actors on a bluescreen and then inserting them into the Klingon corridors. Jaffe noted that the low-tech method of suspending actors by wires helped the final effect, because as photographed by John Fante, few wires had to be removed digitally in post-production; sets were constructed so that the harsh lighting obscured wires, and entire sets were constructed on their sides so that by pulling actors up and down on the rotated sets, the characters appeared to float sideways. These sets were on gimbals so that the movement of the actors and sets created a floating effect. The shot of two Klingons killed and thrown back down a corridor by phaser blasts was simulated by positioning the camera at the bottom of a corridor set. The set was placed on its end in the tallest soundstage at Paramount, so that the camera looked up towards the ceiling. In this position, the wires were hidden by the actors as they ascended the corridor.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The blood that spurts out of the Klingon's wounds was created using computer generated imagery; the animators had to make sure that the blood floated in a convincing manner while still looking interesting and not too gory. The effects artist looked at NASA footage of floating globules of water to inform the physics of the blood particles. Initially, the blood was to be colored green, but the filmmakers realized that McCoy had referred to Spock as green-blooded. The final color was violet, a color Meyer disliked but had to go ahead with, because his first choice—red—would almost certainly earn the film an R rating from the MPAA. The initial killing of the Klingon in the transporter room as the assassins beam aboard was the testing ground for tweaking the color of the blood and how it would move around the room. Most of the blood droplets were "blobbies", groups of spheres smoothed together by computer, creating a continuous shape. The further apart the spheres, the more the shape could stretch and even break apart. The phasers used in the scene and throughout the film were redesigned versions of earlier models and were first used in "The Final Frontier". The props featured blue lights that turned on when the trigger was pressed, so effects artists knew when to add the phaser beam effects.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: For the zero gravity sequences, the ILM team matched Visual Concepts Engineering's phaser blasts by hand-painting the effect in Photoshop. ILM did minor touchup to the scenes as required, adding clothing tears where the phaser blasts hit the actors and adding the hazy Klingon atmosphere to the computer-rendered objects. These zero gravity scenes were the most expensive sequences to complete.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Rura Penthe was created with a mixture of on-set and location shots, along with an establishing sequence created by Matte World. The characters were shot on a San Francisco beach, with a white plastic underfoot. Sun elements were layered onto the shot along with a double-exposed snow effect. Additional passes were made on fiberfill clouds with lights behind them to create a lightning storm underway in the background.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Martia was not the first shapeshifter on "Star Trek", but the character was the first to be created using computer-generated digital morphing technology. The effects, dubbed "morfs", were more advanced revisions of the technology used for films such as "". Animator John Berton attempted new, more complicated morfs, including moving the camera and morphing two characters talking; special care had to be taken to line up the characters properly in plate photography. Martia becomes Kirk while talking, requiring similar line deliveries from Iman and Shatner; Farrar supervised the set photography for the morfs and had the actors speak their lines in sync via a loudspeaker.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Kirk's fight scene with Martia in the form of Kirk was mostly filmed with a double dressed in similar clothes; in the majority of the shots the camera allowed only one of the combatants' faces to be seen. When Kirk talked with his double directly, two separate takes of Shatner facing opposite directions were combined, with the camera motion carefully controlled so that the resulting image looked realistic.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: For the final space battle, Bill George redesigned the photon torpedoes to have a hotter core and larger flare, because he felt that the weapons in earlier films looked "too pretty". The torpedoes moved like guided missiles rather than cannonballs. George told Farrar that he had always wanted to see something penetrate the thin saucer section of the "Enterprise", so a replica of the saucer was recreated and blown up; the model was hung upside down so that the explosion could be flipped to approximate the zero gravity effects. Rather than destroy the Bird of Prey model in the climax, pyrotechnic footage was reduced and placed in the appropriate locations to simulate rippling explosions throughout the vessel. A special "pyro model" was created from a rubber cast of the Bird of Prey and exploded instead, with a lap dissolve making the transition from the motion control ship to the pyro vessel. ILM knew that there was already footage of Chang reacting to the torpedo hit, but knew Meyer was unhappy with the result. Using footage of Plummer as reference, the effects team created a dummy that was detonated in the same position. Steve Jaffe said, "[Editor] Ron Roose and I pored through the footage to find what amounted to three usable frames that we could use to tell the audience 'we got him!


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Meyer's original plan for the score was to adapt Gustav Holst's orchestral suite "The Planets". The plan proving unfeasibly expensive, and with both James Horner (composer for "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Search for Spock") and Jerry Goldsmith (composer for "The Motion Picture" and "The Final Frontier") turning the film down, Meyer began listening to demo tapes submitted by composers. Meyer described most of the demos as generic "movie music", but was intrigued by one tape by a young composer named Cliff Eidelman. Eidelman, then 26, had made a career composing for ballets, television, and film, but despite work on fourteen features, no film had been the hit needed to propel Eidelman to greater fame.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: In conversations with Eidelman, Meyer mentioned that since the marches that accompanied the main titles for the previous "Star Trek" films were so good, he had no desire to compete with them by composing a bombastic opening. He felt that since the film was darker than its predecessors, it demanded something different musically as a result. He mentioned the opening to Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird" as similar to the foreboding sound he wanted. Two days later Eidelman produced a tape of his idea for the main theme, played on a synthesizer. Meyer was impressed by the speed of the work and the close fit to his vision. Meyer approached producer Steven Charles-Jaffe with Eidelman's CD, which reminded Jaffe of Bernard Herrmann; Eidelman was subsequently given the task of composing the score.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Eidelman began the project by creating a compilation of music from the past five "Star Trek" films, and he consciously avoided taking inspiration from those scores. "[The compilation] showed me what to stay away from, because I couldn't do James Horner as well as James Horner," he said. Since he was hired early on in production, Eidelman had an unusually long time to develop his ideas, and he was able to visit the sets during filming. While the film was in early production Eidelman worked on electronic drafts of the final score, to placate executives who were unsure about using a relatively unknown composer.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Eidelman stated that he finds science fiction the most interesting and exciting genre to compose for, and that Meyer told him to treat the film as a fresh start, rather than drawing on old "Star Trek" themes. Eidelman wanted the music to aid the visuals; for Rura Penthe, he strove to create an atmosphere that reflected the alien and dangerous setting, introducing exotic instruments for color. Besides using percussion from around the world, Eidelman treated the choir as percussion, with the Klingon language translation for "to be, or not to be" (""taH pagh, taHbe"") being repeated in the background. Spock's theme was designed to be an ethereal counterpart to the motif for Kirk and the "Enterprise", aimed at capturing "the emotional gleam in the captain's eye". Kirk's internal dilemma about what the future holds was echoed in the main theme: "It's Kirk taking control one last time and as he looks out into the stars he has the spark again [...] But there's an unresolved note, because it's very important that he doesn't trust the Klingons. He doesn't want to go on this trip even though the spark is there that overtook him." For the climactic battle, Eidelman starts the music quietly, building the intensity as the battle progresses.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The soundtrack was released on December 10, 1991, through MCA Records and features thirteen tracks of score with a running time of forty-five minutes. In 2005, a bootleg copy of the soundtrack surfaced with thirty-six tracks of score and a running time of nearly seventy minutes. Intrada Records released a two-disc set in 2012. The first disc is made up of the complete score and four extra cues. The second disc contains the material from the original MCA release.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: "The Undiscovered Country"s Cold War allegory and references to literary history were recognized among researchers and cultural historians. Scholars have noted that it is the Klingons, not the humans, who quote William Shakespeare; Gorkon claims at one point in the film that "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." In reality, the reverse—translating Shakespeare into Klingon—proved problematic because Marc Okrand had not created a verb for "to be" when he developed the language. Shakespeare scholar Paul A. Cantor argues that this association is appropriate—the warlike Klingons find their literary matches in the characters Othello, Mark Antony, and Macbeth—but that it reinforces a claim that the end of the Cold War means the end of heroic literature such as Shakespeare's. According to Kay Smith, the use of Shakespeare has meaning in itself and also derives new meaning (underscoring cultural politics in the film) by its rearticulation in a new form. Meyer said the idea for having the Klingons claim Shakespeare as their own was based on Nazi Germany's attempt to claim the Bard as German before World War II.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: According to scholar Larry Kreitzer, "The Undiscovered Country" has more references to Shakespeare than any other "Star Trek" work until at least 1996. The title itself alludes to "Hamlet", Act III, Scene 1, the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy. Meyer had originally intended "The Wrath of Khan" to be called "The Undiscovered Country". Whereas the undiscovered country referred to in "Hamlet" (and its intended meaning in "The Wrath of Khan") is death, "Star Trek VI"s use of the phrase refers to a future where Klingons and humans coexist in peace.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: Chang recites most of the lines from Shakespeare used in the film, including quotes from "Romeo and Juliet" and "Henry IV, Part 2" in his parting words to Kirk after dinner. During Kirk's trial, Chang mocks Kirk with lines from "Richard II". The final battle above Khitomer contains seven references to five of Shakespeare's plays. Two references are drawn from the title character's lines in "Henry V" ("Once more unto the breach"/"The game's afoot"), while two more quotations are from "Julius Caesar" ("I am as constant as the Northern Star"/"Cry 'havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war"). There is a single reference to Prospero from "The Tempest" ("Our revels now are ended"), and Chang shortens the wronged Shylock's speech from "The Merchant of Venice": "Tickle us, do we not laugh; prick us, do we not bleed; and wrong us, shall we not revenge?" The final line spoken by Chang before he is obliterated by torpedo fire is lifted from Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "to be, or not to be..." Flinn was initially unsure about the numerous classical quotations, but when Plummer was cast, Meyer enthusiastically added more. He said, "Whether it's pretentious or not, I think it depends on how it's used. [...] I don't quite agree with using too much of that sort of thing, but once you get Plummer, suddenly it's working."


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: In addition to Shakespeare, Meyer's script includes references to Arthur Conan Doyle. "The game's afoot", originally from Shakespeare's "Henry V", is spoken by Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in a short story by Doyle. As the "Enterprise" crew works to identify Gorkon's assassins, acting Captain Spock invokes "an ancestor of mine" who maintained that when the impossible is eliminated, what remains must be true, no matter how unlikely it is. This statement was made by Holmes in several works by Doyle; Meyer, too, has written Holmes novels, and has acknowledged the link.


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: The association of General Chang with the politics of the Munich Agreement that involved attempted appeasement of Nazi Germany are brought up twice in the film. The first is with Chang with other Klingon officials at a dinner with Kirk and Federation officers, where Chang declares that the Klingon Empire needs "breathing room", to which Kirk responds by imitating Spock's earlier quoting of Hamlet, saying that Chang's reference is "Earth, Hitler, 1938". Later when Kirk confronts Chang's warship, Chang mocks the historic British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain who attempted to appease Hitler; with Chang saying that there will be "no peace in our time".


title: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

text: A major theme of the film is change, and people's response to that change. Meyer considered Valeris and Chang "frightened people, who are frightened of change", who cling to old ways despite the changing world. He hoped that the fictionalization of a current events story allowed for an objective look at the issues, rather than being blinded by personal bias. At the beginning of the film, Kirk operates under a similar bias, calling the Klingons "animals" and putting him at odds with Spock. The Vulcan sees the Gorkon peace initiative as logical, responding to the sudden change in the "status quo" in a collected manner; he even opens the peace dialog at the behest of his father. Kirk, meanwhile, is willing to "let them (the Klingons) die", unwilling to listen to Spock's words because of his biased understanding. Kirk undergoes a transformation through the film by way of his incarceration; realizing that his hatred is outmoded he allows for a cleansing that restores his son to him in some way.