A Love Of Shakespeare Landed Chris Plummer His Star Trek VI Role

"Star Trek" fans are a notoriously finicky and aggressively opinionated lot, but I don't think it's terribly controversial to suggest that, of the six films featuring "The Original Series" cast, the majority of Trekkers hold the two directed by Nicholas Meyer, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," to be the best of the bunch.

Made for $32 million less than Robert Wise's "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," Meyer, who'd never seen a single episode of the show, got the franchise's big-screen iteration back on track by dispensing with the previous film's occasionally draggy reverence. Though he inherited the notion of calling back to TOS' "Space Seed" episode, Meyer placed his stamp on the film by imbuing the tale with evocative literary allusions to Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" and Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities." It's a tightly structured yarn that managed to extend the life of the movie franchise while killing off (however temporarily) the show's most beloved character.

So when it came time to bid farewell to the original cast a decade later, Paramount brought Meyer back to hopefully craft a fitting swan song (and right the ship once again, this time after William Shatner's half-baked misfire "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"). He boldly aced the assignment. "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country" is a touching sendoff to everyone but Kirk (Shatner got clumsily shoehorned into 1994's "Star Trek Generations") that uses the United Federation of Planets' pursuit of peace with the Klingons to comment on the end of the Cold War.

His script also draws on Shakespeare, particularly via General Chang (Christopher Plummer), the Kirk-hating Klingon who quotes the Bard with blustery aplomb. Meyer wrote the character with Plummer in mind and eventually became so wedded to the actor in the role that he couldn't imagine making the film without him. There was just one hitch: they hadn't offered him the part yet.

In a 2021 interview with StarTrek.com, Meyer (whose "The View from the Bridge: Memories of a Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood" is a must-read regardless of how you feel about the series) discussed how being a "Shakespeare fool" inspired him to tailor him to Plummer's grand, booming persona.

Meyer's journey to "The Undiscovered Country" began when he cut class at the age of 13 to "see a movie that I thought was called 'Henry Vee." As Meyer told StarTrek.com:

"...I didn't know it was Shakespeare because it didn't say on the poster, it just said 'Henry V' and there was pictures of guys with swords and horses. So I snuck out of school and had a religious experience. I was like Saul of Tarsus, on the road to Damascus. I had a vision... And [Laurence] Olivier made a recording of excerpts of 'Henry V,' and it was all done to the music from the film and I love this recording, but the sound was quite inferior as it was made in the late '40s. But in the 1980s Chandos Records produced a brand new CD with Chris Plummer doing the same excerpts."

So when Meyer began writing "Star Trek VI" and hit upon the idea of a "Shakespeare-spouting villain," Chang and Plummer became interchangeable in his mind. He was pleased with his work. But would Plummer be equally as enthusiastic?

Meyer had never met Plummer and realized he had a lot working against him given Paramount's disappointment with the franchise's previous installment. "This is the only business where you get to shake hands with your dreams," said Meyer. "And we didn't have a lot of money. They weren't taking us very seriously. A lot of people just thought after 'Star Trek V,' this is all played out."

Meyer, however, had a key ally in casting director Mary Jo Slater (mother of Christian, in case you're wondering how he wound up in the film). She was a fan of the script, so Meyer trusted her to go to bat for him. Still, Meyer felt he had to impress upon her how crucial Plummer was to realizing his vision. As he told StarTrek.com, "I said to her, 'Listen, Mary Jo, if we don't have Chris Plummer, we don't have a movie. No pressure, but don't come back without him.'"

Slater got Plummer, and the actor delivered a scenery-devouring turn that instantly transformed Chang into one of the franchise's most colorful antagonists. So, aspiring filmmakers, if you hope to work with some of the finest actors working today, read your Shakespeare. They love that guy.