"Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" was always conceived to be an allegory for the Cold War and the Soviet situation, but its creators never counted on how prescient it would ultimately prove to be.

Writer/director Nicholas Meyer spoke about the movie — and his career in general — at a Borders bookstore Tuesday night in Los Angeles, as part of a promotion for the new Special Edition DVD of the sixth Trek movie, which went on sale that day. The main purpose of his appearance was to autograph DVD covers, but he drew such an audience — an overflow crowd of at least 60 — that he spoke for nearly an hour, taking questions from a very inquisitive and admiring group, before actually signing.

[Meyer also made an appearance in San Francisco on Saturday, Jan. 31, at 4:00 p.m. at the Borders San Rafael (588 Francisco Blvd, West).]

Among the many topics he addressed relating to writing and directing Star Trek and other movies, Meyer talked about how the subject matter of "VI" came about. "They said to me six months before this all began, 'Gosh, we'd really like to make another Star Trek movie, do you have any ideas?' I was like, Agh! I never have any ideas! And the ones I do have, mainly, stink!" recalled Meyer, who at the time had already co-written "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" and directed "Khan." But in 1990, when Leonard Nimoy came to visit his fellow director to discuss the upcoming movie, Nimoy raised the idea, "What about 'the wall' comes down in outer space? You know, the Klingons have always been our stand-ins for the Russians..." This got Meyer's juices flowing. "I said, '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!"

Again, this was in 1990, shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, but well before the Soviet Union collapsed effectively ending the Cold War — which occurred in December 1991, almost day-to-date when "Star Trek VI" was released. (The Chernobyl nuclear accident was in 1986.)

A typical conversation Meyer had with people after the movie came out went like one he recalled having with his dentist ("Well, you talk to them sometimes") a few months after that historic time. "He said he really liked the movie. I said, Great — how about we completely predicted the Soviet coup d'etat, huh? How about that we called Gorbachev 'Gorkon'?"  (At the time in 1992, he said, there was a mystery whether Gorbachev was dead or alive.)  "And he said, 'Uh, what do you mean?' I said, 'Well, the Klingons were our [allegory] for the Russians, and the wall coming down ... we were a little heavy-handed about it.' He has a long pause and he goes, 'Ah, I'll have to see it again!'" The bookstore audience burst into laughter. "And I realized, 'Uh, I see we weren't quite heavy-handed enough!'"

The Special Edition of "Star Trek VI" does include some re-editing of the film, though Meyer claimed he "changed even less" than he did for the DVD version of "Star Trek II." He is generally opposed to the idea of "director's editions" of movies, believing that once an artist "puts a message in the bottle" so to speak, "you lose all proprietary authority over your creation." At the same time, he confessed, "In Star Trek VI there were a couple of moments that I thought were not clear, and I suddenly saw how to make them clear. But if it's a total of 30 seconds, I'll be damned."

He also drew laughs by declaring, "I'll tell you what else I'm not happy about. I don't like the director's commentaries, and I don't think you should listen to mine! ... Why would you want somebody whispering in your ear when you're trying to watch the movie? Saying, 'Oh yeah, I remember where we shot this'...!"

The "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" Special Edition DVD is a two-disc set, the first disc featuring the film which includes two scene revisions by Meyer, along with that dreaded audio commentary by himself and co-screenwriter Denny Martin Flinn. The second disc features interviews, documentaries, archival materials, and more, which Meyer praised during his talk. "The other interviews are great — it's fascinating how they did things."