The Undiscovered Country, flying into stars, Neverland, and NUVO

After I hypothesized in my previous post that STS might be a reference to the movie Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (Star Trek 6), based on some probably dubious associations, including what appeared to be graffiti in the shape of the Enterprise on the side of the Xanadu building, Leo asked in the comments if I was going to watch that movie now as well.

I hadn't thought I was going to, honestly, and that just associating the title of Undiscovered Country with Aman-Xanadu was maybe enough, but his comment put a bug in my brain that maybe I should check it out.

So, I dutifully sat down and watched it last night.  This was my third Star Trek film of the week, having also watched Star Trek:  First Contact on Friday night.

I thought it was decent.  Undiscovered Country was the last movie featuring the original Enterprise crew with Kirk, Spock, and team, so it was a bit of a send off show.

As I watched it, I really didn't see or hear a whole lot of specific tie-ins for the majority of the movie, other than to some of the more general plot themes.  In the movie, it is peace between the Federation and the Klingons that seems to be finally in reach, but some 'secret combinations' from within both groups, and in very high levels of leadership, are trying to prevent that from happening.  This obviously fits in with some of what I have been writing here, but it fits in with a lot of stories.  Star Trek characters quote Shakespeare quite often, and many plot devices and scenarios find their way into the screenplay.  Internal intrigue and sabotage is a fairly universal story, so hard to say or claim anything special about that, really.

So, for 99% of the movie, I thought that if there was something to the STS relating to Star Trek 6, it must just be the title, as I didn't see anything really stand out specifically.

But. . . then the last 4 minutes of the film happened.

Actually really the last minute, and I flipped from thinking not specifically relevant to thinking very much so.  This was due to one phrase that Kirk used, and then the final image or scene of the Enterprise.  I will first post the clip, and then actually start in reverse order with the image, before then talking about the phrase he used.

Here is the last 4 minutes of the movie (so spoilers obviously)

OK, so working backward from the very end, at about the 2:30 mark the scene flips for the final time from the bridge to outside of the Enterprise, and as Kirk gives a final monologue we see the Enterprise fly toward a bright sun.  A bit like something flying off to the sunset, space style, since this is the cast's farewell voyage.

An interesting thing happens, though, from a perspective standpoint.  As the Enterprise 'approaches' the sun, or enters its light disk, it appears to actually fly into and through the sun.  Over a period of approximately 10 seconds, the ships will slowly start to disappear in a manner that makes it look the sun was actually not a sun at all, but a bright, shining hole in the background of space itself.  Here is one still image for you to look at, in case you skipped the video clip, that shows the Enterprise mid-way through its disappearing act:

So, at this point - literally the very final scene of the movie - is when I paid attention or saw a potential connection to what I have been writing about here, including Xanadu or Aman.  A star has now become a hole or a passage.

In my post Speech Problems:  Dream 3 of 3, I introduced a dream I had back in 2020 where I stood in front of the Sun.  Here is my brief, one-sentence summary of that dream:

In that dream, I stood in front of what was the Sun, from what I could tell.  It seemed that I was being asked to walk into the Sun, but I hesitated and looked back, not wanting to leave my family, before finally turning around and stepping in.

Furthermore, I brought up that dream in that post because the closing scene of Watership Down, where the Black Rabbit invites Hazel to join him, and they end up running into the Sun, reminded me of it.  This all part of some random points and insights regarding the Black Rabbit, associating Faramir as him, and other related themes.

Following that post, I then started down the path of Holes - specifically Black and White Holes, which would lead into Doors and Passages.  That train of thought started with the question I asked myself following that "Speech Problems" post:  "But just how would it be possible to walk into the Sun?".  I explored that question in the post "Black holes, Rabbit holes, and walking through stars".  And we've obviously covered some significant ground since relative to these topics.

So, for that reason, this scene with the Enterprise seeming to enter into this Sun caught my attention.  How could it not?

It caught my attention for another reason:  after the Enterprise enters the Sun or whatever this Bright Star is, that looks like Hole in space or a rift in the darkness, that light expands until it takes up the whole screen.  It is all white.

This brings me to another dream of mine.  I mentioned my having dreams prior to 2019 was extremely rare (at least ones that I can remember - maybe only 4 or 5 total ), but that the ones I do remember all seem somehow relevant to what I am writing here.  I covered one of those dreams in my post "Wolves", relative to Numenor's invasion and devastation of Eressea.

This dream is actually from just a few years ago, but before any of the weirdness.  It was 2017, and I was on a boat with my family.  My wife's family had held a reunion on a cruise, which turned out to be pretty fun.  One night on the cruise, I had the following dream:

I was standing on something like a sea shore looking out over the water.  It was night.  As I looked at the horizon, I could see storm clouds approaching.  I wasn't worried about the storm, though, for whatever reason.  I felt very calm.

Suddenly I had some kind of feeling, and said "It's happening" out loud not consciously knowing what "It" was.  I began to be lifted up from the ground toward the sky.  It seemed completely natural and I wasn't alarmed.   As I rose, I started to have a feeling of joy, that continued to build as I went higher and higher.  A white light started to build around me, like I was ascending into light. It became all white around me.  I felt like I was ascending to something, and was almost there, when I then suddenly woke up.

It was extremely disorienting to wake up in my bed like that, as again, I think the last memorable dream I had was from childhood.  The combination of the dream's content and emotions, and the fact that it felt real (in terms of having a dream I remembered), kind of left me lying there in a state of shock for several minutes afterward.

Anyway, the way the white light expanded and filled the screen after the Enterprise sailed into the Sun brought back that memory.

Peter Pan and Neverland

Just prior to the scene of the Enterprise flying into the star, Kirk decides to disobey orders (break the rules) one more time and take the Enterprise for a last trip.  Chekhov asks him for a heading, and Kirk replies "Second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning."

As many people might know, this is a quote from Peter Pan.  Actually, it is slightly modified from the book, which omitted 'star'.  The 1953 Disney animated film used "star", and so I guess is what Kirk is quoting, technically.  The book version of the quote comes from chapter 4, which is titled simply "The Flight".

Incidentally, the cruise we were all on that my dream occured on was a Disney cruise, so a bit of a loose link, I suppose.

The phrase itself is meant to be directions to Neverland, given by Peter to Wendy, and this is what Kirk is referring to as he tells Chekhov to set a course.  He is taking the Enterprise to Neverland.  

This phrase piqued my interest right before that closing scene (which sealed the deal for me), because Neverland has come up before in my words, and likely in the context of Faramir and Eowyn.  On March 6, 2020, there was a dialogue that included, at least as I then interpreted and still do now, the requested separation of Faramir and Eowyn as part of next steps in the current plan, but also seems to allude to a reuniting in "Neverland".  

The words were from a dream, and in the dream I saw a man and woman sitting with each other, and they looked very sad.  A voice was speaking to them, and said:

Devise we thee a really hard thing:

To separate

A voice replied (which I currently take to have been Faramir's), saying:

Does not working everyone with?

In that question (clearly some kind of broken english translation), my sense was that perhaps the initial understanding of both Faramir and Eowyn was that they would be coming to this world together, as part of a larger team in this current plan.  In other words, this was a flashback to a previous time.  That obviously changed with this request to separate, and thus why the image I saw of what I assume was meant to represent them was that of a sad couple.  This was unexpected news.

In the story I have partially captured or thought through here, that is what happened.  Faramir was born here (and is alive now as a man), while Eowyn stayed behind and went on to other adventures.  And the Anor and Ithil Stone link will facilitate their reunion.

The dream continued, and after seeing the sad couple that I now take as being Faramir and Eowyn, I voice said, "I long for my wife".  I believe this would have been present-day Faramir saying this, since he would now find himself separated.

In response, a voice said:

Clouds as a family you may enter

Neverland to fly thither

So this is where we have Neverland.  And for those who have kept on board with or followed the Faramir-Eowyn part of this story, this would be a dialogue that refers to his ascent (I think) to Tirion-Xanadu, with Aman in general likely being referred to as "Neverland".

Anyway, putting all that together, and thinking through the things I have written and thought through here, you can likely see why that last scene in Star Trek caught my attention so much.  Or, if you don't, don't worry about it!

So, was STS on the side of the Xanadu building directly referring to a Star Trek film yet to be created at that time, that would include dialogue and symbolism at the end that would be very direct references to the same place, and events, that I have said Xanadu represents?  I don't know.  I do think the connection is there, but not sure whether that was placed intentionally, or just leveraged in such as way as to guide my attention somewhere.  Either way, I thought it was interesting.

NUVO

I will close the post with another random connection from this weekend.  

My daughter is a dancer, and this weekend a travelling dance competition, workshop, and convention was in Minneapolis.  She looks forward to this thing every year.

It's called NUVO, which must have originally been an acronym for something, but I sure can't find what it is/was.  Anyway, after the first day, my daughter got a nice sweatshirt that looks like this (I am using the image from their online store, because I didn't want to completely creep my daughter out and ask if I could take a picture of her sweatshirt logo...):

The first thing that struck me when I saw the logo was the X.  There are two upward facing arrows that intersect each other to form an X.

I had the thought that NUVO must be an Elvish word, so of course I looked it up.  It is a pretty good hit.

Nu = West, or Sunset

Vo = Son

So, something like "West Son".  Pretty straightforward.  My current thought that Tirion (represented by the X) lies both Up and to the West, and that a 'son' (Faramir) will make a trip there (the shirt even mentions a tour) seems fairly well represented on the shirt logo, if I look at it in that light.

"Vo" is interesting, as well, because it has come up in some Elvish words in the past week, which I will share in a different post, because I am going to wrap this one up and hit publish.