Rura Penthe
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In Star Trek, Rura Penthe is an ice-covered Klingon penal colony, whose primary activity is dilithium mining. Due to its harsh conditions, it is "known throughout the galaxy as the Alien's Graveyard." The environment also acts as a natural deterrent against escape, with only a magnetic shield to prevent transporter beam-out. The environment was so harsh, in fact, that it was said that being sentenced to a year of hard labor at Rura Penthe was the same as being sentenced to death. To impress the new inmates, the warden of Rura Penthe waited until their arrival to carry out sentencing on an unnamed prisoner. The prisoner was stripped of almost all clothing and tossed out of the penal colony, where he froze to death in front of the new inmates before the warden was finished with his speech. Rura Penthe was first featured in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when James T. Kirk and Leonard McCoy were imprisoned there after being convicted for the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon. Rura Penthe would again be featured in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Judgment", set some 140 years before Star Trek VI, when Jonathan Archer is sentenced to life imprisonment there for conspiracy against the Klingon Empire. Rura Penthe was named by Nicholas Meyer, director and screenwriter of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, after a slave labour camp in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.[1] With Star Trek VI being an allegory for the fall of the Soviet Union, Rura Penthe is analogous to the Soviet prison camps, or gulags. In fact, the Klingon warden states, "This is the gulag Rura Penthe," when Kirk and McCoy first arrive. Much of the rest of his speech mirrors that of Colonel Saito, the Japanese camp commander in The Bridge on the River Kwai.[1] References
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