Rura Penthe

From Freepedia

In Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Rura Penthe is the name of the slave labor camp that inspired Captain Nemo's rage against society.

Director and script-writer Nicholas Meyer, who is known for peppering his scripts with literary quotes, re-used the name Rura Penthe for the ice-covered Klingon penal colony that holds Captain James T. Kirk and Dr. Leonard McCoy after they are falsely convicted for assassinating Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. As the film was an allegory for the fall of the Soviet Union as was the role of the Klingons in all of Star Trek prior, Rura Penthe can be seen as an allegory for Soviet gulags.

Rura Penthe also appeared in a Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Judgment", where Captain Jonathan Archer is sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy against the Klingon Empire.

In both cases, the Starfleet officers escape the actual prison through their own ingenuity and once outside their confines are rescued by their starships.