After Star Trek V flopped in 1989, Paramount wanted a cheap 25th-anniversary film for the original cast. Leonard Nimoy suggested the idea of the Klingons' empire falling apart, paralleling the end of the Cold War, and Nicholas Meyer built the plot around it: a Klingon peace effort, an assassination and a conspiracy. The Klingon chancellor Gorkon was based on Mikhail Gorbachev, and Meyer wrote the script with Denny Martin Flinn partly by e-mail, with Flinn in Los Angeles and Meyer in Europe. The budget was cut to about $30 million from an original estimate of around $41 million, and creator Gene Roddenberry disliked the script's flawed, prejudiced characters.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.