Posted on 09/09/2022 9:23:51 PM PDT by TBP
Tonight I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. TCM and Fathom Events were presenting it for the movie’s fortieth anniversary. The movie was excellent, but it was bittersweet. Suzanne was a major, big-time Trekker. the kind who could tell you the season, episode number, and title of every episode of what has come to be called “The Original Series.” She would tell you that the movie continues the story arc of Season 1, Episode 12, “Space Seed.”
In “Space Seed,” the Enterprise encounters a sleeper ship containing specially bred superhumans, led by a man named Khan Noonien Singh, from Earth’s past who try to take over the Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk exiles them to the planet Ceti Alpha V.
The movie takes place fifteen years after the events in “Space Seed.” Khan has spent the last fifteen years trying to find a way to escape his exile planet and exact his revenge on Kirk.
The starship Reliant is on a mission to find a lifeless planet to test a scientific device for the Federation called the Genesis Device, which was developed for the Federation by a civilian scientific team led by Dr. Carol Marcus, one of Kirk’s former lovers, and her son David. It is designed to reorganize dead matter into habitable worlds. Two Reliant officers, Captain Clark Terrell and Commander Pavel Chekov (a former Enterprise officer), looking for a lifeless planet to test Genesis, beam down to what they believe is Ceti Alpha VI.
They are captured by Khan and his people and told they are actually on Ceti Alpha V. Ceti Alpha VI has blown up. Khan injects indigenous eel larvae into their ears, controlling their minds. He then takes control of the Reliant. Using Reliant, he attacks the space station Regula I, where Dr. Marcus and her crew have their lab. Regula I sends a distress signal, which is picked up by the Enterprise. The Enterprise is out on a training mission to train new officers, including Spock’s protege, Saavik (played by Kirstie Alley, in her first major motion picture role.)
Admiral Kirk is on board for the training, and due to the emergency, he takes command from Captain Spock. (Yes, everyone got promoted.) Reliant attacks and cripples the Enterprise and Khan demands all material related to Genesis. Kirk buys time and remotely cripples the Reliant‘s shields, making it vulnerable to counterattack. Khan retreats for repairs while the Enterprise limps to Regula I.
Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and Saavik beam aboard Regula I, where they find Dr. Marcus’s crew murdered (except for Dr. Marcus and David.) They also find Terrell and Chekov. Soon they find Dr. Marcus and David hiding Genesis deep inside a planet. Khan orders Terrell and Chekov to kill Kirk. Instead, Terrell kills himself and the eel comes out of Chekov’s ear. He is taken back to the Enterprise.
Khan is transporting Genesis on the Reliant, intending to maroon Kirk on the lifeless planetoid, but Kirk and Spock trick him into a rendezvous inside the Mutara Nebula. In the nebula, shields are disabled. The two wounded ships can have a fair fight. Kirk and his crew disable Reliant, mortally wounding Khan. As he dies, Khan activates Genesis.
The Enterprise crew detects the activation and tries to escape, but is unable to do so without the disabled warp drive. Spock goes to repair the warp drive, but the engine room is flooded with radiation. McCoy tries to stop him from entering, but he uses a Vulcan mind trick on McCoy and repairs the warp drive, allowing the Enterprise to escape the explosion, which forms a new planet. In so doing, Spock dies. (Spoiler alert: He’s back in the next four movies.)
We also learn that David is Kirk’s son.
What can we learn from this tale? Khan’s fierce drive for revenge drives him to his death; Spock dies saving his friends. Genesis breeds new life. We can see in Khan’s story arc the price that revenge and anger cost. They can literally kill you. We see nobility of helping people, even when it costs you, perhaps even your life. We see the devotion of one’s life to service. And we see that there is always a new life if we but know how to create it.
This is a wonderful, dramatic, swashbuckling adventure with several underlying metaphysical messages. I highly recommend it.
It is one of my all-time favorite movies and the best of all the Star Treks.
Star Trek - Born Again Trek - Wrath of Khan - Julia Ecklar
https://youtu.be/vARV4JXK3R0
The best Star Trek film and I watched as a kid in the theater when it came out in 1982. Terrific film score by James Horner.
i never noticed it until Ricardo Montalban commented on it in a much later interview, but his part in this movie was very, very small.
A fantastic movie, even if you aren’t a big Star Trek fan.
Khan continually bragged about his superior intelligence due to his genetic engineering, but he was so easily tricked by Kirk at every encounter. The obvious way that he was mislead into thinking that repairing the Enterprise would take days instead of hours, for one. But then just following him into a nebula because Kirk blatantly taunts him when he starts to slow his pursuit. These people had spent almost no time on a starship, yet they knew how to repair one that was heavily damaged, and also thinking they could outmaneuver Kirk who had decades more experience. I wouldn’t exactly say he had superior intelligence after that.
I was a young engineer, right out of college, when this movie came out. I saw it at the “Cinema Pub” on Orange Blossom Trail in Orlando - a wonderful place to relax and watch a movie on a Friday night. A great movie, and a great memory!
And let’s not forget that Khan was “thinking in two dimensions” as he battled in three dimensional space.
The Critical Drinker posted an excellent you tube review of Wrath of Kahn juxtaposed with Star Trek: Into Darkness. It is worth the time to take in CD’s insight about the two movies. The title of the video is - “Star Trek: Into Darkness is a terrible movie”.
The NappyOne
The producers could have put Shatner in heavy makeup and have him playing Kirk from the show. They did much better though, and had Kirk confront the reality that he was no longer that young man and that mortality comes for each of us.
Star Trek II is when Kirk grows up. And it is magnificent to behold.
Yeah he seemed more willing to let his rage control him than doing the smart thing. And this over the death of his wife which Kirk really had nothing to do with.
I was still dealing with my mother’s death when I became a Trekkie and this movie was the latest one out then. Being able to grieve for Spock instead of mother gave me a release value so that the teapot didn’t boil over. My first piece of fiction was a Trek death piece that I brought to a con and gave to the woman in front of me in line. She burst out crying. From then on, I knew where my story was by who was crying. Trek has always been the most wonderful place to create with other passionate fans. I LOVE being a Trekker!
Star Trek - Born Again Trek - Wrath of Khan - Julia Ecklar
https://youtu.be/vARV4JXK3R0
“All stop! Z-minus 10,000 meters”
Agreed!
Coincidentally, “Space Seed” was on H&I last night (Friday).
The only problem I had with Khan is that the movie ended exactly wrong. Khan should have seen the Enterprise as it warped away from the destruction to put the final knife in Khan’s heart, rather than Khan saying that Kirk could not get away. Boo-hiss! ;-)
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