Star Trek: The Motion Picture ended up being something of a disappointment. Financially it did fine, but failed to fill Paramount’s coffers with Star Wars levels of cash and while ambitious at times, the film was messy, slow, and tried too hard to emulate 2001 while striving too little to play to the shows biggest strengths. Still, Paramount decided to go forward with a sequel, albeit with a much smaller budget and massive amounts of retooling.
That retooling included the demotion of series creator Gene Rodenberry from producer to the nebulous and ceremonial post of “creative consultant.” In his place Paramount installed Harve Bennet to produce and co-write what turned out to be one of the best franchise films ever made: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. We'll get to the film in a minute but first, let's talk about the Original Series episode that inspired it: “Space Seed.” (Spoiler alert for both "Space Seed" and Wrath of Khan follow)
The episode opens with The Enterprise stumbling across a 20th century Earth ship, The Botany Bay, drifting through space. Against all odds, a scan reveals faint life signs, prompting Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to send over a landing party which discovers that most of the ships original passengers still alive in suspended animation. Scotty(James Doohan) blunders with the old technology and almost destroys Khan's suspension tube. Kirk acts quickly and has Khan taken back to the Enterprise.
Kirk and Spock are suspicious, but nobody knows who he is yet, which allows the revived man a certain amount of subterfuge in order to familiarize himself with the much more advanced Enterprise. Look, sometimes people do things in TV shows purely for plot convenience. It's understandable when you've got to get through the story really quickly, but there are points where “Space Seed” asks Kirk to be an irresponsible moron. I'll leave it to a bigger Trekkie than I to inform me of proper protocol, but it seems a bit ridiculous to let mysterious strangers read up on the blueprints and security capabilities of an advanced military vessel deep in unexplored territory. On a related note, Dr. McCoy (Deforest Kelley) likes to leave dangerous surgical equipment sitting around and is quite the badass with a scalpel pressed to his neck.
Soon it's revealed that Khan is no ordinary man, but a genetically engineered superman who built a dictatorship during WWIII. Khan, and the existence of a Third World War is a big deal for the Trek universe. One of the things that sets Trek apart from other visions of the future is its optimism. To Gene Rodenbery and his writers, the future is a statement that we would, eventually, solve poverty, sickness, intolerance and war, but as we learn in “Space Seed,” the emphasis is decidedly on the “eventually” part. More than ever, the show is underling just how flawed people can be, especially when hubris and ambition are involved.
The crew's reaction is rather interesting. When Khan's identity is discovered, Kirk is amused and Scotty owns up to a “sneaking admiration” of the man. When Spock objects to this nostogification of the past, Kirk is quick to compare him to Napoleon and point out that Khan's dictatorship wasn't responsible for any “major” massacres. But it sits a bit uneasy with Spock and with us. The whole idea of Khan being the product of eugenics is meant to invoke 20th century dictators. Everything about his origins and fascist mindset should fly in the face of the inclusionist Enterprise crew. Part of the problem is that the Enterprise is 200 years removed from Khan and the events of WWIII. By namechecking Napoleon but invoking Hitler and the Cold War (WWIII featured full blown nuclear combat), the episode touches on History's troubling tendency to, given enough time, glorify men who seek power for its own sake.
Still, Kirk's admiration is understandable on some level. Despite all his intensity, Khan is extremely magnetic, a fact not lost on Lt. McGivers (Madlyn Rhue), a 20th century expert/fetishist. She more than anyone else looks at all the ugliness of the past and glamorizes the ambition of conquerors. She's immediately taken with Khan and the two begin a rather abusive romance. Eventually he manipulates her into helping him revive his followers and take over the Enterprise. Leading to a big fight between Khan, Kirk and Shatner's stunt double.
Eventually the good guys win, but there's a bizarre hitch. Kirk decides to give Khan, his followers and McGivers some supplies and then maroon them on Ceti Alpha V, a nearby planet. How anyone allows this is beyond me. Surely taking over a Federation starship is a serious crime, and I know it's been 200 years, but there can't be a statute of limitations on attempted global domination? In a way it's typical of Kirk's seat of the pants style of command, but it's also a mindbogglingly stupid plot contrivance. Still, I shouldn't be too hard on this ending, if Kirk had been more responsible then we wouldn't have gotten Wrath of Khan.
Even more than its contemporary, The Empire Stirkes Back, Wrath of Khan is about its ending. (Just a reminder, this is a spoiler review) It wasn't a creative choice to kill off Spock but a way to lure Leonard Nimoy back to a role he was getting tired of. But to the credit of director/co-writter Nicolas Meyer (Time After Time), you'd never know it to look at it. He embraces the imposition and builds the film around it.
In this context, Khan is no longer a nightmare from the past but of the future. He is death incarnate. Meyer's film works as a rebuke of just how light and fluffy death is treated in shows like Star Trek. He and his writers seem determined emphasize the mortality of all these characters, especially Kirk's.
The film opens on a particularly unhappy birthday for James T. Kirk. Not only is the admiral no longer commanding the Enterprise, but he's found himself assigned to training his replacement crew. The pleasures of which seem limited to sassily chewing out Lt. Savak (Kristy Alley) a Vulcan cadet in line for his old job. As Captain, Kirk used to explore strange new worlds and cheat death on a weekly basis, now he's feeling his age. As Admiral, he's retreated from the world that suited him best, not wanting to push his luck and now his life savors of anti-climax.
Eventually the good guys win, but there's a bizarre hitch. Kirk decides to give Khan, his followers and McGivers some supplies and then maroon them on Ceti Alpha V, a nearby planet. How anyone allows this is beyond me. Surely taking over a Federation starship is a serious crime, and I know it's been 200 years, but there can't be a statute of limitations on attempted global domination? In a way it's typical of Kirk's seat of the pants style of command, but it's also a mindbogglingly stupid plot contrivance. Still, I shouldn't be too hard on this ending, if Kirk had been more responsible then we wouldn't have gotten Wrath of Khan.
In this context, Khan is no longer a nightmare from the past but of the future. He is death incarnate. Meyer's film works as a rebuke of just how light and fluffy death is treated in shows like Star Trek. He and his writers seem determined emphasize the mortality of all these characters, especially Kirk's.
The film opens on a particularly unhappy birthday for James T. Kirk. Not only is the admiral no longer commanding the Enterprise, but he's found himself assigned to training his replacement crew. The pleasures of which seem limited to sassily chewing out Lt. Savak (Kristy Alley) a Vulcan cadet in line for his old job. As Captain, Kirk used to explore strange new worlds and cheat death on a weekly basis, now he's feeling his age. As Admiral, he's retreated from the world that suited him best, not wanting to push his luck and now his life savors of anti-climax.
In contrast is Khan. While Kirk was getting softer, Khan was getting sharper and deadlier, growing mad with grief over the death of his wife (presumably McGivers). Bent on revenge he manages to escape Ceti Alpha V by stealing the U.S.S. Reliant, a federation ship doing survey work for the Genesis Project.
Genesis is a device that rapidly terraforms lifeless planets. Think of it as the film's ace in the hole, planting the idea that that from death can come hope and new life. The hitch being that Genesis is ultimately too dangerous because the same process that allows it to create life would also destroy any living thing it came in contact with. All this leads to Kirk, Spock and Dr. McCoy debating the ethics of creating such a device, particularly considering that Starfleet acts just as much as a military organization as it does a scientific one. In the wrong hands, Genesis is a 23rd century atom bomb. It's not ultimately important to the film, but it's a point not lost on the team developing it, particularly Kirk's old flame Dr. Carol Marcus and the their son David (Bibi Besch and Merrit Butrick).
This is the kind of stuff Trek excels at. Tricky intellectual ideas gussied with a shiny sci-fi action coating. Not that the coating is neglected here, in fact the set pieces are uniformly fantastic. After a slow burning first half Khan uses Genesis and Carol to lure Kirk into an trap. The Reliant mounts a sneak attack on the Enterprise, crippling her. So right away in our first action scene we have the heroes at a major disadvantage. By embracing the mortality angle, the film has upped the stakes and, ideally, that's what action movies are really about. The action genre isn't really about explosions, but the possibility that people we care about might get hurt and die in those explosions. Without those stakes you've got nothing. Obviously it's hard for audiences to get to worried watching a weekly series or the Nth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean because we know that there's a status quo to be maintained. But with a major death being imposed on the film already, the stakes immediately jump much higher. The conventional wisdom is that these types of movies are only as good as their villains. But I'll add that a good villain is nothing without a vulnerable hero.
It's interesting that Kirk and Khan never meet face to face. Perhaps when Meyer saw "Space Seed," he realized how boring the climactic fistfight was and decided to skip it. Instead they just interact via the bridge viewscreen. These scenes have a palpable tension to them not just because the film has invested in the characters but because they are legitimately about one intelligent tactician trying to outsmart another. In that initial encounter, there's a wonderful sequence where Kirk and Spock try and find a way to use Khan's unfamiliarity of 23rd century tech, while he counts down the seconds until he kills everyone. The film invites us into the heads of its protagonists more than we usually get in these types of movies.
The ending is particularly spectacular. In a final attempt to even the odds Kirk lures Khan into a nebula that disables the sensors of both ships. Eventually leading to Khan detonating the Genesis device as a last Melvilleian gambit to kill his enemy. The Enterprise escapes, but only because Spock sacrifices himself. The death of Spock is a fantastic emotional climax, but if there is an issue it's that after his funeral, the film starts to hedge its bets. Indeed as filming went on Leonard Nimoy had a reversal and now wanted to continue doing Star Trek. We don't see Spock come back to life right away (that would be silly), but the last few shots might reveal too much where the next film is heading. It's not too bad, the ending comes back to the idea of the Genesis device creating life out of death and it's nice that the film ends on a hopeful note, it's just irritating to see the film building in escape clauses.
Grades:
"Space Seed": B+
Wrath of Khan: A-
Trekkin' It directory:
The Motion Picture
Space Seed / The Wrath of Khan
The Search for Spock
The Voyage Home
The Final Frontier
The Undiscovered Country
Generations
First Contact
Insurrection
Nemesis
Star Trek '09
Into Darkness (spoiler analysis)
Note: I saw the Director's Cut of the film. The only worthwhile addition is a small set up where a plucky, young engineer is revealed to be Scotty's nephew. Apart from that one snippet the content in the DC is unnecessary at best, interrupting the natural films rhythms. The superior Theatrical Cut, as well as "Space Seed" are both streaming on Netflix Instant. If you enjoyed this review, you can subscribe to Screen Vistas via Facebook
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