I do remember seeing Wrath of Khan in the theater on opening night. It was a strange day, Raining heavily when we tried to go to the matinee at a multiplex (4 theaters Wonder of Wonders!) in Orange CT. Ultimately that attempt failed as we didn’t quite make it to New Haven as my 1974 Duster was having alternator problems with the belt slipping due to the rain and splashing. We limped it back to my Buddies house grabbed a snack and hopped in his family’s ancient Suburban. Went to the 6 PM showing and watched the movie. We were enthralled (and nearly teary eyed at the “I am and always have been your friend” line as well as playing of Amazing Grace). We had noticed the rain was LOUD at times almost drowning the dialogue. Got out to Monsoon level rain and a parking lot with 3-5″ of water/ Getting home was a challenge, Rt 95 was closed in Branford due to several accidents and deep water. We were diverted eventually choosing a path along the coastal roads. Came to a bridge over a normally gentle stream running out to Long Island Sound. The bridge is normally about 4′ above the stream. The stream was now a 2′ deep torrent over the bridge. Being young stupid guys (college age) we decided to forge on. I got out and walked ahead of the Suburban to check the depth (I hope you realize this was a very bad choice and I am lucky to be writing this some 40+ years later: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES DO THIS !!!). As we came off the bridge there was a low spot ahead and so I was still the depth gauge. Shortly I felt my knee bump something. It was the bumper of a Ford Taurus wagon submerged such that maybe 6″ of its roof was sticking out of the water ahead of me. Needless to say we turned around and spent a couple hours fishing about for a way back to my buddy’s home that would be passable with the 2′ or so of clearance the Suburban had. That said Wrath of Khan was well worth the journey.
Tag: The Wrath of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) – A Science Fiction Movie Review
My goodness. 1982. Has it been that long? I think I saw this movie in the theater but I’m no longer sure. Okay, so this movie shows all the signs of riding the crest of Star Wars making sci-fi exciting again. The theme music is obviously aping John Williams’ theme from Star Wars. Well, of course they did. They’d have been nuts not to. This was the second Star Trek movie and after how boring the first movie was, they must have decided they needed to get back to the original formula that made the tv show work, action/adventure with a little science fiction thrown in for window dressing.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
When the movie begins “Admiral” James Kirk is observing cadets responding to a simulation of a space emergency. Captain Spock is testing his Vulcan student Ensign Saavik to see if she can reconcile reality with regulations. During these simulations Kirk tells Dr. McCoy that he feels old now that he’s behind a desk instead of commanding a starship.
Meanwhile the USS Reliant’s Captain Clark Terrell and first officer Commander Pavel Chekov beam down to evaluate a planet to see if it is lifeless as required for the next test of the “genesis device.” This is a system that can take a lifeless planet and both terraform it and create life on it. But it turns out that the planet is actually the planet that Kirk marooned Khan Noonien Singh and his group of genetically modified supermen on, twenty years earlier. The reason that the Reliant’s crew didn’t know this is because some cosmic instability blew up one planet and moved Khan’s world where it had been. This also made Khan’s home a death sentence that he only avoided by his incredible intelligence. But the death of his wife Khan blames on Kirk.
Putting “super earwigs” into the ears of Chekov and Terrell, Khan takes control of their minds and forces them to betray their ship into Khan’s hands. Finding out where Kirk was and about the genesis device, he hatches a plan to destroy Kirk and the Enterprise and use the genesis device to destroy the life on an already flourishing world. Apparently, this is the dark side of the device and why only lifeless worlds must be treated.
Khan captures the genesis device and lures Kirk into an attack by the Reliant. After almost destroying the Enterprise Kirk uses some trickery to take over control of the Reliant’s bridge and damages that ship enough to get it to retreat.
Kirk manages to rescue the chief scientists of the genesis project. They happen to be one of Kirk’s old girlfriends and her son who also happens to be Kirk’s son. The young man despises Kirk for not being a pacifist geek like himself. Finally, the showdown arrives. The Enterprise is heavily damaged and can neither outrun nor outfight the Reliant. So, Kirk lures Khan into a “nebula” where the Enterprise’s weakness will not be decisive. Kirk manages to get enough potshots off to destroy the Reliant but Khan decides to activate the genesis device in order to destroy the Enterprise which without warp drive will not have enough time to escape its destructive force.
Seeing that time was of the essence Spock leaves the bridge and heads for engineering where to the horror of McCoy and Scott he intends to enter the warp drive containment room. Spock uses his Vulcan neck pinch to disable McCoy and then uses the Vulcan mind meld to give McCoy some kind of subconscious suggestion and we hear him say to McCoy, “Remember.” Spock then enters the radiation area and removes the safety housing from the warp drive and with his face and hands in the radiation field, “fixes” the warp drive manually. As soon as it comes on line, the bridge crew uses the warp drive to escape the genesis blast by a split second.
Then McCoy calls Kirk over the intercom and tells him to come to engineering in time to say goodbye to a dying Spock. The rest of the movie is Spock’s funeral in space where after the eulogy by Kirk, his coffin is shot out of the ship toward a planet that the genesis device somehow produced out of the nebula where the Reliant was located. After that Kirk and his son have a reconciliation. When asked again by McCoy how he feels Kirk says, “Young, I feel young again.” In the last scene we see Spock’s coffin on the ground in an idyllic setting on the new planet.
Okay. So just as a point of departure, Star Trek: The Motion Picture; the movie that preceded this one was awful because it was boring and nothing much happened. So, this movie had lots of action and stuff happens left and right. I read that they achieved this by kicking Gene Roddenberry upstairs and not letting him play with the script. So good for them for figuring that out. Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh is a wonderful hammy villain. The crew of the Enterprise were very much their old selves from the tv show. So, what’s not to love. And the tragic farewell of Spock to Kirk is the climax of the movie. Sure, it’s hammy tv acting at its worst. But it’s wonderfully satisfying for any fan of the old show. How the young respond to it I won’t speculate on. I highly recommend it to all fans of Star Trek TOS.
Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 22 – Space Seed
I have previously reviewed this episode as part of ShatnerKahn I. But I think it is desirable to provide a standard treatment for all the Star Trek episodes so I will follow the usual procedure here.
The Enterprise encounters a derelict space ship drifting slowly through space and identifies it as an old Earth vessel from the 1990s. Upon scanning it they find signs of life and board it. They discover the crew to be in suspended animation. Upon rescuing the leader from his sleep they discover that the crew are eugenically produced supermen who were forced to flee Earth after their dictatorships were overthrown.
Their Leader Khan Noonien Singh, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, dissembles his intentions and seduces crewmember Lt. Marla Mcgivers into assisting him in capturing the Enterprise in order to aid his people in finding and conquering an Earth colony for their new home. The supermen quickly overwhelm the crew and Khan puts Kirk in a vacuum chamber and threatens to suffocate him if one of the crew does not assist him in his plan. We get a view of Kirk gasping like an out of water goldfish which will earn this episode a very healthy Shatner mockery score. But McGivers repents of her mutiny and saves Kirk from the death trap. With the assistance of Mr. Spock Kirk is able to use knockout gas to subdue the mutineers. But Khan escapes to the engine room and is causing an engine overload that would destroy the whole ship when Kirk arrives for their showdown. Khan starts by prying Kirk’s phaser out of his hand and then bending it into a curve with his bare hands. And here Khan makes his famous taunt. He says, “Captain, I have five times your strength!” in his unique Ricardo Montalban enunciation. Khan proceeds to toss Kirk around the engine room like a rag doll while Kirk attempts some pretty rudimentary martial arts moves. I’m not 100% sure but I believe there was a stunt double for Shatner in some of the acrobatics. But naturally Kirk fights dirty. He grabs a metal rod and starts hammering Khan in the head and back until he passes out.
In the final scene Kirk convenes a court and dismisses all charges against the supermen if they will agree to exile on a deserted and inhospitable planet. When asked if he accepts the offer Khan asks Kirk if he knows his Milton. Kirk nods in understanding. Then Kirk gives Mcgivers a choice; go into exile with Khan or stand trial for mutiny. She eagerly accepts exile.
Scotty pleads shameful ignorance as a Scot for not knowing the Milton reference and Kirk explains that in Paradise Lost, Lucifer declares that he would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. The show ends up with Spock and Kirk wondering what they would find if they were able to come back in a hundred years and see what fruit had grown “from the seed” they were now sowing.
This is one of the quintessential Star Trek episodes. Kirk is out macho-ed by Khan. Spock gets to act appalled by the humans’ clear admiration for Khan’s obviously authoritarian methods, to which charge Kirk admits and explains humans have a primitive streak that allows them to admire an enemy for his strength. In these days of #metoo Khan would never be allowed to rough up McGivers as he does to dominate her into helping him. Of course, he also plays with her hair quite a bit so he is a romantic too. One of the ludicrous things about the episode is Kirk giving Khan access to the ship technical manuals. These allow Khan to capture the ship. I mean come on! What part of superman is hard to understand? Couldn’t he have just given him a game of free-cell to keep him from getting bored?
Kirk’s fight with Khan is also classic. His shirt manages not to get shredded but he has several awkward and lame looking judo holds that helps qualify this episode for a decent Shatner mockery score. And above all there is Montalban. He struts and brags and mocks Kirk for being inferior in all ways. It’s quite entertaining.
Let’s give this a 9 for the episode and a 7 for Shatner mockery. 9 // 7. Well done Ricardo.
ShatnerKhan 1 – Part 4 – Conclusion
After reviving ourselves again with refreshments we estimated that we had time for one last course before exhaustion would set in. Almost at random we selected Mudd’s Women. It was a mistake. What we thought we were going to watch was the episode called I, Mudd. This one is about Mudd selling women that he artificially beautifies with a drug. It’s boring and meaningless. At the end the women are seen to be beautiful without the drug because they’re self-confident. Yeah sure, and I’m Brad Pitt.
Anyway, this poor episode angered the delegates and disrupted the complacency that the massive junk food binge had produced. We set to work repairing the situation with mass quantities of supplies. Once we had re-established our equilibrium, we decided to quickly bring the ShatnerKhan to a rapid close. But we did ramble on about what we had learned and vowed less poisonous food at ShatnerKhan 2.
So, what did we learn?
- William Shatner is indeed a demigod of bad acting. Series television, made-for-tv movies, big studio major motion pictures, even minor awards ceremonies; none of them are proof against his patented lousy acting skills. He is a ham for all seasons.
- As lousy an actor as Shatner is, he is definitively the best part of the original Star Trek series. His character possesses almost the only heroic characteristics to be found on the show. The rest of them are even bigger weirdos and losers than he is.
- Shatner actually seems to be a decent comic actor. He is able to perform self-deprecating routines quite skillfully. We decided not to hold this against him.
- Much more study will be needed and a much higher grade of food supplies will be needed for future ShatnerKhan events. I personally advocated for deli, others spoke of Thai food and barbecue. These questions will be sorted out in committee.
But all agreed that ShatnerKhan 1 was a roaring success both academically and gastronomically.
All hail William Shatner, long may you endure as a shining beacon of terrible acting.
ShatnerKhan 1 – Part 3
As stated at the end of the last post we settled on Star Trek episode “Space Seed” as our next course. And there it all was! Ricardo Montalban and William Shatner battling to settle the question of who could chew up the scenery faster. Khan proves to be an even more persuasive lady’s man than Kirk. He convinces a lady scientist to turn traitor to the Enterprise and assist Khan in taking over the ship. Of course, the most absurd part of the story is that Kirk provides Khan with the ship’s technical manuals that allow him to figure out how to selectively flood most of the Enterprise with knock out gas. Could there be any logical reason to provide a known megalomaniac with the details of these most sensitive technical secrets of the ship? Of course not. While he was at it, he might as well have given Khan his social security number and his bank account PIN.
There is a great scene near the end where Kirk and Khan are fighting mano a mano. Khan starts out by snatching away Kirk’s phaser and twists it in half with his bare hands. Kirk gets tossed around like a rag doll but at the critical juncture he grabs hold of a solid metal bar and clonks Khan over the head a few times with it and shows that even a super-strong super-genius should go for the quick kill instead of ending up having the tables turned on him like some kind of super villain in a James Bond movie.
Watching the final scene where Khan and his colony agree to be exiled on a world of their own is of course ironic. We know that in the future the Wrath of Khan is awaiting Kirk and the rest of the crew. This was discussed heatedly. What should have been done. Should Khan have been handed over to a re-education camp. Should Kirk have checked to see if Ceti Alpha was a stable star that would permanently support a colony? Should such dangerous genetically superior individuals have been liquidated, for the safety of all humanity? What, precisely, was rich Corinthian leather? The answers to all of these were debated endlessly and then abandoned because we got hungry again.
But certain things were agreed on. Kirk and Khan are both hounds and neither Shatner nor Montalban believed in understated performances. And these two things were linked with the fact that this is one of the most popular episodes of the series. Shatner and Montalban are over the top ham actors. The characters they are playing are out of a comic book. But they are fun. They are motivated by the things that men are interested in; women, adventure, honor. This makes them about a trillion times more fun and interesting than Spock or Picard or any of the other “futuristic” characters. Shatner taking shoulder rolls and bouncing around under pretend Khan pummeling is laughable and sophomoric but it’s still the best thing Star Trek had in this episode.
So this is the revelation. Kirk is the best part of the show because he provides the only example of a normal man doing normal manly things. He doesn’t do them well or convincingly but he’s all there is. So we gave one cheer for James Tiberius Kirk and took some time out to eat some more food.
You may think that there was an inordinate amount of time taken away from the proceedings of ShatnerKhan to eat junk food. You would be correct. The plain truth is that all the delegates there were taking the opportunity to eat types and amounts of food that their wives would normally prevent. In many ways it was almost as if ShatnerKhan was an excuse to pig out. Once again, you would be correct. But we justified this by pointing out that Shatner himself always looked like he could lose about thirty pounds and we perceived something heroic in men of a certain age throwing caution and wifely warnings to the wind and seizing the day and the Dorito (as it were).
In the final post we will look at the concluding viewing content and then our final thoughts on ShatnerKhan 1 and the prospects for later editions.
ShatnerKhan 1 – Part 4 – Conclusion