Star Trek: The Motion Picture might represent the spirit of Star Trek, with its story of seeking out new life and new civilizations, and its heady science fiction rooted in the space between the personal and the unfathomable. But as I discussed on the We Love to Watch podcast, if The Motion Picture captures Star Trek’s spirit, then The Wrath of Khan captures the franchise’s character. The second theatrical Star Trek film conveys the way these friends and allies bounce off one another, the franchise’s Wagon Train to the Stars adventurism, and the larger-than-life personalities that give color to its futuristic world.
Better still, the film explores the ripples and consequences of the actions taken by those personalities in a way that both embraces and reflects on The Original Series. The 1960s T.V. show was never heavy on continuity, half by fiat and half by the necessities of the medium at the time. Sure, it might bring back Harry Mudd or reference The Corbomite Maneuver once more, but by and large, the show was reset to the status quo by the time the next episode started.
But given a cinematic berth, The Wrath of Khan does what The Original Series never could. More than the first Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan is firmly rooted in the televised events that preceded the latest crisis in deep space. That tack is clearest in the film’s choice of antagonist, with Ricardo Montalban reprising his role as Khan Noonien Singh, the unfrozen would-be tyrant of 1967’s “Space Seed.” The films deftly delivers his backstory for the uninitiated, but the movie carries particular weight when Khan’s attempt at revenge feels like Kirk’s chickens coming home to roost after the years of adventures since the pair’s last confrontation.
The film ever so slightly deconstructs those (sometimes weighty, sometimes weightless) prior adventures at the edge of the galaxy. Despite Kirk’s oft-professed love for his ship and admiration for his crew, he also quietly harbored dreams of a simpler life and pictured the road less traveled. The Wrath of Khan leans into those alternate possibilities, revealing that Kirk has a son, that he had an old flame who effectively banished him, and that he now sees the ghosts of a family he might have had.
"I'm glad you agreed to meet me here at the Crayola Crayon Factory."
More than that, the film examines the anesthetizing effect of the constant reset to the status quo. The James T. Kirk of the 1960s T.V. show is a man with nerves of steel. He spent plenty of time recording commendations with his would-be dying breath and tried to sacrifice himself for the greater good on more than one occasion. But inevitably, at the last minute, some technological wizardry or quick-witted solution would see him rescued, emboldened, and triumphant. The Wrath of Khan uses that erstwhile plot armor to explore the way Kirk has managed to avoid loss in his lifetime of close scrapes, to sidestep a fair amount of hardship and difficulty. Only now, when he’s thrown back into the adventure that he’s been so hungry for, is he forced to experience the pain of losing, even when he wins.
Of course, this is still Star Trek so those issues are explored in bombastic tones rather than quiet ruminations. But it works! The characters in The Wrath of Khan are vivid, full of life, and feel like the natural extrapolations of the characters from The Original Series fifteen years later. There was a muted quality to these same personalities in The Motion Picture, and it fit that film. The first Star Trek film not only include a colder tone, but it gave the sense that our heroes, who’d been apart for so long (some of them going so far as to purge emotions) were now unexpectedly feeling out their old shorthands with one another.
But by the time of The Wrath of Khan, the mood and atmosphere is one of a bunch of old buddies who still see one another for drinks every other weekend, even if they’re getting a bit long in the tooth. Dr. McCoy and his Vulcan counterpart joust and jibe as always. Scotty’s receiving treatment for space syphilis. And heck, if anything, Spock (and by the same token, Saavik) seem a little too unreserved and emotional in comparison to prior appearances. (Surely an aftereffect of spending so long among humans.)
Naturally, Kirk (and by extension, William Shatner) is just as colorful and expressive as when he at the beginning of the Enterprise’s five year mission. One of the ways that The Wrath of Khan succeeds is by framing its story as a tete-a-tete between two outsized personalities. The chess match between Kirk and Khan provides space for Shatner and Montalban to chew scenery in a delightful fashion, and works as a nice spine for the film, allowing each to gain the upper hand and be bested in turn.
Legally this counts as Surround Sound.
For Khan, that means refusing to let go and continually seeking revenge, even when he has all the tools to go on conquering. If there’s one thing Star Trek loves, it’s Moby Dick homages, and Star Trek II makes James T. Kirk into Khan’s white whale. While never making Khan tragic exactly, the film gives him understandable motivations, underscoring the harsh conditions he and his cohort have lived under since Kirk marooned him. It highlights the loss of his wife (presumably Marla McGivers) that embittered him, and the slight of being bested and buried that fuels his fury. Montalban quivers, preens, and holds focus on the screen in a style that makes him a fine match for Shatner’s “turn it up to eleven” screen presence.
But Khan is not a mere disposable antagonist. He extracts his pounds of flesh from Kirk as a reverberation of what he feels Kirk did to him. That underscores the deepest theme of Star Trek II — that there is a cost to all this space adventuring, a cost that Kirk managed to avoid or ignore for too long, and one that he forgets about in his desire to sit, once more, in the captain’s chair like a younger man.
The Wrath of Khan repeatedly contrasts age and youth. It sets our old heroes (who are a bit more weathered and worn than before) on a ship full of trainees who weren’t expecting to actually go on duty. It puts Kirk himself, recalling his lost days of command, next to his son, still full of piss and vinegar. And it has Khan, whose hair is now a wispy white rather than jet black, and a lost love in the form of Carol Marcus, there to remind the commander of the Enterprise of how long it’s been since these major life events took place, even as they start coming back to haunt him.
That makes it all the more meaningful and affecting when those costs start rolling in. The film briefly introduces Scotty’s nephew, a devoted and proud young cadet following in his uncle’s footsteps. James Doohan delivers the best one-scene wonder performance in the film when he mourns the loss of his tenderfoot kin after Khan’s attack. The message is clear — that not only is Khan dangerous, but that in all Kirk’s adventuring, he’d remembered the triumphs and forgotten the risks.
Scotty, seen here in a scene where he's late for marching band practice.
The greater testament to that is, of course, Spock’s sacrifice in the emotional climax of the film. While The Wrath of Khan moves along at a good clip, interspersing Kirk’s reluctant return to command with Khan’s ascendance before the two collide, the film’s emotional force crests after that conflict is over. When the Enterprise escapes the Genesis Device’s shockwave and our heroes are in relative safety, Spock shows his true colors, trying out his own version of the Kobayashi Maru test that both he and Kirk had managed to sidestep until now.
Despite his Vulcan stoicism, Spock has often been the emotional center of Star Trek. His reserved demeanor makes those moments when his armor falls and he shows true affection or sentiment that much more powerful. So his sacrifice here — his willingness to let the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, and to tell Kirk that he is, and always shall be, his friend — is given all the more weight. This skirmish, this backlash from the acts of a younger Kirk, hasn’t just cost the man his ship or his honor; it’s cost him his best friend.
And yet, there’s a sense of renewal and hope at the end of The Wrath of Khan. It may be the Genesis Device and the paradise it creates. It may be the embrace of a lost child who says he’s proud to be Kirk’s son. Or it may the fact that, you know, there’s four more movies after this one, and Spock’s on the poster, so presumably he’ll be okay. But even if that sacrifice is destined to be undone, the film once again does something the television show never could in quite the same way. It builds on the years of character development and the relationship these two men shared to deliver a blow to Kirk that rattles him, that reminds him of how much they accomplished and yet how much they managed to escape in that original five year mission.
Sulu and Uhura know what's up.
Because that’s the spirit of Star Trek too. While limited by its medium in some ways, the television show was as much about the friendship of the men and women who served aboard the Enterprise — Kirk, Spock, and Bones in particular — as it was about the appetite for adventure. “Risk is our business,” Kirk once said. It’s an easy business to be in when the requirements of a weekly television series mean you almost always come out unscathed, that foes are defeated for good by the end of the hour, and your friends will still be there when the next adventure starts.
The Wrath of Khan embraces that sense of camaraderie, the colorfulness, the slick spaceman taming the wild frontier as they journey among the stars. With that, it encapsulates so much of what Star Trek was and is. But it also goes where Star Trek had never gone before, exploring what happens when those foes reappear to take from you what you took from them, when the seemingly disposable weekly love interests return with your child at their side, and the man who stood beside you through so many close calls finally meets his noble end. It’s enough to make you feel young, and old, and thrilled and saddened and heartened, when the famed captain of the Enterprise still finds new ways to grow up, and to remember.
