Captain's Blog pt. 20: The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was released in 1982. I never realized until getting this post together just how long of a shadow that year cast over my VHS-watching for the rest of the 80s. Tron, Poltergeist, E.T., The Road Warrior, The Thing, Blade Runner, The Beastmaster, The Last Unicorn, Rocky III, and The Dark Crystal were all released that year - not to mention Zapped with Scott Baio, which has the distinction of being the first thing I ever saw on Laser Disc at my buddy's house - and while many of those became ongoing re-watch favorites, for at least the middle part of the 80s the one I watched more than any other was:

As a result of familiarizing myself so thoroughly with the pan and scan home video release back then, I'm always struck at the scenes added back in (Scotty's extended scene in Sick Bay, Scotty's nephew arguing with Admiral Kirk re: the readiness of Engineering, McCoy's arguing with Spock, etc.) when I catch it on cable or see it on disc nowadays. Of these restored scenes, the McCoy-arguing-with-Spock scene works well, but the Scotty/ Scotty's nephew scenes are tonally "off," so it's understandable why they were cut.

I will never understand why Scotty first brings the boy to the bridge instead of Sick Bay. More on this when we get to "The Nick Meyer Approach," though.

At that time I was completely unaware of the behind-the-scenes drama that attended the making of the film:

- Despite its hefty box office receipts, Roddenberry's perceived lack of control over the production of The Motion Picture and his failure to play well with others prompted Paramount to put veteran TV producer Harve Bennett in charge of the sequel. Roddenberry was given the ceremonial title of "consulting producer." His contract made it clear that no Trek could be produced without his name attached, but this ultimately became the sum total of his involvement in the movies: Roddenberry In Name Only.

- Harve Bennett settled into his new job by watching every episode of TOS back to back. He picked "Space Seed" as the story to revisit and began soliciting scripts. Eventually, Nicholas Meyer was hired to direct. Says Mr. Meyer: "I'd never seen Star Trek. Although I did know a guy who watched it dropping LSD for 54 days straight in college. So, I don't know... maybe there's something there."

Indeed.

Nick succeeded in getting a script together from the various attempts (Jack Sowards' being the closest to the end product's) that was palatable to Harve Bennett, Paramount, and to Shatner and Nimoy (who was lulled back to the franchise by being promised "a great death scene.") The only one to whom it wasn't acceptable was Roddenberry, who quickly learned how sidelined he had become when he threatened to walk and it was made clear to him that walk or not, Wrath of Khan was proceeding as planned. Says Harve: "Gene's notes (were highly defensive.) This will ruin Star Trek kind of stuff. I saved a lot of them, but I don't ever want to make them public, because they're very painful. No matter what we came up with (...) he'd counter by pitching a story about the crew (time-traveling) to stop the JFK assassination. That story came up 4 times as substitute for whatever we were planning to do, II, III, IV and V."

(Gene's campaign to get the Trek/JFK story made is the butt of many jokes, and admittedly it's difficult to see it translating well to the screen. But in his defense it's tough not to think of Stephen King's 11/22/63 and how well that story works. Maybe a Trekkified version of 11/22/63 would have been just as good? We'll never know, of course, I'm just saying: it may sounds ludicrous, but who knows? This is a show that had Captain Kirk and Abe Lincoln fist-fighting a rock monster, after all; there are always... possibilities.)

What was Gene's problem? First, the paramilitary look and feel of the story. Harve Bennett again: "Gene always said Trek wasn't military, but in TOS, there was a great deal of violence. (...) In his statesmanlike personal growth, (he'd) begun confusing his own idealism - which was wonderful - about a peaceful future with Star Trek. In my mind, Star Trek's vision was very different and very specific. Parameters will change, technology will change, but human nature will most definitely remain the same. (...) Will 400 years of technology elevate (human nature) into bliss and karma? (...) Gene made that assumption in his later years, or at least that was the basis of his objections to the things we were trying to do."

Taking Roddenberry's side of it for a minute, perhaps he saw the violence/ standard conflicts-making on TOS as a compromise born of television production necessity and was pushing for something less beholden to current storytelling models. I agree with Harve that TOS doesn't quite live up to Gene's idealism, here, and Gene's stance on this was famously restrictive to the writers he hired for TNG. But staying on his side for a second, there are elements of Wrath of Khan which make little sense for tactical combat in the 23rd century. For example:

The first battle between Reliant and Enterprise is staged like a broadside-battle between Age of Sail ships.

 

Even the development of this battle, later in the film, when it draws attention to itself re: Khan's "two-dimensional thinking," bears more resemblance to Napoleonic War combat than something from the future.

As Nicholas Meyer said over and over, he was making "Hornblower in outer space." That's fine, of course; Roddenberry characterized the show exactly the same way, many times. But perhaps Gene's objection was less that Trek was being military and more the way "the future navy" was portrayed.

Personally, I think Meyer managed to keep his Hornblower-allusions in check just enough with Wrath of Khan, excepting this rather silly 18th-century-esque photon torpedo bay sequence, but he took it to ridiculous lengths in The Undiscovered Country. Put another way, Wrath of Khan feels like a Hornblower story successfully-enough adapted to the Trekverse, whereas Undiscovered Country feels like a film that is determined to be Hornblower-esque, Trek, logic and legacy be damned.

Regardless, Roddenberry was out, Bennett was in, and there was little Gene could do but accept the situation as gracefully as possible.

Gene dealt with his second objection less graciously. He leaked the news of Spock's death to the hardcore fans - a real dick move, really, though I have a certain amount of sympathy for his position. The fans immediately sent thousands of letters of protest to media outlets and to Paramount, and Bennett and co. had to work overtime placating the fans and begging for a chance - something that further soured Roddenberry's relationship with the new regime. (Ultimately, though, it led to re-arranging the script for the better.)

"Aren't you dead?" Nice fake-out. The audience breathes a sigh of relief, and the impact of Spock's actual death is all the more powerful for it.

 

I was young enough for this to be pretty much my first "big death." It's certainly survived in my imagination as the standard of comparison. (Coincidentally, the other big deaths of my childhood were Jean Grey's and Elektra's; all three were brought back to life.)

Most fans adopted a "wait and see" attitude and while saddened by Spock's death, were ultimately delighted with the film itself. David Gerrold relays the absurdity of some of the boycott hysteria in The World of Star Trek: one fan went to see the film five times but got up and left the theater right before Spock's death each time. That's a particularly curious way to "vote with your wallet."

Let's get to the film itself. In addition to "Hornblower in outer space," Meyer refers to it as an "adventure movie that was about friendship, old age, and death."

 

 

It's certainly successful on those counts. Also as a tale of obsession and revenge, i.e. the "wrath" of the title. Montalban is exceptional as Khan.

His desire for vengeance and liberal quoting of Moby Dick all make sense in context of the story, (as does the film-framing quotations from A Tale of Two Cities; Meyer is considerably less successful, again, trying for this sort of thing in Undiscovered Country) and you can't help but feel sympathy for his position. Kirk deposits the Botany Bay crew on Ceti Alpha Five at the end of "Space Seed," and, as Khan relays to Chekov and Captain Terrell, no one ever bothered to check up on their progress. As a result, all of the hardships they experience (including the death of Khan's wife, former Starfleet officer Marla McGivers) metastasize in the pursuit of vengeance against James Kirk. Kirk, then, has two figures from his past re-surface, Khan, and his son David. Twin sons of the same father, twin results of  youthful decision-making, coming home to roost.

Shatner's bellowing of "KHAAAN" is perhaps the most enduring bit of the film. No less amusing, though, is Khan's reaction shot, as Kirk's fury (an affectation as part of the misdirection in play - Kirk needs Khan to think his fury has overcome his reasoning - but let's be clear on something: reading this as a ploy in no way satisfactorily explains Shatner's over-the-top-ness here; this is vintage Shatner madness, ruse or not, and thank goodness) echoes over the comm link:

He's enjoying this in an equally over-the-top way.

The film enjoys the reputation of still being the best Trek of them all. Is it? I'll save my how-the-films-rank thoughts for that eventual post, but I love this movie. The score, the editing, the performances, pretty much everything is airtight. Hindsight allows us to see it as only the first part of a trilogy of stories, and as such, it certainly sets everything up (and how.) But even had Search for Spock and The Voyage Home never been made, this would remain a powerful high water mark for the Trekverse. (Perhaps especially if they had never been made; if this, say, was not a box office hit and the franchise left to die, what a farewell this would be.) A few stray observations:

- I'm not sure it's entirely logical for Starfleet to employ live explosives during its Kobayashi Maru exercise:

But, I applaud their commitment to realism.

Much has been made of how Chekov would recognize Khan, since Walter Koenig was not in TOS episode "Space Seed," but okay, maybe he familiarized himself with the ship's adventures before joining the crew. Meyer himself says he was aware of the discrepancy and considered putting Uhura on the Reliant, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle frequently contradicted himself in the Sherlock Holmes books, i.e. "continuity doesn't matter so long as the audience is engrossed and enjoying themselves." To a certain extent, I agree; on the other hand, it's such a flip attitude. Here and elsewhere, he uses his veneration of Sherlock Holmes and Horatio Hornblower to justify any Trek decision he made, as if the source material for his reasoning is so superior to Trek as to be an answer in and of itself.

EDIT: Personally, I never cared much, either way (and it is entirely possible that Meyer is being cheeky, here, and I shouldn't take his comments so literally.) Whether or not Chekov was on the ship during "Space Seed" has little bearing on whether he would recognize Khan. It matters, certainly, for whether Khan would recognize Chekov. But I'm fine with any of the suggestions offered in the comments or elsewhere. I also agree more or less with Meyer's point; he knows him because it makes the scene better. That's not a good rule for storytelling, but it's not a bad exception, every now and again.

Less simple is why he and Captain Terrell don't just beam back to the ship from inside the Botany Bay once Chekov realizes where he is. Did I miss something? Did Pavel just panic? Why rush back out into the sand storm?

Of course if they had, we wouldn't get this admittedly-awesome shot of Khan and the gang in the swirling sands, ready to capture them. Again, when confronted with what looks best on screen vs. what makes the most sense, Meyer chooses the former every time. Case in point, Saavik:

Or rather, Saavik's tears at Spock's funeral:

Nicholas Meyer addresses this on the commentary track: "I remember somebody came running up to me and said, 'Are you going to let her do that?' And I said, 'Yeah.' And they said, 'But Vulcans don't cry,' and I said, 'Well, that's what makes this such an interesting Vulcan." Cute, except it contradicts everything we'd heretofore learned about Vulcans. There really isn't any valid excuse for Saavik to cry, here, except, of course, it looks better on screen. Considering the depths to which Meyer's "Who the hell cares" attitude descends on Undiscovered Country, this is a foreboding remark. But in the context of Wrath of Khan, all right, fine, who cares:

Kirstie Alley is an appealing Saavik, but Robin Curtis (who replaces her in Search for Spock and The Voyage Home) plays the character much more Vulcan-like. We'll get to that film in turn, but it certainly shows the difference between the two directors re: Vulcans.

EDIT: Okay, everyone seems to be remembering Saavik's half-Romulan-ness as something other than an explanation after the fact. I have the novelization for this on audiobook and will huddle over that like a man with an Enigma machine when I get to it. I will say it was my distinct impression from the commentary track and from reading Meyer's book that he didn't even know what a Romulan was, but it's entirely possible he was being cheeky, there, as well.

The other additions to the main cast work well:

Bibi Besch as Carol Marcus.

Paul Winfield as Captain Terrell

And Merritt Butrick as David Marcus.

And although they don't get much to do as they will in the other parts of this trilogy of stories, the rest of the cast is fun to watch as well:

 

 

Of the recurring cast, I guess this is Chekov's big moment in the films, isn't it? He's used for something more than comic relief/ light touch/ Captain Kirk, Jr., here, and as mentioned elsewhere, the moments where he and Terrell are brought under the control of the Ceti eels imprinted themselves on a generation's nightmares. The sequence aboard Regula One is also gruesomely effective, particularly the Captain's grim business of lowering the strung-up corpses:

The effects of this film still hold up pretty well. Industrial Light and Magic had to basically start from scratch, as Doug Trumbull's company refused to share any of the work they'd done on The Motion Picture with them.

 

The Genesis Device is a fascinating idea:

and the simulation of its effects are still fun to watch:

 

Additionally, I always laugh at this next part because I was convinced as a kid that this dawn of the star beyond the Genesis planet was the impact of Spock's burial tube.

 

and I always wondered how the tube remained intact or didn't level any of the foliage on the surface, with an impact like that...! Obviously, I mistook the star beyond the planet as the impact, but as a metaphorical set-up for Star Trek III, it works well. Michael Eisner likened the death of Spock to the crucifixion and insisted the film needed the Gethsemane resurrection. Bennett (and Nimoy) agreed, but Nicholas Meyer hated (and continues to hate) the non-finality of Spock's death.

The film was a huge hit. Charles Bluhdorn, the notorious chairman of Paramount's parent corporation, Gulf and Western, personally phoned Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer with his congratulations. (Bluhdorn was aka "the mad Austrian of Wall Street," and Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls contains several colorful anecdotes of his interactions with Barry Diller, Don Simpson, et al.) 

Given his obstructionism during all aspects of production, Roddenberry was not phoned, by Bluhdorn or by anyone. I can't help but feel for Roddenberry, here. Trek was finally an unreserved success. (The box office receipts of The Motion Picture notwithstanding, its reputation would take awhile to improve; it was considered the misstep that Khan corrected at the time and by the studio brass/ most fans.) Yet he had to watch through the window, uninvited to share in the spoils of the party to which he had dedicated so many years of his life, so much of his soul.

Sadly, this was a situation that would be repeated on Trek's next four big screen iterations.