9. Hail the Conquering Hero
After Paramount Pictures told Gene Roddenberry that his services, other than that of a consultant/figurehead, were no longer needed, you might have expected his replacement to be some hack. In fact, his removal paved the
way for the
Star Trek franchise's third great writer-producer,
Harve Bennett (as far as the original cast was concerned.) Bennett was no
hack, but that wasn't immediately apparent at the time. There was
nothing in his resume prior to 1982 to suggest he was any kind of
visionary (but then you could say the same thing about Roddenberry's and
Gene L. Coon's pre-
Trek efforts.) Bennett had been knocking
around network television--and not motion pictures--for about a quarter
of a century at that point. He got his start at CBS, and then moved to
ABC where he eventually became Vice-President of Daytime Programming,
and was later Vice-President of Programming, period. Poor Harve. Always
the Vice, never the President. He then went from supervising producers to
being an independent producer himself. That might seem like a step down, but it
possibly allowed him to flex his creative muscles. As a producer, he
helped bring into being such popular--and dissimilar--shows as
The Mod Squad, The Six Million Dollars Man, and the miniseries
Rich Man, Poor Man. These weren't bad shows, the best I can remember them, but were they so good that they qualified Bennett to take over
Star Trek,
already considered a pop culture phenomenon by 1982? Plus, he had never written or produced
a movie (though he had graduated from film school, so his ambitions did
point in that direction.) It may be that the Paramount executives, which at
the time included Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, did want to kind of
downsize the next
Trek movie, bring back a kind of TV sensibility while keeping it on the big screen.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
really had more of a feeling of a series finale than a series launch, whereas the four films Bennett produced, and the fifth that was
produced by an associate of his, ended up constituting a kind of fourth
season of
Star Trek, even if you had to wait a year or so
between episodes. More importantly, there was something about a bunch of
people traveling through space that brought out the visionary in
Bennett, as it had earlier to Roddenberry and Coon. A slightly different
vision, however. If Roddenberry was H. P. Lovecraft, and Coon Jonathan
Swift, Bennett seemed to take his cue from the great Old Hollywood
director Howard Hawks. In such films as
Only Angels Have Wings, Rio Bravo, and
The Thing from Another World, Hawks
would present us with a set of disparate, individualistic, often
very quirky characters who, as contradictorily as it may sound, would
come together to accomplish some goal, be it delivering air mail, taming
the West, or defeating a monster from outer space. This may have
existed in at least muted form during Coon's run, as it best describes
the Kirk/Spock/McCoy relationship. The three may not have much in common, but
it's more than what they have with anybody else. But Bennett expanded on
the idea, so that it was now those three against the world, or, this being
Star Trek,
the universe. I'm not just talking evil aliens. Whereas Roddenberry came to see
the Enterprise crew as representing the best ideals of the Federation
and Starfleet, in Bennett's telling, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy got the job
done
in spite of the Federation and Starfleet, whose sorry asses
always needed saving. As for Chekov, Scotty, Sulu and Uhura, you got the
sense they were misfits too, their only loyalty to Kirk, who wasn't
above asking them to commit a felony or two.
First,
though, Harve Bennett had to familiarize himself with the show, which he
had never seen. Also, he had to convince Leonard Nimoy to play Spock
one final time. To those ends, Bennett screened all 79
Star Trek episodes. One in particular, "Space Seed" from the second season, jumped out at him.
Ostensibly
a cautionary tale about the dangers of genetic engineering, "Space
Seed" is actually a mordant meditation on our mixed feelings
toward such conquering heroes as Alexander the Great and Napoleon
Bonaparte, how we tend to admire them until we find ourselves in their
paths (or the paths of those whom admire them even more than we do.) The
Enterprise comes across what they regard as an old-fashioned spaceship
called the "Botany Bay"--apparently named after the one in the former
penal colony known as Australia. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Lieutenant
Marla McGivers, who's a historian, beam aboard, where they find 73 bodies in suspended
animation. One of the bodies (actor Ricardo Montalban) begins to stir,
but maybe not for long as the man's vital signs are weak. He's beamed
back aboard the Enterprise, where McCoy treats him, and almost dies in
the process. Not the patient but the doctor, as the de-suspended visitor
wakes up out of his stupor and clutches McCoy by the throat. Showing
admirable, and arguably uncharacteristic, grace under fire, the MD
replies, "
It would be most effective if you would cut the carotid artery just under the left ear."
Impressed by McCoy's chutzpah (come to think of it, that is kind of
characteristic of him), the visitor lets go. After that, everything's cool for a while. The visitor, whose name we find out is Khan, is
allowed the run of the ship, encouraged to comb the computer memory
banks to catch up on the last couple of centuries, and is even given a
banquet welcoming him to the future, which he uses as an opportunity to
expound on his Might Makes Right philosophy, a philosophy that
strikes
almost everyone else at the table as an amusing, harmless
anachronism. The banquet itself was the idea of Marla McGivers, who
realizes this Khan is none other than the great Sikh warrior Khan
Noonien Singh, who during the 1990s Eugenics War (I believe I was paying
too much attention to O.J. and Monica
Lewinsky to take much notice of it at the time)
ruled a quarter of the Earth, mostly in Asia. It seems Ms. McGivers has
a thing for warmongers--her quarters are decorated with pictures of
Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Richard the Lion-Heart, and Leif
Erikson--and is so turned on by Khan that she agrees to do his bidding
for him. And once they find out it is indeed Khan the historical figure
who's on their ship, Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty get a bit turned on themselves!
In a scene rapt with romanticized rationalizations, the three go on
about how Khan wasn't really all that bad of a guy, that he was strong,
brave, daring, and ambitious, and while he may have relied on a bit of
bloodshed to obtain his own sovereign state, things were peaceful once
he got what he wanted. Before anyone can bring up that Khan got the
trains to run on time, Spock notes that he was a tyrant who curtailed freedoms. Kirk
reluctantly agrees, and assigns a guard to his quarters. Here's where
the genetic engineering stuff comes in handy. Possessing superhuman
strength, Khan easily knocks out the guard, returns to his old ship,
and wakes up the 73 other genetically-engineered warriors. With their
superior minds, they have no problem gaining control of the Enterprise,
even if the technology is way beyond their heyday. First Khan gasses all
those on the bridge, and then just Captain Kirk to the point of
asphyxiation, threatening to go further if the crew doesn't agree to
mutiny and follow their new genetically-improved leader. The lovestruck
McGivers, who's allied herself with Khan up to this point, has a change
of heart and frees the slowly suffocating Kirk from a decompression
chamber. Spock then fights gas with gas by releasing some throughout the
ship to knock out the 73 other warriors, while Khan and Kirk duke it
out, with the physically-inferior latter defeating the former, as he's done in the past, with a
lucky blow. Most shows would have ended the episode right there, but
"Space Seed" has a wry epilogue in store. Despite almost dying at his
hands, Kirk is
still in sufficient awe of Khan not to want to see
him rot away in some Starfleet version of Spandau Prison, and opts for an Elba solution
instead. Khan and his followers (along with Marla McGivers in lieu of a
court-martial) will be allowed to settle on Ceti Alpha V, a harsh but
habitable world. The episode ends with Spock remarking, "
It would be interesting, Captain, to return to that world in a
hundred years and to learn what crop has sprung from the seed you
planted today." As it turns out, Spock won't have to wait that long
to find out. And it will come close to being the very last thing he ever
finds out.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982). In the 23rd century (it's
official now) a young Vulcan woman
named Saavik is at the control of the Enterprise, which is under attack
by three Klingon warships. An impossible situation to escape from, she
orders the starship evacuated. It's then that an amused Admiral James T.
Kirk steps out from behind the scenery. No, this isn't
Six Characters in Search of an Author
you're watching. It's actually the "Kobayashi Maru" a training
simulation test that all Starfleet Academy students have to take to in
order to test their mettle. It seems Kirk is only person ever to pass
the test, a fact that he loves reminding people of (though not on the
original series, in which it never comes up.) Captain Spock, now in
charge of the Enterprise, found Kirk's solution rather unique, but we
won't learn why until later in the movie. For now, no more simulations.
The students will take the Enterprise on a three-week training tour of
the Federation, with Kirk along as an observer. Meanwhile, on another
starship, the Reliant, Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield), and his
First Officer Commander Chekov, have been instructed to assist
Project Genesis, an effort to develop a device that will reorganize matter so as to instantly
terraform a previously uninhabitable planet. The two beam down to such a
planet, and find themselves in a middle of a dust storm. They also find an
abandoned space ship, which they then go inside to check out, only to find Khan
Noonien Singh, whom Chekov instantly recognizes, an extraordinary feat,
given that his character doesn't appear in "Space Seed". So what
happened? I don't mean Chekov but to the planet to which Khan and his
followers were exiled. Seems another world in the same star system
exploded and ruined the environment of Ceti Alpha V, eventually leading
to the death of Khan's wife (presumably Marla McGivers.) Craving
revenge, Khan puts a couple of mind control eels into both Terrell's and
Chekov's ears to get them to talk. Finding out just where Kirk is at,
and now aboard the Reliant, Khan sends a fake message to the Enterprise
ordering his nemesis to take possession of the Genesis device. It
doesn't take Kirk long to find out that Starfleet Command gave no such
order. As the senior officer aboard the Enterprise, Kirk now has to take
command of the ship to find out what happened, getting much less
resistance from logical Spock than he did from Decker in
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Before they can do anything, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy need to find
out what this Project Genesis is all about. It's on what's best
described as a promotional video that they see an old flame of Kirk's,
Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch), head of the project. Spock seems to know
her too, forcing me to go on a fruitless search to see if the character ever
appeared on a regular
Star Trek episode. No, she makes her debut in this movie, as well as a relative whom we'll learn more about
later. On route to the space station where the project is based, they
encounter the Reliant, now in Khan's command. The two ships shoot it
out, with the bulk of the casualties inflicted on the Enterprise, though Kirk
manages to deliver at least one photon bomb of a blow to the Reliant.
Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik (who kind of invites herself along) beams down to the
space station where they find many dead but Terrill and Chekov still
alive. All five beam down inside the Regula asteroid, but not before
Kirk instructs Spock to take the Enterprise somewhere else, lest Khan
still be lurking. Inside a cave inside the asteroid, Kirk is attacked by
Carol Marcus' peacenik son David (Merrit Bukrit), who believes the
slaughter of the Project Genesis scientists (other than him and his
mother) was the work of Starfleet! Meanwhile, the mind control eels go
to work. Terrill points a phaser at Kirk, his superior officer, and is
about to pull the trigger (or whatever they have on a phaser) when he
summons enough will power to point the weapon at himself, an act of
self-sacrifice that foreshadows an even more shocking (as it involves a familiar face) act of
self-sacrifice at the end of the film. Chekov, for his part, merely
passes out, and the eel takes leave of his ear, no doubt wanting a breath of fresh air. Kirk manages to get Khan on his communicator, and this
memorable exchange takes place:
KIRK:
Khan, you bloodsucker!! You're gonna have to do your own dirty work now! Do you hear me? DO YOU?!
KHAN:
Kirk...Kirk, you're still alive, my old friend...
KIRK:
Still...'Old friend!'' You've managed to kill just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep...missing...the...target!
KHAN:
I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you.
And I wish to go
on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me. As you left her.
Marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet. Buried alive.
Buried alive.
KIRK:
KHAAAAAAAAAAANNN!!!
Like
yelling's going to help. Khan takes off, with the Genesis device in
tow. Meanwhile, Kirk and Carol have some catching up to do. Outside of
David's hearing range they talk about his father, who just happens to
be Kirk. That such an otherwise unmemorable character should be his son
is a minor flaw of this film, one that would be remedied in a later sequel. Meanwhile, Kirk's hungry. Carol and David lead them all into another
cave that turns out to be a Genesis-created underground oasis. With plenty now to eat, Kirk feels it's good enough
table conversation as any to explain how exactly he beat the Kobayashi
Maru. After failing the first two times, he reprogrammed the test, and
received a commendation for original thinking. David accuses him of
cheating, and Kirk replies that he just doesn't believe in no-win
situations. At least not for himself. To prove his point, he contacts
the Enterprise. Seems he had left a coded message telling Spock when to
return to pick them up. Kirk, McCoy, a woozy Chekov, Carol Marcus, and
David all beam back aboard the Enterprise, which is still badly in need
of repair. Before they have time to fix anything, Khan and the Reliant
show up. Kirk lures him to a nebula where an ion storm hampers both
starships, ironically evening the fight. Another shootout in space.
Heavy damage on both sides, but it's Khan who's mortally wounded.
Determined to get one last lick in before he dies, Khan shoots into
space the canister containing the Genesis Project, now set to activate.
That might not seem like such a big deal. After all, Genesis is supposed to
create life, not take it away. Except it creates new life by
reorganizing matter, destroying any old life that happens to get in the
way, which would include the crew of the Enterprise. Genesis in now a
rapidly evolving planet headed right toward the starship. Kirk needs to
get the hell out of there. Except the Enterprise's warp drive is knocked out.
Might be a simple thing to get it going again if the engine room wasn't filled with lethally high levels of radiation, and it's not like
you can just open up a window and air it out. Spock has a plan (the last
plan he'll have in quite a while.) Without Kirk noticing, the Science Officer calmly
gets out of his chair and walks over to the engine room. McCoy, however,
does
notice, tries to stop Spock, and is not surprisingly knocked unconscious by a Vulcan nerve
pinch. Spock then places his hand on the unconscious McCoy's head, and
says "
Remember!" Actually, I think a nerve pinch is something the
doctor would prefer to forget! Anyway, Spock walks into the radiation
filled room, and fixes the engines. Warp drive is now possible, and the
Enterprise quickly gets out of harms way. Kirk, clueless as to how
this was achieved exactly, is nevertheless pleased with himself for once
again cheating death. A grave-sounding McCoy voice is heard over the
intercom--the Vulcan pinch apparently having worn off--telling Kirk he
needs to get to the engine room, and fast. There he's shocked to finds a
dying, radiation-scarred Spock on the other side of a glass partition,
struggling to give the Vulcan salute.
SPOCK: Don't grieve, Admiral...it is logical. The needs of the many...outweigh--
KIRK: (grieving anyway) --
the needs of the few.
SPOCK:
Or the one...I never took the Kobayashi Maru test...until now. What do you think of my solution?
KIRK:
Spock!
SPOCK:
I have been...and always shall be...your friend...Live long...and prosper.
Man, I got choked up just typing that.
After the funeral, the casket containing Spock's body is placed in a torpedo
tube and shot into orbit around the new planet that Genesis created.
Kirk and David bond.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was
directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also did some uncredited work on the
screenplay. Meyer first gained attention with his best-selling 1974 novel
The Seven-Per-Cent-Solution, which had Sherlock Holmes, looking
to kick his cocaine habit, as a patient of Sigmund Freud. Meyer got into
film making when he was allowed to direct his own screenplay for
Time After Time,
in which H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper visit 1970s San Francisco.
Obviously, Mayer wasn't attracted to low-concept projects, which made
him a good fit for
Star Trek. He was willing to go all-out-pulp
while making sure the project had an overall intelligence. Arthur C.
Clarke by the way of Jack Kirby, which pretty much describes the original
TV series. The spartan look of the Enterprise in the first movie is
gone, the IKEA store having been replaced by a video arcade. The color
red in particular is a recurring motif, the crew's new uniforms matching
the pyrotechnics that occur throughout the movie. Ironically, this
movie has almost as much highfalutin pontification--e.g., Kirk and Spock
discussing the meaning of Charles Dickens
A Tale of Two Cities--as
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The pontificating is just punctuated by explosions this time around.
The
acting. Lets start with Khan himself. Though he played a lot of
different types of characters early on in his Hollywood career, Ricardo
Montalban eventually became best known as the embodiment of
suave. The suave Mr. Roarke of
Fantasy Island. The suave Chrysler Cordoba pitchman. The suave villain in
The Naked Gun.
And he was a suave warlord when he first played Khan in "Space Seed".
His second take at Khan was considerably less suave and more gritty,
reminding everybody that this was yet another actor who could have had a
much more varied, more interesting career if he hadn't fallen victim to
typecasting. As the late
New Yorker critic Pauline Kael said of Montalban, the second
Trek movie "
was the only validation he has ever had of his power to command the big screen."
That said, I can't help but think there was a bit of a diminution from
the first Khan to the second Khan, even as the screen got bigger. In
"Space Seed" we're told Khan is a world-historical character on par with
Napoleon Bonaparte. That fact is barely mentioned in the movie.
Instead, the genetic engineering aspect is played up, asking us to
regard Khan more as a monster running loose in the countryside. That has
more to to do with the script than with Montalban, who still manages to
invest his monster with a bit of dignity. Moving on, Paul Winfield's
bravura performance as Captain Clark Terrell was somewhat overlooked at
the time. If his character's self-sacrifice didn't resonate with
Star Trek
fans as much as Spock's later on, it's only because he was a newcomer
(and destined to stay a newcomer) to the franchise. More about this a few paragraphs from now. Bibi Besch is OK as Carol Marcus. Kirk's had so many
ex-flames (more so than current flames, as a matter of fact) that it
couldn't have been easy to stand out from the rest, even if she is the
only one that we're aware of to bear him a child. Speaking of the child,
I didn't much like Merrit Butrick's David Marcus, but that may be more due to
the script than with the actor, whom I remember playing a very funny New Wave
high school student in the short-lived '80s sitcom
Square Pegs.
There's
so much going on in this film, that there's really not a lot of time
for a subplot about a long-lost son (purposely lost;
Kirk knew about him from the beginning but was asked to stay away at Carol's request.
) Petulance is the first, and not very attractive, glimpse we get of David, until
near the end of the film, when he's suddenly compassionate. A person
can be both, of course, but the sudden change of heart needed more
exposition to be carried off convincingly. Kirstie Alley as Saavik. Long
way from Rebecca on
Cheers, huh? Well, she's a good actress.
Some have complained about her character shedding tears at Spock's
funeral, but I chalk that up to my
Vulcans-have-emotions-but-supress-them theory. More interesting to me is
her literally having let her hair down in the elevator she shares
with Kirk. Only literally, but she seems to know that it turns Kirk on.
As for the regulars, Walter Keonig as Chekov gets an unusual amount of
screen time, which he puts to good use. Keonig was in his mid-40s when
this was made, and had become a tad pudgy, but whenever he opens his
mouth, he's that boyish young Russian all over again. Most of the
humor in the movie once again centers on DeForest Kelley's Dr McCoy,
though he doesn't get the wittiest lines this time around. That honor
goes to Kirk (when it's implied in the cave that a rescue's unlikely, he
replies, "
Now it's your chance to get away from it all.") But McCoy doesn't really need jokes. "
Who's been holding up the elevator?!"
has no discernible punchline, but I still laughed out loud anyway.
Leonard Nimoy has a great death scene that he plays just right, and it
ended up being the centerpiece of the movie, but, curiously enough, I
don't know that he got all that much screen time otherwise. It's
important to remember that
The Wrath of Khan, unlike, arguably,
Star Trek: The Motion Picture,
isn't told from Spock's point of view. He's not in the middle of an
identity crises as he was in the first film. In fact, he seems at peace
with himself even while he's dying! Still, it would have been a lot more
interesting if Spock had beamed down into the Regula asteroid along
with Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik. Scotty could have manned the Enterprise,
as he had in all those past episodes. Why the long absence? Some books
about the original series claimed that William Shatner had it written
into his contract that he got more lines than anyone else, but I doubt
if he would have had that much clout a decade-and-a-half later when
producers and studio execs were practically begging Nimoy to appear in
these films. It must have been the actor's own decision. After all, Nimoy
didn't really want to do this movie, only agreeing to appear in it if
his character was killed off. Maybe there were other reasons. I remember
seeing a Barbara Walters interview with Bing Crosby where the crooner
claimed that whenever appearing in a movie with an actor of equal
stature--Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra--he insisted on second billing. He
figured there was less overexposure, more longevity that way. Perhaps
something like that figured into Nimoy's thinking. The Spock character
had some amazing longevity indeed, but I don't want to get ahead of
myself. Finally, William Shatner is OK in the lead, but what lead exactly is
he playing?
DAVID:
Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous. We are
dealing with something that...could be perverted into a dreadful
weapon. Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with? That's exactly the kind of man--
CAROL:
Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout!
Not in this film he's not. In preparation for
The Wrath of Khan,
Harve Bennett is said to have screened all 79 episodes of the original
series. I have to wonder if he was watching the same starship captain I
was. While the TV Kirk certainly radiated self-confidence, I don't
recall him as being as hung-up on himself as the vainglorious fool we
meet in this film. The smug smile on his face as he steps out from
behind the scenery to chide poor Saavik for flunking the Kobayashi Maru
test! The Vulcan lass should have nerve pinched him. And to find out he cheated--"
I changed the conditions"--on
that very test! Starfleet hands out commendations for that? Do they
also give an A if you program an android to do your homework? Where Kirk
gets particularly obnoxious is the exchange that immediately followed his admission:
KIRK:
I don't like to lose.
SAAVIK:
Then you never faced that situation...faced death.
KIRK:
I don't believe in a no-win scenario...Kirk to Spock. It's two hours. Are you about ready?
SPOCK (on intercom):
Right on schedule, Admiral. Just give us your coordinates and we'll beam you aboard.
KIRK (smugly smiling):
I don't like to lose!
What's
so obnoxious about his behavior, you may ask? After all, it ain't
bragging if it's true. Except this conversation takes place not too long
after he witnessed Captain Terrell
take his own life in order to save his! Kirk didn't change that particular condition, Terrell did. Yet Kirk
doesn't even acknowledge Terrell's sacrifice. He wants the attention to
be all on him! Plus, he's only just met Terrell. It's different when
Spock does something similar later on. They're old friends. Actually, I
think it's a bit more
impressive that the first time around it was a stranger sacrificing
his life. Kirk's just impressed with himself.
The film, curiously, does suggest Kirk is going through a mid-life crises. He even
tells Carol that he's "
tired...worn out." Worn out from bragging,
I bet! Besides, future films will suggest that hubris has always been
part of Kirk's makeup. Jumping a bit ahead to
Star Trek: The
Undiscovered Country, Kirk non-nonchalantly states near the end, "
Once again we've saved civilization as we know it."
Star Trek: Generations has Kirk telling Picard: "
I don't need to be lectured by you. I was out saving the galaxy when
your grandfather was in diapers. Besides which, I think the galaxy owes
me one." And it continues into J.J. Abrams 2009 reboot that has
Kirk, now played by Chris Pine, getting into bar fights, merely a
prelude to a Starfleet promotion. Kirk, the maverick saver of galaxies!
That where the character now stands, and he first took that stand in
The Wrath of Khan.
Harve Bennett and others that's come since (including Shatner himself)
seem to have taken their inspiration from Old Hollywood swashbucklers
like Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn. I like both those guys, but
that's not the Kirk I remember from the TV show.
On the original series, James Kirk
was a bit of a Boy Scout. He was
Trustworthy
(in "The Ultimate Computer" other Federation starships won't fire on a
shieldless Enterprise, despite an earlier attack, out of their trust for
Kirk),
Loyal (he lets Spock kill him in "Amok Time"),
Helpful (he instructs McCoy to heal the Horta in "The Devil in the Dark"),
Friendly (he lets an alien take control of his body in "Return to Tomorrow"),
Courteous (he doesn't kill Wyatt Earp in "Spectre of the Gun"),
Kind (despite all the trouble it's given him, he decides to help the disabled alien ship at the end of "The Cobermite Maneuver"),
Obedient (he has plastic surgery and steals a Romulan cloaking device, just as he was ordered to do in "The Enterprise Incident"),
Cheerful (he takes it good-naturedly when Spock suggests he's Satan in "The Apple",)
Thrifty (he makes a cannon out of bamboo in "Arena"),
Brave (just about every episode),
Clean (he and Spock tidy up Edith Keeler's basement in "The City on the Edge of Forever"), and
Reverent
(he extends full Presidential honors to Abraham Lincoln in "The Savage
Curtain"). Also, keeping with Scouting policy until very recently, James Kirk was
thoroughly heterosexual (examples too numerous to mention.) Here's
something not out of the
Boy Scout Handbook but the episode "Return to Tomorrow" that I think basically defines the TV version of Kirk:
"They
used to say if man could fly, he'd have wings. But he did fly. He
discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn't
reached the moon, or that we hadn't gone to Mars and then to the nearest
star? That's like saying [to McCoy]
you wish that you still
operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your
great-great-great-great grandfather used to. I'm in command. I could
order this. But I'm not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out
the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence
as fantastically advanced as this. But I must point out that the
possibilities, the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally
great. Risk. Risk is our business. That's what the starship is all
about. That's why we're aboard her..."
Reading the above, the word "
risk" stands out but so does "
potential for knowledge and advancement".
Kirk is just as much interested in the latter as Spock, risk is just
the means to get there and not the ends. A student instructor at the
Starfleet academy, Kirk was once described by friend Gary Mitchell as "
a
stack of books with legs". He really was a very serious guy in the
original series and not this glib fellow in "
The Wrath of Khan"
and later movies who wisecracks his way through grave danger as if he's
James Bond (yeah, I know,
I compared the British secret agent to Spock in an earlier installment, but that was in a whole different context.) Sure,
Kirk does have his light side, can be witty, the guy kind of guy you
want to have a beer with. But that's when everything's going smoothly. That's
when all of us tend to be more agreeable. It's different for the TV Kirk
when danger approaches. He's no coward but that doesn't mean he's in for a fun time. The
graver the situation, the graver Kirk gets. His brows furrow, his body
stiffens, he clenches his fists (as well as his phaser). He's so tense
you'd probably break your fingers giving him a massage. The man is
trying to hold it all together. He sometimes erupts in anger, but tries
not to, and those are the tics that Shatner brings to Kirk for which
he's often been mocked, but that I find more realistic than the hero who
looks unconcerned as bullets or phaser beams fly around him. Then near
the end of just about every episode, once the danger has passed, if you
watch closely, you'll notice his shoulders kind of drop, almost like the gravity has been turned up. It's not a sigh but rather a slump of relief that he's
experiencing. I find that realistic too, and very different most (but
not all) of the time from the Kirk of the movies. To be fair, the movies
take place a little later on in his life. It's quite possible that
evading death on a weekly basis did go to his head a bit, did make him a
bit shallow (he was kind of boorish in "Requiem for Methesulah" which
was aired near the end of the original series run.) The TV Kirk was in awe of
Khan Noonien Singh. The movie Kirk is in awe of himself.
None of this is to say I didn't like
The Wrath of Khan. On its own terms I think it's a
terrific movie.
I also see it as more than the mindless summer blockbuster that it was
sold to the public as. Once you get past all the explosions, it's really
a canny satire of 60 years of motion picture derring-do (even more
years now; remember it came out in 1982) that has Kirk learning the hard
way that how you throw a punch or acrobatically jump on a table doesn't
automatically confer on you the rubric of hero. As he says to David
after Spock's funeral: "
I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I tricked my way out of death, and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity."
That's why I find the mid-life crises subplot so out of place in this film,
which has Kirk at the end claiming everything that's just transpired
finally has made him feel young. Spock's unintentional upending of
Kirk's dauntlessness should have put him
in a mid-life crises, not taken him
out of one!
Nevertheless, it's now a very sober Kirk who delivers Spock's eulogy:
"We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored
dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this
death takes place in the shadow of a new life, the sunrise of a new
world, a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and
nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one. And we will
not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I
can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels...his was the most...HUMAN."
(Hmm...I
just reread Kirk's eulogy. Forgive me, but I can't help but speculate.
If Spock had been black instead of Vulcan, Kirk might have said, "
Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels...his was the most...WHITE.")
(If Spock had been Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist, he might have said, "
...his was the most...CHRISTIAN.")
(If Spock had been gay, he might have said "
...his was the most...STRAIGHT.")
(If Spock had been Hispanic, he might have said, "...
his was the most...NORDIC.")
(If Spock had been female, he might have said, "
...hers was the most...WELL-HUNG.")
(If Spock had been a pauper, he might have said, "
...his was the biggest...BANK ACCOUNT.")
(If Spock had been a beatnik, he might have said, "
...his was the most...GRAY FLANNEL-SUITED.")
(If Spock had been a Furry, he might have said, "
...his was the most...REALISTIC-LOOKING ANIMAL COSTUME.")
(If Spock had been a Trekkie, he might have said, "
...his was the most...APPRECIATIVE OF LOST IN
SPACE.")
(If
there had been no difference in race, religion, gender, ethnicity,
class, creed, association, subculture, or planetary origin, and Spock
had merely been
different, he might have said, "
...his was the most...NORMAL." Say, you suppose that's what Kirk meant all along?)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a huge success, the sixth highest-grossing film of 1982. I was surprised to learn that actually made it
less of a success than
Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was number five the year it came out. The execs at Paramount, however, were
pleasantly surprised. The lower production costs meant the second movie actually earned
more money than the first. Naturally, there would be a sequel.
As for Leonard Nimoy, a funny thing happened while making
The Wrath of Khan:
he enjoyed the experience. He began having second thoughts about his
character's demise. Indeed, he was already having these thoughts when
the film started doing boffo box office in theaters, telling the media
at the time, "
No one ever dies in science fiction." He asked Paramount execs about the possibility of being in the next movie. The execs just sniffed and said "You made your coffin and now you have to lie in it. We can get along fine without you. Humph!"
I'm joking. They said nothing of the sort. Studio execs may be venal,
but they're not crazy. OF COURSE, they were going to let him be in the
next movie. And to sweeten the deal, they let him do something that
hadn't been done in 2000 years. Nimoy would get to direct his own
resurrection.
Next: Vulcan Rising, or: Can't See DeForest for the Trees
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984).
And so, a badly-damaged Enterprise returns home from doing battle with Khan in a state of mourning. One crew member, though, may be
in a state of lunacy. Dr. McCoy has broken into Spock's old quarters and is
found mumbling something about a Vulcan mountain in a voice that's
doesn't sound much like his. Meanwhile, a Klingon official by the name
of Kruge (Christopher Lloyd, better known for such comic characters as
Jim Ignatowski on Taxi and Doc Brown in Back to the Future) finds out
from his underling/girlfriend that the Federation has a new weapon
called Genesis. Of course, it's not supposed to be a weapon, but Khan
certainly proved otherwise, didn't he? Kruge, his girlfriend, pet alien
dog, and sundry other Klingons head to the new planet created by
Genesis in their Bird-of-Prey, a starship that kind of resembles a starving stork (the term was originally used to describe a Romulan starship in the TV version of Star Trek; that particular spacecraft looked more like a stingray,
I've always thought.) Back on Earth, Admiral James T.
Kirk is told that the Enterprise won't be repaired but decommissioned,
much to his disappointment. He's just getting over that blow when he
gets a visit from Spock's father, Sarek (played by Mark Lenard, as in the TV version)
asking where is his son's katra and won't he please give it to him
now. It doesn't take a mind meld for Sarek to realize Kirk has no idea
what he's talking about. As is then explained, the katra is a Vulcan's living spirit,
and needs to be laid to rest on top of the mountain McCoy was
babbling about. Sarek also assumed Spock would have mentally transferred
the katra to Kirk, his best friend. But Kirk knows the dying Spock couldn't as there was a
glass wall between the two. So could he have transferred it to anyone
else? After reviewing a tape, it's revealed that the katra instead was transferred to McCoy--hardly Spock's best
friend--now locked away in a mental ward ranting about the illogic of it
all. Sarek then informs Kirk that a human can carry a Vulcan katra only for
so long before they die of having too many consciousnesses in one brain.
I don't know where Carol Marcus is during all of this but son David is
still part of the Genesis project, now joined by Saavik (Robin Curtis
replacing Kirstie Alley.) David seems to be trying to flirt with Saavik,
who shows no interest. Of immediate interest to both of them is the
detection of an unexpected life form on the Genesis planet. David and
Saavik convince the captain of the U.S.S. Grissom, the starship they're boarding, to beam them down and investigate. They find Spock's open casket empty, save for the Vulcan's burial cloth. Back on Earth (as well
as its orbit) Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura very easily spring
McCoy from the brig, and swipe the Enterprise from Spacedock. Just
before they're about to go into warp drive:
Off
to Genesis they go! Except Uhura, who for some reason (such as there's
only so many minutes in a feature film) is going to meet them on the
planet Vulcan. Speaking of which, David and Saavik find a little boy who
seems to be from that planet wandering around. They conclude it's
Spock, his cells regenerated by Genesis. In the orbit above, the Klingon
Bird of Prey happens upon the U.S.S. Grissom. Attempting to merely subdue
it and then raid it for information, the Bird of Prey instead accidentally blows
the ship to bits. A pissed Klingon commander Kruge subsequently blows
his error-prone gunner to bits. Meanwhile, on the planet below, it's snowing! Seems David had added some
unstable and untested "proto-matter" to the Genises device, and now
everything is aging at an accelerated speed, including Spock. Taking shelter
in a cave, David decides to leave it and patrol some, unknowingly leaving Saavik and
a now-adolescent Spock to the, ahem, whims of "pon farr", the
seven-year itch first mentioned in the episode "Amok Time" that every
Vulcan needs to scratch, lest they die of carnal dissatisfaction. David
returns none the wiser, not that it matters as the Klingons show up and
take all three prisoner. In the orbit above the planet, the Enterprise also
shows up and shoots it out with the Bird of Prey. Unfortunate, the
former still hasn't been brought quite up to par after the events in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Knowing he's outgunned, Kluge orders Kirk to surrender, an order the
latter predictably refuses. So Kluge, who lost his dog in the melee and
thus in no mood to play games, orders that one of the prisoners on the
planet down below be killed, and it looks like it's going to be Saavik,
but David jumps in front of her and takes the fatal knife to the gut
instead. Kirk is devastated. He may be the only one. He recovers enough
from his grief to play a little trick on those murderous Klingons. He
tells Kluge he's ready to surrender to whoever wants to come aboard to
get him. After which he sets the Enterprise on auto-destruct (first
mentioned in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield") and then he, McCoy,
Scott, Sulu, and Chekov hastily beam off the ship just as some Klingons
beam on it. BOOM! No more Enterprise, but no more Klingons, either.
Well, Kluge's still around. He beams down to the planet, where he
engages Kirk in hand-to-hand combat, which he of course loses along with
his life as he falls into a lava flow on the rapidly dissolving world. The
Enterprise crew along with Saavik and a now middle-aged Spock beam up
to the Bird of Prey, toss the one remaining Klingon aside, and head to
Vulcan. It's there that Kirk's greeted by Uhura and Spock's father
Sarek: 
The
acting. Christopher Lloyd is only so-so as the bad guy, especially when
compared to Ricardo Montalban's Khan. But then this movie isn't The Wrath of Kluge,
is it? Nimoy's fine in what's technically a small role that
paradoxically is the whole point of the film. William Shatner is most
like the Kirk from the TV show, which I for one consider a good thing. It's
also an amazingly contradictory thing when you consider the Kirk of the
TV show wasn't as much of a lawbreaker as he is here. But he's marked by
the same sense of duty, whether the mandate comes from Starfleet
Command, or his best friend's father. However, the Best Actor award has
to go to DeForest Kelley, this film's neurotic, discombobulated avater. McCoy has never been
funnier, never been more likable, hell, never been more mesmerizing as
he is in The Search for Spock. With varying degrees of success,
he manages to hold onto his wits, as well as his wit, dealing with an
alien intruder, his longtime logical nemesis/colleague, who's taken up
unwelcome residence in the irascible doctor's soul ["That green-blooded son of a bitch! It's his revenge for all the arguments he lost."]
It's a hoot hearing Spock's voice occasionally come out of McCoy's
mouth, but not nearly as hilarious as when it's Kelley doing all the
talking, his character channeling Nimoy's quite against his will. Here
he is in a bar ordering a drink:
