[8.0/10] When I wrote about *Star Trek: The Motion Picture*, I talked about how it captured the spirit of *Star Trek*, with its devotion to ideas of strange new life and new civilization, to heady science fiction rooted in personal reactions to these grand, nigh incomprehensible events. But if *ST:TMP* captures the spirit of *Star Trek*, then *The Wrath of Khan* captures its character, the way these friends and allies bounced off one another, the Wagon Train to the Stars adventurism of the franchise, and the larger-than-life personalities that gave color to this futuristic world.
And better still, it explores the ripples and consequences of the actions of those personalities in a way that both embraces and reflects on *The Original Series*. The 1960s T.V. show, half by fiat and half by the necessities of the medium at the time, was never heavy on continuity. Sure, it brought back Harry Mudd and might reuse The Corbomite Maneuver, but by and large the show was reset to the status quo by the time the next episode started.
*The Wrath of Khan*, then, does what *The Original Series* never could. More than its predecessor, it is firmly rooted in the televised events that preceded this latest crisis in deep space. That comes most clearly in the film’s choice of antagonist, with Ricardo Montalban reprising his role as Khan Noonien Singh from “Space Seed.” The movie deftly delivers the details as backstory for the uninitiated, but *TWoK* carries particular weight when Khan’s attempt at revenge feels like Kirk’s chickens coming home to roost after years of adventures since their last encounter.
But the film also, ever so slightly, deconstructs those sometimes weighty, sometimes weightless past adventures at the edge of the galaxy. Despite Kirk’s oft-professed love for his ship, he often quietly harbored dreams of a more typical life, imagining the road less traveled. *The Wrath of Khan* reveals that he has a son, had an old flame who effectively banished him, and only now sees the ghosts of the family he might have had.
And, more than that, it examines the anesthetizing effect of that constant status quo reset. The James T. Kirk of the 1960s T.V. show is one with nerves of steel, who spent plenty of time recording commendations with what he thought was his dying breath or trying to sacrifice himself for the greater good before some technological wizardry rescued him at the last minute. *The Wrath of Khan* uses that erstwhile plot armor to explore how Kirk has managed to avoid loss, to sidestep a fair amount of hardship and difficulty, that only know, when he’s thrown back into the adventure that he’s been hungry, is he forced to experience.
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, not just for its somewhat colder tone, but for the sense that these were men and women who’d been apart for so long (some of them going so far as to purge emotions) and feeling out their old shorthand with one another without warning.
But by the time of *The Wrath of Khan*, the impression conveyed 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. Bones and his Vulcan counterpart joust and jibe as always. Scotty’s receiving treatment for space syphilis. And heck, if anything, Spock (and in the same way, Saavik) seem a little too unreserved and emotional compared 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 itself as a tete-a-tete between two outsized personalities. The chess match between Kirk and Khan works as a nice spine for the film, allowing each to gain the upper hand and be bested in turn.
For Khan, that means not giving up, and seeking revenge, even when he has all the tools to go on conquering. If there’s one thing *Star Trek* loves, its *Moby Dick* homages, and *TWoK* makes James T. Kirk into Khan’s white whale. While never making him tragic exactly, the film gives Khan understandable motivations, underscoring the harsh conditions he and his cohort have lived under since Kirk marooned him, 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 and preens and holds focus on the screen in a fashion 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 in the way he feels Kirk did to him, and it highlights the deepest theme of *TWoK* -- 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 in command like a younger man once more.
*The Wrath of Khan* contrasts age and youth. It sets our old heroes, a little more weathered and worn than before, on a ship full of trainees not expecting to actual go on duty. It puts Kirk himself, reflecting on his lost days of command, next to his son, still full of piss and vinegar. It has Khan, who’s hair is now a wispy white rather than jet black, and Carol Marcus as a lost love, to remind the commander of The Enterprise how long it’s been since these major events in his life started 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 young 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.
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 the captain’s chair with Khan’s ascendance before the two collide, the film reaches its greatest height after that conflict is over. When the genesis device’s shockwave is escaped and our heroes are in relatively safety, Spock shows his true colors, trying out his own version of the Kobayashi Maru test that both he and Kirk had managed to avoid until now.
Spock, despite his Vulcan stoicism, 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, to tell Kirk that he is, and always shall be, his friend, is given all the more meaning. This skirmish, this backlash from the acts of a younger Kirk, hasn’t just cost him 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 simply be the Genesis Device and the paradise it creates, the embrace of a lost child who says he’s proud to be Kirk’s son, or the fact that, you know, there’s four more movies and Spock’s on the cover of many of them, so presumably he’ll be okay. But even if it’s erased, the film once again does something the television show never could in the same way -- build on the years of character development and relationship the two men shared to deliver a blow to Kirk that rattles him, reminds him of how much they accomplished and how much they escape in that five year mission.
Because that’s the spirit of *Star Trek* too. While limited by its medium in some ways, it was about the friendship of the men and women who served aboard The Enterprise, particularly Kirk, Spock, and Bones, and it was about that 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 the journey among the stars. In that, it encapsulates so much of what *Star Trek* was and is. But it also goes where *Star Trek* had never gone before, in exploring what happens when those foes reappear to take from you what you took from them, when the seemingly disposable weekly love interests come back 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 ways to grow up, and to remember.
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