Weirdhouse Cinema: The Wrath of Khan

In this special Star Trek Week episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
And with this installment, we're going to be finishing out
Star Trek Week here in the Stuff to Blow Your
Mind podcast feed. So we are, as promised, going to
be talking about a Star Trek movie. And it was
hard to pick our first actual Star Trek film to
cover here on Weird House Cinema, as the Trek films
give us a fair amount of variety to choose from.

(00:38):
Do we go with one of the weirder installments, maybe
one of the others that's kind of a flawed film
but with some interesting ideas or a captivating performance hidden
in there. Do we start at the beginning with Star
Trek the motion picture? Or do we go with what
many consider to be the finest Trek film of them all.
That's ultimately where we landed here to discuss nineteen eighty

(01:01):
two's Star Trek two, The Wrath of.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Con This was a great pick, Rob And Yeah, I've
seen this movie many times over the years, always enjoyed it,
and I loved it again this week before we go
on to discuss the movie itself in detail. One thing
I thought it would be important to do here at
the top is understand this film's role in Star Trek history,

(01:27):
because I think you can make a really solid argument
that without the Wrath of con we wouldn't have a
lot of the Trek that came after, believe it or not,
in the timeline where this movie didn't exist, or the
same film in its place in the sequence was not
as good. I think Star Trek might not be a
very big deal today.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Absolutely, And I don't think this is a crazy idea
by any stretch of the imagination. This one is important, right.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah. I'm not claiming originality in this idea. The other
people have expressed this before. So. The original Star Trek
TV series ran on NBC for only three seasons from
nineteen sixty six to nineteen sixty nine.

Speaker 4 (02:11):
It's kind of.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Hard to believe that because of how big its cultural
impact has become, but it was canceled after only seventy
nine episodes due to poor ratings. In fact, NBC was
planning to cancel it after the second season, but there
was a letter writing campaign by the show's relatively small
base of devoted fans, they were able to convince the
network to revive it for one more season before it

(02:35):
was finally brought to an end. However, in a somewhat
unusual twist, Star Trek became way more popular after it
was canceled because of reruns. Old episodes of the show
were leased to local TV networks around the country and
in fact around the world, where they ran in syndication,

(02:55):
sometimes in like afternoon time slots where kids could watch them,
and the jo became much more popular than it had
ever been during its original run. During the decade after
the show was canceled, you started to see the rise
of trekkie culture. There would be fan clubs and conventions
and all that stuff at this point, based almost entirely

(03:16):
on reruns of the three seasons of the original series.
There was some other stuff, like there was a Saturday
morning animated Star Trek series that ran from seventy three
to seventy four, but that never achieved the fan base
of the original show, And there were also some minor
things for the real hardcore fans. There were like episode
novelizations and original novels and stuff, but these were fairly niche,

(03:39):
so a lot of people in the seventies had a
fondness or at least a nostalgia for the Trek universe
and its characters, but for most of that decade there
was not much new to consume, especially for the more
casual fans if you weren't a hardcore fan getting into
the novels or something. By the mid to late seventies,

(04:00):
users were interested in trying to cash in on that
fan base and revive the property. There were various attempts
to put together a movie project or to start a
new network TV series, which at one point in development
was called Star Trek Phase two. That TV series never happened,
but the idea for the unmade pilot of that series

(04:21):
is what would eventually become the first official film, which
was Star Trek the Motion Picture in nineteen seventy nine.
Original series creator Gene Roddenberry was heavily involved, and the
film was directed by Robert Wise, who was a very
respected filmmaker with a lot of critically acclaimed movies in
his past, even in the sci fi genre. He made
the original The Day the Earth Stood Still in nineteen

(04:44):
fifty one. You know gort Klatu Barada Nikto and He
was also known for hit musical films in the sixties
like The Sound of Music and West Side Story. So
they initially had trouble putting this movie together, Rob, I
don't know how much you've read about like the chaos
of Star Trek the Motion Picture coming together, Like some
members of the main cast did not want to come back.

(05:06):
Leonard Nimoy was not happy about not getting residuals he
believed he was owed relating to the original run. I
think the idea was that somebody had been making money
off of using his likeness in like beer commercials or something,
and I don't know. He was not happy with the
owners of the franchise, and so producer Jeffrey Katzenberg at

(05:29):
the time had had to go beg Leonard Nimoy in
person to come join the film, but they eventually got
all the main cast on board. Unfortunately, Star Trek the
Motion Picture was widely seen as a disappointment. It actually
it did well at the box office. It made a
good amount of money, but its profit margin wasn't great
because it had been an incredibly expensive production and a

(05:53):
very chaotic, disorganized production, with things like constant last minute
script rewrites and repurpose of things, and a lot of
people were not happy with the aesthetic of it, with
the costumes and the sets, and just generally both Trek
fans and mainstream critics did not love it. It was
criticized for being slow moving. I've heard people even describe

(06:13):
it as sleep inducing, like you put it on if
you want to take a nap, and for not being
very focused on character or drama instead being a showcase
for special effects. Now that complaint, if you're not very
familiar with Star Trek, that complaint might be a little
confusing because you might think, well, Star Trek is spacefaring
science fiction, Isn't it supposed to be that there's like

(06:34):
a big focus on special effects. As I've said in
the other episodes of this week, I'm not like the
most well versed Star Trek fan, but even just given
what I do know, I'm pretty confident in saying the
answer is no. Actually, the appeal of Star Trek is
and usually has been based on the writing. The writing,
the characters, and the chemistry of the cast. Like the

(06:57):
original series has a lot of care is matic props
and costumes, but it was never heavily focused on big
visual spectacles Like I think a lot of Star Trek
episodes you could think of as almost kind of native
bottle episodes. They'd just be characters in the room or
in the bridge that doing things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, with some of your most memorable scenes being scenes
that are about character development or just sort of batting
around whatever the ethical or philosophical idea happens to be
in that episode.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yeah, talking about ideas, talking about how to solve a problem.
The debating thing is trying to convince people of things,
that sort of thing. So after the motion picture comes
out in nineteen seventy nine, Star Trek was kind of languishing.
It had been more than a decade since the show ended.
Attempts to put together a new TV series had failed,

(07:47):
and you had this big, very expensive movie project that
they'd thrown everything at and it was not well loved.
Then comes the second film in the Star Trek movie franchise,
today's movie, The Wrath of Khan. This time, the producer's
approach was essentially the exact opposite of what they had
done with the previous movie. Producer Harve Bennett brought in

(08:09):
writer and director Nicholas Meyer, who had made several things
At this point, he made some well regarded Sherlock Holmes stuff,
like he had written original Sherlock Holmes novels and adapted
one of his novels, The Seven Percent Solution, for the film,
and he also wrote and directed tying into last week's
Weird House Cinema movie the HG. Wells Time Machine Jack

(08:31):
the Ripper mash up film Time after Time from nineteen
seventy nine with Who It's Got David Warner and Malcolm McDowell,
who plays Yeah, Yeah, we've done that on Weird House
Cinema before.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
That.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
One's fantastic. It's a movie with a similar storytelling sensibility
to Wrath of con Actually, it's like an emotional drama
with a big heart. And anyway, so they brought Nicholas
Meyron and the plan was to get back all of
the original cast, but to otherwise keep the film as
tightly budgeted as possible, and instead of focusing on big

(09:06):
special effects and visual spectacle, to focus on writing and
character to create a gripping emotional drama. And I think
the filmmakers succeeded in this spectacularly. They created continuity with
the now beloved Long Ago original series by crafting the
movie as a direct sequel to a popular episode of
the show, which was Space Seed, the episode featuring the

(09:29):
iconic villain con Noonian Sing played by a wildly charismatic
Ricardo Montalbon, who also came back for the film. He's
this character on a mad quest for Melvillian revenge against
Captain Kirk. And I think it's interesting that you can
read the themes of this movie as applied to the characters,

(09:54):
especially to Captain Kirk himself, themes about aging and irrelevance
and the need to find your once again through sacrifice
and struggle. You can read those themes as applying to
the Star Trek franchise itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the
movie was a huge hit. It had like an extremely
successful box office take. It was loved by both Trekis

(10:15):
and mainstream critics and audiences, and the success of this
film breathed new life into Star Trek as a whole.
It got old fans excited again, it generated interest from
entirely new fans. It paved the way to several new
films with the original cast and New Trek on TV,
such as Star Trek The Next Generation, which debuted in

(10:35):
nineteen eighty seven and might well never have existed if
the second Star Trek film had been another dud. So
Wrath of Cohn is its own film. It can be
appreciated on its own terms. In fact, I don't think
you even need to be a Star Trek fan to
love Wrath of Khan. But it's also important to understand
this film as the story that made Star Trek feel

(10:57):
young and alive again.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Absolutely yeah, And it's it's amazing because, like, clearly they
had this target set and they managed to really make
the perfect picture to achieve those goals. Wrath of con
is just such a tight and effective movie, just a
strategically charged and aimed photon torpedo that yeah, is aimed
at knocking out multiple targets, diehard Trek fans, casual fans,

(11:22):
the box office, and even critics. Rewatching the movie, it
was really interesting to think about all the elements that
come together here so well and again in a way
that's going to appeal to people who know Star Trek
inside and out by this point, and also people who
didn't know anything about it and they're like, Star Trek
two sounds interesting. Do I need to see Star Trek one.

(11:42):
Now you're good, go on in and enjoy the show.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Do I even need to see the episode that this
is a direct sequel to No, not really.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Not really, it's it's I think it's rewarding to do.
So that's what we both did for this week, and
we may refer back to it, but you don't have
to have seen it.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
Absolutely, yeah, I'd say it adds to your enjoyment of
the movie. But I saw this movie. I've seen this
movie probably five or six times before I ever saw
the saw the episode.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
All right, So just touching on on a few things
that really stood out to me in this rewatch. As
we've mentioned already, just tightly plotted. Nothing feels rushed. But
mind you we have let's see what one hundred and
thirteen minute runtime here compared to the one hundred and
thirty two minute runtime of its predecessor. On the whole,
this lands that in the middle of Star Trek films
when you're looking at their length, and it's still shorter

(12:31):
than every single Star Wars movie.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
You know.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
One thing I really noticed on coming back to this
movie is if you map out the plot beats, if
you just say what actually happens beginning to end. The
story is actually smaller and tighter in scale than it
feels when you like reflect back on the movie. When
you think about it, it feels like a big story,

(12:56):
but it's really not. It's like a pretty pretty height
just a tense couple of interactions between the heroic Enterprise
crew and the villain, and it's all over pretty fast.
I think it takes place in less than a couple
of days of time within the story, you know.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a film that feels
so epic, and yet it is lacking some of those
elements that we otherwise associate with epic storytelling, like multiple
multiple settings and factions and a whole host of characters.
When you really look at it, a lot of stuff
is stripped down, but it's stripped down to the basics.
You know. It's like a race car, you know. So,

(13:38):
for instance, we have a tight focus on character here,
and mainly that means focusing on Captain Kirk. He's our
NeXT's point. He is, without a doubt, our protagonist. I've
heard it pointed out before. It's like sometimes you can say, oh, well,
this movie has multiple protagonists, and the correction would come
well sort of. But from a writing standpoint, there's one protagonist.

(14:00):
Yeah and yeah, it's clear that that is Kirk. And
you know it's easy to develop or acquire Kirk shatner weariness.
I know I've acquired it or developed it at times before.
But as far as this picture goes, his character is
presented with I think a real depth and grace, and
Shatner gives a really solid performance here as a man

(14:23):
halfway through life's journey, looking back on his fading successes,
even as his failures seem to be coming back to
haunt him.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
So not every crew member really gets to shine here,
as we'll discuss here in a few minutes, but you know,
the ones who do are tightly defined by who they
are in relation to Captain Kirk. Okay. On top of that,
we have a very tight faction and species focus here.
So I love the complexity of the Trek universe, and
lord knows I love alien species. This film, however, concerns

(14:53):
itself almost exclusively with humans. We have two vulcan characters
on top of that, and I don't think any other
aliens except for the non intelligent SETI Alpha Eels, which
are fabulous monsters and are just more or less a
tool of the antagonist.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
I saw I think part of this movie maybe on
TV when I was younger, and the thing that really
made an impression on me with the Eels, of course, yes,
I mean, oh, could it not be the eels.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah, that's gonna be a fun scene to talk about.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
I was too young to appreciate the moby Dick references
that I got the Eels got through.

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Yeah. And as far as factions go, it's again largely
just human members of the Federation versus augmented human followers
of Cohn. And this choice makes perfect sense given the plot.
You know, it doesn't limit or downgrade the universe, but
it also would seem to make it all the more
easily digestible. Again, you don't need to know what the

(15:49):
different factions are. You don't need to be able to
tell Klingons from me from Romulans because they're not even
in the picture. And then on top of all this,
we have a tight space time focus, so you'relready mentioned
how everything takes place over the course of a few days,
and then on top of that no time travel in
this way. But also as far as space is concerned,

(16:09):
everything's pretty localized. You know, this is a franchise that
is about traveling and traveling far through the cosmos, but
here all the action plays out in what we might
think of as a single neighborhood, largely concerned with three
locations within reasonably short distance of each other and few players.
It comes down to just two ships. And on top
of these broad strokes, yeah, we have the franchise's most

(16:32):
charismatic villain, some spooky locations for the field work, and
we do get some classics Star Trek fisticuffs. But the
movie really takes the Hornblower and Space premise to the
next level and delivers arguably the best naval battle in
Star Trek media history, the Battle of the Mutara Nebula,
a tense cat and mouse game between two starships that

(16:53):
draws on Napoleonic naval combat, twentieth century submarine combat, and
then of course you know all the sci fi embellishments
that you would expect.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, his pattern indicates two dimensional thinking, yes, but I
agree with all of that. Yeah, the movie, I think,
just because it is so emotionally big, comes to feel
big in your mind. But actually, if you look at
all of the elements of the storytelling. Its tight, tight, tight.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Absolutely, it's personal even and that would be my elevator
pitch Star Trek two. This time it's personal Star Trek
two Cruise Control. All right, let's go ahead and listen
to some trailer audio here. This is from Believe. This
is a TV trailer and I just really, I really
love the narration of this one.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
The wonders of the universe, the dangers of space, the
challenge of the unknown, the courage of a warrior, the
vengeance of a madman, kill him, the seed of new life,
the hand of death, the plan of a genius, The
Wrath of con Star Trek two, The Wrath of Khan

(18:06):
rated PG.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Now showing out a theater near you.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
All right, well, if you would like to jump out
and watch Wrath of Khan before proceeding with the rest
of this episode, hey, go for it. It's widely available.
There's some very nice blue rays out there. This is
one of those films that has come out on every
format imaginable since its release. For Star Trek Week, I
personally signed up for Paramount Plus so I could dig
into any and all Trek media that I might require,

(18:34):
and they seem to have everything that is not a
paid endorsement, but they do have seemingly all the Trek
or a lot of Trek. I don't know, there's a
lot of Star Trek on there.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
They have that animated series from the seventies, have you
ever seen that.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
I've only glanced at that one, and I've watched more
of the more recent animated series. We watched that as
a family, and that one was pretty fun. So you know,
it's gotten to the point where Star Trek is a
wide enough tent that you know there's different stuff for everybody.
So yeah, and all thanks to this film. You know,

(19:08):
who knows what sort of timeline we'd be in without it.
All right, well, let's jump into a discussion of the
people involved here. I am going to note here that
we're going to be touching on some folks that we've
covered before on the show for different movies, and especially

(19:31):
in those cases, I'm going to probably be a little
more brief and refer back to those episodes. And there
are also certain players we may come back to again
in discussing a picture that you know, where it might
benefit us to be a little more focused on that individual.
So at the top here Yeah. The director once more
is Nicholas Meyer born nineteen forty five. We previously discussed
him in our episode on the nineteen seventy nine film

(19:53):
Time after Time. His first feature film was a director,
and Wrath of Khan was the follow up after con
he made the he made for TV Nuclear Holocaust film
the day after in nineteen eighty three, and he would
return to the Trek director's chair for nineteen ninety one's
The Undiscovered Country, which I have not seen that one
in a long time, but I remember liking at the
more or less around the time of its release.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Wait is that four or six? Is it six? The
one with the Klingon chernobyl.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
This is the one there's floating Klingon blood and it's pink. Yeah. Yeah,
that's how long ago it's been since I saw it.
That's the almost the only thing I remember about it.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, I remember that one. It's got some sort of
an in universe equivalent of the fall of the Soviet Union,
but it's like the Klingon Empire, and yeah, I remember
liking it.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, So I'll have to come back to that one
at some point, but at any rate, Yeah, Nicholas Meyer.
He remained active as a writer and producer, and he
apparently did some uncredited work on the screenplay here. And
as we get into the screenplay here, we were talking
about this off Mike. It is amazing that despite the
fact that we have several cooks in the kitchen here,

(21:02):
the resulting dish is so focused and so lean.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Yeah, it does not seem like a script with this
mini writers should be this cohesive.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, And of course we should acknowledge that Gene Roddenberry
he of course had the original vision for Star Trek.
He's an executive consultant on this film, but he did
not directly write anything here. Roddenberry lived nineteen twenty one
through nineteen ninety one. All right. One of the screenplay
credits goes to Jack B. Sowards born nineteen twenty nine

(21:34):
died in two thousand and seven. Mainly a TV writer,
His other film credits include seventy three's Delivers from Evils,
seventy four's Death Cruise and Cry Panic, and seventy eight's
Desperate Women. He also wrote an episode of Star Trek
The Next Generation where Silence has Lease. And then you
mentioned Harve Bennett already. He has a screenplay in story credit,
and he was also the bro one of the producers.

(21:56):
He lived nineteen thirty through twenty fifteen. Emmy Award winning
TV writer and producer of the seventies who worked on
Let's See the Mod Squad and later The Powers of
Matthew Starr and Time Tracks. As a producer, he was
behind TV's The Six Billion Dollar Man and was a
producer on the following three Trek films. He was also
the sole screenwriter on this film's follow up, nineteen eighty

(22:19):
four's The Search for Spock. All right, let's get into
the cast here, starting of course, with James T. Kirk,
played here by William Shatner born nineteen thirty one. We've
discussed Shatner previously in our episode in nineteen seventy five
is The Devil's Rain.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
Oh Yes, the cult melt movie, Yeah, Yeah, yeah, and again.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Shatner's Kirk is such an icon of classic track and
its film spinoffs, and in an icon that I think
is often distorted in certain ways by the way we
celebrate and lampoon the character, you know, aspects of the
performance we sometimes have some fun with, you know, especially
when it is into overacting. And also there's a fair

(23:02):
amount of poking fun regarding Shatner himself. But I get again,
I think, especially in this film, you see him perhaps
at his best. Ye Meyer is generally given a lot
of credit for this kind of time, sounding like he's
almost her zogging Shatner a bit with subsequent takes, you know,
wearing him down, you know, because the way I've heard

(23:24):
it put is like, you know, at first, Shatner comes
in like in full Shatner mode in all of you know,
the best and worst ways. But then subsequent takes he
gets a little tired and that plays into like the
weariness of the character. But at the same time, you
also in subsequent takes, according to Meyer, he gives Shatner
time just to embody the character more and it becomes

(23:47):
more naturalistic and so so yeah, I don't want to
take any credit away from Shatner here. He's absolutely delivering
the goods on his end, and the result is excellent. Like,
I think Shatner's really good, and this which is key
because like this movie is about Captain Kirk.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah, I also think he's really good. He just as
you said, there are things about his performance that, especially
when taken out of context, can be kind of funny
in ways that they maybe weren't supposed to be, Like
some of his most expressive the shouting of con.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
You know, yeah, that that moment especially, it's it's kind
of ironic that that one is so celebrated and so
memed because it's just this one high energy moment and
one with we can also caveat in a bit. It's
I would argue, it's not real even really cheesy if
you take it in context. But this is one moment
out of a performance that's otherwise very believable and grounded.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
There are well, there are ways almost that the writing
itself kind of incorporates ways that Shatner could be a
little blustery and smug sometimes in his performance. Like there
is a great scene in the movie. It's one of
my favorite scenes. Actually, it's the scene where the Enterprise
is first ambushed by the Reliant under the command of Con.

(25:06):
We'll talk about the scene when we get into the
plot section. But one of the younger trainee officers, the
character Savic played by Christy Alli, tries to you know,
quote regulations at Kirk, you know, saying like, hey, you know,
aren't we supposed to do it by the book doing this,
and they ignore her and they just go in and
if they it turns out, if they had listened to her,

(25:28):
Con would not have been able to get the better
of them like he did. But because Kirk is kind
of cocky and blustery and just going in, you know,
kind of smug, Con gets the better of him. And
at the end of the scene he gets a great
moment where he chides himself. He's like, all I did
was get caught with my breeches down, Savvic. You go

(25:48):
right on quoting regulations at me. You were right, And
it's a great moment.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, so Yeah. Ultimately, I have nothing but
nice things to say about Shatner's performance here, all right,
Moving on through the crew. Here, the core crew of
the Enterprise, we have Leonard Nimoy, of course, returning his
spock niem Ooy lived nineteen thirty one through twenty fifteen.
We've also discussed Nimoy before in our recently re aired

(26:14):
episode on nineteen fifty eight's The Brain Eaters.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
One of my favorites and one of my favorite posters.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Though he's barely in it, as I recall, right, I.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Think so, well, now it's been a while since we
did that episode. I think he's the guy who's inside
the Giant Cone once they go in there, so he
doesn't get a lot of screen time.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Yeah. Well, I'm not going to completely rehash everything I
said in that episode about Leonard Nimoy, but you know,
we worked quite a bit outside of Trek. Best known
for his portrayals Spock, but he did a lot of
voice acting and narration. His credits go back to fifty one,
and his TV credits include The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits,
the original Mission Impossible series Night Gallery, which he also

(26:55):
directed an episode of the nineties Outer Limits, among others.
He appeared in the nineteen seventy eight Invasion of the
Body Snatcher's remake, and as a director, he would take
the Helm on eighty four as the Search for Spock
and eighty six is The Voyage Home. As of this recording,
he still holds the record, I believe as the main
cast Trek actor to appear in the most Trek movies,

(27:16):
so eight films. That includes the two thousand and nine
Trek Reboot, Reboot Remake, and twenty thirteens Into Darkness.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Outside of his work on Star Trek, I would single
out his role in the seventy eight Invasion of the
Body Snatchers as especially good. He's really great in that.
I've probably mentioned it on the show before because I
love it so much. But there's a moment when in
the alien replicant form, he is trying to implant some
of the remaining human characters, you know, with pods to

(27:46):
transform them into alien replicants, and Donald Sutherland says to them.
He says to the aliens, He's like, we hate your guts,
and Lendard Nimoy as this alien says to him, we
don't hate you. I always found so chilling. It's wonderful.
It's like they don't We're just doing our thing.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Nimoy could be chilling, and in general
he could. He just brought a quiet dignity to anything
he was in, and even if he wasn't playing Spock,
and if he was playing Spot, you got bucket loads
of quiet dignity all you can handle. So he's great
in this. As always, it is like a key supporting role.

(28:26):
For the most part. Again, Kirk is the protagonist, but
as viewers of this film well know, it's all leading
up to one of the most dramatic and iconic moments
in the Trek film series.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, well, I guess we should go ahead and say
here that this episode will be full of spoilers if
you've ever seen this movie, So if you want to
see it unspoiled, and you've made it this far already,
stop here and go watch the movie, because we are
going to talk about the ending and all that.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah, all right, Next, we have Bones. We have doctor
Leonard Bones McCoy, played by DeForest Kelly, who lived nineteen
twenty through nineteen ninety nine. Atlanta born actor. Of course,
best known for his work as Bones, but he also
was just a staple on various TV westerns, which makes sense.
You know if, even if you've only seen start his

(29:12):
work in Star Trek, you know that he brings kind
of a old TV Western energy to the franchise. His
credits go back to the mid forties, and outside of
the track films, his credits also include the giant rampaging
Rabbits movie nineteen seventy two's Night of the Leavius.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Oh boy, you may not have heard the last of
those Rabbits. Listen.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Yeah, yeah, we may come back. We've been talking about
doing that one for a while. So Bones is a
lovable grumpus in the original series, and he brings that
energy here as well. Again key supporting character, he's Kirk's
older friend and longtime crew member who is trying to
help ease him into his older years, but.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
Also kind of nagging him into like being younger again. Yeah, Like,
why don't you get back into the actions?

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, all right. Up next, we have
Walter Kanig playing Chekhov born nineteen thirty six, the son
of Russian Jewish immigrants. Again best known for playing Chekhov here,
but he did a lot of additional TV work and
appeared in twelve episodes of Babylon five. His other films
include nineteen eighty nine's Moontrap and nineteen ninety six is
Sworn to Justice.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
I've read about how Star Trek fans, though of course
most loved this movie, have long enjoyed pointing out the
continuity flub here in that the character that Kanig plays Chekhov,
when he first meets Khan again in this movie, Khan
is like, I never forget a face. I know you
from the enterprise, and in fact this is that episode

(30:42):
is from before Walter Kanig joined the show, and so
like Chekhov is not in that episode. Yeah, I think
there's some red conning.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
But yeah, I was thinking back on the space Seed episode.
I was like, wait, I don't remember the meeting. But
then I kind of explained it away. I'm like, he
was there on the ship, that we just didn't see him.
That we just can assume they bumped into each other,
like in the cafeteria or something deleted.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Scenes or yeah, yeah, now is it the case when
they first brought Walter Kenney Gone to the show that
I think I'd always heard this that it was because
like he was, he had a beatle haircut. Basically he
was like a mop top and he looks kind of
like Davy Jones.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Oh yeah, I know I remember hearing this as well,
and maybe I've seen some pictures to back this up.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Like they basically wanted a beatle looking kid on the show,
and there he is.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
He had to bring in the youth, all right. Up next,
we have George DeKay playing Sulu born nineteen thirty seven,
beloved Japanese American actor who, outside of Trek, probably best
known for his voice acting. We have another fabulous voice here,
so You'll hear him in such films as Disney's Mulan
from nineteen eighty eight, the film Kubo from twenty sixteen,

(31:50):
and so many one offs. You know, he pops up
in things like Adventure Time and and he has that voice,
you know, when a character is suddenly voiced by George DeKay.
There's no mistaking it.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
He has one of those voices where you can hear
him smiling when he talks. Yes, you know what I'm
talking about. Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Now, due to the tightness of the script here, Sulu
Sadley doesn't really have that much to do in Wrath
of Cohn. Like He's definitely a part of like a
crack team, there's no taking that away from his character,
but he doesn't play into the events too strongly. I
believe there was a key deleted scene that would have
given us a little more Kirk Sulu interaction, but it

(32:30):
was cut for pacing.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, it's there in the script. I don't know if
it was ever filmed, but it's not in the final cut.
In the script, there's a scene where Kirk is congratulating
Sulu on being given command of his own starship, but
he's sort of doing one more training mission with the Enterprise.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
First, yeah, and then rounding out the original Trek crew.
We have Michelle Nichols playing Ohura. She lived nineteen thirty
two through twenty twenty two. American actress and former dancer.
Are best known for Star Trek, as well as her
work with NASA from nineteen seventy seven through twenty fifteen.
She also appears in the nineteen seventy four action film

(33:06):
Truck Turner, starring Isaac Hayes and co starring yaffat Coto. Again,
sadly not a very big role here, but you know,
as with others, she's part of a crack team, and
she does have like one or two crucial moments where
if her character had done something differently, the results would
have been more disastrous for the crew.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
But as you said, this is a very Kirk and
sort of Kirk and Spock focus story.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Right, and you know, ultimately we know the dynamics of
these characters, so you have to introduce some other non
villain characters to round things out and also to add
that level of risk, because they're not going to kill
off one of the members of the classic Enterprise crew
in this movie, right, So we need to introduce some
characters that might conceivably die.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
That's right. So who do we get here?

Speaker 2 (33:51):
All right? So there's a science project going on. There's
a big the Genesis project, as we'll learn, and the
lead scientist on this is doctor Carol Marcus, played by
bb Besch. She lived nineteen forty two through nineteen ninety six.
The character here is Kirk's former romantic partner. The actress
here best known for this film, but also appeared in

(34:12):
eighty two's The Beast Within the Day, after which we
already referenced, eighty seven's Who's That Girl, eighty nine Steel
Magnolia's in nineteen nineties Trimmers, she was a two time
Emmy nominee.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
Wait, who is she in Trimors? She's just one of
the I mean, I guess it's got to be one
of the people who lives in that town. There's nobody
else in that movie.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah, it's a small town. Let's say she's the doctor's wife.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Okay, okay, I do not.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Barely remember her. I'm long overdue for a Trimur's rewatch.
They're under the ground, all right. So that's doctor Carrol Marcus,
and you know, fine performance important role playing her adult son,
doctor David Marcus is Merritt Buttrick, who lived nineteen fifty
nine through nineteen eighty nine. This is Kirk and Carroll's son,

(35:01):
as we'll learn. The actor here is best remembered for
his role in this film and the follow up, The
Search for Spock. He also appeared on the nineteen eighty
two through nineteen eighty three eighteen sitcom Square Pegs alongside
Sarah Jessica Parker, and he also appeared in an episode
of Star Trek The Next Generation. His other film credits
include eighty eight's Fright Night Part two and nineteen eighty

(35:23):
nine's Death Spot.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
You can see, or at least we can imagine, based
on looking at him in his scenes with Shatner, that
he was chosen at least in part for his resemblance
to Shatner and his ability to plausibly be this guy's son. Ye,
but he brings his own kind of shatneriness to the role,
like a younger Shatnery. Neis that is irksome to the

(35:46):
older Shatner.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's very action oriented, kind of a
hot head. Yeah yeah. And I think it's a solid performance,
you know, sadly. This is another young actor whose life
was cut short, but solid presence here, all right. And
then we have Captain Terrell, and he is played by
the great Paul Winfield, who lived nineteen thirty nine through

(36:10):
two thousand and four. Nominated for an OSCAR for his
lead role in the nineteen seventy two film Sounder, and
nominated for an Emmy for his role as Martin Luther
King Junior in the nineteen seventy eight mini series King.
His other credits include eighty Two's White Dog, eighty four
Is the Terminator, nineteen nineties Presumed Innocent, and nineteen ninety
six is Mars Attacks.

Speaker 3 (36:29):
He's good in this as a tragically doomed starfleet officer
who sort of fights against some SETI eel mind control.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah, so yeah, strong performance, but yeah, definitely
a tragic trajectory. All right. We mentioned Christy ally Is
in this earlier. She plays Savvoc, the young Vulcan Federation trainee. Here.
Christy Aali lived nineteen fifty one through twenty twenty two.
Emmy Award winning cheer star, also known for the Look

(37:01):
Who's Talking films. She also appears in John Carpenter's Village
of the Damned the remake from nineteen ninety five, and
she's in nineteen ninety seven's Deconstructing Harry. She did not
return to this role in the subsequent two films because
the two Star Trek films after this also features savoc
but instead she is played by Robin Curtis.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, the presence of this character is good because you
need somebody who is new, essentially to kind of be
learning about the older, familiar characters in their dynamics and
to play as a foil to them getting set in
their ways. That's right.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, she didn't know who all these people are and
what their deals are, so well, Yeah, she's a good character.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
When did we get to Ricardo Montaban? Now do we
get him?

Speaker 2 (37:46):
It is now time for Ricardo Montalban, the legendary Mexican
and American actor who of nineteen twenty through two thousand
and nine, and again reprising his role from the nineteen
sixty seven episode Spacey. His credits go back to nineteen
forty one. He first rose to stardom during the Golden
Age of Mexican cinema, the key film being nineteen forty

(38:09):
three's Santa, directed by that has nothing to do with
Santa Claus, directed by Hollywood expat Norman Foster, and after
a series of Mexican films, he began work with MGM
around the time the film in question here was nineteen
forty seven's Fiesta, which was an American production, but it
was being filmed in Mexico and it kind of took

(38:30):
off from there. So decades of continuous work followed. I
saw a piece from an interview where he described himself
as an actor being like a doctor on call, Like
if you needed him, you just called him and he
would do it. So it sounds like a real workaholic.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
I think the story goes that while some original cast
members were not excited to come back for this film,
I mean I think they would mostly remember it fondly
looking back, but you know, it was hard to get
them on board. Ricardo Montalban was not hard to get
on board. He was excited to play con again and
you can feel it in his scenes. He's like he's
happy to be here, loves doing this absolutely.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, as well discuss he just consumes this role. Yeah,
So whether that story is true or not, you can
believe it easily. So during his career, he did pretty
much everything so comedies, westerns, Swashbuckler's, miscellaneous action films, a
little in the war and there, some of which looks
pretty interesting, and of course a lot of TV appearances,

(39:31):
which included that key episode of the original Star Trek.
Also well known for his role on the original Fantasy
Island from seventy seven through eighty four. He also appeared
in nineteen seventy one's Escape from the Planet of the
Apes and seventy two's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.
But outside of those two films and Star Trek, and
if you want to count them, a couple of spy

(39:52):
kids movies, he didn't really do much in the way
of horror or sci fi, which is kind of a
shame when you realize just what a great That'sracula this
guy would have made. Can you imagine Ricardo montalban as Dracula?

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Amazing? Yes, I would love to have seen it.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
So, yeah, what can you say here? As con we
have just a highly charismatic villain role that just positively drips.
Is it too much? Is it over the top?

Speaker 3 (40:19):
No?

Speaker 2 (40:19):
No, I don't know that it could be right? I mean,
because what else do you want from a genetically engineered
super tyrant that's hell bent on revenge. You know, this
is not a subtle character. This is a grandiose character,
and you got to have a grandiose performance. And that's
what Montalband delivers here in Space, just fills every scene

(40:41):
he's in with this this focused.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Rage, grandiose personality, and grandiose chest. Questions audience members have
looking at this movie is like, is that his real chest? Yeah?
I believe it is. I feel like sixty years old
when this movie was made, and that's his real chest.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Just body, I Montalbon, Yeah, I mean this. You look
back at older pictures of it, this dude was just
always ripped. So wow, all right, I'm just gonna mention
that Industrial Line and Magic did the visual effects here.
Again not a not enough super effects movie, but the
effects that we have are solid. We got some some
computer effects here that you know, not on par with

(41:20):
what we would have today, certainly, but I don't know,
they tend to be limited to you know, like computer
readouts and so forth, and therefore a little more forgiving.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah, like a technical demonstration of how the Genesis project
works is some computer effects that don't look amazing. There
are some things and it will look quite nice, Like
there are these painted backgrounds that they use to show
the you know, the cavern inside the planet that's filled
with blossoming life, and that stuff looks beautiful. And then

(41:49):
there are also some sets that you can tell we're
being made with cost constraints in mind because there's not
a lot for you to see. But what's there is
very very effective at creating the feeling it was supposed to.
Like the set of the surface of SETI Alpha six
or five, whichever it is, you don't see a lot

(42:10):
because it's just this red desert with a windstorm, you know,
dust storm blowing everywhere, so your sightlines are very limited,
so it's just kind of a red haze. But it
works very well. It feels claustrophobic, ominous, dangerous. It gets
you in the right mood, even though they were able
to achieve it without, you know, building out an elaborate
set with a lot of different stuff in it.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yeah, and we'll touch on specific examples of this, but
on the whole, I feel like all the sets feel
very lived in, almost like you can really you can
smell the alien on them to a certain extent, like
they didn't lean Star Wars or Star Wars. Yeah, they
don't lean too far into it, but everything does feel
like a sometimes a little grubby for sure, but other

(42:53):
times just comfortably lived in.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
I agree. Uh the so if you watch episodes of
the original series Star Trek, the sets are very clean.
It's that old sci fi look where everything's like shining,
you know, unblemished kind of rooms and tubes and hallways
where it looks like nobody actually lives in them. I
don't know exactly when that changed, but people sometimes point

(43:17):
to movies like Star Wars and Alien as films that
made space look kind of grungy and lived in, like
the actual spaces we occupy, and this movie feels more
like that.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Yeah, the Next Generation would kind of return to that
old aesthetic because I remember, you know, people are looking
back on it, you know, watching Next Generation, like Junior High,
there was kind of this idea that's like, oh, I
guess in the future, we just don't have stuff like
you have a few things you can have, like two
books and maybe a model ship. You get to bring
three or four things with you onto the Enterprise.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yeah, but also like the walls don't get scuffs on them.
You know you don't like wear the floor out in
certain places.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
Right, all right? And finally the music here is a
score by James Horner nineteen fifty three through twenty fifteen. Yeah,
another superb James Horner score. Composed scores for such films
as Battle Beyond the Stars, Aliens, Kroll, Willow Field of Dreams,
Apollo thirteen, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, and Avatar. His nineteen

(44:19):
eighty six score to the Name of the Rose is
one of my personal favorites. This score really solid, has some,
of course, you know, obligatory nods to the original Star
Trek theme song, but also I don't know if I
assume you caught this, Joe, there are moments here who
become dangerously close to the iconic Bishop's countdown segment in

(44:40):
his Alien score, which would of course come a few
years later that amped up music that energizes Aliens but
also ended up energizing film trailers for decades. So yeah,
great score here for sure. And if you're looking closely,
James Horner also has a cameo. I included a screenshot
here for you, Joe. He's just one of the star

(45:00):
young Starfleet guys just walking through a hallway.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
He looks really young.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Yeah, it's like kid genius James Horner at age thirteen.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
All right, you ready to talk about the plot, Let's
do it. Okay, Now, because this is a very well
known Star Trek film, we might not talk with as
much moment to moment scene description as we do in
some full plot breakdown, So maybe we'll start off describing
the intro in some detail and then see where we
go from there. So I love the opening scene here.

(45:39):
It's a classic now in the Star Trek universe. It
is the Kobayashi Maru scenario. So the film begins on
the bridge of what appears to be the starship Enterprise,
with most of the main cast present except Captain Kirk.
You've got Spack, McCoy, Uhura, and Sulu. They're all there,
but in the captain's chair is a young Vulcan named

(46:00):
Commander Savik played by Kercy Ali, and they are all
on uh We are told a training mission to Gamma Hydra,
which will bring them near the edge of the Neutral Zone.
This is a region of space that Starfleet is prohibited
from entering by way of a treaty with the Klingon Empire. Now,
while traveling, the crew receives a distress call from a

(46:22):
nearby ship, identifying itself as the Kobayashi Maru. It has
hit a gravitic mine and lost all power. The hull
is damaged and there are many casualties among the crew,
so they are in need of immediate evacuation and medical assistance. However,
they are immobilized within the neutral zone, so Captain savak

(46:42):
Here weighs her options and then she decides to head
into the zone to initiate a rescue. Sulu tries to
warn her, but she has made up her mind she
will break treaty and go inside. Now, while on course
to intercept the Kobayashi Maru, communications with the distressed ship
suddenly go offline. Then three Klingon warships appear and they're

(47:04):
bearing down on the Enterprise. Savic orders the broadcast of
an explanation, but Uhura says that the Klingons are jamming
all channels and they will not receive any message sent,
so we have no choice. It's battle stations. But the
Klingons outnumber the Enterprise and they strike first. There is
a barrage of torpedoes that hit the ship one by one,
and each time a torpedo hits a member of the

(47:26):
Enterprise crew is knocked to the ground and the explosion
apparently dead. We see Sulu, Uhura, Spack and McCoy all
appear to die this way, and then finally Captain Savik
realizes that the fight cannot be one and she orders
all surviving crew to the escape pods. So if you
don't know what's up, they're hitting you with a pretty

(47:47):
harsh beginning here. It's like all the characters you know
and lo, you know and love are dead. Yeah yeah,
But just then we hear a voice interrupting the scenario,
and it's Shatner. Captain Kirk comes in and he says,
all right, let's open her up, and then a false
wall peels away, revealing that this was not the real
bridge of the Enterprise, but a training simulator from the

(48:10):
observation room nearby. Kirk enters the simulator bridge in silhouette,
framed by tremendous backlighting and fog, as if he were
a god floating into their midst on an empire in cloud.
And I adore this movie, so any criticisms I make
should be taken with that in mind, but this part
always struck me as a little over the top and

(48:31):
suggesting Kurt Kirk's mythical status, like he is the sacred
object being held up by the hirafant. But on the
other hand, I understand the temptation. I get why this happens,
because it's like, oh, the character you know in love
for many years, now here he is on the big screen.
It's exciting. You want it to be a big revelation.

(48:53):
But I say this with love. This part is a
little unintentionally funny.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, I mean it's very vagus. It's like, this is
his Vegas residence, ladies and gentlemen, Admiral James T.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Kirk, Yeah, exactly. So he comes in and Savic says
any suggestions, Admiral, and Kirk says, prayer, mister Savic. The
Klingons do not take prisoners. So we're already getting the
little jokes, the kirkisms. So the situation at the beginning
of the movie is this, having come off of active
duty in the field, the senior Enterprise officers are now

(49:26):
back at Starfleet headquarters supervising the training of young new
officers like Savoc. It seems Spock is now going to
be the captain of the Enterprise and has been educating
his crew. I think Savic is going to be his
first officer. Meanwhile, Kirk is an admiral. He is an
admiral working behind a desk, and he's been living in

(49:49):
an apartment where he collects lots of old artifacts and
historical war memorabilia, flintlock pistols and stuff like that. After
the simulation is over, Lieutenant Savac is confused about the
purpose of the Kobayashi Maru scenario. It is a standard
test that all aspiring Starfleet captains have to take, but
it seems like there is no way to win. You

(50:11):
either ignore the stranded ship and let its crew perish,
or you break treaty, head into the neutral zone and
are immediately overpowered and destroyed. And Kirk reveals to her
that the point of the test is counterintuitive because it
cannot be one. It is not a test of skill,
but a test of character, because, as Kirk tells Savik,

(50:33):
how we face death is at least as important as
how we face life.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Yeah, and of course this will be a recurring theme
throughout the picture.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Right now, I do make a comment on the fact
that this training simulation comes with pyrotechnics, exploding workstations and consoles,
because when the crew members die when the torpedoes hit,
we see them like they're blown out of their shares,
like halfway across the room. They're all on the floor. Yeah,
and I know they did this in the movie so

(51:03):
that it would work as a fake out for the audience,
where at first we believe it's actually you know, they're
actually out there and this is all happening. But as
a training environment, these actual explosions seem unnecessary and dangerous.

Speaker 4 (51:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Yeah, we just didn't have Holodex yet. Like this is
like clearly, if this film were made a decade or
so later, this would be a Holodeck sequence.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
We also learned through some dialogue with Spock that when
Kirk himself was a cadet, he took this test three
times and the way he solved it on his third
attempt was something that had never been tried before. Anyway.
Here we shift to a focus on Kirk and his
old friends Spock and McCoy. It is Admiral Kirk's birthday,

(51:45):
and as a gift, Spock gives him an antique copy
of a Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Then
later McCoy comes over to Kirk's apartment in the evening
and brings him a bottle of romulan ale, which is
neon blue. And for some reason we're told illegal illegal.

Speaker 2 (52:04):
Well, I guess it's because we're not technically supposed to
trade with the romulans.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
I don't think it's, you know, because it's such like
you know, high proof or anything, or that it's a
llucinogenic or anything. I think it's just like you're not
supposed to have it because we're we're not we're not
doing it well with the.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
Romulins right now, Cuban cigars or something exactly. Okay, So
so yeah, they get the romulin ale And did you
understand more about romulin ale than I did. They take
a sip of it, and Kirk he looks like he
doesn't like it or something, or maybe just like it.
It immediately hits him really hard or something.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah. I don't know that romulin ale is something that
pops up in Star Trek from time to time. But
I actually went on line. I was like, what is
this supposed to stuff to supposed to taste like and
apparently it's inconsistent the way it's described in different Star
Trek media. Looking at it, it makes me expect a
licorice or mouthwaite, But they seem to treat it like

(53:02):
maybe it's a fine, if perhaps challenging spirit. They have
it straight up though, right, there's no ice, no chaser
or anything like that exactly. Yeah, But then of course
we're told it's an ale, which would indicate it some
sort of a beer. I asked my friend Dave, who
knows beers, like, what sort of beer would this be?
And he was like, maybe a Belgian. And I don't

(53:24):
know enough beer s to even know what that means.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
That's just a type of beer.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
I don't want to dispute Dave here, but I don't know.
It seems more like they're treating it like liquor rather
than beer.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
But it's an ale, right, so it.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
May say ale. It just seems confused anyway. He also
McCoy also brings Kirk a pair of antique reading glasses.
Necessary one because Kirk is getting old and so you
know he needs some help with reading, but also because
Kirk is allergic to the drug that most people take
in the twenty third century to correct their eyesight.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
And we had an early scene where Kirk is holding
something he's reading, like super far away from his eyes
the Dickens book. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, but I think
there's even an earlier scene when he first comes into
the training scenario. I think there's a tablet or something
he looks at and he's holding it at arm's length.
So yeah, Kirk is definitely that friend that many of

(54:20):
you have sometimes maybe you are that friend who is
straight up refusing to take the step of getting reading
glasses and instead you're just holding things farther and farther
away from your eyes and continually bumping up the font
size on your kindle.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Nice. Well, maybe for related reasons. In the scene, Kirk
seems to be a little bit depressed. It is clear
that while serving as an admirable and I keep saying admirable,
as an admiral at Starfleet headquarters, he has felt old.
He's feeling his age. He's feeling old, tired, and without purpose.

(54:56):
He feels like someone whose best years are behind him
and he's got nothing to look forward to.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah. This reminded me of the lyrics to an old
Al Stewart song from nineteen seventy three, Old Admirals. There's
a line in it that goes, and I sometimes think,
in all this world, the saddest thing to be old
admirals who feel the wind and never put to sea.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
That describes exactly the themes being evoked here. So Bones
tries to give Kirk some advice. He says, I'm your
doctor and I'm your friend, Jim, get back your command,
Get it back before you really do grow old, before
you turn into part of this collection and emotions at
all the flint lock pistols and all the old stuff.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
Yeah, yeah, though in general I love this set here again,
it feels very lived in. It's got a really cool fireplace,
you know. It has a very authentic feel to it.
So nice set. I like it.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
This is Captain Kirk's bachelor pad. This is what it
would look like, all right. Let's check in with the
other subplot here with the real Lant and SETI Alpha
six or SETI Alpha five. So elsewhere in the galaxy,
we join the starship Reliant, commanded by Captain Terrell and
First Officer Pavel Chekhov, formerly of the Enterprise. This is

(56:13):
Walter Kang's character. The Reliant has been tasked with assisting
a scientific research mission known as the Genesis Project, which
is led by doctor Carol Marcus, who is Kirk's old flame.
Working with her on the Genesis Project is her son David,
who looks a big Kirky and doesn't know that James T.

(56:34):
Kirk is his father. The purpose of the Genesis Project
is to turn lifeless planets into habitable garden worlds. It
is sort of a life nuke. You drop it on
a hunk of dead rock, it explodes, It sets out
this field that reorganizes all of the local matter into

(56:55):
incipient life forms, allowing a newborn biosphere to evolve and
take over the planet in minutes. And so it can
transform an uninhabitable moon into a paradise. But if you
were to drop it somewhere there was already life, it
would annihilate that life and replace it with its new matrix.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Yeah, it would seem to be a stunning advancement in
a starvely technology, Like it's godlike power that they're playing
with here.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
So while the scientists are busy developing the Genesis Project bomb,
the Reliant has been given the job to find a
suitable planet with no indigenous life forms. They come across
the planet Seti Alpha six, which according to their records,
is thought to be completely barren. However, when they scan it,
they detect some faint signs of life and only one

(57:46):
isolated spot on the surface. So Captain Terrell and First
Officer Chekhov beamed down to investigate. And this is one
of the sets I was talking about earlier that was
clearly made with cost containment in mind, so it's not
not elaborate, but very very effective. This craggy red desert,
sightlines are limited, this dust storm blowing all around. Terrell

(58:08):
and Chekhov followed the life signal to its source, where
they find what looks like an abandoned metal shipping container.
They go inside and it's clear that someone has been
using this container as a home. There are beds, clothes, books,
including moby Dick, crude furniture, and also a little tank

(58:29):
like a little glass terrarium, filled only with red sand.
Something is stirring under the sand, but we don't see
what it is at this point. And suddenly, while Chekhov
is looking around, he comes across a piece of equipment
labeled with the name of the ship that these people
came from, the SS Botany Bay, and with horror, Chekhov

(58:50):
realizes who they are dealing with. I guess this would
be the point if we're going to talk in any
detail about the Star Trek episode space maybe we should
do that here. What is it that Chekhov realizes when
he sees s S. Botany Bay.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Well, Chekhov knows and viewers of the original Star Trek
series know that the Botany Bay was, of course a
nineteen nineties starship, nineteen ninety spaceship that Khan and his
fellow genetic augments were cryonically suspended upon. This is daring
after the eugenics wars on Earth, so like this catastrophic,

(59:30):
essentially a Third World War, highly destructive, and it's caused
by these various genetically augmented supermen who were like the
tyrants of the planet, who ended up warring against each other.
And Khan was at once kind of like the best
in the worst of all of them, as explored in
Space Seed. Like you know, he wasn't he wasn't as

(59:51):
cruel as some of them. In many ways, he was
highly effective, but he also is the embodiment of humanity's
love hate relationship with hear Any.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
So, after he was finally dethroned as a tyrant on
Earth and defeated, he and his followers were put on
this spaceship and sent out into deep space. I guess
was this there like sentence their punishment or did they
like escape and get out there. I don't remember exactly
how that happened, but I don't remember that details. So

(01:00:21):
he's a horrible tyrant on Earth, he's removed from power,
and he's sent out here. And so the crew of
this isn't in Wrath of Khan, by the way, this
is just the backstory in space Seed. When the crew
find out who he was, this guy they've rescued from
croywsleep on the spaceship, they talk about what they can
reassemble from the historical record on Earth, and yeah, as

(01:00:42):
you mentioned, they describe him essentially as the best of
the tyrants and eugenics dictators of this era, not the
worst one. You would think that the script tendency would
be to say he was the most cruel and the
most eightful and the worst of all of them. But no,

(01:01:02):
he was actually the best one, the least cruel and
the least ruthless, and he's still awful. He's terrible, and
so I think the episode is trying to comment about how,
you know, tyrants don't only rule by force. They rule
by appeal. Sometimes they rule by seduction. Many people find

(01:01:24):
them appealing and want to be ruled by them, or
think that maybe being ruled by them won't be quite
so bad until they've already been given the power and
it's too late. Another one of the ideas pursued in
Space Seed is about the you know, the artificially created
exceptionalness of con that they say he was created by
scientists from this product of selective breeding. So he's like

(01:01:47):
super intelligent, super strong, you know, his body is incredibly resilient,
he's never been sick, all that kind of stuff, which
the members of the Enterprise find abhorrent. You know that
they are very opposed to the idea of these augments
and stuff like that. But the episode pursues the idea that, like,

(01:02:07):
if one finds oneself so exceptional in this way, does
that naturally lead to a desire to dominate and rule
over others around you. I feel like the episode is
proposing maybe that could be true. I don't know if
in reality that is born out, if that exceptionalness actually
correlates with a desire to dominate and rule others.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
Seem kind of like independent variables to me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
So anyway, Spacey though, what you expect to happen happens.
While Con is recovering in the medical bay, He's like, oh,
I would love to read the various technical manuals for
the starship path I do so, and they're like, of course,
and so he does. He soon, you know, gets this
his defrosted followers to help him stage a coup on

(01:03:07):
the ship. They take over the Enterprise. But eventually this
leads to a standoff between himself and Kirk. There's fisticuffs,
there's a little there's a nice lutador head scissors by
Kirk on Cohn and order is restored. But then what
are they going to do with Con? Right, this is
where Kirk displays a little of that trademark, you know,

(01:03:30):
rogue decision making. He decides to dispense a little extra
judicial judgment here.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
That's right, So Con and his main collaborator on the Enterprise.
Because there's another character in this episode who's interesting. The
character of the historian Lieutenant mcguvers, who is presented as
somebody who's an expert on the past and maybe finds
the past a little bit too romantic and too exciting.
So she is seduced by the charismatic barbarity of this

(01:03:59):
twentieth century superman, and she initially tries to help him
seize power on the Enterprise, but then later she has
a turn, you know, a change of heart, and she
turns against him. And so Con and her are given
the choice of accepting court martial or being set free

(01:04:20):
on this uninhabited planet and to sort of live in
exile basically so they won't be able to escape the
planet and harm anyone else. But also they're not going
to just like send him to space jail. So it's
a very merciful reaction.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Yeah, And as the episode ends, the Enterprise crew ruminates on, hey,
maybe someone will check out this colony one hundred years
from now and we'll see how this experiment worked out.
You know, what will the future of this colony be?
What sort of society or civilization will they build? Will
they build out? But of course, as we'll see here
in this movie, no one actually checked in on them. Afterwards.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
That's right. So back in the the present timeline in
Wrath of Khan, before Captain Tarrell and First Officer Chekhov
can escape, they are captured by the inhabitants of this
desert dressed like something out of Doune. The desert costumes
are creepy and very good. They're wearing these like metal
shields on their faces. They just have like a slit

(01:05:18):
for vision, and you know, full body robes and everything
covering everything up from the dust. So they're taken inside
the habitat and the leader reveals himself to be Khan,
the villain from Space Seed.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Oh and does he ever reveal himself such a great scene.
He milks it, you know, taking off some of the
wrappings around his head, taking off the goggles or the
face mask, you know, and he's decked out and kind
of they're all decked out in these kind of like
post apocalyptic garbs. They've got little like almost cyberpunk little
gadgets on their bodies, cons wearing amulets or jewelry. And

(01:05:57):
then he has these two gloves on, these like black
gloves with silver mash or sequence on them, and he
very stylishly takes off one of those gloves, but then
keeps the other glove on for the remainder of the picture.
I guess to just just as a charismatic flourish.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
It's a good look.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
It is. It's a great look. This man knows what
he's doing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
So one thing that happens at the end of Space
Seed is that when they're in the sort of court
martial scene or the justice scene, Kahn asks Kirk if
he knows Milton referencing Paradise Lost, and the implication there
is he's drawing attention to the quote from Satan in
Paradise Lost, where Satan says it's better to rule in

(01:06:43):
hell than serve in heaven. And so that showed in
the original episode, con sort of accepting that he had
been defeated and accepting his fate to say, yes, I
would rather have exile, sort of showing him being at
peace there. Exile me on this planet, and I'll see
what I can do with the situation. Unfortunately, SETI Alpha
five turned out to be more of a hell than

(01:07:03):
they bargained for. They say, about six months after they
were left there, SETI Alpha six exploded, throwing SETI Alpha
five out of orbit. And reducing its surface from a
garden world into this barren desert. So the planet that
they're on, which was which the Reliant thought was SETI

(01:07:23):
Alpha six, is actually SETI Alpha five. Beyond that, the
only indigenous alien life form left alive from Seti Alfha
five is this thing they call the Seti eels. There
are these weird little caterpillar like creatures, and they killed
many of Kahn's crew, including his wife. We don't ever

(01:07:48):
meet his wife. I was wondering, is his wife supposed
to be the historian from That's what I Okay, I
don't think they make that clear, so I'm not sure,
but that's kind of what I was wondering. But anyway,
these parasitic life forms they enter through the ear and
wrap themselves around the victim's cerebral cortex, causing extreme suggestibility, madness, paralysis,

(01:08:14):
and eventually death. So these things are bad, and they
killed many of his crew, but some of his crew
are still here hanging on. And now that he has
these two starfleet officers captive, he will be able to
escape this cursed planet. So some of his followers are
eager to take this blessing and run. They can now
live free again. They can get off this rock. But

(01:08:37):
Con is not content just to escape his exile and
live in peace. He's got a mission. His mission is
one of revenge against now Admiral James T.

Speaker 4 (01:08:48):
Kirk.

Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
It is very full of Moby Dick analogies. I think
he starts quoting Moby Dick in this scene maybe or certainly,
If not in this scene, he will some more throughout
the film.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Yeah, and he's going to have a fair amount of
back and forth with his like right hand man, played
by the actor Judson Scott born nineteen fifty two. He's
done a lot of work as well and TV and film,
but this character keeps telling him. It's like, hey, we've
done it, we've escaped, we've got the starship. Let's let's
give up on this mad vengeance quest. And Cohn you know,

(01:09:20):
rejects him. And then later on, you know, he's going
to be like, we will, we have the super weapon,
we have everything we need. Let let Captain Kirk go,
and he's like, no, it's revenge front and center.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
That's right. So the next thing is the eel implantation scene.
And this is a great horror scene that I think
I said this earlier, but I think I saw this
when I was younger. Somehow they put these little the
SETI eels inside the helmets of our starfleet officers. They
put the helmets back on their suits, and then we

(01:09:52):
see the eels crawling into their ears, and it's gross
so good.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Yeah, I mean, because you have Montlbond's Cohn narrating the
whole thing, telling them that the creepy story of the eels,
and then yeah, dump them in the helmets and then
put the helmets on them, turn their own helmets into
a torture device essentially.

Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
So the next thing is Con and his people. Now
that they've got these officers, they take control of the
starship Reliant itself. So now they've got a starship, and
they learn of the Genesis projects that they seek to
take control of the Life Nuke as well. Now, meanwhile,
the main cast, they're all going out on board the
Enterprise for real this time, not a simulation, and we

(01:10:33):
meet the young new crew you know we're meeting. We
meet one young character who's an engineer who I think
in another draft of the script or in unfilmed scenes,
is revealed to be Scotty's nephew he's but I don't
recall if anything about that is actually said in the movie.
By the way, when they're coming onto the ship, there's
a moment where Scotty reveals he has just recovered from

(01:10:54):
a wee bout of something, and they're like, wait, a
wee bout of what? And McCoy's like, shore leave. They
get these little inappropriate jokes in there. So they're taking
the ship out for training maneuvers. But while they're on
course for training, they receive a distress call from Regula one,

(01:11:16):
the space station where the Genesis Project is based, and
it's Carol Marcus asking why her old boyfriend James T.
Kirk has given the order for the scientists to relinquish
control of the Genesis Project and hand it over to Starfleet.
Of course, no such order was actually given. Kahan used
his mind control eels to get Chekhov to feed this

(01:11:37):
lie to Marcus and the other scientists so that they
would lure the Enterprise into this trap. So here we
come up to the first big scene, the first encounter
between Kirk and Kahn, between the Enterprise and the Reliant.
There are a lot of things I love about this scene.
I like the way it mirrors some aspects of the
opening simulation. I love the way that the Enterprise goes

(01:11:59):
in unsuspecting, and we get to see Kirk and the
rest of the Enterprise crew just kind of relaxed and
cocky and not really suspecting anything's wrong. And then even
when things start getting kind of weird, they don't seem
too concerned about it. And then on the other side,
we get to see Cohn and his crew plotting in
there at the bridge of their ship and Montleblanc just

(01:12:21):
gobbling this scene up. His right hand man says they're
requesting visual communication, sir, and Con says, let them eat static.
And the guy says they're still running with shields down,
and Con says, of course, we're one big happy fleet. Ah, Kirk,
my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that

(01:12:42):
tells us revenge is a is a dish best served cold?
In this dramatic pause, it is very cold in space.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
I'm not sure anyone else could have delivered that line. Yeah,
but yeah, this scene is great because, of course, the
rest of the film is going to be one big
cat and mouse game, but at this point, from kirk standpoint,
it's just all mice. Only Con knows that there is
a cat in play, and of course he is the cat.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
Right. So Con ambushes the Enterprise with a surprise attack,
blasts it with phasers, and disables most of the ship's capabilities.
The Enterprise cannot warp away, it can't really fight back
very well, so they're they're sitting ducks now. Then Con
appears on the on the view screen to let Kirk
know that it was him and Kirk and Spock. They

(01:13:34):
only managed to get out of this situation by leveraging
their superior knowledge of how Starfleet Bridge controls work. I
like how their solution. So Con gives them a moment
to beam over all of the data they have on
Project Genesis. He's like, if you send me all that data,
then I'll just take my revenge on you personally, and

(01:13:54):
I'll let the rest of the ship go. And so
they buy some time by saying, oh, yeah, we've got
to call up the data files. Hold on, we're looking
for them. Okay, we're about to send them to you now.
But meanwhile, what they're actually doing is they come up
with a plan to hack the mainframe. They're going to
use the Reliance code key to remotely control the other

(01:14:15):
ship and lower its shields, rendering it vulnerable to a
counter attack. So they do that, and now both ships
are damaged and they kind of retreat to their corners
to see what happens next. Another thing I love about
the scene is what I mentioned earlier, is that is
the way that it leans into some of the more

(01:14:36):
buffoonish aspects of Shatner's portrayal of Kirk and makes them
a good part of the character. The way Kirk acknowledges
that he was cocky and smug and careless at the beginning,
and he gives the credit to Savik. He's like, that's right,
I should have listened to her.

Speaker 2 (01:14:52):
That's right. I mean, con is a mastermind here, and
he has set a trap exclusively for Captain James T. Kirk.
He knows this, He knows exactly how to draw him
in and take advantage of his weaknesses.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
Right. So now both ships are kind of separated and
working on repairs, and they're both and like a mystery
re emerges. Both are like what is the other one
going to do next? So the Enterprise tries to go
to Regula one, the space station where the Genesis project
is hosted. They go there and they find that Khan
has been there already and has tortured all of the

(01:15:26):
scientists there, trying to get information out of them about,
you know, where to where the main part of the
project is being held. Also there they meet Chekhov and Tarrell,
who are still alive, and they're you know, they tell
the whole horrible story, and so you think that they
are better.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
Now, yeah, because they even say they put some organisms
inside us and made us two things we didn't want
to do. But they're like, but now we're better and
we're here to help.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
From the space station, Kirk McCoy, Savig and Tarrell and
and Chekhov all beamed down to the underground cavern that
was the place where the Genesis Project was first tried,
and so there was like a phase that was going
to be underground in a cave, and then there was
going to be a bigger phase that was going to

(01:16:12):
be planet wide. So they beamed down and they find, ah,
here is the life nuke, here is the Genesis project bomb.
They've found it there. But it turns out that Captain
Terrell and Chekhov were not done being eel pawns yet.
They were like double agents here. They were saying like, oh, yeah,
we're done with the eel. We've kicked our eel problem now,

(01:16:34):
But they were not. In fact, they were still working
for Con, and so they like draw phasers on the
Enterprise crew. They beam up the coordinates to Con so
that Con can beam up the Genesis bomb. He takes
that and then Con orders them to finish off his enemy,
but they don't quite do it yet. It's like something

(01:16:54):
is resisting. It's almost I mean, you could look at
this as another like the mythic James T. Kirk thing
where it's like, I just can't do it. He's too awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:17:06):
Right at Terryll even he played again by Paul Winsfield. Winfield,
he like resists the eel enough to turn his phaser
on himself, yes, and you know, completely vaporizes his self
rather than turn against Kirk.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
And then Checkov I think he just like screams and
collapses and the thing comes out of his ear. Right,
So Chekhov ends up okay.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
Yeah, yeah, and he's gonna have to recoup a little bit,
but he'll be back in action before the pictures in
and his ear ends up looking fine. I was thinking
to myself, it would have been a nice comedic touch
of his ear just looks super gross, and every time
he turned his head people were just like.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
But but then also importantly here we get con gets
to zoom in once more, and we get a little
more gloating. Well, on one hand, he's disappointed that that
his minions did not just murder James t Kirk, but
then he kind of had I'm not gonna see a
change of heart, but a change of revenge plans, and

(01:18:04):
he says, well, this is this is for the best,
because I'm gonna leave you like you left me. I'm
gonna leave you buried in this lifeless cave, and you're
gonna just think about my victory the rest of your life.

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
Yeah, he whispers buried alive into the communicator and buried alive. Yeah.
And that's when we get Shatner screaming God yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
Which again, you know, take it out of context and
it's me more in funny, but within the context of
the film it's I think it's well earned. And then
also we're gonna learn a few things about what's happening
here as well.

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
Now there's another thing in this part of the movie
where the Enterprise officers manage even though CON's really got
the upper hand on them. Uh, they managed to trick
him with a this is a plot convention I like too.
So the trick is they're talking on the communicators and
there Spock is still up on the ship and he's

(01:19:00):
says something like, if we go by the book, as
Commander Savic does, hours could seem like days, and thus
it will take us two days to complete repairs on
the ship to have it operable again. And then Chattner's like, oh, yeah, okay,
so Beam, I'll check in again in one day, and like,

(01:19:20):
if you don't know, actually, this does kind of go
over your head, or at least it did for me
until they reveal the code later. They are speaking in
code where they're transposing the time measurements they're giving each
other for days and hours, but Con doesn't realize this.
The key is that he's saying, if you go by
the book, meaning that there is a regulation in the

(01:19:40):
Starfleet Manual that says, when you expect communications to be
monitored by the enemy, you should only send ENCRYPTID messages.
And so they are sending messages in code, right, right,
So this gives con the wrong idea about how soon
their ship will be operable, and thus he plans incorrectly. Meanwhile, Kirk,

(01:20:09):
Savic Bones, and Chekhov now are trapped in this underground
cavern with the scientists from the Genesis team, including Kirk's
old flame Carol Marcus and her son David, who is
very handsome and strong and he almost reminds me a
bit of myself.

Speaker 2 (01:20:27):
Now, this is the scene where we really get what
seems to be rock bottom Kirk there.

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):
For a little bit. Yeah, Dark Knight of the Solia.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
Yeah, and it's really good. This is again, this is
Shatner at his finest, where he's like, I'm beat, you know,
I've been defeated, essentially, like the I mean, I think
the really clever thing about this is, like, in this
one scene, two things from his past, errors from his past,
you know, things that he's neglected, have come back to

(01:20:54):
haunt him. On one hand, here is his old enemy Kahn,
who he like literally just you know, didn't check on,
just assume, just completely left him to his own and
now he's come back to seek his revenge. And then
here is his son, who has not been a part
of his life I guess he doesn't even didn't even

(01:21:15):
really know about him. But on the other hand, it's like,
clearly Kirk was not present there to be a part
of this individual's life, right, I think.

Speaker 3 (01:21:22):
He did know about him, but Carol asked him to
stay away.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):
Yeah, so you know, we don't get the impression that
there was a lot of pushback on that. Like this
it feels like a shortcoming of his character and he's
confronted with it, like violently confronted with this when he
has fisticuffs with his own son.

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
Yeah. But at the same time that we get this
dark knight of the soul deep underground where they're buried alive,
there is also a kind of beautiful moment where they're
brought out into a cavern to see what the Genesis
Project is capable of, and we get this vast cave
that somehow almost seems to have a unshining within it,

(01:22:01):
and it's just filled. Yeah, I don't know, to make
a miniature star in there. It's a cavern that's like
an enormous cavern that's just filled with life, blossoming with
trees and fruits and all different kinds of life, and
a beautiful little ocean flowing through the bottom of it,
and it's gorgeous. It looks like the cover of one

(01:22:21):
of these old fantasy novels.

Speaker 2 (01:22:23):
Yeah, so they eat some walk of fruit down there,
they do. They recharge themselves, and now it's time to
get back to the Enterprise.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
That's right, So they get beamed back up to the Enterprise.
According to Spock's coded timeline, that again was a trick
that worked against Con. Con was fooled, and now the
starship Enterprise is able to function again, much sooner than
Con expected. And from here they move on to the
final conflict. They still don't have all of their capabilities back.

(01:22:52):
They can't put up a full fight. CON's ship is
in better shape than the Enterprise is, but they figure
out a way to even the odds. They look nearby
and there is a nebula system, the Mutara Nebula, and
they say, you know what, let's go in there. And
initially I think it's Savic is confused to be like,
if we go in there, won't a lot of our
systems become non functional? And I think Spock says, you know,

(01:23:15):
sauce for the Gander Lieutenant Savic. So the idea is
if we can go into this place where it disables
most of your ship's capabilities, it will even the odds
because their ship is working a lot better than ours
right now, and so it'll make just both ships not
work very well.

Speaker 2 (01:23:32):
Yeah. So yeah, so enter the Battle of the Mutara
Nebula and it's fabulous. Like we were saying, it's this
tense cat and mouse game between two starships that can't
really see each other or detect each other all that well,
they're kind of poking around in the dark, very heavy
shades of like submarine warfare, just seeking for any indication

(01:23:53):
about the look, about the of the position, the coordinates
of the enemy vessel so that they can fire. Neither
ship has shields up, so you know, a direct hit.
The first, really, the first combatant to score a direct
hit is going to be the victor here.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
Yeah, that's right. And they're like looking for ways that
they can get advantage, right, And I think it is
Spock that comments that, you know, con is super intelligent.
He's highly intelligent. He's a brilliant tactician, but he lacks
experience in space combat. And the fact that he lacks
experience means that he's thinking two dimensionally about the combat.

(01:24:30):
So they reorient the z axis basically of how they're
planning their approach, and they're you know, it's like rotate
battlefield by ninety degrees and that allows them to approach
from behind and get the better of CON's ship, and
then they land a torpedo hit and they really finally
get the advantage. But then Con tries to get he's

(01:24:53):
like wounded Captain Ahab now and he tries to get
the last barbin on his white Whale. He's quoting Dick
as he's like on the bridge of his ship dying.
He's saying, you know, from hell's heart, I stab at
the for hate's sake. I spit my last breath at
the And what is that? It is activation of the
Genesis project bomb, because he knows that the Enterprise's warp

(01:25:15):
system is still disabled, so it can't get away fast
enough and so they will be destroyed right along with him.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
Yeah, and you know, of course Montalband does a fabulous
job just really eating the scenery in this moment. You know,
he's wounded at this point, the rest of his crew
is wounded or dead, everything's in ruin. But yeah, he
is spitting venom until the end here.

Speaker 3 (01:25:41):
And this leads up to the very famous self sacrifice
scene at the end of the movie, where in order
to get warp power back online, Spock realizes that someone
has to go into the radiation room, the reactor room,
which is bathed in radiation to I don't know, fiddle
with something.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
To get a lot of tech. Yeah, it's just somebody
needs to go in there and do something, and that
person better have higher radiation tolerance than a normal human being.

Speaker 3 (01:26:08):
But we were told that it will still kill Spock. Like,
Spock is going in and they try to stop him.
They say no, no, no, you go in there, you'll die,
and he just goes anyway. I think he does the
Vulcan neck nerve pinch on McCoy to get him to
go to sleep while he goes into the radiation room,
and he saves the ship by reactivating the warp drive
and the ship is able to get out of range

(01:26:28):
of the Genesis bomb, and so the ship is saved,
but Spock has had to sacrifice himself in order to
do it, and we get a final emotional meeting through
this sort of radiation shield and glass where Kirk comes
down to see his friend there, and Spock gets to
remind him of what they talked about earlier. Actually, I
forget the original context in which this came up, but

(01:26:51):
where the line is the needs of the few outweigh
or the needs of the mini outweigh the needs of
the few, or the one that's right, and it is
only logical. And so Spock dies and then is given
a beautiful funeral where they put him in a little
in a little kind of capsule shaped case and they
launch him out of the Enterprise like a torpedo, onto

(01:27:12):
the surface of the planet that has now been given
life through the Genesis project. So it's like this dead
rock is now blooming with all of this this new biosphere,
and Spock's coffin lands on the planet there among all
of it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
I legitimately do not remember how they bring Spock back
in the next film, but.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
I remember it's weird. It's been a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:27:35):
Yeah, And that is one of the films that I
think is not considered one of the better ones people generally.

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):
I mean, obviously opinions can differ, but very common opinion
is that the even numbered movies are good.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
Yeah, And I don't know how far that actually holds out.
But yeah, at this point, that's kind of the logic.
But it's weird to reflect on this scene because it's
still absolutely powerful. And I remember the first time I
saw it, the scene where Spock dies is very emotional.
But I was not old enough to encounter this film,

(01:28:09):
you know, in the wild before Spock came back. So
it must have hit pretty hard because you know, we
had the tea's at the beginning, and certainly they lay
on it a bit, they lay it on a bit
thick at the end here that there might be some
way to bring Spock back. You don't want people rioting
in the theater, I guess, But still I think it
would have hit pretty hard.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):
Yeah, yeah, totally. And actually I'm not even sure. I
don't know the answer to this question. Did they know
at this point that they were going to bring Spock
back or not.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
I mean, they might have had an inkling that they
would want to, but I get from what I've read
it's like there wasn't a guarantee that Nimoy would want
to come back. There certainly wasn't a guarantee that this
film was going to be a big enough success to
do another picture. The essentially the following year. So I
guess they just kind of left the door open, because
again they lay it on a little thick here. It's like,

(01:28:59):
here's the off and it's landing on this new world.
It's kind of implied there could be some sort of
new life and you know, we just have to find
out in the next film.

Speaker 3 (01:29:09):
Yeah. Oh, and then we also get the thematic stinger,
the very last thing, which is the characters are standing
there looking at this planet after they have given Spock
the space burial, and somebody asks Kirk how he feels,
and he says, I feel young. Yeah, it kind of
he sells it. It works like you can see how

(01:29:31):
he does now after the events of the film, and
so that's his change from how we met him at
the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:29:37):
Absolutely. Yeah, So it's a great finish to a great film.
I almost hesitate to bring this up because again it's
I'm not making fun of the picture. But there is
this one scene I think it's after the first major
encounter between the two ships, where the not my nephew
character has been horrifically injured in the engine room, yes,

(01:29:59):
and they are yeah yeah, and Scotty brings him up
in his arms, but brings him directly to the bridge. Yes,
and at them, I'm like, why did you bring him
to the bridge, dude? Take him to the medical bay. Yeah,
I guess he's just you know, it's a moment that
is more about the drama and the characters than about
like the logic of what you would actually do in
that scenario.

Speaker 3 (01:30:17):
Nicholas Smeyer, I think has a sensibility here that's kind
of like Spielberg's. I mean, you can point this out
in a lot of Spielberg movies, there are things that
if you really think about them, it doesn't make sense
why a character would do that, But it hits so
well when it happens on screen that most of the
time you don't think about it. It doesn't occur to
you to question the plausibility of it. It's just like, oh,

(01:30:39):
that is emotionally affecting, and it just works and you
roll on to the next thing.

Speaker 4 (01:30:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
Absolutely, I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:30:46):
But that engineer character also gets a nice moment as
he's dying in sick Bay as well, because he reaches
up to Kirk and he says he's like, do I
have the word he has? Or and Shattner looks down
at him and says warp speed. You could also imagine
somebody making fun of that, but I don't know. In context.
It's pretty sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:31:06):
Yeah, absolutely Again, I think in the end everything works
here just so beautifully. It's just such a well constructed film,
has a lot of heart, It has some great action. Again,
I would say it's got to be the best naval
battle in Star Trek media. If there's anything on par
with this, please write in and tell me which episode

(01:31:28):
or film I need to watch to follow up this
feeling that I'm having right now.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
Totally. I love how human it is. That's the main
thing that really sticks in there about it. There are
certainly Star Trek stories that deal with more fascinating ideas
or that you could say, you know, present something that
is more novel in the science fiction sense or that

(01:31:54):
kind of thing, But this is about as good as
it gets ever in terms of just making the character
feel like real humans and telling an emotional story.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
Yeah. Like, there are plenty of even original Star Trek
episodes that are probably more cerebral in places, but this
one is about heart and action and character.

Speaker 3 (01:32:11):
Absolutely all right. That's all I got on Wrath of
Cohn All right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
Well, with that, we're going to close out Star Trek
week here and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind feed
and we're going to close out this episode of Weird
House Cinema. But as always, we want to hear what
you all have to say about all of this. Write
in with your thoughts on Star Trek in general, Star
Trek movies, and of course Star Trek to the Wrath
of con When did you see it for the first time?
Did you see it in the theater? If you did

(01:32:35):
see it in the theater when it originally came out,
what was the vibe like? How did everyone react to
the death of Spock? That's the stuff I want to
know about. Let's see, if let's see. At this point,
we'll just go and remind you that Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do
a short form episode, and on Fridays we set aside

(01:32:56):
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
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if you are on a letterbox, look us up. We

(01:33:17):
are a weird House on letterbox and you can get
a nice list of all the movies we've covered over
the years, and sometimes a peek ahead at what comes next.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:33:44):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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