Star Trek Fest - Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan - Midnight Viewing

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
Welcome back, midnight viewers. Oh my god, it's Star Trek Fest.
It is the Star Trek Fest. How do we know?
Here's the trailer.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Beyond the Darkness, beyond the human evolution is Con a
genetically superior tyrant, exiled to a barren play in it,
banished by a starship commander. He is destined to destroy.
Left for dead, he has a browed chase him around

(01:12):
the moose of Nibi, and round the Antaris Maelstrom, and
round Tradition's flames.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Before I gave him up.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
There she is.

Speaker 5 (01:33):
A s collapsing captain, a new shot sun not.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Enough against their shields, and in three minutes we're all dead.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I've gone far worse than kill you. I've hurt you,
and I wish to go on hurting you. I shall
leave you as you left me, my room for all eternity.

Speaker 4 (02:18):
Wearing a line, marrying a line.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Shine sh.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
At the end of the universe lies the beginning of
Vengeance Star Trek two, The Wrath of Con.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Yes, con see, that would be the easy thing would
be to try to do the kind of approximation which
is the signature moment. I prefer to think of the
needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
or the one.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
I'm not a drama.

Speaker 4 (02:56):
Critic, except of course, Happy Birthday.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Oh my god, we're just gonna spiral here. We're watching
Star Trek two. Everybody, Star Trek two, The Wrath of Khn.
Initial title Star Trek two Vengeance of Cohn.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
That was why did change it.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Because they thought Return of the Jedi, originally titled Revenge
of the Jedi, would be too confusing for audiences, so
Vengeance became Wrath. And then years later David Fincher and
Andrew Kevin Walker would call Anger wrath for seven and
now that's all anyone thinks of in the Seven Deadly

(03:32):
Sins as Wrath, when initially it was all anger.

Speaker 4 (03:35):
He reminded me, when I was a kid, father Malone,
it was like a Wrathfule or something Carnival that I
went to as a kid. I acquired a Star Wars poster.
It was Revenge of the Jedi. It was the original
Revenge of the Jedi poster, which would probably be worth
a ton of money now, but I was a fucking kid.
I put it up on my wall. It got all

(03:57):
messed up, it ripped. I don't even know where it
is anymore.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
I remember seeing one for sale at a Spencer's Gifts
and thinking, there's gonna be so many of them, I'll
get one later.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
I wonder what they're worth now, Probably.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
A lot, however, Star Trek two The Wrath of KHN
screenplay credited to the story by Harve Bennett and Jack B.
Sewards screenplay credited solely to Jack B. Sewards and directed
by Nicholas Meyer. We all know Nicholas Meyer wrote this screenplay,
starring guess who everybody, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest, Kelly,

(04:31):
James Dowin, Walter Kanig, George t Kay, Nachelle Nichols, bb
besch Merritt buttrick straight from Square Pegs. Paul Winenfield is
in this movie. Kirsty Ally is in this movie, and
of course he's here to answer the question, is that
a real chest? Ricardo montalbon as I read that to

(04:53):
Cohn and Nudians sing yes, there is a frequent rumor
that's a molded plastic chest, whereas everyone else who was
involved with the production of the movie says, no, that's
just Ricardo Montabon, even at age sixty, was a buff
fucking dude.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
I can believe it. He seemed like a very vital guy.
It never occurred to me that they would. It's not
as if his whole chest is bared. You only see
a little bit of his upper torso it's not like
he's bare chested for the whole movie or anything.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Costume designer claims they redid the costume specifically to feature
his chest. Now, critics are saying that the placement of
his necklace is where the seam is much like you
would see like on a drag race, for like the
false front with the boobies, where that you could cover
the neck line with a necklace or something. So they're saying,

(05:48):
from the neck up, he looks really old, and from
the neck down he looks really young, So there can't
there's a disconnect there. And I say, yeah, he's got
an old man head and a fucking still fit body.
Are you talking about dummies?

Speaker 4 (06:01):
That's the thing I can't say. I know for sure.
I don't believe it's the case, but who the fuck cares.
It's like, it's like this dumb conspiracy theory. I don't
get it.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Star Trek was released on June the fourth, nineteen eighty two,
but the budget of twelve million went down far down
from the forty five million for Star Trek the Motion Picture,
and they have so much more to do in this
film with so much less. Nevertheless, I didn't night, well,
that's that's the.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
Story of every Star Trek movie. Though they were already
slashing budgets. That was a common complaint even by the
time they got to Star Trek four. It was like
the uniforms were we used, the models were we used,
sets were reused. So that doesn't make any sense to me,
because Star Trek two looks so much, it's so much more.

(06:50):
I don't ground it. It doesn't look like they're pinching
pennies to make that movie. It doesn't have the ooh
and eye of the most picture, but it looks fantastic.
Even now I'm watching it, I'm thinking, this is a
great fucking looking movie.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Oh they were cost cutting and penny pinching every which away,
Like Carol Marcus's Space Station Regular is just the space
doc from Star Trek the Motion Picture turned upside down.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
And I know, I think they reuse some of the
shots of the Enterprise in dry dock and all that
kind of stuff. It still looks great to me. It's
still again watching it again after all these years, I
was like, this looks fantastic. You could have made this
movie last year with a few exception.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
HB. When's the first time you saw Star Trek to
Wrath of con Was it in the theater? By chance?

Speaker 4 (07:41):
It was not in the theater. I saw it the
first time, undoubtedly would have been on cable, first run
on cable, which would have been made it probably either
late eighty two or eighty three more than likely.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, I did manage to see this in the theater.
I've seen every Star Trek film, fantrically, really Star Trek film.
I've seen it in the theater now. I remember it
vividly because we I was taken. This is nineteen eighty
two June. So what we're nine ten nine, we're just
nine and we went to the Low's in Summerville. My

(08:15):
cousins took me and we were going to see Star
Trek two. That's why I went with them. And Star
Trek two was sold out. So do you know what
we went to see.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
In eighty two? Was it another movie or did you
sneak in or something?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
It was another movie. They bought tickets for another movie.
They said, Star Trek two was sold out. Michael, We're
going to go see this movie instead.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
Jeez, I can't think of it. What did you see instead?
Or what did you buy tickets for instead?

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Polter Geist? Oh okay, yeah, yep, fucked me up, fucked
me up for years, thanks cousin. That was I was
just I just wanted to see mister Spock. Instead, I
had a man ripping his own face off and demons
coming out of closets.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
Skeletons, and the pool horrifying. It's still amazing. This is
me what they got away with that movie. That is
one intense picture. No Star Trek two, that's for sure.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Anyway, the next weekend I got to see Star Trek,
but still I was scarred. Anyway, Star Trek the motion
picture isn't unqualified success. They do want a sequel, but
they do not want Gene Roddenberry. So the brass at
Paramount that we're talking about, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg
instead turned to veteran TV producer Harve Bennett. HP, you

(09:27):
have something to add.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
I was just going to say it was a financial success,
but critically it was not successful, and from what I've read,
that's the reason why they wanted to cut Roddenberry out
of it, because they wanted somebody who could actually make
a good picture. They didn't want the same sort of
issues to befall this picture that befell the first one.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
That's definitely one of the reasons they cut out Roddenberry.
But they had done away with Roddenberry before they even
lensed Star Trek the motion picture. They had already banished
him to his offices and at his memos.

Speaker 4 (10:01):
But which I gathered something similar happened with the Next Generation.
I don't think he was very involved in that after
the first season, and not coincidentally, that's when it became good.
I'm sorry anybody who you know is like a fanboy
for Roddenberry. You wouldn't have Star Trek without Roddenberry. But
I think his time had come and gone.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
I say that he maintained control of that series until
the third season, and that's when that series actually became good.
And he lost control of that series not because he
was replaced, but because he died.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
He was the one, by the way, and that not
that this is what we're talking about Next Generation, but
He was the one who was responsible for those terrible
uniforms that all the actors complained about in the first
couple of seasons, because his reasoning was every shot of
the uniform had to be perfectly wrinkle free and had
to look as sharp as could be. So they had

(10:56):
these uniforms that were one piece that had stirre ups
in the feet that would drag, that would basically pull
their shoulders down, and some of the actors actually developed
back problems as a result. So they were thrilled when
they finally moved to the really slick two piece uniforms.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
The early don all the early seasons of Next Generations
seemed really awkward after after the innovation of separates.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, but you're right, it wasn't until
that third season that it really found its footing and
became its own thing. I agree.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
So anyway, so Paramount turns to Harve Bennett. Harve Ben
got his start producing The Mod Squad. He went on
to do six Million Dollar Man in The Bionic Woman,
rich Man poor Man, remember that series? That was him.
He also produced a series about gold in my Air
called a Woman called golda starring co starring.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
I remember that it was very popular.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Yeah, Harv has an end with mister Spock, and he's
gonna need it because once again, Leonard Nimo wants nothing
to do with this production anyway, so they bring in Harv.
Harv is a casual viewer of Star Trek, as most
people were. He knew of the series but wasn't a
hardcore fan. So his first order of business is to
sit down and watch every single episode of the series,
looking for something to tie the movies back to the

(12:17):
original series, because the first film was such a fucking
out there nothing to do with anything the picture. And
what he finds is season one's Space Seed about Khan
Noonian Sing, a twentieth century Eugenics war conqueror who was

(12:37):
frozen with his followers in space. Thought out by the Enterprise,
tries to take the Enterprise over. Rather than court marshaling him,
they give him the opportunity to be marooned on a
planet which he can act as king on and that
that's where we left him. What a ripe opportunity to revisit.
So Harve Bennett he comes up with his original story.

(13:00):
Let me see, I have it in my notes. Oh no,
these are my wrong notes. There are my notes. So
Bennett writes a treatment called the War of the Generations,
which is basically a bunch of space hippies are causing
a revolution and taking over planets, and they have to
go out to fight them. They send out the Enterprise

(13:21):
and they discover that the leader of the rebels is
in fact Kirk's son David, who is being pumpeted by
Kirk's old enemy Khan and Noonian Saying. Needless to say,
everyone hated that treatment, so he turned screenwriting duties over
to Jack B. Sourd. He refocused it onto Khan only
and had Khan stealing the Omega device, the Starfleet's weapon

(13:47):
of mass destruction. Everyone really liked this script. They thought
it was almost totally there, but not quite. When somebody
suggested the screenwriting wondercund Nicholas Meyer, who had done the
seven Percent Solution and then written and directed Time after Time,
one of the greatest time travel Jack the Ripper stories

(14:08):
ever committed to film.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
It's fantastic, that's the thing. This was only his second
major motion picture and now he's at the helm of
this big science fiction franchise. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Nicholas Meyer, like Harve Bennett is only a casual fan
of Star Trek. He is more of a classicist when
it comes to literature, and does not understand Star Trek
from a science fiction perspective, but really gets it from
its actual inspiration, which are the Horatio Hornblower books. So
his take is, oh, this is a naval warfare film.

(14:45):
I'll write it from that perspective, and also, let me
add in all this gravitas between Cohn and Kirk, and
let me add in all these layers where sequences are
going to be. Let me make this a great screenplay.
Nicholas Meyer decides and and becomes the directors.

Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah. He The quote that I read was Nicholas Meyer
called his approach Hornblower in outer space, and that is
completely apt for this. We've talked about this a little
bit offline for the Malonea and your contention is one
of the one of the best things about this we'll
get into is that this is a naval picture. These
are naval battles happening, but they just happen to be

(15:25):
happening in outer space, which is really it's almost it's
even a departure from a lot of the original series episodes.
There wasn't a lot of tactical stuff happening like we
see here, but it's almost spoiler alert. Kirk and Kahn
never occupy the same physical space. Everything is con spaceship

(15:46):
versus Kirk's ship, the Enterprise. It's amazing. What a what
an innovative approach to the movie.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Right, did you say spoiler alert for Star Trek to
the Wrath of Con Yeah, somewhere good.

Speaker 4 (16:02):
I don't look. We live in a I don't want
to give anybody any reason to go wood. I didn't
see yet. I guess if you haven't seen this forty
year old movie, then you're listening at your own.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Risks at the end.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
That's what's interesting about that. I've I dove into a
lot of Leonardiemoy interviews and things like that, and Leonard
Nimoy one of the reasons why he agreed to do
this picture was a he got the chance to do
a death scene with Spock, because by then he was
really sick of the character and he was always trying
to break free of that. But number two, he thought

(16:42):
this was going to be the last Star Trek movie,
so why not go out with a bang.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
Also, I much like Jeffrey Canzenberg, who made the pilgrimage
from Los Angeles to New York to see Leonard Nimoy
on stage and convince him to do Star Trek. Harve
Bennett did the exact same thing.

Speaker 4 (16:58):
Yeah, you can have nothing but love and admiration for
Leonard Nimoy. The more that I see interviews and read
about him, and I read his books and everything, and
I think all of his grievances with Star Trek are
completely for lack of a better word, they're logical. He

(17:19):
wanted to be compensated for. He knew his value, and
he knew that the leverage that he had the longer
this series went on, which is why he eventually is
able to transition into directing the pictures. Because at that
point he's irreplaceable. How do you have a Star Trek
movie without Spock? You can't. So I have nothing but

(17:41):
admiration for the guy. Plus he's a local guy. He's
from Boston. How can you not love him from Maldon?
See I thought he was from from actual Boston.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
No, his temple was in Maldon. I apologize.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
Ah, yes, that's where he learned how to do the live,
long and prosper.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Oh man, hey, folks, you listened to the fucking biggest
nerds on planet Earth. I just realized, let's talk about
those uniforms.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
I think we agree that these might be the best uniforms,
at least for the classic Original series movies, because they've
moved away from the dull, white, pale blue hospital looking
uniforms from the first movie. Now we have these are
much more in line with kind of almost militaristic in
a way. They are these kind of maroon uniforms with

(18:30):
a little latch in the top right hand corner that
you can unbutton it and the flap comes down so
you can open it up if you're looking more casual.
They're great. But what I read is a lot of
these were reused from the first picture. The reason why
they went with red was because that was the dye

(18:51):
that could handle the material the best was this deep
red color. I read that somewhere God bless it works
so well. Those are the quintessential.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, anything was going to be step above the uniforms
from the SS Pajama Party that we got the last
As far as I'm concerned, we go from the traditional
shirt slack boot combo of the sixties straight to Starfleet
is now a military organization. Lookout, Gene.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
These look like I would imagine an organization like Starfleet.
They look like you can actually discern ranks. They look
more formal. They remind me of dress uniforms that you
would see in the armed services. Now they just they
work in. The color scheme is a little more exciting,
the reds. The everything just seems a little darker and

(19:45):
more edgy and more grounded look wise in.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
This, including the look of the ships. We get the
Reliant here, which is my favorite Starfleet ship ever. That's
including up to now everything they've come up with since then.
Thing is cool is the fucking Reliant. And the great
hilarious bit of that is they sent those plans to
Harm Bennett, who was in Israel, I believe making The

(20:10):
golda movie, and he looked at the blueprints for the
Reliant upside down and approved it and sent it back
and they were like, what do we do? And I
guess we do it that way. So originally it was
supposed to be a mini version of the Enterprise, just
squat and compact, and then when they got it back,
they flipped it upside down and now it's a badass,
little fucking fighter.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
It is so good looking, the way in the cells
are underneath the main saucer section, and the thing of
it is, as we get into these tense naval battles
with the Enterprise, the Reliant almost has its own character.
When you see this thing zooming around, this little squat
ship that's really kicking ass. It's great. It just it

(20:53):
looks different enough where because I think up to this point,
I don't know how many other ships in the fleet
we'd see before in the original series, did we see
a lot of different You know, this is an Enterprise
class vessel or whatever, but did we see other ones
like this?

Speaker 1 (21:07):
No, we saw other ships. Basically, it would just be
other versions of the Enterprise. They just used other shots
of the Enterprise flipped or they changed the insignia or something.
But no, we didn't get any real other classes of ships.
Certainly not like this. Certainly not what we know now.
Back in the day, you could pick up the technical
manuals which had like dozens of variations of Starfleet ships,

(21:30):
but we never got to see any of them in
the flesh. We just got to look at the blueprints.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
I remember the.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Nerds because I still have my I still have my
technical manual.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
I remember those were those like Michael Lukuda books. Was
he the one who did all those I think he
and his wife actually were responsible for doing all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
That was all. Yeah, they took over for next generation.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
Surprisingly, the more thought about this as some are you're
watching this, there's a lot of firsts in this movie.
Like you said, we have our first look at a
vessel that's not the Enterprise, and it's so cool.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
They decided early on, obviously that this may It isn't
just Leonard Nimoy who thinks this might be the last movie.
Harve Bennett thinks this is going to be the last movie.
Knowing the budget that they've cut him down to. They
think they're going to go out with a bang here,
but they'll leave it hopeful obviously with the ending that
we eventually got. Oh no, now I forgot what I
was saying, Harve Bennett, so not only did okay, So

(22:26):
they decided that they're going to kill Spock at the
end of this movie. That's the big secret. And then
Star Trek fan groups find out and start freaking out
and revealing and starting letter writing campaigns about how fucking
angry they are and spreading the word that Spock is
going to die to all the fan groups and all
the conventions everywhere. And who leaked that information Nimoy Gene Roddenberry.

Speaker 4 (22:50):
Oh Let figures, and it does hamp.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
To derail the production. Leaks that information, which is, by
the way, the movie begins with the Kobeashi Maru scenario
and Spock is killed, as are most of the crew members. Yeah,
that is because the leak got out, so they thought
let's give it to the audience in the opening scene.
They'll forget all about it, and then we'll kill them
again at the end. Well, exactly what happened. It was genius.

Speaker 4 (23:17):
Yeah, because Kirk says when he sees Spock on the turbolift,
aren't you dead? And I remember watching it going they're
trying to throw people off the scent of Spock dying.
This is their way of saying, yeah, you might have
heard that Spock dies. It's just this Kobyashi Maru simulation thing.
By the way, this is what I was surprised by.

(23:38):
So as we get into this, I think everybody by
now is familiar with the concept of the Kobyashi Maru.
The no win scenario. Right, it's effectively entered the lexicon.
People who aren't even necessarily Star Trek fans might understand
the idea of the Kobyashi Maru. What surprise me, fatherm alone,

(24:01):
is this for something that is so central to the
original series lore of Captain Kirk in particular, this is
the introduction, the first mention of the Kobayashi maru in
this movie. And I would have sworn that I had
heard about it during the original series or something, or rather, no,

(24:22):
this was an invention for this particular movie. And it
is so shocking because it's it's been so canonized.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
Yeah, it's you're right, It is such an event that
you retroactively fit it back into the old series. Yes,
certainly we've seen this before, but no, we've not even
heard of this before. And it's one of my favorite
bits in the entire thing. And it's it not only
is just a cool thing to learn about these characters
and see what they go through the inner workings of
Starfleet and to hear that Kirk has been a son

(24:51):
of a bitch his entire fucking life because he reprogrammed
the computer so he could win. But it is actually
this whole movie is everything mirrors everything else. Everything from
the opening gets mirrored in the end. We're presented here
at the beginning with a no win scenario and Kirk
not accepting that, and at the end he has to
and I just like the mirroring there.

Speaker 4 (25:13):
Yeah, it works the mean more s these interviews I've seen,
he admits that the screenplay, the story for this movie
is just strong. It's probably the strongest in the whole series. Everybody.
The commonly held perception is that only the even numbered
Star Trek movies are any good, right, this happens to

(25:34):
be the thing that started that whole notion is because
it is so good and it's so strong, but it is.
We're going to talk about this as we get into
the fest a little more, and there's some more high
points and there's some not so high points. But I
would be hard pressed to think of a better complete
movie than this one. Story wise, direction, everything works.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
It ties back into the original scene, so it gives
us that it gives us a more action oriented portion
of it, which we did. It doesn't skimp on any
of the moral or intellectual problems with the Genesis device
and its introduction to the Star Trek universe and the
thing it does. And this is why Nicholas Meyer deserves

(26:20):
all the praise in the world. It does not run
from the fact that these are no longer a bunch
of people in their early thirties. This movie starts with
Captain Kirk's fiftieth birthday, which must have taken some severe
fucking convincing with William Shatner. But that is what actually
makes all the difference in this movie. It's that these
characters are now older and moved on. It should be

(26:43):
wiser and should have learned lessons that we watched them
learn in the original series, and it's time to start
paying those off dramatically, and Nicholas Meyer does that over
and over again.

Speaker 4 (26:54):
That's the whole notion of Kirk getting older. This is
set to this picture in many ways. This movie is
about Kirk learning to accept aging, learning to accept losing
people in his life, learning to lose, learning to accept

(27:15):
loss and move on. Because this movie begins and Kirk.
This is the first movie where Kirk is no longer
a captain, He's now Admiral Kirk. This is the starter
of that and he ends.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Upon them in the last movie.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
Was he That's right? I'm sorry you cut that up.
He's he was an admiral in that, but in this
movie they make it clear that he's struggling with this
idea that he's he feels ineffectual. He's no longer a captain.
He doesn't really have that excitement in his life anymore.
And there's a great scene with him and Bones where

(27:51):
Bones actually tells him, you should get the captaincy back
before you really do become an old relic. Don't let
that happen. So well, it.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Was the last movie though, they made him an admiral,
but it's just like lip service to the fact that
they've gotten older. It's like, you haven't seen these people
on television in ten years, so we have to do
something to prove that they've had lives past it. So
we'll make him an admiral. But when we meet Kirk,
he's getting on board the Enterprise and taking it over
as the captain, so it doesn't matter. Like here, we

(28:22):
get to see him being an admiral. We get to
see his retired life and the fact that he's thinking
about this stuff now, the fact that he realizes he
does need these fucking glasses if he wants to read
a book.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
Yeah's he has all these reminders that maybe his best days,
his most exciting days, are behind him. And granted, we've
had another five or six movies where we see him
vacillate back and forth, becomes comical towards the end where
he's still having this dilemma within himself, but it was
pretty novel for this particular movie. This is the first

(28:55):
time that he's really struggling with that question, because, as
you said, in the first movie, they just pay lip
service to the notion that he's admiral, but there's no
internal conflict there. He just decides, I'm the best person
to captain the Enterprise, so maybe I'll take over for now.
But this one, he's really it's like a midlife crisis,
really is what he's going through.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
And that midlife crisis has a name. That name is
Khan from the Eugenics Wars, remember them back in ninety
four to ninety six. Cohn was the worst of them,
but he was the most stylish, so I was always
Team Khan. I still have my Team Khan T shirt.
I don't wear it often because people are still a

(29:37):
little touchy about the Eugenics Wars.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
The word eugenics doesn't really fly too well these days,
nor should it. But but he was he basically was
genetically bred to be a superior human. The problem is
he was also a psychopath who had delusions of his
own grandeur and he felt like it was his place
to rule and to sub subvert people to his rule. Basically,

(30:05):
but how we.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Get care material we don't want to know. Kings get
out of here con NOONI and saying we're gonna freeze
you and ship you off to somewhere.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
The way they get to Cohn I think is really
smart and it's pretty ingenious. Where Now Chekhov is on
this other ship, the Reliant, the USS Reliant. He's is
he the first officer?

Speaker 1 (30:24):
I think he is the first commander Chekhov.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
But Paul Winfield classes up the joint by playing Captain Terrell.
They so there's this project called Genesis we have to
mention where, which is basically a terraforming bomb missile. Basically,
it's this ability you shoot this missile at a planet
that's dead, that has no life, and this thing has

(30:48):
some sort of matrix inside of it that can essentially
form life in a matter of hours. Basically, terraform a
whole brand new planet with life giving everything.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
So the reliant Mike Carol Marcus who used to be
involved with James T. Kirk off screen, yes, and bore
his son who is now a grown man and helping
her in her research for the Genesis project. For them,
Starfleet is out there scouting potential dead planets. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:17):
So they come across this planet called Seti Alpha six,
which appears to be a dead planet, but they get
these faint life readings when they scan mandate it has
to be a dead planet. So Chekhov and Captain Terrell
being down on the planet and they find essentially these

(31:38):
it's it's a ship that's been retrofitted as a survival
shelter because the planet is basically just a whirling sandstorm continually.
And they go poking around this sort of survival shelter,
and among other things, they find the markings of the
ship called the Botany Bay, and Chekhov the all the

(32:00):
way Botany Bank. No no, and he freaks out and
says to the captain, we have to get off. Let's
get out of here. This is bad because he remembers
Khan with what they went through, and they they go
outside there's something I want to say about this. But
they go out. They go outside to try and presume

(32:21):
presumably beam back up, and they're greeted by this large
corterie of masked figures waiting for the Yeah, they just
look odd. They're all dressed in black from head.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
To netal advisors. Man, they're so scared. Here's the thing
of them.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
Here's something that didn't occur to me. I'm sure there's
a good explanation for this father alone. But if I'm
gonna we're gonna spend a little bit of time poking
holes in this movie that we both love. Don't get
me wrong. No, why when Chekhov realizes the situation they're in,
why didn't he then immediately say check off the reliant

(32:59):
to be him up, get us out of here. There's
no explanation given. It's not like they say, we can't
get a lock on their fix. There's something jamming our frequencies.
Why didn't they immediately transport off of this godforsaken planet?
Do you know? Why?

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Do you want? The nerd reason? That's not featured in
the film, and therefore it can be easily dismissed something anything.
It was hard enough to beam them down onto that
wind swept, stormy planet outside, never mind with a within
a structure. They needed to get outside in order to
beam up, but as soon as they got outside they
were surrounded by cons people.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
Look, if they beam off, then there is no movie
such as it is. So I will accept that, but
it's certainly never called out or explained in the context
of a movie. I thought that was a bit of
an oversight. If all they had to do was say,
have a shot from the reli on saying we can't
get a fix on their coordinates, we'll keep trying that
way that they can't.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
I'm going to assume. I assume that happened, and I
don't need them to slow the plot down or the
reveal of Khan to let us know that they have
indeed thought of the fact that they can't emergency beam
them off the planet.

Speaker 4 (34:07):
That's fair. Like I said, it's just a little nerds.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Maybe Chekhov is just a panicky sort my man, and
he was just like, oh my god.

Speaker 4 (34:18):
So what ensues is something you talked about Poltergeist scarring
you the scene that comes up, But getting.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
There, I do want to say, because you said it
was ingenius they think they're on Seti Alpha six, which
is a dentist.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
We're getting to that, okay, but.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Seti Alpha six is blew up. It fell out of
its orbit and was destroyed, thus wrecking the entirety of
the planet of Seti Alpha five, making it seem because
now it has shifted its own orbit as if it
is Seti Alpha six.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
And that's a whole.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Bunch of nerd discourse out there about the impossibility of this,
and that Seti Alpha six they would have known because
of the wabble in its orbit and blah blah blah.
Just go with this.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
That doesn't bother me. But what I came away from
watching this again was so that is the crux of
Cohn's gripe. Okay, Captain Kirk and his crew marooned them
on this planet thinking that they were going to have
they're going to be had life, and it offered them
a fair chance to survive, and then this catastrophe happened.
Khan's problem is that Kirk never checked up on them.

(35:27):
And you know what I have to say, He's got
a great fucking point fa them alone. There was no
follow up. Okay, let's make sure that as much as
we don't want to deal with these criminals. We can't
just leave them there and hope that they're going to survive,
like we have a responsibility. They are effectively military prisoners.
At that point, I have to admit as much of
a psychopath as Cohn is, he I'm forced to agree

(35:51):
with him on this. That's his big thing. This happened,
and through the course of those events, he lost his
wife in addition to a good portion of his loyal crew.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Not only is Captain Kirk derelict in not checking up
on these people that he left on this planet, he's
derelict in not letting Starfleet know that a genocidal madman
is incredibly capable, has been marooned on a planet, and
maybe we ought to keep an eye on him. What

(36:23):
happens if Cohn is able to use a radio to
lure a ship down and then do what he wanted
to do. Anyway, somebody should be keeping an eye on him. Kirk,
You're all the way wrong.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
He's wrong. And Cohn does an age like normal people do.
He's effectively hundreds of years old, so there's he could
be a menace or a potential menace for dozens If
not hundreds of more years. He's got nothing but time
to figure out. And he's also incredibly smart because of

(36:56):
his genetic engineering, So yes, he has He's very justified
in his hatred of Kirk in this case, and Kirk
should be at the very least reprimanded for dereliction of duty.
That I have to admit like that. It didn't occur
to me as a kid, because you're just watching this
for the action and the fun. But my god, Con

(37:18):
is not exactly wrong here.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
No, man, Nicholas, Mine is bringing the pathos. Look out
what everybody has a justification, and we're going to fucking
be on board for.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
It, seriously. But the thing that I was getting to,
which is the thing that scarred me about this, is
that so Con is holding Terrell and Chekhov prisoner, and
he's expositioning all of this stuff about what happened to
the planet. And there is this cage, this looseight cage,
with something moving in the sand, and he says, I

(37:47):
want to introduce you to the only other native life
on Citi Alpha five and it's this I don't know,
this weird creature the spider, like not spider, but like.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
A slug it's a slug with mandibles, and it has
a young and in the folds of its gross little body.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
He pokes at this thing with these very violent too.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
It's angry. It's an angry kisses. Yeah, and those foresips
come and like.

Speaker 4 (38:16):
Any good villain, he starts describing to Terrell and check
off what he's about to do to them, which is
what happened to his wife. Is this creature, the slug
like creature, has the larvae that eventually they find their
way into your ears and they wrap themselves around your
cerebral cortex, which not only does it make you susceptible

(38:40):
to suggestion, but it eventually leads to madness and death.
And this is what happened to his wife. She succumbed
to these larva. Even watching it now, it's hard. The
soundtrack is very discordant and scary, and it's it was
a lot for a nine year old to take in.
It's like torture, really scary stuff.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Yeah, it's a It was a great year for fucking
our heads up.

Speaker 4 (39:07):
Seriously, they don't make movies like this, Like they used
to trust that kids could get through this kind of stuff.
Now it's not the case.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
But boy, yeah, and it's pretty brutal, and it continues
the new trend of jeez, what do we do with
Chekhov in this movie? I don't know. Can we brutalize
him in some way?

Speaker 4 (39:24):
It's true the last movie he got burned at his
station and he was didn't really do much beyond that.
But so what effectively what Con has done is he
has made Terrell and Checkov his slaves to lure the
Reliant Grace Jones great album. No, he has seen his

(39:45):
path to a starship. He's gonna basically lure the crew
of the Reliant down take over the ship, and then
he's gonna seek out Kirk and have his revenge. So
Con has seized his opportunity like any good megalomaniac would do.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
And thank god he's doing it because we wouldn't have
much of a movie without him. No, yeah, and okay,
so Con wants Con thanks to taking over the Reliant,
discovers the plans for Project Genesis and figures, oh, that's
a good weapon, and if I have that, then Starfleet
will have to bargain with me. So off he goes

(40:22):
to get Genesis. I'd like to point out that the
I'm sure every podcast ever has pointed out that the
Genesis sequence, made by ILM completely computer generated, the first
ever fully CGI sequence committed to film from beginning to end,
which is the planet being terraformed, going from dead rock

(40:43):
to living forests and oceans and stuff. And I also
like to point out that in early nineteen ninety three,
I went to see Frank Black at the Vine Theater
in Hollywood, and the opening act was Mazzie Star and
for the entirety of Mazzie Stars set behind them played
the Genesis sequence.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
It's a great sequence.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
It was a loop over and over, it was hypotizing.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
It was real cool stuff to see in nineteen eighty two.
I'd never seen anything like that. But I have to
say along with that, not to say that these are
all computer generated, but all of the enterprises, gauges and
viewscreens and everything, they all had an upgrade in this movie.
So instead of just having weird repeating flashing lights or

(41:29):
strange optical illusions that looped, we actually had. At one
point they show the shields being raised, and there's an
actual skim like a computer view of the enterprise with
the shield going up or them targeting things and you
see the target of the ship. It all looked really cool.
It felt more like a real ship a bridge, and

(41:51):
less like just the set that we put a bunch
of blinking lights and had them conveying that idea.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Or the eventual apple store that j Abrams would make
of the bridge. This feels like something that you would
actually be in in outer space, and if it came
to battle, then this is the bridge you want to
be in.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
Even when we eventually we get on the Enterprise, we
should say the Admiral Kirk is there because Spock is
leading effectively a training mission with a bunch of cadets.
They're going to take the Enterprise out for a little
bit of a training mission, and when he gets there,
he's going to Admiral Kirk inspects like the engine room,
even something like the engine room felt so much more

(42:32):
real because it looked like an engine room everything. There's
a lot of doors that are a clear loose sight
because you'd have to look inside and see the engine
working and tubes, and even some of the costuming when
things go south in the engine room, like they have
these triage masks that they have to wear. It all
looked really like it had. It felt grounded and real

(42:54):
to me.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
I will say that's one holdover from Star Trek, the
motion pictures, the engineering outfits, those sort of the bubble
armed white yeah fits. They're great, man, because once they
start getting scorched up, they really show the burn marks,
don't they.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
There's a lot of blood in this There's a lot
of burns and a lot of characters that get burned
on half of their face. It happens a lot in
this picture. We'll get to it, but it makes for
an interesting tableau to see somebody it's Gus fring and
breaking bad. Remember when he meets his end and he
gets up and half of his face is just a skull.

(43:30):
It's not to that degree, but it's definitely a little
jarring to see that much blood.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
It would be if they made Wrath of Con today.
They did make Wrath of Con today, and they didn't
do it. So what are we talking about?

Speaker 4 (43:40):
I'm going to We'll get to that. Yeah, we'll get
to it. But it's it's a good sort of thing
to hang the story on because effectively, the Enterprise has
an untested crew that has never been out in space before,
including what we learned back up for a minute, I
should mention I watched the director's cut of Star Trek two. Now,

(44:03):
for many years the only thing available was the theatrical cut,
and there are some differences that primarily dealing with Scotty's nephew,
who was a trainee in the engine room. It's implied
in the theatrical cut that he is related to Scotty,
but it's not explicit like the director's cut. Did you
watch the director's cut too, father Malone?

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Oh, yeah, of course I did, okay, And a lot
of the scenes that are in the director's cut had
shown up on television when they had finally broadcasted there
where they would take stuff out and put stuff in
for timing and whatever. So I had seen the scenes
with his son. I had seen the scenes with his nephew,
knowing that it was his nephew definitely, and then been
puzzled for years afterwards, wondering where those moments went and

(44:45):
did I imagine them? And I, oh, I must have
read it in the book or something, But yeah, it's there.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
It is. It's definitely better being made. More. Like I said,
I was able to connect the dots. There's a reason
why eventually, when Conn attacks the Enterprise and all these
casualties happen, including this fresh faced trainee. Scotty is completely
broken up over the whole thing. I am I figured
that he was a nephew. I knew he wasn't his

(45:12):
son or anything. But but that's one of the sorry
go ahead.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
I guess Scotti's sibling married an American and moved to
America because no trace of that Scottish brogue, those trace
of the scottishness and not at all. And that kid
from escape to which mountains, I know.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
They recognize him from somewhere. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, he's got that weird upturned nose.

Speaker 4 (45:35):
Yeah, he looks like a Disney contract actor.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
And that's what he is.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Yeah. Yeah, But that's one of the brilliant things about
CON's plot is he has stolen the Reliant, and the
Reliant intercepts the Enterprise. The Enterprise doesn't know what's going on.
They just figure that the Reliant.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Is we are big happy fleet.

Speaker 4 (45:58):
Yeah, and before they know what's going on, Kahn attacks
them unprovoked, which is where all these mass casualties on
the Enterprise happen. It's this is something that it was
like revelatory it's so sudden and so violent and so
evil that he would steal this ship, just just kick

(46:22):
Kirk's butt. I mean, Kirk is left with his pants
around his ankles. Effectively, he's got no he doesn't know
what's going on. And what it's happening is that Kahn,
almost immediately after doing this, wants to dictate terms of
Kirk's surrender. Kirk has no choice but to try to
bargain with him while he tries to figure out some
way out of this.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
I'm just thinking about all the dialogue in the CNHB.
While you're talking. All I'm hearing is their shields are down,
raise the shields up.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
It's it's really it's so tense because we've seen Kirk
in the original series go through tough situations that his
back has been up against the wall countless times. But
this feels that there's more at stake, because it feels
like the Enterprise could be destroyed right then and there.
He's got no choice but to try and bargain with

(47:15):
this madman while he figures this out. And sure enough,
like I know you have your problems with the solution
that he comes up with. I still am thrilled by
it every time I watch it.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
No, no, no, I don't have a problem with it. I
just think once Khan learns that you can use a
spaceship's prefix to lower their shields, that he himself would
use that eventually you would figure.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
But again, if I'm then going to do what you did,
which is put my own nerd hat on and try.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
To look it doesn't really matter because the enterprise after
this is fucked anyway. So they go into the Mutara
and Nebula at the end because they need to even
up the score, like they're crippled. Basically, I don't think
con lowering the shields would have mattered anyway. But it's
just something that occurred to me while I was watching it.
Once you tell Cohn something, he's going to use it

(48:04):
against you.

Speaker 4 (48:05):
But you have to admit it's still every bit as
thrilling now as it was then, because I remember.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, kid, thing this movie threw off the shackles that
like you that a space battle has to be a
dog fight. These are frigates, and it is just as
tense and as exciting. That lead up when the ships
are facing each other for the first time are as
exciting as anything I've seen, and it's just two giant
ships slowly gliding toward one another. The actual battle portion

(48:31):
of it is just the to use a phrase later,
sauce for the goose like that. That the sort of
the build up to that is the entire thing for me.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
But con says to Kirk, look, you have sixty seconds.

Speaker 1 (48:45):
To give you, sixty seconds for you and your rebellion crew.

Speaker 4 (48:49):
So he's given him all of a minute to send
over all of the information on Genesis and give himself
up for his crew or is going to destroy the
Enterprise regardless, So he's got a minute. Kirk and company
have a minute to figure out a way through this,
and I'm on the edge of my seat. How is
he going to get through this? And when he actually

(49:11):
does it, it's so satisfying as a viewer to reason
his way out. But then he after that he has
to reckon with the idea. So you have this moment
of triumph with Kirk. But then almost immediately.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Scotty he's such a bummer.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
Yeah, he Scotty has gone up the turbo lift holding
his dying nephew in his arms. And the nephew, by
the way, is the first of our half face burnt characters.
It was just the thing. And he gets his own
death scene with Kirk where he's in sick bay and
he says, is the word given, Admiral and Kirk says, yeah,

(49:52):
warp speed, and then the kid just expires right then
and there. It's pretty brutal. And then Scotty the waterworks
start and he doesn't understand what happened, and.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Only I warned him, being the head of engineering and everything.

Speaker 4 (50:06):
So now so they've damaged Con to the degree where
now he has to retreat and repair the ship, so
their blood vengeance battle has to hold for now. But
in the meantime Con has gone to the space station
Regular one, where the Genesis weapon or the Genesis devices
is held with all the scientists, and this is also

(50:28):
where it gets brutal.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
This movie is so fucking brutal because.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
Eventually the Enterprise makes their way over to the space
station to see what's going on, and they find it
completely deserted, and McCoy is one of the people who's
on a landing party who's looking and there's nobody. They
can't find anybody there, and McCoy's looking, and then he
turns around and there's like a it's like a Friday
the Thirteenth type sting, and he runs into a dead

(50:54):
body that is hanging from its feet upside down. His
throat has been slit, and McCoy is, Jim, You've got
to see this. He's horror as he would be justifiably horrified.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
But then donal elly, he says the first motherfucker you
ever hear in the Star Trek universe. He just he
looks at all the bodies like motherfucker. Maybe that was
the director's cut. Was that? I don't know.

Speaker 4 (51:17):
I wanted to talk a little bit before we go
any further. You mentioned Kursey ally is in this picture.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
She plays speaking the director's cut, so she plays.

Speaker 4 (51:27):
Savag, who is another Vulcan. She's I think the navigator
on the Enterprise, and she is Spock's replacement, spokes replacement exactly.
Can I be really honest for a minute, No, no
real disrespect to Chursty Allie, because I thought she was
great on Cheers. I don't think she's very good in

(51:47):
this picture. Father Malone. I never really liked Curse the
Alley as Savag. I much preferred Robin Curtis that we
get in Star Trek three and four, Well, what did
you think?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Would you have preferred their original choice Kim Katroll?

Speaker 4 (52:04):
She was the original choice here.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
Nicholas Meyer's original choice for Savic was Kim Katroll. And
you know this to be true because when Star Trek
six rolls around, he has another chance to cast a vulcan,
and he cast Kim Katrol.

Speaker 4 (52:16):
Right, No, I would say, no, I really liked Robin
Curtis that we're going to see in Star Trek three
outs she.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Was definitely the most vulcan the of the three performances.
But I would counter that this is another half vulcan, But.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
I that doesn't matter to me. It's her performance. She
feels a little more wooden here. There's something in the
way she's delivering her lines. There's almost not a smirk,
but there's just it doesn't feel like there's a lot
of there's a lot going on, I don't get. I
don't feel like there's a lot of internal stuff happening.

(52:55):
I don't know. She just feels flat to me. She
feels flat and wooden to.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
Me, like an actor who doesn't understand science fiction going.
I don't know just what am I saying? Okay, whatever.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
Yeah, it's what you said. Robin Curtis was vulcan to me,
and I think it just needed that. And she's so
central in a lot of ways through a lot of
these scenes. She's in it a lot, and I just
I wish she was better, I really do, but I
just I can't. She may be one of the biggest

(53:28):
missteps in this movie for me.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Disagree. I think she's real pretty and I like looking
at her.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
I'm not disputing her beauty. That's fine. But if you're
going to cast somebody just for their beauty, you could
have cast a hundred other actresses to do the same
thing and be as wooden and as.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
They should have cast young Alice Kreege, the eventual Borg Queen.
She would have been a fucking phenomenal vulcan.

Speaker 4 (53:56):
She would have been great. I just you could, like
you could have gotten a dozen other actresses who would
have done a better job. And I again no disrespect
to her, because I think she's actually a very good
comedic actress and I think she's done great work in
other things. I just don't feel like it took me

(54:17):
out of the movie a little bit this last time
I watched it. I just felt like that's a little
bit of a gaping hole there where there should be
something a little more solid.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Name the worst actresses to potentially be cast as vulcans.
I'll start Terry garr.

Speaker 4 (54:34):
Ruth Buzzy three.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
D Wallace. You know what, I bet she would actually
turn it out if you put her in the wig,
gave her those bangs in the fucking ears. I bet
Dee Wallace would have gotten into it and been a vulcan.
I think Wallace would have been a good Remove her
from the list.

Speaker 4 (54:49):
And I totally agree there. Jane Fonda, Nah, I bet
she'd be good.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
She was Barbarella. I think she gets si fied, she
knows it.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
Okay, Then forget that. Lily Tomlin perfect.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
She'd be good vulcan. She'd be a good vulcan.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
You know, Kilda Radner good vulcan. No way, Dolly Parker,
not a chance, I do. You're gonna go Dolly Parker.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I think that's characters.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
But that's too easy, and she didn't start out as
an actress. Ellie Long, we're gonna keep with the.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Would have been good good. Diane Lane, No, she.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
Could have been good. She's got a dramatic side. I
think she would have been fantastic.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Yeah, I'm maybe saying that ironically to my premise here,
because I think Diane Lane actually would have been a
great fucking choice for Savog.

Speaker 4 (55:35):
I actually think Carrie Fisher could have done a good
job too.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
Geez. There were so many people that you would have
preferred to.

Speaker 4 (55:42):
There was a lot. And again I feel bad because
you know, rest in peace, Chursty Alley, what have you.
But it doesn't give me pleasure to say what I'm saying.
But I just don't. I don't think she was right
for this.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
We'll play a blaster beam in her honor.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
You know that the guy who invented and played the
blaster been I mean Craig Huxley. Craig Huxley, he composed
the music that plays underneath the Genesis video that you
talked about, the computer generated demonstration. That's his music playing
underneath that.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah, it's a nice tie to the first film and
the James Horner's reverence to Jerry Goldsmith. James Horner taking
over composing duties here and let's talk about that for
a little bit. Oh my god, Look, it sounds remarkably
like his score to Battle Beyond the Stars. But I'm
not going to hold that against him, because this is

(56:36):
a great score.

Speaker 4 (56:37):
I thought it was wonderful. It has the rousing numbers
that you need for these moments of triumph. But there's
some beautifully dark pieces of music that relate specifically to Cahn.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Oh my god, the one motif with the horns just
no no no no no no no no no no
no no.

Speaker 4 (56:58):
At on the way. Yeah, it's fantastic.

Speaker 5 (57:01):
To me.

Speaker 4 (57:02):
It feels more modern than Jerry Goldsmith's the Motion Pictures score,
and it.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
If I scrint the idiot, it's less flighty.

Speaker 4 (57:12):
If I squint a little bit, it almost feels a
little bit like John Williams taking a stab at a
Star Trek score because it has motifs and themes that
kind of come back and we revisit. But it has
all this great discordant stuff propulsive. It's awesome. I loved
this soundtrack. In some ways, I like it. I loved

(57:33):
how lavish and lush the motion picture score was. But
if I'm being honest, I think I like the score
a little bit more as a piece of music.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
I think the next I think the motion picture score
is appropriate for that movie. But that movie is an
outlier as far as the rest of the Star Trek
films go. It's if we could forget it, we would.
There's just so much weirdness about it, from the uniforms
on up.

Speaker 4 (58:02):
It's it's a miracle that they even made a second one,
despite the fact that it was so successful at the
box office. It was such a weird movie it was
hard to see a way through that. And all credit
goes to Harve Bennett for figuring it out.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
By night look that the first movie was a big success.
I remember My Happy Meal from McDonald's. The very first
Happy Meal tie in was with Star Trek Wow, where
they had I remember the box itself and they had
a little Klingon puzzle. They had to solve on it.
That's all I remember. I do wonder if they had
some sort of vegure toy to give away. This probe

(58:42):
was sent out by mankind and now he wants to
hits your Happy Meal. Yeah, here's Spock in quiet contemplation.

Speaker 4 (58:53):
So it had. It came with a little like reproduction.
It looks like a walkie talkie. Oh yeahs it says
Star Trek on it. I had that looks like some
stickers or some iron on transfers with the Federation iconography.
There is a little game, like a little board game
inside of it where you have to make it to

(59:15):
vegure like a little it's like a It's basically just
a piece of paper that you fold out and you
can play a game on it. The box has all
these fake buttons and screens like as if it was electronic. Wow,
it's pretty surprising. It's very elaborate.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
In the commercial feature to Klingon, did they really?

Speaker 5 (59:34):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (59:34):
It's and it had a ring. It had a plastic
ring that had a picture of the Enterprise that you.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Could put on and a little note telling you how
sad all of these proceedings are. How little you can
relate to this franchise at this present time.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
Oh, here's a trivia question for you. How much do
you think a happy meal back then with a hamburger
and with a cheeseburger? What do you think the price
breakdown is? How much you figure it would be with cheeseburger,
which is the more expensive of the two options.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Dollar fifty You.

Speaker 4 (01:00:07):
Are so close. It's a dollar fifty eight back then
nineteen eighty.

Speaker 1 (01:00:13):
Anyway, let's get back to the Star Trek show.

Speaker 4 (01:00:15):
Yes, sir, let's do it. So we were talking about I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Talking about beaming down to the planet with the actual
Genesis project is after Kirk is reunited with Carol Marcus
and his petulant son Merrit Buttrick from Square Pegs. I'm
gonna keep saying that, do.

Speaker 4 (01:00:30):
You know Merk Buttrick was all of twenty nine years
old when he passed away.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
That's horrible. So young, so young, And he was on
Square Pegs. He was on Square new wave television series
that lasted two seasons on CBS.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
No. I can still hear the theme in my mind.

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
I was square Pegs, Square Pegs, square Pegs, always never
quite right.

Speaker 4 (01:00:55):
Part of the reason why they hired him specifically is
because he he physically looked like he could be the
offspring of James Kirk and Carol Marcus because his hair
was curly like William Shatner's, but physically he resembled Carol Marcus.
I actually think that's pretty smart because you look at

(01:01:18):
him and you can actually see both of them in
his face. Yes, he's petulant, and he's a little bit
seems a little moody for somebody who's like a hy
falutint scientist. But I always liked Merk Buttrick, iways thought
he was a decent actor back then.

Speaker 1 (01:01:32):
Did you ever read that Gene Rodenberry's notes on Nick
Myer's version of the screenplay.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
No, how critical was he, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
All really stupid stuff. Like when we meet Carol, Marcus
and David, he's complaining about Starfleet and you know how
they're basically a military organization and he doesn't like dealing
with them. And one of Roddenberry's notes was, these sciencesists
would not be speaking ill of Starfleet. They wouldn't be

(01:02:04):
just they would not disparage them. They're not a military organization.
They're one of exploration. Like Gene, we got it. That
was the sixties, man, Like, people are going to have
a problem with Starfleet. Get the fuck over it already.
It is not a utopia you created. We need to
have some drama.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
That's one of the most realistic things in the movie
I thought, which is that these scientists have an innate
suspicion of the military because they know that the capabilities
of the Genesis device, and they this is a common
refrain with any scientific discovery. They're worried that it could
be applied to some sort of dreadful military application. I

(01:02:43):
buy that. I think their concerns are warranted, and we
see that play out here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Absolutely. Look, the Genesis device is one of a piece thing.
It's an idea to terra form to bring life to
the lifeless, but it can just as easily be shot
into a planet that is already populated and destroy everything.
They've got some blood on their hands to them. They're
scientists blame in Starfleet, but look, there's plenty of blame
to go around. This is not the future Zootopia. The

(01:03:13):
future frutopia that fucking Rodenberry kept going on about.

Speaker 4 (01:03:18):
That can only that kind of I don't know optimism,
like willfully blinded optimism. It can only get you so far.
And that works a lot better, I think, to a
great degree with the next generation as well. We'll talk
about when we get into those movies. That is a
utopia that I can buy that. I feel it feels
real to me without being cloying.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
But starting in season three, when Geen Rodberry was no
longer around and the writers were like, oh man, we
can actually do stories that are involving and people can
relate to as opposed to this godlike race of humans
out in the future, benevolently deigning to bring lesser races
into the fantastic starfleet.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
Yeah, what was the spock thing? I D I see?
Was it infinite diversity in commonality or something? It was
he wanted to market necklaces with the I D I see.
It was like his way of marketing the spot character
that ID I see necklace.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
So another word to make a buck off a NEMO.

Speaker 4 (01:04:24):
So it turns out they're still under the influence of
the mind worms and send They send the coordinates to Kahn,
who beams up the Genesis device, but not before Terrell
finally goes crazy. When he's ordered to kill Kirk, he
turns the phaser. It's another horrible tableau that plays in
front of us. He turns the phaser on himself. And

(01:04:46):
there's something about the way that that the people who
are shot with phasers scream in this it just seems
like an awful way to die, to shoot yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:04:56):
The way that they de res as it were. Yeah,
it's horrible. It seems like patchwork, like you're going in
pieces slowly as opposed to Yeah, yeah, you would just
get kill the faser and fall over. Your body would
light up for a second and go fall over. And
in the original series, here it's slow disintegration and it's
very painful.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
It looks awful, but fortunately Chekhov screams and he falls.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
For fortunately, Oh man, I'm talking about slug whole weirdness.

Speaker 4 (01:05:27):
Yeah, the slug crawls out of his ear and Kirk
kills it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
So chess playing Russian brain was just too strong for
that one.

Speaker 4 (01:05:36):
So it looks like old Kirk is met his match.
There's nothing he's stuck in this planet.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
But okay, and here is one of these you don't
like to see the movie we discussed this. Yeah, I
will go on hurting you. I will leave you as
you left me, buried alive. Okay, bye, mister Spock. Please
take the Enterprise to the nearest star base and turn
here with an armada. Also, you might want to start

(01:06:03):
tracking the Reliant and fuck them up, because there's more
than one ship in this star fleet. I can count
down here in the Genesis Cave eating delicious looking apples.

Speaker 4 (01:06:15):
My counter to that would be, we already know that
the Enterprise is in no shape to go toe to
toe with the Reliant.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
They should have already left as soon as they beamed off.
The Enterprise should have turned tail and done exactly what
they broadcast, Go find a starbase, return with an armada.

Speaker 4 (01:06:33):
I don't think the Enterprise could go that. I don't
think it could go on anything but impulse power at
this point. It can't warp away, can't travel fast. What
are the odds that? What are the odds Con wouldn't
find them there on his sensors and then just take.

Speaker 1 (01:06:47):
Him out at that At that moment, Con was just
as fucked up as they were.

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
Now he'd done his repairs, he was better.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
No, no, they beamed over to the regular one because
they knew they had time because Con was focked at
that point.

Speaker 4 (01:07:02):
But in the meantime he had he had the time
to do repairs on his ship. That's why he retreated. Remember,
the Enterprise is not going anywhere. We have to retreat,
we have to withdraw.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
He says that, listen, people make decisions in the moment.
And I'm not saying that everything we see on screen
isn't totally valid, And this criticism isn't coming from a
place of forty five or so years of watching this
goddamn movie. Yeah, I just want to say that tactically,
James T. Kirk, who beat the Kobyashi Maru, would have said,

(01:07:37):
go get help.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
I choose to believe that the situation was still so
tenuous that he couldn't afford to put the Enterprise at risk.
I hear what you're saying, but I don't necessarily buy
it completely.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
All power to the communications array, Uhura, please do your stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:07:53):
Con would have picked up on it, and that would
have been it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Heren want the fucking transmission that they made to like
the nearest frigate or fucking dreadnought of the Starfleet Armada.

Speaker 4 (01:08:03):
He would have jammed all frequencies.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
They could get out of here. And speaking of there's
the other problem with the movie, right, They're like, we
can't see him. We think he's on the other side
of this planet. And then later when they get back
on the ship, they bring up tactical and it shows
exactly where they are. Nevertheless, out of that plot hole, buddy.

Speaker 4 (01:08:23):
Let me switch gears for a minute. And this is
in no way a capitulation for them alone. I merely
want to get this in before I forget about it now.
Let's I want to talk a little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
So.

Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
Carol Marcus is played by actress Babe besh Right. When
I watched this movie as a nine year old, she
seemed so old to me. Both both her and Kirk
seemed old, like the idea that they had this adult son.
I just figured, Wow, they're old. She was all of
forty years old at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Father Malone, Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
She was twelve years younger than us.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Now, yeah, I know, I'm an old man, So were
you what do you so?

Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
God him? Kirk Shatner was fifty one at the.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Time, which is the character's age, and it would make
sense that he would have had a dalliance with a
woman ten years.

Speaker 4 (01:09:13):
I will say this was this is the dawning of
the sort of pawnche Shatner.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
Oh man, Thank god, this particular uniform belts very flattering. Yeah,
it won't be flattering by the time we get to
say generations true.

Speaker 4 (01:09:29):
But he was time as a control panel captain. Anyway.
I just wanted to mention that because it occurred to
me as I was watching this. Wow, I can't believe
how young she actually was, but and that kind of
how old are we meant to believe that David Marcus
was in this twenty two, twenty three.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
Yeah, yeah, I guess she could have.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
Had she would have been She would have had to
have been about eighteen years old when she had him,
because then he.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
Could have been in her twenties. Just the actor's ages
don't really matter. S she's forty and he's fifty in
this movie. And he met her twenty years ago when
he was thirty and she was twenty and they had
a fling on Regular nine or whatever the fuck, and.

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
I don't know anyway, let's move on. They're on. When
they're in the Genesis Cave biding their time, Kirk and
Savag and McCoy, that's when we learned the truth about
the Kobyashi Maru, which is that the only reason Kirk
was able to win is because he cheated. He changed,
he reprogrammed the simulation so that it was possible to
save the ship that was in the neutral.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Zone, and that's where they're in the no win scenario.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
That's the and that will come back to haunt Kirk,
as we'll see at the end of this movie, because
that's exactly what he is faced with. But again, it
just knocks me out that the Kobyashi Maru wasn't something
that was mentioned in the original series because it's so
ingrained in the lore of Star Trek at this point.

Speaker 1 (01:10:56):
And can I just say, we're going to get there eventually.
But the fucking jj Abram's first Star Trek movie where
they show the Kobeyashi mur they show him beating it
is the worst representation of that, Like we'd all imagined
and so in some way we had all fan fictioned it,
so nothing was going to satisfy seeing that. But the

(01:11:17):
way they do it, where he's so cavalier that he's
just whatever, and he's like chewing on an apple and shite,
it was just like, so he was just like, basically
should have walked in with a sandwich board that said
I cheated basically.

Speaker 4 (01:11:28):
But what I think the only interesting thing to come
out of that is, as Shatner says, or as Kirk says,
in this he was given a commendation for original thinking,
for figuring out a way through this thing, But in
the Abrams retelling it's the exact opposite. He doesn't get
a commendation. He's actually brought before like the board the

(01:11:51):
administration to answer for he could get expelled for what
he did. Basically, I thought that was maybe the only
interesting thing to come out of This is an actual fact.
If a student went in and reprogrammed the simulation and cheated,
they wouldn't be plauded applauded for it. They would probably
be put up before the academic board for cheating. No,

(01:12:12):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Kirk and Star Trek two is not saying I got caught.
He's saying I've reprogrammed it and they gave me a
commendation because I solved their problem. In the Abrams one,
he gets caught and then they put them up on trial. Now,
the Abrams one could have been saved in my opinion,
if they catch him and then give him a commendation

(01:12:34):
before innovative thinking.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
That's fair. We'll get to that. We got a few
movies to make our way through.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
But in the meantime, here we the Batar and Nebulas.

Speaker 4 (01:12:43):
Yes, Kirk and company are beamed back aboard the enterprise.
That there was some subterfuge with the with the terminology
that Spock and Kirk used, leading ConA believe it would
take days for the Enterprise to be prepared, but In fact,
it only took a few hours to get them to
a minimal state of operation.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
Naval shit going on some naval codes. They got a
bosun's whistle in this speaking of the Navy, we've never
seen that of the Enterprise before.

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
I love that. I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
There's a no smoking sign on the bridge.

Speaker 4 (01:13:17):
That's a sign of the times. So they decide, or
they figure out that they're near this thing called the
Mutara nebula, and they know that if they enter into
this nebula, their shields and anything tactical will effectively be
rendered useless. But they also know that if they can
entice Cohn into there, they'll be on even footing, because

(01:13:38):
then con will be as blind as defenseless as they are.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
He doesn't want us going in there.

Speaker 4 (01:13:43):
It's so they go in.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
The Kirk is so full Kirk at the end of this,
he is in so full control. This is the culmination
of everything from the television series. All the bravado, all
of the skill, all of the like what we expected
from Captain Kirk as a capable Starfleet captain is fully
on display here.

Speaker 4 (01:14:04):
Exactly. He is in Captain Kirk mode here because he
knows this is their only chance. And he's so confident
in his ability to out maneuver Khan because, as Bock
says to him, Khan, in all of our dealings with him,
Khan has shown a remarkable He only seems to deal
in two dimensional thinking. And Kirk recognizes this means, okay,

(01:14:26):
we're in starships, we're in this space. It's not just
about next and a y axis. There's a z axis
that we're dealing with. He knows that he can out
maneuver Khan in this nebula and get behind him, get
the drop on him, and in fact, that's exactly what
he ends up doing. He like any good naval battle,
he outflanks Khan's ship, the Reliant, and basically they go

(01:14:50):
at it, and it's a great sequence. It's very tense,
but it's also got those rousing moments where he gets
the upper hand.

Speaker 1 (01:14:57):
And that sequence is born of Nicholas Meyer talking to
the people at the who were doing the effects and
they had to explain to him, you're in space, so
it's not like a naval battle. You can go up
this way and that way, and him going, oh okay,
let me write that into the script.

Speaker 4 (01:15:13):
It's great. So they have this effectively this naval battle,
and Kirk's gambit works. He shoots the shit out of
the Reliant and the Reliant has lost one of its
nascelles and Khn is in fact mortally wounded at that point,
and we get another, yet another person who his face
is burned on one half. I don't know why what

(01:15:34):
the obsession was with this, but Khan has this like
Freddy Krueger look on one half of his face and as.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
A last grist being too much sure.

Speaker 4 (01:15:45):
And you can tell that he can't use one of
his arms because what he does is as a last
ditch measure, he sets the Genesis device to debt Date
to self destruct on the ship. But to do that,
he's got to reach up with his one good hand
and do this little spinny thing which actually looks quite

(01:16:06):
real for something that's got to unlock this Genesis device,
but he sets it to self destruct.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Montabon's performance here convinced young me that action in these
movies might have consequence beyond somebody just falling over and
either being dead or recovering. In the next scene, he's
playing his injuries so fucking realistically and painfully it's hard

(01:16:33):
to watch.

Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
It is because you can tell that's he doesn't have
much long left. He looks awful and his movements convey that.
So he sets the Genesis to self destruct effectively, and
the Enterprise there's a problem with the warp drive, and
the Enterprise can't there's no way they can get away
in time to avoid the destruction of this. And this

(01:16:56):
is where many tears were shed because Spock realizes that
he's got to try and figure out some way to
do this. So Spock mind melds with McCoy and says remember.
And that was actually something that Nicholas Meyer and Nimoy
talked about because they wanted to leave this remote possibility

(01:17:17):
that maybe Spock this is science fiction, we could bring
Spock back, possibly, but we need to leave ourselves an
out to figure out how are we going to bring
him back? How does he possibly survive this awful end?
And that's what they did. It was actually Nimoy's idea
to use the word remember, because they're like, what does

(01:17:38):
he say, what does he do? What do you remember?
It's so vague that you can almost make anything out
of it. But I give them full credit for keeping
their options open because they felt good about this movie.
Everyone talked about how great the story was and how
awesome it was coming together. Nimoy I think was seeing
the possibility of, you know what, maybe this could lead

(01:18:01):
to other things. Maybe this isn't the end after all,
So I got to keep my options open. So that's
what he does. He mind melds with McCoy in the
Vegas terms possible, just in case he was to come back,
and it was pretty prescient hiccup shots.

Speaker 1 (01:18:18):
It was done way after that was not part of
the original shooting, not part of principal photography. That is
them literally covering their asses and going got to get
something in there in case we got to do something
to come back, because yeah, Nemai's got cold feet, because
we've got a winner on our hands.

Speaker 4 (01:18:33):
But what ensues is what every diehard Trek fan was dreading,
which is Spock takes the cap off and it's like
this jet of energy that shoots up that he's got
to put his hands in and rejigger something and do
something to this warp engine. It all looks, it still
looks really good. It doesn't. The effect is actually very

(01:18:54):
effective because it's almost like he's got this blast of
radiation that he's fighting against the warp engine and he
whatever he does works, and we cut to the bridge
and I think, like Sulu says, oh, we have full
power restored, Captain. And what's great is Kirk says, all right, Scotty,
you've done it. Let's get out of here, and they

(01:19:14):
get out because he thinks, oh, it's just a miracle
worker doing his thing again. Guy, this is what Scotty does.

Speaker 1 (01:19:21):
Price that he's about to pay right.

Speaker 4 (01:19:23):
He hasn't even.

Speaker 1 (01:19:24):
Realized that, for hate's sake, Khan has spit his last
breath at him.

Speaker 4 (01:19:30):
Kirk looks over at Spock's station and realizes, oh shit,
Spock's not here. He puts two and two together and
he runs. He races down to the engine room. He
even does this thing where he's coming down a ladder
and instead of going down rung after rung, he kind
of holds the outside and slides all the way down.
Did you notice that he did that move?

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
Of course, it's the first time I ever saw it
when I was a kid, and it made me just
want to do that every time I got near on
a ladder.

Speaker 4 (01:19:57):
It's like a swashbuckling move. And he rushes over to
the engine room and he's going to open it in
McCoy and Scotty stop him. Scotty's words are still how
do they get to me? Scotty, he says, well, you'll
flood the whole compartment. Don't open it is radiation and.

Speaker 1 (01:20:15):
No, man, I think of that line too, and I
just no.

Speaker 4 (01:20:17):
Sometimes he says. The line is he says Spock, and
Scotty says he's dead already. He's not actually dead, but
the gravity of that is pretty heavy, because he's still
he Once he realizes that Kirk is there, he Spock
who's been radiated in his skin. It looks a little

(01:20:40):
melty and not good. He gets up in what the
best part of this is that he gets up and
he actually straightens his uniform. He's dying right there in
front of us, but he still wants to straighten his uniform.
In the vulcan, he looked presentable for the captain. So
he goes over. We all know the conversation. We've seen
the seen a million times.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Part is that he walks into that pillar. Yeah, and
then recovers like that moment is, oh fuck, Spock is
going to die.

Speaker 4 (01:21:09):
He's really it's taking everything in him just to be
able to talk to Captain Kirk one last time, and
they have this conversation about the ship that's out of danger.
Don't weep for me, captain, because you know.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
The mays everybody, it's Nicholas sticking in literature every which way.
Original title for the movie was Undiscovered Country, and they
in Paramount said, get the fuck out of here. What
does that mean?

Speaker 4 (01:21:39):
He'll get there? Eventually, he'll get there. So Spock gives
one last live long and prosper puts his irradiated mitt
right up to the wall. Kirk kind of touches, does
that thing where he touches like the boy in the
plastic bubble. He touches it, and then Spock expires and
it's there. There was no way as a kid to

(01:22:01):
prepare for that. It was like, really, Spock is actually dead.
That can't be.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Rivers Nerd tears flowed down the aisles of movie theaters
around the nation.

Speaker 4 (01:22:15):
The best was yet to come because then they cut
to They've put Spock's body in a photon torpedo casing
and they're giving.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
What are they doing?

Speaker 4 (01:22:26):
Very unorthodox Spock.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
Okay, this does he have a d n R type?
But document somewhere on file back at Starfleet that none
of you are bothering to even contact them, to let
them know how many crew members are now dead and
what do they want to do with their remains. No,
I've got an idea. Let's stick them in a photon
torpedo tube and shoot him at that planet.

Speaker 4 (01:22:49):
I don't. I don't know why they didn't. He must
have had There must have been instructions for the proper man.

Speaker 1 (01:22:58):
If I have to die, please shoot my body at
a newly formed planet.

Speaker 4 (01:23:03):
It's like something that Hunter Thompson would do. You don't
expect a Spock to be on board with us, but for.

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Whatever reason, he is a half human. Apparently human is
a fucking rager.

Speaker 4 (01:23:15):
But despite all of that, Kirk is given this speech,
and again it's brutal to watch it. Brutal in the
best way because.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
Listen, people make fun of this because he breaks when
he says the word human when he's discussing his best
friend who is half vulcan and half human, and he's
now just realizing the price he's paid in this fucking
battle that was all his fault to begin with. This
is his chickens coming home to roost his dead friend,

(01:23:44):
and William Shatner as fucking James T. Kirk breaks talking
about him. I felt it then, I feel it now
if anyone is laughing about Shatner's performance, and I know
he's a big motherfucking ham obviously, but this isn't Ham.
This is and if you can't get with that, then
get at it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:04):
It's one of his best line readings ever. It is
so emotional and so raw because I think anyone who
has been a similar situation, maybe you're at a funeral
or mourning the death of a loved one and you're
trying to talk and you get that catch in your

(01:24:24):
throat because the emotion catches up to you and you
just can't even get the words out. Anyone can relate
to what he's going through because he just he made
it through most of the words that he's given at
this effectively, this sort of given his last words to
his dead friend. But the words just his you know,

(01:24:45):
that throat tightening thing where you just can't go on.
That's it, and it's so relatable and it's so human,
and it's, like I said, it's probably one of his
best single performances that moment.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
And then they cut the legs out from the end,
tirety of all the emotion, with a wink of guess what, folks,
bonklebe back in Star Trek three. I'm surprised they didn't
have a fucking credit to come up to say Spock
will return in Star Trek three the Search for Spok.

Speaker 4 (01:25:13):
Clearly they were already anticipating this, But if things had
broken differently, maybe, if it hadn't been successful, maybe this
could have functioned as the elegy for Spock. Because they
don't ever tell you, hey, he's going to come back,
or how he could possibly come back. There's no way
of knowing that the last shot is really they've shot

(01:25:34):
the coffin effectively onto the Genesis planet, and that's it.
It could have gone any which way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
It could go anyway. When his photon torpedo coffin arcs
through the air, glowing brightly as amazing grace is played
on the bagpipes, and then we see that his photon
torpedo tube has somehow survived entering the newly formed atmosphere
and landed gently in a jungle. We just sitting there.
What could be in there? If they didn't have the

(01:26:03):
shot of the photon torpedo tube and the obvious what
could happen, folks, we don't know. Then, I would agree,
but it is in there, and this is Nicholas Meyer
like that was foisted on him. He didn't want that
shot in there.

Speaker 4 (01:26:18):
Look, we have the benefit of hindsight because obviously he
did come back, and we know this now, but at
the time there's no such thing as a sure thing.
When it came to this, things break a little differently.
Maybe Memoi decides I'm never going to come back. I
think this death scene was it for the character. I'm done.

Speaker 1 (01:26:38):
Here's the thing. You can either have the photon torpedo
tube or Spock doing the famous Space the final Frontier
speech at the end. You can't have both because both
is we'll definitely be talking with seeing Spock again. One
could be a send off, another could be a sendoff. Together,
it's see you next summer.

Speaker 4 (01:27:00):
I was fine with it because I just thought they
were hedging their bets, and I get it that maybe
Meyer wanted it to be more final and he didn't
want to have any equivocation about whether that because it
it does undercut the seriousness of the situation to have
It's as if Tony Stark's Iron Man died and then
the next movie he just comes back and it's okay,
guess what, he didn't actually die.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
It's not already emotion. That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 4 (01:27:25):
Right. But I I.

Speaker 1 (01:27:26):
When if he wanted to come back and do Star
Trek three, he said, I can do vengeance. I can't
do resurrection.

Speaker 4 (01:27:33):
I just think, again, we have the benefit of the
way things happened, but this could very easily have gone
the other way. Again, a few things break differently, Nimoy
decides he's done. Maybe they call it a day after
Star Trek two, you go with a bang. Maybe it's
not as successful. Who knows, But that's not the way
things happen. So we can only go with the history

(01:27:54):
as it played out.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
Oh ultimately, look, this is the remains the best film
in the series.

Speaker 4 (01:27:59):
Oh yeah, without questioning. Let me back up, this was
the very best of the original series Star Trek movies.
I'm not gonna say it's the best of the next
generation movie because there's at least one incredible entry in
that series that I would hold up favorably against this.
We'll get to it. Yeah, but certain men earlier, right,

(01:28:22):
But certainly amongst the original series films, this was the
very best. But that's not to say there's some good
ones on the horizon. There's some not so good ones
and some at least one very terrible one we'll get to.
But in this case, I'm safe like you are in
saying this was the best of the originals.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
Good bad. It's all win win as far as I'm concerned.
Even the bad ones are going to be enjoyable here.
But this is Head and Hilder's above all the original
series movies. The tone is perfect, the fucking plotting is perfect,
the gravity with which they approached the subject matter and
the characters and consequences. Not to mention what a fucking

(01:29:08):
densely plotted screenplay this is. If you haven't read the screenplay,
do so. Sometimes Nick Meyer's screenplays are hell of a
Reid And you know what, And if you haven't seen
his movie Time after Time, with David Warner as Jack
the Ripper and Malcolm McDowell as HG. Wells traveling to
modern day than nineteen seventies San Francisco, you're doing yourself

(01:29:31):
a disservice. It's fantastic. It's where Mary Steinbergin met Malcolm McDowell,
then they got married.

Speaker 4 (01:29:36):
It's amazing. Malcolm McDowell is so good in that because
he was obviously best known from A Clockwork Orange and
other movies like that where he's playing somebody with people
who maybe have a streak, maybe aren't so nice. His HG.
Wells in Time after Time is brilliant because you would

(01:29:56):
never expect that kind of performance to come out of
Malcolm McDowell. But he is so good in that movie.
And David Warner is so creepy. It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
Yeah, Malcolm mcdell comes off as meek in that film,
which is something I didn't think he was capable of.
But there you go. What a fucking act ever. And
we'll see him about him Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:30:17):
Yeah, and we'll see guess what, We'll see David Warner
in multiple Star Trek movies on the horizon.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
This is true that gor Kan son of a Bitch.
I think that's good pretty much to do it. Don't
you think.

Speaker 4 (01:30:32):
That's gonna do it?

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
That's here's my subtitle for the film Star Trek two
French Horns in Space.

Speaker 4 (01:30:38):
I agree with you, though, ultimately this is the best,
the most complete story. It has everything. It's got great action,
great emotion, great suspense. It's the most complete of all
of those original Star Treks.

Speaker 1 (01:30:51):
And it can stand alone. I think you can watch
this movie without having any prior knowledge to the original series.
You get it. They lay it out for you pretty
wonderfully holds up.

Speaker 4 (01:31:02):
Think of other movies from nineteen eighty two, there's nothing.
It's really not much that dates this movie. It just
feels this could have been made last year. Everything looks real,
the direction is fantastic, the sets are great, the costuming
is great, and it's a great story. Timeless, I would.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
Say, are you saying Porky's isn't timeless?

Speaker 4 (01:31:26):
Was that another one? You mentioned? The Poultergeist? That's an
outlier because I think Poultergeist could also be a fairly timeless.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
So effective Cannery Row, remember that timeless classic. That's a
period piece and it looks older than dirt.

Speaker 4 (01:31:43):
I watched that as a nine year old on cable.
Didn't understand what the fuck was going on in that movie.
Still probably don't.

Speaker 1 (01:31:51):
Nothing dated in Eating Row, also of the same year.

Speaker 4 (01:31:55):
Yeah, but that's Paul Bartel he was. That's such an
outlier case.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Nothing dated there. All these things are incredibly dated.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
HB.

Speaker 4 (01:32:03):
I'm not gonna you're looking at nineteen eighty two movies.

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
But yeah, man, how about Cone and the Barbarian. How
about that that came out the same ear This was
a banner fucking year for movies. Annie came out that year.
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid came out that year. Remember
The Escape Artist with Ryan O'Neil's kid. Did you see
that movie? The Escape One? The Escape? No? I did
not saw that in theater a bunch of times by
myself as a young child.

Speaker 4 (01:32:28):
Here, let's I will see your Cannery Row and raise
you TUTSI good movie, but not exactly. Couldn't make the
claim that that could have been made last year.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
I Will see your Tutsie and raise you The Pirate Move.

Speaker 4 (01:32:43):
Oh with Christy McNicol. Yeah, I remember that terrible movie.
Listen this terrible movie.

Speaker 1 (01:32:49):
This was a great year for movies. The Beast Master
and Cone in the Barbarian, An Officer and a Gentleman,
and Friday the Thirteenth Part three.

Speaker 4 (01:32:57):
Ooh, here's one from nineteen eighty two. It also scarred
me as a child. Do you remember if you could
see what I hear.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
With Mark Singer absolutely swimming at the bottom of the
pool trying to find his dying baby. First Blood was
nineteen eighty two. Halloween three season of The Witch came
out that year. It came to Hollywood, came out in
nineteen eighty two.

Speaker 4 (01:33:20):
Hanky Panky came out, Grease too, Oh there that begins
and ends.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
There for Grease two, Piranha two.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
Okay. On the plus side, Blade Runner was eighty two,
but on the minus side, Mega Force was nineteen eighty two.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
On the minus side, I would say they Call Me
Bruce came out that year, but on the positive side,
Creep Show came out that year.

Speaker 4 (01:33:43):
On the minus side, Zapped came out, but on the
plus side, Night Shift came out.

Speaker 1 (01:33:49):
On the minus side, White Dog. On the plus side,
White Dog.

Speaker 5 (01:33:55):
HP.

Speaker 1 (01:33:56):
Until our next fest is it our best Fest, our
Star Trek three Fest Listen. HP has a show over
on his channel there. It's called night Mister Walter's a
Taxi podcast. I'm a co host on it actually, where
we talk about the television series Taxi and I guess
our next trek Fest is the crossover episode because our

(01:34:16):
villains return at the Klingons and Yeah, our lead Klingon
Krug is mister Christopher Lloyd, playing one of the best
performances of Klingon as far as I'm concerned, because he's
he has layers. He isn't just screaming and shouting and
throwing things at me.

Speaker 4 (01:34:33):
He's very unpredictable. I think he just seems unhinged in
a way that the Klingons don't normally seem that way.
He's very he's scary that way.

Speaker 1 (01:34:42):
He's never I wish they had thought ahead and serialized
these movies and had Krug threaded throughout so he'd become
some ultimate villain of Kirks.

Speaker 4 (01:34:51):
He's very good. But yeah, I guess technically that's a
crossover with night Mister Walter's Taxi podcast, which we, as
you said, we co host. Also I host the Noise
Junkies music podcast and Father Malone. I have a band
campsite hpmusicplace, dot bandcamp dot.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
Com links in the show notes. As for me, you're
listening to the show, I do midnight viewing. Hey, patrons,
you're hearing this at least two weeks in advance to
the regular suckers on the feed. But thank you all
for listening obviously, and please subscribe and can give me
five stars and recommend it to friends and stuff. This
is a com to action. I don't do these too

(01:35:30):
often anymore, I guess, so please do that, actually give
us five stars. It really fucking helps. So anyway, until
our next trek fest, May the Force be with you,

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Star Trek Fest - Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Star Trek Fest - Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan