This Week In Retro: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Patreon)

June 4, 1982: It is very cold…in space…

by Diamond Feit

I know we're experiencing a revival renaissance as older actors and performers increasingly mine their past work for both new and returning audiences, but did you catch the latest season of The Kids in the Hall? I got excited when I heard about the Canadian troupe's return to sketch comedy after ending their show in 1995, and doubly-so when I discovered Amazon saw fit to localize the revival and bring it to Japan. They had to add Japanese subtitles and blur the full-frontal male nudity, but beyond those minor alterations I think I got to enjoy the same jokes that North Americans did.

The Kids in the Hall making a comeback felt different than the other reprises I've seen lately. All five members of the troupe are pushing 60 and it shows; they're visibly thicker and grayer today than they were in the 90s. More than that, their material has aged along with them. So many sketches in this latest sixth season acknowledge the passage of time and reflect on themes of loneliness and feeling out of place. They could have gone right back to their classic material like Cabbage Head or The Chicken Lady, but instead they offered skits about a post-apocalyptic DJ and elderly exotic dancers. They even humorously addressed specific modern issues like wearing masks in public and the struggles of telecommuting.

I bring this up as another famous revival turns 40 this week: Back in 1982, James T. Kirk commanded the Starship Enterprise and embarked on a dangerous mission to face off against a rival he marooned 15 years earlier. While not as drastic a time gap as The Kids in the Hall revival after nearly three decades, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan marked a dramatic turn for all parties involved and it did so by forcing the audience to acknowledge the cast's advancing age.

When NBC canceled Star Trek in 1969 for the crime of "low ratings," the network thought no one would miss the program's optimistic vision of humanity's future as space explorers. Yet Star Trek fans did not let go, and they spent the 1970s gathering in convention centers celebrating their favorite show and hoping for the Enterprise to fly again. The ongoing demand for more Star Trek, coupled with the success of Star Wars in 1977, convinced Paramount executives to fund a big-screen adaptation of the series, appropriately titled Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Released in 1979, a full decade after the final episode of Star Trek aired, The Motion Picture picks up largely where the original series left off. Admiral Kirk is riding a desk at Starfleet and Spock is on Vulcan trying to purge the last remnants of his human emotions, but most of the regular Enterprise crew remain in the same jobs they held during their famed five-year mission. The movie likewise feels like an extended TV episode, with lots of characters discussing their options and very little in the way of on-screen action. However, unlike the show, The Motion Picture sported a significantly larger budget, and director Robert Wise dedicated a copious amount of the film's 132-minute runtime to panning the camera across the all-new Enterprise model.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture cost an estimated $46 million to produce, a pittance by modern standards but a large budget for Hollywood in the 70s. While the film (and its extensive merchandising tie-ins) would turn a profit for the studio, Star Trek never reached the blockbuster status of Star Wars. Paramount could see that the demand for Star Trek warranted a sequel, but executives wanted more bang for their buck. They also wanted to rid themselves of Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek's aggressively hands-on creator and a producer on The Motion Picture, due to his reputation for butting heads with just about everyone above him. Roddenberry did himself no favors when his proposed second film would have sent Kirk and Spock back in time to protect history by assassinating John F. Kennedy.

Unhappy with Roddenberry's work and his personality, the studio sidelined him as an "Executive Consultant" and handed the reigns of Star Trek II to Harve Bennett, an executive with a long list of television credits. Bennett took the job despite having never seen a single episode of Star Trek, but he did his homework by marathoning the entire series to better acquaint himself with the show's legacy. One episode, "Space Seed," stood out to Bennett as especially intriguing, as the Enterprise finds a derelict spacecraft loaded with genetically engineered superhumans in deep sleep. Waking them from suspended animation, Captain Kirk discovers the reason for their long journey: They fled Earth as fugitives following the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. Led by a tyrant named Khan, they try to seize the Enterprise but their mutiny fails, and Kirk offers them a choice between imprisonment or exile on a barren but habitable planet. Khan and his minions opt for the wilderness, and the episode ends with Kirk and Spock wondering aloud what will become of him. The show never answered that question, but Bennett saw the open-ended climax as an invitation to have Kirk and Khan face-off again.

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral Kirk has resumed his desk duties at Starfleet Headquarters and Spock now commands the Enterprise with a crew of untrained, inexperienced officers. When a remote science station working on a top-secret research project sends a distress call and the understaffed Enterprise is somehow "the only ship in the quadrant," Kirk assumes command and heads off to investigate. The mission goes from bad to worse in a hurry: Not only does Khan intercept Enterprise in a captured Starfleet vessel, he has stolen classified material regarding Project Genesis, a terraforming device capable of instantly sparking life and reshaping land on a planetary scale, regardless of whether that planet is already populated or not. Despite Khan's many advantages, Kirk must outsmart and outmaneuver the rogue warlord before he turns Genesis into a genocidal weapon.

Star Trek II lays its cards on the table in the opening scene as a young Lt. Saavik sits on the Enterprise bridge and attempts to rescue the adrift Kobayashi-maru from Klingon battle cruisers. She fails, killing her crew and destroying the Enterprise in the process, only for the bridge to pull apart and reveal that the entire exercise is an elaborate simulation for Starfleet cadets. The eponymous "Kobayashi-maru" test has no correct solution by design; instead, it forces trainees to cope with failure. As Kirk puts it, "How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life." When his friend the irascible Dr. McCoy asks why Starfleet seeks to restaff the Enterprise with junior officers instead of a veteran crew, Kirk bluntly states "Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young."

In case this introduction comes across as too subtle, the message is even more direct in the following scene. Dr. McCoy visits Kirk in his apartment to celebrate his birthday. McCoy bears two gifts for Kirk: A bottle of Romulan Ale and a pair of reading glasses. The two sit in a dark room full of antiques with a clock audibly ticking behind them, and the conversation quickly turns somber. McCoy compares this "party" to a funeral and warns Kirk that he's got to escape his desk job and get back to outer space "before you turn into part of this collection. Before you really do grow old."

Principal photography for Star Trek II took place in early 1982, a few months before star William Shatner's 51st birthday. Some of his co-stars were already 60. The Motion Picture had the crew of the Enterprise jump back into uniform and pretend that the decade which separated them from the original series never happened. Star Trek II throws that lie into a photon torpedo tube and fires it into open space, immediately confronting the audience with the fact that these actors and these characters that they know so well have aged before our eyes and they're not getting any younger.

Beyond the sheer mathematics of the cast getting older, the story of Star Trek II (co-written by Harve Bennett) consistently invokes themes of life, death, and rebirth. Kirk and his old crew must train their replacements to perform duties they would rather perform themselves. During his mission, Kirk meets his (adult) son David for the first time and discovers he detests Kirk, an encounter that leaves the admiral feeling "old, worn out" when he considers "my life that could have been…and wasn't." The MacGuffin of the film is literally named Genesis, and the plot only moves forward because Starfleet accidentally discovers Khan on what they viewed as a desolate planet, one they had hoped to revitalize via their eponymous creation device.

Khan alone embodies all these concepts; born in the 20th century, his continuing existence defies all human expectations of longevity, and while his wrinkled face and silver hair betray his advanced age, his mind remains sharp and he flaunts his impressive physique with a macho open-chested ensemble. Actor Ricardo Montalbán, 61 during filming of Star Trek II, imbues Khan with a sinister aura that intimidates all those around him, even though he never fights anyone during the film and ultimately never meets Kirk face-to-face. All their exchanges play out over transmissions, including the now-famous scene where Kirk screams "KHAAAN!" and his words echo into the void of space.

Everything comes to a head in Star Trek II's climax when Kirk and Khan engage in submarine-style space combat inside a nebula with limited visibility. Khan is physically and arguably mentally superior to Kirk, but he lacks Kirk's seasoned experience as a starship captain, which is precisely how the admiral manages to defeat him. Before he dies, however, Khan schemes to detonate the Genesis device aboard his ship, knowing that the blast will destroy Enterprise as well, earning him a pyrrhic victory and fulfilling his quest for vengeance. Only through Spock's self-sacrifice does the Enterprise escape intact, forcing Kirk to finally confront death after a lifetime of avoiding it. This outcome shocks both Kirk and the audience who grew up watching the Enterprise prevail week after week on television against all odds, a painful reminder that in humanity's quest to defy death, the house always wins.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan scored well with critics and fans, and took the top spot at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend. The Wrath of Khan's final domestic gross did not quite match that of The Motion Picture, but no one at Paramount shed a tear as The Wrath of Khan cost $35 million less to produce, making it far more profitable. However precarious Star Trek's position had been at the studio before, Wrath of Khan proved that the franchise had a future after all. The original cast would reunite for four more sequels, and the saga's enduring popularity would lead to a highly successful Star Trek sequel series on television.

In 1982 I was a kindergartner with no concept of mortality and only a casual awareness of Star Trek. I had most certainly seen at least one Star Wars movie by that point in my life, so I already had an appetite for science-fiction, but I lacked the context and life-experience to grasp everything that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan tried to tell me. Yet seeing the film blew me away and made me care about a cast of characters I barely knew. I'm confident that my fascination with this movie in particular drove me to watch the original series from the 60s and when The Next Generation arrived in 1987, I was on-board from day one.

Looking back on The Wrath of Khan 40 years later, I believe the movie completely holds up regardless of the viewer's previous Star Trek experience due to its timeless theme of confronting mortality. Likewise, when I think about all the media properties that are returning after decades on ice, I wish more of them would take the risks that Star Trek II did. It's not that 60-year-old actors lack the skills or talent to be action stars, but a 60-year-old character should be capable of telling more intricate stories than "old man gets mad, kills punks young enough to be his grandchildren." What we typically see instead are feel-good nostalgia pieces or naked cash grabs, projects that reunite beloved performers but give them nothing compelling to do beyond satisfying our curiosity for how old age has treated them (yes, this includes Star Trek: Picard).

There are wonderful exceptions, of course. In the very first episode of The Kids in the Hall's sixth season, two regular members show their genitalia just to get a laugh. Twin Peaks' third season made Kyle MacLachlan a buffoon for most of its run, only restoring Special Agent Dale Cooper to his full faculties as the finale approached. When Bruce Campbell starred in Ash vs Evil Dead in 2016, we see him living in a trailer, struggling to wear a girdle, and lying to women in bars in order to get laid.

Actors, directors, and creative people of all stripes are only human, and if a corporation comes to them and says "do you want millions of dollars to wear your old costume again" I hope they yes if that's what they want. Certainly if Gene Roddenberry had his way, Star Trek II would have been just another adventure for Kirk and Spock and the only person to die would have been fated to do so in the first place. Roddenberry's removal from the project turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for while he would never truly regain control of Star Trek in the remainder of his life, I'd argue the reason Star Trek continues to resonate with people long after his death is because of projects like Star Trek II. Roddenberry hated it, Shatner had strong reservations about Kirk growing old, and fans wrote letters of protest when they learned of Spock's death, but today The Wrath of Khan stands as a classic of the genre, an impressive feat considering how many non-Star Trek fans made it happen.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.