Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

Before the ponderous space odyssey, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, opened, Paramount planned for a follow-up. Due to the costly production problems they experienced, the sequel would be a modestly budgeted film made by Paramount’s television division, with a theatrical release overseas. Depending on its quality, Paramount would consider a TV movie or a theatrical release in North America.

This led to a discussion with Paramount Television newcomer Harve Bennett, producer for high-profile TV shows like “The Mod Squad” and “The Six Million Dollar Man”. Paramount wanted Bennett to come up with a better movie at a fraction of the cost. Bennett hadn’t seen an episode of “Star Trek”, so his first impulse was to decline, but his children loved the show and begged him to reconsider. He got up to speed in the screening room, watching all 79 episodes. To Bennett, “Star Trek” appealed through the interplay of its characters and their moral dilemmas much more so than battles and space travel. He would guide the drama back to the actors, not toward an epic spectacle.

Bennett looked through the episodes to build a story upon, settling on Season One’s “Space Seed”.  Bennett liked this episode primarily because Kirk had a formidable villain to fight, something viewers and critics felt the first film lacked. Star Trek II would also offer a personal look at Kirk and his life, confronting age, his sacrifice of the family for his career, and the reality of loss in the face of adversity.  Audiences should reconnect with these characters rather than get lost gawking at the vast unknown of the universe.

“Space Seed” features the Enterprise discovering a derelict spaceship, the SS Botany Bay, containing mostly people in suspended animation. Their leader is Khan Noonien Singh, the mastermind among a breed of eugenically engineered superhumans who became warlords in the late 20th Century, taking over a third of the Earth. Wars erupted and Khan and his people made their escape into space. Ever the warmonger, Khan attempts to overtake the Enterprise to go on his quest to conquer worlds again. Kirk wins the skirmish, banishing Khan to Ceti Alpha V, a dangerous, but habitable planet he can use his cunning and strength to tame.

Bennett’s script outline was called, “Star Trek II: The War of the Generations”. A rebellion erupts on a Federation planet that requires Kirk’s attention. He rescues a woman he was once in love with and finds that one of the leaders of the rebellion is the son he never knew existed. Kirk is captured and sentenced to death by his son, but in the interim, it is discovered that Khan is the source of the rebellion, forcing Kirk and his son to join forces to defeat him. The ending has Kirk’s son become a member of the Enterprise crew. Due to the generational elements, Bennett could explore themes about sacrifices made pursuing a Federation career.

Bennett hired TV writer and “Star Trek” fan Jack B. Sowards to help with the script. Sowards noticed Spock wasn’t in the outline; Bennett explained that Nimoy had no interest in returning. It was Sowards’ suggestion that Nimoy might return if they gave his character a proper death. He envisioned it happening a third of the way into the story, shocking audiences in a way similar to Marion Crane in Psycho. Nimoy consented to appear on that condition, along with a negotiated deal with Paramount for two additional acting projects.

Sowards introduced a Federation weapon called the “Omega System.” The rest is similar to the finished movie except the aforementioned death of Spock happening much earlier, the Ceti eels were more like spiders, the woman of Kirk’s past was Dr. Janet Wallace from the TV episode, “The Deadly Years”, and her son was integral to the plot. In this draft, ‘Savik’ was originally written as a male Vulcan new recruit (most male Vulcan names start with ‘S’, females with a ‘T’) and a romantic subplot between Kirk and a female bridge officer. Turning the Omega System into “Genesis” was art director Michael Minor’s idea, stemming from his interest in terraforming. Bennett liked a weapon that produced life, reinforcing the show’s optimistic approach toward technology. Bennett also worked with another screenwriter, Samuel Peeples, who had “Star Trek” experience. Peeples’ script produced major story revisions, trading Khan and wife for alien beings, and host of new characters and conflicts. Bennett knew that the Peeples script was not going to work but couldn’t delay long for another writer’s help. If the special effects department didn’t have a script in three weeks, the movie might never happen.

As the effects budget was a concern, veteran commercial director Robert Sallin, a friend of Bennett since their days at UCLA film school, was hired as producer. Sallin mapped out the effects using an intricate storyboarding process with the art director, Michael Minor. As Douglas Trumbull was unavailable to return, Sallin hired Industrial Light and Magic, who worked wonders for Paramount with Raiders of the Lost Ark. The one thing that would be clear, though, would be that the characters were to remain at the forefront of the film and not the special effects this time out. Now they just needed the completed script and a director to bring it all together.

Most who were offered the director job passed, uninterested in filming a sequel or sci-fi in general. Paramount executive Karen Moore, a friend of novelist and director Nicholas Meyer, suggested he meet with Bennett to discuss a screenplay project he was struggling to nail down. Even without a deal in place, Meyer looked at the script and agreed with Bennett that Peeples’ revision was not workable. He asked for all of the prior drafts and came up with a game plan on how to proceed. Meyer, Bennett, and Sallin set about listing every element they liked from the drafts, and they’d come up with a new screenplay that incorporated them. After Meyer officially came on board, Paramount soon announced that the film would receive a summer 1982 U.S. release, theatrically.

Meyer, like Bennett, was not very familiar with the TV show, but he immediately connected to “Star Trek” as a futuristic version of C.S. Forrester’s “Horatio Hornblower” novels (Roddenberry admits the “Hornblower” influence). With twelve days to complete the final draft, Meyer treated Star Trek II as a seafaring adventure in space, with literary allusions, including “Moby-Dick”, “Robinson Crusoe”, “Paradise Lost”, and “King Lear”. This script carried the Shakespearean subtitle, “The Undiscovered Country,”, Hamlet’s reference to death in his famous soliloquy. The studio incensed Meyer by changing the subtitle to the more provocative, “The Vengeance of Khan.” It became, “The Wrath of Khan” after Lucasfilm complained that “Vengeance” would confuse audiences with the upcoming Star Wars film, “Revenge of the Jedi”, later Return of the Jedi. The “Undiscovered Country” subtitle reemerged for Meyer’s Star Trek VI.

Meyer reimagined Kirk as a flawed figure, cheating certain death in a simulation, disregarding Federation regulations, putting career over family, never caring about the enemy he exiled. Those flaws come with costs and lessons learned – humility earned the hard way. Kirk must finally realize his own mortality. He’s always found a way to escape death, but as he grows older, the inevitability grows tangible. Khan is beyond such introspection, his woes the result of one man. Khan is the representation of Kirk’s arrogance, defiance, and hubris if left entirely unchecked. From here, Meyer introduced into the script themes on aging, friendships, death, sacrifice, and rebirth. He graciously gave writing credit to Bennett, but WGA were stingy about bestowing that to producers, so Sowards received screenplay honors alone despite not working on the final draft.

Creative control was stripped from “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, who Paramount blamed for many production issues associated with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. They rejected his script idea for a follow-up involving Klingon using time travel and altering Earth’s future by interfering with Kennedy’s assassination. However, they feared his god-like respect among “Star Trek” fans. To keep him from badmouthing the sequel as illegitimate, Roddenberry was made ‘executive consultant’ for a producer’s salary and a share in the profits so he’d have a vested interest in promoting the film to the right circles.

Bennett kept Roddenberry in the loop but didn’t need his approval. Roddenberry regarded most decisions not his own as ‘wrong’ for the series, seeing Bennett as unfit to lead “Star Trek”. In Roddenberry’s mind, Paramount gave control to people unfamiliar with “Star Trek” and didn’t have a sci-fi perspective. They’d destroy “Star Trek” by ignoring those who cared most, so all he could offer was contempt.

What drew the most derision from Roddenberry was the death of Spock. Roddenberry insisted this was the wrong course. When Bennett and Paramount began to receive angry letters from Trekkers promising a boycott if Spock dies, they assumed Roddenberry had leaked. Fans weren’t informed that either Spock died or Nimoy wasn’t interested. No Nimoy, perhaps no movie. They addressed the issue when it hit the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Their official position is that they were still working on the script and hadn’t decided on Spock’s fate. To diffuse the blowback, they claimed that multiple endings would be shot, though this was never the case. Unfortunately, that misled fans concluded it was Nimoy who insisted Spock die, they targeted him and his family instead. The silver lining: the fan furor and threats made Nimoy realize how much his character meant to so many. He consented to allow enough ambiguity for the character to return for future entries.

If Roddenberry was the one stirring the pot, fans might boycott. Bennett used whatever clout he had to keep control of his vision and was able to keep the studio supporting him despite all of the ruckuses Roddenberry kicked up against “rampant revisionism”. Nevertheless, now the cat was out of the bag, the death no longer could be used for the desired shock value. Meyer had a notion to move Spock’s death to the beginning so that audiences wouldn’t be distracted the rest of the way. Bennett knew that Spock’s sacrifice had to be at the climax of the film because everything afterward might seem anticlimactic by comparison. Meyer’s suggestion gave Bennett an idea: the entire Enterprise crew would die at the beginning of the film, in a simulation, punctuated by Kirk cheekily asking Spock, “Aren’t you dead?” The scene would throw some viewers off that the “death” they heard about was not real and would be genuinely surprised by the climax.

After reading the script, Ricardo Montalban agreed to return as Khan. The actor was sent a videocassette of “Space Seed” and an edition of “Moby-Dick” as inspiration. Fifteen years later, Ceti Alpha V is a desert planet after a cataclysmic event. Mistaken for a barren planet, it is the intended site for the next experiment of the Federation’s Genesis project. This project is a bomb of sorts that transforms an uninhabited planet into a lush, habitable paradise. A Federation cruiser piloted by Chekhov (Koenig) must confirm there is no existing life on the planet, discovering Khan and several of his surviving clan (mostly played by Chippendale dancers). Khan now has an escape craft but seeks revenge on the man who put them there, kicking off the duel of strength and cunning between mortal enemies Khan and Kirk.

Star Trek II had a budget of one-quarter its predecessor. Knowing two disappointing Star Trek films might end the franchise’s viability, they were resolute in not repeating their mistakes. The second feature is tighter, on the screen and off. Sets, props, and models were repurposed from the first film, with the bridge of the Reliant a reconfiguration of the Enterprise’s bridge. Lighting was reduced to reflect darker thematic undercurrents. Despite running a tight ship, the film ran slightly over schedule and budget. However, that was light years better than going from $2 million to $46 million and not finishing it in time for promotional screenings.

Lifelong “Star Trek” fan Kirstie Allie gets her first significant acting role as Lieutenant Saavik, the first character introduced into Star Trek that wasn’t created by Gene Roddenberry in some way. We assume she’s Vulcan by her appearance, a back-up plan to replace Spock if Nimoy chose not to reprise the role. Excised footage reveals character elements cut from the final film, including Saavik being half-Romulan, which explains why she shows some emotion.  A romantic moment between Saavik and David Marcus was excised, as were most scenes involving Peter Preston, Scotty’s nephew. These scenes were trimmed out of Meyer’s original cut to give tighter pacing; some are restored in the Director’s Edition DVD re-edit from Meyer.

To further counteract backlash, a final scene of Spock’s casket on the Genesis planet followed by Nimoy reading the “Star Trek” monologue (“Space, the final frontier…”) was tacked on by the studio, directed by Robert Sallin at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, two months after the wrap due to some test audiences reacting negatively to the downbeat ending, suggesting the character’s fate as ambiguous. These additions were initially despised by Nicholas Meyer, but he has subsequently come to embrace their inclusion. Following the film’s release, joke-became-rumor-became-near-fact that the third film would be titled, “Star Trek III: In Search of Spock” referencing Nimoy’s TV show, “In Search Of…” They left the door open both for fans and Nimoy, on the hope he’d reconsider.

Actors hated the design and colors of the “space pajamas” of The Motion Picture. For his movie, Meyer re-imagined Starfleet uniforms as similar to the U.S. Navy, utilitarian and militaristic in design, each specific to the types of occupations held by those who wore them, much like the television series. Due to budget, they altered and dyed uniforms from the first film. Dark red seemed to be the color that worked best. Roddenberry had qualms about the Federation operating as a military operation. This flew in the face of Star Trek’s traditionally optimistic approach to space exploration. The Federation was modeled after NASA, not the U.S. Navy, but Meyer and Bennett were committed to the themes and nautical literary allusions they had in mind.

Newcomer James Horner composed the score, replacing the pricier Jerry Goldsmith. Meyer wanted a “seafaring” emphasis to Horner’s score, darker and more energetic than the whimsical, ethereal Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Initially met without the accolades Goldsmith received for The Motion Picture, it is now regarded just as highly.

Roddenberry warned the producers of the inconsistencies between the story and the original show. One is invoked when Khan recognizes Chekhov. Roddenberry pointed out that Chekhov was not in “Space Seed” because Walter Koenig didn’t appear until Season Two. The producers felt people wouldn’t care, but they did receive considerable backlash they received from fans for the blunder. Vonda McIntyre’s novelization explains this by revealing Chekhov worked the Enterprise’s ‘night shift’ and had an ‘off-screen’ interaction with Khan.

The tension that permeated the first film dissipated. The actors had fun, loving the script and their expanded roles. The crew had confidence in Nicholas Meyer’s vision, emphasizing a great story over placating “Star Trek” fans. Meyer had a fun sense of humor and rapport with the actors, which found its way onto the screen. That joviality helped complete the film on a tight budget, easing the boredom of performing on the same tiny set nearly every day. The camaraderie felt again by the cast was another reason Nimoy began to have second thoughts on final closure.

Although Star Trek II seems a simple story of dueling passions and vengeance, it is deceptively one of the most original and intelligent Star Trek chapters ever made, whether small or large screen. Kirk finally has a worthy nemesis, with both men pitting against each other in a chess match of aggression, neither particularly mindful of the rules when winning is concerned. Montalban’s Khan is terrific and surprisingly three-dimensional, ranking among his most exceptional work.  True, he can be hammy at times, but so can the Shatner we know and love, and that makes it all the more fun.

Fresh writing, swift direction, solid acting, and brilliant plotting makes this the best of the series for many. It is also the film that features the most memorable ending, with Spock’s sacrifice for the “good of the many.” You will believe that a man without emotions can evoke a tear in many a viewer’s eyes. As for Kirk, he is a man who matures as in no other story told before in “Star Trek” history, with an arc that alters his course into a new and welcome dimension. He’s not growing old, he’s growing up. He embraces those things that matter – friendship, family, honor, and duty – and he feels young again, having something to look forward to building upon rather than look back at what was.

Just as the first film bested Superman for the biggest opening weekend, The Wrath of Khan bested the record from Superman II, scoring $14.5 million. It would end up with nearly $79 million domestically, placing it as the eighth highest-grossing film in the U.S. for 1982, clearly sending the message that Spock might die but Star Trek would still live long and prosper.

Spock’s death allowed the Enterprise to survive, and so too did it allow “Star Trek” to survive, renewing interest to wavering fans and introducing new ones to the fold. Star Trek II is essential viewing for even the most casual observer of Star Trek, and perhaps even for those who are not. It’s not just great “Star Trek”, it’s a great movie.

• Elements of Star Trek II can be seen in X2.  Star Trek Into Darkness is an alternate universe remake.

Qwipster’s rating: A+

MPAA Rated: PG for violence
Running Time: 113 min.

Cast: William Shatner, Ricardo Montalban, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Walter Koenig, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Bibi Besch, Merritt Buttrick, Paul Winfield, Kirstie Alley
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Screenplay: Jack B. Sowards