Ranking the "Star Trek" Movies: #3 - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The cast of Fantasy Island's cancelled 8th season

The first really good one. The one that made Ricardo Montalban a superstar again! Wait...no. He was in Fantasy Island during this. Plus he did the Corinthian leather thing for Chrysler in those commercials. Alright scratch that. Well, it certainly is the one that many Trek fans consider the greatest of them all. Me? It's pretty great, I'm not going to lie. It's definitely a compelling adventure, and the original series cast isn't even remotely looking old or decrepit yet. Fun fact, it's the only movie I can think of that's a sequel to a TV series episode. It's a fun movie. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was made for like $45 million and was completely fucking boring. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was made for 1/3 that price and was far more entertaining. Let's dive right into one of the finest, most notable movies in the early 1980s.

"Good thing we don't play these roles enough."

In the year 2285, Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) oversees a simulator session of Captain Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) trainees, as it appears he's been replaced as captain of the Enterprise. I guess captains are retired like car parts. In the simulation, Lieutenant Saavik (Kirstie Alley) commands the starship USS Enterprise on a rescue mission to save the crew of the damaged ship Kobayashi Maru. In Trek lore, the Kobayashi Maru test is a no-win scenario test where prospective Starfleet captains are subjected to a rescue mission and then ambushed by several Klingon cruisers and destroyed. It's designed to test the merit of a Starfleet captain. When the Enterprise enters the Klingon Neutral Zone to reach the ship, it is attacked by Klingon cruisers and critically damaged. The Starfleet officers all submit their acting resumes as the fake bridge explodes and they fake their deaths. Later, Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) joins Kirk on his birthday; seeing Kirk in low spirits, the doctor advises Kirk to get a new command and not grow old behind a desk.

Meanwhile, the USS Reliant is on a mission to search for a lifeless planet for testing of the Genesis Device, a technology designed to reorganize matter to create habitable worlds for colonization. It's basically Jesus in the form of a planetoid torpedo. As McCoy says, "The universe was created in six days. Now watch out, here comes Genesis. We'll do it for you in six minutes!" Anywho, Reliant officers Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield) beam down to the surface of a possible candidate planet, which they believe to be Ceti Alpha VI; once there, they are captured by genetically engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). Fifteen years prior, in the episode of the Star Trek original series "Space Seed", the Enterprise discovered Khan's ship adrift in space; Kirk exiled Khan and his fellow supermen to Ceti Alpha V after they attempted to take over the Enterprise by force. I mean, yeah. How else do you try and take over a starship? By saying "please"? After they were marooned, Ceti Alpha VI exploded, shifting the orbit of Ceti Alpha V and destroying its ecosystem. Khan also recognizes Chekov in this scene even though Walter Koenig not only wasn't even in that episode, but wasn't even on the cast of Star Trek by that point. Khan blames Kirk for the death of his wife and plans revenge. Why now? Who knows, I guess the Reliant crew were the only ones dumb enough to come to his planet. He implants Chekov and Terrell with indigenous creatures that enter the ears of their victims and render them susceptible to mind control...a very Star Trek thing to have happen, and uses the officers to capture the Reliant. Learning of Genesis, Khan attacks space station Regula I where the device is being developed by Kirk's former lover, Dr. Carol Marcus, and their son, David. That's got to be an awkward reunion.

"Mom, what do you mean William Shatner's my father?"

The Enterprise embarks on a three-week training voyage. You know what that means! Plenty of expendable crew members to have die horrifically for no reason! Kirk assumes command after the ship receives a distress call from Regula I. Dang, furst usurping Willard Decker of command and now even his best pal Spock. Kirk'll do anything to fuck somebody over for a command. En route, the Enterprise is ambushed and crippled by the Reliant in a very classic and well-paced action sequence, leading to the deaths and injuries of many trainees. Khan hails the Enterprise and offers to spare Kirk's crew if they relinquish all material related to Genesis in, again, another badass and tense sequence with lots of quotable dialogue. Kirk stalls for time and uses the Reliant's prefix code to remotely lower its shields, allowing the Enterprise to counter-attack. Khan is forced to retreat and effect repairs, while the Enterprise limps to Regula I. This entire first encounter between Enterprise and Reliant is so memorable and so badass, it almost makes the whole movie. The other part that makes the movie is coming up! Kirk, McCoy, and Saavik beam to the station and find Terrell and Chekov alive, along with slaughtered members of Marcus's team in probably the darkest part of this whole movie as Terrell describes what Khan did to Marcus's team. They soon find Carol and David hiding deep inside the planetoid of Regula. Khan, having used Terrell and Chekov as spies, orders them to kill Kirk; Terrell resists the eel's influence and kills himself while Chekov collapses as the eel leaves his body. FUN FACT: A larger-than-lifesize scale model of Walter Koenig's ear was built for this scene. Hilarious to walk around a movie set and see a giant Walter Koenig ear just hanging on a wall or something. Khan then transports Genesis aboard the Reliant. Though Khan believes his foe stranded on Regula I, Kirk and Spock use a coded message to arrange a rendezvous. Kirk directs the Enterprise into the nearby Mutara Nebula; static discharges inside the nebula render shields useless and compromise targeting systems, making the Enterprise and the Reliant evenly matched. In easily the best scene of the whole movie, with tense moments and suspense, the Enterprise and Reliant hunt for each other blindly in a dust cloud. Spock notes however that Khan's tactics are two-dimensional, indicating inexperience in space combat, which Kirk then exploits to critically disable the Reliant. Crazy cool scene here, plus a sick reference to three-dimensional chess.

Mortally wounded, Khan activates Genesis like a complete bitch, which will reorganize all matter in the nebula, including the Enterprise, basically eradicating everything remotely close to the scene. Though Kirk's crew detects the activation of Genesis and attempts to move out of range, they will not be able to escape the nebula in time due to the ship's damaged warp drive. Spock goes to the engine room to restore the warp drive. When McCoy tries to prevent Spock's entry, as exposure to the high levels of radiation would be fatal, Spock incapacitates the doctor with a Vulcan nerve pinch and performs a mind meld, telling him to "remember". We would later find out Spock basically backed himself up like a hard drive into McCoy's brain, or I'm sorry, "gave McCoy his ka tra". Spock successfully restores power to the warp drive and the Enterprise escapes the explosion, though at the cost of Spock's life. Somehow, he just reaches into the warp core, then it's fixed. It isn't really shown how he fixed it, but...he did. So there. The explosion of Genesis causes the gas in the nebula to reform into a new planet, capable of sustaining life.

"Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaann!!!!!!!!!!"

After being alerted by McCoy following Khan's annihilation, Kirk arrives in the engine room and discovers Spock dying of radiation poisoning. The scene's a little twisted. I mean Spock even bumps into the wall, revealing that he's blind. It's a little messed up. In probably one of the most famous Star Trek scenes in history, the two share a meaningful exchange in which Spock urges Kirk not to grieve, as his decision to sacrifice his own life to save those of the ship's crew is a logical one, before succumbing to his injuries. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one." A space burial is held in the Enterprise's torpedo room and then, like tossing out the garbage, they fire Spock's coffin into orbit around the new planet. The crew leaves to pick up the Reliant's marooned crew from Ceti Alpha V as Spock's coffin, having soft-landed, rests on the Genesis planet's surface...hinting that the pointy-eared Messiah may rise three days later...Happy Easter everyone!

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a fantastic Trek movie. It's got plenty of action, compelling dialogue, tense suspense scenes and moving moments. It's so much better than The Motion Picture that when you watch this one after that one you'll wonder what the hell the team on The Motion Picture was even doing. Star Trek II is easily considered by many Trekkies to be the best of them all. I consider it great, but there's two more Star Trek movies that I love even more. No offense to Star Trek II, but with my list, the best is yet to come. If you've got time and you want to get into the original ten Star Trek movies, you can start with this one. It's basically the first entry in the aforementioned "Genesis trilogy", so you can totally ignore the events of The Motion Picture. It's events aren't mentioned ever again anyway. So, give this one a watch. We've only got two more to go!