This week: The firstStar Trekfilm with actual characters.
Last week:The beautifulStar Trekfilm about space fog.
Next week: The beginning of director Leonard Nimoys duology.
WhenWrath of Khanstarts, everybody dies.
Its a scene youve seen a hundred times, if youre any kind ofStar Trekperson.
Theres a new face in the Captains Chair Kirstie Alley!
and if youre coming toWrath of Khanchronologically, you notice the new uniforms.
But the variables only make the constants feel more concrete.
(Walter Koenig was added, supposedly, to appeal to young viewers.
He was 29 at the time older than Chris Pine in his firstStar Trek.)
Sure, theres no Kirk but didntThe Motion Picturebegin with someone else in the Captains Chair, too?
Heck, to go die-hard, didnt the wholeStar Trekidea begin with somebody else sitting in Kirks place?
But maybe, when you watchWrath of Khan34 years later, that shock doesnt register.
Weve seen Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Baby Kirk.
Captains leave; the chair remains.
But at the start ofThe Wrath of Khan, theEnterprisecrew is (almost) right where they belong.
On the bridge, in space, facing intergalactic peril.
There is a ship in crisis.
There are Klingon vessel firing on them.
But this time, somethings different.
This time, everybody dies.
Theyre not really dead, of course.
Its a training scenario, theKobayashi Maru.
Admiral Kirk walks onboard.
He looks down at Dr. McCoy.
Is that all you got to say?
says McCoy, teasing.
What about my performance?
TheKobayashi Maruis top-ten-all-timeTrekmythos or anyhow, its one of the tenTrekthings most regular human beings know about.
But the pleasures of theKobayashi Maruscene are vivid, and human.
Pause to consider the situation, for a moment.
One imagines Spock in fussy, professorial terms.
Hes never been completely unemotional.
Actually, Spock onStar Trekis like the robots in Isaac Asimovs novels.
After his panel explodes, he falls against the railing; his head visibly sags downward; hes reallysellingthis.
You could study this scene for subtexts.
And an earlier version of the script had leaked, leading to fan outrage over Spocks death.
(How quaint, to imagine fan outrage in the days before social media!)
So Spocks death here was a misdirection, a primordial variation ofJoss Whedons ludicrously over-architected Hawkeye untwist.
And performance is both running plot point and underlying theme inWrath of Khan.
Khan fools Kirk with a performance, and Kirk fools Khan withthreeperformances.
In the penultimate scene, Kirk quotes Dickens closing: It is a far, far better… etc.
And arent Khans last lines a performance?
How did they live, in such conditions?
Imagine them, in year 12, edging further into despair.
Imagine Khan inspiring them performingParadise Lostfrom memory, or assigning everyone parts inKing Lear.
You remember Shatner in The Motion Picture bored, stolid, his gestures grandly wooden?
Focus on his final facial gesture.
Its a forced smile, one more performance.
You could studyWrath of Khanas a portrait of different performing styles.
Consider William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, and a central paradox of their chemistry.
Whereas the human Kirk is played by Shatner, one of Hollywoods great experts in hyperbole.
(Khanis Shatner at his most wide-eyed.)
As a young actor, Nimoy learned the Method and idolized Brando; Shatner came up performing energetic Shakespeare.
It begins with Kirk in the Captains Chair, receiving disturbing news.
Khan has powered up the Genesis rig to explode.
TheEnterpriseis weakened, its radioactive core leaking (or something.)
The ship wont get away fast enough.
The camera follows Kirk across to Spocks panel, a vision of confused concern.
Only later will we understand: This is the moment when Spock decides to sacrifice himself for his friends.
(Does he think about telling Kirk?
Does he realize that Kirk is too weak to let him go?)
But Meyer has a lovely strategy for shooting them, together yet separated.
Theres been a curious report from a nearby scientific outpost and were the only ship in the quadrant.
(How many ships does Starfleet have?
Meyer shoots the scene in a single take but with multiple levels.
Notice, too, how Meyer frames Kirk and Spock in the final battle scene.
Youve seen this scene a hundred times before: Kirk in the Captains Chair, Spock reporting.
Together, yet separate: Thats the brutal visual punch line of Kirk and Spocks final scene together.
Spocks inside the irradiated room: So near, yet so far away.
Compare the Kirk-Spock dynamic to Kirk-Khan.
Its often said that Montalban is the greatest ofTreks big-screen bad guys.
(In earlierWrath of Khandrafts, Kirk and Khan had a sword fight.)
ButWrath of Khanisnt an action movie.
And you could argue that Kirk defeats Khan with performance.
When Khan cripples theEnterprise, Kirk buys time with a bit of acting.
Keep nodding as though Im giving orders, he tells Spock, while he prepares a counter-attack.
Are you game for a rematch?
Consider the single most famous moment ofThe Wrath of Khan.
You know what Im talking about:
Kirk is screaming in retort.
Khan has just doomed him (we think) to imprisonment in the core of a dead planet.
Buried alive, Khan purrs.
Kirk screams, in apparent fury.
But well soon find out that, to a certain extent, this was all Kirks plan.
He fooled Khan with a coded message; Spocks already put plans for a counterattack into motion.
Kirk needs to convince Khan that he has won.
Meyer cuts from Kirks KHAN scream to an exterior shot of the planets surface.
And look at Montalbans reaction.
This is beyond Slash Fiction; this is pure ecstasy.
Khan is a mirror for Kirk, maybe.
Khan talks about his dead wife and his actions imperil Carol Marcus, the mother of Kirks son.
What they had was long ago.
He shoots it like a Confessional; Kirk doesnt even look Carol in the face.
For Khan, the past is much grander he positivelyruledthe 1990s but his lust for vengeance clouds his judgment.
and so Khan does really become Ahab, killing everyone he knows in a vain pursuit.
Then his eyes go wide, and he goes to Hell.
EveryStar Trekmovie teaches a lesson about how to makeStar Trekmovies.
Something to debate, based onWrath of Khan:
MaybeStar Trekis better when its cheap.
Wrath of Khanmarked a major budgetary decline fromThe Motion Picture.
Compare that fight to the two showdowns inWrath of Khan and consider the strategies Meyer uses.
He cuts between close-ups of Khan and Kirk.
The effects inKhanarent as imaginative as Douglas Trumbulls work onThe Motion Picture, and the sets are much smaller.
But Robert Wises big sets felt empty, and purposeless.
Look closer at that image.
Notice how, above McCoys head, theres a legend on his door: CDR.
L. MCCOY, MD.Wrath of Khanis full of such little details.
In our first sighting of their home, we see a checkers game made from machine parts.
Later, well see Khans bling in closeup: 80s-era techno-chic, straight out ofThe Road Warrior.
What kind of space movie do you make when you cant afford too many space scenes?
What kind of epic science-fiction movie do you make when you cant afford more than a few sets?
You make an epic in miniature, a space movie about bigger-than-life human beings.
All this, in a movie about how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Hell, ifStar Warsrepresents capitalism at its peak, maybeStar Trekis freaking Marxist.
Fashion Check-In:
These are the best Starfleet uniforms.
I will accept counter-arguments, but I will not believe them.
The fun is that theyre more ceremonial than the usual jumpsuits, but theyre also more casual.
THE WHOLE MOVIE IN ONE SHOT:
