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The Wrath of Khan is arguably the greatest Star Trek movie, but it's far from perfect.
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00:00Not too many people would argue with me when I say that The Wrath of Khan is the best Star
00:05Trek movie ever, but it's imperfect in the way that most human endeavors are. This is
00:11unsurprising, given that when director Nicholas Meyer was offered the film, there was shades of
00:16the motion picture, but no workable script. In fact, three different scripts had been developed,
00:22The Omega System, The Genesis Project, and The New Star Trek. So Meyer and the producer identified
00:28all the bits they liked from the scripts, and Meyer wrote his first draft of a new script in just
00:33under two weeks, titled The Undiscovered Country. Well, actually, they retitled it to The Vengeance
00:40of Khan, but then they retitled it again to The Wrath of Khan before release, so they really couldn't
00:46make up their minds. Many, many revisions followed, but time was wasting and money was tight. The script
00:52and the resulting film were of astounding quality for such a time crunch project, but in that hurry,
00:58a fair amount of dumb things did slip through the cracks. So with all that history in mind,
01:04and with our love of this film firmly established, let's have a bit of fun while we look at the 10
01:09dumbest things that happened in Star Trek Wrath of Khan.
01:13Number 10. Reliance Weak Password. The prefix code is a good idea for thwarting a hostile takeover
01:19of a starship, but a code of only five numbers is in the range of your upper-end bicycle combination
01:25lock. 90,000 possible combinations. Have you ever looked at that bank of switches Spock flips to
01:31input the code? There are only 10 switches, one per number from 1 to 9 and 0, and each switch stays
01:38flipped after he uses it. Thus, each number can only be used once per code. This means no prefix numbers
01:45like 16303 or 01701, let alone 66666. This cuts down on the possible combinations by two-thirds to just 27,216.
02:00Most Wi-Fi passwords are harder to crack. Also, after Khan has been prefix coded and handed his ass,
02:06it's surprising that Mr. Superior Intellect doesn't figure out that this is what happens and try to locate the
02:12Enterprise's own prefix code in order to turn the tables on his old friend Kirk. But that would have
02:19meant showing Khan is actually intelligent, not just telling us.
02:23Number 9. Cadet Dead Meat to the Bridge. With the Enterprise's bridge at the very tippy top of the
02:29ship's saucer, and with engineering in the cigar-shaped engineering secondary hall, there is no way that
02:35the bridge is en route to sickbay. So why then does the turbolift bring Scotty carrying the mortally wounded
02:41cadet Peter Preston to the bridge? Ever since the movie opened, fans have either been crying in
02:46outrage over this or offering rationalizations and justifications for it. The damage caused the
02:52turbolifts to malfunction. Uh, Scotty was so grief-stricken that he blah blah blah. Logically,
02:59they could have had Kirk step out of the turbolift on his way to sickbay and find Scotty with Preston in
03:04a line of wounded trying to get into sickbay. But then the audience might have been anticipating such a
03:10sight en route to McCoy, whereas the doors opening to this horror was indeed a shock. So that's the
03:17reality. It's only there for a punch in the gut dramatic effect, even though it makes zero sense.
03:23Shocking? Yeah, absolutely. Dumb? Definitely.
03:27Number 8. Kirk and Bones Both Blow It. The film's story forces Kirk to catch the idiot ball in order to
03:33show him as old and worn out and in desperate need to get his mojo back. Which we can accept to a point,
03:39but it does go overboard in this regard and does bones dirty in the process. Upon discovering Torell
03:45and Chekhov on the regular one space station, Chekhov emotes Chekhov. Oh sir, it was Khan.
03:51We found him on Seti Alpha 5. He put creatures in our bodies to control our minds. McCoy. It's all
03:58right. You're safe now. Chekhov. They made us say lies, do things, but we beat him. We thought he
04:04controlled us, but he did not. The captain was strong. Wait a Vulcan minute Lieutenant Commander
04:10Bad accent. And yeah, I'm also talking about me because what fun would this be if we didn't do
04:15some light teasing. But anyway, Chekhov just explicitly told them the titular space genius
04:21had put creatures in their bodies to control their minds. And what is the first reaction to this
04:26bombshell? Bones effectively says, it's all good. What? The instant Chekhov admits this, both Kirk and Bones
04:32ought to have suspected Khan was behind every word coming out of the Reliant boys' mouths. Sure,
04:38Kirk is focused on the Genesis material and finding Dr. Marcus, but he's beyond thick here. And Bones?
04:45What excuse does he have? What sort of doctor hears two potential patients say they had foreign creatures
04:51placed inside their bodies to control them and doesn't immediately ask how and where and examine
04:58the living crap out of them? Kirk's not the one caught with his britches down. McCoy is tripping
05:04over the metaphorical pants around his ankles. Number seven, the inferior superior intellect.
05:11Khan Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress. It is only the fact of my genetically
05:18engineered intellect that allowed us to survive. Much is made of Khan's intellect in the film,
05:23but he's dumb as a box of rocks throughout, let's be honest. Consider the following. Khan wants Genesis,
05:29yet tortures and kills the uncooperative Genesis team instead of sticking eels in them, or instead
05:35of taking any of the team with him when he has to leave regular one in order to blow Kirk to bits.
05:41I mean, yeah, I get he's mad, but come on, he's a super genius. Next, Mr. Superior Intellect can't spot the
05:48most in plain sight code ever. Spock says hours would seem like days, and then explains the ship's
05:55status using days. Twelve-year-olds in the audience could decode that on the fly, so why can't Khan or
06:03his crew of fellow superhuman, or Savick for that matter? Yes, Khan has activated his Ahab Obsession
06:10power-up, and he's phaser-focused on harpooning his white whale Kirk. And granted, his monumental ego and
06:17sense of innate superiority cloud his judgment to the point where he's easily duped and goaded into
06:22chasing Kirk into a nebula where he loses most of his advantage. But, like Kirk and Bones, he gets
06:28tossed the idiot ball and never once demonstrates any real smarts. This was not always the case. In one
06:35of the scripts from which the final film screenplay was built, and before his beloved wife was fridged,
06:40there was a dialogue that indicated Khan was indeed an extra special super genius. Khan.
06:46How are system controls working? MacGyvers. Very well. Command and remote functions are all tied
06:52through computer stations. How could you have designed it so quickly? Khan. This is a sister ship
06:58of the Enterprise. The Enterprise's manuals I absorbed 14 years ago are still fresh in my mind.
07:04Not only would such a dialogue have demonstrated that Khan's an actual smarty pants, ergo a real threat,
07:10it would have made clear how 14 supermen could have run an entire spaceship, especially with 10 of them on
07:16the bridge. Number 6. Wily Chekhov. In old cartoons, characters would frequently run the same path of a
07:24steamroller about to flatten them, or stand by dumbly before getting clobbered by a car or flattened by a
07:30boulder. Chekhov effectively does this on Seti Alpha 5 upon seeing the belt buckle. Chekhov.
07:36Botany Bay. Botany Bay? Oh no. We've got to get out of here now. Damn.
07:42He knows what this means, but instead of doing the logical thing, putting his helmet on and calling for
07:47extraction, assuming he even needs a helmet to do this, he and Tarell put on their helmets, step outside,
07:53and at the sight of the 14 survivors, freeze like a bug-eyed wily coyote watching as a train bears down on
07:59him. By rights, Chekhov should have tried calling the ship before stepping outside. You don't stop to
08:05explain when you realize you're standing over a live grenade. You run, duck, or throw yourself on it.
08:11And even if, for some plot convenient reason, the comm didn't work inside the cargo containers,
08:16Chekhov should have been screaming for a beam-out throughout their exit from the hatch and even as
08:20Khan's people move towards them. But from the lack of alarm exhibited by Beach and Kyle on the Reliant,
08:26it's obvious no communication of any sort was received. One can excuse Chekhov's behavior
08:31after he gets an eel in the ear, but not his costly ineptitude at this stage in the story.
08:37It's no wonder he never made captain. Number five, Universal Armageddon, but no rush.
08:43As David Marcus frets, as the Genesis proposal demonstrates, and as Spock and Bones argument makes
08:49clear, the Genesis device has the potential to be a dreadful weapon if used where life already
08:55exists. We're talking about Universal Armageddon, Bones exclaims. In short, Genesis is a Manhattan
09:03project, and Kirk clearly knows what it is before revealing it to his confidants. So why is it then
09:09that everyone's so damn blasé about Carol's cry for help? Consider this. Carol calls Kirk to ask if he
09:16gave the order, and states that someone is going to take Genesis without proper authorization. Mid-conversation,
09:22her transmission is jammed at the source. This isn't garbled communications, it's deliberate.
09:28Kirk calls Starfleet Command to try and get to the bottom of things, and when he clearly doesn't
09:33get an answer to what's going on, instead of, you know, immediately calling to the bridge and ordering
09:38maximum warp to regular one, he meanders to Spock's quarters for a friendly chat and then finally goes up to
09:45the bridge to order Sulu to go to warp 5. Warp f***ing 5. Yes, it's a minor continuity point,
09:52but in the previous film, the Enterprise zipped along to meet V'ger at warp 7 without even breaking
09:57a sweat. Warp 5 is like a police car driving below the speed limit while rushing to an active crime scene.
10:04Kirk ought to have been court-martialed for that. I mean, come on, take things seriously, Admiral. As scripted,
10:10this would have been a better scene, as Kirk would have gone to the bridge prior to him going to see
10:15Spock. This was, however, swapped around in editing for dramatic effect, but at the cost of making
10:20Kirk appear to be not taking this whole thing as seriously as he really should. Number 4. Exit the
10:27eel. The influence of the baby eels is pretty shaky. How is it that Tyrell and Chekov can sit by as their
10:34shipmates, Reliance crew, are marooned on Khan's barren sand heap? Yet, later in the movie, Tyrell
10:41manages to resist when Khan instructs him to shoot Kirk, a man he says he'd never met. Is Kirk really
10:48just that awesome? Eh, rank does have its privileges, I guess. Or is actively murdering someone just too
10:55much for even ill influence? Mmm, no, not really, as he vaporizes an innocent civilian just moments
11:02earlier. And, after Tyrell phasers himself out of the narrative rather than Kirk, why is it that
11:08the eel and Chekov's noggin chooses that precise moment to get the heck out of there? You could
11:14maybe argue semantics about what happened to its friend, but it's a little convenient, isn't it?
11:21However, for the past 40 years, fans have joked that there's another reason the beast fled. It was
11:26starving to death as Chekov is brainless. Number 3. Kirk's unfair tactical advantage.
11:33Show-don't-tell is a truism in film and video, and while it's not always necessary to cross every
11:38T or dot every I, sometimes a film really ought to just make a tiny bit of effort to make clear
11:44how something improbable happens to happen. Case in point, when the Enterprise first arrives at Regula 1,
11:51Spock, Regula is a Class D. It consists of various unremarkable ores, essentially a great rock in space.
11:59Kirk, Reliant could be hiding behind that rock. Spock, a distinct possibility. Then, in a classic
12:07case of technology doing whatever the plot requires at any given moment, when Kirk returns to the ship
12:13from the Genesis cave, he orders tactical, and immediately a computer graphic shows him exactly
12:18where the Reliant is, orbiting opposite them, presumably having just left the Regula 1 station
12:24where we saw her seconds earlier.
12:25Now, how come they couldn't do that before? And how can they track her through an entire planetoid
12:31now? And why does it only work one way? Why isn't Khan all, there she is, at the same instant
12:39Kirk spots where the Reliant is? Just how long has the Enterprise crew known where Reliant is?
12:45Is this how she's managed to stay out of sight? If you can't tell, I have a lot of questions.
12:50One can speculate or manufacture all sorts of rationalizations for this, like how the Enterprise
12:56was receiving telemetry from Regula 1 that Khan didn't know how to access. But then it gives Kirk
13:02an easy advantage instead of showing him using his smarts or his experience as a starship captain.
13:07Taking obstacles away from the protagonist diminishes his efforts. It could easily have been addressed by
13:13simply mentioning sensor damage earlier in the damage report or by having Regula 1 telemetry appear
13:19on the tactical display. But alas, they didn't. Number 2. Damn peculiar. Starfleet surely knows that
13:27the Reliant is assigned to Project Genesis. So when Kirk calls them concerning Carol's cry for help,
13:33the very first order of business should have been to call the Reliant and ask what's going on or if
13:38they know anything about it. Nothing in the film suggests that a call like this happened,
13:43or if it did, that Starfleet ever got back to Kirk about whether they could or couldn't get through.
13:48And furthermore, despite being told they are, as usual, the only ship in the Quadrant,
13:54they spot the Reliant assigned to Genesis not only in their Quadrant but closing fast.
13:59As soon as Kirk calms the bridge, he's ordering to try the emergency channels, so something is already
14:05odd. The moment Spock deduces there's something weird about Reliant's excuse about their
14:10Chambers coil is overloading their comm systems. That oughta been the last straw, but it wasn't.
14:17Now, from Carol's message earlier, Kirk knows that a someone is trying to take Genesis,
14:23b that Carol believes it's someone from Starfleet as she said, did you give that order,
14:28and see, her transmission gets jammed at the source. So, when the Reliant shows up acting damn peculiar,
14:35even too long out of pasture Kirk should have been able to put two and two together and acted with due
14:40caution. Yeah, I know the point of Wrath of Khan is that Kirk is rusty, but given everything leading
14:47up to the moment of the ambush, his hesitation and inaction serves to not merely portray Kirk as out of
14:52practice but as an incompetent fool, responsible for the loss of Genesis and the Enterprise damage
14:59and casualties. That's almost dumb enough to warrant being drummed out of the service.
15:05Number 1. The Genesis Defect
15:08Even taking the movie on its own terms, that the Genesis planet even exists at the end is beyond
15:13absurd. The narrative makes it abundantly clear that the Genesis device is intended to be employed on an
15:19existing solid body. Why else would the Reliant be scouring space for suitable sites? Carol,
15:25Stage 3 will involve the process on a planetary scale. It is our intention to induce the Genesis
15:30device into the preselected area of a lifeless space body, a moon, or other dead form. Yet,
15:36as the story climaxes, the Genesis device goes off inside the Reliant, which is itself within the
15:41Matara Nebula. And somehow, the Genesis wave not only turns the entire nebulous gas and dust into
15:47some different kind of matter, complete with all sorts of plant DNA, but all of this conveniently
15:53falls together into a sphere in a matter of minutes. The icing on the cake though is that
15:58this preposterous planet just so happened to have formed within the Goldilocks zone of a star.
16:04Star, wait, where did that star come from? Was it the one Regula orbits or did Genesis manufacture a
16:11star too? And how does that miracle planet just happen to have exactly the right angular momentum to
16:17go into orbit around that wherever it's from star? Ugh, and some fans complain that the red matter in
16:23Star Trek 2009 was dumb. But play by your own rules, movie. And those were the 10 dumbest things in Star
16:30Trek II The Wrath of Khan. Do you think we missed something? Well, check out the article on our website
16:35because there's four additional dumb things listed there. Oh, and before I get any pitchforks in the
16:40comments, this is genuinely my favorite Star Trek movie and I've watched it way more times than I can
16:46count. But there's just something fun about taking a look at the media that we love and just tearing
16:52it apart. If you liked this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. And if you didn't, make sure you
16:57let me know in the comment section below how much you dislike it. If you want to keep up to date with
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17:07also give me a follow on various social medias at TrekkieBree. But most importantly, don't forget to
17:13live long and prosper.
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