- 5 weeks ago
The Wrath of Khan is arguably the greatest Star Trek movie, but it's far from perfect.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
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.
00:10This is unsurprising, given that when director Nicholas Meyer was offered the film, there
00:15was shades of the motion picture, but no workable script.
00:19In fact, three different scripts had been developed, The Omega System, The Genesis Project,
00:25and The New Star Trek. So Meyer and the producer identified all the bits they liked from the
00:30scripts, and Meyer wrote his first draft of a new script in just under two weeks, titled
00:35The Undiscovered Country. Well, actually, they retitled it to The Vengeance of Khan,
00:41but 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
00:52script and the resulting film were of astounding quality for such a time crunch project, but in
00:58that hurry, a fair amount of dumb things did slip through the cracks. So with all that history in
01:03mind, and with our love of this film firmly established, let's have a bit of fun while we
01:08look at the 10 dumbest 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 of a
01:20starship, but a code of only five numbers is in the range of your upper-end bicycle combination lock,
01:2690,000 possible combinations. Have you ever looked at that bank of switches Spock flips to input the
01:32code? There are only 10 switches, one per number from 1 to 9 and 0, and each switch stays flipped
01:38after
01:39he uses it. Thus, each number can only be used once per code. This means no prefix numbers like 16303
01:47or
01:4901701, let alone 666666. This cuts down on the possible combinations by two-thirds to just 27216.
01:59Most 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
02:12locate the Enterprise's own prefix code in order to turn the tables on his old friend, Kirk. But that
02:18would have meant 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 the
02:35bridge is en route to sickbay. So why then does the turbolift bring Scotty carrying the mortally
02:40wounded cadet Peter Preston to the bridge? Ever since the movie opened, fans have either been crying
02:46in outrage 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
03:04in
03:04a line of wounded trying to get into sickbay. But then the audience might have been anticipating such
03:10a sight 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
03:33to
03:33show him as old and worn out, and in desperate need to get his mojo back. Which we can accept
03:38to 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. We found him on
03:52Seti Alpha 5. He put creatures in our bodies to control our minds. McCoy. It's all right. You're safe now.
03:59Chekhov. They made us say lies. Do things. But we beat him. We thought he controlled us, but he did
04:06not.
04:06The captain was strong. Wait a Vulcan minute, Lieutenant Commander Bad accent. And yeah,
04:11I'm also talking about me, because what fun would this be if we didn't do some light teasing?
04:16But anyway, Chekhov just explicitly told them the titular space genius had put creatures in their
04:22bodies to control their minds, and what is the first reaction to this bombshell? Bones effectively says,
04:28it's all good. What? The instant Chekhov admits this, both Kirk and Bones ought to have suspected
04:33Khan was behind every word coming out of the Reliant Boys' mouths. Sure, Kirk is focused on
04:39the Genesis material and finding Dr. Marcus, but he's beyond thick here. And Bones? What excuse does
04:46he have? What sort of doctor hears two potential patients say they had foreign creatures placed
04:51inside their bodies to control them and doesn't immediately ask how and where and examine the
04:58living crap out of them? Kirk's not the one caught with his britches down. McCoy is
05:03tripping over the metaphorical pants around his ankles. Number seven, the inferior, superior
05:10intellect. Khan, Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress. It is only the fact of my
05:17genetically engineered intellect that allowed us to survive. Much is made of Khan's intellect in the
05:23film, but he's dumb as a box of rocks throughout, let's be honest. Consider the following. Khan wants
05:29Genesis, yet tortures and kills the uncooperative Genesis team instead of sticking eels in them,
05:35or instead of taking any of the team with him when he has to leave regular one in order to
05:40blow Kirk to
05:40bits. I mean, yeah, I get he's mad, but come on, he's a super genius. Next, Mr. Superior Intellect can't
05:47spot the most in plain sight code ever. Spock says hours would seem like days, and then explains the
05:55ship's status using days. Twelve-year-olds in the audience could decode that on the fly, so why can't
06:02Khan or his crew of fellow superhuman, or Savik for that matter? Yes, Khan has activated his Ahab
06:09obsession power-up, and he's phaser-focused on harpooning his white whale Kirk. And granted,
06:15his monumental ego and sense of innate superiority cloud his judgment to the point where he's easily
06:21duped and goaded into chasing Kirk into a nebula where he loses most of his advantage. But, like
06:27Kirk and Bones, he gets tossed the idiot ball and never once demonstrates any real smarts. This was
06:33not always the case. In one of the scripts from which the final film's screenplay was built, and before
06:38his beloved wife was fridged, there was a dialogue that indicated Khan was indeed an extra-special
06:45super genius. Khan, how are system controls working? MacGyvers, very well. Command and remote functions
06:51are all tied through computer stations. How could you have designed it so quickly? Khan, this is a
06:57sister ship of the Enterprise. The Enterprise's manuals I absorbed 14 years ago are still fresh in
07:03my mind. Not only would such a dialogue have demonstrated that Khan's an actual smarty-pants,
07:09ergo a real threat, it would have made clear how 14 supermen could have run an entire spaceship,
07:15especially with 10 of them on the bridge.
07:18Number 6. Wily Chekhov
07:20In old cartoons, characters would frequently run the same path of a steamroller about to flatten them,
07:26or stand by dumbly before getting clobbered by a car or flattened by a boulder. Chekhov effectively
07:32does this on SETI Alpha 5 upon seeing the belt buckle. Chekhov. Botany Bay. Botany Bay? Oh no,
07:40we've got to get out of here now. Damn! He knows what this means, but instead of doing the logical
07:45thing, putting his helmet on and calling for extraction, assuming he even needs a helmet to
07:50do this, he and Terrell put on their helmets, step outside, and at the sight of the 14 survivors,
07:56freeze like a bug-eyed wily coyote watching as a train bears down on him. By rights, Chekhov should have
08:02tried calling the ship before stepping outside. You don't stop to explain when you realize you're
08:06standing over a live grenade. You run, duck, or throw yourself on it. And even if for some plot
08:12convenient reason, the comm didn't work inside the cargo containers, Chekhov should have been
08:17screaming for a beam out throughout their exit from the hatch, and even as Khan's people moved
08:21towards them. But from the lack of alarm exhibited by Beach and Kyle on the Reliant, it's obvious no
08:27communication of any sort was received. One can excuse Chekhov's behavior after he gets an eel in
08:33the ear, but not his costly ineptitude at this stage in the story. It's no wonder he never made
08:39captain. Number 5. Universal Armageddon. But no rush. As David Marcus frets, as the Genesis proposal
08:46demonstrates, and as Spock and Bone's argument makes clear, the Genesis device has the potential
08:52to be a dreadful weapon if used where life already exists. We're talking about universal Armageddon,
08:59Bones exclaims. In short, Genesis is a Manhattan project, and Kirk clearly knows what it is before
09:06revealing it to his confidants. So why is it then that everyone's so damn blasé about Carol's cry for
09:13help? Consider this. Carol calls Kirk to ask if he gave the order, and states that someone is going to
09:19take Genesis without proper authorization. Mid-conversation, her transmission is jammed at the
09:24source. This isn't garbled communications. It's deliberate. Kirk calls Starfleet Command to try and
09:30get to the bottom of things, and when he clearly doesn't get an answer to what's going on, instead of,
09:36you know, immediately calling to the bridge and ordering maximum warp to regular one, he meanders to
09:41Spock's quarters for a friendly chat, and then finally goes up to the bridge to order Sulu to go to
09:47warp 5.
09:48Warp f***ing 5. Yes, it's a minor continuity point, but in the previous film, the Enterprise zipped
09:54along to meet V'ger at warp 7 without even breaking a sweat. Warp 5 is like a police car
10:00driving below
10:01the speed limit while rushing to an active crime scene. Kirk ought to have been court-martialed for
10:05that. I mean, come on, take things seriously, Admiral. As scripted, this would have been a better
10:11scene, as Kirk would have gone to the bridge prior to him going to see Spock. This was, however,
10:17swapped around in editing for dramatic effect, but at the cost of making Kirk appear to be not taking
10:22this whole thing as seriously as he really should. Number 4. Exit the eel. The influence of the baby
10:29eels is pretty shaky. How is it that Terrell and Chekhov can sit by as their shipmates, Reliance,
10:35crew, are marooned on Khan's barren sand heap? Yet, later in the movie, Terrell manages to resist when Khan
10:42instructs him to shoot Kirk, a man he says he'd never met. Is Kirk really just that awesome? Eh,
10:50rank does have its privileges, I guess. Or, is actively murdering someone just too much for even
10:56eel influence? Mmm, no, not really, as he vaporizes an innocent civilian just moments earlier.
11:03And, after Terrell phasers himself out of the narrative rather than Kirk, why is it that the
11:08Elin Chekhov's noggin chooses that precise moment to get the heck out of there? You could maybe argue
11:15semantics about what happened to its friend, but it's a little convenient, isn't it? However,
11:22for the past 40 years, fans have joked that there's another reason the beast fled. It was starving to
11:26death as Chekhov is brainless. Number 3. Kirk's unfair tactical advantage. Show, don't tell is a
11:34truism in film and video. And while it's not always necessary to cross every T or dot every I,
11:40sometimes a film really ought to just make a tiny bit of effort to make clear how something improbable
11:46happens to happen. Case in point, when the Enterprise first arrives at Regula I. Spock,
11:52Regula 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 I station
12:24where we saw her seconds earlier. Now, how come they couldn't do that before? And how can they
12:29track her through an entire planetoid now? And why does it only work one way? Why isn't Khan all
12:36there she is at the same instant Kirk spots where the Reliant is? And just how long has the Enterprise
12:43crew known where Reliant is? Is this how she's managed to stay out of sight? If you can't tell,
12:49I have a lot of questions. One can speculate or manufacture all sorts of rationalizations for
12:54this, like how the Enterprise was receiving telemetry from Regula I that Khan didn't know
12:59how to access. But then it gives Kirk an easy advantage instead of showing him using his smarts
13:05or his experience as a starship captain. Taking obstacles away from the protagonist diminishes his
13:10efforts. It could easily have been addressed by simply mentioning sensor damage earlier in the
13:15damage report or by having regular one telemetry appear on the tactical display. But alas, they
13:22didn't. Number two, damn peculiar. Starfleet surely knows that the Reliant is assigned to Project
13:28Genesis. So when Kirk calls them concerning Carol's cry for help, the very first order of business should
13:35have been to call the Reliant and ask what's going on or if they know anything about it. Nothing in
13:40the
13:40film suggests that a call like this happened, or if it did, that Starfleet ever got back to
13:45Kirk about whether they could or couldn't get through. And furthermore, despite being told they are,
13:51as usual, the only ship in the quadrant, they spot the Reliant assigned to Genesis not only in their
13:57quadrant, but closing fast. As soon as Kirk comms the bridge, he's ordering to try the emergency
14:03channels, so something is already odd. The moment Spock deduces there's something weird about Reliant's
14:09excuse about their chamber's coil is overloading their comm systems. That ought to have been the last
14:15straw. But it wasn't. Now, from Carol's message earlier, Kirk knows that A, someone is trying to
14:22take Genesis. B, that Carol believes it's someone from Starfleet as she said, did you give that order?
14:29And C, 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
14:40due
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
14:52of practice, but as an incompetent fool, responsible for the loss of Genesis and the Enterprise damage and
14:59casualties. That's almost dumb enough to warrant being drummed out of the service.
15:04Number one, the Genesis defect. Even taking the movie on its own terms,
15:10that the Genesis planet even exists at the end is beyond absurd. The narrative makes it abundantly
15:16clear that the Genesis device is intended to be employed on an existing solid body. Why else would
15:21the Reliant be scouring space for suitable sites? Carol, stage three will involve the process on a
15:27planetary scale. It is our intention to induce the Genesis device into the preselected area of a
15:32lifeless space body, a moon or other dead form. Yet, as the story climaxes, the Genesis device goes off
15:39inside the Reliant, which is itself within the Matara Nebula. And somehow, the Genesis wave not only
15:45turns the entire nebula's gas and dust into some different kind of matter, complete with all sorts
15:50of plant DNA, but all of this conveniently falls together into a sphere in a matter of minutes.
15:56The icing on the cake, though, is that this preposterous planet just so happened to have
16:01formed within the Goldilocks zone of a star. Star? Wait, where did that star come from?
16:07Was it the one regular orbits? Or did Genesis manufacture a star too? And how does that miracle
16:13planet just happen to have exactly the right angular momentum to go into orbit around that
16:18wherever it's from star? Ugh. And some fans complain that the red matter in Star Trek 2009 was dumb.
16:25But play by your own rules, movie. And those were the 10 dumbest things in Star Trek II,
16:30The Wrath of Khan. Do you think we missed something? Well, check out the article on our
16:34website because there's four additional dumb things listed there. Oh, and before I get any
16:40pitchforks in the comments, this is genuinely my favorite Star Trek movie and I've watched it
16:45way more times than I can count. But there's just something fun about taking a look at the media that
16:50we love and just tearing it apart. If you liked this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up.
16:55And if you didn't, make sure you let me know in the comment section below how much you dislike it.
17:00If you want to keep up to date with us, you can give us a follow on various social medias
17:04at Trek Culture or at Trek Culture YT. You can also give me a follow on various social medias
17:10at TrekkieBree. But most importantly, don't forget to live long and prosper.
Comments