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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb,

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Speaker 1: and today we have an episode that is from last

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Speaker 1: year's Star Trek week. As we dive into this year's

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Speaker 1: Star Trek week, this is gonna be our discussion of

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Speaker 1: Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, that, again, originally

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Speaker 1: aired last September. So let's go ahead and jump right in.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: And with this installment, we're going to be finishing out

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Speaker 1: Star Trek week here in the Stuff to Blow Your

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Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. So we are, as promised, going to

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Speaker 1: be talking about a Star Trek movie. And it was

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Speaker 1: hard to pick a our first actual Star Trek film

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Speaker 1: to cover here on Weird House Cinema, as the Trek

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Speaker 1: films give us a fair amount of variety to choose from.

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Speaker 1: Do we go with one of the weirder installments, maybe

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Speaker 1: one of the others that's kind of a flawed film,

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Speaker 1: but with some interesting ideas or a captivating performance hidden

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Speaker 1: in there? Do we start at the beginning with Star Trek,

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Speaker 1: the motion picture, or do we go with what many

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Speaker 1: consider to be the finest Trek film of them all?

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Speaker 1: That's ultimately where we landed here. we decided to discuss

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Speaker 1: 1982's Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan.

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Speaker 2: This was a great pick, Rob, and yeah, I've seen

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Speaker 2: this movie many times over the years, always enjoyed it,

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Speaker 2: and I loved it again this week. Before we go

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Speaker 2: on to discuss the movie itself in detail, one thing

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Speaker 2: I thought it would be important to do here at

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Speaker 2: the top is understand this film's role in Star Trek history,

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Speaker 2: because even I think you can make a really solid

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Speaker 2: argument that without The Wrath of Khan, we wouldn't have

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Speaker 2: a lot of the Trek that came after. Believe it

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Speaker 2: or not, in the timeline where this movie didn't exist

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Speaker 2: or the same film and its place in the sequence

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Speaker 2: was not as good, I think Star Trek might not

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Speaker 2: be a very big deal today.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I don't think this is a crazy idea

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Speaker 1: by any stretch of the imagination. This one is important.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not claiming originality in this idea. Other people

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Speaker 2: have expressed this before. So the original Star Trek TV

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Speaker 2: series ran on NBC for only three seasons, from 1966

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Speaker 2: to 1969. It's kind of hard to believe that because

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Speaker 2: of how big its cultural impact has become. But it

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Speaker 2: was canceled after only 79 episodes due to poor ratings.

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Speaker 2: In fact, NBC... was planning to cancel it after the

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Speaker 2: second season, but there was a letter-writing campaign by the

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Speaker 2: show's relatively small base of devoted fans. They were able

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Speaker 2: to convince the network to revive it for one more

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Speaker 2: season before it was finally brought to an end. However,

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Speaker 2: in a somewhat unusual twist, Star Trek became way more

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Speaker 2: popular after it was canceled because of reruns, old episodes

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Speaker 2: of the show, were leased to local TV networks around

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Speaker 2: the country, and in fact, around the world, where they

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Speaker 2: ran in syndication, sometimes in afternoon time slots where kids

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Speaker 2: could watch them. And the show became much more popular

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Speaker 2: than it had ever been during its original run. During

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Speaker 2: the decade after the show was canceled, you started to

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Speaker 2: see the rise of Trekkie culture. There would be fan

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Speaker 2: clubs and conventions and all that stuff. At this point,

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Speaker 2: based almost entirely on reruns of the three seasons of

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Speaker 2: the original series. There was some other stuff, like there

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Speaker 2: was a Saturday morning animated Star Trek series that ran

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Speaker 2: from 73 to 74, but that never achieved the fan

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Speaker 2: base of the original show. And there were also some

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Speaker 2: minor things for the real hardcore fans that were like

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Speaker 2: episode novelizations and original novels and stuff, but these were

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Speaker 2: fairly niche. So a lot of people in the 70s

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Speaker 2: had a fondness or at least a nostalgia for the

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Speaker 2: Trek universe and its characters. But for most of that decade,

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Speaker 2: there was not much new to consume, especially for the

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Speaker 2: more casual fans. If you weren't a hardcore fan getting

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Speaker 2: into the novels or something. By the mid to late seventies,

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Speaker 2: producers were interested in trying to cash in on that

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Speaker 2: fan base and revive the property. There were various attempts

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Speaker 2: to put together a movie project or to start a

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Speaker 2: new network TV series, which at one point in development

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Speaker 2: was called Star Trek Phase Two. That TV series never happened,

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Speaker 2: but the idea for the unmade pilot of that series

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Speaker 2: is what would eventually become the first official film, which

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Speaker 2: was Star Trek The Motion Picture in 1979. Original series

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Speaker 2: creator Gene Roddenberry was heavily involved, and the film was

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Speaker 2: directed by Robert Wise, who was a very respected filmmaker

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Speaker 2: with a lot of critically acclaimed movies in his past,

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Speaker 2: even in the sci-fi genre. He made the original The

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Speaker 2: Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951, you know, Gort, Klaatu, Barada, Nikto.

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Speaker 2: And he was also known for hit musical films in

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Speaker 2: the 60s, like The Sound of Music and West Side Story.

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Speaker 2: So they initially had trouble putting this movie together. Rob,

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Speaker 2: I don't know how much you've read about the chaos

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Speaker 2: of Star Trek, the motion picture coming together. Some members

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Speaker 2: of the main cast did not want to come back

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Speaker 2: Leonard Nimoy was not happy about not getting residuals. He

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Speaker 2: believed he was owed relating to the original run. I

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Speaker 2: think the idea was that somebody had been making money

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Speaker 2: off of using his likeness in like beer commercials or something.

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Speaker 2: And he was, I don't know, he was not happy

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Speaker 2: with the owners of the franchise. And so producer Jeffrey

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Speaker 2: Katzenberg at the time had to go beg Leonard Nimoy

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Speaker 2: in person to come join the film. But they eventually

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Speaker 2: got all the main cast on board. Unfortunately, Star Trek

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Speaker 2: The Motion Picture was widely seen as a disappointment. Actually,

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Speaker 2: it did well at the box office. It made a

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Speaker 2: good amount of money, but its profit margin wasn't great

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Speaker 2: because it had been an incredibly expensive production and a

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Speaker 2: very chaotic, disorganized production with things like constant last-minute script

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Speaker 2: rewrites and repurposing of things and a lot of people

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Speaker 2: were not happy with the aesthetic of it with the

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Speaker 2: costumes and the sets and uh just generally both trek

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Speaker 2: fans and mainstream critics did not love it it was

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Speaker 2: criticized for being slow moving i've heard people even describe

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Speaker 2: it as sleep inducing like you put it on if

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Speaker 2: you want to take a nap and for not being

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Speaker 2: very focused on character or drama instead being a showcase

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Speaker 2: for special effects Now that complaint, if you're not very

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Speaker 2: familiar with Star Trek, that complaint might be a little

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Speaker 2: confusing because you might think, well, Star Trek is space-faring

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Speaker 2: science fiction. Isn't it supposed to be that there's like

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Speaker 2: a big focus on special effects? As I've said in

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Speaker 2: the other episodes this week, I'm not like the most

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Speaker 2: well-versed Star Trek fan, but even just given what I

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Speaker 2: do know, I'm pretty confident in saying the answer is no, actually.

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Speaker 2: The appeal of Star Trek is and usually has been

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Speaker 2: based on the writing. The writing, the characters, and the

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Speaker 2: chemistry of the cast. The original series has a lot

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Speaker 2: of charismatic props and costumes, but it was never heavily

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Speaker 2: focused on big visual spectacles. I think a lot of

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Speaker 2: Star Trek episodes you could think of as almost native

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Speaker 2: bottle episodes. They'd just be characters in the room or

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Speaker 2: in the bridge set doing things.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, with some of your most memorable scenes being scenes

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Speaker 1: that are about character development or just sort of batting

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Speaker 1: around whatever the ethical or philosophical idea happens to be

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Speaker 1: in that episode.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, talking about ideas, talking about how to solve a problem,

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Speaker 2: debating things, trying to convince people of things, that sort

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Speaker 2: of thing. So after the motion picture comes out in 1979,

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Speaker 2: Star Trek was kind of languishing. It had been more

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Speaker 2: than a decade since the show ended. Attempts to put

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Speaker 2: together a new TV series had failed. And you had

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Speaker 2: this big, very expensive movie project that they'd thrown everything at,

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Speaker 2: and it was not well-loved. Then comes the second film

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Speaker 2: in the Star Trek movie franchise, today's movie, The Wrath

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Speaker 2: of Khan. This time, the producers' approach was essentially the

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Speaker 2: exact opposite of what they had done with the previous movie.

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Speaker 2: Producer Harv Bennett brought in writer and director Nicholas Meyer,

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Speaker 2: who had made several things at this point. He made

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Speaker 2: some well-regarded Sherlock Holmes stuff, like he had written... original

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Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes novels and adapted one of his novels, the 7%

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Speaker 2: solution for the film. Uh, uh, and he also wrote

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Speaker 2: and directed tying into last week's weird house cinema movie,

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Speaker 2: the HG Wells time machine, Jack, the Ripper mashup film

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Speaker 2: time after time from 1979 with, uh, who is that?

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Speaker 2: It's got David Warner and, um, Malcolm McDowell who plays.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: We've done that on weird house cinema before. I remember

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Speaker 2: that one's fantastic. It's a movie with the, Similar storytelling

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Speaker 2: sensibility to Wrath of Khan, actually. It's like an emotional

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Speaker 2: drama with a big heart. And anyway, so they brought

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Speaker 2: Nicholas Meyer on and the plan was to get back

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Speaker 2: all of the original cast, but to otherwise keep the

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Speaker 2: film as tightly budgeted as possible. And instead of focusing

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Speaker 2: on big special effects and visual spectacle to focus on

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Speaker 2: writing and character to create a gripping emotional drama. And

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Speaker 2: I think the filmmakers succeeded in this spectacularly. They created

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Speaker 2: continuity with the now beloved long ago original series by

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Speaker 2: crafting the movie as a direct sequel to a popular

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Speaker 2: episode of the show, which was Space Seed, the episode

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Speaker 2: featuring the iconic villain Khan Noonien. Singh, played by a

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Speaker 2: wildly charismatic Ricardo Montalban, who also came back for the film.

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Speaker 2: He's this character on a mad quest for Melvillian revenge

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Speaker 2: against Captain Kirk. And I think it's interesting that you

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Speaker 2: can read the themes of this movie as applied to

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Speaker 2: the characters, especially to Captain Kirk himself. Themes about aging

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Speaker 2: and irrelevance and the need to find your purpose once

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Speaker 2: again through sacrifice and struggle. You can read those themes

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Speaker 2: as applying to the Star Trek franchise itself.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And the movie was a huge hit. It had an

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Speaker 2: extremely successful box office take. It was loved by both

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Speaker 2: Trekkies and mainstream critics and audiences. And the success of

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Speaker 2: this film breathed new life into Star Trek as a whole.

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Speaker 2: It got old fans excited again. It generated interest from

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Speaker 2: entirely new fans. It paved the way to several new

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Speaker 2: films with the original cast and new Trek on TV,

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Speaker 2: such as Star Trek The Next Generation, which debuted in 1987.

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Speaker 2: And might well never have existed if the second Star

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Speaker 2: Trek film had been another dud. So Wrath of Khan

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Speaker 2: is its own film. It can be appreciated on its

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Speaker 2: own terms. In fact, I don't think you even need

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Speaker 2: to be a Star Trek fan to love Wrath of Khan.

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Speaker 2: But it's also important to understand this film as the

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Speaker 2: story that made Star Trek feel young and alive again.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah. And it's amazing because clearly they had this

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Speaker 1: target set. and they managed to really make the perfect

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Speaker 1: picture to achieve those goals. Wrath of Khan is just

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Speaker 1: such a tight and effective movie, just a strategically charged

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Speaker 1: and aimed photon torpedo that, yeah, is aimed at knocking

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Speaker 1: out multiple targets, diehard Trek fans, casual fans, the box office,

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Speaker 1: and even critics. Rewatching the movie, it was really interesting

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Speaker 1: to think about all the elements that come together here

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Speaker 1: so well, and again, in a way that's going to

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Speaker 1: appeal to to people who know Star Trek inside and

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Speaker 1: out by this point, and also people who didn't know

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Speaker 1: anything about it. And they're like, Star Trek 2 sounds interesting.

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Speaker 1: Do I need to see Star Trek 1? No, you're good.

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Speaker 1: Go on in and enjoy the show.

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Speaker 2: Do I even need to see the episode that this

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Speaker 2: is a direct sequel to? No, not really.

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Speaker 1: Not really?

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Speaker 2: You can if you want.

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Speaker 1: It's fun. I think it's rewarding to do so. That's

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Speaker 1: what we both did for this week, and we may

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Speaker 1: refer back to it, but you don't have to have

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Speaker 1: seen it.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah. I'd say it adds to your enjoyment of

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Speaker 2: the movie, but I've seen this movie probably five or

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Speaker 2: six times before I ever saw the episode.

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Speaker 1: All right, so just touching on a few things that

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Speaker 1: really stood out to me in this rewatch. As we've

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Speaker 1: mentioned already, just tightly plotted. Nothing feels rushed, but mind you,

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Speaker 1: we have, let's see, what, a 113-minute runtime here compared

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Speaker 1: to the 132-minute runtime of its predecessor. On the whole,

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Speaker 1: this lands in the middle of Star Trek films when

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Speaker 1: you're looking at their length, and it's still shorter than

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Speaker 1: every single Star Wars movie.

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Speaker 2: That's interesting. You know, one thing I really noticed on

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Speaker 2: coming back to this movie is if you map out

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Speaker 2: the plot beats, if you just say what actually happens

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Speaker 2: beginning to end, the story is actually smaller and tighter

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Speaker 2: in scale than it feels when you reflect back on

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Speaker 2: the movie. When you think about it, it feels like

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Speaker 2: a big story. Uh, but it's really not, it's like

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Speaker 2: a pretty, uh, pretty tight, uh, just a tense couple

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Speaker 2: of interactions between the, the, the heroic enterprise crew and

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Speaker 2: the villain. And it's all over pretty fast. I think

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Speaker 2: it takes place in less than a couple of days of,

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Speaker 2: of time, uh, within the story, you know?

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It is, it is a film that feels so epic

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Speaker 1: and yet It is lacking some of those elements that

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Speaker 1: we otherwise associate with epic storytelling, like multiple settings and

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Speaker 1: factions and a whole host of characters. When you really

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Speaker 1: look at it, a lot of stuff is stripped down,

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Speaker 1: but it's stripped down to the basics. It's like a

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Speaker 1: race car. So, for instance, we have a tight focus

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Speaker 1: on character here, and mainly that means focusing on Captain Kirk.

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Speaker 1: He's our nexus point. He is, without a doubt, our

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Speaker 1: protagonist here. I've heard it pointed out before. It's like

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Speaker 1: sometimes you can say, oh, well, this movie has multiple protagonists.

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Speaker 1: And the correction would come, well, sort of. But from

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Speaker 1: a writing standpoint, there's one protagonist. And yeah, it's clear

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Speaker 1: that that is Kirk. And, you know, it's easy to

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Speaker 1: develop or acquire Kirk Shatner weariness. I know I've acquired

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Speaker 1: it or developed it at times before. But as far

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Speaker 1: as this picture goes, His character is presented with, I think,

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Speaker 1: a real depth and grace. And Shatner gives a really

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Speaker 1: solid performance here as a man halfway through life's journey,

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Speaker 1: looking back on his fading successes, even as his failures

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Speaker 1: seem to be coming back to haunt him. So not

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Speaker 1: every crew member really gets to shine here, as we'll

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Speaker 1: discuss here in a few minutes. But the ones who

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Speaker 1: do are tightly defined by who they are in relation

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Speaker 1: to Captain Kirk. Okay, on top of that, we have

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Speaker 1: a very tight faction and species focus here. So I

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Speaker 1: love the complexity of the Trek universe, and Lord knows

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Speaker 1: I love alien species. This film, however, concerns itself almost

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Speaker 1: exclusively with humans. We have two Vulcan characters on top

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Speaker 1: of that, and I don't think any other aliens except

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Speaker 1: for the non-intelligent city alpha eels, which are fabulous monsters

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Speaker 1: and are just more or less a tool of the antagonist.

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Speaker 2: I saw, I think, part of this movie maybe on

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Speaker 2: TV when I was younger, and the thing that really

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Speaker 2: made an impression on me were the eels, of course.

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Speaker 2: I mean, how could it not be the eels?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's going to be a fun scene to talk about.

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Speaker 2: I was too young to appreciate the Moby Dick references,

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Speaker 2: but the eels got through.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And as far as factions go, it's, again, largely

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Speaker 1: just human members of the Federation versus augmented human followers

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Speaker 1: of Khan. And this choice makes perfect sense given the plot.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't limit or downgrade the universe, but it also

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Speaker 1: would seem to make it all the more easily digestible. Again,

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Speaker 1: you don't need to know what the different factions are.

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Speaker 1: You don't need to be able to tell Klingons from

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Speaker 1: Romulans because they're not even in the picture. And then

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Speaker 1: on top of all of this, we have a tight

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Speaker 1: space-time focus. So you already mentioned how everything takes place

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Speaker 1: over the course of a few days. And then on

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Speaker 1: top of that, no time travel in this language. But also,

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Speaker 1: as far as space is concerned, everything's pretty localized. This

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Speaker 1: is a franchise that is about traveling and traveling far

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Speaker 1: through the cosmos. But here, all the action plays out

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Speaker 1: in what we might think of as a single neighborhood.

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Speaker 1: Largely concerned with three locations within reasonably short distance of

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Speaker 1: each other. And few players. It comes down to just

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Speaker 1: two ships. And on top of these broad strokes, we

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Speaker 1: have the franchise's most charismatic villain. Some spooky locations for

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Speaker 1: the field work. And we do get some classic Star

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Speaker 1: Trek fisticuffs, but the movie really takes the hornblower in

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Speaker 1: space premise to the next level and delivers arguably the

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Speaker 1: best naval battle in Star Trek media history. The Battle

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Speaker 1: of the Mutara Nebula, a tense cat and mouse game

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Speaker 1: between two starships that draws on Napoleonic naval combat, 20th

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Speaker 1: century submarine combat, and then, of course, all the sci-fi

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Speaker 1: embellishments that you would expect.

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Speaker 2: His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.

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Speaker 1: Yes.

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Speaker 2: But I agree with all of that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: The movie, I think just because it is so emotionally big,

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Speaker 2: it comes to feel big in your mind. But actually,

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Speaker 2: if you look at all of the elements of the storytelling,

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Speaker 2: it's tight, tight, tight.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's personal, even. And that would be my elevator pitch.

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Speaker 1: Star Trek 2, this time, it's personal.

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Speaker 2: Star Trek 2, cruise control.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's go ahead and listen to some trailer

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Speaker 1: audio here. This is from, I believe this is a

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Speaker 1: TV trailer, and I just really love the narration on

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Speaker 1: this one.

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Speaker 3: The wonders of the universe. The dangers of space. The

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Speaker 3: challenge of the unknown. The courage of a warrior. The

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Speaker 3: vengeance of a madman. Kill him. The seed of new life.

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Speaker 3: The hand of death. The plan of a genius. The

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Speaker 3: Wrath of Khan.

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Speaker 1: John!

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Speaker 3: Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan. Rated PG.

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Speaker 1: Now showing at a theater near you. Alright, well if

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Speaker 1: you would like to jump out and watch Wrath of

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Speaker 1: Khan before proceeding with the rest of this episode, hey,

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Speaker 1: go for it. It's widely available. There's some very nice

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Speaker 1: Blu-rays out there. This is one of those films that

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Speaker 1: has come out on every format imaginable since its release.

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Speaker 1: For Star Trek Week, I personally signed up for Paramount +,

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Speaker 1: so I could dig into any and all Trek media

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Speaker 1: that I might require, and they seem to have everything.

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Speaker 1: That is not a paid endorsement, but they do have

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Speaker 1: seemingly all the Trek, or a lot of Trek, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. There's a lot of Star Trek on there.

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Speaker 2: They have that animated series from the 70s. You ever

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Speaker 2: seen that?

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Speaker 1: I've only glanced at that one. And I've watched more

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Speaker 1: of the more recent animated series. We watched that as

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Speaker 1: a family and that one was pretty fun. So, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's gotten to the point where Star Trek is a

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Speaker 1: wide enough tent that, you know, there's different stuff for everybody. So. So. So, yeah.

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Speaker 1: And all thanks to this film.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Who knows what sort of timeline we'd be in without.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, let's jump into a discussion of the people.

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Speaker 1: involved here. I am going to note here that we're

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Speaker 1: going to be touching on some folks that we've covered

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Speaker 1: before on the show for different movies. And especially in

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Speaker 1: those cases, I'm going to probably be a little more

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Speaker 1: brief and refer back to those episodes. And there are

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Speaker 1: also certain players we may come back to again in

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Speaker 1: discussing a picture that, you know, where it might benefit

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Speaker 1: us to be a little more focused on that individual.

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Speaker 1: So at the top here, you have the director once

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Speaker 1: more is Nicholas Meyer, born 1945. We previously discussed him

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Speaker 1: in our episode on the 1979 film Time After Time.

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Speaker 1: His first feature film as a director and Wrath of

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Speaker 1: Khan was the follow-up. After Khan, he made the made-for-TV

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Speaker 1: nuclear holocaust film The Day After in 1983, and he

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Speaker 1: would return to the Trek director's chair for 1991's The

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Speaker 1: Undiscovered Country, which I have not seen that one in

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Speaker 1: a long time, but I remember liking it more or

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Speaker 1: less around the time of its release.

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Speaker 2: Wait, is that four or six? Is it six? The

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Speaker 2: one with the Klingon Chernobyl?

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Speaker 1: This is the one, there's floating Klingon blood and it's pink.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: That's how long ago it's been since I saw it.

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Speaker 1: That's almost the only thing I remember about it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember that one. It's got some sort of

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Speaker 2: an in-universe equivalent of the fall of the Soviet Union,

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Speaker 2: but it's like the Klingon Empire. And yeah, I remember

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Speaker 2: liking it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'll have to come back to that one

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Speaker 1: at some point. But at any rate, yeah, Nicholas Meyer,

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Speaker 1: he remained active as a writer and producer. And he

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Speaker 1: apparently did some uncredited work on the screenplay here. And

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Speaker 1: as we get into the screenplay here, we were talking

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Speaker 1: about this off mic. It is amazing that despite the

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Speaker 1: fact that we have several cooks in the kitchen here,

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Speaker 1: the resulting dish is so focused and so lean.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it does not seem like a script with this

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Speaker 2: many writers should be this cohesive.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And of course, we should acknowledge that Gene Roddenberry, he

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Speaker 1: of course had the original vision for Star Trek. He's

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Speaker 1: an executive consultant on this film, but he did not

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Speaker 1: directly write anything here. Roddenberry lived 1921 through 1991. All right,

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Speaker 1: one of the screenplay credits goes to Jack B. Sowards,

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Speaker 1: born 1929, died in 2007. Mainly a TV writer, his

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Speaker 1: other film credits include 73's Deliver Us From Evil, 74's

401
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Speaker 1: Death Cruise and Cry Panic, and 78's Desperate Women. He

402
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Speaker 1: also wrote an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation,

403
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Speaker 1: Where Silence Has Lease. And then you mentioned Harv Bennett already.

404
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Speaker 1: He has a screenplay and story credit, and he was

405
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Speaker 1: also one of the producers. He lived 1930 through 2015.

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Speaker 1: Emmy award-winning TV writer and producer of the 70s. who

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Speaker 1: worked on, let's see, The Mod Squad and later The

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Speaker 1: Powers of Matthew Starr and Time Tracks. As a producer,

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Speaker 1: he was behind TV's The Six Billion Dollar Man and

410
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Speaker 1: was a producer on the following three Trek films. He

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Speaker 1: was also the sole screenwriter on this film's follow-up, 1984's

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Speaker 1: The Search for Spock. All right, let's get into the

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Speaker 1: cast here, starting, of course, with James T. Kirk, played

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Speaker 1: here by William Shatner, born 1931. We've discussed Shatner previously

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Speaker 1: in our episode in 1975's The Devil's Reign.

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Speaker 3: Oh, yes.

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Speaker 2: The cult melt movie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, Shatner's Kirk is such an

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Speaker 1: icon of classic Trek and its film spinoffs. And in

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Speaker 1: an icon that I think is often distorted in certain ways.

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Speaker 1: But by the way, we celebrate and lampoon the character,

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Speaker 1: you know, aspects of the performance. We sometimes have some

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Speaker 1: fun with, you know, especially when it ventures into overacting.

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Speaker 1: And also there's a fair amount of poking fun regarding

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Speaker 1: Shatner himself. But again, I think especially in this film,

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Speaker 1: you see him perhaps at his best. Meyer is generally

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Speaker 1: given a lot of credit for this kind of time

428
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Speaker 1: sounding like he's almost Herzoging Shatner a bit with subsequent takes,

429
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Speaker 1: you know, wearing him down, you know, because the way

430
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Speaker 1: I've heard it put is like, you know, at first

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Speaker 1: Shatner comes in like in full Shatner mode, you know,

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Speaker 1: in all of the best and worst ways. But then

433
00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: subsequent takes, he gets a little tired. And that plays

434
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:08,879
Speaker 1: into the weariness of the character. But at the same time,

435
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:12,780
Speaker 1: you also, in subsequent takes, according to Meyer, it gives

436
00:24:12,859 --> 00:24:15,700
Speaker 1: Shatner time to embody the character more and it becomes

437
00:24:15,770 --> 00:24:20,129
Speaker 1: more naturalistic. So yeah, I don't want to take any

438
00:24:20,170 --> 00:24:22,950
Speaker 1: credit away from Shatner here. He's absolutely delivering the goods

439
00:24:23,050 --> 00:24:27,430
Speaker 1: on his end. And The result is excellent. I think

440
00:24:27,470 --> 00:24:31,050
Speaker 1: Shatner's really good in this, which is key because this

441
00:24:31,130 --> 00:24:32,790
Speaker 1: movie is about Captain Kirk.

442
00:24:33,190 --> 00:24:33,390
Speaker 3: Yeah.

443
00:24:33,890 --> 00:24:36,630
Speaker 2: I also think he's really good. Just as you said,

444
00:24:36,690 --> 00:24:41,190
Speaker 2: there are things about his performance that especially when taken

445
00:24:41,230 --> 00:24:43,670
Speaker 2: out of context can be kind of funny in ways

446
00:24:43,710 --> 00:24:46,070
Speaker 2: that they maybe weren't supposed to be like, uh, some

447
00:24:46,090 --> 00:24:49,510
Speaker 2: of his most expressive, the shouting of con, you know?

448
00:24:49,910 --> 00:24:50,070
Speaker 3: Yeah.

449
00:24:50,470 --> 00:24:53,330
Speaker 1: That, that moment, especially it's, it's kind of ironic that

450
00:24:53,369 --> 00:24:56,530
Speaker 1: that one is so celebrated and so memed because it's

451
00:24:56,570 --> 00:25:00,490
Speaker 1: just this one high energy moment and one with a,

452
00:25:00,500 --> 00:25:04,119
Speaker 1: we can also caveat in a bit. Um, it's, I

453
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,200
Speaker 1: would argue it's not even really cheesy if you take

454
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:09,199
Speaker 1: it in context, but, this is one moment out of

455
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:11,740
Speaker 1: a performance that's otherwise very believable and grounded.

456
00:25:12,119 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 2: There are, well, there are ways almost that the writing

457
00:25:15,560 --> 00:25:20,179
Speaker 2: itself kind of, uh, incorporates ways that Shatner could be

458
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 2: a little blustery and smug sometimes, uh, in, in his performance.

459
00:25:24,560 --> 00:25:26,480
Speaker 2: Like there is a great scene in the movie. It's

460
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:29,360
Speaker 2: one of my favorite scenes, actually. It's the scene where

461
00:25:29,420 --> 00:25:33,440
Speaker 2: the enterprise is first, uh, ambushed by the reliant under

462
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 2: the command of Khan. Um, we'll talk about the scene

463
00:25:36,020 --> 00:25:39,450
Speaker 2: when we get into the plot section, but, One of

464
00:25:39,470 --> 00:25:43,510
Speaker 2: the younger trainee officers, the character Savik, played by Christy Alley,

465
00:25:44,070 --> 00:25:47,490
Speaker 2: tries to, you know, quote regulations at Kirk, you know,

466
00:25:47,570 --> 00:25:50,010
Speaker 2: saying like, hey, you know, aren't we supposed to do

467
00:25:50,050 --> 00:25:52,850
Speaker 2: it by the book doing this? And they ignore her

468
00:25:52,890 --> 00:25:54,760
Speaker 2: and they just go in. And if they it turns

469
00:25:54,820 --> 00:25:57,490
Speaker 2: out if they had listened to her, Khan would not

470
00:25:57,560 --> 00:25:59,420
Speaker 2: have been able to get the better of them like

471
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:03,859
Speaker 2: he did. But because Kirk is cocky and blustery and

472
00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:08,280
Speaker 2: just going in, you know, kind of smug, he Khan

473
00:26:08,300 --> 00:26:09,909
Speaker 2: gets the better of him. And at the end of

474
00:26:09,940 --> 00:26:13,070
Speaker 2: the scene, he gets a great moment where he chides himself.

475
00:26:13,130 --> 00:26:14,810
Speaker 2: He's like, all I did was get caught with my

476
00:26:14,850 --> 00:26:18,710
Speaker 2: breeches down. Savick, you go right on quoting regulations at me.

477
00:26:18,790 --> 00:26:19,410
Speaker 1: You were right.

478
00:26:20,290 --> 00:26:21,209
Speaker 2: And it's a great moment.

479
00:26:21,490 --> 00:26:24,990
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, ultimately, I have nothing but

480
00:26:25,050 --> 00:26:29,110
Speaker 1: nice things to say about Shatner's performance here. All right,

481
00:26:29,150 --> 00:26:31,619
Speaker 1: moving on through the crew here, the core crew of

482
00:26:31,990 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: the Enterprise. We have Leonard Nimoy, of course, returning as Spock.

483
00:26:37,060 --> 00:26:41,210
Speaker 1: Nimoy lived 1931 through 2015. We've also discussed Nimoy before

484
00:26:41,369 --> 00:26:45,170
Speaker 1: in our recently re-aired episode on 1958's The Brain Eaters.

485
00:26:45,690 --> 00:26:47,970
Speaker 2: One of my favorites and one of my favorite posters.

486
00:26:49,050 --> 00:26:51,250
Speaker 1: Though he's barely in it, as I recall, right?

487
00:26:51,869 --> 00:26:54,070
Speaker 2: I think so. Well, now it's been a while since

488
00:26:54,090 --> 00:26:55,950
Speaker 2: we did that episode. I think he's the guy who's

489
00:26:56,109 --> 00:26:58,609
Speaker 2: inside the giant cone once they go in there. So

490
00:26:58,650 --> 00:27:00,010
Speaker 2: he doesn't get a lot of screen time.

491
00:27:00,030 --> 00:27:04,159
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I'm not going to completely rehash everything I

492
00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: said in that episode about Leonard Nimoy. But, you know,

493
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:10,400
Speaker 1: he's worked quite a bit outside of Trek. Best known

494
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:13,100
Speaker 1: for his portrayal of Spock. But he did a lot

495
00:27:13,119 --> 00:27:16,850
Speaker 1: of voice acting and narration. His credits go back to 51.

496
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,949
Speaker 1: And his TV credits include The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits,

497
00:27:20,369 --> 00:27:24,430
Speaker 1: the original Mission Impossible series, Night Gallery, which he also

498
00:27:24,450 --> 00:27:28,130
Speaker 1: directed an episode of, The 90s Outer Limits, among others.

499
00:27:28,740 --> 00:27:31,780
Speaker 1: He appeared in the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake.

500
00:27:32,300 --> 00:27:34,139
Speaker 1: And as a director, he would take the helm on

501
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: 84's The Search for Spock and 86's The Voyage Home.

502
00:27:38,020 --> 00:27:41,369
Speaker 1: As of this recording, he still holds the record, I believe,

503
00:27:41,530 --> 00:27:43,929
Speaker 1: as the main cast Trek actor to appear in the

504
00:27:44,090 --> 00:27:47,530
Speaker 1: most Trek movies. So eight films. That includes the 2009

505
00:27:47,530 --> 00:27:48,869
Speaker 1: Trek reboot remake and 2013's Into Darkness.

506
00:27:53,270 --> 00:27:55,710
Speaker 2: Outside of his work on Star Trek, I would single

507
00:27:55,790 --> 00:27:58,970
Speaker 2: out his role in the 78 Invasion of the Body

508
00:27:59,010 --> 00:28:03,340
Speaker 2: Snatchers as especially good. He's really great in that. I've

509
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:05,460
Speaker 2: probably mentioned it on the show before because I love

510
00:28:05,500 --> 00:28:08,220
Speaker 2: it so much, but there's a moment when in the

511
00:28:08,619 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 2: alien replicant form, he is trying to implant some of

512
00:28:11,540 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 2: the remaining human characters with pods to transform them into

513
00:28:16,380 --> 00:28:21,100
Speaker 2: alien replicants and Donald Sutherland says to them, he says

514
00:28:21,140 --> 00:28:23,939
Speaker 2: to the aliens, he's like, we hate your guts. And

515
00:28:23,980 --> 00:28:27,140
Speaker 2: Leonard Nimoy, as this alien, says to him, we don't

516
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:30,630
Speaker 2: hate you. Which I always found so chilling. It's wonderful.

517
00:28:30,650 --> 00:28:33,149
Speaker 2: It's like, they don't. We're just doing our thing.

518
00:28:33,810 --> 00:28:37,710
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Nimoy could be chilling. And in general,

519
00:28:37,910 --> 00:28:40,990
Speaker 1: he just brought a quiet dignity to anything he was in.

520
00:28:41,330 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: And even if he wasn't playing Spock. And if he

521
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:46,540
Speaker 1: was playing Spock, you got bucket loads of quiet dignity.

522
00:28:47,740 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 1: all you can handle. So he's great in this as always,

523
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:54,820
Speaker 1: though it is like a key supporting role for the

524
00:28:54,860 --> 00:28:59,460
Speaker 1: most part. Again, Kirk is the protagonist, but as viewers

525
00:28:59,500 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: of this film well know, it's all leading up to

526
00:29:02,020 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: one of the most dramatic and iconic moments in the

527
00:29:04,380 --> 00:29:05,320
Speaker 1: Trek film series.

528
00:29:05,620 --> 00:29:05,830
Speaker 3: Yeah.

529
00:29:06,070 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 2: Well, I guess we should go ahead and say here

530
00:29:07,940 --> 00:29:10,370
Speaker 2: that this episode will be full of spoilers if you've

531
00:29:10,390 --> 00:29:12,640
Speaker 2: never seen this movie. So If you want to see

532
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:15,420
Speaker 2: it unspoiled and you've made it this far already, stop

533
00:29:15,460 --> 00:29:17,140
Speaker 2: here and go watch the movie because we are going

534
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:18,460
Speaker 2: to talk about the ending and all that.

535
00:29:18,700 --> 00:29:18,860
Speaker 3: Yeah.

536
00:29:19,420 --> 00:29:22,640
Speaker 1: All right. Next, we have Bones. We have Dr. Leonard

537
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:28,740
Speaker 1: Bones McCoy, played by DeForest Kelly, who lived 1920 through 1999.

538
00:29:28,900 --> 00:29:33,090
Speaker 1: Atlanta-born actor, of course, best known for his work as Bones.

539
00:29:33,630 --> 00:29:36,970
Speaker 1: But he also was just a staple on various TV westerns,

540
00:29:37,710 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 1: which makes sense, Even if you've only seen his work

541
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:42,620
Speaker 1: in Star Trek, you know that he brings kind of

542
00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:47,020
Speaker 1: an old TV western energy to the franchise. His credits

543
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:49,660
Speaker 1: go back to the mid-40s, and outside of the Trek films,

544
00:29:49,700 --> 00:29:54,390
Speaker 1: his credits also include the giant rampaging rabbits movie, 1972's

545
00:29:54,530 --> 00:29:55,469
Speaker 1: Night of the Levis.

546
00:29:55,790 --> 00:29:58,310
Speaker 2: Oh boy. You may not have heard the last of

547
00:29:58,350 --> 00:29:59,530
Speaker 2: those rabbits, listener.

548
00:30:01,450 --> 00:30:03,430
Speaker 1: Yeah, we may come back. We've been talking about doing

549
00:30:03,450 --> 00:30:06,209
Speaker 1: that one for a while. So Bones is a lovable

550
00:30:06,250 --> 00:30:08,950
Speaker 1: grumpus in the original series, and he brings that energy

551
00:30:09,010 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: here as well. Again, key supporting character. He's Kirk's older

552
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,540
Speaker 1: friend and longtime crew member who is trying to help

553
00:30:16,700 --> 00:30:18,540
Speaker 1: ease him into his older years.

554
00:30:19,180 --> 00:30:22,540
Speaker 2: But also kind of negging him into being younger again.

555
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:23,380
Speaker 1: Yeah.

556
00:30:23,590 --> 00:30:25,530
Speaker 2: Like, why don't you get back into the action?

557
00:30:25,550 --> 00:30:28,810
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. All right, up next we have Walter

558
00:30:28,870 --> 00:30:35,140
Speaker 1: Koenig playing Chekhov. Born 1936, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Again,

559
00:30:35,260 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 1: best known for playing Chekhov here, but he did a

560
00:30:37,740 --> 00:30:40,120
Speaker 1: lot of additional TV work and appeared in 12 episodes

561
00:30:40,140 --> 00:30:44,730
Speaker 1: of Babylon 5. His other films include 1989's Moontrap and

562
00:30:44,810 --> 00:30:46,410
Speaker 1: 1996's Sworn to Justice.

563
00:30:47,210 --> 00:30:49,190
Speaker 2: I've read about how Star Trek fans, though of course

564
00:30:49,310 --> 00:30:53,290
Speaker 2: most loved this movie, have long enjoyed pointing out the

565
00:30:53,370 --> 00:30:58,220
Speaker 2: continuity flub here in that the character that Koenig plays, Chekhov,

566
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:02,500
Speaker 2: is When he first meets Khan again in this movie,

567
00:31:02,540 --> 00:31:05,590
Speaker 2: Khan is like, I never forget a face. I know

568
00:31:05,670 --> 00:31:10,670
Speaker 2: you from the Enterprise. And in fact, that episode is

569
00:31:10,710 --> 00:31:14,210
Speaker 2: from before Walter Koenig joined the show. And so Chekhov

570
00:31:14,270 --> 00:31:15,390
Speaker 2: is not in that episode.

571
00:31:15,410 --> 00:31:19,620
Speaker 1: I think there's some retconning. I was thinking back on

572
00:31:19,660 --> 00:31:21,780
Speaker 1: the space seat episode. I was like, wait, I don't

573
00:31:21,820 --> 00:31:24,380
Speaker 1: remember the meeting. But then I kind of explained it away.

574
00:31:24,420 --> 00:31:26,450
Speaker 1: I'm like, he was there on the ship. But we

575
00:31:26,470 --> 00:31:28,530
Speaker 1: just didn't see him that we just can assume they

576
00:31:28,570 --> 00:31:31,410
Speaker 1: bumped into each other like in the cafeteria or something.

577
00:31:31,570 --> 00:31:32,350
Speaker 2: Deleted scenes.

578
00:31:32,530 --> 00:31:34,490
Speaker 1: Yeah.

579
00:31:34,710 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 2: Now, is it the case of when they first brought

580
00:31:36,860 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 2: Walter Koenig onto the show that I think I'd always

581
00:31:40,140 --> 00:31:42,340
Speaker 2: heard this, that it was because like he was he

582
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:44,780
Speaker 2: had he had a beetle haircut, basically. He was like

583
00:31:44,820 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 2: a mop top and he looks kind of like Davy Jones.

584
00:31:47,860 --> 00:31:50,720
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I know. I remember hearing this as well.

585
00:31:50,780 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: And maybe I've seen some pictures to back this up.

586
00:31:53,410 --> 00:31:56,150
Speaker 2: They basically wanted a beetle-looking kid on the show, and

587
00:31:56,170 --> 00:31:56,590
Speaker 2: there he is.

588
00:31:57,110 --> 00:31:58,890
Speaker 1: He had to bring in the youth. All right, up

589
00:31:58,930 --> 00:32:03,640
Speaker 1: next we have George Takei playing Sulu, born 1937, a

590
00:32:03,740 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: beloved Japanese-American actor who, outside of Trek, probably best known

591
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:11,580
Speaker 1: for his voice acting. We have another fabulous voice here,

592
00:32:12,020 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 1: so you'll hear him in such films as Disney's Mulan

593
00:32:14,860 --> 00:32:20,270
Speaker 1: from 1988, the film Kubo from 2016, and so many one-offs.

594
00:32:20,410 --> 00:32:23,190
Speaker 1: He pops up in things like Adventure Time and And

595
00:32:23,350 --> 00:32:25,690
Speaker 1: he has that voice. You know when a character is

596
00:32:25,710 --> 00:32:29,650
Speaker 1: suddenly voiced by George Takei. There's no mistaking it.

597
00:32:30,190 --> 00:32:32,890
Speaker 2: He has one of those voices where you can hear

598
00:32:32,970 --> 00:32:36,010
Speaker 2: him smiling when he talks. You know what I'm talking about?

599
00:32:36,270 --> 00:32:39,930
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Now, due to the tightness of the script here,

600
00:32:40,290 --> 00:32:42,870
Speaker 1: Sulu sadly doesn't really have that much to do in

601
00:32:42,910 --> 00:32:46,010
Speaker 1: Wrath of Khan. He's definitely a part of a crack team.

602
00:32:46,690 --> 00:32:49,450
Speaker 1: There's no taking that away from his character, but... But

603
00:32:50,570 --> 00:32:53,970
Speaker 1: he doesn't play into the events too strongly. I believe

604
00:32:53,990 --> 00:32:56,290
Speaker 1: there was a key deleted scene that would have given

605
00:32:56,330 --> 00:32:59,750
Speaker 1: us a little more Kirk-Sulu interaction, but it was cut

606
00:32:59,770 --> 00:33:00,250
Speaker 1: for pacing.

607
00:33:00,590 --> 00:33:02,290
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's there in the script. I don't know if

608
00:33:02,330 --> 00:33:04,260
Speaker 2: it was ever filmed, but it's not in the final cut.

609
00:33:04,300 --> 00:33:07,660
Speaker 2: In the script, there's a scene where Kirk is congratulating

610
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 2: Sulu on being given command of his own starship. But

611
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 2: he's sort of doing one more training mission with the

612
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 2: Enterprise first.

613
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 3: Yeah.

614
00:33:15,790 --> 00:33:18,570
Speaker 1: And then rounding out the original Trek crew, we have

615
00:33:18,610 --> 00:33:24,260
Speaker 1: Nichelle Nichols playing Uhura. She lived 1932 through 2022. American

616
00:33:24,300 --> 00:33:27,020
Speaker 1: actress and former dancer, best known for Star Trek, as

617
00:33:27,060 --> 00:33:31,860
Speaker 1: well as her work with NASA from 1977 through 2015.

618
00:33:31,860 --> 00:33:35,300
Speaker 1: She also appears in the 1974 action film Truck Turner,

619
00:33:35,380 --> 00:33:40,340
Speaker 1: starring Isaac Hayes and co-starring Yafit Kodo. Again, sadly, not

620
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:42,940
Speaker 1: a very big role here, but You know, as with others,

621
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 1: she's part of a crack team. And she does have

622
00:33:45,240 --> 00:33:47,740
Speaker 1: like one or two crucial moments where if her character

623
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:52,080
Speaker 1: had done something differently, the results would have been more

624
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:53,300
Speaker 1: disastrous for the crew.

625
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:56,060
Speaker 2: But as you said, this is a very Kirk and

626
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 2: sort of Kirk and Spock focused story.

627
00:33:58,440 --> 00:34:01,640
Speaker 1: Right. And, you know, ultimately, we know the dynamics of

628
00:34:01,660 --> 00:34:04,410
Speaker 1: these characters. So you have to introduce some other non-villain

629
00:34:04,450 --> 00:34:07,250
Speaker 1: characters to round things out. And also to add that

630
00:34:07,310 --> 00:34:09,390
Speaker 1: level of risk, because they're not going to kill off

631
00:34:09,510 --> 00:34:12,580
Speaker 1: one of the members of the classic Enterprise crew in

632
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 1: this movie, right? So we need to introduce some characters

633
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:17,940
Speaker 1: that might conceivably die.

634
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:19,660
Speaker 2: That's right. So who do we get here?

635
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:23,839
Speaker 1: All right. So there's a science project going on. There's

636
00:34:23,860 --> 00:34:27,609
Speaker 1: a big Genesis project, as we'll learn. And the lead

637
00:34:27,670 --> 00:34:31,170
Speaker 1: scientist on this is Dr. Carol Marcus, played by B.B. Besch.

638
00:34:31,670 --> 00:34:34,790
Speaker 1: She lived 1942 through 1996. The character here is Kirk's

639
00:34:34,830 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: former romantic partner. Um, the actress here, best known for

640
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:42,060
Speaker 1: this film, but also appeared in 82's The Beast Within, uh,

641
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,860
Speaker 1: The Day After, which we already referenced, 87's Who's That Girl,

642
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:49,810
Speaker 1: 89's Steel Magnolias, and 1990's Tremors. Uh, she was a

643
00:34:49,890 --> 00:34:50,950
Speaker 1: two-time Emmy nominee.

644
00:34:51,410 --> 00:34:54,390
Speaker 2: Well, wait, who is she in Tremors? She's just one

645
00:34:54,410 --> 00:34:56,310
Speaker 2: of the, I mean, I guess it's gotta be one

646
00:34:56,330 --> 00:34:57,910
Speaker 2: of the people who lives in that town. There's nobody

647
00:34:57,950 --> 00:34:58,670
Speaker 2: else in that movie.

648
00:34:59,950 --> 00:35:02,830
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a small town. Let's see. Um, she's the

649
00:35:02,850 --> 00:35:07,489
Speaker 1: doctor's wife. Oh, okay. Okay. I do not specifically remember her.

650
00:35:07,570 --> 00:35:09,770
Speaker 1: I'm long overdue for a Tremors rewatch.

651
00:35:10,510 --> 00:35:12,469
Speaker 2: They're under the ground.

652
00:35:14,550 --> 00:35:17,430
Speaker 1: All right, so that's Dr. Carol Marcus. And, you know,

653
00:35:17,830 --> 00:35:23,350
Speaker 1: fine performance, important role. Playing her adult son, Dr. David Marcus,

654
00:35:23,530 --> 00:35:28,450
Speaker 1: is Merritt Buttrick, who lived 1959 through 1989. This is

655
00:35:28,630 --> 00:35:32,069
Speaker 1: Kirk and Carol's son, as we'll learn. The actor here

656
00:35:32,110 --> 00:35:34,009
Speaker 1: is best remembered for his role in this film and

657
00:35:34,030 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 1: the follow-up, The Search for Spock, He also appeared on

658
00:35:36,980 --> 00:35:42,160
Speaker 1: the 1982 through 1983 teen sitcom Square Pegs alongside Sarah

659
00:35:42,180 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: Jessica Parker, and he also appeared in an episode of

660
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:48,489
Speaker 1: Star Trek The Next Generation. His other film credits include

661
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:52,610
Speaker 1: 88's Fright Night Part 2 and 1989's Death Spa.

662
00:35:53,489 --> 00:35:56,310
Speaker 2: You can see, or at least I can imagine, based

663
00:35:56,370 --> 00:35:59,370
Speaker 2: on looking at him in his scenes with Shatner, that

664
00:35:59,410 --> 00:36:02,569
Speaker 2: he was chosen at least in part for his resemblance

665
00:36:02,610 --> 00:36:06,180
Speaker 2: to Shatner and his ability to plausibly be this guy's son.

666
00:36:07,380 --> 00:36:11,060
Speaker 2: But he brings his own kind of Shatneriness to the role,

667
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:15,910
Speaker 2: like a younger Shatneriness that is irksome to the older Shatner.

668
00:36:15,930 --> 00:36:21,650
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very action-oriented, kind of a hothead. And I

669
00:36:21,670 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: think it's a solid performance. Sadly, this is another young

670
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,760
Speaker 1: actor whose life was cut short. But, you know, solid

671
00:36:29,780 --> 00:36:33,590
Speaker 1: presence here. All right, and then we have Captain Terrell,

672
00:36:34,030 --> 00:36:37,430
Speaker 1: and he is played by the great Paul Winfield, who

673
00:36:37,450 --> 00:36:41,839
Speaker 1: lived 1939 through 2004, nominated for an Oscar for his

674
00:36:41,890 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: lead role in the 1972 film Sounder, and nominated for

675
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,340
Speaker 1: an Emmy for his role as Martin Luther King Jr.

676
00:36:47,380 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 1: in the 1978 miniseries King. His other credits include 82's

677
00:36:51,940 --> 00:36:55,259
Speaker 1: White Dog, 84's The Terminator, 1990's Presumed Innocent, and 1996's

678
00:36:55,300 --> 00:36:55,700
Speaker 1: Mars Attacks.

679
00:36:58,340 --> 00:37:02,300
Speaker 2: He's good in this as a tragically doomed Starfleet officer

680
00:37:02,380 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 2: who sort of fights against some SETI eel mine control.

681
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, strong performance, but definitely a

682
00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:14,830
Speaker 1: tragic trajectory. All right. We mentioned Christy Alley is in

683
00:37:14,850 --> 00:37:21,469
Speaker 1: this earlier. She plays Savick, the young Vulcan Federation trainee here.

684
00:37:21,489 --> 00:37:23,930
Speaker 1: Christy Alley lived 1951 through 2022. Emmy award-winning cheer star.

685
00:37:28,210 --> 00:37:31,750
Speaker 1: also known for the Look Who's Talking films. She also

686
00:37:31,770 --> 00:37:34,630
Speaker 1: appears in John Carpenter's Village of the Damned, the remake

687
00:37:34,670 --> 00:37:40,140
Speaker 1: from 1995, and she's in 1997's Deconstructing Harry. She did

688
00:37:40,219 --> 00:37:43,380
Speaker 1: not return to this role in the subsequent two films,

689
00:37:44,100 --> 00:37:47,180
Speaker 1: because the two Star Trek films after this also feature Savick,

690
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: but instead she's played by Robin Curtis.

691
00:37:49,860 --> 00:37:51,900
Speaker 2: Yeah, the presence of this character is good because you

692
00:37:51,940 --> 00:37:56,020
Speaker 2: need somebody who is um, new essentially to kind of

693
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:00,140
Speaker 2: be learning about the, uh, older familiar characters and their

694
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:03,540
Speaker 2: dynamics and to, uh, play as a foil to them

695
00:38:03,580 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 2: getting set in their ways.

696
00:38:05,110 --> 00:38:06,930
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah. She doesn't know who all these people

697
00:38:07,050 --> 00:38:09,629
Speaker 1: are and what their, their deals are. So, uh, yeah,

698
00:38:09,670 --> 00:38:11,210
Speaker 1: she's a, she's a good character.

699
00:38:12,190 --> 00:38:14,430
Speaker 2: When do we get to Ricardo Montalban? When do we

700
00:38:14,450 --> 00:38:14,690
Speaker 2: get him?

701
00:38:15,530 --> 00:38:19,700
Speaker 1: It is now time for Ricardo Montalban. Um, the legendary

702
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:25,020
Speaker 1: Mexican and American actor who lived 1920 through 2009. And again,

703
00:38:25,160 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 1: reprising his role from the 1967 episode Space Seed. His

704
00:38:29,780 --> 00:38:32,970
Speaker 1: credits go back to 1941. He first rose to stardom

705
00:38:33,010 --> 00:38:36,690
Speaker 1: during the golden age of Mexican cinema. The key film

706
00:38:36,750 --> 00:38:42,530
Speaker 1: being 1943's Santa, that has nothing to do with Santa Claus,

707
00:38:43,390 --> 00:38:47,150
Speaker 1: directed by Hollywood expat Norman Foster. And after a series

708
00:38:47,190 --> 00:38:50,450
Speaker 1: of Mexican films, he began work with MGM around the

709
00:38:50,469 --> 00:38:53,750
Speaker 1: time the film in question here was 1947's Fiesta, which

710
00:38:53,810 --> 00:38:56,570
Speaker 1: was an American production, but it was being filmed in Mexico.

711
00:38:57,610 --> 00:39:00,010
Speaker 1: And it kind of took off from there. So decades

712
00:39:00,050 --> 00:39:03,779
Speaker 1: of continuous work followed. I saw a piece from an

713
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:07,060
Speaker 1: interview where he described himself as an actor being like

714
00:39:07,100 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 1: a doctor on call. Like if you needed him, you

715
00:39:09,739 --> 00:39:13,160
Speaker 1: just called him and he would do it. So it

716
00:39:13,219 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 1: sounds like a like a real workaholic.

717
00:39:15,489 --> 00:39:17,850
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the story goes that while some original

718
00:39:17,890 --> 00:39:20,870
Speaker 2: cast members were not excited to come back for this film,

719
00:39:20,930 --> 00:39:23,270
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they would mostly remember it fondly

720
00:39:23,290 --> 00:39:26,069
Speaker 2: looking back. But, you know, it was hard to get

721
00:39:26,110 --> 00:39:29,089
Speaker 2: them on board. Ricardo Montalban was not hard to get

722
00:39:29,190 --> 00:39:29,570
Speaker 2: on board.

723
00:39:29,590 --> 00:39:29,950
Speaker 1: He was exciting.

724
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:33,100
Speaker 2: To play Khan again. And you can feel it in

725
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:37,279
Speaker 2: his scenes. He's happy to be here, loves doing this.

726
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:41,010
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, as we'll discuss, he just consumes this role.

727
00:39:41,710 --> 00:39:44,089
Speaker 1: So whether that story is true or not, you can

728
00:39:44,130 --> 00:39:48,410
Speaker 1: believe it easily. So during his career, he did pretty

729
00:39:48,430 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 1: much everything. So comedies, westerns, swashbucklers, miscellaneous action films, a

730
00:39:53,660 --> 00:39:57,120
Speaker 1: little noir in there, some of which looks pretty interesting.

731
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: And of course, a lot of TV appearances, which included

732
00:40:00,380 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 1: that key episode of the original Star Trek. Also well

733
00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:06,879
Speaker 1: known for his role on the original Fantasy Island from

734
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: 77 through 84. He also appeared in 1971's Escape from

735
00:40:11,260 --> 00:40:14,340
Speaker 1: the Planet of the Apes and 72's Conquest of the

736
00:40:14,380 --> 00:40:17,739
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes. But outside of those two films

737
00:40:17,810 --> 00:40:20,410
Speaker 1: and Star Trek, and if you want to count them,

738
00:40:20,430 --> 00:40:22,969
Speaker 1: a couple of Spy Kids movies, he didn't really do

739
00:40:23,010 --> 00:40:25,110
Speaker 1: much in the way of horror or sci-fi, which is

740
00:40:25,610 --> 00:40:28,110
Speaker 1: kind of a shame when you realize just what a

741
00:40:28,190 --> 00:40:31,020
Speaker 1: great Dracula this guy would have made. Can you imagine

742
00:40:31,060 --> 00:40:34,120
Speaker 1: Ricardo Montalban as Dracula? Amazing.

743
00:40:34,180 --> 00:40:35,530
Speaker 2: Yes, I would love to have seen it.

744
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:40,219
Speaker 1: So, yeah, what can you say? Here, as Khan, we

745
00:40:40,260 --> 00:40:44,710
Speaker 1: have just a highly charismatic villain role that just positively drips.

746
00:40:45,430 --> 00:40:48,739
Speaker 1: It Is it too much? Is it over the top? No, no.

747
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:51,669
Speaker 1: I don't know that it could be, right? I mean,

748
00:40:52,290 --> 00:40:54,850
Speaker 1: because what else do you want from a genetically engineered

749
00:40:54,950 --> 00:40:57,989
Speaker 1: super tyrant that's hell-bent on revenge? You know, this is

750
00:40:58,150 --> 00:41:02,049
Speaker 1: not a subtle character. This is a grandiose character. And

751
00:41:02,090 --> 00:41:05,190
Speaker 1: you've got to have a grandiose performance. And that's what

752
00:41:05,370 --> 00:41:10,200
Speaker 1: Montalban delivers here in Spades. Just fills every scene he's

753
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:12,140
Speaker 1: in with just this focused rage.

754
00:41:12,860 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 2: Grandiose personality and grandiose chest.

755
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:16,300
Speaker 3: Yes.

756
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 2: Questions audience members have looking at this movie is like,

757
00:41:19,620 --> 00:41:21,430
Speaker 2: is that his real chest?

758
00:41:21,930 --> 00:41:22,950
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe it is.

759
00:41:23,210 --> 00:41:26,110
Speaker 2: He's like 60 years old when this movie was made

760
00:41:26,150 --> 00:41:27,570
Speaker 2: and that's his real chest.

761
00:41:27,730 --> 00:41:30,509
Speaker 1: It's just body by Montalban. Yeah, I mean, you look

762
00:41:30,550 --> 00:41:32,489
Speaker 1: back at older pictures of him, this dude was just

763
00:41:32,550 --> 00:41:37,040
Speaker 1: always ripped. Wow. Alright, I'm just going to mention that

764
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 1: Industrial Light and Magic did the visual effects here. Again,

765
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:43,279
Speaker 1: not a Not in a super effects movie, but the

766
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:47,220
Speaker 1: effects that we have are solid. We have some computer

767
00:41:47,260 --> 00:41:49,620
Speaker 1: effects here that, you know, not on par with what

768
00:41:49,660 --> 00:41:51,600
Speaker 1: we would have today, certainly. But I don't know. They

769
00:41:51,640 --> 00:41:55,839
Speaker 1: tend to be limited to, you know, like computer readouts

770
00:41:55,910 --> 00:41:58,070
Speaker 1: and so forth, and therefore a little more forgiving.

771
00:41:58,330 --> 00:42:02,430
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a technical demonstration of how the Genesis project

772
00:42:02,469 --> 00:42:05,609
Speaker 2: works is some computer effects that don't look amazing. there

773
00:42:05,650 --> 00:42:07,870
Speaker 2: are some things in it that look quite nice. Like

774
00:42:07,890 --> 00:42:10,870
Speaker 2: there are these, um, painted backgrounds that they use to

775
00:42:10,930 --> 00:42:13,860
Speaker 2: show the, uh, you know, the cavern inside the planet

776
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 2: that's filled with blossoming life. And that stuff looks beautiful. Uh,

777
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 2: and then there are also some sets that you can

778
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:24,910
Speaker 2: tell were being made with cost constraints in mind, because

779
00:42:24,930 --> 00:42:27,670
Speaker 2: there's not a lot for you to see, but what's

780
00:42:27,770 --> 00:42:31,790
Speaker 2: there is very, uh, uh, effective at creating the, the

781
00:42:31,830 --> 00:42:34,140
Speaker 2: feeling it was supposed to like, the set of the

782
00:42:34,219 --> 00:42:37,799
Speaker 2: surface of SETI Alpha 6 or 5, whichever it is,

783
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:40,589
Speaker 2: you don't see a lot because it's just this red

784
00:42:40,670 --> 00:42:44,589
Speaker 2: desert with a dust storm blowing everywhere, so your sight

785
00:42:44,630 --> 00:42:47,310
Speaker 2: lines are very limited. So it's just kind of a

786
00:42:47,370 --> 00:42:52,440
Speaker 2: red haze, but it works very well. It feels claustrophobic, ominous, dangerous.

787
00:42:53,140 --> 00:42:55,020
Speaker 2: It gets you in the right mood, even though they

788
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:58,240
Speaker 2: were able to achieve it without building out an elaborate

789
00:42:58,280 --> 00:42:59,819
Speaker 2: set with a lot of different stuff in it.

790
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll touch on specific examples of this, but

791
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:05,060
Speaker 1: On the whole, I feel like all the sets feel

792
00:43:05,100 --> 00:43:09,750
Speaker 1: very lived in. Almost like you can really, you can

793
00:43:09,830 --> 00:43:12,149
Speaker 1: smell the alien on them to a certain extent. Like

794
00:43:12,550 --> 00:43:14,850
Speaker 1: they didn't lean too far. Or Star Wars. Or Star Wars, yeah.

795
00:43:14,870 --> 00:43:16,930
Speaker 1: They don't lean too far into it, but everything does

796
00:43:16,969 --> 00:43:21,629
Speaker 1: feel like sometimes a little grubby for sure, but other

797
00:43:21,670 --> 00:43:24,670
Speaker 1: times just comfortably lived in. I agree.

798
00:43:25,790 --> 00:43:29,710
Speaker 2: So if you watch, episodes of the original series, Star Trek,

799
00:43:29,770 --> 00:43:33,790
Speaker 2: the sets are very clean. It's that old sci-fi look

800
00:43:34,510 --> 00:43:39,450
Speaker 2: where everything's like shining, you know, unblemished kind of rooms

801
00:43:39,510 --> 00:43:42,390
Speaker 2: and tubes and hallways where it looks like nobody actually

802
00:43:42,450 --> 00:43:45,220
Speaker 2: lives in them. I don't know exactly when that changed,

803
00:43:45,260 --> 00:43:48,020
Speaker 2: but people sometimes point to movies like Star Wars and

804
00:43:48,140 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 2: Alien as films that made space look kind of grungy

805
00:43:51,780 --> 00:43:54,940
Speaker 2: and lived in like the actual spaces we occupy. And

806
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:56,700
Speaker 2: this movie feels more like that.

807
00:43:57,160 --> 00:43:59,420
Speaker 1: Yeah, though Next Generation would kind of return to that

808
00:43:59,460 --> 00:44:02,390
Speaker 1: old aesthetic. Because I remember, you know, looking back on it,

809
00:44:02,410 --> 00:44:06,750
Speaker 1: you know, watching Next Generation like junior high, there was

810
00:44:06,790 --> 00:44:08,270
Speaker 1: kind of this idea that's like, oh, I guess in

811
00:44:08,290 --> 00:44:10,730
Speaker 1: the future we just don't have stuff. Like you have

812
00:44:10,750 --> 00:44:12,589
Speaker 1: a few things. You can have like two books and

813
00:44:12,650 --> 00:44:15,950
Speaker 1: maybe a model ship. You get to bring three or

814
00:44:15,989 --> 00:44:17,650
Speaker 1: four things with you onto the Enterprise.

815
00:44:17,830 --> 00:44:20,780
Speaker 2: Yeah, but also like the walls don't get scuffs on them.

816
00:44:20,860 --> 00:44:22,739
Speaker 2: You know, you don't like wear the floor out in

817
00:44:22,780 --> 00:44:23,719
Speaker 2: certain places.

818
00:44:23,739 --> 00:44:28,100
Speaker 1: Right, right. All right, and finally, the music here is

819
00:44:28,380 --> 00:44:32,239
Speaker 1: a score by James Horner, who in 1953 through 2015, yeah,

820
00:44:33,239 --> 00:44:38,180
Speaker 1: another superb James Horner score. Composed scores for such films

821
00:44:38,260 --> 00:44:43,530
Speaker 1: as Battle Beyond the Stars, Aliens, Krull, Willow, Field of Dreams,

822
00:44:43,590 --> 00:44:48,770
Speaker 1: Apollo 13, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, and Avatar. His 1986 score,

823
00:44:48,810 --> 00:44:50,210
Speaker 1: To the Name of the Rose, is one of my

824
00:44:50,250 --> 00:44:54,710
Speaker 1: personal favorites. This score, really solid, has some, of course...

825
00:44:55,190 --> 00:44:58,350
Speaker 1: you know, obligatory nods to the original Star Trek theme song.

826
00:44:58,810 --> 00:45:01,790
Speaker 1: But also, I don't know, I assume you caught this, Joe.

827
00:45:02,190 --> 00:45:05,210
Speaker 1: There are moments here where we come dangerously close to

828
00:45:05,250 --> 00:45:09,970
Speaker 1: the iconic Bishop's Countdown segment in his Alien score, which would,

829
00:45:09,989 --> 00:45:12,100
Speaker 1: of course, come a few years later. That amped up

830
00:45:12,180 --> 00:45:16,640
Speaker 1: music that energizes aliens, but also ended up energizing film

831
00:45:16,660 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: trailers for decades. So, yeah, great score here, for sure.

832
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:23,760
Speaker 1: And if you're looking closely, James Horner also has a cameo.

833
00:45:24,890 --> 00:45:27,649
Speaker 1: I included a screenshot here for you, Joe. He's just

834
00:45:27,950 --> 00:45:30,549
Speaker 1: one of the Starfleet, young Starfleet guys just walking through

835
00:45:30,570 --> 00:45:30,950
Speaker 1: a hallway.

836
00:45:31,230 --> 00:45:32,450
Speaker 2: He looks really young.

837
00:45:32,810 --> 00:45:45,049
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like kid genius. James Horner, age 13. All right.

838
00:45:45,070 --> 00:45:46,110
Speaker 2: You ready to talk about the plot?

839
00:45:46,430 --> 00:45:47,759
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Okay.

840
00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:51,260
Speaker 2: Now, because this is a very well-known Star Trek film,

841
00:45:52,100 --> 00:45:56,110
Speaker 2: we might not talk with as much moment-to-moment scene description

842
00:45:56,150 --> 00:45:59,710
Speaker 2: as we do in some full plot breakdowns. So maybe

843
00:45:59,750 --> 00:46:03,190
Speaker 2: we'll start off describing the intro in some detail and

844
00:46:03,230 --> 00:46:06,790
Speaker 2: then see where we go from there. So I love

845
00:46:06,830 --> 00:46:10,110
Speaker 2: the opening scene here. It's a classic now in the

846
00:46:10,150 --> 00:46:14,390
Speaker 2: Star Trek universe. It is the Kobayashi Maru scenario. So

847
00:46:14,410 --> 00:46:17,100
Speaker 2: the film begins on the bridge of what appears to

848
00:46:17,140 --> 00:46:19,860
Speaker 2: be the Starship Enterprise with most of the main cast

849
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 2: present except Captain Kirk, You've got Spock, McCoy, Uhura, and Sulu.

850
00:46:25,140 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 2: They're all there. But in the captain's chair is a

851
00:46:27,820 --> 00:46:32,589
Speaker 2: young Vulcan named Commander Savick, played by Kirstie Alley. And

852
00:46:32,630 --> 00:46:36,989
Speaker 2: they're all on, we're told, a training mission to Gamma Hydra,

853
00:46:37,050 --> 00:46:40,210
Speaker 2: which will bring them near the edge of the Neutral Zone.

854
00:46:40,330 --> 00:46:43,259
Speaker 2: This is a region of space that Starfleet is prohibited

855
00:46:43,300 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 2: from entering by way of a treaty with the Klingon Empire. Now,

856
00:46:47,680 --> 00:46:51,219
Speaker 2: while traveling... The crew receives a distress call from a

857
00:46:51,260 --> 00:46:55,430
Speaker 2: nearby ship, identifying itself as the Kobayashi Maru. It has

858
00:46:55,510 --> 00:46:58,529
Speaker 2: hit a gravitic mine and lost all power. The hull

859
00:46:58,590 --> 00:47:01,790
Speaker 2: is damaged, and there are many casualties among the crew,

860
00:47:01,870 --> 00:47:06,230
Speaker 2: so they are in need of immediate evacuation and medical assistance. However,

861
00:47:06,550 --> 00:47:11,379
Speaker 2: they are immobilized within the neutral zone. So Captain Savick

862
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 2: here weighs her options, and then she decides to head

863
00:47:14,620 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 2: into the zone to initiate a rescue. Sulu tries to

864
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:20,060
Speaker 2: warn her, But she has made up her mind. She

865
00:47:20,100 --> 00:47:24,260
Speaker 2: will break treaty and go inside. Now, while on course

866
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 2: to intercept the Kobayashi Maru, communications with the distressed ship

867
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:32,779
Speaker 2: suddenly go offline. Then three Klingon warships appear, and they're

868
00:47:32,820 --> 00:47:36,299
Speaker 2: bearing down on the Enterprise. Savick orders the broadcast of

869
00:47:36,340 --> 00:47:39,240
Speaker 2: an explanation, but Uhura says that the Klingons are jamming

870
00:47:39,300 --> 00:47:41,680
Speaker 2: all channels and they will not receive any message sent.

871
00:47:42,410 --> 00:47:43,830
Speaker 1: So we have no choice.

872
00:47:43,890 --> 00:47:47,410
Speaker 2: It's battle stations. But the Klingons outnumber the Enterprise and

873
00:47:47,450 --> 00:47:50,989
Speaker 2: they strike first. There is a barrage of torpedoes that

874
00:47:51,030 --> 00:47:53,590
Speaker 2: hit the ship one by one. And each time a

875
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:57,100
Speaker 2: torpedo hits, a member of the Enterprise crew is knocked

876
00:47:57,420 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 2: to the ground and the explosion apparently dead. We see Sulu, Uhura,

877
00:48:01,940 --> 00:48:05,680
Speaker 2: Spock and McCoy all appear to die this way. And

878
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 2: then finally, Captain Savick realizes that the fight cannot be won.

879
00:48:09,780 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 2: And she orders all surviving crew to the escape pods.

880
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:15,400
Speaker 2: So if you don't know what's up, they're hitting you

881
00:48:15,420 --> 00:48:17,660
Speaker 2: with a pretty harsh beginning here. It's like all the

882
00:48:17,700 --> 00:48:22,569
Speaker 2: characters you know and love are dead. But just then

883
00:48:22,950 --> 00:48:26,370
Speaker 2: we hear a voice interrupting the scenario and it's Shatner.

884
00:48:26,870 --> 00:48:29,230
Speaker 2: Captain Kirk comes in and he says, all right, let's

885
00:48:29,290 --> 00:48:32,330
Speaker 2: open her up. And then a false wall peels away,

886
00:48:32,489 --> 00:48:35,710
Speaker 2: revealing that this was not the real bridge of the Enterprise,

887
00:48:35,790 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 2: but a training simulator. From the observation room nearby, Kirk

888
00:48:40,860 --> 00:48:45,940
Speaker 2: enters the simulator bridge in silhouette, framed by tremendous backlighting

889
00:48:45,980 --> 00:48:49,180
Speaker 2: and fog as if he were a god floating into

890
00:48:49,219 --> 00:48:54,080
Speaker 2: their midst on an empyrean cloud. And I adore this movie,

891
00:48:54,120 --> 00:48:56,899
Speaker 2: so any criticisms I make should be taken with that

892
00:48:56,960 --> 00:48:59,060
Speaker 2: in mind. But this part always struck me as a

893
00:48:59,140 --> 00:49:03,940
Speaker 2: little over the top in suggesting Kirk's mythical status. Like

894
00:49:03,980 --> 00:49:07,529
Speaker 2: he is the sacred object being held up by the hierophant.

895
00:49:08,630 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 2: but I on the other hand I understand the temptation

896
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:14,400
Speaker 2: I get why this happens because it's like oh the

897
00:49:14,460 --> 00:49:17,450
Speaker 2: character you know and love for many years he now

898
00:49:17,530 --> 00:49:19,969
Speaker 2: here he is on the big screen it's exciting you

899
00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:23,080
Speaker 2: want it to be a big revelation. Uh, but, uh,

900
00:49:23,340 --> 00:49:25,160
Speaker 2: I say this with love. This part is a little

901
00:49:25,260 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 2: unintentionally funny.

902
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:29,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's very Vegas. It's like, this is

903
00:49:29,260 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 1: his Vegas residence. Ladies and gentlemen, Admiral James T. Kirk.

904
00:49:32,500 --> 00:49:36,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Um, so he comes in and Savick says,

905
00:49:36,860 --> 00:49:41,279
Speaker 2: any suggestions, Admiral? And Kirk says, prayer, Mr. Savick, the

906
00:49:41,300 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 2: Klingons do not take prisoners. So we're already getting the

907
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 2: little jokes, the Kirk-isms. So the situation at the beginning

908
00:49:48,980 --> 00:49:51,740
Speaker 2: of the movie is this. Having come off of active

909
00:49:51,780 --> 00:49:55,350
Speaker 2: duty in the field, the senior Enterprise officers are now

910
00:49:55,410 --> 00:49:59,830
Speaker 2: back at Starfleet headquarters, supervising the training of young, new

911
00:50:00,010 --> 00:50:04,130
Speaker 2: officers like Savick. It seems Spock is now going to

912
00:50:04,170 --> 00:50:06,870
Speaker 2: be the captain of the Enterprise and and has been

913
00:50:07,110 --> 00:50:09,370
Speaker 2: educating his crew. I think Savick is going to be

914
00:50:09,410 --> 00:50:13,690
Speaker 2: his first officer. Meanwhile, Kirk is an admiral. He is

915
00:50:13,730 --> 00:50:17,640
Speaker 2: an admiral working behind a desk, and he's been living

916
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:20,719
Speaker 2: in an apartment where he collects lots of old artifacts

917
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:24,540
Speaker 2: and historical war memorabilia, flintlock pistols and stuff like that.

918
00:50:24,980 --> 00:50:29,000
Speaker 2: After the simulation is over, Lieutenant Savick is confused about

919
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:33,259
Speaker 2: the purpose of the Kobayashi Maru scenario. It is a

920
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,750
Speaker 2: standard test that all aspiring Starfleet captains have to take,

921
00:50:36,830 --> 00:50:39,130
Speaker 2: but it seems like there is no way to win.

922
00:50:39,290 --> 00:50:43,270
Speaker 2: You either ignore the stranded ship and let its crew perish,

923
00:50:43,510 --> 00:50:46,310
Speaker 2: or you break treaty, head into the neutral zone, and

924
00:50:46,390 --> 00:50:51,739
Speaker 2: are immediately overpowered and destroyed. And Kirk reveals to her

925
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 2: that the point of the test is counterintuitive. Because it

926
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:58,000
Speaker 2: cannot be won, it is not a test of skill,

927
00:50:58,219 --> 00:51:01,670
Speaker 2: but a test of character. Because, as Kirk tells Savick,

928
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:04,500
Speaker 2: How we face death is at least as important as

929
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:05,560
Speaker 2: how we face life.

930
00:51:07,070 --> 00:51:08,969
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course, this will be a recurring theme

931
00:51:09,030 --> 00:51:09,700
Speaker 1: throughout the picture.

932
00:51:10,070 --> 00:51:12,570
Speaker 2: Right. Now, I do want to make a comment on

933
00:51:12,610 --> 00:51:17,890
Speaker 2: the fact that this training simulation comes with pyrotechnics, exploding

934
00:51:17,969 --> 00:51:21,089
Speaker 2: workstations and consoles. Because when the crew members die, when

935
00:51:21,130 --> 00:51:23,910
Speaker 2: the torpedoes hit, we see them like they're blown out

936
00:51:23,950 --> 00:51:25,870
Speaker 2: of their shares, like halfway across the room.

937
00:51:25,910 --> 00:51:27,410
Speaker 1: They fall on the floor. Yeah.

938
00:51:29,090 --> 00:51:31,580
Speaker 2: And I know they did this in the movie so

939
00:51:31,620 --> 00:51:33,259
Speaker 2: that it would work as a fake out for the

940
00:51:33,360 --> 00:51:36,480
Speaker 2: audience where at first we believe it's actually, you know,

941
00:51:36,500 --> 00:51:39,000
Speaker 2: they're actually out there and this is all happening. But

942
00:51:39,060 --> 00:51:43,870
Speaker 2: as a training environment, these actual explosions seem unnecessary and dangerous.

943
00:51:44,230 --> 00:51:47,529
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. We just didn't have holodecks yet. Like this

944
00:51:47,590 --> 00:51:50,590
Speaker 1: is like clearly of this film were made a decade

945
00:51:50,630 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 1: or so later. This would be a holodeck sequence.

946
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:57,180
Speaker 2: We also learned through some dialogue with Spock. that when

947
00:51:57,239 --> 00:52:00,590
Speaker 2: Kirk himself was a cadet, he took this test three times,

948
00:52:00,950 --> 00:52:03,010
Speaker 2: and the way he solved it on his third attempt

949
00:52:03,070 --> 00:52:06,890
Speaker 2: was something that had never been tried before. Anyway, here

950
00:52:07,010 --> 00:52:09,850
Speaker 2: we shift to a focus on Kirk and his old

951
00:52:09,930 --> 00:52:14,420
Speaker 2: friends Spock and McCoy. It is Admiral Kirk's birthday, and

952
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 2: as a gift, Spock gives him an antique copy of

953
00:52:17,700 --> 00:52:21,020
Speaker 2: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Then later,

954
00:52:21,060 --> 00:52:23,940
Speaker 2: McCoy comes over to Kirk's apartment in the evening and

955
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:27,569
Speaker 2: And brings him a bottle of Romulan ale, which is

956
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:31,029
Speaker 2: neon blue and for some reason we're told illegal.

957
00:52:31,650 --> 00:52:34,770
Speaker 1: Illegal? Well, I guess it's because we're not technically supposed

958
00:52:34,790 --> 00:52:37,170
Speaker 1: to trade with the Romulans. Oh, I see. I don't

959
00:52:37,210 --> 00:52:40,660
Speaker 1: think it's, you know, because it's such like, you know,

960
00:52:40,860 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: high proof or anything. Or that it's hallucinogenic or anything.

961
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:45,759
Speaker 1: I think it's just like you're not supposed to have

962
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:49,180
Speaker 1: it because we're not doing all that well with the

963
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 1: Romulans right now.

964
00:52:50,260 --> 00:52:51,300
Speaker 2: Cuban cigars or something.

965
00:52:51,320 --> 00:52:52,070
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

966
00:52:52,860 --> 00:52:56,660
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, they get the Romulan ale, and did

967
00:52:56,700 --> 00:52:59,080
Speaker 2: you understand more about Romulan ale than I did? They

968
00:52:59,100 --> 00:53:03,170
Speaker 2: take a sip of it, and Kirk, he looks like

969
00:53:03,290 --> 00:53:06,230
Speaker 2: he doesn't like it or something, or maybe just like

970
00:53:06,410 --> 00:53:09,250
Speaker 2: it immediately hits him really hard or something?

971
00:53:10,630 --> 00:53:13,650
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Romulan ale is something that pops

972
00:53:13,770 --> 00:53:16,450
Speaker 1: up in Star Trek from time to time, but I

973
00:53:16,550 --> 00:53:18,830
Speaker 1: actually went online and was like, what is this stuff

974
00:53:18,950 --> 00:53:22,569
Speaker 1: supposed to taste like? And apparently... It's inconsistent the way

975
00:53:22,590 --> 00:53:26,200
Speaker 1: it's described in different Star Trek media. Looking at it,

976
00:53:26,300 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: it makes me expect a licorice or mouthwash taste. But

977
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 1: they seem to treat it like maybe it's a fine,

978
00:53:33,060 --> 00:53:38,510
Speaker 1: perhaps challenging spirit. They have it straight up, though, right?

979
00:53:38,550 --> 00:53:40,410
Speaker 1: There's no ice, no chaser or anything like that.

980
00:53:40,950 --> 00:53:41,549
Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah.

981
00:53:42,310 --> 00:53:44,230
Speaker 1: But then, of course, we're told it's an ale, which

982
00:53:44,270 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 1: would indicate it's some sort of a beer. Um, I

983
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:49,379
Speaker 1: asked my friend Dave who knows beers, like what sort

984
00:53:49,420 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: of beer would this be? And he was like, maybe

985
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:53,740
Speaker 1: a Belgian. And I don't know enough beers to even

986
00:53:53,760 --> 00:53:54,390
Speaker 1: know what that means.

987
00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:57,390
Speaker 2: That's just a type of beer. I don't know. Uh,

988
00:53:57,510 --> 00:53:59,730
Speaker 2: I don't want to dispute Dave here, but I don't know.

989
00:53:59,750 --> 00:54:01,790
Speaker 2: It seems more like they're, they're treating it like liquor

990
00:54:01,850 --> 00:54:02,570
Speaker 2: rather than beer.

991
00:54:03,450 --> 00:54:04,609
Speaker 1: But it's an ale, right?

992
00:54:04,989 --> 00:54:07,610
Speaker 2: So they say ale just seems confused.

993
00:54:08,010 --> 00:54:08,170
Speaker 3: Yeah.

994
00:54:08,210 --> 00:54:11,790
Speaker 2: Anyway, uh, he also, McCoy also brings Kirk a pair

995
00:54:11,950 --> 00:54:16,490
Speaker 2: of antique reading glasses and necessary uh one because kirk

996
00:54:16,590 --> 00:54:18,770
Speaker 2: is getting old and so i know you know he

997
00:54:18,790 --> 00:54:21,930
Speaker 2: needs some help with reading but also because kirk is

998
00:54:21,950 --> 00:54:24,290
Speaker 2: allergic to the drug that most people take in the

999
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:26,720
Speaker 2: 23rd century to correct their eyesight.

1000
00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:29,899
Speaker 1: And we had we had an earlier scene where where

1001
00:54:29,940 --> 00:54:33,259
Speaker 1: kirk is uh holding something he's reading like super far

1002
00:54:33,300 --> 00:54:36,460
Speaker 1: away from his eyes the dickens book yeah yeah yeah

1003
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:39,230
Speaker 1: so But I think there's even an earlier scene when

1004
00:54:39,570 --> 00:54:42,129
Speaker 1: he first comes into the training scenario. I think there's

1005
00:54:42,150 --> 00:54:44,069
Speaker 1: a tablet or something he looks at and he's like

1006
00:54:44,110 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 1: holding it at arm's length. So, yeah, Kirk is definitely

1007
00:54:47,920 --> 00:54:50,299
Speaker 1: that friend that many of you have. Sometimes maybe you

1008
00:54:50,420 --> 00:54:53,200
Speaker 1: are that friend who is straight up refusing to take

1009
00:54:53,219 --> 00:54:56,000
Speaker 1: the step of getting reading glasses. And instead, you're just

1010
00:54:56,060 --> 00:54:59,590
Speaker 1: holding things farther and farther away from your eyes and

1011
00:54:59,650 --> 00:55:02,230
Speaker 1: continually bumping up the font size on your Kindle.

1012
00:55:02,630 --> 00:55:02,750
Speaker 3: Nice.

1013
00:55:02,770 --> 00:55:02,910
Speaker 1: Nice.

1014
00:55:03,640 --> 00:55:07,020
Speaker 2: Well, maybe for related reasons. In the scene, Kirk seems

1015
00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:10,779
Speaker 2: to be a little bit depressed. It is clear that

1016
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:14,799
Speaker 2: while serving as an admirable, I keep saying admirable, as

1017
00:55:14,860 --> 00:55:21,049
Speaker 2: an admiral at Starfleet headquarters, he has felt old. He's

1018
00:55:21,070 --> 00:55:24,670
Speaker 2: feeling his age. He's feeling old, tired, and without purpose.

1019
00:55:25,489 --> 00:55:28,310
Speaker 2: He feels like someone whose best years are behind him

1020
00:55:28,350 --> 00:55:29,890
Speaker 2: and he's got nothing to look forward to.

1021
00:55:30,940 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, this reminded me of the lyrics to an old

1022
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:37,820
Speaker 1: Al Stewart song from 1973, Old Admirals. There's a line

1023
00:55:37,860 --> 00:55:40,600
Speaker 1: in it that goes, and I sometimes think in all

1024
00:55:40,640 --> 00:55:43,660
Speaker 1: this world, the saddest thing to be old admirals who

1025
00:55:43,719 --> 00:55:45,530
Speaker 1: feel the wind and never put to sea.

1026
00:55:47,150 --> 00:55:52,270
Speaker 2: That describes exactly the themes being evoked here. So Bones

1027
00:55:52,330 --> 00:55:56,029
Speaker 2: tries to give Kirk some advice. He says, I'm your

1028
00:55:56,070 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 2: doctor and I'm your friend, Jim. Get back your command.

1029
00:55:59,200 --> 00:56:01,720
Speaker 2: Get it back before you really do grow old, before

1030
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:04,520
Speaker 2: you turn into part of this collection and emotions and

1031
00:56:04,540 --> 00:56:07,060
Speaker 2: all the flintlock pistols and all the old stuff.

1032
00:56:07,540 --> 00:56:11,460
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Though, in general, I love this set here. Again,

1033
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:15,370
Speaker 1: it feels very lived in. It's got a really cool fireplace.

1034
00:56:17,090 --> 00:56:19,950
Speaker 1: It has a very authentic feel to it. So, nice set.

1035
00:56:19,989 --> 00:56:20,350
Speaker 1: I like it.

1036
00:56:20,570 --> 00:56:23,469
Speaker 2: This is Captain Kirk's bachelor pad. This is what it

1037
00:56:23,510 --> 00:56:24,049
Speaker 2: would look like.

1038
00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:25,080
Speaker 1: All right.

1039
00:56:25,520 --> 00:56:28,319
Speaker 2: Let's check in with the other subplot here with the

1040
00:56:28,390 --> 00:56:31,450
Speaker 2: Reliant and SETI Alpha 6 or SETI Alpha 5. So

1041
00:56:32,690 --> 00:56:36,130
Speaker 2: elsewhere in the galaxy, we join the starship Reliant commanded

1042
00:56:36,190 --> 00:56:41,219
Speaker 2: by Captain Terrell and First Officer Pavel Chekov, formerly of

1043
00:56:41,260 --> 00:56:45,279
Speaker 2: the Enterprise. This is Walter Koenig's character. The Reliant has

1044
00:56:45,320 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 2: been tasked with assisting a scientific research mission in known

1045
00:56:49,860 --> 00:56:53,280
Speaker 2: as the Genesis Project, which is led by Dr. Carol Marcus,

1046
00:56:53,340 --> 00:56:57,310
Speaker 2: who is Kirk's old flame. Working with her on the

1047
00:56:57,350 --> 00:57:01,089
Speaker 2: Genesis Project is her son, David, who looks a bit

1048
00:57:01,130 --> 00:57:04,130
Speaker 2: Kirky and doesn't know that James T. Kirk is his father.

1049
00:57:05,250 --> 00:57:09,050
Speaker 2: The purpose of the Genesis Project is to turn lifeless

1050
00:57:09,130 --> 00:57:13,350
Speaker 2: planets into habitable garden worlds. It is sort of a

1051
00:57:13,570 --> 00:57:16,810
Speaker 2: life nuke. You drop it on a hunk of dead rock,

1052
00:57:17,150 --> 00:57:22,270
Speaker 2: it explodes, it sets out this field that reorganizes all

1053
00:57:22,310 --> 00:57:26,270
Speaker 2: of the local matter into incipient life forms, allowing a

1054
00:57:26,390 --> 00:57:30,510
Speaker 2: newborn biosphere to evolve and take over the planet in minutes.

1055
00:57:30,980 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 2: And so it can transform an uninhabitable moon into a paradise.

1056
00:57:35,280 --> 00:57:37,760
Speaker 2: But if you were to drop it somewhere there was

1057
00:57:37,880 --> 00:57:41,200
Speaker 2: already life, it would annihilate that life and replace it

1058
00:57:41,240 --> 00:57:42,510
Speaker 2: with its new matrix.

1059
00:57:43,170 --> 00:57:47,070
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would seem to be a stunning advancement in

1060
00:57:47,170 --> 00:57:51,500
Speaker 1: Starfleet technology. Like it's a godlike power that they're playing

1061
00:57:51,540 --> 00:57:51,820
Speaker 1: with here.

1062
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,500
Speaker 2: So while the scientists are busy developing the Genesis Project bomb,

1063
00:57:56,560 --> 00:57:59,460
Speaker 2: the Reliant has been given the job to find a

1064
00:57:59,580 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 2: suitable planet with no indigenous life forms. They come across

1065
00:58:04,180 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 2: the planet SETI Alpha 6, which according to their records

1066
00:58:07,470 --> 00:58:11,190
Speaker 2: is thought to be completely barren. However, when they scan it,

1067
00:58:11,390 --> 00:58:14,630
Speaker 2: they detect some faint signs of life in only one

1068
00:58:14,870 --> 00:58:19,320
Speaker 2: isolated spot on the surface. So Captain Terrell and First

1069
00:58:19,380 --> 00:58:23,600
Speaker 2: Officer Chekov beam down to investigate. And this is one

1070
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 2: of the sets I was talking about earlier that was

1071
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:29,160
Speaker 2: clearly made with cost containment in mind. So it's not elaborate,

1072
00:58:29,180 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 2: but very, very effective. This craggy red desert, sight lines

1073
00:58:33,460 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 2: are limited, this dust storm blowing all around. Terrell and

1074
00:58:37,240 --> 00:58:40,730
Speaker 2: Chekov follow the life signal to its source where they

1075
00:58:40,790 --> 00:58:45,210
Speaker 2: find what looks like an abandoned metal shipping container. They

1076
00:58:45,230 --> 00:58:48,410
Speaker 2: go inside and it's clear that someone has been using

1077
00:58:48,450 --> 00:58:52,750
Speaker 2: this container as a home. There are beds, clothes, books,

1078
00:58:52,890 --> 00:58:57,670
Speaker 2: including Moby Dick, crude furniture, and also a little tank,

1079
00:58:57,850 --> 00:59:01,790
Speaker 2: like a little glass terrarium filled only with red sand.

1080
00:59:02,290 --> 00:59:04,830
Speaker 2: Something is stirring under the sand, but we don't see

1081
00:59:04,850 --> 00:59:08,350
Speaker 2: what it is at this point. And suddenly, while Chekhov

1082
00:59:08,410 --> 00:59:10,710
Speaker 2: is looking around, he comes across a piece of equipment

1083
00:59:11,150 --> 00:59:13,270
Speaker 2: labeled with the name of the ship that these people

1084
00:59:13,310 --> 00:59:18,530
Speaker 2: came from, the SS Botany Bay. And with horror, Chekhov

1085
00:59:18,630 --> 00:59:23,010
Speaker 2: realizes who they are dealing with. I guess this would

1086
00:59:23,050 --> 00:59:25,750
Speaker 2: be the point, if we're going to talk in any

1087
00:59:25,810 --> 00:59:29,390
Speaker 2: detail about the Star Trek episode Space Seed. Maybe we

1088
00:59:29,430 --> 00:59:32,360
Speaker 2: should do that here. What is it that Chekhov realizes

1089
00:59:32,400 --> 00:59:34,060
Speaker 2: when he sees S.S. Botany Bay?

1090
00:59:34,800 --> 00:59:38,700
Speaker 1: Well, Chekhov knows, and viewers of the original Star Trek

1091
00:59:38,740 --> 00:59:41,840
Speaker 1: series know, that the Botany Bay was, of course, a

1092
00:59:42,240 --> 00:59:49,030
Speaker 1: 1990s spaceship that Khan and his fellow genetic augments were

1093
00:59:49,110 --> 00:59:56,060
Speaker 1: cryonically suspended upon. This is during, after... the eugenics wars

1094
00:59:56,160 --> 01:00:00,280
Speaker 1: on Earth. So like this catastrophic, essentially a third world war,

1095
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:05,980
Speaker 1: highly destructive. And it's caused by these various genetically augmented

1096
01:00:06,060 --> 01:00:08,660
Speaker 1: supermen who were like the tyrants of the planet who

1097
01:00:08,700 --> 01:00:13,110
Speaker 1: ended up warring against each other. And Khan was at

1098
01:00:13,250 --> 01:00:14,870
Speaker 1: once kind of like the best and the worst of

1099
01:00:14,950 --> 01:00:18,270
Speaker 1: all of them as explored in Space Seed. Like, you know,

1100
01:00:19,710 --> 01:00:21,970
Speaker 1: he wasn't as cruel as some of them. In many ways,

1101
01:00:22,010 --> 01:00:25,180
Speaker 1: he was highly effective, but he also is the embodiment

1102
01:00:25,540 --> 01:00:28,940
Speaker 1: of humanity's love-hate relationship with tyranny.

1103
01:00:29,600 --> 01:00:33,960
Speaker 2: So after he was finally dethroned as a tyrant on

1104
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:37,300
Speaker 2: Earth and defeated, he and his followers were put on

1105
01:00:37,340 --> 01:00:41,460
Speaker 2: this spaceship and sent out into deep space. I guess,

1106
01:00:41,640 --> 01:00:44,840
Speaker 2: was this their sentence, their punishment? Or did they escape

1107
01:00:44,910 --> 01:00:47,050
Speaker 2: and get out there? I don't remember exactly how that happened.

1108
01:00:47,070 --> 01:00:49,410
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't remember the detail.

1109
01:00:49,890 --> 01:00:52,790
Speaker 2: So he's a horrible tyrant on Earth. He's removed from power.

1110
01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:55,740
Speaker 2: And he's sent out here. And so the crew of,

1111
01:00:55,940 --> 01:00:57,660
Speaker 2: this isn't in Wrath of Khan, by the way, this

1112
01:00:57,720 --> 01:01:00,560
Speaker 2: is just the backstory in Space Seed. When the crew

1113
01:01:00,660 --> 01:01:03,560
Speaker 2: find out who he was, this guy they've rescued from

1114
01:01:04,100 --> 01:01:07,430
Speaker 2: cryosleep on the spaceship, they talk about what they can

1115
01:01:07,660 --> 01:01:10,730
Speaker 2: reassemble from the historical record on Earth. And yeah, as

1116
01:01:10,770 --> 01:01:16,350
Speaker 2: you mentioned, they describe him essentially as the best of

1117
01:01:16,630 --> 01:01:21,890
Speaker 2: the tyrants and eugenics dictators of this era, not the

1118
01:01:21,930 --> 01:01:25,390
Speaker 2: worst one. You would think that the the script tendency

1119
01:01:25,410 --> 01:01:27,790
Speaker 2: would be to say he was the most cruel and

1120
01:01:27,870 --> 01:01:30,310
Speaker 2: the most hateful and the worst of all of them

1121
01:01:30,770 --> 01:01:34,010
Speaker 2: but no he was actually the best one the the

1122
01:01:34,170 --> 01:01:38,330
Speaker 2: least cruel and the the least ruthless and he's still

1123
01:01:38,490 --> 01:01:42,110
Speaker 2: awful he's he's terrible and so I think the episode

1124
01:01:42,690 --> 01:01:45,610
Speaker 2: is trying to comment about how you know tyrants don't

1125
01:01:45,790 --> 01:01:49,330
Speaker 2: only rule by force they rule by appeal sometimes they

1126
01:01:49,390 --> 01:01:53,710
Speaker 2: rule by seduction many people find them appealing and want

1127
01:01:53,770 --> 01:01:56,600
Speaker 2: to be ruled by them or think that maybe being

1128
01:01:56,640 --> 01:01:59,360
Speaker 2: ruled by them won't be quite so bad until they've

1129
01:01:59,400 --> 01:02:01,820
Speaker 2: already been given the power and it's too late another

1130
01:02:01,880 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 2: one of the ideas pursued in space seed is is

1131
01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:09,890
Speaker 2: about the um uh you know the artificially created exceptionalness

1132
01:02:10,130 --> 01:02:12,790
Speaker 2: of khan they say he's created by scientists from this

1133
01:02:12,850 --> 01:02:17,140
Speaker 2: product of selective breeding so he's like super intelligent super

1134
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:20,260
Speaker 2: strong you know his body is incredibly resilient he's never

1135
01:02:20,300 --> 01:02:23,300
Speaker 2: been sick all that kind of stuff um which the

1136
01:02:23,480 --> 01:02:26,640
Speaker 2: members of uh this of the enterprise find abhorrent you

1137
01:02:26,660 --> 01:02:28,800
Speaker 2: know that they uh they are very opposed to the

1138
01:02:28,880 --> 01:02:32,760
Speaker 2: idea of these augments and stuff like that um but

1139
01:02:33,080 --> 01:02:36,040
Speaker 2: uh it the episode pursues the idea that like if

1140
01:02:36,700 --> 01:02:40,980
Speaker 2: one finds oneself so exceptional in this way Does that

1141
01:02:41,140 --> 01:02:44,780
Speaker 2: naturally lead to a desire to dominate and rule over

1142
01:02:44,840 --> 01:02:48,230
Speaker 2: others around you? I feel like the episode is proposing

1143
01:02:48,290 --> 01:02:50,710
Speaker 2: maybe that could be true. I don't know if in

1144
01:02:50,750 --> 01:02:54,910
Speaker 2: reality that is borne out, if that exceptionalness actually correlates

1145
01:02:54,950 --> 01:02:57,250
Speaker 2: with a desire to dominate and rule others.

1146
01:02:58,240 --> 01:02:59,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would agree.

1147
01:02:59,540 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 2: Seem kind of like independent variables to me.

1148
01:03:01,940 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

1149
01:03:11,490 --> 01:03:15,780
Speaker 1: So anyway, Spacey, though, what you expect to happen happens.

1150
01:03:17,540 --> 01:03:20,940
Speaker 1: While Khan is recovering in the medical bay, he's like,

1151
01:03:21,620 --> 01:03:24,180
Speaker 1: I would love to read the various technical manuals for

1152
01:03:24,220 --> 01:03:26,660
Speaker 1: the Starship. May I do so? And they're like, of course.

1153
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:33,240
Speaker 1: And so he does. He soon gets his defrosted followers

1154
01:03:34,060 --> 01:03:37,610
Speaker 1: to help him stage a coup on the ship. They

1155
01:03:37,630 --> 01:03:41,340
Speaker 1: take over the enterprise, but eventually this leads to a

1156
01:03:41,380 --> 01:03:46,700
Speaker 1: standoff between himself and Kirk. There's fisticuffs. There's a nice

1157
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:51,640
Speaker 1: luchador head scissors by Kirk on Khan, and order is restored.

1158
01:03:51,980 --> 01:03:53,919
Speaker 1: But then what are they going to do with Khan, right?

1159
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:58,750
Speaker 1: This is where Kirk displays a little of that trademark

1160
01:03:58,850 --> 01:04:04,030
Speaker 1: rogue decision-making. He decides to dispense a little extrajudicial judgment here.

1161
01:04:04,490 --> 01:04:07,910
Speaker 2: That's right. So Khan and his main collaborator on the Enterprise,

1162
01:04:07,950 --> 01:04:10,820
Speaker 2: because there's another character in this episode who's interesting. The

1163
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:16,680
Speaker 2: character of the historian Lieutenant MacGyvers, who is presented as

1164
01:04:16,700 --> 01:04:18,880
Speaker 2: somebody who's an expert on the past and maybe finds

1165
01:04:18,940 --> 01:04:23,040
Speaker 2: the past a little bit too romantic and too exciting.

1166
01:04:23,120 --> 01:04:27,970
Speaker 2: So she is seduced by the charismatic barbarity of this

1167
01:04:28,530 --> 01:04:34,260
Speaker 2: 20th century Superman. And she... initially tries to help him

1168
01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:37,320
Speaker 2: seize power on the Enterprise, but then later she has

1169
01:04:37,380 --> 01:04:39,800
Speaker 2: a turn, you know, a change of heart and she

1170
01:04:39,840 --> 01:04:43,870
Speaker 2: turns against him. And so Khan and her are given

1171
01:04:43,910 --> 01:04:48,510
Speaker 2: the choice of accepting court martial or being set free

1172
01:04:48,670 --> 01:04:53,910
Speaker 2: on this uninhabited planet and to sort of live in exile, basically.

1173
01:04:53,950 --> 01:04:56,690
Speaker 2: So they won't be able to escape the planet and

1174
01:04:56,730 --> 01:04:58,680
Speaker 2: harm anyone else, but also they're not going to just

1175
01:04:58,720 --> 01:05:00,660
Speaker 2: like send them to space jail. So it's a very

1176
01:05:00,720 --> 01:05:01,820
Speaker 2: merciful reaction.

1177
01:05:02,490 --> 01:05:07,020
Speaker 1: Yeah. And as the episode ends, the Enterprise crew ruminates on, hey,

1178
01:05:07,060 --> 01:05:09,439
Speaker 1: maybe someone will check out this colony a hundred years

1179
01:05:09,480 --> 01:05:11,760
Speaker 1: from now and we'll see how this experiment worked out.

1180
01:05:12,500 --> 01:05:15,840
Speaker 1: You know, what will the future of this colony be?

1181
01:05:15,900 --> 01:05:19,990
Speaker 1: What sort of society or civilization will they build out?

1182
01:05:20,510 --> 01:05:23,010
Speaker 1: But of course, as we'll see here in this movie,

1183
01:05:23,670 --> 01:05:25,610
Speaker 1: no one actually checked in on them afterwards.

1184
01:05:26,190 --> 01:05:29,900
Speaker 2: That's right. So Back in the, uh, the present timeline

1185
01:05:29,940 --> 01:05:33,180
Speaker 2: in wrath of con before captain Terrell and first officer

1186
01:05:33,220 --> 01:05:36,700
Speaker 2: Chekov can escape, they are captured by the inhabitants of

1187
01:05:36,760 --> 01:05:40,520
Speaker 2: this desert dressed like something out of dune. The desert

1188
01:05:40,560 --> 01:05:43,640
Speaker 2: costumes are creepy and very good. Uh, they're wearing these

1189
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:46,340
Speaker 2: like sheet metal shields on their faces that just have

1190
01:05:46,380 --> 01:05:49,320
Speaker 2: like a slit for vision and, uh, you know, full

1191
01:05:49,340 --> 01:05:52,280
Speaker 2: body robes and everything, covering everything up from the dust.

1192
01:05:53,200 --> 01:05:55,540
Speaker 2: So they're taken inside the habitat, and the leader reveals

1193
01:05:55,580 --> 01:05:58,980
Speaker 2: himself to be Khan, the villain from Space Seed.

1194
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:02,240
Speaker 1: Oh, and does he ever reveal himself? Such a great scene.

1195
01:06:02,280 --> 01:06:06,560
Speaker 1: He milks it, taking off some of the wrappings around

1196
01:06:06,600 --> 01:06:09,800
Speaker 1: his head, taking off the goggles or the face mask.

1197
01:06:11,030 --> 01:06:14,350
Speaker 1: He's decked out, and they're all decked out in these

1198
01:06:14,410 --> 01:06:20,230
Speaker 1: post-apocalyptic garbs. They've got little almost cyberpunk little gadgets on

1199
01:06:20,270 --> 01:06:25,950
Speaker 1: their bodies. Khan's wearing... uh, amulets or jewelry. And then

1200
01:06:25,990 --> 01:06:28,710
Speaker 1: he has these two gloves on, uh, these like black

1201
01:06:28,810 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 1: gloves with silver mesh or sequins on them. And he

1202
01:06:33,280 --> 01:06:36,480
Speaker 1: very stylishly takes off one of those gloves, but then

1203
01:06:36,520 --> 01:06:40,300
Speaker 1: keeps the other glove on for the remainder of the picture. Uh, just,

1204
01:06:40,420 --> 01:06:44,400
Speaker 1: I guess to, uh, just, just as a charismatic flourish.

1205
01:06:44,820 --> 01:06:45,740
Speaker 2: It's a good look.

1206
01:06:46,040 --> 01:06:47,080
Speaker 1: It is. It's a great look.

1207
01:06:47,160 --> 01:06:51,980
Speaker 2: This One thing that happens at the end of Space

1208
01:06:52,020 --> 01:06:55,200
Speaker 2: Seed is that when they're in the sort of court

1209
01:06:55,240 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 2: martial scene or the justice scene, Khan asks Kirk if

1210
01:07:00,420 --> 01:07:04,760
Speaker 2: he knows Milton, referencing Paradise Lost. And the implication there

1211
01:07:04,880 --> 01:07:08,840
Speaker 2: is he's drawing attention to the quote from Satan in

1212
01:07:08,880 --> 01:07:11,840
Speaker 2: Paradise Lost where Satan says, it's better to rule in

1213
01:07:11,910 --> 01:07:15,130
Speaker 2: hell than serve in heaven. And so that showed in

1214
01:07:15,170 --> 01:07:17,890
Speaker 2: the original episode, Khan sort of accepting that he had

1215
01:07:17,910 --> 01:07:21,210
Speaker 2: been defeated and accepting his fate, to say, yes, I

1216
01:07:21,230 --> 01:07:23,750
Speaker 2: would rather have exile, sort of showing him being at

1217
01:07:23,790 --> 01:07:26,730
Speaker 2: peace there. Exile me on this planet, and I'll see

1218
01:07:26,770 --> 01:07:30,710
Speaker 2: what I can do with the situation. Unfortunately, SETI Alpha

1219
01:07:30,710 --> 01:07:32,360
Speaker 2: 5 turned out to be more of a hell than

1220
01:07:32,390 --> 01:07:36,260
Speaker 2: they bargained for. They say about six months after they

1221
01:07:36,300 --> 01:07:41,260
Speaker 2: were left there, SETI Alpha 6 exploded, throwing SETI Alpha

1222
01:07:41,260 --> 01:07:43,920
Speaker 2: 5 out of orbit and reducing its surface from a

1223
01:07:43,980 --> 01:07:48,470
Speaker 2: garden world into this barren desert. So the planet that

1224
01:07:48,490 --> 01:07:53,350
Speaker 2: they're on, which the Reliant thought was SETI Alpha 6,

1225
01:07:53,350 --> 01:07:59,660
Speaker 2: is actually SETI Alpha 5. Beyond that, the only indigenous

1226
01:07:59,780 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 2: alien life form left alive from SETI Alpha 5 is

1227
01:08:05,960 --> 01:08:08,940
Speaker 2: this thing they call the SETI eels. They're these weird

1228
01:08:09,020 --> 01:08:13,400
Speaker 2: little caterpillar-like creatures, and they killed many of Khan's crew,

1229
01:08:13,600 --> 01:08:17,810
Speaker 2: including his wife. We don't ever meet his wife. I

1230
01:08:18,130 --> 01:08:22,130
Speaker 2: was wondering, is his wife supposed to be the historian

1231
01:08:22,530 --> 01:08:23,070
Speaker 2: from the Enterprise?

1232
01:08:23,130 --> 01:08:25,370
Speaker 1: That's what I assumed, yeah.

1233
01:08:25,390 --> 01:08:25,550
Speaker 3: Okay.

1234
01:08:25,650 --> 01:08:27,490
Speaker 2: I don't think they make that clear, so I'm not sure,

1235
01:08:27,550 --> 01:08:30,230
Speaker 2: but that's kind of what I was wondering. But anyway,

1236
01:08:30,310 --> 01:08:33,990
Speaker 2: these parasitic life forms, they enter through the ear and

1237
01:08:34,110 --> 01:08:42,930
Speaker 2: wrap themselves around the victim's cerebral cortex, causing extreme suggestibility, madness, paralysis,

1238
01:08:43,070 --> 01:08:47,570
Speaker 2: and eventually death. Um, so this, so these things are

1239
01:08:47,590 --> 01:08:49,510
Speaker 2: bad and they killed many of his crew, but some

1240
01:08:49,530 --> 01:08:52,559
Speaker 2: of his crew are still here, uh, hanging on. And

1241
01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:55,760
Speaker 2: now that he has these two Starfleet officers captive, he

1242
01:08:55,800 --> 01:08:59,010
Speaker 2: will be able to escape this cursed planet. So some

1243
01:08:59,050 --> 01:09:02,320
Speaker 2: of his followers are. eager to take this blessing and run.

1244
01:09:02,380 --> 01:09:04,880
Speaker 2: They can now live free again. They can get off

1245
01:09:04,920 --> 01:09:09,000
Speaker 2: this rock. But Khan is not content just to escape

1246
01:09:09,060 --> 01:09:11,900
Speaker 2: his exile and live in peace. He's got a mission.

1247
01:09:12,200 --> 01:09:16,920
Speaker 2: His mission is one of revenge against now Admiral James T.

1248
01:09:17,040 --> 01:09:17,260
Speaker 1: Kirk.

1249
01:09:18,090 --> 01:09:21,480
Speaker 2: It is very full of Moby Dick analogies. I think

1250
01:09:21,490 --> 01:09:25,339
Speaker 2: he starts quoting Moby Dick in this scene, maybe. Certainly,

1251
01:09:25,400 --> 01:09:27,460
Speaker 2: if not in this scene, he will some more throughout

1252
01:09:27,520 --> 01:09:28,000
Speaker 2: the film.

1253
01:09:28,479 --> 01:09:30,260
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's going to have a fair amount of

1254
01:09:30,300 --> 01:09:33,439
Speaker 1: back and forth with his right-hand man, played by the

1255
01:09:33,500 --> 01:09:36,700
Speaker 1: actor Judson Scott, born in 1952. He's done a lot

1256
01:09:36,720 --> 01:09:40,100
Speaker 1: of work as well in TV and film. But this

1257
01:09:40,140 --> 01:09:42,210
Speaker 1: character keeps telling him, it's like, hey, we've done it.

1258
01:09:42,270 --> 01:09:45,310
Speaker 1: We've escaped. We've got the starship. Let's give up on

1259
01:09:45,350 --> 01:09:49,250
Speaker 1: this madness. vengeance quest and Khan, you know, rejects him.

1260
01:09:49,270 --> 01:09:51,290
Speaker 1: And then later on, you know, he's going to be like, well,

1261
01:09:51,310 --> 01:09:53,580
Speaker 1: we have the super weapon. We have everything we need.

1262
01:09:54,260 --> 01:09:58,420
Speaker 1: Let Captain Kirk go. And he's like, no. Have its

1263
01:09:58,479 --> 01:09:59,860
Speaker 1: revenge front and center.

1264
01:10:00,380 --> 01:10:03,979
Speaker 2: That's right. So the next thing is the eel implantation scene.

1265
01:10:04,020 --> 01:10:07,520
Speaker 2: This is a great horror scene that I think, I

1266
01:10:07,560 --> 01:10:09,220
Speaker 2: said this earlier, but I think I saw this when

1267
01:10:09,260 --> 01:10:12,750
Speaker 2: I was younger somehow. They put these little, the set

1268
01:10:12,790 --> 01:10:18,790
Speaker 2: of eels inside the helmet's Of our Starfleet officers, they

1269
01:10:18,810 --> 01:10:20,650
Speaker 2: put the helmets back on their suits and then we

1270
01:10:20,670 --> 01:10:24,189
Speaker 2: see the eels crawling into their ears and it's gross.

1271
01:10:24,210 --> 01:10:26,950
Speaker 1: It's so good. Yeah. I mean, because you have Montalban's

1272
01:10:27,050 --> 01:10:30,910
Speaker 1: Khan narrating the whole thing, telling them the creepy story

1273
01:10:30,990 --> 01:10:33,189
Speaker 1: of the eels and then, yeah, dump them in the

1274
01:10:33,270 --> 01:10:35,910
Speaker 1: helmets and then put the helmets on them. Turn their

1275
01:10:35,990 --> 01:10:38,610
Speaker 1: own helmets into a torture device, essentially.

1276
01:10:39,100 --> 01:10:42,360
Speaker 2: So the next thing is Khan and his people, now

1277
01:10:42,380 --> 01:10:44,550
Speaker 2: that they've got these officers, they take control of the

1278
01:10:44,590 --> 01:10:49,070
Speaker 2: starship Reliant itself. So now they've got a starship. And

1279
01:10:49,130 --> 01:10:51,410
Speaker 2: they learn of the Genesis project, so they seek to

1280
01:10:51,729 --> 01:10:55,670
Speaker 2: take control of the life nuke as well. Now, meanwhile,

1281
01:10:55,710 --> 01:10:58,830
Speaker 2: the main cast, they're all going out on board the

1282
01:10:58,910 --> 01:11:02,370
Speaker 2: Enterprise for real this time, not a simulation. And we

1283
01:11:02,410 --> 01:11:06,030
Speaker 2: meet the young new crew. Uh, you know, we're, we're meeting,

1284
01:11:06,270 --> 01:11:08,660
Speaker 2: we meet one young character who's an engineer who I

1285
01:11:08,720 --> 01:11:11,120
Speaker 2: think in another draft of the script or in unfilmed

1286
01:11:11,180 --> 01:11:14,920
Speaker 2: scenes is revealed to be Scotty's nephew. But, uh, he's, uh,

1287
01:11:15,180 --> 01:11:17,620
Speaker 2: but I don't recall if anything about that is actually

1288
01:11:17,660 --> 01:11:20,269
Speaker 2: said in the movie. By the way, when they're coming

1289
01:11:20,330 --> 01:11:22,450
Speaker 2: onto the ship, there's a moment where Scotty reveals he

1290
01:11:22,490 --> 01:11:25,970
Speaker 2: has just recovered from a wee bout of something. And, uh,

1291
01:11:26,689 --> 01:11:29,130
Speaker 2: they're like, wait, a wee bout of what? And, uh,

1292
01:11:29,330 --> 01:11:34,530
Speaker 2: McCoy's like, uh, shore leave. Yeah. They get these little

1293
01:11:34,689 --> 01:11:38,630
Speaker 2: inappropriate jokes in there. So they're taking the ship out

1294
01:11:38,689 --> 01:11:41,990
Speaker 2: for training maneuvers. But while they're on course for training,

1295
01:11:42,290 --> 01:11:45,250
Speaker 2: they receive a distress call from Regula One, the space

1296
01:11:45,290 --> 01:11:48,890
Speaker 2: station where the Genesis project is based. And it's Carol

1297
01:11:48,930 --> 01:11:52,470
Speaker 2: Marcus asking why her old boyfriend, James T. Kirk, has

1298
01:11:52,530 --> 01:11:56,600
Speaker 2: given the order for the scientists to relinquish control of

1299
01:11:56,650 --> 01:11:59,979
Speaker 2: the Genesis project and hand it over to Starfleet. Of course,

1300
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:03,469
Speaker 2: no such order was actually given. Khan used his mind

1301
01:12:03,550 --> 01:12:06,970
Speaker 2: control eels to get Chekhov to feed this lie to

1302
01:12:07,030 --> 01:12:10,590
Speaker 2: Marcus and the other scientists so that they would lure

1303
01:12:10,630 --> 01:12:13,960
Speaker 2: the Enterprise into this trap. So here we come up

1304
01:12:14,000 --> 01:12:17,380
Speaker 2: to the first big scene, the first encounter between Kirk

1305
01:12:17,420 --> 01:12:20,580
Speaker 2: and Khan, between the Enterprise and the Reliant. There are

1306
01:12:20,600 --> 01:12:22,500
Speaker 2: a lot of things I love about this scene. I

1307
01:12:22,540 --> 01:12:25,870
Speaker 2: like the way it mirrors some aspects of the opening simulation.

1308
01:12:25,890 --> 01:12:29,689
Speaker 2: I love the way that the Enterprise goes in unsuspecting

1309
01:12:29,770 --> 01:12:33,040
Speaker 2: and we get to see Kirk and the rest of

1310
01:12:33,080 --> 01:12:36,370
Speaker 2: the Enterprise crew just kind of relaxed and cocky and

1311
01:12:36,850 --> 01:12:39,690
Speaker 2: not really suspecting anything's wrong. And then even when things

1312
01:12:39,710 --> 01:12:42,450
Speaker 2: start getting kind of weird, they don't seem too concerned

1313
01:12:42,490 --> 01:12:44,830
Speaker 2: about it. And then on the other side, we get

1314
01:12:44,850 --> 01:12:47,740
Speaker 2: to see Khan and his crew plotting the bridge of

1315
01:12:47,780 --> 01:12:52,500
Speaker 2: their ship. And Montalban just gobbling this scene up. His

1316
01:12:52,560 --> 01:12:56,120
Speaker 2: right-hand man says, they're requesting visual communication, sir. And Khan says,

1317
01:12:56,400 --> 01:12:58,089
Speaker 2: let them eat static.

1318
01:12:58,100 --> 01:12:58,530
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1319
01:12:59,810 --> 01:13:02,670
Speaker 2: And the guy says, they're still running with shields down.

1320
01:13:02,770 --> 01:13:08,260
Speaker 2: And Khan says, of course, we're one big happy fleet. Ah, Kirk,

1321
01:13:08,310 --> 01:13:11,100
Speaker 2: my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that

1322
01:13:11,140 --> 01:13:15,420
Speaker 2: tells us revenge is a dish best served cold? And

1323
01:13:15,460 --> 01:13:19,880
Speaker 2: this dramatic pause, it is very cold in space.

1324
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:23,700
Speaker 1: Not sure anyone else could have delivered that line. Yeah.

1325
01:13:25,220 --> 01:13:27,220
Speaker 1: But yeah, this scene is great because, of course, the

1326
01:13:27,260 --> 01:13:29,360
Speaker 1: rest of the film is going to be one big

1327
01:13:29,420 --> 01:13:33,880
Speaker 1: cat and mouse game. But at this point, from Kirk's standpoint,

1328
01:13:33,939 --> 01:13:37,860
Speaker 1: it's just all mice. Only Khan knows that there is

1329
01:13:37,900 --> 01:13:39,680
Speaker 1: a cat in play. And of course, he is the cat.

1330
01:13:40,020 --> 01:13:40,280
Speaker 3: Right.

1331
01:13:40,420 --> 01:13:44,900
Speaker 2: So Khan ambushes the Enterprise with a surprise attack, blasts

1332
01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:48,500
Speaker 2: it with phasers and disables most of the ship's capabilities.

1333
01:13:48,540 --> 01:13:51,860
Speaker 2: The Enterprise cannot warp away. It can't really fight back

1334
01:13:51,920 --> 01:13:55,450
Speaker 2: very well. Um, so they're, they're sitting ducks now. Then

1335
01:13:55,510 --> 01:13:58,040
Speaker 2: Khan appears on the, on the view screen to let

1336
01:13:58,100 --> 01:14:01,500
Speaker 2: Kirk know that it was him. Uh, and, uh, Kirk

1337
01:14:01,560 --> 01:14:04,580
Speaker 2: and Spock, they only managed to get out of this

1338
01:14:04,620 --> 01:14:09,070
Speaker 2: situation by leveraging their superior knowledge of how Starfleet bridge

1339
01:14:09,130 --> 01:14:12,580
Speaker 2: controls work. I like how their solution. So Khan, uh,

1340
01:14:12,990 --> 01:14:16,110
Speaker 2: gives them a moment to beam over all of the

1341
01:14:16,150 --> 01:14:19,790
Speaker 2: data they have on project Genesis. He's like, if you

1342
01:14:19,830 --> 01:14:21,769
Speaker 2: send me all that data, then I'll just take my

1343
01:14:21,810 --> 01:14:24,440
Speaker 2: revenge on you personally. And I'll let the rest of

1344
01:14:24,640 --> 01:14:27,939
Speaker 2: the ship go. Uh, and so they buy some time

1345
01:14:27,979 --> 01:14:30,059
Speaker 2: by saying, oh yeah, we've got to call up the, uh,

1346
01:14:30,120 --> 01:14:30,900
Speaker 2: the data files.

1347
01:14:30,939 --> 01:14:31,360
Speaker 1: Hold on.

1348
01:14:31,400 --> 01:14:32,140
Speaker 2: We're looking for them.

1349
01:14:32,220 --> 01:14:32,520
Speaker 1: Okay.

1350
01:14:32,540 --> 01:14:35,780
Speaker 2: We're about to send them to you now. But meanwhile,

1351
01:14:35,820 --> 01:14:37,860
Speaker 2: what they're actually doing is they come up with a

1352
01:14:37,880 --> 01:14:41,090
Speaker 2: plan to hack the mainframe. They're going to use the

1353
01:14:41,189 --> 01:14:44,479
Speaker 2: Reliance code key to remotely control the other ship and

1354
01:14:44,520 --> 01:14:49,320
Speaker 2: lower its shield, rendering it vulnerable to a counterattack. So

1355
01:14:49,360 --> 01:14:52,019
Speaker 2: they do that, and now both ships are damaged, and

1356
01:14:52,040 --> 01:14:54,229
Speaker 2: they kind of retreat to their corners to see what

1357
01:14:54,270 --> 01:14:57,370
Speaker 2: happens next. Another thing I love about the scene is

1358
01:14:57,390 --> 01:14:59,349
Speaker 2: what I mentioned earlier, is the way that it leans

1359
01:14:59,650 --> 01:15:07,929
Speaker 2: into some of the more buffoonish aspects of Shatner's portrayal

1360
01:15:07,950 --> 01:15:10,689
Speaker 2: of Kirk and makes them a good part of the character.

1361
01:15:10,710 --> 01:15:14,390
Speaker 2: The way Kirk acknowledges that he was cocky and smug

1362
01:15:14,430 --> 01:15:17,920
Speaker 2: and careless at the beginning and he gives the credit

1363
01:15:17,939 --> 01:15:20,180
Speaker 2: to Savick. He's like, that's right, I should have listened

1364
01:15:20,200 --> 01:15:20,520
Speaker 2: to her.

1365
01:15:20,540 --> 01:15:23,200
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, Khan is a mastermind here and

1366
01:15:23,260 --> 01:15:27,540
Speaker 1: he has set a trap exclusively for Captain James T. Kirk.

1367
01:15:27,640 --> 01:15:30,630
Speaker 1: He knows this guy. He knows exactly how to draw

1368
01:15:30,650 --> 01:15:32,940
Speaker 1: him in and take advantage of his weaknesses. Right.

1369
01:15:32,950 --> 01:15:35,820
Speaker 2: So now both ships are kind of separated and working

1370
01:15:35,900 --> 01:15:39,640
Speaker 2: on repairs and they're both and like a mystery reemerges.

1371
01:15:39,720 --> 01:15:41,320
Speaker 2: Both are like, what is the other one going to

1372
01:15:41,360 --> 01:15:45,240
Speaker 2: do next? So the Enterprise tries to go to regular one,

1373
01:15:45,300 --> 01:15:49,240
Speaker 2: the space station where the Genesis project is hosted. They

1374
01:15:49,280 --> 01:15:52,260
Speaker 2: go there and they find that Khan has been there

1375
01:15:52,300 --> 01:15:56,120
Speaker 2: already and has tortured all of the scientists. They're trying

1376
01:15:56,160 --> 01:15:58,860
Speaker 2: to get information out of them about, you know, where

1377
01:15:58,939 --> 01:16:02,090
Speaker 2: to where the main part of the project is being held.

1378
01:16:02,760 --> 01:16:07,439
Speaker 2: Also there, they meet Chekhov and Terrell, who are still alive.

1379
01:16:07,979 --> 01:16:10,580
Speaker 2: And they tell the whole horrible story. And so you

1380
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:11,940
Speaker 2: think that they are better now.

1381
01:16:12,180 --> 01:16:14,700
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they even say they put some organisms inside

1382
01:16:14,800 --> 01:16:16,720
Speaker 1: us and made us do things we didn't want to do.

1383
01:16:16,820 --> 01:16:18,740
Speaker 1: But they're like, but now we're better and we're here

1384
01:16:18,770 --> 01:16:18,970
Speaker 1: to help.

1385
01:16:20,200 --> 01:16:24,650
Speaker 2: From the space station, Kirk, McCoy, Savick, and Terrell, and

1386
01:16:25,510 --> 01:16:30,300
Speaker 2: Chekhov all beam down to the underground cavern there. that

1387
01:16:30,660 --> 01:16:34,580
Speaker 2: was the place where the Genesis Project was first tried.

1388
01:16:35,160 --> 01:16:37,269
Speaker 2: And so there was like a phase that was going

1389
01:16:37,290 --> 01:16:39,309
Speaker 2: to be underground in a cave, and then there was

1390
01:16:39,330 --> 01:16:41,010
Speaker 2: going to be a bigger phase that was going to

1391
01:16:41,030 --> 01:16:44,030
Speaker 2: be planet wide. So they beam down and they find, ah,

1392
01:16:44,110 --> 01:16:47,450
Speaker 2: here is the life nuke. Here is the Genesis Project bomb.

1393
01:16:48,210 --> 01:16:51,679
Speaker 2: They found it there, but it turns out that Captain

1394
01:16:51,700 --> 01:16:56,100
Speaker 2: Terrell and Chekov were not done being eel pawns yet.

1395
01:16:56,780 --> 01:16:59,679
Speaker 2: They were like double agents here. They were saying like, oh, yeah,

1396
01:17:00,220 --> 01:17:02,559
Speaker 2: we're done with the eel. We've kicked our eel problem now.

1397
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:04,760
Speaker 2: But they were not. In fact, they were still working

1398
01:17:04,800 --> 01:17:07,820
Speaker 2: for Khan. And so they like draw phasers on the

1399
01:17:07,860 --> 01:17:11,099
Speaker 2: Enterprise crew. They beam up the coordinates to Khan so

1400
01:17:11,140 --> 01:17:15,059
Speaker 2: that Khan can beam up the Genesis bomb. He takes

1401
01:17:15,150 --> 01:17:18,870
Speaker 2: that and then Khan orders them to finish off his enemy.

1402
01:17:19,229 --> 01:17:23,400
Speaker 2: But they don't quite do it yet. It's like something

1403
01:17:23,460 --> 01:17:25,780
Speaker 2: is resisting. It's almost, I mean, you could look at

1404
01:17:25,820 --> 01:17:29,200
Speaker 2: this as another, like, the mythic James T. Kirk thing,

1405
01:17:29,400 --> 01:17:33,030
Speaker 2: where it's like, I just can't do it. He's too awesome.

1406
01:17:33,050 --> 01:17:39,310
Speaker 1: That's right. That Terrell even, he, played again by Paul Winfield,

1407
01:17:40,070 --> 01:17:44,189
Speaker 1: he resists the eel enough to turn his phaser on

1408
01:17:44,229 --> 01:17:50,740
Speaker 1: himself and completely vaporizes his self rather than turn against Kirk.

1409
01:17:51,120 --> 01:17:53,439
Speaker 2: And then Chekhov, I think he just like screams and

1410
01:17:53,479 --> 01:17:55,580
Speaker 2: collapses and the thing comes out of his ear.

1411
01:17:55,600 --> 01:17:55,900
Speaker 3: Right.

1412
01:17:55,939 --> 01:17:57,340
Speaker 2: So Chekhov ends up OK.

1413
01:17:57,860 --> 01:17:58,120
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1414
01:17:58,160 --> 01:17:58,380
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1415
01:17:58,500 --> 01:18:01,410
Speaker 1: And he's going to have to recoup a little bit,

1416
01:18:01,430 --> 01:18:03,350
Speaker 1: but he'll be back in action before the picture's in.

1417
01:18:04,030 --> 01:18:05,729
Speaker 1: And his ear ends up looking fine. I was thinking

1418
01:18:05,750 --> 01:18:07,450
Speaker 1: to myself, it would have been a nice comedic touch

1419
01:18:07,490 --> 01:18:09,430
Speaker 1: if his ear just looks super gross. And every time

1420
01:18:09,470 --> 01:18:11,880
Speaker 1: he turned his head, people were just like, oh, yeah.

1421
01:18:12,570 --> 01:18:16,300
Speaker 1: But but then also importantly here, we get Khan gets

1422
01:18:16,380 --> 01:18:19,430
Speaker 1: to zoom in once more. And we get a little

1423
01:18:19,470 --> 01:18:23,470
Speaker 1: more gloating. Well, on one hand, he's disappointed that his

1424
01:18:23,550 --> 01:18:27,389
Speaker 1: minions did not just murder James T. Kirk. But then

1425
01:18:27,630 --> 01:18:29,530
Speaker 1: he kind of has a, I'm not going to say

1426
01:18:29,550 --> 01:18:32,599
Speaker 1: a change of heart, but a change of revenge plans.

1427
01:18:32,650 --> 01:18:35,580
Speaker 1: And he says, well, this is for the best because

1428
01:18:35,620 --> 01:18:37,820
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave you like you left me. I'm

1429
01:18:37,840 --> 01:18:41,240
Speaker 1: going to leave you buried in this lifeless cave. And

1430
01:18:41,260 --> 01:18:43,640
Speaker 1: you're going to just think about my victory the rest

1431
01:18:43,680 --> 01:18:44,219
Speaker 1: of your life.

1432
01:18:44,260 --> 01:18:45,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.

1433
01:18:45,020 --> 01:18:47,680
Speaker 2: He whispers buried alive into the communicator.

1434
01:18:47,700 --> 01:18:47,920
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1435
01:18:49,540 --> 01:18:49,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1436
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:53,940
Speaker 2: And that's when we get Shatner screaming.

1437
01:18:53,960 --> 01:18:59,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. Which again, you know, take it out of context

1438
01:18:59,260 --> 01:19:02,260
Speaker 1: and it's me more than funny, but within the context

1439
01:19:02,280 --> 01:19:04,500
Speaker 1: of the film, it's, I think it's well earned. And

1440
01:19:04,520 --> 01:19:06,820
Speaker 1: then also we're going to learn a few things about

1441
01:19:06,860 --> 01:19:07,900
Speaker 1: what's happening here as well.

1442
01:19:08,350 --> 01:19:10,870
Speaker 2: Now, there's another thing in this part of the movie

1443
01:19:11,010 --> 01:19:15,550
Speaker 2: where the Enterprise officers manage, even though Kahn's really got

1444
01:19:15,570 --> 01:19:19,340
Speaker 2: the upper hand on them, they manage to trick him.

1445
01:19:19,520 --> 01:19:22,580
Speaker 2: This is a plot convention I like, too. So the

1446
01:19:22,600 --> 01:19:26,979
Speaker 2: trick is they're talking on the communicators, and Spock is

1447
01:19:27,000 --> 01:19:29,300
Speaker 2: still up on the ship, and he says something like,

1448
01:19:29,640 --> 01:19:33,200
Speaker 2: if we go by the book, as Commander Savick does,

1449
01:19:33,640 --> 01:19:37,100
Speaker 2: hours could seem like days. And thus it will take

1450
01:19:37,220 --> 01:19:40,360
Speaker 2: us two days to complete repairs on the ship to

1451
01:19:40,420 --> 01:19:44,059
Speaker 2: have it operable again. And then Shatner's like, oh, yeah, okay.

1452
01:19:44,100 --> 01:19:48,920
Speaker 2: So I'll check in again in one day. And like,

1453
01:19:49,060 --> 01:19:51,140
Speaker 2: if you don't know, actually, this does kind of go

1454
01:19:51,180 --> 01:19:53,320
Speaker 2: over your head, or at least it did for me

1455
01:19:53,380 --> 01:19:56,439
Speaker 2: until they reveal the code later. They are speaking in

1456
01:19:56,740 --> 01:20:01,210
Speaker 2: code where they're transposing the time measurements they're giving each

1457
01:20:01,250 --> 01:20:04,389
Speaker 2: other for days and hours. But Khan doesn't realize this.

1458
01:20:05,350 --> 01:20:07,019
Speaker 2: The key is that he's saying if you go by

1459
01:20:07,060 --> 01:20:09,360
Speaker 2: the book, meaning that there is a regulation in the

1460
01:20:09,400 --> 01:20:13,160
Speaker 2: Starfleet manual that says when you expect communications to be

1461
01:20:13,220 --> 01:20:16,820
Speaker 2: monitored by the enemy, you should only send encrypted messages.

1462
01:20:16,960 --> 01:20:18,809
Speaker 2: And so they're sending messages in code.

1463
01:20:19,390 --> 01:20:20,050
Speaker 1: Right, right.

1464
01:20:20,310 --> 01:20:23,670
Speaker 2: So this gives Khan the wrong idea about how soon

1465
01:20:23,729 --> 01:20:39,129
Speaker 2: their ship will be operable. And thus he plans incorrectly. Meanwhile, Kirk, Savick, Bones,

1466
01:20:39,390 --> 01:20:44,139
Speaker 2: and Chekov now are trapped in this underground cavern with

1467
01:20:44,150 --> 01:20:48,740
Speaker 2: the scientists from the Genesis team, including Kirk's old flame,

1468
01:20:48,780 --> 01:20:52,420
Speaker 2: Carol Marcus, and her son, David, who is very handsome

1469
01:20:52,500 --> 01:20:55,769
Speaker 2: and strong. And he almost reminds me a bit of myself. Yeah.

1470
01:20:56,479 --> 01:20:58,800
Speaker 1: Now this is the scene where we really get what

1471
01:20:58,880 --> 01:21:01,340
Speaker 1: seems to be rock bottom Kirk there for a little bit.

1472
01:21:01,400 --> 01:21:01,620
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1473
01:21:01,680 --> 01:21:02,900
Speaker 2: Dark night of the soul. Yeah.

1474
01:21:02,960 --> 01:21:05,540
Speaker 1: And it's, it's really good. This is, again, this is

1475
01:21:05,560 --> 01:21:08,479
Speaker 1: Shatner at his finest. Where he's like, I'm beat, you know,

1476
01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:11,250
Speaker 1: I've been defeated. Essentially like the, I mean, I think

1477
01:21:11,470 --> 01:21:14,070
Speaker 1: the really clever thing about this is like in this

1478
01:21:14,189 --> 01:21:19,229
Speaker 1: one scene, uh, two things from his past, um, errors

1479
01:21:19,250 --> 01:21:22,680
Speaker 1: from his past, uh, you know, things that he's neglected

1480
01:21:22,740 --> 01:21:25,240
Speaker 1: have come back to haunt him. On one hand, here

1481
01:21:25,300 --> 01:21:29,230
Speaker 1: is his old enemy. uh khan who he like literally

1482
01:21:29,310 --> 01:21:32,189
Speaker 1: just you know didn't check on just assumed just completely

1483
01:21:32,530 --> 01:21:34,790
Speaker 1: left him to his own and now he's come back

1484
01:21:34,990 --> 01:21:37,800
Speaker 1: to seek his revenge and then here is his son

1485
01:21:37,810 --> 01:21:40,540
Speaker 1: who uh has not been a part of his life

1486
01:21:41,120 --> 01:21:43,940
Speaker 1: um i guess he doesn't even didn't even really know

1487
01:21:44,000 --> 01:21:45,880
Speaker 1: about him but on the other hand it's like clearly

1488
01:21:46,300 --> 01:21:48,720
Speaker 1: kirk was not present there to be a part of

1489
01:21:48,760 --> 01:21:50,260
Speaker 1: this individual's life.

1490
01:21:50,090 --> 01:21:52,970
Speaker 2: Right i I think he did know about him, but

1491
01:21:53,090 --> 01:21:55,150
Speaker 2: Carol asked him to stay away.

1492
01:21:55,170 --> 01:21:57,950
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, you know, I don't, you don't get the

1493
01:21:57,970 --> 01:21:59,710
Speaker 1: impression that there was a lot of pushback on that.

1494
01:21:59,790 --> 01:22:03,750
Speaker 1: Like this, it feels like a shortcoming of his character

1495
01:22:04,110 --> 01:22:06,650
Speaker 1: and he's confronted with it, like violently confronted with this

1496
01:22:07,020 --> 01:22:08,780
Speaker 1: when he has fisticuffs with his own son.

1497
01:22:09,160 --> 01:22:09,380
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1498
01:22:09,780 --> 01:22:11,620
Speaker 2: But at the same time that we get this dark

1499
01:22:11,660 --> 01:22:15,259
Speaker 2: night of the soul deep underground where they're buried alive,

1500
01:22:15,880 --> 01:22:19,380
Speaker 2: there is also a kind of beautiful moment where they're,

1501
01:22:19,820 --> 01:22:22,460
Speaker 2: brought out into a cavern to see what the Genesis

1502
01:22:22,479 --> 01:22:26,900
Speaker 2: Project is capable of. And we get this vast cave

1503
01:22:26,979 --> 01:22:30,429
Speaker 2: that somehow almost seems to have a sun shining within it. Yeah,

1504
01:22:30,470 --> 01:22:30,979
Speaker 2: where did that.

1505
01:22:30,930 --> 01:22:31,710
Speaker 1: Sun come from?

1506
01:22:31,729 --> 01:22:32,430
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.

1507
01:22:32,450 --> 01:22:34,490
Speaker 1: Did it make a miniature star in there?

1508
01:22:35,210 --> 01:22:39,350
Speaker 2: It's a cavern that's like an enormous cavern that's just

1509
01:22:39,510 --> 01:22:43,910
Speaker 2: filled with life, blossoming with trees and fruits and all

1510
01:22:43,950 --> 01:22:46,820
Speaker 2: different kinds of life and a beautiful little ocean flowing

1511
01:22:46,860 --> 01:22:49,530
Speaker 2: through the bottom of it. And it's gorgeous. It looks

1512
01:22:49,550 --> 01:22:51,640
Speaker 2: like the cover of one of these old fantasy novels.

1513
01:22:51,880 --> 01:22:56,720
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they eat some Wonka fruit down there. They do. Yeah.

1514
01:22:56,800 --> 01:22:59,760
Speaker 1: They recharge themselves. And now it's time to get back

1515
01:22:59,800 --> 01:23:00,379
Speaker 1: to the Enterprise.

1516
01:23:00,560 --> 01:23:02,439
Speaker 2: That's right. So they get beamed back up to the

1517
01:23:02,460 --> 01:23:07,860
Speaker 2: Enterprise according to Spock's coded timeline that, again, was a

1518
01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:10,580
Speaker 2: trick that worked against Khan. Khan was fooled. And now

1519
01:23:10,780 --> 01:23:13,930
Speaker 2: the Starship Enterprise is able to function again much sooner

1520
01:23:13,979 --> 01:23:17,740
Speaker 2: than Khan expected. And from here, they move on to

1521
01:23:17,760 --> 01:23:20,200
Speaker 2: the final conflict. They still don't have all of their

1522
01:23:20,220 --> 01:23:23,090
Speaker 2: capabilities back. They can't put up a full fight. Khan's

1523
01:23:23,130 --> 01:23:26,170
Speaker 2: ship is in better shape than the Enterprise is, but

1524
01:23:26,189 --> 01:23:28,510
Speaker 2: they figure out a way to even the odds. They

1525
01:23:28,550 --> 01:23:32,729
Speaker 2: look nearby and there is a nebula system, the Mutara Nebula.

1526
01:23:33,030 --> 01:23:35,479
Speaker 2: And they say, you know what, let's go in there.

1527
01:23:35,570 --> 01:23:38,479
Speaker 2: And initially, I think it's Savik is confused to be like,

1528
01:23:38,520 --> 01:23:40,180
Speaker 2: if we go in there, won't a lot of our

1529
01:23:40,220 --> 01:23:44,360
Speaker 2: systems become non-functional? And I think Spock says, you know,

1530
01:23:44,439 --> 01:23:48,080
Speaker 2: sauce for the gander, Lieutenant Savick. So the idea is

1531
01:23:48,620 --> 01:23:51,370
Speaker 2: if we can go into this place where it disables

1532
01:23:51,510 --> 01:23:54,389
Speaker 2: most of your ship's capabilities, it will even the odds

1533
01:23:54,510 --> 01:23:56,790
Speaker 2: because their ship is working a lot better than ours

1534
01:23:56,830 --> 01:23:59,710
Speaker 2: right now. And so it'll make just both ships not

1535
01:23:59,750 --> 01:24:00,390
Speaker 2: work very well.

1536
01:24:00,850 --> 01:24:01,090
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1537
01:24:01,229 --> 01:24:04,600
Speaker 1: So, yeah. So enter the Battle of the Mutara Nebula.

1538
01:24:04,800 --> 01:24:08,120
Speaker 1: And it's fabulous. Like we were saying, it's this tense

1539
01:24:08,240 --> 01:24:11,820
Speaker 1: cat and mouse game. between two starships that can't really

1540
01:24:11,979 --> 01:24:14,439
Speaker 1: see each other or detect each other all that well.

1541
01:24:14,479 --> 01:24:17,280
Speaker 1: They're kind of poking around in the dark, very heavy

1542
01:24:17,360 --> 01:24:22,700
Speaker 1: shades of submarine warfare, just seeking for any indication about

1543
01:24:22,740 --> 01:24:26,060
Speaker 1: the position, the coordinates of the enemy vessel so that

1544
01:24:26,100 --> 01:24:29,560
Speaker 1: they can fire. Neither ship has shields up, so a

1545
01:24:29,600 --> 01:24:34,600
Speaker 1: direct hit, really the first combatant to score a direct

1546
01:24:34,640 --> 01:24:36,019
Speaker 1: hit is going to be the victor here.

1547
01:24:36,360 --> 01:24:39,310
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Uh, and they're like looking for ways

1548
01:24:39,370 --> 01:24:40,990
Speaker 2: that they can get advantage.

1549
01:24:41,070 --> 01:24:41,290
Speaker 3: Right.

1550
01:24:41,850 --> 01:24:44,550
Speaker 2: And I think it is Spock that comments that, you know,

1551
01:24:44,850 --> 01:24:49,080
Speaker 2: con is super intelligent. He's highly intelligent. He's a brilliant tactician,

1552
01:24:49,540 --> 01:24:52,980
Speaker 2: but he lacks experience in space combat. And the fact

1553
01:24:53,020 --> 01:24:56,980
Speaker 2: that he lacks experience means that he's thinking two dimensionally

1554
01:24:57,280 --> 01:25:01,250
Speaker 2: about the combat. So they, they reorient the Z axis

1555
01:25:01,350 --> 01:25:05,080
Speaker 2: basically of how they're planning their approach. And they're, you know,

1556
01:25:05,100 --> 01:25:09,500
Speaker 2: it's like rotate battle battlefield by 90 degrees. And, uh,

1557
01:25:09,560 --> 01:25:12,180
Speaker 2: that allows them to approach from behind and get the

1558
01:25:12,200 --> 01:25:15,479
Speaker 2: better of Khan's ship. And, uh, then they, they land

1559
01:25:15,520 --> 01:25:19,270
Speaker 2: a torpedo hit and they, they really finally get the advantage. Um,

1560
01:25:19,510 --> 01:25:22,870
Speaker 2: but then Khan tries to get, he's, he's like wounded

1561
01:25:22,910 --> 01:25:25,390
Speaker 2: captain Ahab now, and he tries to get the last

1562
01:25:25,470 --> 01:25:28,830
Speaker 2: barb in on, on his white whale. He's quoting Moby

1563
01:25:28,870 --> 01:25:31,389
Speaker 2: Dick as he's like on the bridge of his ship dying.

1564
01:25:32,240 --> 01:25:35,000
Speaker 2: He's saying, you know, from hell's heart, I stab at thee.

1565
01:25:35,100 --> 01:25:37,460
Speaker 2: For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

1566
01:25:38,000 --> 01:25:40,439
Speaker 2: And what is that? It is activation of the Genesis

1567
01:25:40,470 --> 01:25:44,490
Speaker 2: Project bomb. Because he knows that the Enterprise's warp system

1568
01:25:44,689 --> 01:25:48,130
Speaker 2: is still disabled, so it can't get away fast enough.

1569
01:25:48,590 --> 01:25:51,230
Speaker 2: And so they will be destroyed right along with him.

1570
01:25:51,890 --> 01:25:54,769
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, of course, Montalban does a fabulous

1571
01:25:54,810 --> 01:25:59,850
Speaker 1: job just really... eating the scenery in this moment. You know,

1572
01:25:59,870 --> 01:26:02,060
Speaker 1: he's wounded at this point. The rest of his crew

1573
01:26:02,150 --> 01:26:06,059
Speaker 1: is wounded or dead. Everything's in ruin. But yeah, he

1574
01:26:06,160 --> 01:26:09,120
Speaker 1: is spitting venom until the end here.

1575
01:26:09,580 --> 01:26:12,880
Speaker 2: And this leads up to the very famous self-sacrifice scene

1576
01:26:12,920 --> 01:26:15,780
Speaker 2: at the end of the movie where in order to

1577
01:26:15,820 --> 01:26:19,040
Speaker 2: get warp power back online, Spock realizes that someone has

1578
01:26:19,080 --> 01:26:22,400
Speaker 2: to go into the radiation room, the reactor room, which

1579
01:26:22,479 --> 01:26:26,110
Speaker 2: is bathed in radiation to, I don't know, fiddle with

1580
01:26:26,150 --> 01:26:27,410
Speaker 2: something and They.

1581
01:26:27,370 --> 01:26:29,290
Speaker 1: Don't hit us with a lot of technical babble here.

1582
01:26:29,330 --> 01:26:31,560
Speaker 1: It's just somebody needs to go in there and do something.

1583
01:26:31,880 --> 01:26:35,380
Speaker 1: And that person better have higher radiation tolerance than a

1584
01:26:35,420 --> 01:26:36,240
Speaker 1: normal human being.

1585
01:26:36,540 --> 01:26:39,240
Speaker 2: But we were told that it will still kill Spock.

1586
01:26:39,400 --> 01:26:41,340
Speaker 2: Like Spock is going in and they try to stop him.

1587
01:26:41,400 --> 01:26:43,480
Speaker 2: They say, no, no, no, you go in there, you'll die.

1588
01:26:44,200 --> 01:26:46,250
Speaker 2: And he just goes anyway. I think he does the

1589
01:26:46,290 --> 01:26:49,570
Speaker 2: Vulcan nerve pinch on McCoy to get him to go

1590
01:26:49,610 --> 01:26:52,310
Speaker 2: to sleep while he goes into the radiation room. And

1591
01:26:52,350 --> 01:26:55,450
Speaker 2: he saves the ship by reactivating the warp drive. And

1592
01:26:55,490 --> 01:26:57,400
Speaker 2: the ship is able to get out of range of

1593
01:26:57,460 --> 01:27:00,720
Speaker 2: the Genesis bomb. And so the ship is saved. But

1594
01:27:01,080 --> 01:27:04,100
Speaker 2: Spock has had to sacrifice himself in order to do it.

1595
01:27:04,560 --> 01:27:07,460
Speaker 2: And we get a final emotional meeting through this sort

1596
01:27:07,479 --> 01:27:10,420
Speaker 2: of radiation shielding glass where Kirk comes down to see

1597
01:27:10,439 --> 01:27:14,650
Speaker 2: his friend there. And Spock gets to remind him of

1598
01:27:14,729 --> 01:27:18,070
Speaker 2: what they talked about earlier. Actually, I forget the original

1599
01:27:18,110 --> 01:27:20,750
Speaker 2: context in which this came up, but where the line

1600
01:27:20,850 --> 01:27:23,189
Speaker 2: is the needs of the few outweigh, or the needs

1601
01:27:23,229 --> 01:27:25,440
Speaker 2: of the many outweigh the needs of the few or

1602
01:27:25,460 --> 01:27:25,840
Speaker 2: the one.

1603
01:27:25,860 --> 01:27:26,800
Speaker 1: That's right.

1604
01:27:27,040 --> 01:27:31,040
Speaker 2: And it is only logical. And so Spock dies and

1605
01:27:31,080 --> 01:27:33,960
Speaker 2: then is given a beautiful funeral where they put him

1606
01:27:34,000 --> 01:27:38,780
Speaker 2: in a little kind of capsule-shaped case and they launch

1607
01:27:38,800 --> 01:27:41,200
Speaker 2: him out of the Enterprise like a torpedo onto the

1608
01:27:41,310 --> 01:27:44,730
Speaker 2: surface of the planet that has now been given life

1609
01:27:44,810 --> 01:27:47,650
Speaker 2: through the Genesis Project. So it's like this dead rock

1610
01:27:48,080 --> 01:27:51,500
Speaker 2: is now blooming with all of this new biosphere, and

1611
01:27:51,540 --> 01:27:55,060
Speaker 2: Spock's coffin lands on the planet there among all of it.

1612
01:27:55,979 --> 01:27:59,780
Speaker 1: I legitimately do not remember how they bring Spock back

1613
01:27:59,820 --> 01:28:00,519
Speaker 1: in the next film.

1614
01:28:01,200 --> 01:28:03,460
Speaker 2: I remember it's weird. It's been a long time.

1615
01:28:03,800 --> 01:28:06,740
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that is one of the films that I

1616
01:28:06,780 --> 01:28:09,410
Speaker 1: think is not considered one of the better ones.

1617
01:28:10,490 --> 01:28:14,070
Speaker 2: People generally, I mean, obviously opinions can differ, but very

1618
01:28:14,130 --> 01:28:17,850
Speaker 2: common opinion is that the even numbered movies are good. Yeah.

1619
01:28:18,130 --> 01:28:20,880
Speaker 1: And I don't know how far that actually holds out.

1620
01:28:20,920 --> 01:28:23,320
Speaker 1: But yeah, at this point, that's kind of the logic.

1621
01:28:23,360 --> 01:28:26,500
Speaker 1: But it's weird to reflect on this scene because it's

1622
01:28:26,520 --> 01:28:28,680
Speaker 1: still absolutely powerful. And I remember the first time I

1623
01:28:28,760 --> 01:28:31,800
Speaker 1: saw it, the scene where Spock dies is very emotional.

1624
01:28:32,890 --> 01:28:37,570
Speaker 1: But I was not old enough to encounter this film,

1625
01:28:37,590 --> 01:28:41,640
Speaker 1: you know, in the wild before Spock came back. So

1626
01:28:42,680 --> 01:28:44,780
Speaker 1: it must have hit pretty hard because, you know, we

1627
01:28:44,800 --> 01:28:47,460
Speaker 1: had the tease at the beginning. And certainly they lay

1628
01:28:48,420 --> 01:28:50,380
Speaker 1: it on a bit thick at the end here that

1629
01:28:50,420 --> 01:28:53,019
Speaker 1: there might be some way to bring Spock back. You

1630
01:28:53,040 --> 01:28:56,350
Speaker 1: don't want people rioting in the theater, I guess. But still,

1631
01:28:56,430 --> 01:28:57,670
Speaker 1: I think it would have hit pretty hard.

1632
01:28:58,270 --> 01:29:00,610
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. And actually, I'm not even sure. I

1633
01:29:00,650 --> 01:29:02,610
Speaker 2: don't know the answer to this question. Did they know

1634
01:29:02,689 --> 01:29:04,420
Speaker 2: at this point that they were going to bring Spock

1635
01:29:04,460 --> 01:29:05,580
Speaker 2: back or not?

1636
01:29:05,979 --> 01:29:07,540
Speaker 1: I mean, they might have had an inkling that they

1637
01:29:07,580 --> 01:29:10,960
Speaker 1: would want to, but I get from what I've read,

1638
01:29:11,000 --> 01:29:13,520
Speaker 1: it's like there wasn't a guarantee that Nimoy would want

1639
01:29:13,540 --> 01:29:16,010
Speaker 1: to come back. There certainly wasn't a guarantee that this

1640
01:29:16,050 --> 01:29:18,550
Speaker 1: film was going to be a big enough success to

1641
01:29:18,570 --> 01:29:21,010
Speaker 1: do another picture, essentially the following year.

1642
01:29:21,030 --> 01:29:21,090
Speaker 3: So.

1643
01:29:22,080 --> 01:29:24,800
Speaker 1: Um, I guess they just kind of left the door

1644
01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:27,240
Speaker 1: open because, uh, again, they lay it on a little

1645
01:29:27,300 --> 01:29:29,540
Speaker 1: thick here. It's like, here's the coffin. It's landing on this,

1646
01:29:30,140 --> 01:29:33,100
Speaker 1: this new world. It's kind of implied there could be

1647
01:29:33,160 --> 01:29:35,990
Speaker 1: some sort of new life. Um, and you know, we'd

1648
01:29:36,010 --> 01:29:37,270
Speaker 1: just have to find out in the next film.

1649
01:29:38,630 --> 01:29:41,110
Speaker 2: Oh, and then we, we also get the thematic stinger,

1650
01:29:41,150 --> 01:29:44,730
Speaker 2: the very last thing, um, which is the, the characters

1651
01:29:44,790 --> 01:29:47,990
Speaker 2: are standing there looking at this planet, uh, after they have, uh,

1652
01:29:48,300 --> 01:29:51,720
Speaker 2: given Spock the space burial, uh, And somebody asks Kirk

1653
01:29:51,760 --> 01:29:55,790
Speaker 2: how he feels. And he says, I feel young. Yeah.

1654
01:29:55,970 --> 01:29:59,030
Speaker 2: And it kind of, he sells it. It works. Like

1655
01:29:59,290 --> 01:30:01,530
Speaker 2: you can see how he does now after the events

1656
01:30:01,570 --> 01:30:04,150
Speaker 2: of the film. And so that's this change from the,

1657
01:30:04,330 --> 01:30:05,610
Speaker 2: from how we met him at the beginning.

1658
01:30:06,550 --> 01:30:10,229
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah. So it's a great finish to a great film.

1659
01:30:10,689 --> 01:30:12,670
Speaker 1: I almost hesitate to bring this up because again, it's,

1660
01:30:12,729 --> 01:30:14,330
Speaker 1: I'm not making fun of the picture, but there is

1661
01:30:14,370 --> 01:30:16,870
Speaker 1: this one scene. I think it's after the first major

1662
01:30:16,910 --> 01:30:23,430
Speaker 1: encounter between the two ships. where the not-my-nephew character has

1663
01:30:23,650 --> 01:30:28,729
Speaker 1: been horrifically injured in the engine room. Yes, the engineer, yeah. Yeah,

1664
01:30:28,790 --> 01:30:31,050
Speaker 1: and Scotty brings him up in his arms, but brings

1665
01:30:31,090 --> 01:30:33,570
Speaker 1: him directly to the bridge. Yes. And at that moment,

1666
01:30:33,590 --> 01:30:35,150
Speaker 1: I'm like, why'd you bring him to the bridge, dude?

1667
01:30:35,189 --> 01:30:38,370
Speaker 1: Take him to the medical bay. I guess he's just,

1668
01:30:38,450 --> 01:30:40,830
Speaker 1: you know, it's a moment that is more about the

1669
01:30:40,850 --> 01:30:43,809
Speaker 1: drama in the characters than about the logic of what

1670
01:30:43,830 --> 01:30:45,310
Speaker 1: you would actually do in that scenario.

1671
01:30:45,950 --> 01:30:49,950
Speaker 2: Nicholas Meyer, I think, has a sensibility here That's kind

1672
01:30:49,970 --> 01:30:52,229
Speaker 2: of like Spielberg's. I mean, you point this out in

1673
01:30:52,250 --> 01:30:54,770
Speaker 2: a lot of Spielberg movies. There are things that if

1674
01:30:54,810 --> 01:30:57,750
Speaker 2: you really think about them, it doesn't make sense why

1675
01:30:57,790 --> 01:31:01,090
Speaker 2: a character would do that. But it hits so well

1676
01:31:01,130 --> 01:31:03,300
Speaker 2: when it happens on screen that most of the time

1677
01:31:03,340 --> 01:31:05,519
Speaker 2: you don't think about it. It doesn't occur to you

1678
01:31:05,560 --> 01:31:08,200
Speaker 2: to question the plausibility of it. It's just like, oh,

1679
01:31:08,260 --> 01:31:12,380
Speaker 2: that is emotionally affecting and it just works and you

1680
01:31:12,439 --> 01:31:13,500
Speaker 2: roll on to the next thing.

1681
01:31:13,840 --> 01:31:14,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I agree.

1682
01:31:15,270 --> 01:31:17,610
Speaker 2: But that engineer character also gets a nice moment as

1683
01:31:17,810 --> 01:31:20,320
Speaker 2: he's dying in sickbay as well because he reaches up

1684
01:31:20,380 --> 01:31:22,840
Speaker 2: to Kirk and he says, he's like, do I have

1685
01:31:22,860 --> 01:31:27,220
Speaker 2: the word? And Shatner looks down at him and says,

1686
01:31:27,280 --> 01:31:31,720
Speaker 2: warp speed. You could also imagine somebody making fun of that,

1687
01:31:31,780 --> 01:31:34,620
Speaker 2: but I don't know. In context, it's pretty sweet.

1688
01:31:35,240 --> 01:31:38,570
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I think in the end, everything works

1689
01:31:38,610 --> 01:31:42,790
Speaker 1: here just so beautifully. It's just such a well-constructed film.

1690
01:31:42,810 --> 01:31:46,360
Speaker 1: It has a lot of heart. It has some great action. Again,

1691
01:31:46,380 --> 01:31:50,040
Speaker 1: I would say, uh, it's gotta be the best naval

1692
01:31:50,080 --> 01:31:53,460
Speaker 1: battle in Star Trek media. Uh, if there's anything on

1693
01:31:53,520 --> 01:31:55,800
Speaker 1: par with this, uh, please write in and tell me which,

1694
01:31:56,360 --> 01:31:58,600
Speaker 1: which episode or film I need to watch to follow

1695
01:31:58,660 --> 01:32:01,480
Speaker 1: up this feeling that I'm having right now. Totally.

1696
01:32:01,700 --> 01:32:05,750
Speaker 2: I love how human it is. That's the main thing

1697
01:32:06,270 --> 01:32:08,990
Speaker 2: that really sticks in there about it. There are, there

1698
01:32:09,010 --> 01:32:12,780
Speaker 2: are certainly Star Trek stories that, uh, deal with more

1699
01:32:12,840 --> 01:32:16,559
Speaker 2: fascinating ideas or that you could say um you know

1700
01:32:16,840 --> 01:32:20,500
Speaker 2: uh present something that is more uh novel in the

1701
01:32:20,540 --> 01:32:24,600
Speaker 2: science fiction sense or that kind of thing but this

1702
01:32:24,700 --> 01:32:27,330
Speaker 2: is about as good as it gets ever in terms

1703
01:32:27,430 --> 01:32:30,070
Speaker 2: of just making the characters feel like real humans and

1704
01:32:30,110 --> 01:32:31,830
Speaker 2: telling an emotional story.

1705
01:32:31,870 --> 01:32:33,670
Speaker 1: Yeah like there are plenty of even original star trek

1706
01:32:33,689 --> 01:32:36,670
Speaker 1: episodes that are probably more cerebral in places but this

1707
01:32:36,790 --> 01:32:40,010
Speaker 1: one this one is about heart and action and character.

1708
01:32:40,010 --> 01:32:42,710
Speaker 2: Absolutely All right, that's all I got on Wrath of Khan.

1709
01:32:43,030 --> 01:32:44,890
Speaker 1: All right, well, with that, we're going to close out

1710
01:32:44,930 --> 01:32:46,790
Speaker 1: Star Trek week here in the Stuff to Blow Your

1711
01:32:46,830 --> 01:32:48,680
Speaker 1: Mind feed, and we're going to close out this episode

1712
01:32:48,689 --> 01:32:51,620
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema. But as always, we want to

1713
01:32:51,660 --> 01:32:54,200
Speaker 1: hear what you all have to say about all of this.

1714
01:32:54,640 --> 01:32:57,200
Speaker 1: Write in with your thoughts on Star Trek in general,

1715
01:32:57,240 --> 01:32:59,979
Speaker 1: Star Trek movies, and, of course, Star Trek II, The

1716
01:33:00,020 --> 01:33:02,320
Speaker 1: Wrath of Khan. When did you see it for the

1717
01:33:02,360 --> 01:33:03,960
Speaker 1: first time? Did you see it in the theater? If

1718
01:33:04,000 --> 01:33:05,860
Speaker 1: you did see it in the theater when it originally

1719
01:33:05,900 --> 01:33:08,710
Speaker 1: came out, what was the vibe like? How did everyone

1720
01:33:08,750 --> 01:33:11,360
Speaker 1: react to the death of Spock? That's the stuff I

1721
01:33:11,400 --> 01:33:15,490
Speaker 1: want to know about. Let's see. At this point, we'll

1722
01:33:15,510 --> 01:33:17,030
Speaker 1: just go ahead and remind you that Stuff to Blow

1723
01:33:17,050 --> 01:33:19,350
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with

1724
01:33:19,390 --> 01:33:22,610
Speaker 1: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we do

1725
01:33:22,650 --> 01:33:24,950
Speaker 1: a short-form episode. And on Fridays, we set aside most

1726
01:33:24,990 --> 01:33:27,510
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here

1727
01:33:27,570 --> 01:33:30,650
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. You can follow Stuff to Blow

1728
01:33:30,670 --> 01:33:34,100
Speaker 1: Your Mind on any of the social media accounts out there,

1729
01:33:34,120 --> 01:33:36,620
Speaker 1: or at least the main ones. You can get the

1730
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Speaker 1: podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. Just rate, review, and

1731
01:33:40,510 --> 01:33:43,900
Speaker 1: subscribe wherever you do that. Oh, and then finally, if

1732
01:33:43,939 --> 01:33:46,120
Speaker 1: you are on a Letterboxd, look us up. We are

1733
01:33:46,220 --> 01:33:48,200
Speaker 1: Weird House on Letterboxd, and you can get a nice

1734
01:33:48,280 --> 01:33:50,120
Speaker 1: list of all the movies we've covered over the years

1735
01:33:50,420 --> 01:33:52,780
Speaker 1: and sometimes a peek ahead at what comes next.

1736
01:33:53,240 --> 01:33:56,380
Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.

1737
01:33:56,420 --> 01:33:56,880
Speaker 1: Posway.

1738
01:33:57,100 --> 01:33:58,439
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

1739
01:33:58,479 --> 01:34:01,110
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1740
01:34:01,170 --> 01:34:03,170
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1741
01:34:03,210 --> 01:34:13,780
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to

1742
01:34:13,800 --> 01:34:16,580
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more

1743
01:34:16,620 --> 01:34:19,160
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

1744
01:34:19,479 --> 01:34:22,050
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.