Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan - Star Trek

'Space Seed'


Like most people my age I had seen The Wrath of Khan many times before sitting down to watch the first season Star Trek episode that spawned the titular character. Although when the movie came out it was almost impossible to watch the old television episode as a refresher (this was before the days of torrents and DVDs), watching them in succession improves them both.

'Space Seed' starts the way many episodes of Star Trek do: there is a rudderless spaceship adrift with seemingly no humanoid pilot. Thus the crew of the Enterprise decide to make an away team to see what's up. This is a very popular plot device in science fiction, another example being the Firefly episode 'Bushwhacked' (which is interesting because the way that Khan disposes of some scientists in the film is reminiscent of the way the Reavers hung up bodies in this same Firefly episode), but this being the original 'Star Trek' series it doesn't yet seem cliche. The Enterprise crew discovers that this ship is from the 1990's (where's my spaceship, 90s!?!) and contains a fairly large crew in suspended animation.

Khan is the leader of the ship and is the first one re-animated. After figuring out his current situation and recovering on the Enterprise, he then quickly starts to plot to overtake the ship and crew. We learn that Khan is the leader of a group of genetically engineered humans who attempted to control the planet back in 1996 (where's my superman, 90s!?!) who then escaped in a ship to attempt to take over some alien races in the distant future. Kirk makes sure to compare Khan to Napoleon at least 4 times so we understand that this guy means business, and that he's bound to try to take over the ship. Khan actually succeeds briefly (with the help of a starry eyed earth historian who has a Napoleon/Alexander the Great jonze) but our captain eventually takes him out with a sweet karate kick or two. Kirk then gives Khan the option of punishments, and Khan takes the 'deserted on a habitable planet to surely cause trouble in the not so distant future' option and away he goes.

Like all Star Trek episodes this one has its amount of camp. Almost all of the scenes with the historian and Khan are pretty ridiculous, and it's impossible not to laugh at Kirk's fighting style. Even so, this episode maintains a pretty heavy tone, which is really helped by Ricardo Montalban portrayal of Khan. Although it is only one episode in the first season, one can't help but feel it was being set up for a sequel (in TV or the movies). One of the final lines, in which the episode title comes form, from Spock to Kirk lets the audience know that this battle is far from over.

It would be interesting, captain, to return to that world in a hundred years, and learn what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today.

The Wrath of Khan


I find it impossible to fathom how The Wrath of Khan got made. It's a sequel to a boring, slow movie that didn't do that well critically or financially, which was itself a spin off from a canceled television show. Furthermore, the end of The Wrath of Khan pretty much demands a sequel, which is pretty ballsy for a franchise in the state that Star Trek was in after The Motion Picture. However it got made it's good that it happened, because The Wrath of Khan is one of the most well known, and influential movies in American cinema (at least when it comes to sci-fi).

I won't go into as much as a plot summary as I did above, because I figure most everyone has seen this film. Having not viewed it in a while, I forgot how smooth it flows and how quick it moves. The movie doesn't feel dated at all, it has the somewhat 70s outfits and old looking spaceships, but the pace and direction feel like they could have come from a movie today. The film is also helped by the fact that all of the actors improved considerably in the 15 years that elapsed. (An interesting side note, I never knew that the crew of the Enterprise was constantly in flux. I was used to TNG where the crew stays pretty constant. Sulu and Chekov were not in the above episode and in fact Chekov is in less than half of the total episodes and Sulu in just over half. That being the case I feel less bad that they aren't given much to do in any of the movies.) In addition, the movie just looks and feels darker than the tv show. The bridge is cast in shadows and doesn't have that bright and shiny feel found in the series. I think this helps give the movie a little more weight which definitely helps improve it from the series. Watching the TV episode on which this movie is based really helps give you a sense of history between Kirk and Khan and really improves the film. Again Montalban's portrayal is excellent as Khan and the war of wills between him and Kirk is very believable because of the personalities involved.

Khan has its share of memorable moments and one of the most memorable movie moments of all time is shown below so you don't have to go looking for it (I know you'd have to look it up. Also sorry for the annoying panning and annotation, there isn't a 'normal' clip out there that I found).





Although this movie is one of the better sci fi movies ever made, and probably the best trek movie it has its share of problems. One of the main problems I found was the multiple plot holes. If Chekov wasn't on the ship on the previous episode, why would Khan remember him when they first meet on his desolate planet? The planet that Khan was stranded on was initially habitable but became a desert after a nearby planet blew up. How does a planet just blow up? When Khan inserts the mind controlling desert slug he claims that it will make them susceptible to suggestion until the slug grows so big and the host dies. Why then does it just leave Chekov's head randomly at just the right time? I'm not one to be a nitpicker so I'll let the previous problems slide, I just figured they should be noted.

Of course I have left off what might be the most moving scene of the whole movie, Spock's death. Even though now we know that Spock obviously makes a return (the existence of the sequel The Search for Spock gives us a hint) his death is still affecting nevertheless. His quote to Kirk 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one' is one of the movie quotes that has followed me ever since childhood. His sacrifice and the efforts and losses that Kirk goes through to get him back in the following film is what defines the best part of 'Star Trek' to me. Although they are very different 'people', they have formed such a bond that they would do anything for each other. Kirk and Spock might be the best and most pure 'best friends' of all time.