Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

“I’ll chase him round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perdition’s flames before I give him up,” vows Khan (Ricardo Montelban) in the racy sequel to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Genetically-engineered warrior Khan is obsessive in his pursuit of revenge against Kirk (the indomitable William Shatner) after having been marooned by the then Captain on Ceti Alpha V 15 years previously (charted in the 1967 TV episode Space Seed). Themes of friendship, ageing, death and life’s renewal are woven into a storyline centring on the Genesis Device, a means of reorganising molecular matter and creating new worlds for colonisation from barren planets. When the tyrannical Khan hijacks a U.S.S. Reliant advance exploration as it seeks out suitable terra to form then uses the ship to escape his living dustbowl tomb, Genesis becomes a weapon of mass destruction if fired onto any already inhabited planet. Meanwhile, contemplating a life put out to graze through the reading glasses Bones (DeForest Kelley) has bought him for his birthday, Kirk decides (luckily for us) to grow old disgracefully. A rookie Enterprise training flight helmed by the recomissioned Admiral turns into a cat-and-mouse game of death with Khan, photon torpedoes and downed defence shields in the Mutara Nebula. You know the crew are in serious trouble when Spock himself (Leonard Nimoy) concedes that Khan is ‘quite intelligent’.

Director Nicholas Meyer (The Day After) envisioned Kirk as a galactic Horatio Hornblower and the enhanced naval milieu of the film was to become a staple. Meyer had not watched a single episode of the original TV run before coming on board with the franchise. Quite an achievement, then, that the film plays out like an exciting two-parter from the TV series with the addition of some Lucas Films’ Industrial Light and Magic and a stomping James Horner soundtrack.

The Wrath of Khan is more than that though, with a screenplay rich in literary references provided by Jack B Sowards and Meyer himself focused more on ensemble than epic: it is Kirk and McCoy sharing illegal Romulan ale; it is Spock always having been, and who always shall be, Kirk’s friend, gifting an antique copy of A Tale of Two Cities on the admiral’s birthday – “surely the best of times,” Spock suggests; it is the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few, or the one; it is the no-win scenario of the Kobayashi Maru; it is a great screen villain turn by Montalban, his body (especially his pecs, so impressive that some still don’t believe they were real) obviously possessed by the spirit of Attila the Hun during filming; it is a genetically psychotic Ahab pursuing an elusive Moby Kirk across the ocean of space. And finally, it is an emotionally shattering climax no Trekkie can watch (even with hindsight) without blubbing like a kid who has just had their coveted model U.S.S. Enterprise stomped on by the school playground bully. The coda is more producer logic than director’s heart and whether the whole is a far, far better thing than Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not something to be measured by box office receipts alone.

Anything but nebulous, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one hell of a ride round the moons and maelstroms of the Trek universe.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Dir. Nicholas Meyer 1982. Sold as part of six-disc boxset Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection, Paramount Home Entertainment DVD £44.99, Blu-ray £99.99