“Learning to Love Star Trek” is a weekly blog series by Sci-Fi Block Editor in Chief Robert Ring, begun January 1, 2010. In this series of blog posts, Robert is endeavoring to determine whether he can make a Star Trek fan out of himself through an exposure to a combination of episodes from Star Trek the Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation (Update: TNG has now been replaced with Deep Space Nine). Click here to read his introduction to the experiment.

I was supposed to be doing “Where No Man Has Gone Before” this week, but alas, CBS decided to take down their Trek videos, likely because of their deal to let Netflix stream the series. So, I’m going to skip ahead a bit and do The Wrath of Khan this time. Next week we’ll return to WNMHGB, and then we’ll be back on schedule with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and my conclusion of this blog series.

The first time I saw The Wrath of Khan, I knew of its reputation, so I was excited, even though my only exposure to Trek at that point had been The Motion Picture and maybe one single episode. I remember watching it and thinking it was okay, but I didn’t see anything special about it. I must not have been paying attention. This is a movie that everyone can like. It is a movie that everyone should like.

I’m not going to recap because either you already are very familiar with the film or you need to just experience it on your own. Instead, I’ll jump straight into what’s so great about it. Naturally Star Trek fans are going to enjoy this more than anyone — especially those fans who are familiar with Khan, but I think the writers do a great job of introducing the characters, the character dynamics, and even the characters’ general pasts smoothly without having to announce things in obvious exposition. All dialogue that establishes who the characters are also works to move the story along. That is a difficult trick to pull off, and they do it here surprisingly well.

This film is good for a lot of reasons, from the inclusion of one of the series’ greatest villains to that emotional scene near the end involving Spock, but I find two other elements of the movie to be even more satisfying than those. To me, the best parts about The Wrath of Khan are its story about the inescapable nature of the past and about the characters rediscovering their true purposes in life. Along with Khan, there’s also that little revelation about Kirk (which I won’t spoil, though it’s not all that shocking), and it’s like everything from Kirk’s past is coming back to get him. As a result, Kirk faces some of his greatest challenges ever in this Trek installment. It’s always fun to see a hero face challenges that he may not be able to overcome.

My personal favorite aspect of the movie, though, is the way Khan, this immensely powerful force, seems to knock the characters back into their destined roles. Kirk is now an admiral, and it is made clear from the beginning that, though that is a higher rank than captain, Kirk really belongs in the captain’s seat. That is where he is he can accomplish the greatest good, and that is where, deep inside, he wants to be. The same goes for Spock, who is now a captain. Spock certainly deserves the recognition of a captain, but, as I discussed in my post on “The Galileo Seven,” he really doesn’t have the right personality for that position. Khan’s presence, though, is so immediately threatening that the main characters almost unnoticeably fall back into their former Starfleet roles. The only way they can beat this man is if they are operating at those functions at which they are the strongest, and somehow they just naturally fall back into those functions.

This is a film about accepting the role for which you were meant in life. Kirk and Spock have been promoted in the years since the Original Series, and they certainly deserved those promotions, as I said, but it is clear that the positions in which they served so greatly in TOS are the positions for which they were meant. It takes the threat of a villain as great as Khan to get them to realize that.

But the famous Spock scene is indeed awesome, too, from that crucial Vulcan nerve pinch to the great line, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” How can you beat that?

Two observations/questions:

1. Funny that they retconned Chekov as having been involved in the first (season 1) run-in with Khan.

2. When Kirk yells the famous “KHAAANNNNN!!!” is that actually a small flaw (or a feigned anger on Kirk’s part)? I may well be mistaken, but when he yells that, it’s because Khan has trapped them on the planet, but Kirk knows how to get off of the planet anyway (that whole “by the book” business with Spock). Or am I way off?

Next week: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”

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