I was always a Star Wars kid. I loved Star Wars and had little interest in Star Trek. My Dad and older brother were both into Star Trek, so I saw a lot of the episodes (including the Animated Series). I went to see the first Star Trek movie and wasn’t that impressed. It wasn’t bad, but nothing to get excited about. Then the second movie came out. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was a movie to get excited about. There was action, ideas, characters and growth. This movie made me a Star Trek fan. So lets go back to the future and rediscover Khan.

During the original run of Star Trek, one of the favorite villains was Khan Noonien Singh. Khan was the product of a series of Eugenics experiments on Earth that led to a World War and 80-90 of these super-men were unaccounted for. The Enterprise found them (and after a battle for the ship) exiled them to a planet Ceti Alpha V.

As our movie starts, Lieutenant Saavik is taking the Kobayashi Maru test for Spock and Kirk. After she, of course, fails, there is a small gift of presents to Kirk for his birthday including some glasses for Kirk (acknowledging that he is getting older).
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Chekov (no longer on the Enterprise) and his new commander are on Ceti Alpha VI investigating some life signals on a supposedly empty planet. They are captured by Khan who tells them that they are on Ceti Alpha V and Ceti Alpha VI exploded which shifted their orbit and destroyed most of their ecosystem. Khan and his remaining followers easily take over the Reliant and go attack Space Station Regula I, where scientist Carol Marcus and her son David are working on the Genesis device.

When Space Station Regula I sends out a distress signal, the Enterprise is dispatched to find out what is going on. The Reliant attacks the Enterprise which limps into hiding. Kirk, Bones and Lieutenant Saavik find the hiding scientists and Kirk discovers that Carol (who was an ex-lover/girlfriend of his) has been hiding the fact that David is his son. The movie then ends with a psychological battle between Kirk and Khan and a physical battle between Reliant and Enterprise. Kirk is forced into a sacrifice (against his knowledge or will) that shakes him to his core.

Where this movie really shines is in showing James T Kirk as a heroic man who has never lost (with a great story about Kirk’s Kobayashi Maru test) before and now has had to lose something. The realization that he is getting older, the knowledge of his son and his sacrifice humanizes him and Shatner really nails those scenes. The use of Khan as a villain was masterful. Ricardo Montalbán chews the scenery as the villain and goes beyond the cheesy special effects and scenery to create a wonderful bad guy. Carol and David (and to some extent Bones and the rest of the Enterprise outside of Spock) are mainly there to move the plot along and to add some depth to Kirk. This is (in my estimation) the best of the Star Trek films and I would rank it as one of the better science fiction films of all time. Highly recommended