Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Entry updated 8 April 2019. Tagged: Film.
Film (1982). Paramount. Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Written by Jack B Sowards, based on a story by Harve Bennett and Sowards. Cast includes the lead players from the Star Trek television series, along with Kirstie Alley, Bibi Besch, Merritt Butrick, Ricardo Montalban. 114 minutes. Colour.
This was the second (and very much cheaper) movie incarnation of Star Trek, the first being Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Montalban plays Khan, the villain, resurrected from the television episode Space Seed (1967), who thinks he is Captain Ahab. Project Genesis, a Terraforming project that can be used as a weapon, is about to be set off by Khan. Kirk meets his alienated son. Chekov is mind-controlled by an alien earwig in his ear. Spock sacrifices himself for the greater good. The whole melodramatic, sentimental mishmash is muddily photographed in flat television style, but, mystifyingly, many fans liked it better than its much more considerable predecessor.
The novelization is Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) by Vonda N McIntyre. [PN]
see also: Genetic Engineering.
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