Stand Back...I'm going to geek out for a minute here....

First of, for something oddly funny: Go Here

Now...where was I? Oh yeah...

Once upon a time Star Trek sucked….

I know people love the old TV show from the sixties, but I could never get into it. I dug the concept and the ideas behind the characters and what not, but the series just doesn’t work for me. It’s too cheesy, and a lot of the stories are just kind of dumb (season 3 in particular).

Years later as the cult of Star Trek built, they made the jump to movies with “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”. On paper this movie should have been awesome. John Dykstra and the rest of the Star Wars effects team were on board. Robert Wise, Orson Wells editor on Citizen Kane was going to direct. The human adventure was just beginning….

Yeah. The movie sucked. And not in the “so bad it’s funny” kind of way ala Star Trek 5 (What does god need with a starship?). The series could have died and I probably wouldn’t have cared one way or another.

Enter: KHAN

This is the film that completely revamped and changed Star Trek, which is something a lot of people don’t realize. The only reason that any of us still love the original crew is because of this movie. Everything we love about Shatner starts here. This is the Empire Strikes Back of Star Trek. And we can all thank one guy:

Director Nick Meyer.

Nick Meyer has never been a well known filmmaker (Although he’s now responsible for Star Trek 2, 4 and 6. i.e the only good ones with the old crew). But no one, other than Gene Roddenberry have made more positive contributions to the Star Trek universe.

“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates 2 dimensional thinking”

First off, this film was the first time that a military aspect was brought to the Enterprise. A move Roddenberry always disagreed with. Meyer saw the ship as a submarine and brought a very strong Naval influence to Starfleet. These aren’t a bunch of hippies running around exploring strange new worlds. This is a well oiled machine, trained to handle the kind of crazy crap that’s going to go down when you’re running around the galaxy with a lot of enemies lurking around the corners. This whole military aspect brought a level of reality to the series, that had never been seen before, and has been emulated in every Star Trek franchise since.

“Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young, Doctor.”

Next he introduced the concept of age. Originally this film, like the last, was just going to ignore the fact that these characters are almost 20 years older than they were on the TV show. Meyer decided to really make that a part of the plot. This crew was playing a young mans game, and suddenly they’re not so young. At first Shatner totally hated this idea, and at one point threatened to leave the film. However, he eventually came around, and this idea became a running theme through the rest of the films.

“You lied!” “I exaggerated.”

Then there’s the humor. Humor is something that had previously been missing from this universe. The characters could be smarmy, but they never actually made jokes before…at least not well. This was an idea that actually the studio was against. They couldn’t understand why he would follow up a scary or dramatic moment with a funny one. His thinking was always: Well that’s real life. It’s not all serious, and it’s not all funny, it’s usually a little bit of everything happening at once.

“From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee.”

The strongest thing about this film comes from one source: It’s Villian. Khan is the kind of villain that Star Trek had never had before (even including his appearance in the episode “Space Seed”). This was a bad guy that was better than the good guys. He was stronger than Kirk and he was smarter than Kirk. The best good evil conflicts always have one thing in common: The bad guy has the advantage. Vader is more experienced and powerful than Luke, Sauron could crush Frodo with a thought, Neo and Agent Smith, Harry Potter and Voldomort, you get the idea. Khan has got to be one of the top five movie villains of all time. He was evil as hell, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of him. A little part of you almost wanted him to win. The guy is the definition of bad ass. In fact the producers liked him so much, that when the Next Generation was on the air, they told the writers that Picard needed “A Khan”. This lead them to create the Borg as the main nemesis of the show.

Now for a little story…

So I was working a booth for a group I was a part of at a Sci-Fi convention 4 or 5 years ago. And the guy sitting at the table next to us was Judson Earney Scott, who played “Joachim” in Wrath of Khan (You’ll remember him as Khan’s right hand man). Anyway, the guy looked like he didn’t want to be there, and hasn’t really had much of an acting career to speak of outside of the occasional small role on a TV show.

So the night before this Con, a few friends and me went out drinking. This night of craziness lasted well beyond dawn. Most of us passed out and got a couple of hours sleep before we had to be up. One of my friends, Jeff, totally disappeared.

So the next day, we’re all hung over working our booth, cracking the occasional joke about the burnt out actor next to us. About halfway into the day, Jeff shows back up…drunk.

Now my friend LOVES Wrath of Khan. It’s possibly his favorite non-Star Wars film. So when he sees the actor next to us he gets really excited, in between bouts of chugging Ranier beer.
Finally my friend goes and stands about ten feet behind Judson Earney Scott and starts yelling: “FORGET KIRK! WE HAVE GENESIS!!!!!” Thankfully he just ignored my friend, and we sent him elsewhere to sober up. But for the rest of the day, any chance he could get to be near the booth he’d just start belting “FORGET KIRK! WE HAVE GENESIS!” in different voices.

Suffice to say, the actor has never been back to do a convention in Washington State since.