Real Life in Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan
Disclaimer
This is a discussion of a non-âFree as in Freedomâ popular culture franchise property with references to a part of that franchise behind a paywall. My discussion and conclusions are free, but nothing about the discussion or conclusions implies any attack on the ownership of the properties. All the big names are trademarks of the owners and so forth and everything here should be well within the bounds of Fair Use.
PreviouslyâŚ
The project was outlined in this post, for those falling into this from somewhere else. In short, this is an attempt to use the details presented in Star Trek to assemble a view of what life looks like in the Federation.
This is neither recap nor review; those have both been done to death over fifty-plus years. It is a catalog of information we learn from each episode, though, so expect everything to be a potential âspoiler,â if thatâs an irrational fear you have.
Rather than list every post in the series here, you can easily find them all on the startrek tag page.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Before we get going, itâs maybe worth pointing out thatâdespite the love that it gets from fansâthereâs a lot more going on in this film than probably really fits, and that impression isnât helped by the weird editing that gives minor characters a good long look but no relevance. While The Motion Picture felt like whatâs now a typical boring television pilot for a new Star Trek show, this often feels like many barely related episodes severely edited together to fit the time.
Of course, Iâm introducing the idea of this film being made up of multiple âepisodesâ now, because the next three movies will basically take place back-to-back with this one, as if they represent an entire season of a hypothetical Phase II series.
IN THE 23RD CENTURYâŚ
Well, we finally get a fixed timeframe for the franchise.
Captainâs log, stardate 8130.3. Starship Enterprise on training mission to Gamma Hydrae, Section fourteen, coordinates twenty-two eighty-seven four. Approaching Neutral Zone, all systems normal and functioning.
We saw Gamma Hydrae in The Deadly Years, so itâs probably not worth talking about again.
VOICE: Imperative! This is the Kobayashi Maru, nineteen periods out of Altair VI. We have struck a gravitic mine, and have lost all power. Our hull is penetrated and we have sustained many casualties.
Kobayashi is one of the most common Japanese family names, and a maru (Japanese for âcircleâ) usually refers to merchant ships. I point this out, because I have seen a surprising number of fan sources over the years embarrass themselves by trying to guess what mysterious alien species the target ship represents, when we can be fairly sure that they try to save Japanese merchants.
You might already recall that Amok Time described Altair VI as having a totalitarian government with a strong commitment to providing high-quality recreation to the powerful.
Finally, notice that the ship describes itself as being a certain time away from its last port. As I have mentioned in the past, such an arrangement could easily explain why the stardate system often seems completely arbitrary, as if the writers just picked numbers at random without any coherent vision of futuristic time-keeping.
KIRK: Prayer, Mister Saavik. The Klingons donât take prisoners. Lights!
While we have admittedly not seen anybody kept as a prisoner of Klingons for any length of time, we have seen them take prisoners, suggesting that this is basically just propaganda to ratchet up tensions.
UHURA: Now what is that supposed to mean?
Notice that Uhura has dropped her natural hair. This is either a wig or yet another extensive ironed-and-curled job. An uncharitable view would be that we celebrated the looser dress code prematurely with The Motion Picture, and Uhura instead only wore her hair naturally, because she wasnât officially on duty.
SPOCK: I know of your fondness for antiques.
KIRK: âIt was the best of times, it was the worst of timesâ A message, Spock?
SPOCK: None that Iâm conscious ofâŚexcept, of course, happy birthday, surely the best of times.
Spock gives Kirk an edition of A Tale of Two Cities, of which Kirk helpfully reads the first few words.
Birthdays are significant celebrations, assumed to be inherently happy. Even Spock respects the celebratory nature, instead of wondering why anybody would care about commemorating an event where the celebrated person was merely a bystander, or anything like that.
Also, note the technician with something like an industrial vacuum. I donât think that thereâs anything useful to us about him, but heâs surprisingly prominent in a franchise that gives almost all of its attention to middle management.
KIRK: Why! Bless me, Doctor! What beams you into this neck of the woods?
MCCOY: Beware Romulans bearing gifts. Happy Birthday, Jim.
It may not have been notable in the 1980s when he filmed this, but it strikes me that showing up at someoneâs door without advance notice is something that still happens. Given just the technology that we have available today, I would expect at least a camera and some low-level scan to give the occupant advance notice.
Also, note Kirkâs apartment, which has surprisingly similar architecture to his quarters on the Enterprise, but with the big picture windows in back. It seems to be a single room, since the bed is in view of the door, but itâs enormous.
KIRK: Romulan Ale! Why, Bones, you know this is illegal.
MCCOY: I only use it for medicinal purposes. Iâve got a border ship that brings me in a case every now and then across the Neutral Zone. Now donât be a prig.
I realize that we go to the âMcCoy abuses his authorityâ well frequently, butâŚhe keeps abusing his authority. This has the added twist that he tries to peer-pressure a Starfleet admiralâcalling Kirk a prigâto cover up his crime. That seems rich, especially considering that Kirkâs tone implied that he meant the comment as a joke.
KIRK: 2283âŚ
MCCOY: Yeah, well, it takes this stuff a while to ferment. Here now, gimme. Now you open this one.
Itâs unclear whether McCoyâs âtakes the stuff a while to fermentâ comment is a jokeâimplying that 2283 is recentâor literal. However, either way, it suggests that the film takes place sometime after that year. Based on the opening on-screen text, itâs also prior to 2301. The release date, for possible context, was mid-1982, so this presumably all takes place a bit more than three hundred years in the productionâs future, or the joke is that itâs a future vintage, depending on how we interpret the lineâŚif the writers thought this through.
MCCOY: For most patients of your age, I generally administer Retnax Five.
KIRK: Iâm allergic to Retnax Five.
McCoy also gives an antique pair of glasses. Something called âRetnax Fiveâ is usually used for age-related eyesight issues, apparently unilaterally, except in cases of allergy like Kirkâs. And as you can probably guess at this point, itâs definitely a brand name.
Also, you might note that this is the second extravagant physical gift for the birthday, suggesting that itâs an important tradition.
Weâre then toldâI wonât quote it because itâs basically the entire lineâthat Kirk âflies a computer console,â implying what his Admiralty job looks like, or at least how many Starfleet officers view that job.
MCCOY: Bull. Youâre hidingâŚhiding behind rules and regulations.
In The Motion Picture there was some talk about coarse language, and future-Englishâs lack of offensive terminology. âBull,â meanwhile, is a fairly direct reference to coarse language, suggesting that itâs less that the language has changed than the culture has changed.
DAVID: Well, donât have kittens. Genesis is going to work. Theyâll remember you in one breath with Newton, Einstein, Surak.
We met Surak in The Savage Curtain, where he was decidedly not portrayed as a scientist. I assume that everybody is already familiar with Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein or can read Wikipedia for yourselves.
Maybe more importantly, David only names white male scientists, here, and only from the two worlds that we know best. Of course, this is probably more indicative of a 1980s audience than the world, since (happy Womenâs history month!) the contributions of non-white people and those who donât identify as male have often gotten written out of history. For example, Rosalind Franklinâs career just started receiving media coverage. Mario Molinaâs work wouldnât see prominence for another decade when he received the Nobel Prize. Ibn al-Haythamâs work still sits mostly ignored in favor of Newton. People still only barely know about Emmy Noether. Even Marie Curie seems mostly like an afterthought in most discussions of science.
DAVID: Every time we have dealings with Starfleet, I get nervous. âŚWe are dealing with something that could be perverted into a dreadful weapon. Remember that overgrown Boy Scout you used to hang around with? Thatâs exactly the kind of manâŚ
CAROL: Listen, kiddo, Jim Kirk was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout!
The obvious implication from Davidâs statement is that Starfleet has a known history of, or at least a reputation for, weaponizing scientific breakthroughs.
Also, the Boy Scouts of America either still existâthe wonders of suing or buying out competing scouting programs will never cease, I guessâor have become more of an idiom referring to someone judged to be overly bound in honor and honesty.
Oh, and I thank the writers for including the only legitimate use of the word âkiddo,â a condescending term of address, rather than a conventional nounâŚ
CHEKOV: Captain, this is the garden spot of Ceti Alpha VI.
Unsurprisingly, we talked about Alpha Ceti with Space Seed.
In the shelter, Chekhov sees a bookshelf with The Inferno, Paradise Lost (also mentioned in Space Seed), Paradise Regained (combined with its predecessor), Moby Dick, some regulatory statue, a second copy of Paradise Lost without the sequel, two books with the titles too dim to see, and King Lear.
KHAN: I donât know you. But you, I never forget a face, MisterâŚChekov, isnât it? I never thought to see your face again.
Do I need to explain that this film is the sequel to Space Seed?
Also, many other fans have argued over whether Khan could have actually encountered Chekov, when Walter Koenig wasnât hired until the following season, so I wonât bother to get involved. You can do the math on the fraction of the Enterprise crew that we saw prior to Chekovâs introduction on your own time, to determine the probability that the two met off-screen.
KHAN: Captain, Captain, save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born. Do you mean he never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain? No? Never told you how the Enterprise picked up the Botany Bay, lost in space in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-six, myself and the shipâs company in cryogenic freeze?
This gives us a specific date of the end of the Eugenics Wars, and for the launch of the Botany Bay. Interestingly, Khanâs math appears to be off, suggesting that the 1990s were only two centuries earlier than âsometime in the 23rd century,â presumably later than 2283, given the date on the Romulan Ale bottle. And actor Paul Winfieldâs age only gives about forty years to play with.
Unrelated, it amuses me that Khan assumes that the time that the crew met him is surely the story to stick in everybodyâs mind and that they would tell for decades to come.
KHAN: This is Ceti Alpha V! Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet and everything was laid waste. Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress. It was only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that enabled us to survive! On Earth, two hundred years ago, I was a prince, with power over millions.
Is it carelessness, a technical issue, or some other reason that the initial survey didnât bother to count the planets orbiting the star?
Also, this fleshes out the Eugenics Wars a bit furtherâŚand also repeats the math weirdness.
KIRK: Yes, weâve been through death and life together.
Weirdly, Kirk is still hauling around the copy of A Tale of Two Cities that Spock gave him, and he dumps it off on Uhura. That isâŚprobably not her job.
KIRK: Mister Scott, you old space dog. Youâre well?
SCOTT: I had me a wee bout, sir, but Doctor McCoy pulled me through.
KIRK: Oh? A âwee boutâ of what?
MCCOY: Shore leave, Admiral.
âŚIs it still âshore leaveâ when youâre stationed domestically at a desk job? I mean, McCoy obviously means this as a euphemism for âScott was extremely drunk,â because the character has that sort of identity, but it still seems like an odd choice. Maybe it revolves around how this makes McCoy sound like the shipâs taskmaster, when he has basically never cared what the crew did, as long as he couldnât see them idle.
SPOCK: Nobodyâs perfect, Saavik.
As soon as the humans are clear, Spock and Saavik talk about Kirk behind his back in Vulcan.
MCCOY: Would you like a tranquilizer?
Iâm not sure if this is just a goofy moment or a direct callback to Yesteryear, where we learned that Spock played practical jokes as a child.
Also, McCoyâs reflexive reaction to seeing Kirk under stress is to offer to drug him, as the Enterprise leaves space-dock.
SAAVIK: Humor. It is a difficult concept. It is not logical.
Yes, but he grinned at her and laughed. That seems like a significant enough clue that âlogicâ could have carried her over the finish line, here.
MCCOY: Did she change her hairstyle?
KIRK: I hadnât noticed.
Why is her hair a topic of discussion at all? I can almost understand Kirk asking Saavik, assuming that sheâas a Vulcanâwould have some extensive reason for a different look. But McCoy, as usual, has no excuse, aside from being creepy.
CAROL: I donât think thereâs another piece of information we could squeeze into the memory banks. Next time, weâll design a bigger one.
DAVID: Whoâd wanna build it?
Carol seems to be suggesting that the Genesis team has needed to design their own computer systems, primarily just for data storage. And David seems to think that theyâre extremely complicated devices to build.
DAVID: I knew it! I knew it! All along the military has wanted to get their handsâ
When Chekov claims that he has orders to take control of Genesis, specifically from Kirk, David Marcus calls Starfleet âthe military,â twice.
CAROL: Starfleet has kept the peace for a hundred years. I cannot and will not subscribe to your interpretation of this event.
Starfleet has been around for at least a century, and has âkept the peaceââŚfor some credible definition of that phrase, given that episodes such as By Any Other Name mention that the Federation has needed to fight invasive forces, and Errand of Mercy hints at the idea that Starfleet has spent years provoking the Klingons.
KIRK: Weâve got a problem. Something may be wrong at Regula I. Weâve been ordered to investigate.
The name âRegulaâ currently has no astronomical significance that I can find. Itâs a name in some parts of the world, though, probably traced most directly to the third-century saint, a patron of ZĂźrich.
SPOCK: Jim, you proceed from a false assumption. I am a Vulcan. I have no ego to bruise.
Vulcans believe that they have no egos, despite seeing their entire culture apparently built around proving their strength to each otherâŚ
KIRK: Youâre about to remind me that logic alone dictates your actions.
SPOCK: I would not remind you of that which you know so well.
Speaking of Vulcans playing pointless dominance games, thereâs one now.
KHAN: He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him. Iâll chase him round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares maelstrom and round perditionâs flames before I give him up. Prepare to alter course.
Khan is paraphrasing Moby-Dick, mentioned above. The original lines are âHe tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing itâ and âAye, aye! and Iâll chase him round Good Hope, and round the horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perditionâs flames before I give him up,â Chapter XXXVI, The Quarter-Deck.
The only reference to a âNibiaâ that I can find is the late Uruguayan activist Nibia Sabalsagaray. Antares has come up several times since The Trouble with Tribbles, though other thingsâa song and a shipâhave the name before the star itself gets its mention.
SPOCK: It might help my analysis if I knew what Genesis was, beyond the biblical reference.
As weâve seen in episodes such as The Gamesters of Triskelion, Spock is highly conversant with the Bible, for unknown reasons.
SPOCK: Really, Doctor McCoy, you must learn to govern your passions. They will be your undoing. Logic suggestsâ
MCCOY: Logic? My God! The manâs talking about logic! Weâre talking about universal Armageddon, you green-blooded, inhumanâŚ
I feel like McCoy might have only brought up using the device for mass murder in hopes of baiting Spock into saying anything that he could attack. Regardless, heâs attacking Spock for not being performatively angry at the potential for destructive uses of technology.
KHAN: Of course. Weâre one big happy fleet. Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us âRevenge is a dish that is best served cold?â It is very coldâŚin space.
I was OK with Khan knowing Chekov, butâŚhow does he know Klingons well enough to joke about them? And is Klingon culture known well enough to have cultural comments like this in the computers and for similar aphorisms to be more likely attributed to them than Federation cultures? Surely, the answer to this question wonât become strangely important in four weeksâŚ
SCOTT: Weâre just hanging on, sir. The main energizers out.
KIRK: Try auxiliary power.
I have to appreciate that, even in this disastrous situation, Kirk apparently still knows Scottâs job better than he does.
KIRK: Damn!
The moment of Kirk realizing that people might see him wearing his glasses is a nice highlight of basic vanity.
KIRK: I did nothing, except get caught with my britches down. I must be senile. Mister Saavik, you go right on quoting regulations! In the meantime, letâs find out how badly weâve been hurt.
I mostly want to point out that the word âbritchesâ seems to be the word that Kirk felt was natural to refer to his clothing.
Also, he refers to being senile, whenâŚthatâs not a great term. Today, weâre more likely to refer to dementia.
And oh, no, itâs Peter Preston, who weâve spent a total of two seconds with, and who Scotty brought to the bridge instead ofâŚyou know, sickbay, where they might take care of injured people. He does figure it out eventually, though, since we see him there next.
To be fair, there are versions of the film including deleted scenes explaining that Preston is Scottâs nephew, and also gave him some actual lines. Neither the television versions nor the directorâs cut are online or in the DVD collections, though, so I canât be sure that my recollection is completely accurate.
It has been decades since I read it, and Iâm not reading it for this project, but I vaguely recall that the late Vonda McIntyreâs novelization goes into even more detail about why we should care about Preston at all. None of it really helps, though, since heâs still just someone we met briefly and havenât seen since.
MCCOY: I can spare me.
SAAVIK: Begging the Admiralâs pardon, General Order Fifteen. âNo flag officer shall beam into a hazardous area without armed escort.â
KIRK: There is no such regulation. âŚAll right, join the party. Mister Spock, the ship is yours.
Oh, itâs not just Spock who muscles his way into missions. I can only hope that these two will whine less than he does, though thatâs probably not a good bet for McCoyâŚ
KIRK: Phasers on stun. Move out.
Space stations have rats, meaning that they must have a way of sneaking aboard transports undetected. Also, of all the people to panic at the sight of a dead body, youâd think that maybe the doctor might not be the one.
MCCOY: Go? Where are we going?
KIRK: Where they went.
MCCOY: Suppose they went nowhere.
KIRK: Then thisâll be your big chance to get away from it all.
OK, look, this has nothing to do with our little project analyzing the early franchise, but itâs still probably my favorite line in the film.
KIRK: Whereâs Doctor Marcus?
DAVID: Iâm Doctor Marcus!
I appreciate the little twist, here. We normally get a scene like this the other way around, where nobody is able to realize that the woman is the doctor. Here, because Kirk knows the elder Marcus, it doesnât occur to him that the man might be a doctor.
Two quick things about the fight in here.
First, David has no qualms fighting with a knife. Presumably, this isnât atypical.
Second, disintegration by phaser is painful, with the atomized scientist screaming in agony as he vaporizes; the same goes for Terrell, moments later.
CAROL: This? It took the Starfleet Corps of Engineers ten months in space suits to tunnel out all this. What we did in there âŚwe did in a day. David, why donât you show Doctor McCoy and the Lieutenant our idea of food?
Starfleet includes an engineering corps of some sort, and they get dispatched to make space for secretive scientific experiments.
CAROL: How can you ask me that? Were we together? Were we going to be? You had your world and I had mine. And I wanted him in mine, not chasing through the universe with his father. Actually, heâs a lot like you. In many ways. Please tell me what youâre feeling.
There doesnât seem to be any stigma around unmarried women with children, as Carol didnât hesitate to keep Kirk away from their son or tell David anything about his father. Likewise, Carol seems to imply that Kirk could have brought David with him on the Enterprise.
KIRK: Thereâs a man out there I havenât seen in fifteen years whoâs trying to kill me. You show me a son thatâd be happy to help him. My son. My life that could have been, and wasnât. And what am I feeling? Old, worn out.
Kirk hasnât seen Khan âin fifteen years.â Since Khan mentions that Ceti Alpha VI was destroyed, devastating the biosphere of Ceti Alpha V, six months after Kirk abandoned them there, then the movie must take place fifteen to sixteen years after the late-first season, which also happens to approximately match the duration between the episode and the movie.
As a corollary, since David Marcus is an adult with a doctorate degree, he was born substantially before the first season. The actor was born in 1959, seven years before the show aired, and wouldâve only been twenty-three when the movie aired. Since we know that Kirk was thirty-four in second-season episode The Deadly Years, Kirk would have been (roughly) twenty-four years old when he was with with Carol Marcus.
Also, if the first season of the series was also the first year of the mission, then about seven years have passed since The Motion Picture, rather than the three to four years between release dates.
SAAVIK: But the damage report? We were immobilized. Captain Spock said it would be two days.
People can speak while transporting.
SAAVIK: ââŚno uncoded messages on an open channel.â You lied.
SPOCK: I exaggerated.
Oddly, Spock feels the need to defend his âlieâ about the time necessary to repair the Enterprise as âI exaggerated,â rather than the more legitimate âit was a coded message that complied with regulations,â since he didnât actually lie or exaggerate. Even stranger, Saavikâs prior lieâwhich the message built onâabout the fictional regulation isnât brought up at all.
Thatâs on top of the fact that weâve repeatedly established that Vulcans are entirely able to lie, when they feel that itâs useful.
By contrast, Saavik lied to get on the mission to the station, quoting an entirely fabricated Starfleet regulation to Kirk.
SPOCK: Sauce for the goose, Mister Saavik. The odds will be even.
More surprising than Spock lying, however, is Spock using an obscure metaphor mired in Earth culture of European holiday meals.
KIRK: Zee-minus-ten thousand meters. Stand by photon torpedoes.
Given that theyâve just called out âtwo-dimensional thinking,â itâs interesting to me that (a) theyâre using simple Cartesian coordinates like youâd see in a junior high school geometry lesson, with the z-axis representing âupâ and âdown,â and (b) they seem to be holding the Enterprise at a fixed orientation in that coordinate system, despite the fact that it shouldnât matter how theyâre angled.
KHAN: No, Kirk. The gameâs not over. To the last I will grapple with thee!
âŚ
KHAN: No! âŚNo! You canât get away. From Hellâs heart, I stab at thee. For hateâs sake I spit my last breath at thee.
The full line from Moby-Dick, for reference, is âTowards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hellâs heart I stab at thee; for hateâs sake I spit my last breath at thee.â
SPOCK: Iâm sorry, Doctor. I have no time to discuss this logically. Remember!
Spock justâŚforces a mind-meld with McCoy before entering the irradiated room. You might remember, when the concept of the mind-meld was first introduced, Spock described it as an intimate and almost embarrassing affair that no Vulcan would attempt without full cooperation.
Also, while this has nothing at all to do with Federation culture, I should use this moment to follow up on my point about strange editing that implies a long television season crammed into two hours: This scene is utterly meaningless to the film itâs in, and only has meaning when we rewatch it in the next film.
If youâre interested in the technological aspect, in Enterpriseâs current, damaged condition, three and a half minutes takes them four thousand kilometers away from the Reliant.
SCOTT: Sir! Heâs dead already.
MCCOY: Itâs too late, Jim.
It is too late for medical science to save Spockâs life. In a moment of restraint, I guess, thereâs no trickery with the transporter to just âreboot himâ to his last stored pattern.
KIRK: We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world, a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel that sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this: Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the mostâŚhuman.
Kirkâs memorial for Spock refers to him as human, as if itâs a compliment, suggesting that thereâs still some prejudice against Vulcans. I mean, really, imagine someone saying âthat Bangladeshi man was the whitest person that I have known, and Iâll miss himâ at a funeral. Or rather, that speaker is probably not making it back to their car without some bruisingâŚ
We see a fair amount of space-borne funerary rights, in fact. Maybe most notably, Scott plays Amazing Grace, which implies a religious tradition, somewhere. However, we donât know if itâs a choice made by Starfleet as a standard, Spock as a final wish, or Scott as the only song that he knows how to play.
This is obviously a character moment, rather than a direct cultural issue, but it may also be worth noting that Saavik wears her hair to the funeral in the same style that Kirk and McCoy both commented on in the elevator, maybe suggesting that it could tie into how she sees her relationship with Spock. Or maybe itâs just more comfortable that way, when sheâs off-duty.
Finally, a small oddity: The Genesis device apparently saw fit to (somehow) create a sun for the planet.
DAVID: But good words. Thatâs where ideas begin. Maybe you should listen to them. I was wrong about you, and Iâm sorry.
KIRK: Is that what you came here to say?
DAVID: Mainly. And also that Iâm proud, very proud to be your son.
As I mentioned at the top, this film has many problems with its storytelling, but this moment does an amazing job of showing David and Kirk as the same sorts of mature adult, in touch with their feelings, concerned about the feelings of others, and willing to reconcile.
As a bonus, this might be the first time that weâve seen people hug in the franchise.
KIRK: Itâs a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. A far better resting place that I go to than I have ever known.
He reads the final line of A Tale of Two Cities, which fits his quoting the first line, when Spock gave the book to him. Presumably, they donât mean this to suggest that Kirk read the entire novelânearly 140,000 wordsâin the few hours that this story appears to coverâŚunless we have more time between Saavikâs test and the inspection of the Enterprise than implied, I guess.
Conclusions
This film has more than I thought it would, considering that itâs primarily a Hollywood spectacle with Star Trek trade dress. We finally narrow down the events to somewhere between 2283 and 2301âwith the first season of Star Trek taking place fifteen years priorâand an end of the Eugenics Wars fixed to 1996, along with a broad outline of what those wars might have looked like. We see that Charles Dickens is still read, and that old paper books are still available. Birthday celebrations havenât changed much. Thereâs some future architecture, Starfleet history, and funeral rites in space.
The Good
Kirk still knows everybodyâs job better than they do. Kirk, and even David, are also both mature enough to admit their mistakes, apologize, and forgive each other.
Single parentsâat least of the social standing of someone like Carol Marcus, whatever that actually isâdonât seem to face much stigma. She has easily kept David and his father from knowing about each other, and has no complaints about hardship.
The Bad
Anti-Klingon propaganda appears to have become more intense, with young Starfleet officers told that âthe enemyâ will slaughter in the event that they surrender to the enemy.
The dress code issues appears to have become stricter, again, with natural Black hair no longer acceptableâŚassuming that it was ever considered acceptable by Starfleet, since the Enterprise was rushed in the previous film.
Everybody continues to ignore McCoyâs abuses of authority, which have metastasized into smuggling. He dismisses anybody who finds his illegal transport of regulated drugs as obnoxious. McCoy also attacks Spock in front of others, for not performing outrage correctly.
As a corollary to McCoyâs antics, smuggling is common enough that a Starfleet doctor can buy cases of restricted substances.
The Federation has one solution for all age-related eyesight degeneration, a brand-name drug. Those who have allergic reactions to the drugâs ingredients have no recourse, forced to live with impaired vision. Doctorsâat least McCoy, who they present as emblematic of the professionâalso jump to tranquilize anybody who might have even mild anxious symptoms.
When people name the top scientists in Federation history, theyâre all white men, mostly human and occasionally Vulcan.
Civilians see Starfleet as âthe military,â and it has a reputation for or history of taking scientific breakthroughs and weaponizing them over the objections of scientists. Others see Starfleet as a successful peacekeeping organization.
We have a routine bit of casual sexism in the film, with Kirk dumping a heavy book that he carries onto Uhura, and they consider a womanâs hairstyle a reasonable topic of conversation. Though, because we already know Carol Marcus, we also have a moment that flips the script, where they find it impossible to believe that David is also âDr. Marcus.â
Behind the backs of humans, Vulcans gossip about them in their native language. They also dismiss as illogical any cues that they donât immediately pick up on, and continue to worry about making themselves seem more powerful than anyone else around, including pushing their way into missions where they werenât assigned. It is also almost comically easy to force them into defensive positions by telling them that they have contradicted claims that they never actually made. We also still see enough prejudice against Vulcans that the kindest thing that Kirk can think to say about Spock is that heâs human.
Vanity is still common among humans, with Kirk spending a lot of the film concerned about looking old.
Space stations have rat infestations, implying that shipments arenât monitored for stowaways.
Thereâs an impression that civilian life might be violent, if a prissy academic who follows his mother into space impulsively dives into knife-fights.
The Weird
Apparently, stardates arenât used widely outside Starfleet, with other ships referring to time as âperiods out ofâ their most recent major port.
The doors to civilian housing are apparently unmonitored, with no computer performing facial recognition to announce visitors before they knock.
Assuming the films to represent a consistent world, we get a bit more insight into the nature of profanity, with McCoy suggesting an inappropriate term without actually using it.
Itâs possible that computers are no longer a mass-market item, with scientists designing their own systems, difficult to have manufactured, for what sounds suspiciously like routine work.
We continue to see that the person most likely to reference the Bible is Spock, whose funeral also includes the music to a hymn.
Klingon culture might be so well known that aphorisms that are similar in both cultures get attributed to the Klingons, even by people in the Federation.
Metaphors about holiday goose dinners are common enough that even Vulcans easily use them.
Thereâs a point where doctors donât bother to treat a patient, convinced that there is no chance for survival. Presumably, this includes the genre-breaking treatments that weâve seen in The Animated Series, like using the transporter to ârebuildâ the personâs body, based on the last pattern recorded.
Next
Next up, it turns out that Spock is only mostly dead, and we swap out a future insurrectionist from the castâhey, I made it through the entire film without bringing up the actor who is now known primarily for being overweight and pro-fascist, rather than any of her acting, so indulge me this onceâin Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Credits: The header image is Little Gem by NASA/GSFC, released into the public domain by NASA policy.
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Tags: scifi startrek closereading