Revisiting Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan

There was this one time when I was little that Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan aired on network television. I stumbled on it during the interrogation scene and was frightened out of my mind as the eel squirmed across Chekov's face and into his ear. I remember changing the channel.

Many years later, I had my parents rush home immediately after a Parent-Teacher night so I could catch Wrath of Khan. I missed the very beginning but started taping just as the Enterprise disaster was revealed to be an Academy simulation.

And this time, I stared intently into the screen daring the eels to scare me again. Then I continued to stare right through to the end.

I have a special place in me for Reliant. It's the first evidence that Star Fleet had multiple ship designs. To me, that opens up a world of possibilities. It's agressive to the Enterpise's elegance. And we also saw the first extensive space-battle in Star Trek! It dictated fans' collective imagination of ship combat for years until the debut of Deep Space Nine when a similar ship was shown maneuvering around a Borg cube reminding us that ship speeds are relative.

I kept this movie on the same 6 hour cassette as Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I kept it right through to college when I showed it to my friends at a club we formed (no charter, but we booked communal rooms for screenings in its name).

Like the first film, I revisited Wrath of Khan when it was available on VHS for cheap. I was happy to finally see the openning credits, plus the recycled TMP footage of the Klingon ships. This didn't bother me anywhere near as much as it probably should have.

And finally, I got it on DVD, which was kind of a non-event. The double-disc release was billed as an extended cut but I honestly couldn't tell you what was added.

In fact, the most memorable thing about this movie isn't even something that happened in the film. Mad Magazine reprinted a spoof in their Star Trek special years later. In it, McCoy warns Spock not to enter the engine compartment or be exposed to a gazillion units of radiation. To which Spock responds, "don't worry, I've got gloves!" I guess, if anything, now we know the reactor core is hot enough to require oven-mitts...