The Sci-Fi 1st Runner Up

Our Big Empty Movie Awards Sci-Fi category continues after a couple of detours.  Recall that Star Trek was somewhat panned in the previous Sci-Fi thread.  It earned that, and the attempt to boldly take the show where it had never gone before, namely the movies, didn't help matters.  The very cleverly named Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in 1979 after Star Wars invigorated the public about where modern special effects could take our imaginations and Close Encounters of the Third Kind proved there was an appetite for Sci-Fi that wasn't about dog fights in space.  What Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought us was state of the art special effects and a very cerebral concept.  What they forgot to pack in this lunchbox though was any kind of a discernable plot.  The first time I saw it as a kid, it was playing on TV at a house we were visiting, and us youngsters found ourselves saying "I don't get this" and "what's going on" and "let's go outside" and then coming back in and saying things like "this is STILL on?" and "how did they get to this?"  I watched it again from beginning to end a few months ago for the second time and I don't have anything to add to that.  The movie was a financial success, but a massive critical failure, and it called into question whether or not the ride that we were enjoying from Star Wars and Superman was coming to an end.  Superman II and The Empire Strikes Back would answer that question with a resounding "No!", meaning that there must be something wrong with Star Trek.  

So when the question about whether or not to do a second Star Trek movie was floated around, the answer was "maybe, but not with nearly the budget used last time."  In many ways our 1st runner up was born out of the need to sell a movie with creative story telling instead of trying to wow folks in the way George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were doing it.  And so with that preface, the Big Empty Sci-Fi 1st Runner Up is:

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Series creator Gene Roddenberry, whether fair or not, was blamed for the problems with the first film and was kicked off the sequel.  While screenplays kicked around several concepts involving super-villains and super-weapons capable of destroying a world, the clock ticked and there were no detailed story boards for special effects people to go and breathe life into.  Deadlines were looming and the movie was behind schedule.  That's when Nicholas Meyer was asked to direct.  He had never seen an episode of Star Trek, and perhaps that was a good thing in this case.  A fresh set of eyes can sometimes give a story exactly what it needs to work.  

There was no need to create a new villain.  A super villain had already existed in the Star Trek universe in the form of a genetically engineered race of humans.  Their leader, Khan Noonien Singh was encountered by Kirk and his merry band of space travelers in 1967 on an episode called Space Seed.  These genetically engineered super-humans, possessing superior strength and intellect had become a real problem in the distant past for Earth, and they were exiled into space in a state of suspended animation aboard a ship called the Botany Bay, not to be woken back up until hundreds of years later by the Enterprise.  Upon waking, Khan (as portrayed by Ricardo Montalban of Fantasy Island fame, sans Tatoo) immediately set to work on establishing dominance over and enslavement of his new found inferiors.  The tension of this episode was how the good natured crew of the Enterprise could find a humane way to deal with Khan and his gang.  Ultimately, Khan accepts an offer to be given a world of his own that is not only habitable for him, but also lush with abundant resources which would support his desire to populate a world with his own kind.  His new home would be Ceti Alpha V.  Kirk had found a way to placate his adversary leading to a non-violent and diplomatic solution....or so he and everyone else believed once the Enterprise kicked into reverse to back out of that episode's driveway and head for the highway to get to the next one.

So the intriguing question to explore was, what ever became of Khan?  And what if we were to see him again?

Now what Nicholas Meyer did for his contribution was bring Star Trek down to Earth from its lofty pitch.  Humans can be tested, and Khan was just the kind of character to test them.  But how do we tell the story with a cast of characters that seems to behave as though it has evolved way past human conflict?  Well, we calibrate that a little bit.  We take the show off its high horse by knocking her main protagonists down a few notches.

"The chief contribution I brought to Star Trek II was a healthy disrespect...Star Trek was human allegory in a space format.  That was both its strength and ultimately its weakness.  I tried through irreverence to make them more human and a little less wooden.  I didn't insist that Captain Kirk go to the bathroom, but did Star Trek have to be so sanctified?"

Wrath of Khan Director Nicholas Meyer

Fast forward to the beginning of Star Trek II, where we learn an aging Kirk's days of flying are over, and he needs reading glasses to see.  He is oblivious to what has occurred on Ceti Alpha V ever since he left and forgot about it a long time ago.  Pavel Chekov, One of Kirk's former officers is on a parallel storyline and we learn he has since accepted command of the USS Reliant alongside a new character, Captain Terrell.  The Reliant is on a search for a barren planet to test a life generating science experiment appropriately called The Genesis Project.  Upon landing on just such a planet to use for a test case, Chekov suspects something is not right, and his fears are confirmed while investigating the remains of an old wrecked ship there when he learns the name of the ship is Botany Bay.  This barren, barely habitable planet is Ceti Alpha V, and Khan is still there.  And he's pissed.  Unbeknownst to Kirk, something went terribly wrong on Ceti Alpha V that dramatically changed her fate.  Instead of this place being Khan's garden of Eden, he has been exiled to Hell and believes this was all done intentionally by Kirk.  

The chess match that began on Space Seed would resume, and this time Khan was hell bent on making sure he would not lose.  Also, this 2nd iteration of Trek in the movies gets bonus points for setting up a brief moment of dialogue delivered by its chief antagonist for which our hero has no response other than to yell at the top of his lungs the meme heard round the world to this day:

Enjoy this movie for a bit of nostalgia with a new twist, but also with a grittier atmosphere, a challenge that pushes the protagonists to the brink, and leads to a truly defining moment for a beloved character without ever answering the question of whether his act of bravery and sacrifice was motivated by love or logic.  No answers come easily to anyone in Wrath of Khan, and every solution comes with great cost.  That is the struggle of human existence that had been sanitized from Star Trek until this story was told.