Of That Which You Know So Well- The new Star Trek and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
This was supposed to be my "review" of the new Star Trek movie, but I found that I could not write about the new movie without talking about Wrath of Khan, a movie whose fingerprints were all over the plot. For good reason, too, though perhaps I am biased by my flaily love. If you haven't seen Wrath of Khan, or if you've only seen it once, what you probably think of first is Kirk's mockable KHAAAAAN shout, and possibly the Henry Jenkins meta-moment about removing the glass. This post isn't entirely about why Wrath of Khan is such a great movie, though I'm sure I could write that epic essay someday (where I could talk about David, and Savik as a foil for Spock, and the trope of "great" characters being stuck behind a desk, as it were. Also, the mechanics of the movie, though perhaps that's another-another someday.) These are my reflections on how the new movie uses echoes and formulas of predefined relationships to draw the audience in, whether or not you already know what has happened or are waiting to be shown for the very first time.
The reasons I love Wrath of Khan have as much to do with when I saw the movie as with the actual strength of the story. Wrath of Khan is the very first memory I have of the Star Trek series, though it's more than likely that I saw several episodes of the original series before it. It's the kind of movie that has forever informed my ideas of narrative and characters relationships. I think that Spock's death was my very first character death - the first I remembered as having an emotional impact, the first time I understood that a character I had loved was gone. The final scenes of Kirk and Spock in engineering is seared into my brain as a defining moment of how relationships work. I remember it was fall and we were peeling apples for a pie and I was 8, maybe 10. I remember Spock died and I was sure the world would stop, sure we'd never finish the apple pie, we'd never need to, because the story was over and I was crying for the loss.
But let me back up. What happens in Wrath of Khan is this: Kirk is having an identity crisis. It's several years after the original series, and one movie in, and Kirk is an admiral and teaching cadets. And he's miserable, though he won't tell Spock or McCoy why. He wants to be on a starship, but all he feels is old. Kirk goes on a training cruise with the new cadets Spock has been training, and then a crisis happens and the ship gets diverted on a rescue mission, a mission which happens to involve Kirk's past. There's the Genesis device that Kirk's old flame is working on, and an old enemy of Kirk's is back to steal the science in order to exact revenge on Kirk for marooning him so many years ago. The majority of the movie is about Kirk tyring to figure out who he is, through all of these crises - can he really be outsmarted by Khan? Why did Carol conceal that they had a son together? Has he ever really faced death?
Spock, in the meantime, is very much stepping into the first officer role that previously so well suited his interactions with Kirk. He jokes with Kirk about he should not argue with Spock's logic, reminds him that he has no ego to bruise when Kirk takes over captaining the ship, states plainly that it was a mistake for Kirk to be an admiral because he's unhappy and he's best suited to captaining a starship, and reminds Kirk that he has always been and always shall be his friend.
The movie's climax has the Enterprise finally defeating Khan, though Khan has had time to activate the Genesis device, which will ultimately consume the Enterprise if they can't get away. The problem is, the ship is badly damaged from the previous encounters with Khan. Just as things approach the state of "we need warp in 4 minutes or we're dead," quietly in the background, Spock sneaks away from the bridge, goes down to engineering to make the repairs despite the deadly radiation, sacrificing himself. Kirk only realizes Spock is gone once the ship is out of danger, and Kirk and Spock have a heartbreaking goodbye just before Spock dies.
Viewed as a movie about Kirk and Spock, which I think it ultimately is, it's a story about how an already established relationship, a rich, strong and significant friendship endures, changes, and leaves a lasting impact.
There are echoes of Wrath of Khan throughout the entire new Star Trek movie, but because JJ Abrams is too smart and too skilled to tell the same story over again, they remain references, moments that recall the movie, using the effective formulas to draw us in. They are not replays of previous events, but are always slightly altered, twisted and turned moments; much like the new alternate universe created by Nero's appearance in the timeline, events will not necessarily unfold the way we expect. Kirk and Spock may never be the people they are in Wrath of Khan. However, by weaving into the new movie moments that mirror what happens in Wrath of Khan, we're led to believe that this same relationship, or a similar one, is inevitably going to happen.
I went into the new movie hoping that there would at least be a mention of the Kobiyashi Maru, the unwinnable test from Wrath of Khan. Wrath of Khan is actually framed, in a way, by the exam - or the question posed by the exam - do they needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few? We come to realize, as Kirk does, that he has always known what a no-win situation looks like, but he found the choice to ridiculously hard to ever make, so he always found a way to avoid making it. The only real solution to a no-win situation always involves sacrifice. I was hoping the new movie would at least mention what was clearly a defining character moment of Cadet Kirk, a test which is a metaphor about how you cannot remain a whole person and still cheat your way out of loss.
Star Trek goes much further than just mentioning the test - we find out Kirk has already failed the test twice, a test everyone fails, but Kirk won't let that stop him. He's going to take it a third time, and we get to see not only his instructor's reactions to what appears to be his cavalier approach to certain death, but McCoy's reactions to Kirk's ridiculous stubbornness and perseverance. If seeing Kirk cheat to beat the test with such arrogance was not delightful enough, we find out that it's Spock who is programming the test. If you've seen Wrath of Khan before going into this movie, then that revelation explains a moment where Spock admits to never having had to face the test himself - and recalls one of the most emotional moments in the movie where Spock has faced a real-life no-win situation, and found his own solution. If you haven't seen Wrath of Khan, the moment in Star Trek is still enormously powerful for a different reason, because you're being introduced to two characters who are immediately set in conflict against one another.
(I suspect there's a whole side essay to be written, a tangent I can't explore now, about anticipated relationships, and how reading fanfic or even a romance novel with a familiar formula builds in an additional dimension to the story because you're anticipating the way the character relationships will unfold. It's like picking up a novel with a prideful heroine, a detestable antagonist, and a tempting rogue, and knowing the heroine is going to end up with the transformed antagonist because you've read Pride and Prejudice and you know how this story goes. Kirk and Spock's interactions in the new movie resonate because, even in this new alternate reality, we know there are some things that do not change - by setting Kirk and Spock in an antagonistic relationship at the start of the movie, we become even more deeply invested in them, because we know that they are destined to be friends.)
The summons to Vulcan in the middle of Kirk's academic stand-off with Spock is another moment that echoes the events of Wrath of Khan. In the middle of a training cruise with an Enterprise full of cadets, Kirk receives a distress call from Carol Marcus about a crisis at a nearby space station - the Enterprise, who is the closest available starship is dispatched. Like the crews of cadets sent to Vulcan, the main Federaton force is otherwise engaged, pushing people into power who would not otherwise be there. And like the situation the Enterprise arrives to at Vulcan, the crisis at Regula One is also a trap.
The Genesis device in Wrath of Khan rewrites the composition of a planet, turning something lifeless into something living - though, with the risk of destroying anything that's already living if introduced to a planet with life. It's shocking then, to see Nero's black hole device, which destroys a planet from it's very core - and then to find out that it was designed, not as a weapon, but to consume a supernova and save a planet. They're both very similar devices (and plot devices), created for one purpose, used destructively for another.
Nero cannot really be described as the same kind of character as Khan, but they are both villains who have spent years isolated, bent on revenge, determined to force the person who has wronged them suffer the same way they have suffered. In the new Star Trek, Nero is after Spock, where in Wrath of Khan, Khan is after Kirk. However, in both circumstances, Kirk and Spock are tied together, and Nero's hunt for Spock alters Kirk's whole life, as Khan's revenge against Kirk takes Spock's.
Also, another less emotionally fraught echo, the creature Nero introduces to Pike which can control his thoughts is like a creature Khan uses to control people - which very creepily crawls in through their ear, thank you JJ Abrams for NOT recreating that. And whether or not it was intentional, Nero shouting "Spock" like a primal scream when Spock steals the red matter ship and flies it out of the Narada is very reminiscent of Kirk's too-famous scream, echoing forever into our memories as a perfect example of over-dramatics.
Because we are not watching the rebooted Wrath of Khan, but instead a new movie entirely, the characters do things we could not have anticipated, like Spock stranding Kirk on the ice planet. Kirk does gets stranded in Wrath of Khan, while Spock tries to repair the Enterprise, but it's Khan who strands Kirk - the villain, not his captain. We find out, when Spock hails him, that Kirk has not actually been stranded, but that they've outwitted Khan by speaking in code over the previous transmission, making Khan think they were badly injured and the ship would leave them. In the cave, Kirk is able to reflect on what it means for him to be a starship captain, and how he cheated the Kobiyashi Maru, until he's saved with Spock's help, with their quick understanding of one another.
I had no idea what was going to happen with new Kirk on the ice planet, because there was no way the same echos could happen here, and the patterns revolve around Kirk and Spock, since the new Kirk and Spock have yet to get their relationship in line. However, I love the way that JJ Abrams knows we're anticipating some turn around of Spock's so callous abandonment of Kirk, and lets us believe, for a few seconds, with a shadowy and suggestive shot, that the rescuer chasing away the monster is in fact Spock. It is Spock, of course, just not the Spock we were expecting.
Spock Prime greets Kirk with "I have been and always shall be your friend" - a phrase which is meant to directly encapsulate their relationship if you know the previous story, if you know their alternate history. However, if you're coming to this movie a blank slate, if you've never heard that phrase before, then it still works as a shocking counterpart to Kirk's actual relationship with Spock, who, as Kirk points out, hates him. Either way, you get the idea that who Kirk and Spock are now is not necessarily who they will become.
Let me take a moment to explore why the "I have been and every shall be" resonates with us beyond it's powerful repetition. In the original series, seeing Spock open up to a relationship with Kirk that supersedes just that of a captain and a first officer is incredible. (Also, no one's kidding about the slash in the original series. Watch it and you'll see how "friendship" between those two is like "partnership" between Fraser and Kowalski.) By the time you get to Wrath of Khan, you have two old friends who have worked for years together, been there for each other through crises and near-death experiences, formed a lasting and deep friendship. Spock says the phrase, "I have been and always shall be your friend" near the beginning of Wrath of Khan, as a way to reassure Kirk that he knows him, that he understands. Their friendship is currency. Spock says it again when he's dying at the end of the movie, when he's saying goodbye.
So when Spock Prime uses it as a greeting to young Kirk, as an explanation of who he is to him, it carries with it the entire definition of their friendship, a friendship that has surpassed death, a friendship that defines the two of them. New Kirk doesn't know this yet, but we do, or even if the phrase is new to the audience, it carries with it some yet unexplained promise of a friendship were none yet exists.
Once the Narada is being turned into a singularity, and the Enterprise realizes it has to escape its grip, we're back in line with the echos of Wrath of Khan. The Enterprise defeats Khan, but Khan is able to activate the Genesis device, which, like the black hole device, is going to consume everything nearby. In Wrath of Khan, though, the ship is so badly damaged that they won't be able to escape in time unless they can get the engines back online - which Spock manages to do by sacrificing himself. (There's a delightful moment when McCoy sees what Spock intends to do and says it will kill any human - Spock reminds McCoy that, as he's so fond of saying, Spock is not human. We know, though, that he knows he won't survive, when he neck-pinches McCoy so he won't stop him.)
In the new movie, the Enterprise is able to get away without sacrificing anything except some pieces that makes their ship work - which is only fitting because the movie is about the beginning of Kirk and Spock's relationship. Spock's death in Wrath of Khan isn't, of course, the end, or we'd never see Spock Prime in this movie, but Kirk and Spock have a whole lot more to work on before anyone ends up dying and coming back to life.
The sum of these echos of Wrath of Khan, a movie that serves to define Kirk and to define his friendship with Spock, allows us several different approaches in anticipating what will happen with new Kirk and Spock while never negating what previously existed in another timeline, in another story. I think, perhaps, my favorite echo comes in the end, where Spock Prime, who has already lost Kirk, finds him again, as well as himself. He orchestrates events so Kirk and Spock can find each other - so they can begin their friendship because, he tells his younger self, he would not deny him that opportunity. It reminds me of the power of a Five Things fic, where showing what didn't happen becomes an effective way to highlight the unspokenness of what did happen, what doesn't exist pointing us inexorably toward what does.
At the end of Wrath of Khan, it's Kirk who looks on at the genesis of a new planet in the face of the death of his friend. In the new movie, it's Spock who watches the beginning of a new relationship, one that won't be the same as the one he experienced, but, in the end, won't also be that different at all.
The reasons I love Wrath of Khan have as much to do with when I saw the movie as with the actual strength of the story. Wrath of Khan is the very first memory I have of the Star Trek series, though it's more than likely that I saw several episodes of the original series before it. It's the kind of movie that has forever informed my ideas of narrative and characters relationships. I think that Spock's death was my very first character death - the first I remembered as having an emotional impact, the first time I understood that a character I had loved was gone. The final scenes of Kirk and Spock in engineering is seared into my brain as a defining moment of how relationships work. I remember it was fall and we were peeling apples for a pie and I was 8, maybe 10. I remember Spock died and I was sure the world would stop, sure we'd never finish the apple pie, we'd never need to, because the story was over and I was crying for the loss.
But let me back up. What happens in Wrath of Khan is this: Kirk is having an identity crisis. It's several years after the original series, and one movie in, and Kirk is an admiral and teaching cadets. And he's miserable, though he won't tell Spock or McCoy why. He wants to be on a starship, but all he feels is old. Kirk goes on a training cruise with the new cadets Spock has been training, and then a crisis happens and the ship gets diverted on a rescue mission, a mission which happens to involve Kirk's past. There's the Genesis device that Kirk's old flame is working on, and an old enemy of Kirk's is back to steal the science in order to exact revenge on Kirk for marooning him so many years ago. The majority of the movie is about Kirk tyring to figure out who he is, through all of these crises - can he really be outsmarted by Khan? Why did Carol conceal that they had a son together? Has he ever really faced death?
Spock, in the meantime, is very much stepping into the first officer role that previously so well suited his interactions with Kirk. He jokes with Kirk about he should not argue with Spock's logic, reminds him that he has no ego to bruise when Kirk takes over captaining the ship, states plainly that it was a mistake for Kirk to be an admiral because he's unhappy and he's best suited to captaining a starship, and reminds Kirk that he has always been and always shall be his friend.
The movie's climax has the Enterprise finally defeating Khan, though Khan has had time to activate the Genesis device, which will ultimately consume the Enterprise if they can't get away. The problem is, the ship is badly damaged from the previous encounters with Khan. Just as things approach the state of "we need warp in 4 minutes or we're dead," quietly in the background, Spock sneaks away from the bridge, goes down to engineering to make the repairs despite the deadly radiation, sacrificing himself. Kirk only realizes Spock is gone once the ship is out of danger, and Kirk and Spock have a heartbreaking goodbye just before Spock dies.
Viewed as a movie about Kirk and Spock, which I think it ultimately is, it's a story about how an already established relationship, a rich, strong and significant friendship endures, changes, and leaves a lasting impact.
There are echoes of Wrath of Khan throughout the entire new Star Trek movie, but because JJ Abrams is too smart and too skilled to tell the same story over again, they remain references, moments that recall the movie, using the effective formulas to draw us in. They are not replays of previous events, but are always slightly altered, twisted and turned moments; much like the new alternate universe created by Nero's appearance in the timeline, events will not necessarily unfold the way we expect. Kirk and Spock may never be the people they are in Wrath of Khan. However, by weaving into the new movie moments that mirror what happens in Wrath of Khan, we're led to believe that this same relationship, or a similar one, is inevitably going to happen.
I went into the new movie hoping that there would at least be a mention of the Kobiyashi Maru, the unwinnable test from Wrath of Khan. Wrath of Khan is actually framed, in a way, by the exam - or the question posed by the exam - do they needs of the many always outweigh the needs of the few? We come to realize, as Kirk does, that he has always known what a no-win situation looks like, but he found the choice to ridiculously hard to ever make, so he always found a way to avoid making it. The only real solution to a no-win situation always involves sacrifice. I was hoping the new movie would at least mention what was clearly a defining character moment of Cadet Kirk, a test which is a metaphor about how you cannot remain a whole person and still cheat your way out of loss.
Star Trek goes much further than just mentioning the test - we find out Kirk has already failed the test twice, a test everyone fails, but Kirk won't let that stop him. He's going to take it a third time, and we get to see not only his instructor's reactions to what appears to be his cavalier approach to certain death, but McCoy's reactions to Kirk's ridiculous stubbornness and perseverance. If seeing Kirk cheat to beat the test with such arrogance was not delightful enough, we find out that it's Spock who is programming the test. If you've seen Wrath of Khan before going into this movie, then that revelation explains a moment where Spock admits to never having had to face the test himself - and recalls one of the most emotional moments in the movie where Spock has faced a real-life no-win situation, and found his own solution. If you haven't seen Wrath of Khan, the moment in Star Trek is still enormously powerful for a different reason, because you're being introduced to two characters who are immediately set in conflict against one another.
(I suspect there's a whole side essay to be written, a tangent I can't explore now, about anticipated relationships, and how reading fanfic or even a romance novel with a familiar formula builds in an additional dimension to the story because you're anticipating the way the character relationships will unfold. It's like picking up a novel with a prideful heroine, a detestable antagonist, and a tempting rogue, and knowing the heroine is going to end up with the transformed antagonist because you've read Pride and Prejudice and you know how this story goes. Kirk and Spock's interactions in the new movie resonate because, even in this new alternate reality, we know there are some things that do not change - by setting Kirk and Spock in an antagonistic relationship at the start of the movie, we become even more deeply invested in them, because we know that they are destined to be friends.)
The summons to Vulcan in the middle of Kirk's academic stand-off with Spock is another moment that echoes the events of Wrath of Khan. In the middle of a training cruise with an Enterprise full of cadets, Kirk receives a distress call from Carol Marcus about a crisis at a nearby space station - the Enterprise, who is the closest available starship is dispatched. Like the crews of cadets sent to Vulcan, the main Federaton force is otherwise engaged, pushing people into power who would not otherwise be there. And like the situation the Enterprise arrives to at Vulcan, the crisis at Regula One is also a trap.
The Genesis device in Wrath of Khan rewrites the composition of a planet, turning something lifeless into something living - though, with the risk of destroying anything that's already living if introduced to a planet with life. It's shocking then, to see Nero's black hole device, which destroys a planet from it's very core - and then to find out that it was designed, not as a weapon, but to consume a supernova and save a planet. They're both very similar devices (and plot devices), created for one purpose, used destructively for another.
Nero cannot really be described as the same kind of character as Khan, but they are both villains who have spent years isolated, bent on revenge, determined to force the person who has wronged them suffer the same way they have suffered. In the new Star Trek, Nero is after Spock, where in Wrath of Khan, Khan is after Kirk. However, in both circumstances, Kirk and Spock are tied together, and Nero's hunt for Spock alters Kirk's whole life, as Khan's revenge against Kirk takes Spock's.
Also, another less emotionally fraught echo, the creature Nero introduces to Pike which can control his thoughts is like a creature Khan uses to control people - which very creepily crawls in through their ear, thank you JJ Abrams for NOT recreating that. And whether or not it was intentional, Nero shouting "Spock" like a primal scream when Spock steals the red matter ship and flies it out of the Narada is very reminiscent of Kirk's too-famous scream, echoing forever into our memories as a perfect example of over-dramatics.
Because we are not watching the rebooted Wrath of Khan, but instead a new movie entirely, the characters do things we could not have anticipated, like Spock stranding Kirk on the ice planet. Kirk does gets stranded in Wrath of Khan, while Spock tries to repair the Enterprise, but it's Khan who strands Kirk - the villain, not his captain. We find out, when Spock hails him, that Kirk has not actually been stranded, but that they've outwitted Khan by speaking in code over the previous transmission, making Khan think they were badly injured and the ship would leave them. In the cave, Kirk is able to reflect on what it means for him to be a starship captain, and how he cheated the Kobiyashi Maru, until he's saved with Spock's help, with their quick understanding of one another.
I had no idea what was going to happen with new Kirk on the ice planet, because there was no way the same echos could happen here, and the patterns revolve around Kirk and Spock, since the new Kirk and Spock have yet to get their relationship in line. However, I love the way that JJ Abrams knows we're anticipating some turn around of Spock's so callous abandonment of Kirk, and lets us believe, for a few seconds, with a shadowy and suggestive shot, that the rescuer chasing away the monster is in fact Spock. It is Spock, of course, just not the Spock we were expecting.
Spock Prime greets Kirk with "I have been and always shall be your friend" - a phrase which is meant to directly encapsulate their relationship if you know the previous story, if you know their alternate history. However, if you're coming to this movie a blank slate, if you've never heard that phrase before, then it still works as a shocking counterpart to Kirk's actual relationship with Spock, who, as Kirk points out, hates him. Either way, you get the idea that who Kirk and Spock are now is not necessarily who they will become.
Let me take a moment to explore why the "I have been and every shall be" resonates with us beyond it's powerful repetition. In the original series, seeing Spock open up to a relationship with Kirk that supersedes just that of a captain and a first officer is incredible. (Also, no one's kidding about the slash in the original series. Watch it and you'll see how "friendship" between those two is like "partnership" between Fraser and Kowalski.) By the time you get to Wrath of Khan, you have two old friends who have worked for years together, been there for each other through crises and near-death experiences, formed a lasting and deep friendship. Spock says the phrase, "I have been and always shall be your friend" near the beginning of Wrath of Khan, as a way to reassure Kirk that he knows him, that he understands. Their friendship is currency. Spock says it again when he's dying at the end of the movie, when he's saying goodbye.
So when Spock Prime uses it as a greeting to young Kirk, as an explanation of who he is to him, it carries with it the entire definition of their friendship, a friendship that has surpassed death, a friendship that defines the two of them. New Kirk doesn't know this yet, but we do, or even if the phrase is new to the audience, it carries with it some yet unexplained promise of a friendship were none yet exists.
Once the Narada is being turned into a singularity, and the Enterprise realizes it has to escape its grip, we're back in line with the echos of Wrath of Khan. The Enterprise defeats Khan, but Khan is able to activate the Genesis device, which, like the black hole device, is going to consume everything nearby. In Wrath of Khan, though, the ship is so badly damaged that they won't be able to escape in time unless they can get the engines back online - which Spock manages to do by sacrificing himself. (There's a delightful moment when McCoy sees what Spock intends to do and says it will kill any human - Spock reminds McCoy that, as he's so fond of saying, Spock is not human. We know, though, that he knows he won't survive, when he neck-pinches McCoy so he won't stop him.)
In the new movie, the Enterprise is able to get away without sacrificing anything except some pieces that makes their ship work - which is only fitting because the movie is about the beginning of Kirk and Spock's relationship. Spock's death in Wrath of Khan isn't, of course, the end, or we'd never see Spock Prime in this movie, but Kirk and Spock have a whole lot more to work on before anyone ends up dying and coming back to life.
The sum of these echos of Wrath of Khan, a movie that serves to define Kirk and to define his friendship with Spock, allows us several different approaches in anticipating what will happen with new Kirk and Spock while never negating what previously existed in another timeline, in another story. I think, perhaps, my favorite echo comes in the end, where Spock Prime, who has already lost Kirk, finds him again, as well as himself. He orchestrates events so Kirk and Spock can find each other - so they can begin their friendship because, he tells his younger self, he would not deny him that opportunity. It reminds me of the power of a Five Things fic, where showing what didn't happen becomes an effective way to highlight the unspokenness of what did happen, what doesn't exist pointing us inexorably toward what does.
At the end of Wrath of Khan, it's Kirk who looks on at the genesis of a new planet in the face of the death of his friend. In the new movie, it's Spock who watches the beginning of a new relationship, one that won't be the same as the one he experienced, but, in the end, won't also be that different at all.