The Wrath of Khan is arguably the greatest Star Trek movie, but it's far from perfect.
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00:00Not too many people would argue with me when I say that The Wrath of Khan is the best Star Trek movie ever,
00:06but it's imperfect in the way that most human endeavors are.
00:10This is unsurprising, given that when director Nicholas Meyer was offered the film, there was shades of the motion picture,
00:17but no workable script. In fact, three different scripts had been developed. The Omega System, the Genesis Project, and
00:25the new Star Trek.
00:26So Meyer and the producer identified all the bits they liked from the scripts, and Meyer wrote his first draft of a new script in
00:33just under two weeks, titled The Undiscovered Country.
00:37Well, actually, they retitled it to The Vengeance of Khan,
00:40but then they retitled it again to The Wrath of Khan before release, so they really couldn't make up their minds.
00:47Many, many revisions followed, but time was wasting and money was tight. The script and the resulting film were of
00:54astounding quality for such a time crunch project,
00:57but in that hurry, a fair amount of dumb things did slip through the cracks.
01:01So with all that history in mind, and with our love of this film firmly established,
01:06let's have a bit of fun while we look at the 10 dumbest things that happened in Star Trek Wrath of Khan.
01:13Number 10, Reliance weak password. The prefix code is a good idea for thwarting a hostile takeover of a starship,
01:20but a code of only five numbers is in the range of your upper-end bicycle combination lock.
01:2690,000 possible combinations. Have you ever looked at that bank of switches Spock flips to input the code?
01:32There are only 10 switches, one per number from 1 to 9 and 0, and each switch stays flipped after he uses it.
01:39Thus, each number can only be used once per code. This means no prefix numbers like
01:4516303 or 01701, let alone 66666.
01:53This cuts down on the possible combinations by two-thirds to just 27,216.
01:59Most Wi-Fi passwords are harder to crack. Also, after Khan has been prefix coded and handed his ass,
02:06it's surprising that Mr. Superior Intellect doesn't figure out that this is what happened,
02:11and try to locate the Enterprise's own prefix code in order to turn the tables on his old friend Kirk.
02:17But that would have meant showing Khan is actually intelligent, not just telling us.
02:23Number 9, Cadet dead meat to the bridge.
02:26With the Enterprise's bridge at the very tippy top of the ship's saucer, and with engineering in the cigar-shaped engineering secondary hall,
02:33there is no way that the bridge is en route to sickbay.
02:37So why then does the Turbolift bring Scotty, carrying the mortally wounded Cadet Peter Preston, to the bridge?
02:43Ever since the movie opened, fans have either been crying in outrage over this, or offering rationalizations and justifications for it.
02:51The damage caused the Turbolifts to malfunction.
02:54Uh, Scotty was so grief-stricken that he... blah blah blah.
02:58Logically, they could have had Kirk step out of the Turbolift on his way to sickbay,
03:02and find Scotty with Preston in a line of wounded trying to get into sickbay.
03:07But then the audience might have been anticipating such a sight en route to McCoy,
03:12whereas the door's opening to this horror was indeed a shock.
03:15So, that's the reality.
03:17It's only there for a punch-in-the-gut dramatic effect, even though it makes zero sense.
03:23Shocking? Yeah, absolutely.
03:25Dumb? Definitely.
03:27Number 8, Kirk and Bones both blow it.
03:30The film's story forces Kirk to catch the idiot ball in order to show him as old and worn out,
03:35and in desperate need to get his mojo back.
03:37Which we can accept to a point, but it does go overboard in this regard,
03:41and does Bones dirty in the process.
03:44Upon discovering Tyrell and Chekov on the regular one space station, Chekov emotes Chekov,
03:49Oh sir, it was Khan.
03:51We found him on Setyava 5.
03:53He put creatures in our bodies to control our minds.
03:57McCoy, it's all right.
03:58You're safe now.
03:59Chekov, they made us say lies, do things.
04:03But we beat him.
04:04We thought he controlled us, but he did not.
04:06The captain was strong.
04:08Wait a Vulcan minute, Lieutenant Commander Bad Accent.
04:11And yeah, I'm also talking about me,
04:13because what fun would this be if we didn't do some light teasing?
04:16But anyway, Chekov just explicitly told them,
04:20the titular space genius had put creatures in their bodies to control their minds,
04:24and what is the first reaction to this bombshell?
04:27Bones effectively says, it's all good.
04:29What?
04:30The instant Chekov admits this,
04:31both Kirk and Bones ought to have suspected Khan was behind every word
04:35coming out of the Reliant boys' mouths.
04:37Sure, Kirk is focused on the Genesis material and finding Dr. Marcus,
04:42but he's beyond thick here.
04:44And Bones?
04:45What excuse does he have?
04:47What sort of doctor hears two potential patients
04:50say they had foreign creatures placed inside their bodies to control them,
04:53and doesn't immediately ask how and where,
04:57and examine the living crap out of them?
05:00Kirk's not the one caught with his britches down.
05:02McCoy is tripping over the metaphorical pants around his ankles.
05:07Number seven, the inferior superior intellect.
05:11Khan.
05:12Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.
05:15It is only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that allowed us to survive.
05:21Much is made of Khan's intellect in the film,
05:23but he's dumb as a box of rocks throughout, let's be honest.
05:27Consider the following, Khan wants Genesis,
05:30yet tortures and kills the uncooperative Genesis team,
05:33instead of sticking eels in them,
05:35or instead of taking any of the team with him,
05:37when he has to leave regular one in order to blow Kirk to bits.
05:41I mean, yeah, I get he's mad, but come on, he's a super genius.
05:45Next, Mr. Superior intellect can't spot the most in plain sight code ever.
05:51Spock says,
05:52hours would seem like days,
05:53and then explains the ship status using days.
05:5812 year olds in the audience could decode that on the fly,
06:01so why can't Khan or his crew of fellow superhuman,
06:05or Savick for that matter,
06:07Yes, Khan has activated his Ahab obsession power up,
06:11and he's phaser focused on harpooning his white whale Kirk.
06:14And granted, his monumental ego and sense of innate superiority,
06:18cloud his judgment to the point where he's easily duped and goaded,
06:22into chasing Kirk into a nebula where he loses most of his advantage.
06:26But like Kirk and Bones,
06:28he gets tossed the idiot ball and never once demonstrates any real smarts.
06:33This was not always the case.
06:34In one of the scripts from which the final film screenplay was built,
06:38and before his beloved wife was fridged,
06:40there was a dialogue that indicated Khan was indeed an extra special super genius.
06:46Khan,
06:46How are system controls working?
06:48MacGyvers,
06:49Very well.
06:50Command and remote functions are all tied through computer stations.
06:53How could you have designed it so quickly?
06:56Khan,
06:57This is a sister ship of the Enterprise.
06:59The Enterprise's manuals I absorbed 14 years ago are still fresh in my mind.
07:04Not only would such a dialogue have demonstrated that Khan's an actual smarty pants,
07:09ergo a real threat,
07:11it would have made clear how 14 supermen could have run an entire spaceship,
07:15especially with 10 of them on the bridge.
07:18Number 6.
07:19Wiley Chekhov
07:21In old cartoons, characters would frequently run the same path of a steamroller about to flatten them,
07:26or stand by dumbly before getting clobbered by a car or flattened by a boulder.
07:31Chekhov effectively does this on SETI Alpha 5 upon seeing the belt buckle.
07:36Chekhov,
07:36Botany Bay.
07:38Botany Bay?
07:39Oh no, we've got to get out of here now.
07:41Damn!
07:42He knows what this means, but instead of doing the logical thing,
07:45putting his helmet on and calling for extraction,
07:48assuming he even needs a helmet to do this,
07:51he and Tyrell put on their helmets, step outside,
07:53and at the sight of the 14 survivors,
07:56freeze like a bug-eyed Wiley coyote watching as a train bears down on him.
08:00Bay writes,
08:01Chekhov should have tried calling the ship before stepping outside.
08:04You don't stop to explain when you realize you're standing over a live grenade.
08:08You run, duck, or throw yourself on it.
08:11And even if, for some plot-convenient reason,
08:13the comm didn't work inside the cargo containers,
08:16Chekhov should have been screaming for a beam-out throughout their exit from the hatch
08:20and even as Khan's people moved towards them.
08:22But from the lack of alarm exhibited by Beach and Kyle on the Reliant,
08:26it's obvious no communication of any sort was received.
08:30One can excuse Chekhov's behavior after he gets an eel in the ear,
08:33but not his costly ineptitude at this stage in the story.
08:37It's no wonder he never made captain.
08:40Number 5.
08:41Universal Armageddon.
08:42But no rush.
08:44As David Marcus Fretz, as the Genesis proposal demonstrates,
08:47and as Spock and Bones' argument makes clear,
08:50the Genesis device has the potential to be a dreadful weapon
08:54if used where life already exists.
08:56We're talking about Universal Armageddon.
08:59Bones exclaims,
09:00In short, Genesis is a Manhattan project,
09:03and Kirk clearly knows what it is before revealing it to his confidants.
09:08So why is it then that everyone's so damn blasé about Carroll's cry for help?
09:13Consider this.
09:14Carroll calls Kirk to ask if he gave the order
09:17and states that someone is going to take Genesis without proper authorization.
09:21Mid-conversation, her transmission is jammed at the source.
09:24This isn't garbled communications, it's deliberate.
09:28Kirk calls Starfleet Command to try and get to the bottom of things,
09:32and when he clearly doesn't get an answer to what's going on,
09:35instead of, you know, immediately calling to the bridge
09:38and ordering maximum warp to regular one,
09:40he meanders to Spock's quarters for a friendly chat
09:43and then finally goes up to the bridge to order Sulu to go to warp 5.
09:48Warp f***ing 5.
09:50Yes, it's a minor continuity point,
09:52but in the previous film,
09:53the Enterprise zipped along to meet V'ger at warp 7
09:56without even breaking a sweat.
09:58Warp 5 is like a police car driving below the speed limit
10:01while rushing to an active crime scene.
10:04Kirk ought to have been court-martialed for that.
10:06I mean, come on.
10:07Take things seriously, Admiral.
10:09As scripted, this would have been a better scene,
10:12as Kirk would have gone to the bridge prior to him going to see Spock.
10:16This was, however, swapped around in editing for dramatic effect,
10:19but at the cost of making Kirk appear to be not taking this whole thing
10:23as seriously as he really should.
10:25Number 4.
10:26Exit the eel.
10:28The influence of the baby eels is pretty shaky.
10:31How is it that Tyrell and Chekov can sit by
10:34as their shipmates, Reliant's crew,
10:36are marooned on Khan's barren sand heap?
10:39Yet, later in the movie,
10:40Tyrell manages to resist when Khan instructs him to shoot Kirk,
10:44a man he says he'd never met.
10:47Is Kirk really just that awesome?
10:50Eh, rank does have its privileges, I guess.
10:52Or is actively murdering someone just too much for even eel influence?
10:58No, not really,
10:59as he vaporizes an innocent civilian just moments earlier.
11:03And after Tyrell phasers himself out of the narrative rather than Kirk,
11:07why is it that the eel in Chekov's noggin chooses that precise moment
11:11to get the heck out of there?
11:13You could maybe argue semantics about what happened to its friend,
11:18but it's a little convenient, isn't it?
11:21However, for the past 40 years,
11:23fans have joked that there's another reason the beast fled.
11:25It was starving to death as Chekov is brainless.
11:29Number 3
11:30Kirk's Unfair Tactical Advantage
11:33Show-don't-tell is a truism in film and video,
11:36and while it's not always necessary to cross every T or dot every I,
11:40sometimes a film really ought to just make a tiny bit of effort
11:44to make clear how something improbable happens to happen.
11:47Case in point,
11:48when the Enterprise first arrives at Regula I,
11:51Spock, Regula is a Class D.
11:53It consists of various unremarkable ores,
11:57essentially a great rock in space.
12:00Kirk, Reliant could be hiding behind that rock.
12:03Spock, a distinct possibility.
12:06Then, in a classic case of technology doing whatever the plot requires at any given moment,
12:11when Kirk returns to the ship from the Genesis cave,
12:14he orders tactical,
12:15and immediately a computer graphic shows him exactly where the Reliant is,
12:20orbiting opposite them,
12:21presumably having just left the Regula I station where we saw her seconds earlier.
12:26Now how come they couldn't do that before?
12:28And how can they track her through an entire planetoid now?
12:32And why does it only work one way?
12:34Why isn't Khan all,
12:36there she is,
12:38at the same instant Kirk spots where the Reliant is?
12:41And just how long has the Enterprise crew known where Reliant is?
12:45Is this how she's managed to stay out of sight?
12:48If you can't tell, I have a lot of questions.
12:50One can speculate or manufacture all sorts of rationalizations for this,
12:55like how the Enterprise was receiving telemetry from Regula I that Khan didn't know how to access.
13:00But then it gives Kirk an easy advantage
13:03instead of showing him using his smarts or his experience as a starship captain.
13:07Taking obstacles away from the protagonist diminishes his efforts.
13:11It could easily have been addressed by simply mentioning sensor damage earlier in the damage
13:16report or by having Regula I telemetry appear on the tactical display.
13:20But alas, they didn't.
13:23Number two.
13:24Damn peculiar.
13:25Starfleet surely knows that the Reliant is assigned to Project Genesis.
13:29So when Kirk calls them concerning Carol's cry for help,
13:33the very first order of business should have been to call the Reliant and ask what's going on
13:37or if they know anything about it.
13:40Nothing in the film suggests that a call like this happened,
13:43or if it did, that Starfleet ever got back to Kirk about whether they could or couldn't get through.
13:48And furthermore, despite being told they are, as usual, the only ship in the quadrant,
13:54they spot the Reliant assigned to Genesis not only in their quadrant, but closing fast.
13:59As soon as Kirk calms the bridge, he's ordering to try the emergency channels.
14:04So something is already odd.
14:06The moment Spock deduces there's something weird about Reliant's excuse about their
14:11chamber's coil is overloading their comms systems,
14:14that ought to have been the last straw, but it wasn't.
14:17Now from Carol's message earlier, Kirk knows that
14:21A. Someone is trying to take Genesis.
14:23B. That Carol believes it's someone from Starfleet as she said,
14:27did you get that order?
14:29And C. Her transmission gets jammed at the source.
14:32So when the Reliant shows up acting damn peculiar,
14:35even too long out of pasture Kirk should have been able to put two and two together
14:39and acted with due caution.
14:41Yeah, I know the point of Wrath of Khan is that Kirk is rusty,
14:45but given everything leading up to the moment of the ambush,
14:48his hesitation and inaction serves to not merely portray Kirk as out of practice,
14:53but as an incompetent fool responsible for the loss of Genesis
14:57and the Enterprise damage and casualties.
15:00That's almost dumb enough to warrant being drummed out of the service.
15:05Number one, the Genesis defect.
15:08Even taking the movie on its own terms,
15:10that the Genesis planet even exists at the end is beyond absurd.
15:14The narrative makes it abundantly clear that the Genesis device
15:17is intended to be employed on an existing solid body.
15:21Why else would the Reliant be scouring space for suitable sites?
15:24Carol, stage three will involve the process on a planetary scale.
15:28It is our intention to induce the Genesis device
15:31into the preselected area of a lifeless space body,
15:34a moon or other dead form.
15:36Yet as the story climaxes,
15:37the Genesis device goes off inside the Reliant,
15:39which is itself within the Matara Nebula.
15:42And somehow the Genesis wave not only turns
15:45the entire nebulous gas and dust into some different kind of matter,
15:49complete with all sorts of plant DNA,
15:51but all of this conveniently falls together into a sphere in a matter of minutes.
15:56The icing on the cake though,
15:58is that this preposterous planet just so happened to have formed
16:01within the Goldilocks zone of a star.
16:04Star, wait, where did that star come from?
16:07Was it the one regular orbits or did Genesis manufacture a star too?
16:12And how does that miracle planet just happen to have
16:15exactly the right angular momentum to go into orbit
16:18around that wherever it's from star?
16:20Ugh, and some fans complain that the red matter in Star Trek 2009 was dumb.
16:25But play by your own rules movie.
16:27And those were the 10 dumbest things in Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan.
16:32Do you think we missed something?
16:33Well, check out the article on our website
16:35because there's four additional dumb things listed there.
16:38Oh, and before I get any pitchforks in the comments,
16:41this is genuinely my favorite Star Trek movie
16:44and I've watched it way more times than I can count.
16:47But there's just something fun about taking a look at the media that we love
16:51and just tearing it apart.
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16:55And if you didn't, make sure you let me know in the comment section below
16:59how much you dislike it.
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17:11But most importantly, don't forget to live long and prosper.