A Brief Guide to Star Trek

Thirsting for vengeance, Khan and his band (marooned by Kirk) hijack the
Reliant
and lay a trap for Kirk. The climax of the film is a ‘submarine’ battle between Kirk and his nemesis in a lightning-splattered nebula, in which Spock sacrifices his life to save his captain and the crew of the
Enterprise
.’
    Complicating the thematic content of the film and heightening the dramatic stakes, Meyer gave Kirk a long-lost old flame in the form of research scientist Carol Marcus and a son – David – whose life he’d not been involved in. Both are caught up in themachinations of Khan, and serve to remind Kirk of the kind of life he has missed through his commitment to Starfleet. These were issues that
The Original Series
had only occasionally been able to touch upon. Given the prominence of death in the movie, Meyer turned to Shakespeare for a quote to use as a title, settling on ‘The Undiscovered Country’, Hamlet’s phrase for the world beyond death.
    Leonard Nimoy had been tempted back aboard the
Enterprise
by the promise of a dramatic death scene, but the ship was still without a captain, the now Admiral Kirk. William Shatner reportedly hated the screenplay, probably because a lot of the dramatic focus fell on the character he’d always seen as his side-kick, Spock (although
Star Trek
fans had long ago decided on the importance of Spock’s role to the franchise). While the screenplay contained many solid, dramatic scenes for Shatner to play, the actor was predictably uncomfortable with confronting the theme of ageing that was central to the drama.
    The sticking point seemed to be the fact that the screenplay specified an age for Kirk, and it was this that was upsetting Shatner. ‘The revisions proved remarkably simple’, admitted Meyer in his memoir, ‘and in the end Shatner’s needs were easily fulfilled.’ Shatner described the resulting revised screenplay as ‘terrific’, although all Meyer had done was to delete any specific numerical references to Kirk’s age. The rest was the same script that Shatner had previously professed to ‘hate’.
    Meyer brought in George Lucas’ special effects house Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) to provide many of the special effects for
Star Trek II
. While the majority of the work was traditional film models, especially for the climactic confrontation of the two starships (the
Enterprise
and the hijacked
Reliant
), ILM also pioneered the use of computer-generated imagery or computer graphics in the Genesis Project sequence. Intended to depict the terraforming of a planet – renewing a barren landscape to make it suitable for human habitation – in the past the sequence would have been traditionally animated. Using computers to create special effects would graduallybecome the norm in filmmaking, but
Star Trek II
was one of the first to use the technique in a commercial film.
    The shooting of the pivotal death of Spock scene was saved until the end of the production process. ‘It was my job to make Spock’s death plausible, meaningful and moving’, wrote Meyer in his memoir. ‘If we botched the job, people would throw things at the screen. If we did it correctly and the death proceeded organically from the material, no one would ever question it.’ After fifteen years of living with Spock, Leonard Nimoy was nervous on the day the scene was to be filmed – after all, he was saying goodbye to an alter-ego that had meant a lot to him, even if the relationship had been a troubling one. During the shooting of
Star Trek II
there was talk of making a third film in the series, and Nimoy’s more commercial instincts may have been telling him he’d be silly to distance himself from
Star Trek
just as it was on the verge of ever-greater success. As it was, the atmosphere on stage during the shooting of the dramatic sacrifice scene anticipated that which would pervade cinemas where the movie screened: several of the production crew were observed to have tears in their eyes as
Star Trek
’s Vulcan hero breathed his last. ‘It took about a day to film the death of Spock’, relates Meyer. ‘Some of us understood the significance of that eternal moment while it was unfolding.’
    Released in the US on 4 June 1982,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
enjoyed considerable success, garnering $97 million worldwide on a budget of around $11 million. The film’s opening weekend – at the time the largest opening weekend gross in movie history – brought in $14.3 million,