Speaker 1: Welcome back, midnight viewers. Oh my god, it's Star Trek Fest.
Speaker 1: It is the Star Trek Fest. How do we know?
Speaker 1: Here's the trailer.
Speaker 2: Beyond the Darkness, beyond the human evolution is Con a
Speaker 2: genetically superior tyrant, exiled to a barren play in it,
Speaker 2: banished by a starship commander. He is destined to destroy.
Speaker 2: Left for dead, he has a browed chase him around
Speaker 2: the moose of Nibi, and round the Antaris Maelstrom, and
Speaker 2: round Tradition's flames.
Speaker 3: Before I gave him up.
Speaker 4: There she is.
Speaker 5: A s collapsing captain, a new shot sun not.
Speaker 3: Enough against their shields, and in three minutes we're all dead.
Speaker 1: I've gone far worse than kill you. I've hurt you,
Speaker 1: and I wish to go on hurting you. I shall
Speaker 1: leave you as you left me, my room for all eternity.
Speaker 4: Wearing a line, marrying a line.
Speaker 3: Shine sh.
Speaker 2: At the end of the universe lies the beginning of
Speaker 2: Vengeance Star Trek two, The Wrath of Con.
Speaker 4: Yes, con see, that would be the easy thing would
Speaker 4: be to try to do the kind of approximation which
Speaker 4: is the signature moment. I prefer to think of the
Speaker 4: needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
Speaker 4: or the one.
Speaker 1: I'm not a drama.
Speaker 4: Critic, except of course, Happy Birthday.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we're just gonna spiral here. We're watching
Speaker 1: Star Trek two. Everybody, Star Trek two, The Wrath of Khn.
Speaker 1: Initial title Star Trek two Vengeance of Cohn.
Speaker 4: That was why did change it.
Speaker 1: Because they thought Return of the Jedi, originally titled Revenge
Speaker 1: of the Jedi, would be too confusing for audiences, so
Speaker 1: Vengeance became Wrath. And then years later David Fincher and
Speaker 1: Andrew Kevin Walker would call Anger wrath for seven and
Speaker 1: now that's all anyone thinks of in the Seven Deadly
Speaker 1: Sins as Wrath, when initially it was all anger.
Speaker 4: He reminded me, when I was a kid, father Malone,
Speaker 4: it was like a Wrathfule or something Carnival that I
Speaker 4: went to as a kid. I acquired a Star Wars poster.
Speaker 4: It was Revenge of the Jedi. It was the original
Speaker 4: Revenge of the Jedi poster, which would probably be worth
Speaker 4: a ton of money now, but I was a fucking kid.
Speaker 4: I put it up on my wall. It got all
Speaker 4: messed up, it ripped. I don't even know where it
Speaker 4: is anymore.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing one for sale at a Spencer's Gifts
Speaker 1: and thinking, there's gonna be so many of them, I'll
Speaker 1: get one later.
Speaker 4: I wonder what they're worth now, Probably.
Speaker 1: A lot, however, Star Trek two The Wrath of KHN
Speaker 1: screenplay credited to the story by Harve Bennett and Jack B.
Speaker 1: Sewards screenplay credited solely to Jack B. Sewards and directed
Speaker 1: by Nicholas Meyer. We all know Nicholas Meyer wrote this screenplay,
Speaker 1: starring guess who everybody, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest, Kelly,
Speaker 1: James Dowin, Walter Kanig, George t Kay, Nachelle Nichols, bb
Speaker 1: besch Merritt buttrick straight from Square Pegs. Paul Winenfield is
Speaker 1: in this movie. Kirsty Ally is in this movie, and
Speaker 1: of course he's here to answer the question, is that
Speaker 1: a real chest? Ricardo montalbon as I read that to
Speaker 1: Cohn and Nudians sing yes, there is a frequent rumor
Speaker 1: that's a molded plastic chest, whereas everyone else who was
Speaker 1: involved with the production of the movie says, no, that's
Speaker 1: just Ricardo Montabon, even at age sixty, was a buff
Speaker 1: fucking dude.
Speaker 4: I can believe it. He seemed like a very vital guy.
Speaker 4: It never occurred to me that they would. It's not
Speaker 4: as if his whole chest is bared. You only see
Speaker 4: a little bit of his upper torso it's not like
Speaker 4: he's bare chested for the whole movie or anything.
Speaker 1: Costume designer claims they redid the costume specifically to feature
Speaker 1: his chest. Now, critics are saying that the placement of
Speaker 1: his necklace is where the seam is much like you
Speaker 1: would see like on a drag race, for like the
Speaker 1: false front with the boobies, where that you could cover
Speaker 1: the neck line with a necklace or something. So they're saying,
Speaker 1: from the neck up, he looks really old, and from
Speaker 1: the neck down he looks really young, So there can't
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect there. And I say, yeah, he's got
Speaker 1: an old man head and a fucking still fit body.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about dummies?
Speaker 4: That's the thing I can't say. I know for sure.
Speaker 4: I don't believe it's the case, but who the fuck cares.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's like this dumb conspiracy theory. I don't
Speaker 4: get it.
Speaker 1: Star Trek was released on June the fourth, nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: but the budget of twelve million went down far down
Speaker 1: from the forty five million for Star Trek the Motion Picture,
Speaker 1: and they have so much more to do in this
Speaker 1: film with so much less. Nevertheless, I didn't night, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's the.
Speaker 4: Story of every Star Trek movie. Though they were already
Speaker 4: slashing budgets. That was a common complaint even by the
Speaker 4: time they got to Star Trek four. It was like
Speaker 4: the uniforms were we used, the models were we used,
Speaker 4: sets were reused. So that doesn't make any sense to me,
Speaker 4: because Star Trek two looks so much, it's so much more.
Speaker 4: I don't ground it. It doesn't look like they're pinching
Speaker 4: pennies to make that movie. It doesn't have the ooh
Speaker 4: and eye of the most picture, but it looks fantastic.
Speaker 4: Even now I'm watching it, I'm thinking, this is a
Speaker 4: great fucking looking movie.
Speaker 1: Oh they were cost cutting and penny pinching every which away,
Speaker 1: Like Carol Marcus's Space Station Regular is just the space
Speaker 1: doc from Star Trek the Motion Picture turned upside down.
Speaker 4: And I know, I think they reuse some of the
Speaker 4: shots of the Enterprise in dry dock and all that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff. It still looks great to me. It's
Speaker 4: still again watching it again after all these years, I
Speaker 4: was like, this looks fantastic. You could have made this
Speaker 4: movie last year with a few exception.
Speaker 1: HB. When's the first time you saw Star Trek to
Speaker 1: Wrath of con Was it in the theater? By chance?
Speaker 4: It was not in the theater. I saw it the
Speaker 4: first time, undoubtedly would have been on cable, first run
Speaker 4: on cable, which would have been made it probably either
Speaker 4: late eighty two or eighty three more than likely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did manage to see this in the theater.
Speaker 1: I've seen every Star Trek film, fantrically, really Star Trek film.
Speaker 1: I've seen it in the theater now. I remember it
Speaker 1: vividly because we I was taken. This is nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two June. So what we're nine ten nine, we're just
Speaker 1: nine and we went to the Low's in Summerville. My
Speaker 1: cousins took me and we were going to see Star
Speaker 1: Trek two. That's why I went with them. And Star
Speaker 1: Trek two was sold out. So do you know what
Speaker 1: we went to see.
Speaker 4: In eighty two? Was it another movie or did you
Speaker 4: sneak in or something?
Speaker 1: It was another movie. They bought tickets for another movie.
Speaker 1: They said, Star Trek two was sold out. Michael, We're
Speaker 1: going to go see this movie instead.
Speaker 4: Jeez, I can't think of it. What did you see instead?
Speaker 4: Or what did you buy tickets for instead?
Speaker 1: Polter Geist? Oh okay, yeah, yep, fucked me up, fucked
Speaker 1: me up for years, thanks cousin. That was I was
Speaker 1: just I just wanted to see mister Spock. Instead, I
Speaker 1: had a man ripping his own face off and demons
Speaker 1: coming out of closets.
Speaker 4: Skeletons, and the pool horrifying. It's still amazing. This is
Speaker 4: me what they got away with that movie. That is
Speaker 4: one intense picture. No Star Trek two, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Anyway, the next weekend I got to see Star Trek,
Speaker 1: but still I was scarred. Anyway, Star Trek the motion
Speaker 1: picture isn't unqualified success. They do want a sequel, but
Speaker 1: they do not want Gene Roddenberry. So the brass at
Speaker 1: Paramount that we're talking about, Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg
Speaker 1: instead turned to veteran TV producer Harve Bennett. HP, you
Speaker 1: have something to add.
Speaker 4: I was just going to say it was a financial success,
Speaker 4: but critically it was not successful, and from what I've read,
Speaker 4: that's the reason why they wanted to cut Roddenberry out
Speaker 4: of it, because they wanted somebody who could actually make
Speaker 4: a good picture. They didn't want the same sort of
Speaker 4: issues to befall this picture that befell the first one.
Speaker 1: That's definitely one of the reasons they cut out Roddenberry.
Speaker 1: But they had done away with Roddenberry before they even
Speaker 1: lensed Star Trek the motion picture. They had already banished
Speaker 1: him to his offices and at his memos.
Speaker 4: But which I gathered something similar happened with the Next Generation.
Speaker 4: I don't think he was very involved in that after
Speaker 4: the first season, and not coincidentally, that's when it became good.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry anybody who you know is like a fanboy
Speaker 4: for Roddenberry. You wouldn't have Star Trek without Roddenberry. But
Speaker 4: I think his time had come and gone.
Speaker 1: I say that he maintained control of that series until
Speaker 1: the third season, and that's when that series actually became good.
Speaker 1: And he lost control of that series not because he
Speaker 1: was replaced, but because he died.
Speaker 4: He was the one, by the way, and that not
Speaker 4: that this is what we're talking about Next Generation, but
Speaker 4: He was the one who was responsible for those terrible
Speaker 4: uniforms that all the actors complained about in the first
Speaker 4: couple of seasons, because his reasoning was every shot of
Speaker 4: the uniform had to be perfectly wrinkle free and had
Speaker 4: to look as sharp as could be. So they had
Speaker 4: these uniforms that were one piece that had stirre ups
Speaker 4: in the feet that would drag, that would basically pull
Speaker 4: their shoulders down, and some of the actors actually developed
Speaker 4: back problems as a result. So they were thrilled when
Speaker 4: they finally moved to the really slick two piece uniforms.
Speaker 1: The early don all the early seasons of Next Generations
Speaker 1: seemed really awkward after after the innovation of separates.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yeah, but you're right, it wasn't until
Speaker 4: that third season that it really found its footing and
Speaker 4: became its own thing. I agree.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so Paramount turns to Harve Bennett. Harve Ben
Speaker 1: got his start producing The Mod Squad. He went on
Speaker 1: to do six Million Dollar Man in The Bionic Woman,
Speaker 1: rich Man poor Man, remember that series? That was him.
Speaker 1: He also produced a series about gold in my Air
Speaker 1: called a Woman called golda starring co starring.
Speaker 4: I remember that it was very popular.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Harv has an end with mister Spock, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna need it because once again, Leonard Nimo wants nothing
Speaker 1: to do with this production anyway, so they bring in Harv.
Speaker 1: Harv is a casual viewer of Star Trek, as most
Speaker 1: people were. He knew of the series but wasn't a
Speaker 1: hardcore fan. So his first order of business is to
Speaker 1: sit down and watch every single episode of the series,
Speaker 1: looking for something to tie the movies back to the
Speaker 1: original series, because the first film was such a fucking
Speaker 1: out there nothing to do with anything the picture. And
Speaker 1: what he finds is season one's Space Seed about Khan
Speaker 1: Noonian Sing, a twentieth century Eugenics war conqueror who was
Speaker 1: frozen with his followers in space. Thought out by the Enterprise,
Speaker 1: tries to take the Enterprise over. Rather than court marshaling him,
Speaker 1: they give him the opportunity to be marooned on a
Speaker 1: planet which he can act as king on and that
Speaker 1: that's where we left him. What a ripe opportunity to revisit.
Speaker 1: So Harve Bennett he comes up with his original story.
Speaker 1: Let me see, I have it in my notes. Oh no,
Speaker 1: these are my wrong notes. There are my notes. So
Speaker 1: Bennett writes a treatment called the War of the Generations,
Speaker 1: which is basically a bunch of space hippies are causing
Speaker 1: a revolution and taking over planets, and they have to
Speaker 1: go out to fight them. They send out the Enterprise
Speaker 1: and they discover that the leader of the rebels is
Speaker 1: in fact Kirk's son David, who is being pumpeted by
Speaker 1: Kirk's old enemy Khan and Noonian Saying. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: everyone hated that treatment, so he turned screenwriting duties over
Speaker 1: to Jack B. Sourd. He refocused it onto Khan only
Speaker 1: and had Khan stealing the Omega device, the Starfleet's weapon
Speaker 1: of mass destruction. Everyone really liked this script. They thought
Speaker 1: it was almost totally there, but not quite. When somebody
Speaker 1: suggested the screenwriting wondercund Nicholas Meyer, who had done the
Speaker 1: seven Percent Solution and then written and directed Time after Time,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest time travel Jack the Ripper stories
Speaker 1: ever committed to film.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic, that's the thing. This was only his second
Speaker 4: major motion picture and now he's at the helm of
Speaker 4: this big science fiction franchise. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Meyer, like Harve Bennett is only a casual fan
Speaker 1: of Star Trek. He is more of a classicist when
Speaker 1: it comes to literature, and does not understand Star Trek
Speaker 1: from a science fiction perspective, but really gets it from
Speaker 1: its actual inspiration, which are the Horatio Hornblower books. So
Speaker 1: his take is, oh, this is a naval warfare film.
Speaker 1: I'll write it from that perspective, and also, let me
Speaker 1: add in all this gravitas between Cohn and Kirk, and
Speaker 1: let me add in all these layers where sequences are
Speaker 1: going to be. Let me make this a great screenplay.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Meyer decides and and becomes the directors.
Speaker 4: Yeah. He The quote that I read was Nicholas Meyer
Speaker 4: called his approach Hornblower in outer space, and that is
Speaker 4: completely apt for this. We've talked about this a little
Speaker 4: bit offline for the Malonea and your contention is one
Speaker 4: of the one of the best things about this we'll
Speaker 4: get into is that this is a naval picture. These
Speaker 4: are naval battles happening, but they just happen to be
Speaker 4: happening in outer space, which is really it's almost it's
Speaker 4: even a departure from a lot of the original series episodes.
Speaker 4: There wasn't a lot of tactical stuff happening like we
Speaker 4: see here, but it's almost spoiler alert. Kirk and Kahn
Speaker 4: never occupy the same physical space. Everything is con spaceship
Speaker 4: versus Kirk's ship, the Enterprise. It's amazing. What a what
Speaker 4: an innovative approach to the movie.
Speaker 1: Right, did you say spoiler alert for Star Trek to
Speaker 1: the Wrath of Con Yeah, somewhere good.
Speaker 4: I don't look. We live in a I don't want
Speaker 4: to give anybody any reason to go wood. I didn't
Speaker 4: see yet. I guess if you haven't seen this forty
Speaker 4: year old movie, then you're listening at your own.
Speaker 1: Risks at the end.
Speaker 4: That's what's interesting about that. I've I dove into a
Speaker 4: lot of Leonardiemoy interviews and things like that, and Leonard
Speaker 4: Nimoy one of the reasons why he agreed to do
Speaker 4: this picture was a he got the chance to do
Speaker 4: a death scene with Spock, because by then he was
Speaker 4: really sick of the character and he was always trying
Speaker 4: to break free of that. But number two, he thought
Speaker 4: this was going to be the last Star Trek movie,
Speaker 4: so why not go out with a bang.
Speaker 1: Also, I much like Jeffrey Canzenberg, who made the pilgrimage
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles to New York to see Leonard Nimoy
Speaker 1: on stage and convince him to do Star Trek. Harve
Speaker 1: Bennett did the exact same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can have nothing but love and admiration for
Speaker 4: Leonard Nimoy. The more that I see interviews and read
Speaker 4: about him, and I read his books and everything, and
Speaker 4: I think all of his grievances with Star Trek are
Speaker 4: completely for lack of a better word, they're logical. He
Speaker 4: wanted to be compensated for. He knew his value, and
Speaker 4: he knew that the leverage that he had the longer
Speaker 4: this series went on, which is why he eventually is
Speaker 4: able to transition into directing the pictures. Because at that
Speaker 4: point he's irreplaceable. How do you have a Star Trek
Speaker 4: movie without Spock? You can't. So I have nothing but
Speaker 4: admiration for the guy. Plus he's a local guy. He's
Speaker 4: from Boston. How can you not love him from Maldon?
Speaker 4: See I thought he was from from actual Boston.
Speaker 1: No, his temple was in Maldon. I apologize.
Speaker 4: Ah, yes, that's where he learned how to do the live,
Speaker 4: long and prosper.
Speaker 1: Oh man, hey, folks, you listened to the fucking biggest
Speaker 1: nerds on planet Earth. I just realized, let's talk about
Speaker 1: those uniforms.
Speaker 4: I think we agree that these might be the best uniforms,
Speaker 4: at least for the classic Original series movies, because they've
Speaker 4: moved away from the dull, white, pale blue hospital looking
Speaker 4: uniforms from the first movie. Now we have these are
Speaker 4: much more in line with kind of almost militaristic in
Speaker 4: a way. They are these kind of maroon uniforms with
Speaker 4: a little latch in the top right hand corner that
Speaker 4: you can unbutton it and the flap comes down so
Speaker 4: you can open it up if you're looking more casual.
Speaker 4: They're great. But what I read is a lot of
Speaker 4: these were reused from the first picture. The reason why
Speaker 4: they went with red was because that was the dye
Speaker 4: that could handle the material the best was this deep
Speaker 4: red color. I read that somewhere God bless it works
Speaker 4: so well. Those are the quintessential.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anything was going to be step above the uniforms
Speaker 1: from the SS Pajama Party that we got the last
Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, we go from the traditional
Speaker 1: shirt slack boot combo of the sixties straight to Starfleet
Speaker 1: is now a military organization. Lookout, Gene.
Speaker 4: These look like I would imagine an organization like Starfleet.
Speaker 4: They look like you can actually discern ranks. They look
Speaker 4: more formal. They remind me of dress uniforms that you
Speaker 4: would see in the armed services. Now they just they
Speaker 4: work in. The color scheme is a little more exciting,
Speaker 4: the reds. The everything just seems a little darker and
Speaker 4: more edgy and more grounded look wise in.
Speaker 1: This, including the look of the ships. We get the
Speaker 1: Reliant here, which is my favorite Starfleet ship ever. That's
Speaker 1: including up to now everything they've come up with since then.
Speaker 1: Thing is cool is the fucking Reliant. And the great
Speaker 1: hilarious bit of that is they sent those plans to
Speaker 1: Harm Bennett, who was in Israel, I believe making The
Speaker 1: golda movie, and he looked at the blueprints for the
Speaker 1: Reliant upside down and approved it and sent it back
Speaker 1: and they were like, what do we do? And I
Speaker 1: guess we do it that way. So originally it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a mini version of the Enterprise, just
Speaker 1: squat and compact, and then when they got it back,
Speaker 1: they flipped it upside down and now it's a badass,
Speaker 1: little fucking fighter.
Speaker 4: It is so good looking, the way in the cells
Speaker 4: are underneath the main saucer section, and the thing of
Speaker 4: it is, as we get into these tense naval battles
Speaker 4: with the Enterprise, the Reliant almost has its own character.
Speaker 4: When you see this thing zooming around, this little squat
Speaker 4: ship that's really kicking ass. It's great. It just it
Speaker 4: looks different enough where because I think up to this point,
Speaker 4: I don't know how many other ships in the fleet
Speaker 4: we'd see before in the original series, did we see
Speaker 4: a lot of different You know, this is an Enterprise
Speaker 4: class vessel or whatever, but did we see other ones
Speaker 4: like this?
Speaker 1: No, we saw other ships. Basically, it would just be
Speaker 1: other versions of the Enterprise. They just used other shots
Speaker 1: of the Enterprise flipped or they changed the insignia or something.
Speaker 1: But no, we didn't get any real other classes of ships.
Speaker 1: Certainly not like this. Certainly not what we know now.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, you could pick up the technical
Speaker 1: manuals which had like dozens of variations of Starfleet ships,
Speaker 1: but we never got to see any of them in
Speaker 1: the flesh. We just got to look at the blueprints.
Speaker 4: I remember the.
Speaker 1: Nerds because I still have my I still have my
Speaker 1: technical manual.
Speaker 4: I remember those were those like Michael Lukuda books. Was
Speaker 4: he the one who did all those I think he
Speaker 4: and his wife actually were responsible for doing all that stuff.
Speaker 1: That was all. Yeah, they took over for next generation.
Speaker 4: Surprisingly, the more thought about this as some are you're
Speaker 4: watching this, there's a lot of firsts in this movie.
Speaker 4: Like you said, we have our first look at a
Speaker 4: vessel that's not the Enterprise, and it's so cool.
Speaker 1: They decided early on, obviously that this may It isn't
Speaker 1: just Leonard Nimoy who thinks this might be the last movie.
Speaker 1: Harve Bennett thinks this is going to be the last movie.
Speaker 1: Knowing the budget that they've cut him down to. They
Speaker 1: think they're going to go out with a bang here,
Speaker 1: but they'll leave it hopeful obviously with the ending that
Speaker 1: we eventually got. Oh no, now I forgot what I
Speaker 1: was saying, Harve Bennett, so not only did okay, So
Speaker 1: they decided that they're going to kill Spock at the
Speaker 1: end of this movie. That's the big secret. And then
Speaker 1: Star Trek fan groups find out and start freaking out
Speaker 1: and revealing and starting letter writing campaigns about how fucking
Speaker 1: angry they are and spreading the word that Spock is
Speaker 1: going to die to all the fan groups and all
Speaker 1: the conventions everywhere. And who leaked that information Nimoy Gene Roddenberry.
Speaker 4: Oh Let figures, and it does hamp.
Speaker 1: To derail the production. Leaks that information, which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, the movie begins with the Kobeashi Maru scenario
Speaker 1: and Spock is killed, as are most of the crew members. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is because the leak got out, so they thought
Speaker 1: let's give it to the audience in the opening scene.
Speaker 1: They'll forget all about it, and then we'll kill them
Speaker 1: again at the end. Well, exactly what happened. It was genius.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because Kirk says when he sees Spock on the turbolift,
Speaker 4: aren't you dead? And I remember watching it going they're
Speaker 4: trying to throw people off the scent of Spock dying.
Speaker 4: This is their way of saying, yeah, you might have
Speaker 4: heard that Spock dies. It's just this Kobyashi Maru simulation thing.
Speaker 4: By the way, this is what I was surprised by.
Speaker 4: So as we get into this, I think everybody by
Speaker 4: now is familiar with the concept of the Kobyashi Maru.
Speaker 4: The no win scenario. Right, it's effectively entered the lexicon.
Speaker 4: People who aren't even necessarily Star Trek fans might understand
Speaker 4: the idea of the Kobyashi Maru. What surprise me, fatherm alone,
Speaker 4: is this for something that is so central to the
Speaker 4: original series lore of Captain Kirk in particular, this is
Speaker 4: the introduction, the first mention of the Kobayashi maru in
Speaker 4: this movie. And I would have sworn that I had
Speaker 4: heard about it during the original series or something, or rather, no,
Speaker 4: this was an invention for this particular movie. And it
Speaker 4: is so shocking because it's it's been so canonized.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you're right, It is such an event that
Speaker 1: you retroactively fit it back into the old series. Yes,
Speaker 1: certainly we've seen this before, but no, we've not even
Speaker 1: heard of this before. And it's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: bits in the entire thing. And it's it not only
Speaker 1: is just a cool thing to learn about these characters
Speaker 1: and see what they go through the inner workings of
Speaker 1: Starfleet and to hear that Kirk has been a son
Speaker 1: of a bitch his entire fucking life because he reprogrammed
Speaker 1: the computer so he could win. But it is actually
Speaker 1: this whole movie is everything mirrors everything else. Everything from
Speaker 1: the opening gets mirrored in the end. We're presented here
Speaker 1: at the beginning with a no win scenario and Kirk
Speaker 1: not accepting that, and at the end he has to
Speaker 1: and I just like the mirroring there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it works the mean more s these interviews I've seen,
Speaker 4: he admits that the screenplay, the story for this movie
Speaker 4: is just strong. It's probably the strongest in the whole series. Everybody.
Speaker 4: The commonly held perception is that only the even numbered
Speaker 4: Star Trek movies are any good, right, this happens to
Speaker 4: be the thing that started that whole notion is because
Speaker 4: it is so good and it's so strong, but it is.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about this as we get into
Speaker 4: the fest a little more, and there's some more high
Speaker 4: points and there's some not so high points. But I
Speaker 4: would be hard pressed to think of a better complete
Speaker 4: movie than this one. Story wise, direction, everything works.
Speaker 1: It ties back into the original scene, so it gives
Speaker 1: us that it gives us a more action oriented portion
Speaker 1: of it, which we did. It doesn't skimp on any
Speaker 1: of the moral or intellectual problems with the Genesis device
Speaker 1: and its introduction to the Star Trek universe and the
Speaker 1: thing it does. And this is why Nicholas Meyer deserves
Speaker 1: all the praise in the world. It does not run
Speaker 1: from the fact that these are no longer a bunch
Speaker 1: of people in their early thirties. This movie starts with
Speaker 1: Captain Kirk's fiftieth birthday, which must have taken some severe
Speaker 1: fucking convincing with William Shatner. But that is what actually
Speaker 1: makes all the difference in this movie. It's that these
Speaker 1: characters are now older and moved on. It should be
Speaker 1: wiser and should have learned lessons that we watched them
Speaker 1: learn in the original series, and it's time to start
Speaker 1: paying those off dramatically, and Nicholas Meyer does that over
Speaker 1: and over again.
Speaker 4: That's the whole notion of Kirk getting older. This is
Speaker 4: set to this picture in many ways. This movie is
Speaker 4: about Kirk learning to accept aging, learning to accept losing
Speaker 4: people in his life, learning to lose, learning to accept
Speaker 4: loss and move on. Because this movie begins and Kirk.
Speaker 4: This is the first movie where Kirk is no longer
Speaker 4: a captain, He's now Admiral Kirk. This is the starter
Speaker 4: of that and he ends.
Speaker 1: Upon them in the last movie.
Speaker 4: Was he That's right? I'm sorry you cut that up.
Speaker 4: He's he was an admiral in that, but in this
Speaker 4: movie they make it clear that he's struggling with this
Speaker 4: idea that he's he feels ineffectual. He's no longer a captain.
Speaker 4: He doesn't really have that excitement in his life anymore.
Speaker 4: And there's a great scene with him and Bones where
Speaker 4: Bones actually tells him, you should get the captaincy back
Speaker 4: before you really do become an old relic. Don't let
Speaker 4: that happen. So well, it.
Speaker 1: Was the last movie though, they made him an admiral,
Speaker 1: but it's just like lip service to the fact that
Speaker 1: they've gotten older. It's like, you haven't seen these people
Speaker 1: on television in ten years, so we have to do
Speaker 1: something to prove that they've had lives past it. So
Speaker 1: we'll make him an admiral. But when we meet Kirk,
Speaker 1: he's getting on board the Enterprise and taking it over
Speaker 1: as the captain, so it doesn't matter. Like here, we
Speaker 1: get to see him being an admiral. We get to
Speaker 1: see his retired life and the fact that he's thinking
Speaker 1: about this stuff now, the fact that he realizes he
Speaker 1: does need these fucking glasses if he wants to read
Speaker 1: a book.
Speaker 4: Yeah's he has all these reminders that maybe his best days,
Speaker 4: his most exciting days, are behind him. And granted, we've
Speaker 4: had another five or six movies where we see him
Speaker 4: vacillate back and forth, becomes comical towards the end where
Speaker 4: he's still having this dilemma within himself, but it was
Speaker 4: pretty novel for this particular movie. This is the first
Speaker 4: time that he's really struggling with that question, because, as
Speaker 4: you said, in the first movie, they just pay lip
Speaker 4: service to the notion that he's admiral, but there's no
Speaker 4: internal conflict there. He just decides, I'm the best person
Speaker 4: to captain the Enterprise, so maybe I'll take over for now.
Speaker 4: But this one, he's really it's like a midlife crisis,
Speaker 4: really is what he's going through.
Speaker 1: And that midlife crisis has a name. That name is
Speaker 1: Khan from the Eugenics Wars, remember them back in ninety
Speaker 1: four to ninety six. Cohn was the worst of them,
Speaker 1: but he was the most stylish, so I was always
Speaker 1: Team Khan. I still have my Team Khan T shirt.
Speaker 1: I don't wear it often because people are still a
Speaker 1: little touchy about the Eugenics Wars.
Speaker 4: The word eugenics doesn't really fly too well these days,
Speaker 4: nor should it. But but he was he basically was
Speaker 4: genetically bred to be a superior human. The problem is
Speaker 4: he was also a psychopath who had delusions of his
Speaker 4: own grandeur and he felt like it was his place
Speaker 4: to rule and to sub subvert people to his rule. Basically,
Speaker 4: but how we.
Speaker 1: Get care material we don't want to know. Kings get
Speaker 1: out of here con NOONI and saying we're gonna freeze
Speaker 1: you and ship you off to somewhere.
Speaker 4: The way they get to Cohn I think is really
Speaker 4: smart and it's pretty ingenious. Where Now Chekhov is on
Speaker 4: this other ship, the Reliant, the USS Reliant. He's is
Speaker 4: he the first officer?
Speaker 1: I think he is the first commander Chekhov.
Speaker 4: But Paul Winfield classes up the joint by playing Captain Terrell.
Speaker 4: They so there's this project called Genesis we have to
Speaker 4: mention where, which is basically a terraforming bomb missile. Basically,
Speaker 4: it's this ability you shoot this missile at a planet
Speaker 4: that's dead, that has no life, and this thing has
Speaker 4: some sort of matrix inside of it that can essentially
Speaker 4: form life in a matter of hours. Basically, terraform a
Speaker 4: whole brand new planet with life giving everything.
Speaker 1: So the reliant Mike Carol Marcus who used to be
Speaker 1: involved with James T. Kirk off screen, yes, and bore
Speaker 1: his son who is now a grown man and helping
Speaker 1: her in her research for the Genesis project. For them,
Speaker 1: Starfleet is out there scouting potential dead planets. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So they come across this planet called Seti Alpha six,
Speaker 4: which appears to be a dead planet, but they get
Speaker 4: these faint life readings when they scan mandate it has
Speaker 4: to be a dead planet. So Chekhov and Captain Terrell
Speaker 4: being down on the planet and they find essentially these
Speaker 4: it's it's a ship that's been retrofitted as a survival
Speaker 4: shelter because the planet is basically just a whirling sandstorm continually.
Speaker 4: And they go poking around this sort of survival shelter,
Speaker 4: and among other things, they find the markings of the
Speaker 4: ship called the Botany Bay, and Chekhov the all the
Speaker 4: way Botany Bank. No no, and he freaks out and
Speaker 4: says to the captain, we have to get off. Let's
Speaker 4: get out of here. This is bad because he remembers
Speaker 4: Khan with what they went through, and they they go
Speaker 4: outside there's something I want to say about this. But
Speaker 4: they go out. They go outside to try and presume
Speaker 4: presumably beam back up, and they're greeted by this large
Speaker 4: corterie of masked figures waiting for the Yeah, they just
Speaker 4: look odd. They're all dressed in black from head.
Speaker 1: To netal advisors. Man, they're so scared. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 4: Here's something that didn't occur to me. I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: a good explanation for this father alone. But if I'm
Speaker 4: gonna we're gonna spend a little bit of time poking
Speaker 4: holes in this movie that we both love. Don't get
Speaker 4: me wrong. No, why when Chekhov realizes the situation they're in,
Speaker 4: why didn't he then immediately say check off the reliant
Speaker 4: to be him up, get us out of here. There's
Speaker 4: no explanation given. It's not like they say, we can't
Speaker 4: get a lock on their fix. There's something jamming our frequencies.
Speaker 4: Why didn't they immediately transport off of this godforsaken planet?
Speaker 4: Do you know? Why?
Speaker 1: Do you want? The nerd reason? That's not featured in
Speaker 1: the film, and therefore it can be easily dismissed something anything.
Speaker 1: It was hard enough to beam them down onto that
Speaker 1: wind swept, stormy planet outside, never mind with a within
Speaker 1: a structure. They needed to get outside in order to
Speaker 1: beam up, but as soon as they got outside they
Speaker 1: were surrounded by cons people.
Speaker 4: Look, if they beam off, then there is no movie
Speaker 4: such as it is. So I will accept that, but
Speaker 4: it's certainly never called out or explained in the context
Speaker 4: of a movie. I thought that was a bit of
Speaker 4: an oversight. If all they had to do was say,
Speaker 4: have a shot from the reli on saying we can't
Speaker 4: get a fix on their coordinates, we'll keep trying that
Speaker 4: way that they can't.
Speaker 1: I'm going to assume. I assume that happened, and I
Speaker 1: don't need them to slow the plot down or the
Speaker 1: reveal of Khan to let us know that they have
Speaker 1: indeed thought of the fact that they can't emergency beam
Speaker 1: them off the planet.
Speaker 4: That's fair. Like I said, it's just a little nerds.
Speaker 1: Maybe Chekhov is just a panicky sort my man, and
Speaker 1: he was just like, oh my god.
Speaker 4: So what ensues is something you talked about Poltergeist scarring
Speaker 4: you the scene that comes up, But getting.
Speaker 1: There, I do want to say, because you said it
Speaker 1: was ingenius they think they're on Seti Alpha six, which
Speaker 1: is a dentist.
Speaker 4: We're getting to that, okay, but.
Speaker 1: Seti Alpha six is blew up. It fell out of
Speaker 1: its orbit and was destroyed, thus wrecking the entirety of
Speaker 1: the planet of Seti Alpha five, making it seem because
Speaker 1: now it has shifted its own orbit as if it
Speaker 1: is Seti Alpha six.
Speaker 4: And that's a whole.
Speaker 1: Bunch of nerd discourse out there about the impossibility of this,
Speaker 1: and that Seti Alpha six they would have known because
Speaker 1: of the wabble in its orbit and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Just go with this.
Speaker 4: That doesn't bother me. But what I came away from
Speaker 4: watching this again was so that is the crux of
Speaker 4: Cohn's gripe. Okay, Captain Kirk and his crew marooned them
Speaker 4: on this planet thinking that they were going to have
Speaker 4: they're going to be had life, and it offered them
Speaker 4: a fair chance to survive, and then this catastrophe happened.
Speaker 4: Khan's problem is that Kirk never checked up on them.
Speaker 4: And you know what I have to say, He's got
Speaker 4: a great fucking point fa them alone. There was no
Speaker 4: follow up. Okay, let's make sure that as much as
Speaker 4: we don't want to deal with these criminals. We can't
Speaker 4: just leave them there and hope that they're going to survive,
Speaker 4: like we have a responsibility. They are effectively military prisoners.
Speaker 4: At that point, I have to admit as much of
Speaker 4: a psychopath as Cohn is, he I'm forced to agree
Speaker 4: with him on this. That's his big thing. This happened,
Speaker 4: and through the course of those events, he lost his
Speaker 4: wife in addition to a good portion of his loyal crew.
Speaker 1: Not only is Captain Kirk derelict in not checking up
Speaker 1: on these people that he left on this planet, he's
Speaker 1: derelict in not letting Starfleet know that a genocidal madman
Speaker 1: is incredibly capable, has been marooned on a planet, and
Speaker 1: maybe we ought to keep an eye on him. What
Speaker 1: happens if Cohn is able to use a radio to
Speaker 1: lure a ship down and then do what he wanted
Speaker 1: to do. Anyway, somebody should be keeping an eye on him. Kirk,
Speaker 1: You're all the way wrong.
Speaker 4: He's wrong. And Cohn does an age like normal people do.
Speaker 4: He's effectively hundreds of years old, so there's he could
Speaker 4: be a menace or a potential menace for dozens If
Speaker 4: not hundreds of more years. He's got nothing but time
Speaker 4: to figure out. And he's also incredibly smart because of
Speaker 4: his genetic engineering, So yes, he has He's very justified
Speaker 4: in his hatred of Kirk in this case, and Kirk
Speaker 4: should be at the very least reprimanded for dereliction of duty.
Speaker 4: That I have to admit like that. It didn't occur
Speaker 4: to me as a kid, because you're just watching this
Speaker 4: for the action and the fun. But my god, Con
Speaker 4: is not exactly wrong here.
Speaker 1: No, man, Nicholas, Mine is bringing the pathos. Look out
Speaker 1: what everybody has a justification, and we're going to fucking
Speaker 1: be on board for.
Speaker 4: It, seriously. But the thing that I was getting to,
Speaker 4: which is the thing that scarred me about this, is
Speaker 4: that so Con is holding Terrell and Chekhov prisoner, and
Speaker 4: he's expositioning all of this stuff about what happened to
Speaker 4: the planet. And there is this cage, this looseight cage,
Speaker 4: with something moving in the sand, and he says, I
Speaker 4: want to introduce you to the only other native life
Speaker 4: on Citi Alpha five and it's this I don't know,
Speaker 4: this weird creature the spider, like not spider, but like.
Speaker 1: A slug it's a slug with mandibles, and it has
Speaker 1: a young and in the folds of its gross little body.
Speaker 4: He pokes at this thing with these very violent too.
Speaker 1: It's angry. It's an angry kisses. Yeah, and those foresips
Speaker 1: come and like.
Speaker 4: Any good villain, he starts describing to Terrell and check
Speaker 4: off what he's about to do to them, which is
Speaker 4: what happened to his wife. Is this creature, the slug
Speaker 4: like creature, has the larvae that eventually they find their
Speaker 4: way into your ears and they wrap themselves around your
Speaker 4: cerebral cortex, which not only does it make you susceptible
Speaker 4: to suggestion, but it eventually leads to madness and death.
Speaker 4: And this is what happened to his wife. She succumbed
Speaker 4: to these larva. Even watching it now, it's hard. The
Speaker 4: soundtrack is very discordant and scary, and it's it was
Speaker 4: a lot for a nine year old to take in.
Speaker 4: It's like torture, really scary stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a It was a great year for fucking
Speaker 1: our heads up.
Speaker 4: Seriously, they don't make movies like this, Like they used
Speaker 4: to trust that kids could get through this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Now it's not the case.
Speaker 1: But boy, yeah, and it's pretty brutal, and it continues
Speaker 1: the new trend of jeez, what do we do with
Speaker 1: Chekhov in this movie? I don't know. Can we brutalize
Speaker 1: him in some way?
Speaker 4: It's true the last movie he got burned at his
Speaker 4: station and he was didn't really do much beyond that.
Speaker 4: But so what effectively what Con has done is he
Speaker 4: has made Terrell and Checkov his slaves to lure the
Speaker 4: Reliant Grace Jones great album. No, he has seen his
Speaker 4: path to a starship. He's gonna basically lure the crew
Speaker 4: of the Reliant down take over the ship, and then
Speaker 4: he's gonna seek out Kirk and have his revenge. So
Speaker 4: Con has seized his opportunity like any good megalomaniac would do.
Speaker 1: And thank god he's doing it because we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: much of a movie without him. No, yeah, and okay,
Speaker 1: so Con wants Con thanks to taking over the Reliant,
Speaker 1: discovers the plans for Project Genesis and figures, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a good weapon, and if I have that, then Starfleet
Speaker 1: will have to bargain with me. So off he goes
Speaker 1: to get Genesis. I'd like to point out that the
Speaker 1: I'm sure every podcast ever has pointed out that the
Speaker 1: Genesis sequence, made by ILM completely computer generated, the first
Speaker 1: ever fully CGI sequence committed to film from beginning to end,
Speaker 1: which is the planet being terraformed, going from dead rock
Speaker 1: to living forests and oceans and stuff. And I also
Speaker 1: like to point out that in early nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: I went to see Frank Black at the Vine Theater
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, and the opening act was Mazzie Star and
Speaker 1: for the entirety of Mazzie Stars set behind them played
Speaker 1: the Genesis sequence.
Speaker 4: It's a great sequence.
Speaker 1: It was a loop over and over, it was hypotizing.
Speaker 4: It was real cool stuff to see in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 4: I'd never seen anything like that. But I have to
Speaker 4: say along with that, not to say that these are
Speaker 4: all computer generated, but all of the enterprises, gauges and
Speaker 4: viewscreens and everything, they all had an upgrade in this movie.
Speaker 4: So instead of just having weird repeating flashing lights or
Speaker 4: strange optical illusions that looped, we actually had. At one
Speaker 4: point they show the shields being raised, and there's an
Speaker 4: actual skim like a computer view of the enterprise with
Speaker 4: the shield going up or them targeting things and you
Speaker 4: see the target of the ship. It all looked really cool.
Speaker 4: It felt more like a real ship a bridge, and
Speaker 4: less like just the set that we put a bunch
Speaker 4: of blinking lights and had them conveying that idea.
Speaker 1: Or the eventual apple store that j Abrams would make
Speaker 1: of the bridge. This feels like something that you would
Speaker 1: actually be in in outer space, and if it came
Speaker 1: to battle, then this is the bridge you want to
Speaker 1: be in.
Speaker 4: Even when we eventually we get on the Enterprise, we
Speaker 4: should say the Admiral Kirk is there because Spock is
Speaker 4: leading effectively a training mission with a bunch of cadets.
Speaker 4: They're going to take the Enterprise out for a little
Speaker 4: bit of a training mission, and when he gets there,
Speaker 4: he's going to Admiral Kirk inspects like the engine room,
Speaker 4: even something like the engine room felt so much more
Speaker 4: real because it looked like an engine room everything. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of doors that are a clear loose sight
Speaker 4: because you'd have to look inside and see the engine
Speaker 4: working and tubes, and even some of the costuming when
Speaker 4: things go south in the engine room, like they have
Speaker 4: these triage masks that they have to wear. It all
Speaker 4: looked really like it had. It felt grounded and real
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 1: I will say that's one holdover from Star Trek, the
Speaker 1: motion pictures, the engineering outfits, those sort of the bubble
Speaker 1: armed white yeah fits. They're great, man, because once they
Speaker 1: start getting scorched up, they really show the burn marks,
Speaker 1: don't they.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of blood in this There's a lot
Speaker 4: of burns and a lot of characters that get burned
Speaker 4: on half of their face. It happens a lot in
Speaker 4: this picture. We'll get to it, but it makes for
Speaker 4: an interesting tableau to see somebody it's Gus fring and
Speaker 4: breaking bad. Remember when he meets his end and he
Speaker 4: gets up and half of his face is just a skull.
Speaker 4: It's not to that degree, but it's definitely a little
Speaker 4: jarring to see that much blood.
Speaker 1: It would be if they made Wrath of Con today.
Speaker 1: They did make Wrath of Con today, and they didn't
Speaker 1: do it. So what are we talking about?
Speaker 4: I'm going to We'll get to that. Yeah, we'll get
Speaker 4: to it. But it's it's a good sort of thing
Speaker 4: to hang the story on because effectively, the Enterprise has
Speaker 4: an untested crew that has never been out in space before,
Speaker 4: including what we learned back up for a minute, I
Speaker 4: should mention I watched the director's cut of Star Trek two. Now,
Speaker 4: for many years the only thing available was the theatrical cut,
Speaker 4: and there are some differences that primarily dealing with Scotty's nephew,
Speaker 4: who was a trainee in the engine room. It's implied
Speaker 4: in the theatrical cut that he is related to Scotty,
Speaker 4: but it's not explicit like the director's cut. Did you
Speaker 4: watch the director's cut too, father Malone?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, of course I did, okay, And a lot
Speaker 1: of the scenes that are in the director's cut had
Speaker 1: shown up on television when they had finally broadcasted there
Speaker 1: where they would take stuff out and put stuff in
Speaker 1: for timing and whatever. So I had seen the scenes
Speaker 1: with his son. I had seen the scenes with his nephew,
Speaker 1: knowing that it was his nephew definitely, and then been
Speaker 1: puzzled for years afterwards, wondering where those moments went and
Speaker 1: did I imagine them? And I, oh, I must have
Speaker 1: read it in the book or something, But yeah, it's there.
Speaker 4: It is. It's definitely better being made. More. Like I said,
Speaker 4: I was able to connect the dots. There's a reason
Speaker 4: why eventually, when Conn attacks the Enterprise and all these
Speaker 4: casualties happen, including this fresh faced trainee. Scotty is completely
Speaker 4: broken up over the whole thing. I am I figured
Speaker 4: that he was a nephew. I knew he wasn't his
Speaker 4: son or anything. But but that's one of the sorry
Speaker 4: go ahead.
Speaker 1: I guess Scotti's sibling married an American and moved to
Speaker 1: America because no trace of that Scottish brogue, those trace
Speaker 1: of the scottishness and not at all. And that kid
Speaker 1: from escape to which mountains, I know.
Speaker 4: They recognize him from somewhere. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got that weird upturned nose.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he looks like a Disney contract actor.
Speaker 1: And that's what he is.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, But that's one of the brilliant things about
Speaker 4: CON's plot is he has stolen the Reliant, and the
Speaker 4: Reliant intercepts the Enterprise. The Enterprise doesn't know what's going on.
Speaker 4: They just figure that the Reliant.
Speaker 1: Is we are big happy fleet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and before they know what's going on, Kahn attacks
Speaker 4: them unprovoked, which is where all these mass casualties on
Speaker 4: the Enterprise happen. It's this is something that it was
Speaker 4: like revelatory it's so sudden and so violent and so
Speaker 4: evil that he would steal this ship, just just kick
Speaker 4: Kirk's butt. I mean, Kirk is left with his pants
Speaker 4: around his ankles. Effectively, he's got no he doesn't know
Speaker 4: what's going on. And what it's happening is that Kahn,
Speaker 4: almost immediately after doing this, wants to dictate terms of
Speaker 4: Kirk's surrender. Kirk has no choice but to try to
Speaker 4: bargain with him while he tries to figure out some
Speaker 4: way out of this.
Speaker 1: I'm just thinking about all the dialogue in the CNHB.
Speaker 1: While you're talking. All I'm hearing is their shields are down,
Speaker 1: raise the shields up.
Speaker 4: It's it's really it's so tense because we've seen Kirk
Speaker 4: in the original series go through tough situations that his
Speaker 4: back has been up against the wall countless times. But
Speaker 4: this feels that there's more at stake, because it feels
Speaker 4: like the Enterprise could be destroyed right then and there.
Speaker 4: He's got no choice but to try and bargain with
Speaker 4: this madman while he figures this out. And sure enough,
Speaker 4: like I know you have your problems with the solution
Speaker 4: that he comes up with. I still am thrilled by
Speaker 4: it every time I watch it.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I don't have a problem with it. I
Speaker 1: just think once Khan learns that you can use a
Speaker 1: spaceship's prefix to lower their shields, that he himself would
Speaker 1: use that eventually you would figure.
Speaker 4: But again, if I'm then going to do what you did,
Speaker 4: which is put my own nerd hat on and try.
Speaker 1: To look it doesn't really matter because the enterprise after
Speaker 1: this is fucked anyway. So they go into the Mutara
Speaker 1: and Nebula at the end because they need to even
Speaker 1: up the score, like they're crippled. Basically, I don't think
Speaker 1: con lowering the shields would have mattered anyway. But it's
Speaker 1: just something that occurred to me while I was watching it.
Speaker 1: Once you tell Cohn something, he's going to use it
Speaker 1: against you.
Speaker 4: But you have to admit it's still every bit as
Speaker 4: thrilling now as it was then, because I remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kid, thing this movie threw off the shackles that
Speaker 1: like you that a space battle has to be a
Speaker 1: dog fight. These are frigates, and it is just as
Speaker 1: tense and as exciting. That lead up when the ships
Speaker 1: are facing each other for the first time are as
Speaker 1: exciting as anything I've seen, and it's just two giant
Speaker 1: ships slowly gliding toward one another. The actual battle portion
Speaker 1: of it is just the to use a phrase later,
Speaker 1: sauce for the goose like that. That the sort of
Speaker 1: the build up to that is the entire thing for me.
Speaker 4: But con says to Kirk, look, you have sixty seconds.
Speaker 1: To give you, sixty seconds for you and your rebellion crew.
Speaker 4: So he's given him all of a minute to send
Speaker 4: over all of the information on Genesis and give himself
Speaker 4: up for his crew or is going to destroy the
Speaker 4: Enterprise regardless, So he's got a minute. Kirk and company
Speaker 4: have a minute to figure out a way through this,
Speaker 4: and I'm on the edge of my seat. How is
Speaker 4: he going to get through this? And when he actually
Speaker 4: does it, it's so satisfying as a viewer to reason
Speaker 4: his way out. But then he after that he has
Speaker 4: to reckon with the idea. So you have this moment
Speaker 4: of triumph with Kirk. But then almost immediately.
Speaker 1: Scotty he's such a bummer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he Scotty has gone up the turbo lift holding
Speaker 4: his dying nephew in his arms. And the nephew, by
Speaker 4: the way, is the first of our half face burnt characters.
Speaker 4: It was just the thing. And he gets his own
Speaker 4: death scene with Kirk where he's in sick bay and
Speaker 4: he says, is the word given, Admiral and Kirk says, yeah,
Speaker 4: warp speed, and then the kid just expires right then
Speaker 4: and there. It's pretty brutal. And then Scotty the waterworks
Speaker 4: start and he doesn't understand what happened, and.
Speaker 1: Only I warned him, being the head of engineering and everything.
Speaker 4: So now so they've damaged Con to the degree where
Speaker 4: now he has to retreat and repair the ship, so
Speaker 4: their blood vengeance battle has to hold for now. But
Speaker 4: in the meantime Con has gone to the space station
Speaker 4: Regular one, where the Genesis weapon or the Genesis devices
Speaker 4: is held with all the scientists, and this is also
Speaker 4: where it gets brutal.
Speaker 1: This movie is so fucking brutal because.
Speaker 4: Eventually the Enterprise makes their way over to the space
Speaker 4: station to see what's going on, and they find it
Speaker 4: completely deserted, and McCoy is one of the people who's
Speaker 4: on a landing party who's looking and there's nobody. They
Speaker 4: can't find anybody there, and McCoy's looking, and then he
Speaker 4: turns around and there's like a it's like a Friday
Speaker 4: the Thirteenth type sting, and he runs into a dead
Speaker 4: body that is hanging from its feet upside down. His
Speaker 4: throat has been slit, and McCoy is, Jim, You've got
Speaker 4: to see this. He's horror as he would be justifiably horrified.
Speaker 1: But then donal elly, he says the first motherfucker you
Speaker 1: ever hear in the Star Trek universe. He just he
Speaker 1: looks at all the bodies like motherfucker. Maybe that was
Speaker 1: the director's cut. Was that? I don't know.
Speaker 4: I wanted to talk a little bit before we go
Speaker 4: any further. You mentioned Kursey ally is in this picture.
Speaker 1: She plays speaking the director's cut, so she plays.
Speaker 4: Savag, who is another Vulcan. She's I think the navigator
Speaker 4: on the Enterprise, and she is Spock's replacement, spokes replacement exactly.
Speaker 4: Can I be really honest for a minute, No, no
Speaker 4: real disrespect to Chursty Allie, because I thought she was
Speaker 4: great on Cheers. I don't think she's very good in
Speaker 4: this picture. Father Malone. I never really liked Curse the
Speaker 4: Alley as Savag. I much preferred Robin Curtis that we
Speaker 4: get in Star Trek three and four, Well, what did
Speaker 4: you think?
Speaker 1: Would you have preferred their original choice Kim Katroll?
Speaker 4: She was the original choice here.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Meyer's original choice for Savic was Kim Katroll. And
Speaker 1: you know this to be true because when Star Trek
Speaker 1: six rolls around, he has another chance to cast a vulcan,
Speaker 1: and he cast Kim Katrol.
Speaker 4: Right, No, I would say, no, I really liked Robin
Speaker 4: Curtis that we're going to see in Star Trek three
Speaker 4: outs she.
Speaker 1: Was definitely the most vulcan the of the three performances.
Speaker 1: But I would counter that this is another half vulcan, But.
Speaker 4: I that doesn't matter to me. It's her performance. She
Speaker 4: feels a little more wooden here. There's something in the
Speaker 4: way she's delivering her lines. There's almost not a smirk,
Speaker 4: but there's just it doesn't feel like there's a lot
Speaker 4: of there's a lot going on, I don't get. I
Speaker 4: don't feel like there's a lot of internal stuff happening.
Speaker 4: I don't know. She just feels flat to me. She
Speaker 4: feels flat and wooden to.
Speaker 1: Me, like an actor who doesn't understand science fiction going.
Speaker 1: I don't know just what am I saying? Okay, whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's what you said. Robin Curtis was vulcan to me,
Speaker 4: and I think it just needed that. And she's so
Speaker 4: central in a lot of ways through a lot of
Speaker 4: these scenes. She's in it a lot, and I just
Speaker 4: I wish she was better, I really do, but I
Speaker 4: just I can't. She may be one of the biggest
Speaker 4: missteps in this movie for me.
Speaker 1: Disagree. I think she's real pretty and I like looking
Speaker 1: at her.
Speaker 4: I'm not disputing her beauty. That's fine. But if you're
Speaker 4: going to cast somebody just for their beauty, you could
Speaker 4: have cast a hundred other actresses to do the same
Speaker 4: thing and be as wooden and as.
Speaker 1: They should have cast young Alice Kreege, the eventual Borg Queen.
Speaker 1: She would have been a fucking phenomenal vulcan.
Speaker 4: She would have been great. I just you could, like
Speaker 4: you could have gotten a dozen other actresses who would
Speaker 4: have done a better job. And I again no disrespect
Speaker 4: to her, because I think she's actually a very good
Speaker 4: comedic actress and I think she's done great work in
Speaker 4: other things. I just don't feel like it took me
Speaker 4: out of the movie a little bit this last time
Speaker 4: I watched it. I just felt like that's a little
Speaker 4: bit of a gaping hole there where there should be
Speaker 4: something a little more solid.
Speaker 1: Name the worst actresses to potentially be cast as vulcans.
Speaker 1: I'll start Terry garr.
Speaker 4: Ruth Buzzy three.
Speaker 1: D Wallace. You know what, I bet she would actually
Speaker 1: turn it out if you put her in the wig,
Speaker 1: gave her those bangs in the fucking ears. I bet
Speaker 1: Dee Wallace would have gotten into it and been a vulcan.
Speaker 1: I think Wallace would have been a good Remove her
Speaker 1: from the list.
Speaker 4: And I totally agree there. Jane Fonda, Nah, I bet
Speaker 4: she'd be good.
Speaker 1: She was Barbarella. I think she gets si fied, she
Speaker 1: knows it.
Speaker 4: Okay, Then forget that. Lily Tomlin perfect.
Speaker 1: She'd be good vulcan. She'd be a good vulcan.
Speaker 4: You know, Kilda Radner good vulcan. No way, Dolly Parker,
Speaker 4: not a chance, I do. You're gonna go Dolly Parker.
Speaker 1: I think that's characters.
Speaker 4: But that's too easy, and she didn't start out as
Speaker 4: an actress. Ellie Long, we're gonna keep with the.
Speaker 1: Would have been good good. Diane Lane, No, she.
Speaker 4: Could have been good. She's got a dramatic side. I
Speaker 4: think she would have been fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm maybe saying that ironically to my premise here,
Speaker 1: because I think Diane Lane actually would have been a
Speaker 1: great fucking choice for Savog.
Speaker 4: I actually think Carrie Fisher could have done a good
Speaker 4: job too.
Speaker 1: Geez. There were so many people that you would have
Speaker 1: preferred to.
Speaker 4: There was a lot. And again I feel bad because
Speaker 4: you know, rest in peace, Chursty Alley, what have you.
Speaker 4: But it doesn't give me pleasure to say what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: But I just don't. I don't think she was right
Speaker 4: for this.
Speaker 1: We'll play a blaster beam in her honor.
Speaker 4: You know that the guy who invented and played the
Speaker 4: blaster been I mean Craig Huxley. Craig Huxley, he composed
Speaker 4: the music that plays underneath the Genesis video that you
Speaker 4: talked about, the computer generated demonstration. That's his music playing
Speaker 4: underneath that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a nice tie to the first film and
Speaker 1: the James Horner's reverence to Jerry Goldsmith. James Horner taking
Speaker 1: over composing duties here and let's talk about that for
Speaker 1: a little bit. Oh my god, Look, it sounds remarkably
Speaker 1: like his score to Battle Beyond the Stars. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going to hold that against him, because this is
Speaker 1: a great score.
Speaker 4: I thought it was wonderful. It has the rousing numbers
Speaker 4: that you need for these moments of triumph. But there's
Speaker 4: some beautifully dark pieces of music that relate specifically to Cahn.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, the one motif with the horns just
Speaker 1: no no no no no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no.
Speaker 4: At on the way. Yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker 5: To me.
Speaker 4: It feels more modern than Jerry Goldsmith's the Motion Pictures score,
Speaker 4: and it.
Speaker 1: If I scrint the idiot, it's less flighty.
Speaker 4: If I squint a little bit, it almost feels a
Speaker 4: little bit like John Williams taking a stab at a
Speaker 4: Star Trek score because it has motifs and themes that
Speaker 4: kind of come back and we revisit. But it has
Speaker 4: all this great discordant stuff propulsive. It's awesome. I loved
Speaker 4: this soundtrack. In some ways, I like it. I loved
Speaker 4: how lavish and lush the motion picture score was. But
Speaker 4: if I'm being honest, I think I like the score
Speaker 4: a little bit more as a piece of music.
Speaker 1: I think the next I think the motion picture score
Speaker 1: is appropriate for that movie. But that movie is an
Speaker 1: outlier as far as the rest of the Star Trek
Speaker 1: films go. It's if we could forget it, we would.
Speaker 1: There's just so much weirdness about it, from the uniforms
Speaker 1: on up.
Speaker 4: It's it's a miracle that they even made a second one,
Speaker 4: despite the fact that it was so successful at the
Speaker 4: box office. It was such a weird movie it was
Speaker 4: hard to see a way through that. And all credit
Speaker 4: goes to Harve Bennett for figuring it out.
Speaker 1: By night look that the first movie was a big success.
Speaker 1: I remember My Happy Meal from McDonald's. The very first
Speaker 1: Happy Meal tie in was with Star Trek Wow, where
Speaker 1: they had I remember the box itself and they had
Speaker 1: a little Klingon puzzle. They had to solve on it.
Speaker 1: That's all I remember. I do wonder if they had
Speaker 1: some sort of vegure toy to give away. This probe
Speaker 1: was sent out by mankind and now he wants to
Speaker 1: hits your Happy Meal. Yeah, here's Spock in quiet contemplation.
Speaker 4: So it had. It came with a little like reproduction.
Speaker 4: It looks like a walkie talkie. Oh yeahs it says
Speaker 4: Star Trek on it. I had that looks like some
Speaker 4: stickers or some iron on transfers with the Federation iconography.
Speaker 4: There is a little game, like a little board game
Speaker 4: inside of it where you have to make it to
Speaker 4: vegure like a little it's like a It's basically just
Speaker 4: a piece of paper that you fold out and you
Speaker 4: can play a game on it. The box has all
Speaker 4: these fake buttons and screens like as if it was electronic. Wow,
Speaker 4: it's pretty surprising. It's very elaborate.
Speaker 1: In the commercial feature to Klingon, did they really?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: It's and it had a ring. It had a plastic
Speaker 4: ring that had a picture of the Enterprise that you.
Speaker 1: Could put on and a little note telling you how
Speaker 1: sad all of these proceedings are. How little you can
Speaker 1: relate to this franchise at this present time.
Speaker 4: Oh, here's a trivia question for you. How much do
Speaker 4: you think a happy meal back then with a hamburger
Speaker 4: and with a cheeseburger? What do you think the price
Speaker 4: breakdown is? How much you figure it would be with cheeseburger,
Speaker 4: which is the more expensive of the two options.
Speaker 1: Dollar fifty You.
Speaker 4: Are so close. It's a dollar fifty eight back then
Speaker 4: nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Anyway, let's get back to the Star Trek show.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, let's do it. So we were talking about I'm.
Speaker 1: Talking about beaming down to the planet with the actual
Speaker 1: Genesis project is after Kirk is reunited with Carol Marcus
Speaker 1: and his petulant son Merrit Buttrick from Square Pegs. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep saying that, do.
Speaker 4: You know Merk Buttrick was all of twenty nine years
Speaker 4: old when he passed away.
Speaker 1: That's horrible. So young, so young, And he was on
Speaker 1: Square Pegs. He was on Square new wave television series
Speaker 1: that lasted two seasons on CBS.
Speaker 4: No. I can still hear the theme in my mind.
Speaker 1: I was square Pegs, Square Pegs, square Pegs, always never
Speaker 1: quite right.
Speaker 4: Part of the reason why they hired him specifically is
Speaker 4: because he he physically looked like he could be the
Speaker 4: offspring of James Kirk and Carol Marcus because his hair
Speaker 4: was curly like William Shatner's, but physically he resembled Carol Marcus.
Speaker 4: I actually think that's pretty smart because you look at
Speaker 4: him and you can actually see both of them in
Speaker 4: his face. Yes, he's petulant, and he's a little bit
Speaker 4: seems a little moody for somebody who's like a hy
Speaker 4: falutint scientist. But I always liked Merk Buttrick, iways thought
Speaker 4: he was a decent actor back then.
Speaker 1: Did you ever read that Gene Rodenberry's notes on Nick
Speaker 1: Myer's version of the screenplay.
Speaker 4: No, how critical was he, it's.
Speaker 1: All really stupid stuff. Like when we meet Carol, Marcus
Speaker 1: and David, he's complaining about Starfleet and you know how
Speaker 1: they're basically a military organization and he doesn't like dealing
Speaker 1: with them. And one of Roddenberry's notes was, these sciencesists
Speaker 1: would not be speaking ill of Starfleet. They wouldn't be
Speaker 1: just they would not disparage them. They're not a military organization.
Speaker 1: They're one of exploration. Like Gene, we got it. That
Speaker 1: was the sixties, man, Like, people are going to have
Speaker 1: a problem with Starfleet. Get the fuck over it already.
Speaker 1: It is not a utopia you created. We need to
Speaker 1: have some drama.
Speaker 4: That's one of the most realistic things in the movie
Speaker 4: I thought, which is that these scientists have an innate
Speaker 4: suspicion of the military because they know that the capabilities
Speaker 4: of the Genesis device, and they this is a common
Speaker 4: refrain with any scientific discovery. They're worried that it could
Speaker 4: be applied to some sort of dreadful military application. I
Speaker 4: buy that. I think their concerns are warranted, and we
Speaker 4: see that play out here.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Look, the Genesis device is one of a piece thing.
Speaker 1: It's an idea to terra form to bring life to
Speaker 1: the lifeless, but it can just as easily be shot
Speaker 1: into a planet that is already populated and destroy everything.
Speaker 1: They've got some blood on their hands to them. They're
Speaker 1: scientists blame in Starfleet, but look, there's plenty of blame
Speaker 1: to go around. This is not the future Zootopia. The
Speaker 1: future frutopia that fucking Rodenberry kept going on about.
Speaker 4: That can only that kind of I don't know optimism,
Speaker 4: like willfully blinded optimism. It can only get you so far.
Speaker 4: And that works a lot better, I think, to a
Speaker 4: great degree with the next generation as well. We'll talk
Speaker 4: about when we get into those movies. That is a
Speaker 4: utopia that I can buy that. I feel it feels
Speaker 4: real to me without being cloying.
Speaker 1: But starting in season three, when Geen Rodberry was no
Speaker 1: longer around and the writers were like, oh man, we
Speaker 1: can actually do stories that are involving and people can
Speaker 1: relate to as opposed to this godlike race of humans
Speaker 1: out in the future, benevolently deigning to bring lesser races
Speaker 1: into the fantastic starfleet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was the spock thing? I D I see?
Speaker 4: Was it infinite diversity in commonality or something? It was
Speaker 4: he wanted to market necklaces with the I D I see.
Speaker 4: It was like his way of marketing the spot character
Speaker 4: that ID I see necklace.
Speaker 1: So another word to make a buck off a NEMO.
Speaker 4: So it turns out they're still under the influence of
Speaker 4: the mind worms and send They send the coordinates to Kahn,
Speaker 4: who beams up the Genesis device, but not before Terrell
Speaker 4: finally goes crazy. When he's ordered to kill Kirk, he
Speaker 4: turns the phaser. It's another horrible tableau that plays in
Speaker 4: front of us. He turns the phaser on himself. And
Speaker 4: there's something about the way that that the people who
Speaker 4: are shot with phasers scream in this it just seems
Speaker 4: like an awful way to die, to shoot yourself.
Speaker 1: The way that they de res as it were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's horrible. It seems like patchwork, like you're going in
Speaker 1: pieces slowly as opposed to Yeah, yeah, you would just
Speaker 1: get kill the faser and fall over. Your body would
Speaker 1: light up for a second and go fall over. And
Speaker 1: in the original series, here it's slow disintegration and it's
Speaker 1: very painful.
Speaker 4: It looks awful, but fortunately Chekhov screams and he falls.
Speaker 1: For fortunately, Oh man, I'm talking about slug whole weirdness.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the slug crawls out of his ear and Kirk
Speaker 4: kills it.
Speaker 1: So chess playing Russian brain was just too strong for
Speaker 1: that one.
Speaker 4: So it looks like old Kirk is met his match.
Speaker 4: There's nothing he's stuck in this planet.
Speaker 1: But okay, and here is one of these you don't
Speaker 1: like to see the movie we discussed this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will go on hurting you. I will leave you as
Speaker 1: you left me, buried alive. Okay, bye, mister Spock. Please
Speaker 1: take the Enterprise to the nearest star base and turn
Speaker 1: here with an armada. Also, you might want to start
Speaker 1: tracking the Reliant and fuck them up, because there's more
Speaker 1: than one ship in this star fleet. I can count
Speaker 1: down here in the Genesis Cave eating delicious looking apples.
Speaker 4: My counter to that would be, we already know that
Speaker 4: the Enterprise is in no shape to go toe to
Speaker 4: toe with the Reliant.
Speaker 1: They should have already left as soon as they beamed off.
Speaker 1: The Enterprise should have turned tail and done exactly what
Speaker 1: they broadcast, Go find a starbase, return with an armada.
Speaker 4: I don't think the Enterprise could go that. I don't
Speaker 4: think it could go on anything but impulse power at
Speaker 4: this point. It can't warp away, can't travel fast. What
Speaker 4: are the odds that? What are the odds Con wouldn't
Speaker 4: find them there on his sensors and then just take.
Speaker 1: Him out at that At that moment, Con was just
Speaker 1: as fucked up as they were.
Speaker 4: Now he'd done his repairs, he was better.
Speaker 1: No, no, they beamed over to the regular one because
Speaker 1: they knew they had time because Con was focked at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 4: But in the meantime he had he had the time
Speaker 4: to do repairs on his ship. That's why he retreated. Remember,
Speaker 4: the Enterprise is not going anywhere. We have to retreat,
Speaker 4: we have to withdraw.
Speaker 1: He says that, listen, people make decisions in the moment.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that everything we see on screen
Speaker 1: isn't totally valid, And this criticism isn't coming from a
Speaker 1: place of forty five or so years of watching this
Speaker 1: goddamn movie. Yeah, I just want to say that tactically,
Speaker 1: James T. Kirk, who beat the Kobyashi Maru, would have said,
Speaker 1: go get help.
Speaker 4: I choose to believe that the situation was still so
Speaker 4: tenuous that he couldn't afford to put the Enterprise at risk.
Speaker 4: I hear what you're saying, but I don't necessarily buy
Speaker 4: it completely.
Speaker 1: All power to the communications array, Uhura, please do your stuff.
Speaker 4: Con would have picked up on it, and that would
Speaker 4: have been it.
Speaker 1: Heren want the fucking transmission that they made to like
Speaker 1: the nearest frigate or fucking dreadnought of the Starfleet Armada.
Speaker 4: He would have jammed all frequencies.
Speaker 1: They could get out of here. And speaking of there's
Speaker 1: the other problem with the movie, right, They're like, we
Speaker 1: can't see him. We think he's on the other side
Speaker 1: of this planet. And then later when they get back
Speaker 1: on the ship, they bring up tactical and it shows
Speaker 1: exactly where they are. Nevertheless, out of that plot hole, buddy.
Speaker 4: Let me switch gears for a minute. And this is
Speaker 4: in no way a capitulation for them alone. I merely
Speaker 4: want to get this in before I forget about it now.
Speaker 4: Let's I want to talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 4: Carol Marcus is played by actress Babe besh Right. When
Speaker 4: I watched this movie as a nine year old, she
Speaker 4: seemed so old to me. Both both her and Kirk
Speaker 4: seemed old, like the idea that they had this adult son.
Speaker 4: I just figured, Wow, they're old. She was all of
Speaker 4: forty years old at the time.
Speaker 1: Father Malone, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: She was twelve years younger than us.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, I know, I'm an old man, So were
Speaker 1: you what do you so?
Speaker 4: God him? Kirk Shatner was fifty one at the.
Speaker 1: Time, which is the character's age, and it would make
Speaker 1: sense that he would have had a dalliance with a
Speaker 1: woman ten years.
Speaker 4: I will say this was this is the dawning of
Speaker 4: the sort of pawnche Shatner.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Thank god, this particular uniform belts very flattering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it won't be flattering by the time we get to
Speaker 1: say generations true.
Speaker 4: But he was time as a control panel captain. Anyway.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to mention that because it occurred to
Speaker 4: me as I was watching this. Wow, I can't believe
Speaker 4: how young she actually was, but and that kind of
Speaker 4: how old are we meant to believe that David Marcus
Speaker 4: was in this twenty two, twenty three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess she could have.
Speaker 4: Had she would have been She would have had to
Speaker 4: have been about eighteen years old when she had him,
Speaker 4: because then he.
Speaker 1: Could have been in her twenties. Just the actor's ages
Speaker 1: don't really matter. S she's forty and he's fifty in
Speaker 1: this movie. And he met her twenty years ago when
Speaker 1: he was thirty and she was twenty and they had
Speaker 1: a fling on Regular nine or whatever the fuck, and.
Speaker 4: I don't know anyway, let's move on. They're on. When
Speaker 4: they're in the Genesis Cave biding their time, Kirk and
Speaker 4: Savag and McCoy, that's when we learned the truth about
Speaker 4: the Kobyashi Maru, which is that the only reason Kirk
Speaker 4: was able to win is because he cheated. He changed,
Speaker 4: he reprogrammed the simulation so that it was possible to
Speaker 4: save the ship that was in the neutral.
Speaker 1: Zone, and that's where they're in the no win scenario.
Speaker 4: That's the and that will come back to haunt Kirk,
Speaker 4: as we'll see at the end of this movie, because
Speaker 4: that's exactly what he is faced with. But again, it
Speaker 4: just knocks me out that the Kobyashi Maru wasn't something
Speaker 4: that was mentioned in the original series because it's so
Speaker 4: ingrained in the lore of Star Trek at this point.
Speaker 1: And can I just say, we're going to get there eventually.
Speaker 1: But the fucking jj Abram's first Star Trek movie where
Speaker 1: they show the Kobeyashi mur they show him beating it
Speaker 1: is the worst representation of that, Like we'd all imagined
Speaker 1: and so in some way we had all fan fictioned it,
Speaker 1: so nothing was going to satisfy seeing that. But the
Speaker 1: way they do it, where he's so cavalier that he's
Speaker 1: just whatever, and he's like chewing on an apple and shite,
Speaker 1: it was just like, so he was just like, basically
Speaker 1: should have walked in with a sandwich board that said
Speaker 1: I cheated basically.
Speaker 4: But what I think the only interesting thing to come
Speaker 4: out of that is, as Shatner says, or as Kirk says,
Speaker 4: in this he was given a commendation for original thinking,
Speaker 4: for figuring out a way through this thing, But in
Speaker 4: the Abrams retelling it's the exact opposite. He doesn't get
Speaker 4: a commendation. He's actually brought before like the board the
Speaker 4: administration to answer for he could get expelled for what
Speaker 4: he did. Basically, I thought that was maybe the only
Speaker 4: interesting thing to come out of This is an actual fact.
Speaker 4: If a student went in and reprogrammed the simulation and cheated,
Speaker 4: they wouldn't be plauded applauded for it. They would probably
Speaker 4: be put up before the academic board for cheating. No,
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Kirk and Star Trek two is not saying I got caught.
Speaker 1: He's saying I've reprogrammed it and they gave me a
Speaker 1: commendation because I solved their problem. In the Abrams one,
Speaker 1: he gets caught and then they put them up on trial. Now,
Speaker 1: the Abrams one could have been saved in my opinion,
Speaker 1: if they catch him and then give him a commendation
Speaker 1: before innovative thinking.
Speaker 4: That's fair. We'll get to that. We got a few
Speaker 4: movies to make our way through.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, here we the Batar and Nebulas.
Speaker 4: Yes, Kirk and company are beamed back aboard the enterprise.
Speaker 4: That there was some subterfuge with the with the terminology
Speaker 4: that Spock and Kirk used, leading ConA believe it would
Speaker 4: take days for the Enterprise to be prepared, but In fact,
Speaker 4: it only took a few hours to get them to
Speaker 4: a minimal state of operation.
Speaker 1: Naval shit going on some naval codes. They got a
Speaker 1: bosun's whistle in this speaking of the Navy, we've never
Speaker 1: seen that of the Enterprise before.
Speaker 4: I love that. I love that.
Speaker 1: There's a no smoking sign on the bridge.
Speaker 4: That's a sign of the times. So they decide, or
Speaker 4: they figure out that they're near this thing called the
Speaker 4: Mutara nebula, and they know that if they enter into
Speaker 4: this nebula, their shields and anything tactical will effectively be
Speaker 4: rendered useless. But they also know that if they can
Speaker 4: entice Cohn into there, they'll be on even footing, because
Speaker 4: then con will be as blind as defenseless as they are.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want us going in there.
Speaker 4: It's so they go in.
Speaker 1: The Kirk is so full Kirk at the end of this,
Speaker 1: he is in so full control. This is the culmination
Speaker 1: of everything from the television series. All the bravado, all
Speaker 1: of the skill, all of the like what we expected
Speaker 1: from Captain Kirk as a capable Starfleet captain is fully
Speaker 1: on display here.
Speaker 4: Exactly. He is in Captain Kirk mode here because he
Speaker 4: knows this is their only chance. And he's so confident
Speaker 4: in his ability to out maneuver Khan because, as Bock
Speaker 4: says to him, Khan, in all of our dealings with him,
Speaker 4: Khan has shown a remarkable He only seems to deal
Speaker 4: in two dimensional thinking. And Kirk recognizes this means, okay,
Speaker 4: we're in starships, we're in this space. It's not just
Speaker 4: about next and a y axis. There's a z axis
Speaker 4: that we're dealing with. He knows that he can out
Speaker 4: maneuver Khan in this nebula and get behind him, get
Speaker 4: the drop on him, and in fact, that's exactly what
Speaker 4: he ends up doing. He like any good naval battle,
Speaker 4: he outflanks Khan's ship, the Reliant, and basically they go
Speaker 4: at it, and it's a great sequence. It's very tense,
Speaker 4: but it's also got those rousing moments where he gets
Speaker 4: the upper hand.
Speaker 1: And that sequence is born of Nicholas Meyer talking to
Speaker 1: the people at the who were doing the effects and
Speaker 1: they had to explain to him, you're in space, so
Speaker 1: it's not like a naval battle. You can go up
Speaker 1: this way and that way, and him going, oh okay,
Speaker 1: let me write that into the script.
Speaker 4: It's great. So they have this effectively this naval battle,
Speaker 4: and Kirk's gambit works. He shoots the shit out of
Speaker 4: the Reliant and the Reliant has lost one of its
Speaker 4: nascelles and Khn is in fact mortally wounded at that point,
Speaker 4: and we get another, yet another person who his face
Speaker 4: is burned on one half. I don't know why what
Speaker 4: the obsession was with this, but Khan has this like
Speaker 4: Freddy Krueger look on one half of his face and as.
Speaker 1: A last grist being too much sure.
Speaker 4: And you can tell that he can't use one of
Speaker 4: his arms because what he does is as a last
Speaker 4: ditch measure, he sets the Genesis device to debt Date
Speaker 4: to self destruct on the ship. But to do that,
Speaker 4: he's got to reach up with his one good hand
Speaker 4: and do this little spinny thing which actually looks quite
Speaker 4: real for something that's got to unlock this Genesis device,
Speaker 4: but he sets it to self destruct.
Speaker 1: Montabon's performance here convinced young me that action in these
Speaker 1: movies might have consequence beyond somebody just falling over and
Speaker 1: either being dead or recovering. In the next scene, he's
Speaker 1: playing his injuries so fucking realistically and painfully it's hard
Speaker 1: to watch.
Speaker 4: It is because you can tell that's he doesn't have
Speaker 4: much long left. He looks awful and his movements convey that.
Speaker 4: So he sets the Genesis to self destruct effectively, and
Speaker 4: the Enterprise there's a problem with the warp drive, and
Speaker 4: the Enterprise can't there's no way they can get away
Speaker 4: in time to avoid the destruction of this. And this
Speaker 4: is where many tears were shed because Spock realizes that
Speaker 4: he's got to try and figure out some way to
Speaker 4: do this. So Spock mind melds with McCoy and says remember.
Speaker 4: And that was actually something that Nicholas Meyer and Nimoy
Speaker 4: talked about because they wanted to leave this remote possibility
Speaker 4: that maybe Spock this is science fiction, we could bring
Speaker 4: Spock back, possibly, but we need to leave ourselves an
Speaker 4: out to figure out how are we going to bring
Speaker 4: him back? How does he possibly survive this awful end?
Speaker 4: And that's what they did. It was actually Nimoy's idea
Speaker 4: to use the word remember, because they're like, what does
Speaker 4: he say, what does he do? What do you remember?
Speaker 4: It's so vague that you can almost make anything out
Speaker 4: of it. But I give them full credit for keeping
Speaker 4: their options open because they felt good about this movie.
Speaker 4: Everyone talked about how great the story was and how
Speaker 4: awesome it was coming together. Nimoy I think was seeing
Speaker 4: the possibility of, you know what, maybe this could lead
Speaker 4: to other things. Maybe this isn't the end after all,
Speaker 4: So I got to keep my options open. So that's
Speaker 4: what he does. He mind melds with McCoy in the
Speaker 4: Vegas terms possible, just in case he was to come back,
Speaker 4: and it was pretty prescient hiccup shots.
Speaker 1: It was done way after that was not part of
Speaker 1: the original shooting, not part of principal photography. That is
Speaker 1: them literally covering their asses and going got to get
Speaker 1: something in there in case we got to do something
Speaker 1: to come back, because yeah, Nemai's got cold feet, because
Speaker 1: we've got a winner on our hands.
Speaker 4: But what ensues is what every diehard Trek fan was dreading,
Speaker 4: which is Spock takes the cap off and it's like
Speaker 4: this jet of energy that shoots up that he's got
Speaker 4: to put his hands in and rejigger something and do
Speaker 4: something to this warp engine. It all looks, it still
Speaker 4: looks really good. It doesn't. The effect is actually very
Speaker 4: effective because it's almost like he's got this blast of
Speaker 4: radiation that he's fighting against the warp engine and he
Speaker 4: whatever he does works, and we cut to the bridge
Speaker 4: and I think, like Sulu says, oh, we have full
Speaker 4: power restored, Captain. And what's great is Kirk says, all right, Scotty,
Speaker 4: you've done it. Let's get out of here, and they
Speaker 4: get out because he thinks, oh, it's just a miracle
Speaker 4: worker doing his thing again. Guy, this is what Scotty does.
Speaker 1: Price that he's about to pay right.
Speaker 4: He hasn't even.
Speaker 1: Realized that, for hate's sake, Khan has spit his last
Speaker 1: breath at him.
Speaker 4: Kirk looks over at Spock's station and realizes, oh shit,
Speaker 4: Spock's not here. He puts two and two together and
Speaker 4: he runs. He races down to the engine room. He
Speaker 4: even does this thing where he's coming down a ladder
Speaker 4: and instead of going down rung after rung, he kind
Speaker 4: of holds the outside and slides all the way down.
Speaker 4: Did you notice that he did that move?
Speaker 1: Of course, it's the first time I ever saw it
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and it made me just
Speaker 1: want to do that every time I got near on
Speaker 1: a ladder.
Speaker 4: It's like a swashbuckling move. And he rushes over to
Speaker 4: the engine room and he's going to open it in
Speaker 4: McCoy and Scotty stop him. Scotty's words are still how
Speaker 4: do they get to me? Scotty, he says, well, you'll
Speaker 4: flood the whole compartment. Don't open it is radiation and.
Speaker 1: No, man, I think of that line too, and I
Speaker 1: just no.
Speaker 4: Sometimes he says. The line is he says Spock, and
Speaker 4: Scotty says he's dead already. He's not actually dead, but
Speaker 4: the gravity of that is pretty heavy, because he's still
Speaker 4: he Once he realizes that Kirk is there, he Spock
Speaker 4: who's been radiated in his skin. It looks a little
Speaker 4: melty and not good. He gets up in what the
Speaker 4: best part of this is that he gets up and
Speaker 4: he actually straightens his uniform. He's dying right there in
Speaker 4: front of us, but he still wants to straighten his uniform.
Speaker 4: In the vulcan, he looked presentable for the captain. So
Speaker 4: he goes over. We all know the conversation. We've seen
Speaker 4: the seen a million times.
Speaker 1: Part is that he walks into that pillar. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then recovers like that moment is, oh fuck, Spock is
Speaker 1: going to die.
Speaker 4: He's really it's taking everything in him just to be
Speaker 4: able to talk to Captain Kirk one last time, and
Speaker 4: they have this conversation about the ship that's out of danger.
Speaker 4: Don't weep for me, captain, because you know.
Speaker 1: The mays everybody, it's Nicholas sticking in literature every which way.
Speaker 1: Original title for the movie was Undiscovered Country, and they
Speaker 1: in Paramount said, get the fuck out of here. What
Speaker 1: does that mean?
Speaker 4: He'll get there? Eventually, he'll get there. So Spock gives
Speaker 4: one last live long and prosper puts his irradiated mitt
Speaker 4: right up to the wall. Kirk kind of touches, does
Speaker 4: that thing where he touches like the boy in the
Speaker 4: plastic bubble. He touches it, and then Spock expires and
Speaker 4: it's there. There was no way as a kid to
Speaker 4: prepare for that. It was like, really, Spock is actually dead.
Speaker 4: That can't be.
Speaker 1: Rivers Nerd tears flowed down the aisles of movie theaters
Speaker 1: around the nation.
Speaker 4: The best was yet to come because then they cut
Speaker 4: to They've put Spock's body in a photon torpedo casing
Speaker 4: and they're giving.
Speaker 1: What are they doing?
Speaker 4: Very unorthodox Spock.
Speaker 1: Okay, this does he have a d n R type?
Speaker 1: But document somewhere on file back at Starfleet that none
Speaker 1: of you are bothering to even contact them, to let
Speaker 1: them know how many crew members are now dead and
Speaker 1: what do they want to do with their remains. No,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea. Let's stick them in a photon
Speaker 1: torpedo tube and shoot him at that planet.
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't know why they didn't. He must
Speaker 4: have had There must have been instructions for the proper man.
Speaker 1: If I have to die, please shoot my body at
Speaker 1: a newly formed planet.
Speaker 4: It's like something that Hunter Thompson would do. You don't
Speaker 4: expect a Spock to be on board with us, but for.
Speaker 1: Whatever reason, he is a half human. Apparently human is
Speaker 1: a fucking rager.
Speaker 4: But despite all of that, Kirk is given this speech,
Speaker 4: and again it's brutal to watch it. Brutal in the
Speaker 4: best way because.
Speaker 1: Listen, people make fun of this because he breaks when
Speaker 1: he says the word human when he's discussing his best
Speaker 1: friend who is half vulcan and half human, and he's
Speaker 1: now just realizing the price he's paid in this fucking
Speaker 1: battle that was all his fault to begin with. This
Speaker 1: is his chickens coming home to roost his dead friend,
Speaker 1: and William Shatner as fucking James T. Kirk breaks talking
Speaker 1: about him. I felt it then, I feel it now
Speaker 1: if anyone is laughing about Shatner's performance, and I know
Speaker 1: he's a big motherfucking ham obviously, but this isn't Ham.
Speaker 1: This is and if you can't get with that, then
Speaker 1: get at it.
Speaker 4: It's one of his best line readings ever. It is
Speaker 4: so emotional and so raw because I think anyone who
Speaker 4: has been a similar situation, maybe you're at a funeral
Speaker 4: or mourning the death of a loved one and you're
Speaker 4: trying to talk and you get that catch in your
Speaker 4: throat because the emotion catches up to you and you
Speaker 4: just can't even get the words out. Anyone can relate
Speaker 4: to what he's going through because he just he made
Speaker 4: it through most of the words that he's given at
Speaker 4: this effectively, this sort of given his last words to
Speaker 4: his dead friend. But the words just his you know,
Speaker 4: that throat tightening thing where you just can't go on.
Speaker 4: That's it, and it's so relatable and it's so human,
Speaker 4: and it's, like I said, it's probably one of his
Speaker 4: best single performances that moment.
Speaker 1: And then they cut the legs out from the end,
Speaker 1: tirety of all the emotion, with a wink of guess what, folks,
Speaker 1: bonklebe back in Star Trek three. I'm surprised they didn't
Speaker 1: have a fucking credit to come up to say Spock
Speaker 1: will return in Star Trek three the Search for Spok.
Speaker 4: Clearly they were already anticipating this, But if things had
Speaker 4: broken differently, maybe, if it hadn't been successful, maybe this
Speaker 4: could have functioned as the elegy for Spock. Because they
Speaker 4: don't ever tell you, hey, he's going to come back,
Speaker 4: or how he could possibly come back. There's no way
Speaker 4: of knowing that the last shot is really they've shot
Speaker 4: the coffin effectively onto the Genesis planet, and that's it.
Speaker 4: It could have gone any which way.
Speaker 1: It could go anyway. When his photon torpedo coffin arcs
Speaker 1: through the air, glowing brightly as amazing grace is played
Speaker 1: on the bagpipes, and then we see that his photon
Speaker 1: torpedo tube has somehow survived entering the newly formed atmosphere
Speaker 1: and landed gently in a jungle. We just sitting there.
Speaker 1: What could be in there? If they didn't have the
Speaker 1: shot of the photon torpedo tube and the obvious what
Speaker 1: could happen, folks, we don't know. Then, I would agree,
Speaker 1: but it is in there, and this is Nicholas Meyer
Speaker 1: like that was foisted on him. He didn't want that
Speaker 1: shot in there.
Speaker 4: Look, we have the benefit of hindsight because obviously he
Speaker 4: did come back, and we know this now, but at
Speaker 4: the time there's no such thing as a sure thing.
Speaker 4: When it came to this, things break a little differently.
Speaker 4: Maybe Memoi decides I'm never going to come back. I
Speaker 4: think this death scene was it for the character. I'm done.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. You can either have the photon torpedo
Speaker 1: tube or Spock doing the famous Space the final Frontier
Speaker 1: speech at the end. You can't have both because both
Speaker 1: is we'll definitely be talking with seeing Spock again. One
Speaker 1: could be a send off, another could be a sendoff. Together,
Speaker 1: it's see you next summer.
Speaker 4: I was fine with it because I just thought they
Speaker 4: were hedging their bets, and I get it that maybe
Speaker 4: Meyer wanted it to be more final and he didn't
Speaker 4: want to have any equivocation about whether that because it
Speaker 4: it does undercut the seriousness of the situation to have
Speaker 4: It's as if Tony Stark's Iron Man died and then
Speaker 4: the next movie he just comes back and it's okay,
Speaker 4: guess what, he didn't actually die.
Speaker 1: It's not already emotion. That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 4: Right. But I I.
Speaker 1: When if he wanted to come back and do Star
Speaker 1: Trek three, he said, I can do vengeance. I can't
Speaker 1: do resurrection.
Speaker 4: I just think, again, we have the benefit of the
Speaker 4: way things happened, but this could very easily have gone
Speaker 4: the other way. Again, a few things break differently, Nimoy
Speaker 4: decides he's done. Maybe they call it a day after
Speaker 4: Star Trek two, you go with a bang. Maybe it's
Speaker 4: not as successful. Who knows, But that's not the way
Speaker 4: things happen. So we can only go with the history
Speaker 4: as it played out.
Speaker 1: Oh ultimately, look, this is the remains the best film
Speaker 1: in the series.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, without questioning. Let me back up, this was
Speaker 4: the very best of the original series Star Trek movies.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna say it's the best of the next
Speaker 4: generation movie because there's at least one incredible entry in
Speaker 4: that series that I would hold up favorably against this.
Speaker 4: We'll get to it. Yeah, but certain men earlier, right,
Speaker 4: But certainly amongst the original series films, this was the
Speaker 4: very best. But that's not to say there's some good
Speaker 4: ones on the horizon. There's some not so good ones
Speaker 4: and some at least one very terrible one we'll get to.
Speaker 4: But in this case, I'm safe like you are in
Speaker 4: saying this was the best of the originals.
Speaker 1: Good bad. It's all win win as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: Even the bad ones are going to be enjoyable here.
Speaker 1: But this is Head and Hilder's above all the original
Speaker 1: series movies. The tone is perfect, the fucking plotting is perfect,
Speaker 1: the gravity with which they approached the subject matter and
Speaker 1: the characters and consequences. Not to mention what a fucking
Speaker 1: densely plotted screenplay this is. If you haven't read the screenplay,
Speaker 1: do so. Sometimes Nick Meyer's screenplays are hell of a
Speaker 1: Reid And you know what, And if you haven't seen
Speaker 1: his movie Time after Time, with David Warner as Jack
Speaker 1: the Ripper and Malcolm McDowell as HG. Wells traveling to
Speaker 1: modern day than nineteen seventies San Francisco, you're doing yourself
Speaker 1: a disservice. It's fantastic. It's where Mary Steinbergin met Malcolm McDowell,
Speaker 1: then they got married.
Speaker 4: It's amazing. Malcolm McDowell is so good in that because
Speaker 4: he was obviously best known from A Clockwork Orange and
Speaker 4: other movies like that where he's playing somebody with people
Speaker 4: who maybe have a streak, maybe aren't so nice. His HG.
Speaker 4: Wells in Time after Time is brilliant because you would
Speaker 4: never expect that kind of performance to come out of
Speaker 4: Malcolm McDowell. But he is so good in that movie.
Speaker 4: And David Warner is so creepy. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Malcolm mcdell comes off as meek in that film,
Speaker 1: which is something I didn't think he was capable of.
Speaker 1: But there you go. What a fucking act ever. And
Speaker 1: we'll see him about him Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we'll see guess what, We'll see David Warner
Speaker 4: in multiple Star Trek movies on the horizon.
Speaker 1: This is true that gor Kan son of a Bitch.
Speaker 1: I think that's good pretty much to do it. Don't
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 4: That's gonna do it?
Speaker 1: That's here's my subtitle for the film Star Trek two
Speaker 1: French Horns in Space.
Speaker 4: I agree with you, though, ultimately this is the best,
Speaker 4: the most complete story. It has everything. It's got great action,
Speaker 4: great emotion, great suspense. It's the most complete of all
Speaker 4: of those original Star Treks.
Speaker 1: And it can stand alone. I think you can watch
Speaker 1: this movie without having any prior knowledge to the original series.
Speaker 1: You get it. They lay it out for you pretty
Speaker 1: wonderfully holds up.
Speaker 4: Think of other movies from nineteen eighty two, there's nothing.
Speaker 4: It's really not much that dates this movie. It just
Speaker 4: feels this could have been made last year. Everything looks real,
Speaker 4: the direction is fantastic, the sets are great, the costuming
Speaker 4: is great, and it's a great story. Timeless, I would.
Speaker 1: Say, are you saying Porky's isn't timeless?
Speaker 4: Was that another one? You mentioned? The Poultergeist? That's an
Speaker 4: outlier because I think Poultergeist could also be a fairly timeless.
Speaker 1: So effective Cannery Row, remember that timeless classic. That's a
Speaker 1: period piece and it looks older than dirt.
Speaker 4: I watched that as a nine year old on cable.
Speaker 4: Didn't understand what the fuck was going on in that movie.
Speaker 4: Still probably don't.
Speaker 1: Nothing dated in Eating Row, also of the same year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's Paul Bartel he was. That's such an
Speaker 4: outlier case.
Speaker 1: Nothing dated there. All these things are incredibly dated.
Speaker 2: HB.
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna you're looking at nineteen eighty two movies.
Speaker 1: But yeah, man, how about Cone and the Barbarian. How
Speaker 1: about that that came out the same ear This was
Speaker 1: a banner fucking year for movies. Annie came out that year.
Speaker 1: Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid came out that year. Remember
Speaker 1: The Escape Artist with Ryan O'Neil's kid. Did you see
Speaker 1: that movie? The Escape One? The Escape? No? I did
Speaker 1: not saw that in theater a bunch of times by
Speaker 1: myself as a young child.
Speaker 4: Here, let's I will see your Cannery Row and raise
Speaker 4: you TUTSI good movie, but not exactly. Couldn't make the
Speaker 4: claim that that could have been made last year.
Speaker 1: I Will see your Tutsie and raise you The Pirate Move.
Speaker 4: Oh with Christy McNicol. Yeah, I remember that terrible movie.
Speaker 4: Listen this terrible movie.
Speaker 1: This was a great year for movies. The Beast Master
Speaker 1: and Cone in the Barbarian, An Officer and a Gentleman,
Speaker 1: and Friday the Thirteenth Part three.
Speaker 4: Ooh, here's one from nineteen eighty two. It also scarred
Speaker 4: me as a child. Do you remember if you could
Speaker 4: see what I hear.
Speaker 1: With Mark Singer absolutely swimming at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: pool trying to find his dying baby. First Blood was
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two. Halloween three season of The Witch came
Speaker 1: out that year. It came to Hollywood, came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 4: Hanky Panky came out, Grease too, Oh there that begins
Speaker 4: and ends.
Speaker 1: There for Grease two, Piranha two.
Speaker 4: Okay. On the plus side, Blade Runner was eighty two,
Speaker 4: but on the minus side, Mega Force was nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: On the minus side, I would say they Call Me
Speaker 1: Bruce came out that year, but on the positive side,
Speaker 1: Creep Show came out that year.
Speaker 4: On the minus side, Zapped came out, but on the
Speaker 4: plus side, Night Shift came out.
Speaker 1: On the minus side, White Dog. On the plus side,
Speaker 1: White Dog.
Speaker 5: HP.
Speaker 1: Until our next fest is it our best Fest, our
Speaker 1: Star Trek three Fest Listen. HP has a show over
Speaker 1: on his channel there. It's called night Mister Walter's a
Speaker 1: Taxi podcast. I'm a co host on it actually, where
Speaker 1: we talk about the television series Taxi and I guess
Speaker 1: our next trek Fest is the crossover episode because our
Speaker 1: villains return at the Klingons and Yeah, our lead Klingon
Speaker 1: Krug is mister Christopher Lloyd, playing one of the best
Speaker 1: performances of Klingon as far as I'm concerned, because he's
Speaker 1: he has layers. He isn't just screaming and shouting and
Speaker 1: throwing things at me.
Speaker 4: He's very unpredictable. I think he just seems unhinged in
Speaker 4: a way that the Klingons don't normally seem that way.
Speaker 4: He's very he's scary that way.
Speaker 1: He's never I wish they had thought ahead and serialized
Speaker 1: these movies and had Krug threaded throughout so he'd become
Speaker 1: some ultimate villain of Kirks.
Speaker 4: He's very good. But yeah, I guess technically that's a
Speaker 4: crossover with night Mister Walter's Taxi podcast, which we, as
Speaker 4: you said, we co host. Also I host the Noise
Speaker 4: Junkies music podcast and Father Malone. I have a band
Speaker 4: campsite hpmusicplace, dot bandcamp dot.
Speaker 1: Com links in the show notes. As for me, you're
Speaker 1: listening to the show, I do midnight viewing. Hey, patrons,
Speaker 1: you're hearing this at least two weeks in advance to
Speaker 1: the regular suckers on the feed. But thank you all
Speaker 1: for listening obviously, and please subscribe and can give me
Speaker 1: five stars and recommend it to friends and stuff. This
Speaker 1: is a com to action. I don't do these too
Speaker 1: often anymore, I guess, so please do that, actually give
Speaker 1: us five stars. It really fucking helps. So anyway, until
Speaker 1: our next trek fest, May the Force be with you,