star trek ii | the m0vie blog

303. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (#—)

Posted on September 3, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

So this week, to mark its re-release in Irish and British cinemas, Nicholas Meyer’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Now supervising cadets at Starfleet Academy, Admiral James Tiberius Kirk finds himself reflecting on his mortality. A routine training mission provides an unlikely reckoning when genetically engineered superman Khan Noonien Singh escapes from his exile and vows revenge on Kirk as the man who marooned him. Kirk has lived his life on the assumption that there is no such thing as a no-win scenario, but that philosophy is about to be sorely tested.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250, The Original Series | Tagged: aliens, Harve Bennett, Khan Noonien Singh, kirk, Leonard Nimoy, militarism, Nicholas Meyer, revenge, spock, star trek, star trek ii, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Starfleet, violence, William Shatner | 2 Comments »

Harve Bennett

Posted on March 6, 2015 by Darren

Although he will likely be best remembered by genre fans for his work on the Star Trek film franchise, Harve Bennett was a super-producer. His career began in the fifties – with his first credited work on Now is Tomorrow, a television movie starring actors Robert Culp and Sydney Pollack. However, Bennett really came into his own as a producer of seventies television. He helped to create The Mod Squad and The Invisible Man. However, he is perhaps most noted in geek circles for his work on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Along with director Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennett effectively reinvented Star Trek. Taking over the reins from Gene Roddenberry after that creator’s bloated (if ambitious) work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Bennett stumbled upon an ingenious idea. Instead of trying to hide the fact that the cast and crew were getting older, he would embrace it. Bennett effectively came up with the idea of allowing the characters to grow older, coming up with an approach that would help to distinguish the Star Trek films from their source material.

It would be too much to suggest that Harve Bennett was the first writer to reinvent Star Trek, paving the way for creators like Michael Piller or Ira Steven Behr or Brannon Braga or Manny Coto. After all, Star Trek had already been reinvented by Gene L. Coon and D.C. Fontana before Bennett come on board. However, Bennett was part of the first creative team to reinvent Star Trek in a very overt and very conscious way. Meyer and Bennett were the first creators to be overt (rather than subversive) in how they were updating and revising the Star Trek canon.

Bennett was part of the creative team that oversaw the first truly seismic transition in what Star Trek actually was, the first without any major behind-the-scenes continuity. In doing so, Bennett was one of the first creators to demonstrate the versitility and the potential of Star Trek. In shepherding the movie franchise, Bennett was a vital part of keeping Star Trek alive long enough for the franchise to prove that it could be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. Bennett is a much bigger figure in Star Trek history than he is given credit for.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Harve Bennett, star trek, star trek ii, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan | 4 Comments »

Star Trek: Khan – Ruling in Hell (Review)

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Darren

This June, we’re taking a look at some classic Star Trek movie tie-ins and other interesting objects. Check back daily for the latest reviews and retrospectives.

Khan is a massively important figure in the grand mythology of Star Trek.

One need only look to Star Trek Into Darkness as proof of that assertion – a film that trades on how iconic the name “Khan” is, even to the most casual of fans. However, despite the fact that Khan has only appeared in a single episode and two feature films, each spaced apart by more than a decade, the character continues to exert a strong pull over the rest of the franchise. He is arguably more iconic and well-known than any lead character from a show produced after Star Trek: The Next Generation.

War of the supermen…

After all, Khan’s influence can be felt on just about every iteration of the franchise. On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, he haunted the character of Julian Bashir. When the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise began its high-profile journey into the franchise’s continuity, Khan became something of a touchstone. The season’s first three-part episode (Borderland, Cold Station 12 and The Augments) was devoted to exploring the legacy of Khan Noonien Singh. Indeed, the show even tied Khan into the origin of the flat-foreheaded Klingons in Affliction and Divergence.

And yet, despite all this, there really is only so much material the character can support. Khan Noonien Singh is an iconic bad guy, but there’s a point where he ends up over-saturated.