From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!mhtsa!ihnss!ihuxl!rjnoe Newsgroups: net.movies Title: Star Trek II **SPOILER** Article-I.D.: ihuxl.193 Posted: Thu Jun 24 16:21:14 1982 Received: Mon Jun 28 03:21:21 1982 In the past couple of weeks much misinformation and wild speculation has been passed off as fact on this newsgroup concerning the latest Star Trek motion picture. Using whatever references and Paramount connections I had, I was able to ascertain the "truth" about many of the ideas and observations bandied about here. What I am going to do in the following article is to go through my hardcopy record of this newsgroup chronologically and attempt to set the record straight on some of these issues (my earliest articles are dated as submitted June 11). Should I raise questions rather than settle them, I welcome your mail. The thoughts expressed below are a combination of my observations of physical evidence (e.g. movie stills and shooting scripts), testimony of (usually) reliable sources, and my own educated guesses; I will do my best to make it apparent what is which. (1) Leonard Nimoy is on public record as having stated how much personal anguish Spock's death has caused him. In no way did he request this, much less demand it. Of course he doesn't want Spock to be his only role but he is certainly not ready to completely abandon the role, either, as evidenced by the mutual acknowledgement by Nimoy and Paramount that they have already begun plans for Nimoy to appear in "Star Trek III". Whether Spock is somehow regenerated or the movies will no longer follow in chronological order or some other possible solution, no one can say yet. Officially that hasn't even been decided. (2) Don Chan is not correct in his statements about Starfleet ranks. A midshipman is NOT an officer; ensign is the lowest officer grade. They are by no means equivalent. The next higher rank after ensign is lieutenant (e.g. Saavik), next is Lieutenant Commander, then Commander, and Captain. The flag ranks (usually administrative, not assigned to starships) are Commodore and Admiral, and their various degrees. (3) The correct title of the film is "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". The tentative production title was "The Vengeance of Khan" but at NO time was it EVER called "The Revenge of Khan". The title is fitting as all Khan ever says pertinent to this is "I shall avenge you" which is a necessarily wrathful statement (directed at another). He never achieves the vengeance he desires (and no one he promised to avenge wanted Khan to avenge them) thus it would be inaccurate to call it "Revenge". However, BVI@SRI-UNIX may be correct in speculating that "Vengeance" was dropped to avoid confusion with "Revenge of the Jedi". Paramount won't say. (4) This is probably a bit of a flame, but I feel it would be of interest to most everyone reading this far in this article, so I'm going to include it here rather than mailing it. Steve (ALICE!SJB), I don't see how you can call the picture "inane." It was not overly sentimental. You must always remember that the strongest aspect of Trek is the human aspect, something that was noticeably lacking in ST-TMP. I hear a lot of so-called Sci-fi lovers raving about "E.T." and THAT is one movie that is far too senti- mental for my tastes. The statement by Spock about the "two-dimensional" thinking was far from "ludicrous." Back in high school I wrote a Star Trek computer game which, among many other features, was played in three dimensions. I programmed the enemy tactics to take full advantage of this (example: even when Klingons surround the Enterprise, all in a plane, Enterprise still has basically two escape routes, up and down; but when Klingons surround Enterprise in three dimensions--say, four battle cruisers located at the vertices of a regular tetrahedron centered on Enterprise--then there is no way the surrounded vessel can move without first getting closer to at least one of the enemy). Knowing this before attempting to play my own game, I was usually able to win against six Klingons (more Klingons made it more difficult). Among all the other people ever to play that game, only one EVER won against more than five enemy ships. The basic reason for this is not that they were unable to think in three dimensions (as I first suspected) but that they didn't understand the strategic importance of having that third dimension to move about in. I found the battle in the Mutara nebula to be the most suspenseful part of the whole film. End of flame. (5) UIUCDCS!MCDANIEL made some points about the movie after reading the novelization by Vonda McIntyre. I would like to address those now. The speculation that Saavik is Spock's daughter is totally ridiculous. Given her age, she would have to have been conceived while Spock was still serving on the Enterprise with Captain Pike. As to the speculation that Saavik was the offspring of Spock and the Romulan commander in "The Enterprise Incident" TV episode, it should be obvious that those two never even got that far (nor would they). Again, Saavik is too old for that to be true. There can be only one explanation why Scott brought the dying Preston up to the bridge and that is he did not intend to. Remember, he never stepped off the turbo elevator. Also, the ship was heavily damaged--would one expect the turbo elevators to work flawlessly under those circumstances? Scott's only concern was to get Preston to sick bay as soon as possible. As the book did not have to move as fast as the movie, this incident occurred before Scott got Preston out of engineering, not on the bridge. Peter Preston was a midshipman, an officer-in-training, not a "cabin boy." Saavik was ORDERED by Spock to tutor Preston, presumably because Spock believed that Saavik needed to learn to be more comfortable with humans. I don't think that Saavik and David Marcus are "interested" in each other the way you imply. Of course, Vonda McIntyre did have some strange fantasies in the novel. However, this would not be a parallel Kirk/Spock relationship, because the logical half-Vulcan would now be the one in command and the human son of Kirk would be the (future) science officer. This is an inverted relationship. Kirk and Spock both derived major facets of their respective characters by being/not being in command. As to your remarks concerning Romulans raping Vulcans: Even if a Vulcan did have the ability to stop his/her heart, mind or whatever, could he/she still do it under the influence of the chemicals the Romulans used? WOULD he/she do it while remaining logical? Further, given the context, I do not think the Vulcans were necessarily emotional or irrational in arguing about the fate of Saavik and the others on Hellguard. (6) Paul Soren asked about the graphics in the film, which has gotten some answers. Nobody has replied directly to the issue of the bridge monitors. None that I've been told about were done by Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Graphic designer Lee Cole got his display material from quite a variety of sources including universities, computer houses, laser research facilities and, of course, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He and technical advisor Todd Grodnick transferred the display materials of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" from 8mm and 16mm film stock to videotape. Grodnick and video engineers Ed Moscowitz and Jim Padget prevented strobing of the displays by "locking the video images into the light/dark phase of a Panavision movie camera" (so I'm told). Similar things were done in some of the sick bay displays. (7) As the photon torpedo/coffin was a solid prop, it could NOT have opened at any point in the picture. What I have not yet determined is HOW it landed if there was sufficient atmosphere on the planet to support all that plant life. Why didn't it burn up on reentry to the Genesis planet? (Maybe it was covered with space shuttle tiles, accounting for its blackness.) In any event, it was so aerodynamically smooth that it should have dropped like a rock, not glided to a soft landing. Even with power, how could it have lift? (8) Nothing I've uncovered and no one I've spoken to has indicated that there is any hidden meaning to Scotty's "wee bout" which McCoy helped him through. I prefer to take it at face value: as McCoy said, "shore leave." Forget what the novel says about what Saavik was thinking--she was confused. (9) The atmospheric conditions on the surface of Ceti Alpha V made communi- cations difficult. In the novel, Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov were cautioned to stay out in the open before beaming down to the planet. While inside the shelters, communication with the Reliant was impossible. Chekov and Terrell could not get clear of the shelters before being apprehended by Khan and his people, thus they did not have time to ask to be beamed up. (10) While Saavik was certainly referred to as "Mister" by more than one person on several occasions, this was NOT a result of "bad editing." This fully intended departure from contemporary practice had several reasons behind it, including the motivation to make Star Trek less sexist than it was in the late 1960s. Khan's right hand was gloved throughout the movie. Note the glove left the palm bare. It was his left hand (contrary to the novel, I believe) which was mutilated as a result of Enterprise's final salvo. Khan's henchman was called "Joachim" and played by Judson Scott. I must admit that I, too, missed seeing Scott's name in the credits. (11) Saavik's eyebrows may not be as severely angled as one might expect, but then NONE of the aliens in either Star Trek film are exactly as they were in the TV series. Hers are not normal eyebrows (cf. photos of Kirstie Alley, who played Saavik) but are probably penciled higher, not shaven like Nimoy's were. Quite a few veiled references are made to Saavik's Vulcan-Romulan background, but it would be silly to refer explicitly to this fact in the dialogue when all of the characters present were aware of it. (12) While the Mutara nebula was not dense, it was quite large. It is consis- tent with present cosmological theory to presume the nebula's total mass equalled that of an entire star system. While the basic materials for those life forms on the newly created planet were part of the Genesis device, I do recall Carol Marcus saying something in her proposal about the planet being capable of supporting whatever life forms they cared to deposit on it. I assume she meant animal life and that Genesis created all the plant life (like in the cave of Regulus) and I would guess some lower animal life to complete some sort of food chain. The Genesis device transformed the nebula and all things within it which did not include the planetoid Regulus. It was some time after Enterprise departed Regulus when Spock announced that they had a few minutes to the boundary of the nebula. Actually, the Mutara nebula would be the perfect test environment for Genesis because nebulae cannot support any life we know of. The Genesis effect had to stop with the nebula "edge" because the device acted on mass and there would have been no continuous mass between the nebula and the planetoid (which is why Enterprise escaped). HOWEVER, one can maintain that Regulus was included because there is no perfect vacuum and therefore some mass was between the nebula and the planetoid. In any event, it definitely included the Mutara nebula, the Reliant and all aboard, but not the Enterprise. (13) There is indeed something in Kirk's San Francisco apartment which looks like a minicomputer but I seriously doubt it's a Commodore. Cute idea, though. Neither Khan nor Spock could really be said to be "in the Genesis matrix." We will never see Khan again because his body was rearranged at the subatomic level into something much less dangerous. His basic components have ceased to exist. Spock's body was introduced onto the planet relatively intact though non-functioning. At that point, all the large-scale transformations were already completed by the Genesis device. It may be possible that the new matrix will still perform some small-scale reorganization on Spock's body without affecting its basic structure, perhaps even regeneration. I guess anything is possible in science fiction. (14) The reason why Reliant's navigator did not come up with the fact that the Ceti Alpha system had shifted or that Khan had been marooned on the fifth planet is that it was never recorded. Kirk probably felt that it was not wise to record the fact that a band of people from the twentieth century were living there, as the curious might investigate and provide Khan with a means for escape. As long as Ceti Alpha retained its obscurity, the galaxy was safe--almost. (15) As far as the exchange in Vulcan between Saavik and Spock, it started something like Saavik saying about Kirk, "He's not what I expected at all" to which Spock responded something like, "What do you mean?" From there, the verbatim translation is: Saavik: "He's so . . . human." Spock: "No one's perfect, Saavik." The regulation about approaching a Federation ship which does not respond to communications and has no apparent damage would have to be something of the sort that the approaching ship should go to red alert and prepare fully for hostilities, inlcuding raising shields. Kirk does this half-way, by going to yellow alert. Other evidence for this deduction is the fact that Joachim on the Reliant is surprised that Enterprise had not yet raised its shields and that Kirk told Saavik to keep quoting regulations after they had already damaged the Reliant. There are still a few things I haven't resolved completely. As the Genesis device is about to detonate, Spock prepares to enter the lethally irradiated main energizer chamber. When McCoy tries to stop him, Spock gives McCoy a nerve pinch to knock him out. Then, Spock mind-melds with McCoy and says "Remember." Later, on the bridge, McCoy says, "You know, he's not really dead as long as we remember him." I know these two events are very closely connected but I'm not certain of the nature of the connection. There are some obvious conclusions one can draw, but since they all involve assumptions about Spock's intentions, I am not yet ready to presume things are as obvious as they seem. I am also puzzled as to how Khan would know of the Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish best served cold." He went into suspended animation in 1996, when Klingons were unknown, and awoke in the 23rd century when the Enterprise happened upon the S.S. Botany Bay. Surely he didn't have time while on board the Enterprise to dig up trivia while he was planning to take over the Enterprise. Why would anyone in Starfleet be aware of such a saying anyway? I suppose his wife, Marla McGivers, who was the ship's historian on board the Enterprise 15 years before this movie is set could have told Khan this, but why would she mention it, much less know it? I may have gone on too long. I'll leave you with a bit of trivia which anyone who closely watches the film can see: What is the registration number of the U.S.S. Reliant? (example: the Enterprise's is NCC-1701.) DO NOT MAIL ME YOUR ANSWERS AND DO NOT SEND THEM IN TO THIS NEWSGROUP!!! I'll publish the answer next week sometime. Thanks for your patience. Roger Noe