Star Trek Arcs III: The Trilogy

The third arc of the franchise is the first to be a deliberately continuous one, although it’s also somewhat invisible, the second through fourth films.

This is possible at all because two of them stand out as individual experiences, and they’re the bookends. Wrath of Khan is still talked about today as a singular achievement in Star Trek, the film by which all Star Trek films are judged. But in terms of box office, the most popular of the three, and of them all until the Kelvin trilogy, is The Voyage Home.

Somehow the one direct sequel and most obvious act of the trilogy, The Search for Spock, ends up lost in the shuffle. It also happens to be my favorite.

To even think of it as a continuous story, you have to think of Spock’s arc. In Khan, of course, he dies at the end, sacrificing himself so Kirk can achieve his victory. In Search, obviously, the whole story is about getting him back, as the Genesis Planet created in Khan serves as the impetus, backdrop, as stage of that project. Kirk sacrifices his career and his ship in order to get it done, and even his own son, David Marcus, who also originates from Khan. 

The neatest trick of Search, for me, is Kirk and Sarek, Spock’s father, recreating, via mind meld, Spock’s death. For some it might feel needlessly repetitive, especially if they watch the trilogy in one sitting. For me, it feels as moving and effective a moment, selling the impact, for Kirk, in ways that sharing the moment, originally, with Spock couldn’t, driving home how much it affected him. It’s also the moment Sarek becomes more than just Spock’s father, a standout character in his own right, an overlooked legacy of the films, and the trilogy itself.

Kirk, Spock, and the Klingon ship acquired during Search, sail through Home, with of course a sidetrack to rescuing some whales. By the end of the trilogy, they have to face what they have so often avoided, which is an official Starfleet reprimand for flouting the rules. The Klingons are furious over what Kirk did in Search, which itself creates another arc, which becomes the march to peace between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, which evolves from The Undiscovered Country to The Next Generation, which I’ll cover for the TV material later.

But this film trilogy bears greater attention. Clearly there was an effort, at least by Search, to find a Star Trek version of Star Wars (a concept many fans would claim the Kelvin films belabor), but no one watching, whether as a fan or the more casual, is likely to confuse the two. If it’s possible at all, it’s very much just that, a Star Trek version, that results. But that’s a worthy distinction. Star Wars didn’t tell its story across three initial films. With Star Trek there are three distinct acts with three distinct goals. With Star Wars it’s three variations of the battle between the Rebellion and the Empire. Certainly no room for “colorful metaphors”!

In a lot of ways, the existence of the franchise itself relies on the trilogy. The huge success of Home leads to a new TV series, while Khan gives fans a rallying point beyond the original series. The idea of an arc itself was to become a hallmark of Star Trek, steeped so heavily in episodic storytelling in its origins. Before fans realize the genre tide is turning in that direction, the films have already gotten there. In the 90s and 00s, fans think Star Trek is playing catch-up, but the franchise in fact got there already, in the ‘80s, when most genre material is still struggling to recognize how big Star Wars really is, how much and how drastically it changed the landscape.

Suddenly the “imitation” of Search doesn’t look so poor in comparison. There isn’t another franchise even making an effort that decade. Everything else is one movie at a time, and none of them even get another installment. It’s easy to take the Star Trek films for granted. But it shouldn’t.

Star Trek Arcs II: Khan

The second Star Trek arc is probably the most famous arc of the whole franchise: Khan Noonien Singh. 

Khan comes from our own lifetime, a genetic superman who rose to power in the 1990s as part of the Eugenics Wars, which other than this biographical detail have never been explored except in books. (Slightly more examined but still sketchy: WWIII.) Anyway, Khan loses power, is exiled into space in a sleeper ship called the Botany Bay, there to linger for hundreds of years until stumbled upon by Kirk and company near the end of the first season of the original series in “Space Seed” (which, for those keeping score, is of course before Chekov joins the cast).

And Khan immediately attempts his old shenanigans again, and once more finds himself in exile for his efforts, this time on a planet called Ceti Alpha V.

And then, in the second film of the franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he returns once more. Fans still claim this particular adventure is the high water mark of at least the films, and were none too pleased when Star Trek Into Darkness revisited it. Like the other Kelvin films it essentially exists in its own timeline, so it doesn’t technically connect with the rest of the arc, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story.

Enterprise provides that. Remember how Data’s creator was named Noonian Soong? Well, we meet his ancestor, Arik, whose work begins with other “augments” from Khan’s heyday, similarly revived for additional mayhem, in the trilogy of episodes “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments,” before he decides to switch to robotics (the evolution of which itself carries into the first season of Picard).

That’s still not the end of the story!

The augments, during the course of their misbegotten adventures, crossed paths with the Klingons, and in “Affliction” and “Divergence” we learn the canonical explanation for the lack of ridges in the original series: they attempted an experiment to create augments of their own, and mostly the results were cosmetic (mostly so they didn’t accidentally annihilate themselves!).

A side note: Deep Space Nine revisits the idea of genetic engineering in “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?,” in which we learn that Bashir, naturally enough, is controversially entangled in it, thanks to his parents, and that the Federation still finds it otherwise as much a taboo as the Genesis Planet Khan helped create.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Whatever else The Motion Picture had been, it was a relative failure, one that disappointed fans and general audiences, but it was success enough to have demanded a sequel, and so work was quickly begun to figure out how exactly to follow it up. Even that was proving difficult, however, until Nicholas Meyer sauntered in and changed everything. When the finished product was delivered to theaters in 1982, Star Trek had delivered the word, and the word was “good.”

Gene Roddenberry, who had fought so hard to retain his role as the frontrunner of his creation, was cast aside once again, this time by Harve Bennett, but without Meyer, it’s doubtful that anyone today would remember Bennett’s name. But it’s Khan (Ricardo Montalban) who truly makes his mark in this film, his first appearance since “Space Seed,” as the only man alive capable of matching wits with Jim Kirk. To do it, he must affect a resurrection of his own, creeping from the wreckage of the planet he was condemned to when he first attempted revenge on a galaxy that had rebuffed his efforts to rule it, twice.

The great irony of Wrath of Khan is that, as far as the character of Kirk is concerned, it is much the same movie as The Motion Picture. Again our lead character is reflecting on a life that seems to have passed him by, and only extreme circumstances are able to rouse him from his despondency. The difference this time is that he is engaged directly and personally, first by an enemy both he and the audience knows, and then by the revelation that he has a son, a direct consequence of what had always been implied but never acknowledged, that Kirk is a cad. Yet even in that he is shown with a greater sense of responsibility than was evident in the earlier film. In essence, Wrath of Khan is a story of personal redemption through unimaginable tragedy.

But audiences have long embraced the film, if not in rebuke of The Motion Picture, then as something far more familiar and engaging, not to mention better resembling the popular success of the Star Wars films at that time still one away from completing their trilogy. (One might even cynically suggest that the character of David Marcus, portrayed by blond-haired Merritt Butrick, was inspired by Luke Skywalker, who had just learned of his own controversial parentage.)

Wrath of Khan, until the wide success of Star Trek last year (and even then it’s debatable), has been considered the measuring stick of every film in the franchise, the source of unfavorable comparisons in almost every regard.

Yet I have had a long and tortured relationship with it. Maybe it’s because in 1982, I was two years old, and that even when I saw the Star Trek films, I found The Motion Picture and The Search for Spock more memorable, The Voyage Home more famous (it did gross more). In fact, I don’t even remember the first time I saw it. You could say its reputation is my first memory, and that’s a long road to cross. I became more annoyed by all the insistence of its brilliance than anything. You could say for me, Wrath of Khan was like literature being taught by any teacher who cares more about their lecture plans than actually getting their point across. It spoils the class and a love for literature. For me, Wrath of Khan stood like an albatross in the annals of Star Trek lore.

So I kept at it. The first thing I noticed when I began my efforts was that Khan behaved more like a spoiled idiot than a genius, a survivor with a huge ego but nothing to back it up. I had never seen “Space Seed” (or it had likewise sank into the obscure regions of my memory), so I had nothing of the warm feelings to recall upon seeing this epic villain again. All I had was my impression of him. It wasn’t a fault of Montalban. No, he was suitably impressive. But there was no depth in the writing of his character. It was all broad strokes (which is what I still struggle with when I consider There Will Be Blood, the closest analogy to Wrath of Khan that I can think of), and none of it added up.

Yet the sacrifice his threat necessitates loses nothing from this. One way or another, Spock’s death is staged in appropriately iconic circumstances, the final moments with Kirk, saying goodbye, the utter poetic brilliance of it. My mother, who helped introduce me to Star Trek, having watched the original series when it aired the first time around, probably thinks only about this film as the one where Spock dies. She’s an emotional viewer, and this scene works, probably just as well if you’ve never seen Star Trek before. In that sense, Wrath of Khan clearly and easily earns a place in cinema history, franchise lore.

Yet clearly this is just rather grim icing on the cake for most fans, who revere everything about the film, as if it’s somehow become sacred material (as the thing that revived an unabashed interest in Star Trek, it probably is). How is that possible, I dare ask?

Khan’s obsession with vengeance, his blind need to hurt Kirk as Kirk hurt him, speaks far beyond the confines of the story. It’s a primal event, the kind a good story can always build around, amplify into something greater and more significant than it actually is. It’s not really about Khan at all, but as a figurehead, he’s unavoidable, and therefore entirely perfect.

The fact that Khan and Kirk never directly confront each other might as well be a subliminal message that this is essentially true, that Khan himself is not all that necessary, but rather what he brings about, a rallying point.

A far more significant character is introduced in the film, Saavik (Kirstie Alley), the first regular Vulcan addition to the franchise since Sarek, who serves almost to link the old and the new, as Star Trek had been attempting to do since everyone realized there was still a chance it could be salvaged. Like a new incarnation of Xon, she’s someone that could be adopted by this crew, a surrogate Spock, the next generation, a sign of fresh life that felt entirely welcome. While Saavik herself wouldn’t last much longer than two additional films (and be the first major character to be recast in franchise lore), she was a major if understated symbol of what Wrath of Khan accomplished.

Eventually I came to accept this film as the entertaining, engaging story it is. Though I will probably never consider it the standard-bearer of the movies, I can see how it might have seemed like it at the time. From a perspective that saw the franchise develop firsthand, it’s like the second coming of the original series, just when it seemed like that was no longer possible, even though Star Trek had finally staged its comeback. Without it, there might never have been another film, or another series; with it, everything else must necessarily be refracted through its lens, even if that vision might in time become distorted.

Perhaps that was a small price to pay. Wrath of Khan achieved the impossible. It pushed the franchise to the next level.