Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

directed by Nicholas Meyer

James Brubaker

Jim Kirk is getting old. This is one of the main takeaways of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The film begins on Jim Kirk’s birthday. According to Trek timelines, the year is 2285. Jim Kirk was born in 2233. He is turning fifty-two years old. Kirk is feeling old, a fact that isn’t lost on Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy who, upon delivering Kirk a pair of spectacles and a bottle of Romulan Ale for his birthday, remarks, “Other people have birthdays. Why are we treating yours like a funeral?” He’s right, Jim Kirk is not aging gracefully, is moping away into old age like a sullen teenager feeling sorry for himself.

*

Three weeks before I turned forty, I was in the chair at the dentist, preparing for a routine cleaning. The hygienist informed me that she’d be taking my blood pressure before starting. This was only the second time I’d had my blood pressure taken at the dentist’s office. I’m still not sure if the taking of blood pressure prior to having one’s teeth cleaned is standard procedure now for everyone, or just for overweight forty-year-olds. The hygienist slipped the cuff on my arm. Then there was the tightening, the release. The hygienist looked at the device’s digital display, said, “You’re a little high, higher than last time.” I said, “No shit?” trying to be casual so as not to betray the sudden dread welling up inside of me. My blood pressure had never been high before, not once. And hearing that now it was high, well, that didn’t sit well with me. I was about to be forty. I was about to be old.

*

The Wrath of Khan opens with the Enterprise crew, led by Lieutenant Saavik, played by a young Kirstie Alley, dying as part of the Kobyashi Maru, a test given to all Starfleet trainees in which they are confronted with a “no win scenario,” so as to evaluate how they handle adversity, how they act in the face of death. When the test is over and the literal smoke starts to clear, the door to the bridge opens and who should walk in but Jim Kirk, all grey curls and middle-aged paunch. When Doc McCoy questions why Starfleet is relying on so many cadets, asking Kirk if it wouldn’t just be easier to put an experienced crew back on the Enterprise, Kirk says, “Galloping around the cosmos is a game for the young, Doctor.” His words sting. Uhura, indignant, says, “Now what does that mean?”

*

My parents let me watch The Wrath of Khan with them when I was five. Before that, I’d seen only reruns of Original Series episodes on television. I loved “Arena,” in which Kirk is stranded on a planet with a reptilian captain of a Gorn ship, and has to fight for survival. I was enamored by the romance and tragedy of “The City on the Edge of Forever.” I laughed through “The Trouble With Tribbles.” I loved the crew of the Enterprise, Kirk’s emphatic brashness, Spock’s cool logic and sunken emotions, McCoy’s curmudgeonly griping. When my parents cued up a VHS copy of The Wrath of Khan, though, I remember my shock at how old the crew seemed. Their hair was graying, they’d gained weight, they talked about growing old, what it means to grow old. Though all of the actors had aged, the most shocking of all was Jim Kirk—the once cocky hero had been reduced to a sad old man. I decided right then I’d never get old. 

*

Now, though, I am forty, and after being told by my dental hygienist that my blood pressure was high, but before I actually turned forty, I started running. When I started, I made it about a block before I started panting and thought I was going to die. In the weeks before my fortieth birthday, I also started paying closer attention to my diet. I started trying to make healthier decisions more frequently, for the most part. Except, I also started drinking more. Not much more, but enough that, were I to visit the doctor, I’d have to check the 4-5 drinks a week box on the intake survey instead of the 1-2 drinks a week box. I stayed up late sipping whiskey and listening to records, trying to recapture the feeling of being twenty and staying up all night getting buzzed and listening to records. I mostly listened to Robert Pollard records, because he’s sixty-two and still does high kicks at Guided By Voices shows, and somehow listening to his music made me feel less old—if Robert Pollard could do still do that shit at sixty-two, I can do whatever at forty. Still, none of anything I was doing was going to make me feel any younger. Sometimes my wife would ask me, “What’s wrong?” and I’d say, “Nothing,” when really I was thinking about how old I felt and how stupid I felt for feeling so old, thinking about how I wanted to age gracefully, whatever that means.

*

Jim Kirk was never concerned with aging gracefully. He tried to tell himself he was trying—that is why he accepted a promotion to admiral, resigning himself to paper work, diplomacy, and an adventureless life. But Jim Kirk wasn’t really trying. There’s a pivotal moment in The Wrath of Khan’s first half when the films titular villain launches a successful attack on the Enterprise, out on a training cruise. Many young cadets die. The only option left for Jim Kirk is to take back command of his ship. Despite the recent attack and the loss of so many lives, an old familiar light appears in Jim Kirk’s eyes. Jim Kirk’s fantasy has come true.

*

In perhaps the most iconic moment from The Wrath of Khan, perhaps one of the most iconic moments in all of Trek, Jim Kirk and a handful of colleagues find themselves in a hollowed out cave deep beneath the surface of a lifeless planet. The Enterprise is nowhere near, still hobbled from Khan’s previous attack. Khan has the upper hand, but Jim Kirk tries to turn the tables. He tells Khan, who is safe on his ship, “You've managed to kill just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target.” He tells Khan, “You were going to kill me, Khan. You're going to have to come down here.” Khan’s response is cold blooded:  “I've done far worse than kill you, I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you…marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, buried alive.” As Khan finishes gloating over the intercom, the camera slowly zooms in on Jim Kirk’s face. We can almost hear his teeth grinding. He sneers. His head shakes. He has lost control of the situation. He screams Khan’s name once, then twice. Were one to pause the film as Jim Kirk screams for the first time, one would see his eyes wild, dispossessed—would see the angry, violent eyes of a man who is used to controlling his own fate realizing that he has no control over his current circumstances.

*

The year I turned forty, I grew my beard longer than it had ever been. I let my hair grow back out, long, past my shoulders. I started getting my tires rotated every 5,000 miles. I traveled to Athens, Georgia and dragged my wife to all of the R.E.M. sites. I traveled to Portland to sell books. I traveled to Buenos Aires and dragged my wife and parents to all the Borges sites. I traveled to my hometown, Dayton, Ohio, four times. I drove to Kansas City, to teach a veteran’s writing workshop. I took my wife to Milwaukee to see Sarah McLachlan perform. I flew to South Carolina to read my fiction out loud. I’ve never been one to go out of my way to travel. The year I turned forty I could barely keep still. I wrote and rewrote most of a new novel about a man born of privilege struggling to understand that he has very little control over time and space. I watched The Wrath of Khan a half dozen times. I want to say there was some pattern in all of this. I’m not sure there was.

*

In an early scene from The Wrath of Khan, Spock says to Kirk it was a “mistake for you to accept promotion. Commanding a starship is your first best destiny.” And McCoy tells him, referencing Kirk’s collection of antiques decorating his apartment, “Get back your command. Get it back before you turn into part of this collection. Before you really do grow old.” And that’s exactly what Jim Kirk does at the first opportunity, after Khan’s devastating attack—he takes back his command, reclaims his youth.

*

Youth can’t be reclaimed, though. Jim Kirk is smart enough to know this. And Jim Kirk is smart enough to know that he isn’t really afraid of growing old. So what is driving Jim Kirk? With Jim Kirk present, Leonard “Bones” McCoy tells Lieutenant Saavik that Kirk actually beat the Kobyashi Maru. When Saavik asks how, Kirk reveals he won by rewriting the simulation’s programming. He tells her, “I don’t like to lose.” He tells her, “I don’t believe in a no-win scenario.” Jim Kirk isn’t afraid of growing old, or trying to reclaim his lost youth—he can’t stand not being in control. But: aging can’t be controlled. Death is inevitable. Eventually, we all face the “no-win scenario.” We all lose.

*

Much of the plot of The Wrath of Khan revolves around a scientific endeavor called Project Genesis. In the words of Carol Marcus, who developed Genesis, Genesis is capable of creating “life from lifelessness.” That is, the project is a torpedo that, when fired at a lifeless planet, rewrites that planet’s molecular makeup, imbuing that planet with life. When Kirk encounters Marcus at the testing site for Project Genesis, he tells her, “I’m feeling old, worn out,” to which she replies, “Let me show you something that will make you feel young, as when the world was new.” What Carol Marcus shows Jim Kirk is a cavern in which Genesis has been tested. It is lush and green. Fruit grows on the trees. There are animals. The Genesis cave is Eden. Jim Kirk eats an apple. None of this will make Jim Kirk feel any younger, or less old. But there is comfort there, for him, in the idea of mortal beings taking control of the universe, shaping it to their will. Jim Kirk will someday die, if he must, but at least he knows that mortal beings are standing up to, giving the finger to the laws of nature that will inevitably end them.

*

In watching The Wrath of Khan so much recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that Jim Kirk is the film’s tragic fool. Yes, it’s Khan whose hubris and insatiable hunger for revenge results in his own death. And yes, it’s Spock’s willingness to sacrifice himself to save his crewmates that leads to his death. But Jim Kirk’s story in the film is about trying and failing to control everything around him, and not learning that he can’t. Instead of humbling Jim Kirk, Spock’s death leads to a sequel film in which Jim Kirk brings Spock back to life. In the following film, Jim Kirk brings humpback whales back from extinction. In the film after that, Jim Kirk confronts a god-like being and survives. But Jim Kirk will always be powerless in the face of mortality. Still, he lives his life with the arrogance of those whose lives are defined by privilege and the power that comes with it (there’s another essay to be written, here, perhaps, about Jim Kirk as great, white savior fantasy—we’ll let that settle into the subtext of this essay, though). 

*

When Jim Kirk finally dies in Star Trek: Generations, his last words are “It was fun,” a beat, then, “oh my.” Even in his last moment he can’t believe he is actually dying—it’s humorous, and maybe has a hint of romance to it. In The Wrath of Khan, though, Jim Kirk’s rejection of his own mortality plays as sad, foolish. At a certain point, we have to accept our own powerlessness in the chaotic universe surrounding us, have to accept that no amount of will or work or innovation will allow us to live forever—this is what I learned from watching The Wrath of Khan the year I turned forty. But Jim Kirk never learns. In the film’s final scene, he stands on the bridge of the Enterprise with Carol Marcus and Leonard McCoy, looking at the new planet Genesis—birthed earlier when Khan detonated the Genesis torpedo in a nebula—quoting A Tale of Two Cities in remembrance of Spock. McCoy asks him how he feels, and Kirk says, “Young. I feel young,” as if feeling young will somehow give him the control he desires, might stave off death. As if feeling young will fix everything. The film ends and Jim Kirk hasn’t learned a goddamn thing.

James Brubaker is the author of The Taxidermist's Catalog, Black Magic Death Sphere: (science) fictions, Liner Notes, and Pilot Season. He lives in Missouri with his wife, teachers writing, and runs Southeast Missouri State University Press. Between 2010 and 2012, he re-watched every Star Trek episode and film, and responded to each one on Twitter. Here is his tweet for The Wrath of Khan.