10 Dumbest Things In Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
The Wrath of Khan is arguably the greatest Star Trek movie, but it's far from perfect.
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00:00 Not too many people would argue with me when I say that The Wrath of Khan is the best Star Trek movie ever.
00:06 But it's imperfect in the way that most human endeavors are.
00:10 This is unsurprising given that when director Nicholas Meyer was offered the film there was shades of the motion picture,
00:17 but no workable script. In fact, three different scripts had been developed. The Omega System, the Genesis Project, and
00:25 the new Star Trek. So Meyer and the producer identified all the bits they liked from the scripts and Meyer wrote his first draft of a
00:32 new script in just under two weeks, titled The Undiscovered Country.
00:37 Well, actually they retitled it to The Vengeance of Khan,
00:40 but then they retitled it again to The Wrath of Khan before release.
00:45 So they really couldn't make up their minds. Many, many revisions followed,
00:49 but time was wasting and money was tight. The script and the resulting film were of astounding quality for such a time crunch project.
00:57 But in that hurry a fair amount of dumb things did slip through the cracks.
01:01 So with all that history in mind and with our love of this film firmly established,
01:06 let's have a bit of fun while we look at the 10 dumbest things that happened in Star Trek Wrath of Khan.
01:12 Number 10, Reliance weak password.
01:16 The prefix code is a good idea for thwarting a hostile takeover of a starship,
01:20 but a code of only five numbers is in the range of your upper and bicycle combination lock.
01:26 90,000 possible combinations. Have you ever looked at that bank of switches Spock flips to input the code?
01:32 There are only 10 switches, one per number from 1 to 9 and 0, and each switch stays flipped after he uses it.
01:39 Thus, each number can only be used once per code.
01:43 This means no prefix numbers like 16303 or 01701,
01:50 let alone 66666.
01:53 This cuts down on the possible combinations by two-thirds to just 27,216.
01:59 Most Wi-Fi passwords are harder to crack.
02:02 Also, after Khan has been prefix coded and handed his ass,
02:06 it's surprising that Mr. Superior Intellect doesn't figure out that this is what happens
02:11 and try to locate the Enterprise's own prefix code in order to turn the tables on his old friend Kirk.
02:18 But that would have meant showing Khan is actually intelligent, not just telling us.
02:22 Number 9, Cadet dead meat to the bridge.
02:26 With the Enterprise's bridge at the very tippy top of the ship's saucer
02:30 and with engineering in the cigar-shaped engineering secondary hall,
02:33 there is no way that the bridge is en route to sickbay.
02:37 So why then does the Turbolift bring Scotty carrying the mortally wounded Cadet Peter Preston to the bridge?
02:43 Ever since the movie opened, fans have either been crying in outrage over this
02:47 or offering rationalizations and justifications for it.
02:51 "The damage caused the Turbolifts to malfunction."
02:54 "Uh, Scotty was so grief-stricken that he..."
02:57 "Blah blah blah."
02:58 Logically, they could have had Kirk step out of the Turbolift on his way to sickbay
03:02 and find Scotty with Preston in a line of wounded trying to get into sickbay.
03:07 But then the audience might have been anticipating such a sight en route to McCoy,
03:12 whereas the doors opening to this horror was indeed a shock.
03:15 So, that's the reality.
03:17 It's only there for a punch-in-the-gut dramatic effect, even though it makes zero sense.
03:23 Shocking? Yeah, absolutely.
03:25 Dumb? Definitely.
03:27 Number 8, Kirk and Bones both blow it.
03:30 The film's story forces Kirk to catch the idiot ball in order to show him as old and worn out
03:35 and in desperate need to get his mojo back,
03:37 which we can accept to a point, but it does go overboard in this regard
03:41 and does Bones dirty in the process.
03:44 Upon discovering Tarell and Chekov on the regular one space station, Chekov emotes Chekov,
03:49 "Oh, sir, it was Khan. We found him on Seti Alpha 5. He put creatures in our bodies to control our minds."
03:57 "McCoy, it's alright. You're safe now. Chekov."
04:00 "They made us say lies, do things, but we beat him. We thought he controlled us, but he did not. The captain was strong."
04:08 "Wait a Vulcan minute, Lieutenant Commander Bad Accent."
04:11 "And yeah, I'm also talking about me because what fun would this be if we didn't do some light teasing."
04:16 But anyway, Chekov just explicitly told them
04:20 the titular space genius had put creatures in their bodies to control their minds
04:24 and what is the first reaction to this bombshell? Bones effectively says, "It's all good."
04:29 What? The instant Chekov admits this, both Kirk and Bones ought to have suspected
04:34 Khan was behind every word coming out of the Reliant boys' mouths.
04:38 Sure, Kirk is focused on the Genesis material and finding Dr. Marcus, but he's beyond thick here.
04:44 And Bones? What excuse does he have?
04:47 What sort of doctor hears two potential patients say they had foreign creatures placed inside their bodies to control them
04:53 and doesn't immediately ask how and where and examine the living crap out of them?
05:00 Kirk's not the one caught with his britches down. McCoy is tripping over the metaphorical pants around his ankles.
05:07 Number 7. The inferior superior intellect.
05:11 Khan. Admiral Kirk never bothered to check on our progress.
05:16 It is only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that allowed us to survive.
05:21 Much is made of Khan's intellect in the film, but he's dumb as a box of rocks throughout, let's be honest.
05:27 Consider the following. Khan wants Genesis, yet tortures and kills the uncooperative Genesis team
05:33 instead of sticking eels in them or instead of taking any of the team with him
05:37 when he has to leave regular one in order to blow Kirk to bits.
05:41 I mean, yeah, I get he's mad, but come on, he's a super genius.
05:45 Next, Mr. Superior intellect can't spot the most in plain sight code ever.
05:51 Spock says ours would seem like days and then explains the ship status using days.
05:58 Twelve year olds in the audience could decode that on the fly.
06:01 So why can't Khan or his crew of fellow superhuman or savag for that matter?
06:07 Yes, Khan has activated his Ahab obsession power up and he's phaser focused on harpooning his white whale Kirk.
06:14 And granted his monumental ego and sense of innate superiority cloud his judgment to the point
06:20 where he's easily duped and goaded into chasing Kirk into a nebula where he loses most of his advantage.
06:26 But like Kirk and Bones, he gets tossed the idiot ball and never once demonstrates any real smarts.
06:33 This was not always the case. In one of the scripts from which the final film screenplay was built
06:38 and before his beloved wife was fridged,
06:40 there was a dialogue that indicated Khan was indeed an extra special super genius.
06:46 Khan, how are system controls working?
06:48 MacGyver's, very well. Command and remote functions are all tied through computer stations.
06:53 How could you have designed it so quickly?
06:56 Khan, this is a sister ship of the Enterprise.
06:59 The Enterprise's manuals I absorbed 14 years ago are still fresh in my mind.
07:04 Not only would such a dialogue have demonstrated that Khan's an actual smarty pants, ergo a real threat,
07:11 it would have made clear how 14 supermen could have run an entire spaceship,
07:15 especially with 10 of them on the bridge.
07:18 Number 6. Wiley Chekhov.
07:21 In old cartoons, characters would frequently run the same path of a steamroller about to flatten them
07:26 or stand by dumbly before getting clobbered by a car or flattened by a boulder.
07:31 Chekhov effectively does this on SETI Alpha 5 upon seeing the belt buckle.
07:36 Chekhov, botany bay, botany bay? Oh no, we've got to get out of here now. Damn!
07:42 He knows what this means, but instead of doing the logical thing,
07:46 putting his helmet on and calling for extraction, assuming he even needs a helmet to do this,
07:51 he and Terrell put on their helmets, step outside, and at the sight of the 14 survivors,
07:56 freeze like a bug-eyed Wiley coyote watching as a train bears down on him.
08:00 By rights, Chekhov should have tried calling the ship before stepping outside.
08:04 You don't stop to explain when you realize you're standing over a live grenade.
08:08 You run, duck, or throw yourself on it.
08:11 And even if for some plot convenient reason, the comm didn't work inside the cargo containers,
08:16 Chekhov should have been screaming for a beam out throughout their exit from the hatch
08:20 and even as Khan's people moved towards them.
08:22 But from the lack of alarm exhibited by Beach and Kyle on the Reliant,
08:26 it's obvious no communication of any sort was received.
08:29 One can excuse Chekhov's behavior after he gets an eel in the ear,
08:33 but not his costly ineptitude at this stage in the story.
08:37 [sigh] It's no wonder he never made captain.
08:40 Number 5 - Universal Armageddon.
08:42 But no rush.
08:44 As David Marcus Fretz, as the Genesis proposal demonstrates,
08:47 and as Spock and Bones' argument makes clear,
08:50 the Genesis device has the potential to be a dreadful weapon if used where life already exists.
08:56 "We're talking about Universal Armageddon!" Bones exclaims.
09:00 In short, Genesis is a Manhattan project,
09:03 and Kirk clearly knows what it is before revealing it to his confidants.
09:08 So why is it then that everyone's so damn blasé about Carol's cry for help?
09:13 Consider this.
09:15 Carol calls Kirk to ask if he gave the order,
09:17 and states that someone is going to take Genesis without proper authorization.
09:21 Mid-conversation, her transmission is jammed at the source.
09:24 This isn't garbled communications, it's deliberate.
09:28 Kirk calls Starfleet Command to try and get to the bottom of things,
09:32 and when he clearly doesn't get an answer to what's going on,
09:35 instead of, you know, immediately calling to the bridge and ordering maximum warp to regular one,
09:41 he meanders to Spock's quarters for a friendly chat,
09:43 and then finally goes up to the bridge to order Sulu to go to warp 5.
09:48 Warp f***ing 5!
09:50 Yes, it's a minor continuity point,
09:52 but in the previous film, the Enterprise zipped along to meet V'ger at warp 7 without even breaking a sweat.
09:58 Warp 5 is like a police car driving below the speed limit while rushing to an active crime scene.
10:04 Kirk ought to have been court-martialed for that.
10:06 I mean, come on, take things seriously, Admiral.
10:09 As scripted, this would have been a better scene,
10:12 as Kirk would have gone to the bridge prior to him going to see Spock.
10:16 This was however swapped around in editing for dramatic effect,
10:19 but at the cost of making Kirk appear to be not taking this whole thing as seriously as he really should.
10:25 Number 4.
10:26 Exit the eel.
10:28 The influence of the baby eels is pretty shaky.
10:31 How is it that Tyrell and Chekov can sit by as their shipmates, Reliant's crew, are marooned on Khan's barren sand heap?
10:39 Yet, later in the movie, Tyrell manages to resist when Khan instructs him to shoot Kirk,
10:44 a man he says he'd never met.
10:47 Is Kirk really just that awesome?
10:50 Eh, rank does have its privileges, I guess.
10:52 Or is actively murdering someone just too much for even eel influence?
10:57 Mmm, no, not really.
10:59 As he vaporizes an innocent civilian just moments earlier.
11:03 And after Tyrell phasers himself out of the narrative rather than Kirk,
11:07 why is it that the eel in Chekov's noggin chooses that precise moment to get the heck out of there?
11:13 You could maybe argue semantics about what happened to its friend,
11:18 but it's a little convenient, isn't it?
11:21 However, for the past 40 years, fans have joked that there's another reason the beast fled.
11:26 It was starving to death, as Chekov is brainless.
11:29 Number 3 - Kirk's unfair tactical advantage
11:33 Show-don't-tell is a truism in film and video.
11:36 And while it's not always necessary to cross every T or dot every I,
11:40 sometimes a film really ought to just make a tiny bit of effort to make clear
11:44 how something improbable happens to happen.
11:47 Case in point, when the Enterprise first arrives at Regula I.
11:51 Spock, Regula is a Class D.
11:54 It consists of various unremarkable ores.
11:57 Essentially, a great rock in space.
12:00 Kirk, Reliant could be hiding behind that rock.
12:03 Spock, a distinct possibility.
12:06 Then, in a classic case of technology doing whatever the plot requires at any given moment,
12:11 when Kirk returns to the ship from the Genesis cave,
12:14 he orders tactical and immediately a computer graphic shows him exactly where the Reliant is.
12:20 Orbiting opposite them, presumably having just left the Regula I station where we saw her seconds earlier.
12:26 Now, how come they couldn't do that before?
12:28 And how can they track her through an entire planetoid now?
12:32 And why does it only work one way?
12:34 Why isn't Khan all "there she is" at the same instant Kirk spots where the Reliant is?
12:41 And just how long has the Enterprise crew known where Reliant is?
12:45 Is this how she's managed to stay out of sight?
12:48 If you can't tell, I have a lot of questions.
12:51 One can speculate or manufacture all sorts of rationalizations for this.
12:55 Like how the Enterprise was receiving telemetry from Regula I that Khan didn't know how to access.
13:01 But then it gives Kirk an easy advantage instead of showing him using his smarts or his experience as a starship captain.
13:07 Taking obstacles away from the protagonist diminishes his efforts.
13:11 It could easily have been addressed by simply mentioning sensor damage earlier in the damage report.
13:16 Or by having Regula I telemetry appear on the tactical display.
13:20 But alas, they didn't.
13:23 Number 2. Damn peculiar.
13:25 Starfleet surely knows that the Reliant is assigned to Project Genesis.
13:29 So when Kirk calls them concerning Carol's cry for help,
13:33 the very first order of business should have been to call the Reliant and ask what's going on or if they know anything about it.
13:40 Nothing in the film suggests that a call like this happened,
13:43 or if it did, that Starfleet ever got back to Kirk about whether they could or couldn't get through.
13:48 And furthermore, despite being told they are, as usual, the only ship in the quadrant,
13:54 they spot the Reliant assigned to Genesis not only in their quadrant, but closing fast.
14:00 As soon as Kirk calms the bridge, he is ordering to try the emergency channels.
14:04 So something is already odd.
14:06 The moment Spock deduces there's something weird about Reliant's excuse about their "chambers coil is overloading their comms systems",
14:14 that ought to have been the last straw, but it wasn't.
14:17 Now, from Carol's message earlier, Kirk knows that A) someone is trying to take Genesis,
14:23 B) that Carol believes it's someone from Starfleet, as she said, "Did you give that order?"
14:29 and C) her transmission gets jammed at the source.
14:32 So when the Reliant shows up acting damn peculiar,
14:35 even too long out of pasture Kirk should have been able to put two and two together and acted with due caution.
14:41 Yeah, I know the point of Wrath of Khan is that Kirk is rusty,
14:45 but given everything leading up to the moment of the ambush,
14:49 his hesitation and inaction serves to not merely portray Kirk as out of practice,
14:53 but as an incompetent fool responsible for the loss of Genesis and the Enterprise damage and casualties.
15:00 That's almost dumb enough to warrant being drummed out of the service.
15:05 Number one, the Genesis defect.
15:08 Even taking the movie on its own terms, that the Genesis planet even exists at the end is beyond absurd.
15:14 The narrative makes it abundantly clear that the Genesis device is intended to be employed on an existing solid body.
15:21 Why else would the Reliant be scouring space for suitable sites?
15:24 Carol, stage three will involve the process on a planetary scale.
15:28 It is our intention to induce the Genesis device into the preselected area of a lifeless space body, a moon or other dead form.
15:36 Yet as the story climaxes, the Genesis device goes off inside the Reliant,
15:40 which is itself within the Metara Nebula and somehow the Genesis wave not only turns the entire nebulas gas and dust into some different kind of matter,
15:49 complete with all sorts of plant DNA, but all of this conveniently falls together into a sphere in a matter of minutes.
15:56 The icing on the cake, though, is that this preposterous planet just so happened to have formed within the Goldilocks zone of a star.
16:04 A star? Wait, where did that star come from?
16:07 Was it the one regular orbits or did Genesis manufacture a star too?
16:12 And how does that miracle planet just happen to have exactly the right angular momentum to go into orbit around that wherever it's from star?
16:21 And some fans complain that the red matter in Star Trek 2009 was dumb, but play by your own rules, movie.
16:27 And those were the 10 dumbest things in Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan.
16:32 Do you think we missed something?
16:33 Well, check out the article on our website because there's four additional dumb things listed there.
16:38 Oh, and before I get any pitchforks in the comments, this is genuinely my favorite Star Trek movie and I've watched it way more times than I can count.
16:47 But there's just something fun about taking a look at the media that we love and just tearing it apart.
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