From hell's heart, I stab at thee.

It is Shakespearean, and it's just a scope and an accomplishment, isn't it, Paul?

One of the most magnificent performances of an antagonist ever committed to celluloid.

And, you know, people are going to say, oh, but it's so hammy, it's so big, it's so this. I'm like, fuck you. Acting is not supposed to be naturalistic. Acting is supposed to convey emotion, and wow, does he convey and just give you everything that Khan is feeling. Mostly, I'm going to say wrath.

Yes, lots of wrath, just gobs and gobs of wrath-y wrath.

But I will not brook any discussion about whether Montalban is a good actor or not. This performance is insanely good and insanely fit to the material, which is what really matters. But Paul, obviously, we're talking about the greatest Star Trek film of all time, Star Trek II, The Wrath Of Khan. Yes. I mean, there really is no, I mean, we can argue the even ones and the odd ones, but Star Trek II just towers over them all, as far as I'm concerned.

With just no comparison, nothing comes close. And a remarkable resurrection of the franchise after a somewhat faulty, wobbly start onto the big screen. And also a remarkable reinvigoration of a character that had been seen in one episode of Star Trek in the 60s. We've been so distracted by the grandeur of the operatic that we've neglected to introduce ourselves.

Oh, my God. Well, let me begin then. I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is...

Multiplex Overthruster. Summer of 82.

You know, I know it's our third episode, and we shouldn't be so self-congratulatory, but I just can't get over how much I love our theme song.

It is the song of our soul. It really is.

Now, Paul, let's get right down to business here, because this is an important podcast, big one for both of us, and I want to make sure that we cover all our bases. The plot of Star Trek II begins with Admiral Kirk. He is now approximately 53 years old, which is many years older than we are, Paul. He's in no way near the same age that you and I are at. And he has grown a little bit complacent. He's doing a desk job. He's Spock has taken over the command of the Enterprise. And Kirk is getting a little bit of a reprieve from his boring life as a desk jockey, as an Admiral, as a manager, by going on a training cruise on the Enterprise. Little does he know that on SETI Alpha-5, a planet that we have not heard from since the 1967 episode, Space Seed of the original series, he in 1967 in the original series dumped Ricardo Montalban, the genetically engineered Superman and his tribe of people on this planet, hoping that they would start a new civilization and not turn into a despotic fascist theocracy. Little did he know that it did, and it didn't go very well for them. And Chekhov, Kirk's former officer, is on a ship that's exploring that planet for some reason. Khan winds up kidnapping Chekhov, as well as the captain of that ship, taking over the ship, the Defiant, attacking Kirk, horribly, what did I say, the Defiant?

Yeah, which is also a fine ship.

A fine ship, yeah. For the other show. Yes, winds up taking the ship over, attacking Kirk, and then using the spoils of his attack to try to take over the Genesis device, which is a doomsday weapon, which has quite serendipitously been developed by Kirk's estranged former girlfriend and his illegitimate son.

There's a lot of plot. There's a lot of plot in this one.

A lot of plot, a lot of plot, but also a lot of wrath, really, because more than anything else, it is the story of this man, Khan, who was a Superman and a genetically engineered leader on Earth who feels that he has been robbed going after the man who he thinks robbed him. And in a weird way, it's Khan is as much of a character and a main character in this film and has as much of a mirror parallel arc to Kirk's as Kirk's. It's a really amazingly constructed script. Now you may remember last episode, we would see Poltergeist on the Friday night, but then it was a really good weekend in 82 because Star Trek II, The Wrath Of Khan also opened this weekend. So Paul and I went back to our parents and we asked them for a little bit more allowance. Paul, what was your allowance in 82? How much money did you get a week? Did you get an allowance?

You know, I did. And I'm trying to think what that was. I don't know. I don't remember.

Mine was the princely sum of $8 a week.

I think you had me beat. I want to say it might have been $5, but I'm not sure.

It's legit for 82, though, like $5. You'd actually go to see Star Trek II more than once, with maybe once, maybe twice in a matinee. So now it's Saturday. And our parents said we could not go back to the movies. They didn't go to see the other ones. So what we did is we snuck on a bus. And now we're at the mall and we're going to watch Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan. And it's one of the old time classics. So let's ring the bell and start. That's a great thing about the third episode. You're still laughing at your own jokes, right? It's awesome.

I was going to say we hijacked a Federation starship to the theater. But yeah, pretty much the same thing.

So Paul, now you and I have probably spent more time discussing this movie with our friends, with our enemies, with people that we fell out with, with family, than a lot of other things. Like, you know, probably second only to Star Wars, really. Is there anything rewatching this movie, was there anything new that stuck to you after? How long since you last saw this movie?

So I saw this film earlier this year with William Shatner in attendance here in Austin. And I dragged my very forgiving teenage son with me, who is actually more entertained by the Q&A of William Shatner wherein he started talking about the mycelium network of fungus and many other cosmic things. But to one of the points you made, it's hard for me to think of a film that I have not discussed with other people more in my life than Star Trek II. Maybe, maybe Bukkara Banzai, and one can only hope this podcast lasts until the summer of 84. And we get to that. That'll be a pinnacle of my existence. So yeah, I'd seen it then with an audience and it still kills like crazy in all the right places. And then in advance of this podcast, I had never listened to the Nicholas Meyer commentary track. And so I sort of seized the opportunity to kind of make up for that and go back and watch it again with that, which was quite entertaining. Yeah, but it had been a while up until this year since I'd seen it.

I don't think I've seen it in at least five years, front to back. I think I see bits of it all the time. And in 1982, I had a Sanyo sort of a rip off of a Sony Walkman. And the two cassettes I had were the Wrath Of Khan soundtrack and the 1812 Overture. And I listened to them at least once every night. So I feel like this movie kind of follows me everywhere because the music is so, it's James Horner's second score, it's his first for a studio film. The first one was Battle Beyond The Stars. And so I've got that really like just sort of rolling in my head like pretty much daily. So I feel like I kind of live this movie all the time just because the score always comes back to me. The one thing I was gonna say, there's two things that sort of I wanna say about it. One of them is the score does a shit ton of heavy lifting in this movie. Like it is one of the most evocative and it really, really helps the picture in a way that I think is on the level with how much heavy lifting John Williams did on the Star Wars movies, you know, especially the first one. But the other thing I noticed again, and it just keeps, every time I see this movie, I think for all the Star Treks ever, this one seems to me to be the one that has the most fully realized visual style. You know, it feels like Nicholas Meyer, his directing style is very workmanlike. I mean, he shoots masters, he does coverage and all of that. But I feel like his idea that these ships should be like submarines and that the uniforms should look like submarine uniforms. And even the quilting of the turtlenecks is something they used to do on U-boats, you know, for those uniforms. And the way that the sets look, the bridge of the Enterprise and the Reliant looks so cramped and everything's like bathed in red light. And there's, it just feels like every other Star Trek for me, the next generation, even Star Trek 3, 4, 5, the Enterprise looks like an Apple store, you know? And everything, and this is the first movie where I got the sense that Starfleet is like a working organization where people actually live and work in these ships, you know? And for me, Star Trek has never kind of had that worked, worked in look that I think this movie has. That was my new epiphany on it.

I am having a very out of body, kind of uncanny, psychic moment because my top two notes were Horner's score and the kind of redesign, reboot aesthetic of the film. So I want to talk about everything you just said, because I think you hit the two big things for me. In the shadow, first of all of the Alexander Courage fanfare, iconic Star Trek theme that then was matched by the towering power of Jerry Goldsmith at just his full extravagant majesty. Yeah. 29 year old James Horner, at the beginning of his career, steps in, in part because either I think they couldn't afford Goldsmith or they're-

They couldn't afford him at all, yeah.

Maybe it was scheduling, but I think it was a budget thing. Comes in and I think gives this, and I think Star Trek III are the most underrated scores and are just absolutely tremendous. I still have my original LP for these. I played it like crazy. Also, this was a film that I remember taking a cassette recorder into the theater and recording the audio.

You pirate, you pirate.

You like a lot. So I could listen back to it. And I did this at a successive showing, because I saw this movie more than once and was just completely obsessed with it. But yeah, there are so many moments where the score and hearing Meyer talk about his direction to Horner, in terms of going in this very different direction of saying, I want Horatio Hornblower. I want, you know, tall sail, sailing ships and kind of classical Napoleonic war, a seafaring adventure. But also, as you said, hit the nail on the head, a submarine movie and the tension and claustrophobia of that. But, yeah, Horner's themes and his spotting and placement and tracking of everything is, this is as potent an exercise in film scoring as I think you could find in any movie.

There's a couple of things about Horner also. Like, Horner stole from himself a lot. Like, you know, you hear a lot of his cues in a lot of his things. Like, there's a tension cue that's in this movie. It's in Cocoon. It's in Aliens. It's like literally. So he does recycle his own work a lot, which is probably the worst thing I can say about James Horner, because I think he's an incredible film composer.

He recycles the Khan theme in Aliens.

For Aliens.

And it's very distracting. Yeah, it's very distracting.

The thing that I find so fascinating about this score is that this score is kind of like everything that James Horner would go on to unpack in the rest of his career is in this score. So you literally have 20 years of doing movies for Cameron, for Ron Howard, for just working for some of the greatest directors in Hollywood, some of his iconic films. And yet the only thing that isn't in the Star Trek II score from Horner is using vocals, which is something that he started with in Cocoon. And then that goes into a bunch of his other scores. But literally, and then if you listen to his first score, which is Battle Beyond The Stars, if this is his high school yearbook, Battle Beyond The Stars is like his high school journal with all of his doodles and shit. You know? Yeah, yeah.

It's like Battle Beyond The Stars, which is a delightful score, but it's sort of prototypical.

Yes.

Because it's a prototype of James Horner. But with Khan to be thrust in, to take up this mantle, and he brings it in such an incredible way. And really, the only other example that comes to mind for me is what Bear McCrary would do a generation later when he was tapped to step in and take over scoring duties on the Galactica series, which is just a transcendent breakthrough, I think, in scoring. But yeah, to see Horner just take the biggest swings and recognize that this is his shot and this made his career.

Yeah, absolutely.

And launched him. And again, at 29 years old, it's dazzling work.

And Horner is an interesting composer because he's kind of one who bridges the Hans Zimmer... I basically consider the modern era the Hans Zimmer era. And I consider the late 20th century the John Williams era. And it's almost... Horner bridges those two eras very nicely. I think you start hearing some of the stuff that Goldsmith was doing, more experimental electronic sounds and all that in Horner. But really in the context of that John Williams thing, I think he's a really fascinating guy. And he died in a plane crash, like what, five, six years ago?

Yeah, heartbreaking tragedy. The other thing that's really interesting in this film in so many different ways is that on the one hand, it is having to make a movie with hand-me-downs, like reusing, recycling elements that...

Have you noticed, Paul, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you've lit up my brain like a firestorm. Are you a prop spotter?

Are you one of the...

Because I'm a prop spotter. Are you a prop spotter? Okay, so then I think we can both agree that this movie is not only made entirely with hand-me-downs, like literally all of the iconic 80s props that were at this one prop warehouse that everybody who ever made a sci-fi movie rented are in this movie, right? Like even the Genesis Lab, literally that shit is in Ghostbusters, is in Star Trek III, it's like, I just watched these movies and it's so awesome watching the lower budget 80s movies and how much of the props were all rented from the same place and they're all the same props, you know, regardless of the tone of the movie.

And this is a movie where they basically brought in a TV producer, Harv Bennett, to kind of reign it in and say we can't spend the money we did on Motion Picture and you've got to reuse and recycle as many of the models of the effect shots, of the sets, as you can to create as many cost efficiencies to get as to squeeze as much value out of them, basically amortize those expenses into the sequel that was not a guarantee, but really in a way echoed the history of the Star Trek series is that it's kind of a second pilot. Just like the original series got this unprecedented second pilot, Star Trek II is sort of a reboot where they're like, we're going to take another shot after the Motion Picture at relaunching this as a film franchise and we're going to kind of pretend that the Motion Picture didn't happen.

But that's what's so interesting. It's like they're in the same sense, right? But just to give some context to what you're saying, Star Trek The Motion Picture cost over $50 million in 1978. That made it the most expensive movie ever made in its time. And it was actually the Guinness Book of World Records for that, right? And it was directed by Robert Wise, who directed The Sound of Music, The Day the Earth Sits Still and The Sand Pebble. So The Motion Picture was an event and Paramount did not do very well with that movie. The movie opened well, but it did not do great. So they had this franchise. They have this title. Everybody knows these actors. Everybody know. And Nicholas Meyer had to shoot this film in 12 days.

Correction. Star Trek II was shot in 53 days, according to Nicholas Meyer's commentary.

Somebody said 12 in the thing I read.

I don't know who said that, but it would be metaphysically impossible to shoot this movie in 12 days.

So Paramount is looking at a movie that opened well, but didn't do so well in the long term, right? Everybody thought it was kind of slow and boring. They've got this name and these actors everybody knows, and they decide to relaunch the franchise, and they have to shoot the film in much less time. Someone in the studio said, you know what we need to match this low budget film made by a young kid with documentary style tactics and visual effects that move very quickly and a lot of fast editing? Let's get the guy that did the sound of music. But anyway.

Well, the day of the year stood still.

I do not have a single bad thing to say about Robert Wise, and I'm on the record that I adore The Motion Picture. But The Motion Picture is sort of like such a collection of like completely the opposite choice to what they were trying to accomplish. Like they wanted to make Star Wars, and instead they made like, you know, Gene Roddenberry's riff on 2001. But that's, I'm sorry, let's talk about Star Trek II. Sorry, so it's inexpensive.

Star Trek II was made for about $12 million, apparently, reportedly. Shot in 53 days. And part of Bennett was brought in to kind of rein things in, keep things, cost of schedules contained. And then they went with a young director who had just directed one other thing.

Yeah, but his other film is a great movie.

It is. Yeah.

If you haven't seen Time After Time, I mean, that movie is fucking phenomenal.

Yeah, a time travel classic. But also somebody who was completely disconnected to Star Trek, had no affection or even knowledge, but then just proceeded to do a deep dive, going back and watching all the episodes and looking for back and forth with Hart Bennett, what would make sense to kind of reset the board and do what kind of is in a weird way, kind of like a second pilot or second shot of launching the film franchise.

As you were pointing out earlier, Echoes, The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before, which are the failed pilot of Star Trek that was considered too cerebral, much like The Motion Picture, and then the second pilot, which was like an action, you know, packed.

Yeah, so history kind of repeats itself for this franchise, but the recycling of so many elements, even just unabashedly reusing beautiful effect shots that they spent obscene amounts of money for, for The Motion Picture, and they shamelessly use them again. And we don't really care because in part, they're recontextualized partially by Horner's score, which carries so much weight. And then one huge change that they did make were jettisoning the pajama uniforms out the airlock for Motion Picture and going with a radical redesign for the uniforms.

Well, but also also for the props. I mean, like you had all those blobby props for Star Trek, The Motion Picture and everything was so sort of biomorphic and kind of, you know, kind of fitting that pajama aesthetic. And then here everything's really blocky and like, yeah, more utilitarian.

Yeah, yeah.

Visible screws, things like that, you know. But that's your question because, you know, Nicholas Meyer is an interesting cat. So he a big Sherlock Holmes fan, right? Obviously a huge Shakespeare fan. He seems to know Melville a little bit. And the thing I find fascinating about a lot of Star Trek, especially in this period and into the early next generation and so on, is that it's being written by people who, whose frame of reference, you know, for high culture is the 19th century, you know? And I don't, you know, and look, that's just a question of when you were educated, what school, you know, like at what time in history you were. But I find that Nicholas Meyer is especially sort of twee about his love of Shakespeare and all that. And I feel like as you go further on in Star Trek, like I feel like in Star Trek VI, which he wrote and directed also, you see a lot of like Spock says, you know, a great Vulcan said this, and it's a Sherlock Holmes quote, or like, you know, you haven't, listen, you haven't known Shakespeare until you've heard it in the original Klingon. I mean, it gets very twee. But one of the questions I want to test is in this movie, I feel like that sensibility creates the movie. To me, Star Trek II exists in a very, like Nicholas Meyer rewrote Jack Sauer's script from page one. Like it is very much a Nicholas Meyer script, even though it stands on everything that came before. I find the dialogue in this film to be incredibly stilted, incredibly melodramatic, incredibly sort of like a pastiche of, it listens to me more like a serialized novel from the late 19th century, okay? But in a weird way, that works because the movie is so operatic, and the emotions are so big, and do you notice any of that watching this movie 5,000 times as I have? Or what's sort of your impression of that?

Again, I have so many thoughts. So one of the things on the development side of this that Meyer talks about in his commentary and spoken about elsewhere is that they basically started with five different screenplays and had this kind of interesting hodgepodge, pastiche process with him and Harv Bennett of going through what they had developed and deciding what are the things we like from each of them. And they distilled that down to five core elements, which were Kirk meets his unknown son, the Genesis device, the death of Spock, Khan and Savick. And they're like that. And so then from that, they built and constructed this thing. And again, it's very interesting because it is this amalgam of this newcomer to the franchise, Nick Meyer, looking at the original series and being told that the motion picture missed the mark. We don't want to do that again. We want to recapture the spirit of the series. We want to make this an accessible big movie that people will be excited to see and also that he would be excited to make. And so then he's combining that, again, with all of his geekery.

And his geekery is also Hornblower.

Yeah, and Run Silent Run Deep, which is a Robert Wise movie. And in a way, a lot of this movie, of course, Star Trek II is more Robert Wise than the Motion Picture compared to Run Silent Run Deep.

I'm not sure because, you know, like one of the... Well, we can discuss that at another time because we're talking about Star Trek II, not Robert Wise. We'll do a Robert Wise SmackDown later. But because Robert Wise is the master of the Mi Sansan. I mean, he really is the master of the great one-er, you know, and of the split diopter, I might add. When you listen to the dialogue in this movie, what are your thoughts about how the people express themselves in this film? I'm very curious.

I think you hit the nail in the head with the word operatic. It is unabashedly unrestrained in embracing the sweep of melodrama of space opera. And I think it feels as a reaction to the restrained cerebral kind of robotic tone of the motion picture. And so it stands in very stark contrast to that. And it's a pendulum swing in the opposite direction. And I love it. It is scenery chewing, just popcorn, chomping, B-movie greatness.

I think it's like no craft service for Mr. Shatner. He'll be dining on the set.

Yeah. And one of the things that's interesting is that these performances seem recalibrated more in line with what they were in the series in terms of feeling like, oh, these are the characters I recognize and that I've missed. And like there's some great scenes and interactions between the Holy Trinity of Kirk Spock and McCoy that really never captured the magic in the prior film, but here feel just completely connected to the roots in the series and even going back to the kind of, you know, seminal space seed of this particular film.

In this movie, I mean, you look, you get to go home with Kirk, you know, and you see his birthday celebration with McCoy, you know, and it's this. The other thing, the biggest question I want to ask is why do you think you and I, when we were 12, were so attracted to a movie about male menopause? Because now you and I are about the same age Shatner was when he made the, in fact, we're probably a little bit older than the age Shatner was when he made this movie. So we're actually, I think he was 52. If memory serves, I may be completely wrong. Producer Brad can tell me, can tell me if I'm wrong.

But yeah, so he was about, he was right at about 50. And I think that apparently in the script at some point it was specified or he'd wanted it specified that Kirk was 49. But it's never said, it's never said on screen in the film. But watching the film with its fixation on aging, it's kind of hilarious now in 2023 going, dude, 4950 is not old. You are not old yet.

Shatner was born in 1931.

You're asking me to do math.

And so they made the film in 1981 because it came out in 1982.

50.

You got two writers and you're asking and you're asking to go with it. That's awesome, producer Brad. Have you met me? So I think that, you know, just we get into the movie, like, you know, the movie starts with the Kobayashi Maru's scenario, which we want to talk about, obviously. But you also go home with Kirk for his lonely birthday with his collection of, you know, antique guns and his pet computer. He's got a Commodore pet computer in his in his in his house. It's amazing because even in 1982, that wasn't futuristic.

Well, I ascribe it to being part of his collection of antiques.

Yes, he has a Commodore pet computer because someday he hopes to become a Starfleet Commodore. But no, but I feel like but I feel like even though I feel like the dialogue in this movie, it's a little bit more arch and mannered. The context of the scenes is a lot more personal, a little bit more kitchen sinky. So you do get to kind of, you start with such a strong personal issue for Kirk, which is that he feels obsolete. I feel like one of the biggest differences between this and The Motion Picture is that, this is very much about Kirk's humanity and the closest The Motion Picture got to that was Spock, failing his logic test and trying to find a thing that we don't know quite what it was. I feel like this movie, the personal drama is so much close to the heart.

It's a movie about friendship and about the distinctive friendships that Kirk has with Bones and with Spock that are very different, but that also are two pillars of his identity and that keep him anchored.

Yeah, because they represent his- I mean, I always thought of Kirk, Bok and McCoy as 80 egos and super ego. Bok is the super ego. He's the guy going, well, to do this would be the- and McCoy is the guy going, do something, damn it, and Kirk's in the middle and he's got to make up a plan to make these things work. The two of them make Kirk whole.

Yeah, and having that wonderful scene early on after the whole prologue opening of the- which we need to talk about, of just Kirk and Bones in Kirk's apartment. That's a wonderful scene. It's a really great scene.

Jim, what the hell's the matter with you?

it's like a funeral. It grounds the film and it resets the tone in such a very different way than what we've seen before. But I think that fulfills a longing for those of us that had deep affection for these characters and just wanted to get to spend time with them again.

I would also say that one of the things that I think is really interesting is that because the film is so arch and the dialogue is so mannered, there's two things about it. One of them is that it's eminently quotable, so much more quotable than I think any other Star Trek film ever, because it does have that desire to aspire to a Shakespeare aphorism. But the other thing is, I feel like you look at an actor like Paul Winfield, right? Paul Winfield is a genuinely great actor. He was a pretty amazing guy and he seems so lost in this movie. He plays Captain Terrell, the captain of The Reliant, but he seems so lost in this movie because he's literally a guy who, his acting was naturalistic. Then he's in this movie where everybody is doing grand opera. Look, everybody is pretty big. The performances are big. He's keeping it down and then his death scene is huge, but it's nothing like what the character had. It's not like the characters bearing before. To me, it's interesting how this film defeated one great actor, but enabled actors who perhaps might not have been considered as great at the time. Yes. It places Shatner's strengths.

We'll get to that. But I think it's interesting that it is so devoted to honoring and restoring our connection to the legacy characters, but also being unafraid to introduce new characters. That's the opening of the film, which does it in this incredibly bold way. It's, I think, just one of the great misdirect openings of a film. The other thing that is so striking looking back on it, is that in a pre-social media, online, rumor mill world, during production of the film, it leaked that they were going to kill Spock in this movie.

I remember that, yeah.

There was enormous, just avalanche of backlash from fans who were preemptively swearing off the film and everybody involved, and it was just this nightmare situation. And in a way, it's like, it's the Kobayashi Maru scenario for this production, for the filmmakers in terms of how they dealt with it. And they deal with it in the most ingenious way.

By killing him in the first scene.

They kill him in the first scene.

It's interesting how much Leonard Nimoy, not wanting to be Spock anymore, didn't he write a book called I'm Not Spock, right? I mean, he literally, this was like a thing in his head.

Yes, although he would then later write a book called I Am Spock. Yes, to make up for that.

Well, he made peace with it. But what's interesting about that is that, you know, Savick, if my understanding of the behind the scenes stuff was kind of brought in to replace Leonard Nimoy, she was sort of brought in as his protege, and then become that character later on. So you see a bunch of decisions made here, like what you just said about killing him in the Kobayashi Maru scenario, that really are all centering and preparing for the idea that this major character is going to leave the franchise, which of course, when the movie makes $100 billion at the box office, he does not want.

Yeah, and I think, and also apparently during the production, Nimoy had such a far more positive, fulfilling experience making it, that he was then having second thoughts before the film was even over, which is then why they added elements to kind of give themselves an escape hatch.

The guy who produced the movie, his name was Robert Salin, I believe. And I read an interview with him where he said that he had worked on making commercials. And the way that he shot, because Spock's Torpedo Landing on the Genesis Planet was a reshoot for the same reason you just said. But the thing I read in his interview, he says he shot it in such a way that he could have a caption next to it, you know, like name of the brand or a tagline or something like that. So just watch it when you see that. But that was added later on because Nimoy then was like, I kind of like being Spock. I am Spock.

Yes. I mean, we're bouncing around and we're presuming everyone who's heard this is seen the film a million times.

Star Trek II, I don't know what you're talking about here.

But the other thing that's noteworthy is that that scene was not shot by Nicholas Meyer. He refused to shoot that scene. Oh really?

Did Meyer Bennett do it?

They, or second unit director.

Robert Salin did it.

Yeah, Salin probably did it himself. Yeah, I think so. But Meyer was willing to compromise on an insert of the mind meld and remember because it was ambiguous. But he drew the line and refused to direct the soft landing of the torpedo casket Genesis planet because he felt that was a betrayal of the creative decision and of the depth. He would then later, of course, come around and make Star Trek VI. There's something else in the ending I want to get to, but I don't want to get to it yet.

So let me pop a question, then let's jump start. We're not going to go through the whole movie scene by seeing it every time and then we do it anyway. Do you think the Kobayashi Maru scenario is a fair test of character, Paul?

I mean, what is fair? I think it's great. I will fast forward to a later point in life where I feel like I don't know that we needed the retcon explanation of how Kirk actually did cheat the Kobayashi Maru.

First of all, I think that the 2009, the way they treat that in that movie is shameful. I think the way that they show Kirk defeating the simulation is shameful. That's not Kirk.

Yeah, I didn't mean to open that can of worms.

I love Christopher Pine, but him coming in and being all glib and throwing the apple on all that shit, you failed that test of character if you do it that way.

Yeah, I take that all as a parallel universe version. But no, I think that it's a really well-constructed scene. It also sets the tone in terms of that, oh, we're in a very different vibe in terms of this world. Even though we're on the same sets, we're using some other shots before, but this is a different Star Trek that we're in. Also, the uniforms pop in this opening scene, and this whole kind of naval vibe and submarine vibe is just really arresting in that whole sequence. Also, the confusion misdirect of who the heck is she?

Are they blowing up the Enterprise?

We don't know who Savik is. They're throwing us in the deep end and assuming that we're going to be able to keep up and catch up and figure it out. Then there's the great reveal and majestic introduction. I was about to talk about that.

Okay, we'll build on that. I don't know.

That's yours.

No, come on. One of the most iconic shots in Star Trek ever is when the set opens and Kirk steps out and he's backlit and he says, pray to Mr. Savik that Klingons don't take prisoners. It's amazing. Just the way that the shafts of light are coming over his shoulders and over his head and his arm. I was going to say something that I found really interesting about this part of this movie. They never go outside the Enterprise.

Right.

You see stock footage of the Klingon D7 cruisers from The Motion Picture. Right.

You see they go to regular one. But you mean in this scene.

In this scene, it's entirely in the bridge. All of the exterior stuff is on the screen. So one of the things I really like about the scene is so well directed that you don't need to be outside. You don't need to have some big shot of the ship doing all sorts of crap. It's literally all played in this very tight way. The other thing that I was going to say when you said the uniforms pop, the other thing that for me pops in this movie is that the tactical displays, I know this is really stupid, but the computer graphics look much more workaday and much more like just military and utilitarian. And I feel like that gives the movie a real... The movie opens on a computer graphic of the enterprise inside of the navigational bubble. And it's a very different... Maybe they had that graphic in the motion picture. I don't know. Just puts you in a place where the technology is different. Everything just feels much more grounded in this movie. And whoever did the graphical user interfaces and the tacticals was a genius. That's all I got to say.

The other thing too that we kind of blew right past other than Horner's beautiful opening fanfare and flying through the star field is the title card in the 23rd century. Yes. That establishes this as a period piece. In the future. In the future. In this beautiful kind of interweaving between this sort of classical, romantic, nautical overture that Horner is blessed with. And then we dive in to the submarine-like setting and it's lit more ominously. It's that same set we saw in Motion Picture. But it looks so much more claustrophobic and dramatic. And there's one significant change in the layout they have swung Spock Station from behind Kirk's chair where it had been in Motion Picture to the side closer to where it was in the original series in terms of that dynamic.

And the other big change in terms of that is because Wise was such a master of the wide shot and he always set up a very sort of a strong mise en scene. Wise shot the bridge with like there were a couple of shots with split diopters where you've got a foreground and background both in focus and the bridge looks bigger. He used a lot of wide angle lenses in shooting that bridge. For example, Wise, the bridge, even though the set is a different size, the lenses that Nicholas Meyer is using make the bridge look more cramped. And that's a huge part of it too.

Yeah, he's filming it tighter. He's not shy about push ins. He's really taking a very different approach to how he's staging and blocking and shooting in this same set. And yeah, it's such a dramatic contrast. And it's exciting to kind of see just, oh, the difference that a director makes.

There's one other huge difference. Well, there's two other huge differences. Nicholas Meyer said that he wanted more flashing lights everywhere. So one thing from The Motion Picture is he put a lot more control surfaces and flashing lights on everything. Obviously, the set is lit a lot less brightly. It's much more red and it's much more pools of light. And he also put a no smoking sign on the bridge. And when they asked him, Nicholas Meyer said, People have been smoking for 400 years. They're not going to stop in 200 years. OK.

Yeah, but they made him take it down. So it's not visible. But yeah, he argued and fought for that.

No, it's visible. It's there. It's not there. It's totally there. It's next to the turbolift when they come in, dude. Am I making that up? Is this the Nelson Mandela effect? Is that happening?

I may have blocked it out. We're going to see which one of us gets the gets the angry notes.

Episode four, episode four. So we go from the sequence Kobayashi Maru. It's a test of character. You basically you go. You walk in the you hang out in the bridge for 20 minutes. You get your ass handed to you. And then you got to walk out and figure out why you failed. That's the test.

And we've seen every and we've seen all these characters we love die. Yes, they're all killed. They're all killed in the scene except for Savik, who is left in shock and dismay until the big reveal that, oh, it's just a simulation. None of this is real.

If it's a simulation, like, why would everybody act so much?

Anyway, it is pretty funny and you could tell some of them are really going for it.

Yeah. So we have the iconic entrance of Kirk and we established the entire theme of male menopause. It's Kirk's birthday. Spock gives him a tale of two cities. By the way, which foreshadowing Paul, one of your favorite things, obviously ends with the selfless sacrifice of Charles Darnay, you know, to the guillotine and it's a far, far better thing. So that's that's foreshadowing where Spock's going to go. And then we kind of get into like the private life of James T. Kirk, which looks kind of depressing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's got a I mean, he's got a nice view of the Golden Gate, right?

And one of the things that's slightly puzzling on this and I know we need to like move forward into the narrative of the film, because we've only really talked about these first two scenes, is that at the end of the last film, we had gone through these beats of Kirk has been promoted to an admiral. He realizes it's a mistake. He's obsessed with trying to get the Enterprise back and reclaim command of it. And we leave him in that film, embarking on another adventure back in command of the Enterprise and all as well. And now it's like it's a little Groundhog Day that, oh, suddenly at some point, whether that movie has happened or not, or who knows how much time has passed since it, he's stuck again in the Admiral's chair. But then the other thing that is sort of glossed over is that at some point, Spock has been promoted to captain and is ostensibly, he is now the captain of the Enterprise, but which is now on training duty.

Yeah, it's weird because the Enterprise goes from being the flagship to being like a ship that's literally a training ship for cadets. And I mean, look, I think that's all but that's all Hornblower. That's the Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is all about being cadets on the ship and all that stuff. So I get it just literally. But let's keep moving forward. We've got this great scene with Kirk and McCoy that we've discussed. It's about male menopause. And McCoy brings him Romulan Ale, which I spent days and weeks trying to replicate in my home with blue food coloring. I'm sure you did too, Paul.

I will neither confirm nor deny.

And a pair of reading glasses because Kirk is getting older and he needs reading glasses and he's allergic to Retinax 5, which is the reading glasses drug. And then that sort of leads us into the Reliant. And I think that opening shot where you first see the Reliant, I think is amazing because it's one of the first times I remember seeing it. I must have seen more in the TV show, but like here's a Federation ship that doesn't look like any Federation ship I've ever seen before. It's sort of squat, mean looking, kind of like very, ah, it's like literally in a pouncing posture, you know? And inside that ship are Captain Terrell, Chekov, who we know from the classic series, but also Commander Kyle, who appeared in the original series and the animated series and Strange New Worlds. So, you know, you've got kind of a lot of...

Yes, yes. I got to talk about the Reliant.

Please.

So, like, three things. First of all, the Reliant appears and we're seeing the primary hull dish enter frame thinking, oh, it's another ship like the Enterprise. It's another Constitution Class heavy cruiser. And then it's like, oh, no, we've never seen a ship like this before. So this is first, I believe, the first new effect shot in the film that appears. It's like, oh, my God, we're not just going to get recycled shots of the Motion Picture. It's a brand new shot. It's a new model. And it's the first time in Star Trek onscreen canon, I believe, live action, at least, that we're seeing a new design of a starship. And we've never seen it before. And one of the funniest bits of trivia about it is that it's upside down. The original design for The Reliant was flipped with the nacelles on top. But when it was submitted for approval, Harv Bennett signed it, turned upside down. And so the production design team saw it approved. Basically, we're like, oh, well, OK, he approved it in the center orientation. And so that's how we got The Reliant. That's phenomenal. It did.

I can't imagine that ship being as menacing upside down, you know, because I think that part of what makes it so menacing is that the nacelles sort of look like its rear legs are coiled for a jump, for a pound. Now, OK, so now we're getting into obviously, check off on Terrell Beam down to SETI Alpha 5, which I want to go on the record. Starfleet cartography must suck. In Space Seed, there were two moons, SETI Alpha 6, SETI Alpha 5, right? Presumably there were three more before that, right? And they go there and they don't realize that one of the moons is missing?

And there's also the explanation that like SETI Alpha 6 exploded, shifted the orbit of SETI Alpha 5. SETI Alpha 5 to like, so it's like, so anyway.

Everything was made waste.

So I just got to, we just got to jump to...

Khan in here.

Like this is what we're here for.

Okay, I want to tell you something. First of all, I want to tell you what's on his bookshelf. Not one, but two copies of Paradise Lost.

You can never have too many.

No. A copy of King Lear, The Holy Bible, Moby Dick, and a book called Statute Regulating.

Yeah.

What the fuck is statute regulating, man?

I mean, how's that?

How is that?

Sometimes, sometimes you just got to regulate your statute.

It's like when you're in the library on the cruise ship or the rented apartment, and you're like, oh, a lot of Judith Krantz books. That's great. Anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to assume that that is just a code title, like a cover for something else. So we've already been treated with one of the great entrances of all time, of Kirk's entrance in the Kobirafu Maru at the end of that scene. And now we get just the most awesome, in every truest sense of that word, slow reveal and introduction of Khan. And just the way this whole scene is staged and paced and scored from Chekhov's horrified revelation of the Botany Bay.

Yeah, so Botany Bay.

Botany Bay? We have to get out of here!

Quickly!

And just that accelerating tension. Yeah. And knowing, oh, they're so screwed. And then, you know, Khan is all covered and cloaked, but you know it's him. And he takes his time uncovering.

The amount of time it takes him to take off his helmet, to take off his outer robes, you know, and then the chest, which is real, confirmed by Nicholas Meyer multiple times. Yes. It's not a prosthetic chest. Last podcast, we talked about the Zelda Rubenstein's long monologue in Poltergeist, right?

Uh-huh.

This scene primarily is a long expository monologue that Ricardo Montalban delivers mostly in a one or two. And it is fucking like, first of all, I mean, the style of acting is big and theatrical, but it is amazing, you know?

Yeah, it's incredible. And so, tidbit of trivia, this was Montalban's first scene, his first day on set. And he has been toiling on Fantasy Island, this actor who I think is truly blessed with greatness that had not been properly respected, appreciated by Hollywood given his ethnicity. And has been given this invitation to return to this role, this one guest spot from this canceled sci-fi series in the 60s.

Yep, where he plays a Sikh. He's playing an Asian character.

Right.

Kind of in brown face in the original to be honest. I look back at Space Seed, he's a little bit in brown face.

A little bit, a little bit, although I'll take him over Benedict Cumberbatch any day.

Benedict Cumberbatch could have fucking hit a tanning salon. You know, like, come on, man. Put your back in it.

I just think like you've got... Let's not even get into it. You've got Shah Rukh Khan standing right there, right there. But don't even get me started on how much I hate that movie. But Meyer hands Montalban the feast of a lifetime. Yes, he does. Of this role and this movie. And he is the star of this movie. Like, let's make no mistake, he is the star. And his opening scene is this just resplendent expository monologue. Again, it's like it's wonderful contrast between, in a very different way, what Zelda Rubenstein got in Poltergeist, reintroducing his character, kind of resetting the board and like, oh, this is the movie now. Like, now the movie has started. And it was staged and shot essentially as a oner. And he delivered and brought it as that. And then, you know, Meyer came in and got his coverage. And the scene is broken up. But it is just so sweeping and mesmerizing. And Meyer talks in his commentary about how initially Montalban's instinct was to just go big out of the gate. And Meyer gave him this note, took him aside and was like, there's this line of thing, Lawrence of Olivier said, which is, an actor should never show his top. That you want to always have somewhere to go. And he said, the most powerful people don't need to express power. They're quiet and menacing. And then it clicked for Montalban and he recalibrates this performance that is so well modulated, that goes big when it needs to and has impact, but is so quietly...

I need to interrupt you. I'm really sorry, Paul. But you've said something deeply offensive here. Ricardo Montalban has no top. The man has no limits. He doesn't go to 11, he goes to 11,000. He's like Batman. Batman has no limits. But anyway, no, you're totally right. I was going to say, one of the things that I love about this sequence in general, they did the planet on a sound stage. They literally just had fans blowing sand around and it's very small. This entire scene takes place in a container. Like it literally looks like a cargo container from a from a semi truck. And what's amazing about it is that the acting, the reaction, and also the writing, which is wonderful, is what gives it scope. You know, like Montalban is saying, on Earth 200 years ago, I was a prince with power over millions. You know, and it's like and it's just his delivery that creates these huge stakes for what is a very small set piece. And if that were being shot today, you know, obviously you'd see them beam from the ship down to the planet. You'd see a giant shot of the planet with the giant dunes and all that. And this is literally just a bunch of couple of chimps in spacesuits in a set, you know?

And it's great. It is so dazzling. And also from a screenwriting standpoint, in terms of all the things that this scene has to accomplish and does it so deftly. First, in terms of like bringing in Khan back, catching us up on basically everything we need to know as far as what happened between Space Seed and now, his wife, who was Starfleet officer Marla MacGyver, betrayed Kirk and the crew and then went to live with her, met a grisly horrible fate and he is filled with rage.

One might say wrath.

Yes. Or, yeah, yeah. Or vengeance. And there was a whole title issue between-

It was the Vengeance Of Khan, right?

Yeah, it was going to be Vengeance Of Khan, but then it was going to be Revenge Of The Jedi. And so then they changed Vengeance Of Khan to Wrath Of Khan. And then, you know, they changed them out to Jedi anyway.

As huge and melodramatic a title as Wrath Of Khan is, it's iconic. You know, like literally a movie just came out that's a sequel to a movie called Becky and it's called The Wrath Of Becky. Like literally to this day people quote that title because it's so weird, over the top and iconic, you know, and it's so operatic.

No, it's perfect. But one of the great things that I love in this scene is you're seeing the wheels turning behind Khan's eyes. Yes. As he is figuring things out and connecting the dots. But it's also through this clear lens of arrogance because it's clear once he hears Chukov referred to Kirk as Admiral Kirk. Admiral. Khan's clear assumption is that Kirk got that promotion because he marooned Khan on Seti Alphor. Because everything is about him.

He's a narcissist. I love how he says, you mean you never told the tale. To amuse your captain, the only story that exists that you could use to amuse a captain is how Chukov met Khan.

Because what would be a bigger story to tell? Like he is Khan.

My first Star Trek convention was after this movie. And Walter Koenig was, it was a creation convention in like 83 in Detroit. Walter Koenig was the guest and he would tell this story. He apparently told it at every convention. Because he wasn't in the first season of Star Trek when Space Seed was made. So he's actually not in the show. Right. His retcon for it is that he actually, Chukov had a bad stomach condition. And he was literally taking up a stall in the public bathroom of the enterprise the entire time Space Seed happened. And Khan had to go to the pee and his super kidneys were about to explode. And he ripped the door open and looked at Chukov and said, I'll never forget your face. So that was Koenig's retcon. So there you go.

It's probably Koenig's best convention story. And it never gets old. And I kind of love how Meyer just kind of handwaves this. Because it's like, yeah, it doesn't matter. We just assumed Chukov was on the enterprise, on the crew. It's okay. But it's such a willful choice that of any of the original crew of the enterprise that he could have taken out of the enterprise and put on the reliant to then have the encounter and the interactions with Khan, it has to be Chukov. Well, because Chukov and Koenig has the best screen. Got it.

Now, in the purpose of the screen, now, I don't know if you have encountered this in your lifetime, Paul, but I have seen the ear. Have you seen the ear?

Not in person.

I went to a screening of the director's cut of this, which is what I saw. There's a couple of extended scenes I wanted to talk about as we get out of this scene. But yeah, the ear is like a two-foot square, right? And it's a giant latex ear with a huge fake sideburn that looks like it's made out of gorilla suit fur. And it's what they puppet at the SETI Eel to go into Chukov's ear. And even in the movie, it looks pretty fake, but it's quickly cut so well, you know? But I have actually touched the ear.

Yeah, well, and that's the other thing too that this scene does. It also, it pivots us into the horror genre.

Body horror, yeah, when he...

And it's like it's classic 80s, like monster horror shit that is unleashed in this scene. But the other thing, just in terms of like seeing Montalban's wheels turning and then connecting the dots of realizing, wait a minute, you didn't expect to find me here. Then seizing the opportunity of what this potentially means and what he can do, it's just, it's so captivating. And you just know Tyrell and Chekhov are completely screwed. But it's so delicious. And the way it ends on this just very quiet interrogation of like now he has their attention and their compliance.

The pivot that Montalban does from when he gets the bugs of them to where he just sort of very nicely leans in front of them and goes, much better. And so it's wonderful.

And then it's just quietly interrogating them about, you know, tell me everything.

Tell me why are you here and tell me why.

Yeah. Yes.

James T. Kerr.

Yeah. And then you have just one of the great cuts. The editing in this film is also dazzlingly done. And the editor has hardly, hardly edited anything else. I think with.

William Dornish. Yeah.

Who went to, had some kind of post-production company. I think did other.

I met his son who was also doing post-production on a show that I worked on. It was interesting because I didn't know he was his son, but he tells me his name and I'm like Dornish. And I just remember that it's a fairly uncommon name. And I remember saying to the guy, any familiarity to William Dornish? And he goes, hey, it's my dad. I'm like, whoa. He edited Star Trek II The Wrath Of Khan. And he was like, wow, you know that. Yeah.

But I think it's an underrated element. There are so many amazing cuts and just from juxtapositions of scenes that are so beautifully done. And then this revealed to Kirk, then in the shuttle pod with his Tale of Two Cities and his reading glasses. Heading back to his true home, the Enterprise.

We have a couple of things happen here. Depending on which cut of the film you see, you meet Scotty's nephew, who is now a guy in the bridge. Now, if you see the original cut of the movie, they don't specify that, but it's Peter Preston, played by Ike Eisenman, who played Tony of Tony and Tia in the Witch Mountain movies. Sadly, his performance is not great in the extended version because he tells Kirk, Captain Kirk, if you can't see that this is the greatest ship in the galaxy, you're as blind as a Tiberian bat.

Yeah, it's very cringe.

But I love that, you know, look, I think that, you're absolutely right, that Montalban was given a feast. And here's an underrated minority actor giving a great performance. But one of the things I like about the Star Trek movie, Sue, is that every once in a while, Scotty gets to play an emotional scene, and James Doohan cries really well. He mourns beautifully. And I think, like, as we meet this character, knowing that it's his nephew really helps later in the film, although when that character dies later and you see him show up in the bridge holding the body, if it's not his nephew, you just get the sense that Scotty's a great leader who loves the people who work for him, and was trying to save this kid, I think it's an interesting little detail that...

Yeah, and I know it's a point of frustration to Meyer to this day, that that bit of crucial information of the relationship between Scotty and Preston being his nephew was cut. And I don't know if you could have threaded that needle between maybe cutting out of the full cringe of that extended introduction.

But the other thing is that Ike Eisenman is sitting there and he says the thing about Kirk being as blind as a Tiberian bat, but then the extra behind him reacts to that. And that may be some of the worst acting I've ever seen. Like Ike Eisenman looks like Olivier next to the dude behind him who goes, Yeah, but it's nice.

It's another shading of giving these characters some added dimension and the sense of like, oh, they have lives outside the context of the ship. Not just seeing Kirk in his apartment, but the sense that, oh, Scotty has a nephew who's he's proud of, who's serving on the ship with him. And sort of almost like also an idea of a next generation, a passage of the time is passing and a torch passing.

Even some of the things the characters say, like when McCoy brings him the Romulan Ale, he says, well, I've got a border ship that brings you. You get the feeling that, oh, he's got a bunch of friends who are smugglers and shit. You know, like he's a doctor, he's got contacts, you know. And I think so they're going to launch the ship. They launch the ship. It's a beautiful sequence, mostly taken from the Star Trek The Motion Picture.

I just want to add one quick thing because of your kind words about James Dewan. There's a lovely moment when Kirk comes aboard and does his sort of review of the crew and attention. And there's a reference to a wee bout. A wee bout of Scotty. And it's a meta moment. And he plays it off as like, oh, it was surely like a joke. But it's a reference to the fact that Dewan had had a heart attack. Oh, wow. And yeah, and it's just it's sort of a little nice moment of compassion kind of in the movie to acknowledge that we care about him.

Yeah, and I think this is one of the things that makes this movie so endearing is that you have a lot of those little things just floating around the movie that, you know, that just give you the sense that it's lived in, you know. I think that's the biggest contrast between this and the Motion Picture is that this feels lived in. We have a little bit of a scene with the Genesis scientists when, you know, they find out Khan is coming to get them or rather Chekhov calls them. The only thing I wanted to point out in this scene is that the set is amazing because it's all rented props against the dark backdrop. There are no walls in the regular lab. It's literally like a void. And again, like this is what happens when you have limitations instead of an open palette. You make choices. And I feel like the shot of the scientists arguing is a 360 shot where Myers is going around the set as they all talk to each other. And the two things you get, the sense these scientists have been working together a while because of their rapport, but you also get realized just how much he was able to work around a bad set, you know, or on a less than ideal set.

Yeah. And these look like real people, like real scientists. Like it's cast, I think, populated very well. But also, I think another thing I'm reminded of with regard to Regular One is that Regular One, the model, is the Starfleet orbital office complex for Motion Picture just turned upside down and then with a little extra stuff futzed onto it, which I just think is amazing. Once you see that, you kind of can't unsee that. But it's like this movie, it's just so...

It's clutched together. It's like Star Wars in that it's literally put together out of popsicle sticks and whatever they could find in the closet, you know?

Yeah, they're saving money everywhere they can.

One of the best sequences in this film, and I mean, I just love it, and it's Khan attacking the Enterprise. And that first attack, one of the things that... The way the tension builds on that is incredible, but also Horner makes pizzicato like menacing. The initial for this is played on plucked violin strings, like ding, dica ding, ding, ding, dica ding, ding, you know? And it's, I don't know, like... Paul, why is this scene so awesome? Why is the scene of the... Aside from Khan saying, let them eat static.

Let them eat static. So the setup for this scene is a classic Trinity scene between Spock, Kirk and McCoy, where we're getting into a philosophical argument about the Genesis device. We've established at this point who Carol Marcus is and that she's an old flame of Kirk's and there's all that kind of drama there. So there's all this kind of relationship human stuff that we've gotten.

And we've also seen the first fully CGI sequence ever in any film, which was actually done by ILM, by the people who eventually became Pixar and the computer that eventually became Pixar. But the whole Genesis simulation is literally the first time that CGI animation was used in a complete movie like that.

And which was a big swing, and they didn't know how they were going to do it, or if it would work. And it does. And it still holds up remarkably well, I think, to this day. But it definitely is a breakthrough weeks in advance of Tron.

So Fawke and McCoy are arguing about whether humanity should have the power of creation and then Captain... It's Savik.

Savik, that's right. Yeah, it's Savik... .who alerts them on the comms and says there's another vessel entering range. And it's like, and then we have this, it's one of ours. It's reliant. And we know that that's bad news. They don't. And then we have the beginning of, I think, one of the greatest music cues in certainly genre film history, if anything. But this is where James Horner just is unleashed and we get this full Khan reliant theme that our heroes cannot hear, but we can. And it is on the level, I think, of the Jaws theme and motif of just the sense of overwhelming doom that is coming for them.

But it's the opposite of Jaws because Jaws is, you know, very slow burn, very slow build. And this, the moment she says it's ours, it's the Starship Reliant. You hear those horns come in and then you hear the clank, you know, like that sort of wooden block versus wooden block sound that he also used for aliens. All the music we've heard has been pretty, you know, elegant. I think the most exotic thing we've heard is that in Spock's theme, you hear this sort of on-disc, Martinot kind of sound, you know, very sort of ethereal. But this is the first time you're hearing some heavy sort of percussion that doesn't sound like a snare. And that sound like immediately gets you into like something wild is going to happen. And then then it goes to it like unlike because Joss is, you know, it's a slow build. But this just starts at 11. And it's literally like an Italian opera.

And it builds to like 20. It goes into full blast blaring with the great shot and the most menacing shot of the reliant of maybe any spaceship ever with it askew coming to frame with these glaring red lights and like eyes that are on the prowl on the attack. And it's just it's fantastic. It's so fantastic. And that our crew is so unaware that they are in danger and that that builds this incredible tension and suspense for the audience because we know what they don't know.

It's Hitchcock's bomb. I mean, but it's with Khan.

And the escalation and then intercutting with Khan and him relishing this moment of just like not being able to help himself in terms of how much he is going to savor every moment of this. Maybe to the sacrifice of sound tactics later on.

Maybe to the sacrifice of verisimilitude as an actor.

This is when the movie comes to its full power. And there's no going back from it being a classic and of greatness because this whole sequence is as gripping as anything.

And one of the best things in the sequence is Khan has all of these younger people who are in various states of undress around him. Only one of them speaks and it's Judson Scott who plays Joachim, who was actually supposed to be Khan's son, which is why they have a relationship. The one thing is he never speaks to anybody other than that guy. And then everybody else, like there's one scene where one of them kind of touches Montalban and Montalban looks at him like, what the fuck are you doing, man? They just seem to be there. But you get the beginning of that relationship between Joachim and Khan, which is a very kind of like Joachim is the voice of reason. He's the guy going, don't do this. This is bad.

We have a ship.

Let's go.

There's a great moment where he points out to Khan, you can already claim victory. You've outsmarted Kirk. You've escaped your purgatory. And you've stolen a Federation ship. You can go anywhere. Let's just take the win.

But then Khan says...

And I think our producer may have a clip of what Khan says.

He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him.

Yeah. That's before all of this. Now, when Khan finally unleashes on the Enterprise, it is a full phaser beam to the ventral pod of the Enterprise, right into engineering. I don't think I ever saw the Enterprise get damaged this badly ever in anything. And it's like literally, they were so sadistic in how they staged it. You literally see the phaser beams hitting the ship, not quite melting it, but you see it. It is so visceral the way that the Enterprise is...

Eviscerated.

I've seen the Enterprise destroyed many times. I've seen the Enterprise attacked and all of this stuff, but this is the only time in any of these movies where I felt like, where it felt like I was watching a real character get stabbed.

It is visceral.

Yeah.

And it is so shocking because to that point, we've never seen anything like this before in the context of Trek. And we know something bad is coming. We don't know it's this bad, it's this ruthless. And the way that short sequence is constructed from the editing, the cuts, the shots, the score, the sound design, the klaxon alert of the tactical, like blaring going off, and then the intercutting between the bridge reaction, the exterior model shots and the effect shots, and then the interior of all hell breaking loose in engineering and bodies flying, and it's just so jarring and jolting and awful.

It's just awful.

It is.

And one of the things that, again, this movie really brings home, and so did Poltergeist, and we talked about this a lot in Poltergeist, is when you were doing analog visual effects, you didn't have the flexibility that you have now with CGI, you didn't have a lot of this ability to sort of change things, do new things and all that. You needed to plan every shot, you needed to plan everything, because that's how much more expensive and time-consuming the shots were, right? So much of this is carried on the actors' faces, on the editing, on the score, and in the writing. And it sort of goes to show you, movies now are like four hours long, and two of those hours are visual effects shots that you could probably cut out. A director like Meyer had to sort of storyboard this scene in a much more rigorous way and know how the scene was going to work instead of finding it in editing, you know? Because you're dealing with too expensive a commodity to waste. And I think that's a lesson that a lot of filmmakers could learn today.

Yeah, he's so limited in his resources, in his time, his schedule, his budget, that he needed to be meticulous in his planning. And you can just tell that this entire sequence, it is a clockwork. It is so precisely meticulously crafted and constructed, and it's dazzling in its effectiveness. And the escalation that it takes the movie to this whole other level of stakes and of drama, and then the twist.

The twist. I believe in the record album, it's called Kirk's Explosive Reply.

Yes, yes. But first, the shock, the punctuation of we surrender, of signaling their surrender and negotiating terms and all that. And seeing Kirk in this moment of utter defeat, sort of hopelessness, and then scrambling and trying to buy time and again seeing wheels turning with our characters of these heroes we know and love, and really him and Spock then figuring out what can they do, especially once they see who they're facing.

Khan and Kirk never occupy the same frame. This is the only time in the movie they're actually face to face in any meaningful way. So the scene has to carry a huge amount of heavy lifting.

But they weren't acting to each other. They got to perform to each other, so we see them acting to each other, but they never had that privilege. And they both give just tremendous performances throughout this scene.

And this is the scene that sets up this rivalry. You've seen Khan, you've seen Kirk in their lives, you've seen how outsized Khan's need for vengeance is to whatever the fuck Kirk is thinking about. Which, by the way, is probably what Kirk was doing. Can you imagine the scene in Starfleet, Kirk's office, circa 2252? He's like, oh, let's see what's on the agenda today. Let's see. Okay, I got to go talk to Admiral Nagura. I got to inspect an Exeter class ship. Check on SETI Alpha 6. Bob, we did that? Okay, never mind. So Kirk's just living his life like a champ, and then Khan shows up. And now finally, we have these two guys mano a mano, tete a tete. And it's the moment Kirk kind of enters the movie, really. It's the moment where the movie comes to Kirk finally and says, this is the movie you're in, asshole.

Yeah, because sort of up until this point, I mean, to varying degrees, but he hasn't really had to be Kirk to the degree that he has been the Kirk that we know from the show. He hasn't had to step fully into the role of what that means. And now it's like, oh, you kind of have been missing this. Be careful what you wish for, because now you are firmly back into that situation.

And one of the things I love in the scene to punctuate kind of how out of shape he is, how weak he is, you know, the rocky part of this movie is that he puts on his glasses. While he's trying to figure out what to do about the fact that Khan's about to kill all of them, he like literally puts on his glasses and looks at the time and goes, damn. Which is such a nice touch, you know.

It's a lovely moment. And there's so many little ones here where he underplays it. And then, you know, as they figure out the counterattack and send the code, he's understated in a lot of the deliveries. And one of the things that Meyer talks about in his commentary is that he found pretty quickly that Shatner needed a lot of takes, basically wear him out, so that he would just sort of then throw away the line, like that he would just get to a place where that he was not just overdoing it as much. And that Meyer just sort of intentionally calibrated his approach by just making him do a whole lot of takes to get what he needed and what he knew would work.

One of the other things that, you know, so once Kirk's explosive reply happens, right, there are two things in the scene that I think are just beautiful. One of them is, so the prefix code is a string of numbers that you send with an order so that the ship's computer knows that you are authorized to make the computer. So they type in the prefix code and they make Reliant drop her shields. And that's how they're going to get Reliant with the few shots they've got, right? The scene where Reliant's shields start to drop and you see the graphic of the shields around the ship. And Judson Scott, his performance, says, sir, the shields are dropping. And Khan's like, raise them. He's like, I can't.

Yes. As he pounds the console with both fists.

Yes. You know, we're used to seeing Starfleet officers man these consoles, you know. And this is somebody who's like literally just been in battle after growing up in a rock in space. He's now manning a ship and he's disappointing daddy. So his performance is just phenomenally just appropriate there. But then when the Enterprise finally shoots, it not only like sort of blasts into the Reliant, it turns out that these ships like the impulse engine control has this glass dome on top of the ship. I don't know why there's a big glass dome on top of the ship. But like again, something I've never seen in Star Trek is they blow off. Like you literally see it explode in a shower of glass into space. And you get the sense that Kirk really dinged Khan here, you know?

Yes, he's disabled the Reliant.

Exactly. And this is where Joachim sort of yells at Khan saying, we got to withdraw, man. And Khan like doesn't want to. He wants to kill Kirk right there. But they're damaged and this is how the battle ends. And there's a lot of stuff in this movie about fathers and sons, obviously, because it's about Kirk meeting his son that he never knew before. And I think it's really interesting that they never specified that Joachim and Khan are father and son when their dynamic is such a mirror to what Kirk winds up having with his own son. You know, like here's a son who is dutiful, completely devoted, driven to disagree with his father, you know, and ultimately pays the ultimate price for his filial piety. And then you've got Kirk's son who basically thinks Kirk is an asshole and has his entire life. He mentions it earlier in the movie. And his last line is, I'm proud to be your son. You know, I'm shocked that they never actually called it what it is with Khan and Joachim.

In contrast to Khan's last line to his son after he dies. I shall avenge you.

Which, by the way, I remember seeing that and going, dude, have you learned nothing?

Yeah, no.

Even at the age of 12, I'm like, oh my God, what the fuck, man? And then we get into damage control. We get into seeing Scotty in a very touching scene, brings Peter Preston up to the bridge because the turbolift from engineering to Sickbay has been damaged and he's holding the burned body of his nephew, depending on which cut of the film you see. You know, McCoy sort of declares him dead later in Sickbay and Scotty is crying. And he explains that Peter stayed at his post when everybody else ran. It's such a nice sort of like 18th century, like Napoleon-like war.

It's master and commander. It's master and commander.

In the best way, I mean, but it's again, like I think one of the things that Nicholas Meyer brought to Star Trek II to diminishing returns, I think later, but to this movie so potently, as you would say, Paul, is that sense of we're in a galleon, you know?

One thing that this film leaves me with is I feel like there's a whole space or a gap where what if we had gotten just several more installments of this kind of Star Trek movie?

Yeah, it's interesting. Once Meyer left and Star Trek III came in and all that, I think the look of it all changed. A lot of things changed. The movies got flatter, more TV movie looking. They started using the next generation sets. I think this movie is a really interesting just sort of standalone thing that everybody refers to afterwards, but they never quite matched it, you know?

No, no. And it is a little heartbreaking. But yeah, this particular aesthetic, this particular tone and dynamic is so magical. And it's such a very specific incarnation of Star Trek that is singular. And we've never really got again.

It's a version of Star Trek that has a theme song, like the classic Star Trek theme song from next generation that you hear is Jerry Goldsmith's main theme from Star Trek The Motion Picture. Horner's themes have never been reused. They've gone back to Alexander Courage. They've gone, but aside from Star Trek III.

And even the third season of Star Trek, Richard Picard brings back the first contact theme of Goldsmith. And there are little hints or nods to Horner, but not a full expression of Horner's theme. And that is something that I find really interesting because I feel like that's kind of ripe for revisiting. It would be interesting to see a Star Trek that could valiantly reclaim and take that Horner theme and bring it back.

And look, I think it's like the movie that all Star Trek has been in conversation with since it came out, and yet the form of Star Trek that nobody... They've brought back the old Federation uniforms for Strangely New Worlds. They brought back a different version of Courageous theme, all of that. But I frankly appreciate that. I like that this movie just has stayed kind of trapped in amber the way it has, you know? But let's talk about Kirk. So Kirk goes down to Regula, to the space station. He finds that Khan has slaughtered everybody there, that the transporter is set to the inside of this rock that the station's next to, and they beam into the planet. And it turns out that's the Genesis cave, where they've been testing the Genesis device. And Kirk meets his son. Yeah.

He tries to kill him.

He tries to kill him. And David, earlier in the movie, has a scene where he says, you know, remember that overgrown boy scout who used to hang out? What was his name? And his mom says, James T. Kirk was many things, but he was never a boy scout. First of all, I want to just say something that may seem grim, and I apologize. But I feel, you know, I really like Merrick Buttrick in this film. And I just thought he was charming and an attractive young man and all of that. And like many actors from this period of time, he's somebody who died of AIDS. And it's one of the things that I think is really poignant about being a fan of 80s movies is that a lot of these films were shot in New York. Some of them were shot on the East Coast. Obviously, Star Trek II was shot here at Paramount. You have a lot of actors that you go like, oh, what happened to that guy? And then you go to IMDb and you find out that's what happened to that guy. So there's something also melancholy to me about watching some of these movies because you know what happened to some of these people in real life. It's sort of a really tragic part of the 1980s that I feel like these movies in the 80s kind of still have become a time capsule of some of the people that we lost, you know?

Absolutely. And it's such a big swing to give Kirk a son and then to imagine, okay, who is that character? And this film gives us a character that I think is unexpected. It's not who you would, at least from a fan standpoint, you would imagine what Kirk's son would be. And it kind of sort of goes against that type. And in part, because it's a reflection of his mother, of Carol Marcus, again, who's a construction and a new character, and also in contrast to maybe who you might expect from past experience of what a Kirk Fling would look like. She's such a fully formed, professional, brilliant, independent, full of agency character and impressive, even though, I mean, I say full of agency within the bounds of the patriarchy.

No, but I think a uniquely capable character who has a very strong point of view, who is very commanding at a time when Star Trek did not have any female commanders at all. And also Kirk comes back into her life in this movie, but it's not like she's fawning over him or anything. I mean, she's doing her thing, you know? She also has the best line in the movie, which is when we first see the Genesis cave and everybody's just loosing their shit over it because they've literally taken an asteroid and made an entire ecosystem inside of it and it's gorgeous and all that. And then they just go to her close up and she goes, can I cook or can't I? Even at the age of 12, I thought that line was hilarious.

Yeah, and in that scene, in that interchange, there are these little sparks where then you can fill in the gaps, the backstory and imagine, rewind to the younger versions of her and Kirk and get these glimpses of a very special dynamic that's very tantalizing but also feels really true. But yeah, I think that Merrick's performance, especially the high wire act of having to go through this arc of petulance and resentment and all the things he goes through to realization, reawakening and sticking the landing in the final scene with Kirk is beautiful.

With a horrible costume choice, they literally gave him like a preppy tennis sweater to wrap around his neck.

Yes.

What the fuck is that about?

That was certainly a choice and maybe not one that has aged the best. A little unfair to saddle him with, but I get the intent of like, oh, he's not Starfleet. Yeah. But I think Meyer even would say, maybe that was a little much.

The thing about Star Trek, especially in this time period, is that the 80s kind of creep in in the margins. One of the things that when you look at Star Trek, The Motion Picture, you look at this movie, you look at Star Trek III, now all the Federation people, like they all look like Federation people. They're all clean shaven. They've got their little Federation sideburns and all that stuff that come to a point. But what you realize also is like all the extras kind of look like they went to the KitKat theater in nearby Santa Monica, Santa Monica Boulevard.

Yes.

A lot of porn stashes, a lot of 1980s Tom of Finland kind of looking dudes in the background here. Yes.

I am filled with metaphysical anguish that we are running so short on time.

We're going to have to do the rest of this movie later.

Actually...

Actually what? Wait.

I was going to say what we're about to do may be an excuse to play our theme again.

Oh, my God. You're right. Okay. So, hey, dear listener, Paul and I had to take like a 24-hour break because the podcast is already about three hours long and it's raw form. And, you know, people had to go have dinners and go to the bathroom and stuff like that. So if you hear a difference in the sound quality, it's because we are resuming from a completely new location, new mics, the whole thing. But, Paul, you're a genius. Because I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado. Thanks for that.

And this is...

Still... Multiplex Overthruster! Summer of 82. Thank you.

Paul, we are literally such nerds that we literally cannot restrict the discussion. We literally have to restart our own podcast hours later because we cannot talk about Star Trek II with any kind of brevity.

Yeah, that was an unexpected but should have wholly been anticipated intermission.

Thoroughly.

I don't know what we were thinking that we could cover everything in one go.

The thing I was gonna bring up is how nobody but DeForest Kelly can say the word Jim with such brio. Jim, you know, it's like the man's battle cry. Just, I love it. It's what happens when you know he's gonna like go off on a tear. I just, I love it. And he does it when he finds the dead bodies and it's pretty fucking great.

Yeah, yeah. And there's some really nice horror moments on the lab when they find the bodies. It's very disturbing.

Yeah, the hands with the blood all over them and all that.

Yeah, yeah. They're flailing around and they're being strung up. And then when they get into the Genesis cave, you know, all the stuff with the ear that we talked about that and then, you know, Tyrell's tragic phase of suicide.

I have a question because I happen to think, I've seen Paul Winfield in a lot of movies. Yeah, great actor. And I happen to think he is a great actor. His performance in this movie feels like it's very odd. Like either he found himself among a bunch of TV actors who already know how to go to where they had to go. And what do you think about what Paul Winfield is doing in the role of Clark Tyrell? I'm curious.

Yeah, so it's a fascinating character because it is a new Starfleet captain and it is the first black Starfleet captain that we've seen in the franchise. So it's very significant. But what's interesting is that we get very little of actual Captain Tyrell because most of what we get is Captain Tyrell under mind control by the Settie Eel and Khan. And he is acting kind of wigged out. Right, sort of weird. And it is, yeah, and that does add this heightened weirdness to the performance. And Chekhov is also a little weird in that state as well. But Chekhov is always a little weird. So that's...

I feel like we're used to Walter Koenig being big and kind of odd anyway, you know?

Yes.

The other thing is he's not just under Khan's mind control. He's also kind of being brow beaten by Carol in a weird way. He's sort of the character who's there to show that Carol Marcus is a powerful woman because she basically kind of reads him the riot act about the microbes. I think that it's like a great actor in a role that sort of, it has to be underwritten, right? Yeah. And I mean, I feel like he does the best he can with it, right?

Absolutely. I do kind of wish that we'd gotten to see sort of more of him in his full height of his powers and the true full status of his character. And we'd give very little of that, just sort of a tease.

The good news is I think we can all agree that the worst ever guest captain in a Star Trek classic movie is JT Esteban from Star Trek III, who like, I mean, that guy just fucking wigs out. He's like, his ship gets destroyed. So I feel like Tyrell, like I like Tyrell because he has a fighting spirit. And I do really feel for both the actor and the captain when he commits his phaser, what you have so aptly called this tragic phaser suicide. I mean, he really is giving it his all.

Yeah, yeah, no, and it's real drama and suspense as he's struggling with whose will is going to win out. And that that's his Kobayashi Maru.

I also got to say, in weird times in my life, when it's completely not appropriate, more than once, I have looked up at somebody and gone, kill him Tyrell, now. Kill him Tyrell, now. I mean, it's so, and I think that this actually leads, you know, like one thing we didn't discuss during the first five hours of this podcast was sort of like Khan's entire turn when he says, I have done far worse than kill.

Oh my God.

I've hurt you. And I wish to go on, I think one of the reasons like I love this movie when I was 12 is the emotions all felt like they were punching a little bit out of my weight class. And I think that at age 12, the idea that somebody would rather just hurt you constantly rather than kill you was kind of new. I mean, I've enacted it many times in my life since. But it's kind of really new to me, you know, I don't know. I mean, I asked the question again, Paul, what is it about this sort of tragic opera about male menopause appealed to you?

I think we may have that one.

I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you.

I mean, who could deliver that line?

Oh my God, it's amazing. Yeah, just by the way, the pauses, the sheer part, like if this were a modern movie, you know, the producer, the non-writing producer was in there, can we cut to a closeup of somebody during this monologue? During these pauses, you know, and instead you just get to, you live with him as he's making these changes in his character.

Yeah, and again, it's another example of the two of them never share the same space in any scene in the film, they're never on set together, but they're co-inhabiting the scene so potently because of the performance and the writing. And the way the scene is constructed, again, the realization that Khan has that, oh, this is perfect, I can maroon him just like he marooned me. Right. And the sort of poetic justice of that and of winning, of his superior inner life, stranding them, beaming out the Genesis device. At this point, Khan has achieved his greatest victory. He has won, he's cleared the board, he's run the table.

And he's almost come through for his own son. I mean, he's basically saying, I'm done with my wrath. You know? And that, of course, leads to the greatest Captain Kirk moment of all time, which is when he just goes bug shit crazy and yells Khan at Producer Bradley, please. I mean, the glory, the majesty, the opera of this is just beyond compare, right?

There is no higher peak in the mountain range of the entire Star Trek franchise of iconic moments than that line as delivered by Shatner at the height of his Shatnerian power.

And it's funny because you say that an actor should never show his top. And I said, and I argued that Montalban has no limits, but with Shatner, it's not about a limit. It's like, this is his top. And it is Shatner giving us everything he's got, you know?

Yeah, it's iconic. And I can't help but wonder in the moment, oh, to be on that sound stage in that moment, to witness it. Just one of the great moments in movie history.

However, it is, yeah, we're about to hit the snag with it. Go ahead. I know you know it. Go ahead.

It is somewhat inexplicably unmotivated and implausible because we then come to find out.

Exactly.

Kirk has got an ace up his sleeve.

Exactly.

And he's already a step ahead of Khan and has not been stranded and is, yeah, so it's a little bit of a, it's a puzzling. Well, I think. Kind of a narrative choice.

The question becomes, is Kirk doing this as a piece of theater for Khan to sell him on the idea that he has won so that he can buy some time for the Enterprise and for Spock, whom he's already spoken to in a coded message that Khan was listening to and Kirk knew that, or is he in genuine despair that the Enterprise may not get up to speed in time and that he's actually stranded there?

Yeah, I think we sort of have to give the movie broad leeway on this. I think that also it may be partially motivated by the fact that it drove Tyrell to kill himself and then also the murder, you know, there was a murder of another regular scientist who kind of dove into the shot and took it and then beaming out the Genesis device and Kirk knowing that, well, potentially, he can do stuff before Kirk is going to be able to move into stock. So there's plenty of reasons for Kirk to have anguish, but the question is, is it a proportional response to the veracity, like the true situation he's in, which is not the true situation that Khan believes to have put him in.

I think Kirk is having a genuine moment of doubt about whether the Enterprise can survive Khan destroying it now. And I also think that you point out something really interesting, which is that, you know, it's funny, I've seen this movie a billion times and it feels like after Tyrell's suicide, you know, that's when Kirk has that monologue of Khan, you bloodsucker, do you hear me?

Do you? Yes.

Which, of course, has the second greatest line delivery in this movie, which is when Khan says, Kirk, my old friend, you're still alive. And Kirk goes, still old friend. You've managed to kill just about everybody else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target. And it feels to me like what you've just pointed out is that there have been two murders that Kirk has witnessed. And also, and he's also witnessed the worm coming out of Chekhov's ear. So maybe it's, you know, maybe we're nitpicking the emotional moment because there is so much going on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has plenty to be upset about. But not the least of which is Khan's poor marksmanship. Yes, yes. But his restraint in that moment, in letting Khan take the win and believe it and not immediately kind of tipping his hand that, oh, no, I've got to get out of jail, free card. And you only think that you've stranded me here for the rest of my days. And then it's an interesting vibe because after that exchange, Kirk is relaxed. He's asking about, is there food? McCoy's like, how can you think about food? Because no one else has looped in on Kirk's little secret joy. And it's almost kind of like he's being a little bit of a dick by not looping anybody else in and letting everybody else think that they are stranded to their doom.

I think he generally doesn't know whether Spock is going to come through. I'm going to say that he's got some faith, but the situation is dire.

Yeah, I guess, yeah, that there is a chance, not 100% guarantee that he's going to, in this wonderful moment, punctuated by him taking a bite of an apple, pulling it, whipping out the communicator and then just picking things right back up with Spock and everybody else just sort of having their jaws hit the floor.

But there's an interesting bit of business that happens before that, which is Kirk and Carol Marcus have their come to Jesus about why they didn't stick together, why he didn't get to be David's parent. What I love in this scene, and again, punching above my weight class emotionally, is how strong Carol Marcus is. She says, I didn't want him with you on spaceships. I wanted this. I had my life and I wanted him in mine. And it's interesting to hear a woman in a movie in 1982 that is not Kramer versus Kramer or an unmarried woman or a Cassavetes movie saying, I wanted this and I got it. And I don't care that you're the male lead of a franchise, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It is a big, bold stand for single moms. And this is predating the Murphy Brown, you know, controversy that would erupt. But for the time, it is very significant and I think quite laudable. And also, I think it's arguably her best scene. It's the most substantive in terms of asserting her identity and agency in the life choices that she's made. Really seeing the two of them finally together and establishing this dynamic that, again, as I mentioned earlier, you then can fill in the echoes of backstory and believe that they had that relationship.

Oh, I believe that he loved her because she called him out on his shit. She seems like the kind of character who would not take any shit from James Tiberius Kirk, who did not, and who finally ultimately took the sun away. I can see that relationship and I just, like I said, I just love her strength. I love her power. As you said, single mom, Kirk, we all know is like galactic sperm donor Captain Kirk. I mean, he literally spreads his celestial seasonings all over the galaxy. That's what the series is about. He's always dropping trough for some alien girl. And here literally is like the one person who rejected him and it's glorious. And I think it almost, like you said, the moment where he finally picks up the communicator, calls Spock to see if his plan worked. Let's talk about that bite of the apple. Is that the most satisfying bite of an apple in movie history or what? Can you tell us how we get to the apple? Can you just tell us a little bit about it?

I don't like to lose.

Crunch.

And also another of the great James Horner music cues, because then we get this joyous, heroic romp. As we're back into the enterprise, his enterprise theme is sort of hero theme for our crew. And the conversation we're seeing also kind of crossing over a transporter of beaming. Talking through the beaming.

It's like, how did you pull this off? What are you talking about?

It's so great. And then there's Spock and then there's a great interchange between the three of them. Because we all know famously, as we've been recently reminded of in Strange New Worlds, that Vulcans cannot lie, but Spock being half human, exaggerated.

And he said it. And by the way, he didn't, it was sort of like a Baron Harkonnen lie, because it's sort of like he said in the communication, ours would seem like days. Yes. We had to vamp for hours. We knew that. There's some scene that's in the director's cut that's not in this. We've got the Horner cue. It's those wonderful slicing violins going, that, right? Kirk and Spock are going up a turbo lift. They're going up the stairs on the turbo lift, because the turbo lifts are down. And then I think you see that part of it in the regular cut. And then there's an added scene as you're going up the turbo lift, where Kirk looks up at Spock as they're going up the ladder and he goes, he's my son. That young man is my son. And Spock just goes, fascinating. And I can tell why they cut it, because it's kind of awkwardly blocked. And you can tell they're both kind of a little bit older and going up the stairs isn't like in their nature. It's interesting because it's the first time that it gets said, actually, Spock never finds that out in the cut of the film as it is. It's also interesting to me how that cue develops into this preparation for war montage, which is great because it leads me to think that preparation for war in the enterprise consists entirely of carrying these glowing fluorescent tubes to different places. You know, it's literally just people in uniform going down hallways carrying fluorescent tubes and vacuum cleaners.

And lifting sections of a grill to load the photon torpedoes. And again-

Can you tell the story about that in the commentary about how they got to that shot and what he did with that?

I don't know, but remind me.

There's this great scene where the cadets have these sticks with hooks and they're pulling up the grates to the bay where you put the torpedo in and the torpedo is coming down automatically and you follow the torpedo down the path. So that set is a redress of the Klingon, I think it's D7 battle cruiser from the beginning of Star Trek The Motion Picture, right?

The bridge? Yes.

Famously commanded by Mark Leonard, who was also Cerec, who was also the Romulan commander in the first time Star Trek ripped off Run Silent Run Deep, right? An episode called...

Balance of Terror.

Balance of Terror, yes. Oh, great episode. Which starts with Kirk Ophiuch at End of the Wedding, which is awesome. So Meyer wanted the shot and they had done this, they had rebuilt the set and there was no way of doing that. So he literally, like at the last minute, got everybody on the set and they figured out that they could put dolly track on either side of the torpedo bay and put the dolly there to follow the camera. So that shot, one of the best shots in the movie where they follow the torpedo down the grate and then later with Spock's funeral, was like something that they sort of had to clutch up in the moment, which was just another example of kind of like just how, first of all, how Jerry built this movie is that they literally took a set from The Motion Picture, just spray painted it and made it into a different set. But also just the ingenuity of, hey, how do we do this shot that I want, you know?

Yeah, this is, I'm going to digress into a little, well, all of this is geeky, but this is extra geeky. I love that set and I love the purposes that it is used for in the film. From an engineering standpoint, first of all, this is the first time we have ever been shown how photon torpedoes work. What they actually look like, how they are loaded, what that system, how that system functions.

They are like a big black box full of photons.

But the other thing is, is that it's clear they are purposely designed to very conveniently also be able to function as a casket.

Yes.

And we don't know that yet when we are watching the movie. You know that that was all part of the plan. And so to have this set that's like, okay, it's going to serve these three key functions. It's going to serve as when Kirk arrives and kind of does the review of the crew, kind of the inspection scene. And at that point, it's not really clear what that scene or what that set is, that that's the photon torpedo bay. We don't know where we are. It's just, oh, we're in this room and he's doing his inspection. Then it's revealed, oh my God, this is where they load the torpedoes. This is how they load photon torpedoes. This is so freaking cool. And it is somewhat foreshadowing because later we'll come to know, oh, really, the only reason the set, I think, fundamentally exists is because that's for the funeral scene later. And they needed something that would function to be able to bury him at sea, continuing in this whole nautical tradition kind of theme that Meyer is doing. But I also just love the kind of nuts and bolts, prep for war. Again, a very Master and Commander procedural aspect of the functioning naval kind of dimension of a texture of realism that makes you feel like, oh, this is a real ship. This is a real crew. Yeah.

You imagine in the world of next generation that those greats just sort of slide out automatically. And I think one of the things I love about this movie is exactly what you just said. Look, starship movies have never gotten away from two things, World War II or Napoleonic era ship to ship combat. Even in Star Wars, these giant capital ships literally pull up next to each other and they have gun bays with cannons that look like cannons in a frigate and shoot at each other. I mean, look, in a real space battle, one ship would be upside down 500 kilometers away. The other one would be behind the moon and they just fire guided missiles at each other the way it probably had. The way that it harkens back to this nautical tradition, especially with so much of being that you have to pull up these great by hands and all that, it just gives you the sense of motion and the sense of like, these are real people, even though they're high tech future people, and they talk funny, their job is manual and the stakes are human. And I just really appreciate that, you know?

Yeah, there's the whole this whole analog dimension to the proceedings that in terms of how things work on a ship, and that it still has that human tactile manual labor to it, where it's not all automated, although we will then see in Star Trek III that that actually you can run a whole starship on automation.

But apparently, apparently, there's like hands that you come in and take the thing off the grate, you know? Yeah, yeah, I think that as we said, you know, this version of Star Trek did not exist after this version of Star Trek, you know, even Star Trek III, things started getting a little cleaner, a little more flat, a little more brightly lit, you know, which is really kind of Rick Berman's legacy, because Rick Berman was a very old school TV guy. And by all accounts, what I've heard is, you know, like...

Harv Bennett.

No, no, no, I'm talking about Rick Berman.

Oh, later, later.

I think what happened with Star Trek, even after Harv, I think Harv Bennett obviously brought in a more televisual sensibility. And I think that's why Star Trek III got a little flatter and all that. But once the next generation kicked off, you know, Rick Berman was very much about brightly lit sets, bringing the music down. And I think that and kind of keeping the show a little bit more muted and a little bit more even in tone, and I think you see that choice all through the movies with the next generation and all that. As we have said before, this is a type of Star Trek that just didn't take, you know, it just sort of it just sort of sits there and it's unique and it's nautical and it's it's exactly it's just a very different version of it, you know.

Yeah. And there is a parallel universe where the powers that be and Nimoy had opted to keep Spock dead. And we would have continued this version of Trek. With Meyer at the helm potentially and continued this type of this version, this incarnation.

But instead we got what was mocked in Spaceballs as Star Trek III, The Search For More Money.

Exactly.

So Kirk and Khan get back on the on the comm link and Kirk just like fucking kicks the shit out of Khan verbally, doesn't he?

Yeah, because there's a whole stretch of this engagement between the two ships where Khan does not know that Kirk is back on board and in command.

Khan is going back to blow up the Enterprise in a very leisurely way. He's trapped Kirk and he's just basically doing one long orbit around Regula trying to find the Enterprise while Kirk is confessing about his sins and having difficulties with his ex-girlfriend and not loving his son and all that shit. And Khan is just sort of like, whoo, whoo, whoo, where's the Enterprise?

Yeah. Because then Kirk and Spock have plotted, again, to level the playing field because the Enterprise has been eviscerated and is at such a disadvantage. The only way to even the odds is to enter the Butara Nebula, which is gorgeous. And they bait Khan in, but he does not take the bait. And what is the only thing that can bait Khan?

And what is interesting is, before which happens, Khan's own son says we can't follow them into the Nebula, our shields would be useless. And it seems like Khan's only tactical move in Star Trek, even though he memorized the manual for how to captain a ship, is raise the shields and fire. So the moment he says our shields would be useless, Khan is actually kind of cowed a little bit.

Yes. And again, Khan's son is trying to be the voice of reason. And trying to look at the bigger picture. And at this point, it's like, well, you've already won. You've got Genesis, you know, before it's like, you've already won, you've got your own ship, you've escaped, you know, being marooned. Now, like you've won on top of winning, you stranded Kirk, you've gotten the Genesis device. Like, what do you care about the enterprise anymore? Let it go into the nebula. Who cares until then Kirk has to stick it to Khan in just this delicious moment.

So satisfying, because Khan slows down, Kirk, Spock tells Kirk they're slowing down, Kirk gets on the comm link and he says to Khan, we tried it once, you're away, are you game for a rematch? Paul, you got to say the next one. I can't even say it. It's too grandiose.

The coup de grace that pierces through Khan's incredulity, he couldn't conceive of how Kirk could be alive. And then Kirk comes in for the death blow to Khan's ego. I'm laughing at the superior intellect.

Oh, God, that hurts. That hurts.

And that sets Khan off and no one is going to be able to talk reason to him. He is blinded by fury and rage. His pride has been shattered and full ahead.

And two things here. One of them is we've seen this played as a joke. You know, you see Kill Bill and this and Kill Bill, how they zoom in on Beatrix Kiddo's eyes and they play that, you know, like, like that she's going to kick some ass, right? We know it as a postmodern joke. But the way it's played in this movie, like literally the cellos, the deep cellos are going da and then like this shot of Khan and he just has full power. His son tells him no, he literally casts him aside forcefully and says, yes, our damn you.

Yeah, it is it is operatic. It is so, oh, it's it's a feast. But also now, like the dais cast, like he he is and it is it's a have it's all of this stuff just brought to full bloom and it's glorious. And and now you get the rematch again, kind of in a echo of Rocky, like we've seen our Rocky be defeated. And now there's the rematch.

You know, it's interesting because we're doing this podcast, you know, talk about movies we saw when we were kids. And just talking about this moment, like takes me back to like 1982 in a very, as you say, Paul, potent manner. Because as I said, like, I always felt like this movie was sort of punching above my head emotionally, you know, and I think probably that's the reason I liked it is that it was dealing with a lot of emotions that I had not experienced as a 12 year old, you know, like, just sort of like divorce, male menopause, you know, like feeling useless in the world and all that. And I'm digging the movie, and I'm really wrestling with what the movie is about while loving its propulsion and its operatic plot and the fact that it's Star Trek, which I love, it's probably the last moment of real joy in the film because it is Kirk being a badass, kicking the shit out of Khan. I mean, the movie, it's obviously thrilling and exciting. The Battle of the Mutara Nebula is one of the greatest space battles ever.

Yeah, there is one big moment of joy in that battle, but we'll get to that.

Oh, yeah. You know, just just when it is such a huge moment of triumph and literally it is the last time when I can really be happy that Khan is losing without feeling the tragedy of Khan. So I remember in the movie theater between when Kirk tells Khan, here it comes and Kirk's explosive reply and this, those are just two moments where you just feel so the first time I saw it, I stood up and cheered because it was just so powerful, you know?

And thrilling. I mean, this movie is exhilarating in ways that we've never seen Star Trek achieved before. Again, it's doing it on this shoestring budget and schedule. And it's all because of the writing and the performances and the direction and the editing. And it's just so beautifully crafted and dynamic.

And I think and I think ultimately, if we go back and talk about how operatic Kirk's shouting Khan was, right? If you look at this moment just in terms of now, Kirk, Khan has kind of much like Rocky III, Khan has sort of been the protagonist of this movie, you know, the first actor. So and this is kind of like now in the second act of the movie, Kirk has been put through a wringer. His ship has been destroyed. He's witnessed multiple murders. His son hates him. His ex-wife, his ex-girlfriend doesn't want him around. She only called him because she needed help with the Genesis project. Like, you know, like he's really been through a lot now. And I think as a 52, as a 53 year old, I think about that now. And I go like, Kirk being able to stick it to Khan, it's just, it's literally cathartic because I now understand so much better what he went through. But even as a 12 year old, it was just like phenomenal.

As we pointed out earlier, we have seen Kirk kind of stripped of his Kirkness. Yep. And in this sequence, as we're entering the third act, it is about Kirk reclaiming his mantle of greatness.

Yes.

Of reestablishing the iconic legendary Captain Kirk. And that, oh, he still has this in him. And it is thrilling to see that. And it's such a wonderful arc for his character. And also has got to be just immeasurably satisfying for Shatner to get to play. Because he's ceded so much ground in the first two acts of this film in many levels, in terms of his potency and his character and his standing. And now he gets to win it all back.

In a film about male menopause, this moment is a massive injection of Viagra. I will say the most toxically male terms possible. Now, Paul, the Mottara Nebula, I have one of these loaded leading questions for you. This is one of the great battles of all time. It is scored beautifully. It is literally a battle between two sailing vessels in outer space. The nebula is beautifully rendered as one of the most beautiful composites. ILM's work is phenomenal. Does this battle make any geographical sense to you? Because I look at it and I'm like, where are these ships? How are they having all these weird crosses and stuff?

Yeah, it takes some leaps into the fantastic and the surreal, but it is so beautiful. And it's a really interesting contrast because there's so many beauty shots in the motion picture of entering into VEGER and the cloud and the atmospherics and very old school practical analog tactile effects that were done in tanks and, you know, with different fluids and substances to kind of create all in light and just really magical craftsmanship of moviemaking visual effects. And here we see ILM's take on that with the nebula, but it's approached so differently because it's so much more engaging and you're so much more connected, it's so much more connected to the action.

I think you're absolutely right, Paul, because, you know, you're talking about in the motion picture, there's these wonderful shots of awe and wonder, but the stakes just aren't high enough. And in this, the stakes are about as high as stakes can possibly get. And, you know, it's interesting because I was listening to the director commentary on Attack of the Clones. Don't ask me why. And George Lucas says, you know, like the fight between Count Dooku and Anakin. George Lucas says, I've done a billion lightsaber duels by now, right? And at a certain point, you just sort of run out of ways to do them. So this one, I just decided it would be a tone poem and it would be, you know, flashy. And you see it, you know, it's a little bit more abstract. It doesn't quite work in Attack of the Clones, but then again, what does? But in this film, you know, like the battle does become a little bit dreamlike because the positions of the ships are not particularly, you know, either big leaps in time are being taken and the ships are changing direction and position all the time, where it's just, but it doesn't matter.

Yeah. And to pick up on something on entering the cloud, Enterprise entering the cloud in Motion Picture is sort of this lean back in your seat on Wonder, but there's sort of a, there's a distance. Whereas here entering this beautiful pastel, the Atari Nebula is a lean in kind of moment of engagement and investment. It also feels spooky in a way that it's like you're, there has this ghost like quality because their, their sensors aren't quite working and so we're lean, literally lean. I remember, and I still do it, you lean in as you're looking on their, their display, trying to catch glimpses through the very analog static, to try to see whether we can, we can actually catch a glimpse of that other ship. But yeah, the geography of it, especially as Kirk embraces the three-dimensional ranking that we are just told to believe that Khan lacks, which are a couple examples of huge lapses in Khan's advanced intellect. The other one going back being that the coded transmissions between Kirk and Spock are exactly subtle, are anything but subtle, and not the most challenging cipher to...

What, you mean like Khan didn't lose because he didn't have an Enigma machine?

Yeah, it's like Spock basically starts the transmission by giving the key to the code. But Khan just is not paying attention somehow. But we just go with it. And the same thing here, we go with the idea that he lacks this three-dimensional...

Yeah, Spock points out that Khan is not experienced and he's thinking two-dimensionally like a chess player. And then comes one of the most satisfying shots ever in this film. You see the reliant. And it's been a joint battle. I mean, like there's been like a big scare moment where reliant shows up almost about to crash into the Enterprise. They've been shooting off hunks of each other for a while. And then that last shot where the Enterprise sort of... In the storyboard, I remember seeing the storyboard, I think on like Starlog magazine or maybe in the Making Of book, they called the shot the sneaky peep shot. And it's the shot where the reliant is in the foreground and the Enterprise is sort of emerges from behind it very slowly.

Yes, rising out of the clouds. It's this wonderful reveal and turn as it is finding its prey and the prey is unaware. And it's the first moment really that Kirk has the upper hand.

Yes. But let's talk a little bit about access to the Enterprise bridge for a moment because this is like the doors open and Chekov, who thus far has been a mind controlled stooge of the villain, walks into the bridge and says, Hey, can I help? And then later on, David Marcus just enters the bridge. But it is sort of Chekov's redemption that he gets to fire the torpedo that finally cripples the reliant, right? That's his revenge.

Except, yeah, there's a moment of ill time, moment of turbulence that their initial shot misses, which is kind of sad. But then they, yeah, and then that tips, that's the reliant and caught off. And then the fight is on and it is it is just dynamite.

And let's talk about the damage. And let's talk about the damage to the reliant, because it's interesting. They blow off one of its warp in the cells. And in a thing that a spaceship would never do in response to that, the reliant takes on a list. It literally tips toward the side, like as if it were in water. It tips to the side that has the X at the cell, because that would be the heaviest side in a situation with gravity. Wouldn't happen in space, but it's nautical. This is Master and Commander, like you say, yes.

Yeah, yeah. And that is the one great moment of joy, of triumph, of when Kirk and the Enterprise and Chekhov and Sulu, like they are, they are at the back, at the peak of their power, of their capabilities, of their greatness. And they have what is briefly a moment of triumph in defeating their adversary, finally.

Except that Khan has real anger management issues. Now his son is dead. He died because literally the bridge fell on top of him. And his son's last words are, yours is superior. And then he dies. And then as we talked earlier, as we discussed earlier, Khan says, I shall avenge you. And all of us at the end of 12 are like, asshole, learn your lesson. What's the matter with you? And he turns on the Genesis device and he's going to blow everybody up. Starting the end of the movie.

And the countdown. And again, just another great pivot of Horner's score, which is perfection in this moment. And now we have the true no-win scenario unfold that Kirk is not able to cheat.

So much of this movie is about facing the no-win scenario. I think this is one of the places where this movie actually hit me in the right place emotionally when I was 12. It's sort of a lesson that the no-win scenario exists, it can happen, and here it is. And Kirk finally has to look it in the face. And it's pretty sad.

But also in terms of a culmination of setups and payoffs. And foreshadowing. From going back to the opening scene of Akobe Oshimaru, the concept of a no-win scenario, the scene in Spock's quarters where we first hear the concept of the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one, the reveal of that, you know, Kirk cheated in his no-win scenario test, all these things that have come to the forefront, and then also just the nuts and bolts engineering understanding of the condition the respective ships are in and establishing the sense of geography that as you mentioned earlier, realistically, ships like capital ships like these would not have to get anywhere near as close to each other to engage. But the Mutari Nebula created this convenient mechanism where that was necessary. But we also have established that enterprises warp drive is offline. There's no way they can escape in time with this countdown of the Genesis device now being used as a weapon, which McCoy warned us of.

As the David Marcus, exactly.

Yes, as a David Marcus that this thing that was intended and used, you know, to create life is also this Oppenheimer-esque nightmare of doom.

You bring up a really interesting thing that when you actually look at the script mechanically, it's a really well engineered script. I think one of the things Nicholas Meyer brings to this as a dramatist is that he's clearly like an 18th and 19th century guy and the well-made play is very much in his veins. Just on the level of engineering and craft is a beautifully crafted script. And so there's that. And also, as we mentioned, the Mutara Nebula is sort of a tone poem, right? But it's really interesting because in this moment of truth, the geography is, the Mutara Nebula wasn't a tone poem because somebody dropped the ball. They planned it that way. And at this moment, the tone poem is done. And now we've got real geography, which is we are literally 10 kilometers away from a ship that's about to detonate the worst weapon in history. You know what actually makes this so, there's a moment in the bridge that Genesis device is on. David has confirmed it. Khan has been spouting lines from Moby Dick at Kirk into an empty screen because his wrath is so vast. And Sulu, in one of his few lines in this movie, looks up from his console and says, we're not going to make it, are we? And that for me was the moment that like, for some weird reason, I mean, obviously, you know, the stakes, but that kind of landed to me like, oh, God, like, I mean, I knew they were going to make it. I knew, but, you know, it's funny because if you look at Kelvin timeline, Star Trek, right, and also the last Star Wars, The Rise Of Skywalker, you know, JJ has this thing that he does where the great commander tells his crew he's sorry, you know, like when the Enterprise is about to be destroyed and Star Trek into darkness, Kirk just sort of gets a sad look in his face and he goes, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, which by the way, a fucking real captain would never do because it's horseship. Poe Dameron does that in Rise Of Skywalker. And you're like, dude, when Sulu says that Kirk looks at David and David shakes his head, but Kirk doesn't like lose faith, you know?

And again, the book ending of this opening misdirect of the Kobayashi Maru simulation, where we see all these characters, beloved characters die, but not really. And now we're in a situation where they are all realizing and we're seeing it. And there's a great montage of like push-ins on different faces and characters that we know so well. And the realization that they are all, there's no way out, that they're done, except for one character.

I think before we get into that, though, I want to say, like, I've sort of just had this epiphany. But I think the theme of this podcast ultimately will be that, and I think the biggest lesson we can learn from these movies from the 80s, these blockbusters, is that the human face and an actor's capacity to convey emotion into the camera is the greatest visual effect there is. And I think that the limitations of this analog-era filmmaking really prove that in an incredible way. And I think this movie and Poltergeist are such good examples of that. And they both opened on the same weekend.

Because it all comes down to these very human stakes and a sense of real jeopardy. And we've been enjoying this battle of intellects, this very Holmes Moriarty, which is very much in Meyer's wheelhouse throughout. And it keeps going back and forth. But now Khan has essentially won and believes he's won. He is basking in it, even though Khan's victory has come at the cost of everything. Of everyone he's loved, his whole crew, his son, his own life. He's going to die, but he is going to die knowing he won. And that he defeated his greatest adversary. And yeah, and it's seeing him also with this beautifully, horrifically done makeup effect of the burns on one side of his face. And he is just this monster. But it's really incredible.

It's funny that you point out that Khan dies happy. Which is sort of fascinating because I never actually thought about that. Many times I've seen this movie, I never thought about the idea that Khan dies thinking he won. So in a weird way, unlike Clubber Lang in Rocky III who knows he's been defeated, he knows he got his ass whooped at the end of Rocky III. Khan actually kind of gets everything he wanted. Which was death and destruction and the end of Kirk. Ultimately, it's interesting because for all of his fantasies of power, and having been a prince and wanting to be in power again, which is what we see in Space Seed, he's really just been reduced to this one goal. And he gets it. Yeah. And he hurts Kirk because, as you were saying, one person figured out what to do.

Yeah. Yeah. And this great moment of realization. And again, we're hearing the chatter among the bridge crew and that they're ruling out possibilities and options. There's no way out of this situation. And Spock, silently, we see his wheels turning behind his stoic eyes. And as he pivots in his chair and he gets up and leaves the bridge in this dire hour and no one notices.

I give the movie a broad pass on all of this. And because also the entire montage where Spock is fixing the warp drive with like a pair of white gloves, it is literally Spock is literally sticking his hands into what looks like a sort of silver wastebasket with two giant sort of like chafing dishes put on top of it. And he's really reaching in and like it's like he's mixing the antimatter himself or something.

I mean, it's never explained exactly what he is doing. I assume that he's resetting something that's a jar in that. I mean, we're kind of jumping ahead a little bit, but it doesn't really matter. Like the specific subjects don't really matter. We just know what we need to know, which is he goes down to engineering. Clearly, he's got a plan and is told, no, you're crazy.

Yeah, a really great, I really, I mean, between McCoy and Scotty and that, you know, Scotty has basically passed out from exhaustion and from radiation and radiation poisoning. McCoy goes down there and basically he's down there. He basically tells Spock he can't survive. And, you know, again, look, one of the things that sells so much of Star Trek for me is McCoy, because I see him as kind of like, honestly, for me, McCoy is also, in a weird way, the voice of reason and humanity, even though he's not the voice of reason, but he's the voice of a certain sort of common horse sense and of a certain kind of human decency. And Spock has to give him the old Vulcan nerve pinch to get past him, to get into the radiation chamber, which is, you know, just a wonderful sort of statement that McCoy actually is a very dogged character. He doesn't give up either and he cares deeply.

I want to take a moment to just sort of honor the awesomeness of DeForest Kelly.

Yes, please.

Throughout everything. When I was a kid, I remember after school watching Star Trek reruns and I was always into Spock. As I got older, I really grew to love McCoy so much. Although there are certain moments in episodes where he can be like a real asshole. But he brings such an important texture and dimension and humanity and also just humor wonderfully. But he's also a bridge, and we've talked about this in other contexts a little bit, a bridge to another era and Hollywood actors of classic Westerns and of old Hollywood. And he just represents and brings something, a gravitas and sort of an energy and a presence that is so distinctive and so crucial and I think is easily overlooked and underappreciated in the dynamics of Star Trek.

I think also McCoy is kind of like a 20th century person who is trapped in the future. He's the guy who doesn't like the technology. He's a healer, so his practice is a lot more hands-on. And also he's the guy who has the reactions to shit that we would.

Yeah, he's the old country doctor, but yeah, he is often a stand-in for the audience looking at things with skepticism and incredulity.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

But in a very funny way, very wry and sarcastic, but grounded in humanity and emotion and real devotion and...

He's a real friend.

Yeah, and that's one of the things that I think is the magic secret sauce of Star Trek, and this is not saying anything new, but that between that Holy Trinity of Kirk Spock and McCoy, setting aside the conflict and the friction, there's this deep devotion. Yes. And that comes through in this scene, in this moment, in both directions.

Yeah. And I love... You know what? Because we say so many bad... Well, I don't know about you. I say so many bad things about the Kelvin timeline. And apropos of old school Star Trek, I will say this. Kudos to Carl Urban for being able to play that role with real fidelity to McCoy's humanity without it being an impersonation of DeForest Kelley. I think out of everything in the Kelvin timeline, that to me was the one revelation, you know? I really appreciate it.

I'm going to indulge in a tangent because I love Carl Urban. And I remember when that casting was announced, his choice seemed to be the most inexplicable because Carl Urban is this very manly man. And we saw him battling in Lord of the Rings and all this other stuff. And you're thinking, Bones is not this beefy, fighter, kind of capable pillar of physicality and intensity. But what Urban did with that role, I think, is remarkable. And many years ago, he was at Fantastic Fest with the film. And I got to visit with him. And this was after the first Star Trek had come out. And I was very gratified to be able to just commend him and thank him for his portrayal. Because one of the great, you know, setting all the complaints and issues and problems with those movies and a lot of the choices that they made, the thing that I was so happy to be able to thank him for was that I didn't think that I would ever get to spend time with these characters again. And to kind of have my friends back. And the way that he inhabited and brought that character back and honored Kelly without mimicking him in spirit, I think is really special. I think he's a really underrated talent. His Judge Dredd movie, by the way, is incredible.

To pivot from that into snarkiness, I, for the life of me, do not understand why they dress McCoy like Mr. Furley from Three's Company. You know, every time McCoy shows up as a civilian, he looks like Don Knotts in Three's Company. In the first movie, he's wearing that one-piece jumpsuit with the hemline down to his breastbone.

And the big medallion. And the beard. Yeah, I wanted a whole, I wanted a whole side quill or whatever of Disco McCoy. Like, what was he doing prior to being drafted and beamed up?

No, literally, yeah, it should be like literally Leisure Suit Leonard, you know, in the land of the Lounge Lizards. I mean, I bet Leonard McCoy was crushing Disco ass, you know, so.

Oh my God. We've been deprived of so much McCoy backstory and side story. He gets some very interesting wardrobe choices.

That's only by some of the punishment they subject Walter Koenig to in Star Trek III, but that's for another podcast.

That's two years from now.

Paul, we can't avoid it anymore. We're gonna cry. Let's just do it. Let's just go, let's just talk about the big moment because I'm gonna break, you talk about it. I can't even, it's too much for me.

Well, so to finish the exchange, and again, it's a moment where Spock blatantly lies. He pretends to agree with McCoy's assessment that perhaps you're right, you know, whatever. Cause McCoy's like, no, you can't do this. Whatever, you'll die. But Spock has already made this decision. And we've already established Spock's philosophy on this, that there is no other choice. This is the choice. And he being half Vulcan is gonna be able to go endure whatever he's about to endure. And we know it's gonna be bad, but we don't necessarily know that it's gonna be fatal. And what's also, I think, really impressive in this film, again, knowing in the time where it had leaked this rumor that Spock was gonna be killed and people were up in arms, the movie does this incredible misdirect to kind of diffuse that right in the opening scene, killing him, but bringing him back, so that was fake. At this point in the movie, we have forgotten that Spock dies because the movie is so engaging, has just gone in so many different directions and has just been captivating. But now, we're being reminded of, oh my God, maybe he actually is going to die. And it's awful. It's this awful, just stomach sinking feeling. And it's this, I just have this visceral sense memory of experiencing that in the theater and it still gets me every time I see the movie, no matter how many times that I see it. But he goes in and starts doing his weird juju of-

Yeah, he's going in there mixing up the cobalt blue antimatter.

Yeah, whatever he's doing in that thing is as he's getting furnace blasted in the face. I don't know why he's like sticking his head in that thing, but like, because he can't see anything. But it is bad and awful. And you know, Scotty reawakens at some point and he and McCoy are horrified. And then this is unfolding and then we're intercutting with the bridge and then they don't know. And one of the most beautifully simple and heartbreaking moments in all of Star Trek, and it makes me tearing up just thinking about it and seeing the image in my head is Kirk's beginning to dawn on Kirk when he's told, you've got to get down here. And he turns and he looks, and we see Spock's empty chair and the iconic science station of Spock, and it's empty, and we know where Spock is. And that shot and that moment and the cutting of it on Kirk and then as Kirk is just flying out the door down to engineering as fast as he can. But the music is already telling us what he's going to find. And it is just soul-destroying.

There's two things here that are great. One of them is, as we said before, nobody can say the word Jim the way that DeForest Kelley can do it. And the call from engineering is McCoy and not Scotty, you know? And it's Jim, you better get down here. And you just hear the grief in his voice, which I think is a wonderful thing. And also, Horner, look, the score gets really corny and hackneyed here, but it's so beautiful and it's worked so well because it's literally the violins just hitting it real hard, you know? And it's the weeping violins. And Shatner's response when he gets down there and he sees, again, you know, James Doohan, you know, the thing that sells the, in Star Trek III when the Enterprise is destroyed, it's heart rending scene that I hear up thinking about. But Scotty's face watching the ship burn. And I think like you get another great sort of DeForest Kelley suffering performance, both when Peter Preston dies and here. For some reason, James Doohan really did sad very well.

Yeah, and also the moment where they're stopping Kirk, they're holding him back. And it takes both of them to hold him back from going in to try to save his friend. And we haven't seen Spock yet. We haven't seen what Kirk has seen, but it takes both of them to hold him back.

And Scotty shouts, he's dead already. And then the movie puts one last shank in our hearts because Spock has been sort of curled up into a ball, but he stands up, straightens his uniform with his back turned to us, right? In a moment that rivals Gus Spring's death in Breaking Bad, he turns around and you think, oh my God, could he have possibly survived? And then you see his face is horribly burned. And he walks up to this glass door that Kirk's on the other side of, and then they have their final scene together.

Yeah, the transparent aluminum, presumably. Which he stumbles into because he can't see.

Which is the amazing thing is like, he gets up, straightens his uniform, and then he turns around, he's horribly burned, and then he stumbles. And then he realized, it's like, the performance does such a good job of toying with our emotions, you know?

Yeah, because it gives us this moment of hope, because we've just heard Scottie say he's dead already. We're like, oh no, he's not, maybe he's not, maybe he's gonna be okay. And then it's like, oh no, no.

But it's amazing how well the movie's able to kind of keep you guessing, keep your emotions, you know, in like a state of suspense. And of course, the final scene is just heart rending, you know.

I mean, the greatest scene in all of Star Trek between those two actors who are separated and can't touch, but are right up against each other.

And I love that Spock says, I never took the Kobayashi Maru scenario, which is weird because he's a captain.

Yes.

I don't get to be captain without taking the Kobayashi Maru. I don't know, I wanna talk to his student advisor at the Academy. But he says, you know, what did you think of my solution? I remember crying in the movie theater. It gets me emotional talking about it right now. You know, this scene is so emotional for me because as I said, died in the world of Star Trek and that even in when Seinfeld made fun of this, you know, where they were at a funeral and Seinfeld says, oh, I told them that, you know, her death takes place in the shadow of new life. And Star Trek II is in it. Yeah, Wrath of Khan, a hell of a thing when Spock died and they all get sad. Even that makes me sad, you know, like even just hearing it evoked in the context of a joke makes me kind of a Spock staff, you know.

The power of this scene, of the writing, I mean, of all the elements, the performances, the direction, the music, the editing, the construction, the set design, which I think is ingenious in terms of the staging of this, it is so powerful, it is immune to all parody. It has never lost its power, no matter how many times you see it. And seeing it with an audience earlier this year at this Shatner event where he's touring and speaking after it, with this audience of full of people, most of whom have seen it a million times and are laughing at all the lines, reciting the lines, all screaming in unison, Khan when that happens, like are all that dead silent in this scene and weeping, because it's just, it's magic. It is absolute perfection.

Well, and I think, look, it's interesting because, you know, this movie is literally dealing with, so I recently watched Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, right? I did not care for the movie, but the last scene where Indiana Jones reunites with Marion Ravenwood and they reenact some of the iconic dialogue from the first film. As old people, now at the end of their lives, is incredibly touching. What's interesting about Dial of Destiny is Dial of Destiny doesn't really earn that scene for me. But Raiders of the Lost Ark earned that scene for me back in 1981. And I think with Star Trek II, you're coming at this with 25 years of Star Trek, the original Star Trek was 69. So actually, it's like 14 years of history. You've watched every episode a million times, you know this relationship, you're literally visiting with family. So the film could have coasted on that. And a lot of the early scripts for the movie, Spock dies off screen, and it's just sort of another crisis Kirk has to face.

Yeah, and earlier.

And much earlier than the movie.

And then they just move past it, yeah. I just have to say, at the risk of digression, but I'll keep this very brief.

Will we?

There are just no words for how much I wanted Indy to stay back and hang out with our comedies.

Oh yeah, and I don't even want to get into that. I can't.

Oh my God. I'm just like, oh my God, I'm sorry, but yeah.

But that's a good example of a movie that sort of rested on the laurels of the previous film and Star Trek's example of earns the emotion by being a great film in and of itself.

And that's the, I think that's the key word here is that this movie is so effective and capable in earning these moments and these moments of impact. And again, it's one of the frustrations of when they try to remake it at Star Trek Into Darkness is that it's completely unearned. And others have tried to do this as well and they're learning the wrong lessons of it. It's not just about the mechanics of the moment. It's about all the setup and groundwork and investment and track that is laid in advance to it, that builds to it, that this is a payoff to.

Yeah.

And it's a payoff to all these years of friendship, but also of the very fine craftsmanship of narrative engineering in this particular film. It's marvelous.

And you know, then we go to Spock's funeral and Scotty on the backpipes, he plays Amazing Grace, which is incredibly touching. And we see Sawick crying because it hasn't been said in the film, but if you read Vonda McIntyre's novelization of this, 500 times as I did, you know, she's half Romulan.

As did I. I'm so glad we share that.

And I mean, the funeral scene is interesting because again, it's Shatner is having a very artist moment here. He is not subtle in his eulogy, but it works. I mean, I have nothing left to say about Spock's death. It's just...

I think we would later come to discover through Denny Crane, who you and I both share a deep love for.

Yes, we do.

That Shatner is legitimately a great actor, can be a great actor. And at this point in his standing in his career was not appreciated.

He was not regarded as even a good actor. He was sort of...

Yeah, as his hanny. Yeah, yeah. But the moment, especially the death scene, and the thing that kills me is that no, the plaintive no at the end of that death scene when they're both slumped back to back and Kirk is utterly defeated and has lost his best friend and there's nothing he can do and he's just completely destroyed and bereft. And it just kills you. It's because, and in part because it's so unexpected, we've never seen this number on the dial of that.

I also think it's the first franchise movie that I had seen where they kill the character like that. I mean, it's Star Wars, Return of the Jedi was, and even Darth Vader's death didn't hit me anywhere near as big as this did. So it's the first time that, I think it's probably the first time I'd seen a beloved character like that actually.

That's a big point. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I mean, now we take it for granted. It's become so kind of cheap and easy to kill off characters for shock and effect, but here it was somewhat unprecedented.

Yeah, it was. And I think that's why even in the analog era, the rumor that Spock might die was such a force because it really was. I remember it being in newspapers.

It was unthinkable. So it just was not something that you would do that it hadn't been done. And just, yeah, and the fact that this film does it in a way that dramatically makes sense that from a character standpoint feels true and inevitable and is honored as deeply and richly as you want it to be. And lets, gives time and scene and like screen real estate to let the audience share in the grief with the characters. And it's, I think it's beautifully, beautifully done.

You know, it's interesting because as you pointed out, Kirk has been fully defeated in this film. If we look at it just where we're dramatically, Kirk's best friend is dead. You know, he got his ship and his ass handed to him. Yes, he defeated Khan, but Khan died thinking he won, you know, and in a way he did. And what brings Kirk back, you know, because Kirk's last line in the film is, I feel younger, which is not how he has felt. And even up until this moment. And what brings him back is this very nice scene between him and David, between him and his son. His son has now seen the father that he referred to as a boy scout earlier on and the man he tried to kill earlier because he assumed that any soldier is a murderer. And he comes to Kirk's room as Kirk is drinking champagne, or not champagne, he's drinking whiskey and trying to forget and his glasses are broke, which indicates that even his old age is broken. He's trying to read A Tale Of Two Cities that Spock gave him and then he takes out the glasses that are broken, he throws them on the desk. And it's an interesting moment because I'm not entirely certain yet, having seen this movie 5,000 times, that it's enough to get Kirk back to I Feel Young, but it's very touching time when David says, I'm very proud to be your son, you know. It's an interesting character turn. I'm not sure that I buy that it's what brings Kirk back all the way the way it does at the end of this movie. So, I mean, what are your thoughts on that scene? I'm very curious. How does it land for you?

It lands so much differently now as a parent than it did when I was a kid. And yeah, it's very moving and emotional for me to even think about. And the way it's constructed and Merrick's delivery of the line is so simple, just so perfectly modulated and delivered. Like you just believe it. It lands just perfectly. It's not overdone at all. It's really kind of understated, which is perfect because it's such a huge statement, but it's made so quietly and so tenderly. And he knows, like he, to some degree, the state that Kirk is in, and who he, you know, somebody who he barely knows. And as you said, is still in the process of reconciling the reality of this man he has now finally met and observed to this image of this man that he had constructed in his head for his whole life up until then, that was this caricature and cartoon. And in a weird way, somewhat paralleling this cartoon image of Kirk and Shatner that we've all had, and now we've gotten to see these unexpected depths and shadings that we've never encountered before. At the time, I remember when I saw it, this was not a scene that carried nearly the impact or significance that it does now, but you're right. It directly ties in. It's part of this calculus, this emotional, this formula, this karmic exchange that Kirk has lost his best friend, but now the universe has brought him his son and this son that now is expressing pride and acceptance of him.

I think you're absolutely right about, I think that it really did land differently for me this time. I kind of didn't realize it until you mentioned it, but I think at 53 with two kids, that scene lands a lot differently for me than at 12 as a boy. Even though I liked how the movie punched above my weight class, I think that boy, I would love to hear that from my son when I'm older. And yeah, I think, okay, so I think I can see how then it goes from there to Kirk feeling a little lightness at the end of the film. Okay, okay, you sold me.

There is one little thing that we have to sort of give the movie, but here where Kirk says he's never faced death, he's cheated death. He never actually had to go through the Kobayashi Maru.

I haven't faced death, I've cheated death. I tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity.

This is not entirely true. We know that Kirk lost his brother Sam in the original series, but we never, but we never, whereas that relationship was never really strongly established as it is now being established in Strange New Worlds quite delightfully. But the one example that I can't help but think of and thought of when I first heard that line was Edith Keillor in City on the Edge of Forever. So that is one thing. It's like, okay, that was a long time ago. I'm like, whatever. It's like not to puncture or deflate this very potent emotional moment. But I can't help but think, well, there is this one moment where he did lose this great love and was complicit in that loss to maintain the timeline.

I think that in a way sort of, you know, this is somebody for whom now in the loss of a friend that he's been with for over 10 years in movie time between the death of Edith Keillor and now, at his age now, death for Kirk is a personal thing that has definable features, not just for, you know, whereas Edith Keillor, he was in love with her, he had to make a really difficult choice and he did. Their romance was sort of short lived and I'm not saying it wasn't valid for that reason or that his choice wasn't heart-rending for that reason. But I think that this is the first time Kirk faced his own mortality, you know, because in Spock literally bought him his life back. So the stakes are not, oh, if we don't throw Edith Keillor in front of the bus, Hitler will win the war. It's not like, death for Kirk now is now a real thing with definable features. And I think that's kind of where we were headed there, you know?

Yeah, I think the other thing too, in a way that this sort of unintentionally honors is the episodic nature of the original Star Trek series, because that loss of Edith Keillor is never referenced in any other episode.

Ever again.

Ever again. It's just wiped clean from his experience and memory, as far as the audience can tell. I'm willing to give that a pass, but I just had to mention that because it did pop in my mind when, I remember when I first heard that, I was like, oh, but.

I think your point is very valid though, because I think it's the difference between Kobayashi Maru at the age of 30, which is Kirk was in his 30s when he was first commanding the ship, and then Kobayashi Maru at the age of 52. And I feel like maybe this is what gives Kobayashi Maru a little bit of poignancy and a little bit of that Starfleet would put you through that. Not so that you can succeed in the mission or learn your lesson during the mission, but for me, Kobayashi Maru, the intellectual exercise there is, what do you do with it in your head for the next 10 years?

Yeah, it is a sort of psychological and an emotional rehearsal.

Exactly.

Or sort of test drive.

And I also like how in Star Trek VI, McCoy used to say that as a punchline, where he goes like, ah, you do all this thing, dah, dah, dah, and then suddenly Kobayashi Maru and he does the hand get across the neck slashing gesture. Like I love the idea that Kobayashi Maru becomes shorthand for certain death.

And also there's this, I mean, one thing we skipped over in the exchange, leading up to Spock's death and kind of over and through it and Kirk racing down to him, it's beautifully edited because we're intercutting between the creation of the planet that's like apparently just coalesced all the matter in the Mutara Nebula. Now is creating this planet. And so there's this beauty and then we're seeing Kirk finally then gets to see this as they're leaning on the front railing on the bridge, which is again, something we've never seen before. Like we're staging things in a different way in the set that we know really well. And he's there being comforted by Carol and McCoy.

He's with his family.

He's with his family. Yeah. And that it's like, oh, he does. Yeah, he's not alone. He's still as his family and is surrounded by love and fellowship and companionship and also gazing at awe and wonder and of creation of something that is a light that sort of come out of this darkness that they've all experienced. And so there's a visual kind of poetry and energy to that too that I feel is part of what sells that moment.

I've just realized, I mean, Paul, I'm sorry that it took us three episodes of the podcast to get to this, but I just realized that what this podcast is really about is how do we reinterpret the emotions from these films as adults? You know, it's interesting because earlier in this podcast, I said, you know, I literally am feeling that 12-year-old feeling again, just talking about the scene. But I feel like part of what we have been talking about is really kind of how do you look at the things you loved as a 12-year-old 40 years later? And I think one of the best things I can say about this movie is that all of these emotions land with me 41 years later and much more poignantly, you know, and with much more force, actually. This is one of those rare movies that has, it's not about getting better with age, but I feel like as I've gotten to be Kirk's age, I loved it at the beginning, and now I love it even more because of how much it reflects my own experience, you know?

Yeah, and it's a very special thing to be able to revisit formative childhood memories and experiences and reconnect with the feelings we had when we saw these movies in our youth and they were new, and they helped forge our minds and imaginations and sensibilities going forward and set us on the paths that we were put on. And to hold that in our head and in our minds right alongside then the new experience of feeling and seeing these films and feeling and discovering new things. And yeah, it's a pretty cool thing.

Hey, producer Brad, are you happy that we finally discovered the point of the podcast?

You discovered two points. I don't know which one to keep in.

Let's keep all of them. I think we should let our audience know what we're doing here. I think this was a good place to stop. I would add that we are not fuddy-duddies. We like modern movies very much. So it's not about you kids, but there's a real sort of revisiting it through modern eyes that's really amazing to me.

Yeah. So real quick, box office-wise, this opened at number one.

So Rocky III opened the week prior, right? Or two weeks prior, no, the week prior, because we had a doubleheader this week. Rocky made how much in its first week? That was the 14?

They both, in their opening weekend, made about the same 21. But in Rocky's second week, Star Trek II's first week, Star Trek II was at 21 and Rocky III was at 14.

And Poltergeist opened at number three?

At 10 million.

You know, it's amazing because I could have sworn that Poltergeist was like, well, I mean, I guess with every movie in the summer.

Well, then let's look at the year-end box office where Star Trek II comes in at number eight with 78 million and Poltergeist's number nine was 76 million.

And Rocky III had the longer legs. It ranked as three for the year, but behind ET and Raiders and a significantly outgrossed Khan. And I think that's very interesting.

Well, I think Rocky movies have a much broader audience, you know. So there we go. Hey, producer Brad, now what movies are... Let's say we just got the NRB News and we're seeing what movies are opening next week. What are we talking about?

Next week is the weekend of June 11th, 1982. And there are two movies opening, Grease 2, which is Michelle Pfeiffer's third movie.

And Maxwell Caulfield's cinematic debut.

Sure. And also opening that weekend is ET., the extraterrestrial.

Paul, what do you want to go see? Let's go see Grease 2, man. I hear Michelle Pfeiffer's in hot pants. It's supposed to be really fun. Oh, oh. Can I confess to a very dirty secret? I have seen ET once. I saw it in 1982 in Puerto Rico at Plaza Las Americas during one of our summer vacations. We went back to visit our family and I have never seen it since.

By choice? Because...

I don't know. I think the hype around the movie was so pervasive that it turned me against the film at the time. And I'm really looking forward to watching it pretty much for the first time because I don't remember a lot of it. I'm very eager to see how I respond to it now as opposed to when I was, you know, 12.

So, in other words, you've chosen ET as the next film?

I think we should see ET. I mean, I don't really want to watch Maxwell Caulfield's screen debut. Do you, Paul?

I'm struggling with how much to share in answering this question.

Is Maxwell Caulfield your father?

So, Grease 2 occupies a very specific emotional place because it was one of the favorite movies of an ex of mine that I endeavored to attempt to share in her appreciation of, but couldn't, although I did revisit it. Actually, no, I'd never seen it. I'd never seen it. And there is a part of me, and I know this goes against one of the laws of show running, to inflict it upon you as it was inflicted upon me. Because I would be so delighted to hear your responses to certain things in that movie that are astonishing. And I will say it is worth experiencing for Michelle Pfeiffer, who is kind of amazing and incredible, but also Grease 2 is, I think, unintentionally a genre movie in certain ways. It takes some crazy swings that it is not a good movie. I'm sorry. I know there are people who love it and are devoted to it. But it is a very unique collision of choices that I just feel like there's a voice in my head saying, you need to experience Grease 2.

Paul, this is really interesting because, you know, we've done, we've gone for the low-hanging fruit. We did Rocky III, we did Poltergeist, now we've done Wrath Of Khan. This is nerd low-hanging fruit. But here's the thing. ET was the highest grossing film of all time for many years. Everybody has seen it. Everybody knows it. You and I are nerds. We could talk about ET for three hours, right?

Oh, and we need to. I haven't gotten to ET yet. But yeah, we need to do ET.

Well, my question is, but should we take our own big swing and not do the obvious thing and see Grease 2?

So two things. Again, I am so conflicted on multiple dimensions.

I can see it in your face.

You're like, Oh my God. Because there are few things that I would least rather do than watch Grease 2 again. I run away screaming at the idea of ever having to watch Grease 2 again.

I think you just sealed your fate, my friend.

But if I have to in my own Kobayashi Maru or cosmic karmic exchange, if I can make you see Grease 2 at the cost of me having to watch it a second time, I kind of feel like that is my needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. And I have to go, I have to be willing to shove my face in that antimatter containment blast furnace that is Grease 2. And I suffered having to watch that movie. And I did it. I did it for love. I think if you have never seen Grease 2, you need to see Grease 2. And I think that our listeners, even if they don't need to see it, they need to hear us bear witness and report back. But the one shining beacon of delight is that Michelle Pfeiffer is dazzling in that movie.

Paul, I feel like you and I have more you than me, actually. But we have now literally become the giver. You know, like I feel like we need to experience this that others may live.

I agree. And then but this is not to them. We've already crossed the Rubicon of double features on a weekend. OK, so so that door has been blown open. So we can't use that as an excuse to only pick one. OK, ET is a cultural milestone and really a monument of cinema that we can't ignore. We would be remiss. And that's just not an option.

So the question is now, do we watch ET or Greece 2 first? Which one do you want to do next?

I think we have to we have to do both. We have to do both. This has to be a double feature of doom. I think we have to take our medicine with Greece 2. And then we go reward ourselves with the Spielbergian.

With the Banana Split. That is ET.

Majesty of ET.

Great.

All I can say is I'm not looking forward to the end of June when we have Blade Runner, The Thing and Megaforce. I see that as a three movie weekend.

Oh dear Lord.

Megaforce! Deeds not words.

Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week in line at The Multiplex.