Were the writers born yet?Yes, that's what I was referring to. (But I also understand that Prodigy was nowhere near being a thing when Debt of Honor was written.)
Star Trek The Wrath of Khan Book Club
- Thread starter Tallguy
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The novel Home is the Hunter offers yet another incompatible fate for Garrovick.
I agree and I did say "assumed" as past tense and I should have clarified that I thought this at the time and in 1984 with TSFS. Not necessarily currently.
I still take it as "Hey, surely this monotheistic Christian thing won't be such a big deal in the 23rd century." Not that VM was a practicing polytheist or anything. (There is not the same emphasis on any other monotheistic religions, is there?)
Chapter 5
Peter is in trouble. This is told from Peter's point of view. We have no insights into Scott's thoughts. But this will all land on Scotty.
Maybe because she's working from the script rather than the screen, but after Kirk sets up the meeting with Spock and McCoy to discuss Genesis and he orders Saavik to take the conn, it's surprisingly perfunctory. In the film it's followed be a grin and an understanding between Kirk and
Spock that he is showing greater trust for Spock's protégé. Here it's just a thing that happens before they leave the bridge. I only note it because VM has added greater emphasis on Saavik and her journey than in the film. So this moment stands out if you know the film.
We learn that Kirk met David once as an adult. I'll skip ahead a bit to acknowledge that this is told from the script where Kirk does not know that he is David's father.
I have never considered The Wrath of Khan to be any more military than many other episodes of Star Trek. Even The Corbomite Maneuver and The Motion Picture have their nods to this being an organization that has considerable force as one of its tools. Never mind episodes like Balance of Terror. And it's obviously the Space Navy.
I also never saw The Original Series as Utopian. Its great statement (if it had one) in the 1960s was merely "We don't go extinct and we're fine." Not that we will completely solve disease and hunger and greed. Many TOS episodes indicate that all of those things will be with us.
All that said, Carol's statement always took me aback. Population? Food supply? TOS often showed that the frontier could be harsh and there was sometimes a planet riven with a plague or needing supplies. But these were the exceptions not the norm and usually showing us that life on the Final Frontier could have hardships.
Carol has her passions, doesn't she?
I mentioned Vonda's take on Deltans before. But it's interesting that she chose to use Deltans here at all. Technically another TMP callback. Also that she gives them complicated names while Ilia had the traditional "I'm an alien I have a single name" trope.
Jedda is in the film and mentioned by name. He's a dark haired (!) fellow. There is one other woman on Regula I, a blonde lady with her hair up. She was apparently a stunt person. Also not what we would recognize as Deltan.
EDIT: According to Memory Alpha Jedda was Deltan in the early drafts of the screenplay.
The first time we learn of Mr. Spock's familiarity with Lewis Carroll?
I dare say.
BTW, on film the black guy is actually credited as March. (Hey! He directed an episode of Elsbeth! And Lost in Space!) And Madison is the Asian looking fellow. Not black and not two meters tall and skinny.
I wonder if the actors know there are fans like me who look at them and see whole subplots and characters? And they're game designers!
Vance and Del are from Washington as well. Thanks, @Greg Cox for the heads up! Port Orchard, specifically.
Alright. I admit it. I never had a problem with Del having a drug problem like I did with Raffi on Picard. "Endorphin-rock and beer"!
It is heartening and tragic that the scientists think that all they are doing is stalling for time before the story of their plight makes its way to wider Starfleet or if that doesn't work then the Federation. For all their talk of "storm troopers" they know this can't happen here. But they don't know Khan is coming.
Ah. There's the Deltans we know!
That's amped up a bit from even Roddenberry's idea. He wanted forbidden fruit. Not something that would actually harm him.
Oh. Damn. Reliant is here. I remember this. Before I read it now let me tell you...
I remember reading this the first time. There has been stuff "not in the movie" before here. But this was going off into a whole different story. One where I suppose I knew what was ultimately going to happen and I also had no idea.
They don't know.
Tron was already out by the time I read this. (I gather this was not actually on shelves before the movie? It was published in July?) So I learned a lot about passwords this summer. Reindeer Flotilla indeed.
What's a blaster, I wonder?
Khan is six feet tall. But he's not anywhere near two meters. Which is six foot six and a bit. (Look at Riker standing next to Zephram Cochrane. That's the height difference we're talking about.) (Why do I care? Check the user name.)
I mean...
There is a much debate over Khan's character in this film vs. Space Seed. And even if Khan might not be as cunning in the film as in the episode (maybe?), he is a cruel tyrant who fancies himself sophisticated and logical. He'll complain that it's pointless while he tortures you.
I'm with Spock. I don't see him as admirable.
I figured if anyone was Khan's son it would be Joachim. But I guess not.
This is so sad. You get some of this in the film. Vonda builds it into towering regret.
And now I remember how much of this world that Vonda built for us. That I remember almost forty-five years later. When I say "Here be dragons" I actually think of this.
So Zinaida is bald.
And Yoshi. And Jan.
See you Friday.
The sequences in the book showing Khan on Regula I are a bit too much for me. A good point can be made that it was always horrific what Khan does in the story of the book and movie, and it helps make more "real" that what Khan does takes away the idea that Khan is admirable. It's good that the book distinguishes the scientists as not throwaway character, like red shirts in the original show.
I did feel like the sequences of Khan's brutality went on and on and on in a way that I felt was overboard. The movie is a story that is fun and exciting and action packed. The book has these long sequences of horror that drains the energy of the movie's story. I don't object to the sequences, I just object to it going on and on for pages and pages of it. I don't like the tonal shift that it feels like the book wallows in unnecessarily.
The point was made, the scientists' characters were effectively humanized, and their suffering became more real. But to go on about it so much was too much for me.
I did feel like the sequences of Khan's brutality went on and on and on in a way that I felt was overboard. The movie is a story that is fun and exciting and action packed. The book has these long sequences of horror that drains the energy of the movie's story. I don't object to the sequences, I just object to it going on and on for pages and pages of it. I don't like the tonal shift that it feels like the book wallows in unnecessarily.
The point was made, the scientists' characters were effectively humanized, and their suffering became more real. But to go on about it so much was too much for me.
Yes, but that could represent the author's expectations about societal trends rather than a personal religious belief or preference. Logically, a multicultural, inclusive united-Earth society would have to be multifaith as well, and a writer might extrapolate that such a culture would adopt inclusive language like swearing by multiple gods. Not rejecting Christianity, just assuming it would be part of a larger mix.
(IIRC, in my novel Only Superhuman, I had a character swear by "Jesus Krishna." Religious syncretism is pretty much inevitable in any multicultural community.)
Famine on a colony planet was a major plot driver in "The Conscience of the King." "The Trouble with Tribbles" was driven by the need to prevent famine on Sherman's Planet by delivering a high-yield grain, and "More Tribbles, More Troubles" established that a famine had broken out anyway due to crop failures. "The Survivor" established that Carter Winston saved McCoy's daughter from a crop failure on Cerberus.
So TWOK is entirely consistent with both TOS and TAS in this respect. I mean, naturally a technology for quick-terraforming planets is meant to be used in uninhabited areas, so it stands to reason that its intended use would be mainly on the frontier, or on otherwise unsettled planets. It's not surprising that attempting to grow Earth crops on alien planets with their own distinct biochemistry and environmental conditions would be a hit-or-miss proposition (as Carol's novel dialogue mentions), so I can see the logic of trying to develop a means to tailor-make amenable biospheres from scratch.
No, that was TAS: "Once Upon a Planet." ("Light reading is considered relaxing, Captain. My mother was particularly fond of Lewis Carroll's work." Although Spock misattributed the Queen of Hearts to Through the Looking Glass rather than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.)
So is this where we get the extended digression about the subnuclear physics behind Genesis and the particles named snarks and boojums? I liked that addition a lot more than the addition of the torture scenes.
It's less than a chapter. A lot goes on in this chapter. You have Peter's struggles with his uncle. You have the Genesis proposal which has a substory of Spock meeting March and Madison. You have the Genesis scientists preparing to run. After all of that you have the scenes with Khan.
They're intense, but they are not lengthy. (Which I admit, surprised me.)
It's a chicken and egg I suppose. You get all of the backstory and spending time with the Genesis team so that these scenes have impact. But presumably you would not have had those stories without a conclusion that needed them.
Yes. But all of those were "on the frontier" and also emergencies. (Well, Sherman's Planet would have been an emergency caused by a Klingon war crime.) TOS kind of had the "starving colony / colony with plague" trope. I don't know how much it was used in TNG / Berman Trek.
Carol (in book and film) seems to be speaking to a wider problem of general hunger and overpopulation in the Federation. Which just seems very 1982. "Eat your jello cubes. There are children starving on Orion VII."
Of course. Thank you.
Yes. There's even a rather lengthy excerpt from The Hunting of the Snark.
As I said, it stands to reason that a technology to create new planetary biospheres is one that would be used primarily on the frontier. And since the Federation is an expanding, colonizing civilization, there'd be a lot of overlap between Federation and frontier. Heck, the fact that they're growing so quickly implies rapid population growth and the need for more territory to grow food.
And yes, it is very much of the period, but so is TOS/TAS as a whole. It was just part of the expectations of the times that overpopulation and hunger would be major issues in the future. Besides, the writers of TWOK needed a reason why Starfleet would be so motivated to develop a fast-terraforming technology, and that fits the bill.
One of the things I like most about VM's novelizations is that she makes the Genesis scientists feel like real people before, during, and even after their deaths (in the TSFS novelization, Carol's eulogies for them is quite touching, and one of the things I missed when I saw the film) versus throwaway "random scientists". It's deeply distressing to see them have no inkling of what's coming for them and know they don't stand a chance...more distressing when you consider that Carol will disappear after the film, David will die on the world his team worked to create, and Jedda will be cursorily dispatched. They deserved better.
Khan's visceral torture and murder of the Genesis scientists is the kind of sequence I don't think I've encountered anywhere else in Trek. Perhaps "Conspiracy" comes closest, or the (relatively brief) torture of Icheb in PIC, though I found it hard to feel very invested in him during that sequence. Even Picard's assimilation into the Borg Collective is deeply unsettling but rather bloodless; the assimilations shown briefly in FC are more visceral but involve characters we have no investment in. Perhaps David Mack's A Time to Heal comes closest to equaling the kind of intimate horrors we're exposed to here, though on a larger and somewhat less personal scale.
Khan's visceral torture and murder of the Genesis scientists is the kind of sequence I don't think I've encountered anywhere else in Trek. Perhaps "Conspiracy" comes closest, or the (relatively brief) torture of Icheb in PIC, though I found it hard to feel very invested in him during that sequence. Even Picard's assimilation into the Borg Collective is deeply unsettling but rather bloodless; the assimilations shown briefly in FC are more visceral but involve characters we have no investment in. Perhaps David Mack's A Time to Heal comes closest to equaling the kind of intimate horrors we're exposed to here, though on a larger and somewhat less personal scale.
Good thing Vonda wrote the novel for Star Trek IV.
If you are going by the July publication date stated at Memory Beta, either that date is incorrect or copies were sent to bookstores WAY earlier and accidentally sold earlier. I had my copy at the very end of May 1982, and had actually read it before seeing the movie on opening day. (Unnecessary detail to corroborate my memory - my father gave it to me when he picked me up from a pool party of classmates to celebrate the last day of school and graduation from middle school. Since we all graduated Sunday May 30, 1982 (Catholic school – we had a graduation mass) and scattered to the four winds, that pool party would’ve happened May 27 or 28, 1982, whatever the last day of school was. School had definitely ended and summer break begun when I lined up to see the movie June 4.)
Mike
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That sounds about right.
I think I picked up TWOK novel used at some point after the movie was in theaters, but purchased TSS before the movie came out.
Finally got caught up!
I really like all the character building Vonda does. Peter isn't just a cypher. Saavik has a background. The Regulas I scientists are real people you feel for. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy get some nice bits. Even *Joachim* gets internal dialogue!
I've never heard a Scottish person use thee and thy outside of historical productions.
I really like all the character building Vonda does. Peter isn't just a cypher. Saavik has a background. The Regulas I scientists are real people you feel for. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy get some nice bits. Even *Joachim* gets internal dialogue!
I've never heard a Scottish person use thee and thy outside of historical productions.
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Even as a kid, I wondered why Vonda M. seemed so obsessed with torture porn in this sequence. It's really pretty heavy.
Chapter 6
Rather than going directly from the Genesis Proposal scene to the arrival of Reliant we see that time has passed and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are having dinner together.
Joachim is almost in shock. Terrell and Chekov are missing.
Peter is waiting at his backup backup station. It'll be fine.
When Khan attacks we see that Peter not only stayed at his post when his friend runs away but he actually has something crucial to do.
When Spock lowers Reliant's shields we only see it from the Enterprise's perspective. They hear the chaos on the other bridge. After the Enterprise escapes we cut back to Reliant.
Kirk and Spock go to engineering rather than Scotty going to the bridge. I understand why Scotty goes to the bridge in the film because of the rhythm they were going for.
And again we're referring to Chapel as Chris.
Spock fabricates a chore for Saavik so that she may be away from the bridge when she finds out what happened to Peter. I forgot how much this hurts.
Rather than going directly from the Genesis Proposal scene to the arrival of Reliant we see that time has passed and Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are having dinner together.
Joachim is almost in shock. Terrell and Chekov are missing.
Peter is waiting at his backup backup station. It'll be fine.
When Khan attacks we see that Peter not only stayed at his post when his friend runs away but he actually has something crucial to do.
When Spock lowers Reliant's shields we only see it from the Enterprise's perspective. They hear the chaos on the other bridge. After the Enterprise escapes we cut back to Reliant.
Kirk and Spock go to engineering rather than Scotty going to the bridge. I understand why Scotty goes to the bridge in the film because of the rhythm they were going for.
And again we're referring to Chapel as Chris.
Spock fabricates a chore for Saavik so that she may be away from the bridge when she finds out what happened to Peter. I forgot how much this hurts.
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Damn, that was painful. Beautifully done, Vonda. I think I need a minute.
Chapter 7
Arriving at Regula I with no sensors:
Ouch.
How does the Enterprise use transporters if there are no sensors?
Heh. According to VM there is a General Order Fifteen. Either way (it's true and Kirk denied it or Saavik is bluffing her way past Kirk) it is a nice character moment for both of them.
Saavik:
Now that is a good line.
The novel establishes a past friendship with between McCoy and Terrell. I've always felt that of all of the characters, one of the ones who should have had a past without Kirk should have been Bones. (And Scott.)
Here is the exchange between David, Jim, and Carol that was... originally filmed? I honestly don't know the timeline here. I know that this was the original script: David almost takes out Kirk hand to hand and is halted by the revelation to both father and son that Kirk is David's father. I know the poster of the film has a photo of David holding Kirk down with a knife.
I don't know if they filmed this and then did reshoots before or after it was screened to an audience. As it went out with the publicity materials I gather it was a change made rather late.
Ah, if only. Of course who knows what Shatner's real hair might look like. Especially then.
On film when Saavik stops David from getting himself shot I love the business that Alley performs of immediately releasing him after the danger is past with a look of "Well, that was unpleasant" wanting no part of having to do anything about David's rash act and actually averting her eyes.
This plays out pretty much as on screen. The differences are that McCoy begs for Terrell not to shoot himself. Kirk tries a little harder to goad Khan by bringing up McGiver(s). It backfires. Also Khan vows to destroy the Enterprise.
Kirk actually has (kind of) a plan to phaser the torpedo and hopefully render it useless to Khan. David has a incompatible plan of -- Getting caught in the transporter beam? And he stands in Kirk's way.
Joachim is still having a tough time of it.
It's interesting over the years that I've heard fans starting to call this character "Joaquin" and pronounce it "wah-KEEN" like Joaquin Phoenix. Khan, The Musical, for a recent instance. I would think that if this was the name that Ricardo Montalban, of all people, would have pronounced it as such. It's pronounced "JOH-ə-kim" which is pretty much how Montalban says it. It's actually Hebrew? (Open to correction.) Judson Scott is not credited in the film so the character's name is not on screen. Also there was a member of Khan's followers in Space Seed who is named Joaquin.
McCoy is pissed off. Terrell's death has hit him hard. He, Carol, and David are having a grief-off. Carol is winning.
That's more than they got (on screen, anyway) in the film.
Carol and Jim talk about David. The Search for Spock continues this version of events with Jim having being unaware of his child. McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Advernture revises this and has Carol telling Jim that she is pregnant shortly before Jim takes command of the Enterprise.
They leave poor Pavel. If you notice, in the film, they never go back for him. He's not in the Genesis cave when Kirk contacts Spock. (Yes, obviously he beams up with the rest of them.)
Wow. Unlike many people (including the film makers) I adore the Genesis cave matte paintings. I admit that I only very recently realized that the long shot after "Can I cook or can't I?" is actually meant to be a wide shot of Our Heroes, showing where their little "lawn" is meant to be in the cave.
But Vonda makes this into some place that I want to explore.
Arriving at Regula I with no sensors:
Ouch.
How does the Enterprise use transporters if there are no sensors?
Heh. According to VM there is a General Order Fifteen. Either way (it's true and Kirk denied it or Saavik is bluffing her way past Kirk) it is a nice character moment for both of them.
Saavik:
Now that is a good line.
The novel establishes a past friendship with between McCoy and Terrell. I've always felt that of all of the characters, one of the ones who should have had a past without Kirk should have been Bones. (And Scott.)
Here is the exchange between David, Jim, and Carol that was... originally filmed? I honestly don't know the timeline here. I know that this was the original script: David almost takes out Kirk hand to hand and is halted by the revelation to both father and son that Kirk is David's father. I know the poster of the film has a photo of David holding Kirk down with a knife.
I don't know if they filmed this and then did reshoots before or after it was screened to an audience. As it went out with the publicity materials I gather it was a change made rather late.
Ah, if only. Of course who knows what Shatner's real hair might look like. Especially then.
On film when Saavik stops David from getting himself shot I love the business that Alley performs of immediately releasing him after the danger is past with a look of "Well, that was unpleasant" wanting no part of having to do anything about David's rash act and actually averting her eyes.
This plays out pretty much as on screen. The differences are that McCoy begs for Terrell not to shoot himself. Kirk tries a little harder to goad Khan by bringing up McGiver(s). It backfires. Also Khan vows to destroy the Enterprise.
Kirk actually has (kind of) a plan to phaser the torpedo and hopefully render it useless to Khan. David has a incompatible plan of -- Getting caught in the transporter beam? And he stands in Kirk's way.
Joachim is still having a tough time of it.
It's interesting over the years that I've heard fans starting to call this character "Joaquin" and pronounce it "wah-KEEN" like Joaquin Phoenix. Khan, The Musical, for a recent instance. I would think that if this was the name that Ricardo Montalban, of all people, would have pronounced it as such. It's pronounced "JOH-ə-kim" which is pretty much how Montalban says it. It's actually Hebrew? (Open to correction.) Judson Scott is not credited in the film so the character's name is not on screen. Also there was a member of Khan's followers in Space Seed who is named Joaquin.
McCoy is pissed off. Terrell's death has hit him hard. He, Carol, and David are having a grief-off. Carol is winning.
That's more than they got (on screen, anyway) in the film.
Carol and Jim talk about David. The Search for Spock continues this version of events with Jim having being unaware of his child. McIntyre's Enterprise: The First Advernture revises this and has Carol telling Jim that she is pregnant shortly before Jim takes command of the Enterprise.
They leave poor Pavel. If you notice, in the film, they never go back for him. He's not in the Genesis cave when Kirk contacts Spock. (Yes, obviously he beams up with the rest of them.)
Wow. Unlike many people (including the film makers) I adore the Genesis cave matte paintings. I admit that I only very recently realized that the long shot after "Can I cook or can't I?" is actually meant to be a wide shot of Our Heroes, showing where their little "lawn" is meant to be in the cave.
But Vonda makes this into some place that I want to explore.
If they're beaming to Regula 1's transporter pad, they wouldn't need to scan the destination, since they could just interface with the receiving station and lock onto it directly.
That goes without saying, doesn't it? Even aside from the facts that Saavik is a Vulcan and a very serious person, making false statements to a superior officer would be a criminal offense. Kirk is the one that TWOK's script misinterprets as a rule-breaking renegade; Saavik is the exact opposite.
I read the novelization before I saw the movie, and I assumed the Genesis torpedo was the size of a missile. When I finally saw what it looked like in the film, I found it laughable that something so tiny was supposed to be powerful enough to transform (or create) a planet. (Although on the scale of a planet, even a large missile would be infinitesimal.)
I've always assumed that TWOK's writers intended Joachim to be the same character as Joaquin but misspelled it. It makes no sense that they'd create a different character with such a similar name. But due to the film recasting him with a much younger actor, both Greg Cox's To Reign in Hell and the Khan audio series (which is apparently more or less canonical) interpreted them as two different people. (I don't remember if the IDW Comics version did.)
Joachim is very interesting here. Too bad I don't think Judson could've pulled this off as an actor. Where did I get the idea in the movie that he was Khan's son?
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