I think Gene's disagreement was more in the story formula. It would have benefitted from being more of a moral dilemma and the Genesis device which should have disgraced Carol Marcus and her son and should have included the Klingons IMO. They could have supplied the protomatter and forced him to use it through blackmail. That would have been more interesting than a moustache twirling villain all the way though. It would have been interesting if Khan redeemed himself at the end too overthrowing the Klingons and their threat to kill whoever.
Roddenberry calls Wrath embarrassing
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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Based upon what we saw of Khan in 'Space Seed', I don't think that a change of heart would be in character for him. If the planet that Kirk dropped him off on had turned out to be a paradise, and his wife had lived, etc, he might have thought differently but I doubt it. Khan felt that he was superior and to be exiled anywhere under any conditions would have grated on him in the extreme because he no longer had a large population under his boot heels.
The third season memo that Gene composed for TOS mentioned that fans were upset that Spock and McCoy were not bickering enough any more. People like to see conflict included because they think it's normal and that it mirrors everyday life. Even professors in college English courses say that a good story needs conflict. I disagree to a certain extent, but that's my opinion.
General audiences who had not seen 'Space Seed' still may not have found it believable for a character of Khan's nature to 'make nice' by the end of the story.
Maybe the Klingons could have found him and made him head of some planet somewhere and he could have given his life at the end to save Kirk in an ironic twist. You see how it centers on the concept of the genesis device better and not on Moby Dick revenge slop. Klingons could have had designs on it for a weapon even back then to destroy Earth and Khan was against it and conflicted by that.
Oh, I agree ... TWoK was Nick Meyer's movie. GR's ceremonial position of Creative Consultant was, nevertheless, a necessary evil, as he was still around and could have his name attached to the project directly, rather than just a "Created By ..." credit. For Public Relations value and ... and so forth. A frustrating situation for all involved, when GR wasn't content to simply wait for a phone call that was never coming with someone consumed with questions on the other end, on what this particular movie should be about. But that's GR ... he had to feel involved and he had his own reasons for that.
Pure speculation on my part: Possibly Meyer was concerned that if he gave Roddenberry an inch, by letting him get seriously involved in the development of the script, Roddenberry would take a mile and try to reinsert himself into the production in a big way? Which might be a plausible reason for keeping Roddenberry at arms-length to a degree.
To be clear, I have no idea if this was actually a concern, but I can see why, under the circumstances, Meyer might not want to encourage Roddenberry to meddle too much. The last thing anyone wanted was a repeat of TMP, where Roddenberry was rewriting the script on a near-daily basis . . . even after being told by the studio to knock it off.
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While that nine page letter from Roddenberry is interesting, it's hard to interpret his remarks out of context, owing to how different the draft he was commenting on evidently is from the final product (while at the same time obviously similar in certain respects). Is there a link to that early draft, The Genesis Project? (Apologies if it's already been posted, and I missed it.)
Did Roddenberry ever express a preference for one version of Saavik over another (character-wise, I mean, not the actresses in any non-character context).
Maybe so. But it would be nice to read the actual thing he is commenting on.
From what Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer have said about the writing of TWOK, none of the drafts before Meyer came on board had much of anything to do with each other. A couple of the drafts had Khan, one had new villain in his place, one had a male Vulcan character named Savik, one had Kirk discovering his long-lost son with Dr. Janet Wallace from "The Deadly Years," one had the Kobayashi Maru scenario (somewhere in the middle of the film, I think), and one had the concept of terraforming and the Genesis Project. So The Genesis Project draft may have been one of the versions of ST2 that didn't feature Khan.
When Meyer came on board as writer/director, he was told that they had to have a script to send to ILM in 12 days in order to have the special effects ready in time for the release. So Meyer suggested to the producers that they make a list of all the elements they liked about the previous drafts (a character, a concept, a line of dialogue, whatever) and Meyer would then write a new draft incorporating all of those elements into a new story. And that's what he did.
When Meyer came on board as writer/director, he was told that they had to have a script to send to ILM in 12 days in order to have the special effects ready in time for the release. So Meyer suggested to the producers that they make a list of all the elements they liked about the previous drafts (a character, a concept, a line of dialogue, whatever) and Meyer would then write a new draft incorporating all of those elements into a new story. And that's what he did.
Tell it to the people who made the trailer for TSFS that shows the E's destruction.
Which producers would those be?When Meyer came on board as writer/director, he was told that they had to have a script to send to ILM in 12 days in order to have the special effects ready in time for the release. So Meyer suggested to the producers that they make a list of all the elements they liked about the previous drafts (a character, a concept, a line of dialogue, whatever) and Meyer would then write a new draft incorporating all of those elements into a new story. And that's what he did.
Which memo was that? Roddenberry wrote more than one memo concerning the third season, surely?
I would have liked seeing Khan give his life to save Kirk's in the end by blowing up the Klingons. Bad guy turns good. Better than David giving his life, IMO. And better Star Trek.
Khan strikes me as the type who would only save Kirk's life if he was then going to turn the situation to his advantage. His entire life led him to believe he was better than the non-genetically enhanced, and I never saw anything to suggest that he'd reconsidered that position.
Do you recall where it was the Bennett mentioned this step? So many interviews, I cannot recall the specifics of this one.
