Star Trek The Wrath of Khan Book Club

[Christopher]

I decided long ago that I'd never have a midlife crisis. That way, I'd be immortal.

 

[Cap'n Claus]

Considering how young my parents were when they passed, I was being pretty optimistic

 

[Desert Kris]

Chapter 2.

Here is a direct reference to Star Trek: The Motion Picture that the movie never went near.

"You never should have given up the Enterprise after Voyager."

And then:

"If you'd made a few waves, they wouldn't have had any choice but to reassign you."

Which, if you will recall our read through last year was exactly Kirk's intention at the end of Roddenberry's novel.

When I read The Wrath of Khan novelization a couple years ago for my own reading project, this passage jumped out at me. I liked a fair amount of McIntyre's novelization, but I was disappointed and puzzled by why she chose to present that outcome as the version of events. Was she making the movie novelizations a tighter continuity, between just the stories told in the movies?

I much prefer stories that let Kirk continue to be the captain for who knows how many adventures before letting himself get dragged back into a promotion. Much more fun that way.

 

[Christopher]

I liked a fair amount of McIntyre's novelization, but I was disappointed and puzzled by why she chose to present that outcome as the version of events.

Perhaps she was assuming that less time passed between movies than is generally accepted. The Admiral Kirk of TWOK had clearly been away from starship command for years, enough time to get depressed about the state of his career, so if McIntyre assumed the interval between movies was close to the real-life three-year interval, as many people have done, it would have logically followed that Kirk gave up the ship again after TMP.

 

[mb22]

Back with Chekov and Terrell. They encounter a child. I gather that this was something that was actually filmed?

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-wrath-khan-son-cut-why/

 

[DonIago]

Chapter 2



Well here we are on the Reliant. I have always wondered if there was ever a thought that (keeping with the traditions of TOS) the ship would have just been another Enterprise. It's indicated to be an old ship.

Chekov is duty officer here rather than first officer. Did someone tell me that this was a late change to the film that was handled with the voice over for some reason?

We spend a little more time with him and get to hear about how long and boring the assignment has been. We are told this does not come close to comparing with his time on the Enterprise.

I have long thought the addition of Surak as the "alien third" in the formulation of "Newton, Einstein, Surak" was an odd choice. (Warning: TV Tropes - https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FamousFamousFictional) Two scientists / mathematicians and a philosopher. Maybe this tells us something about Surak that we didn't know?

(My Kindle edition does not have line breaks between scene changes. It's annoying.)

Now we go to Kirk's apartment. Funny that McIntyre includes the lines about the glasses being 400 years old with the lenses intact (that was removed from the final cut of the film) but then goes on to explain that, no, not really.

McIntyre does a delightful job of giving scenes air. In the film Kirk and McCoy are running through a tightly scripted scene that will tell us that Kirk is unhappy and having a midlife crises. (Who the heck has a midlife crises at 49?) This has more of the feeling of Kirk and McCoy spending a quiet (very quiet) evening together having a couple of ales.

Here is a direct reference to Star Trek: The Motion Picture that the movie never went near.



And then:



Which, if you will recall our read through last year was exactly Kirk's intention at the end of Roddenberry's novel.

Back with Chekov and Terrell. They encounter a child. I gather that this was something that was actually filmed?

All of the inhabitants are out, they left a child alone, and there is hot stew on the stove. How did these people make it 15 years?

McIntyre also gives the impression of a much larger space than we saw on screen.



It's one thing to posit that Christianity is a religion from Earth's past. Another to tie the Bible specifically to the 20th century. Chekov must have had an interesting education. And he still thinks Lenin is groovy.

Doesn't the novelization also allude to reasons why Reliant may have mistaken CA5 for CA6? I seem to recall a reference to them relying on old and presumed unreliable probe data, which suggests that Enterprise didn't provide any updated records that might have jogged Chekov's memory.