Darren Franich’s Wrath of Khan retro-review was just posted on Entertainment Weekly’s site. His Motion Picture review was spot on, but, for me, the TWOK one lacked a critical edge to it. Even the best films have an Achilles Heal. It’s been 34 years. Certainly if one can find something positive about TMP then they can also find something negative in TWOK besides the uniforms. For me it’s the characterization of Kirk.
Kirk is gravely misunderstood by Harve Bennett and Nicholas Meyer. Where did they come up with this idea that Kirk never faced death? Kirk was on Tarsus IV where he saw half the population murdered by Governor Kodos. He lost his brother to space pancake monsters in Operation:Annihilate. He blamed himself for the crippling of the U.S.S. Farragut and the death of her captain. He buried his best friend alive. He held McCoy back as Edith Keeler was hit by a truck. He mourned every damn redshirt as if they were his own kid. Remember him scooping up the powdered remains of Yeoman Thompson in By Any Other Name? Kirk has never tricked his way out of death and patted himself on the back for it. Never. He’s faced it head on again and again. Even Claudius admires Kirk’s ability to face his own death and the death of his crew in Bread and Circuses.
TWOK created an image of Kirk as some kind of irresponsible man-child that couldn’t deal with reality until he lost his best friend. A best friend, by the way, that he had previous blinded, taunted, beat up, seen fatally wounded, and ordered to his apparent death more times than I can count. And when that friend’s only way out of a marriage contract was Kirk’s own demise he accepted it. It was McCoy who gave Kirk the neuro-paralyzer in secret. Kirk didn’t ask for an easy way out. The only way Kirk’s ever cheated death was in having the sense to say “energize and detonate” instead of the other way around.
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As I recall, the notion that Kirk never faced death comes from Saavik while they’re “trapped” in the Genesis cave. Kirk’s response is “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” Shortly thereafter, the communicator beeps. The audience discovers Kirk has been calm because his crew has already been working on a way out.
(I apologize if I’ve got the sequence wrong. It’s been a while since I’ve rewatched TWoK.)
I think the key is that Kirk has never given over to despair in the face of death. He’s fought and cheated for survival, if not for himself, then at least for his ship and crew.
The only think wrong with not taking Kirk at his word, like you and Kessler suggest, is that it’s not just words. We actually see it happen right there on screen. Kirk doesn’t know what to do when the Genesis device activates. His entire role becomes sitting in his chair calling to an unresponsive engine room. He can’t order someone to die so they can all live. Spock has to then take the reigns. Great for Spock’s character, bad for Kirk’s. As I mention in the article, life or death decisions, even when involving loved ones, are not something Kirk has failed at in the past. Just think of Immunity Syndrome for the best example.
Good analysis. I’d never really considered this angle before, and it is a flaw. What’s more, it’s a flaw that could have probably been reduced by better word choice.
I feel that the idea of the line really reflects the (in my opinion correct) analysis that Kirk as a character and a Captain is basically split into three people. Spock is the intellectual, reasoning aspect of Kirk. McCoy is the humanist, emotional component. And Kirk is the man who finds the balance between the two at the end of the day. In that sense, Spock’s death is in a very real way Kirk’s death as well. While Kirk had confronted other deaths before, he’s never really had to confront his own mortality in that sense.
Of course the problem is that this holds up great as a literary deconstruction, but it kind of fails in the context of the characters actually saying this out loud. Even within the context of fictional hyperreality, characters aren’t usually supposed to be that clued into the themes of the work.
The use of “Death” in regards to the Kobayashi Maru test I feel is an inaccurate term. The test, after all, doesn’t really focus on the participant facing their own death. It focuses on them facing the deaths of their entire crew, the loss of their ship, and entering a state where they’re completely helpless. Their own death is part of it, but what they’re really being confronted with is their defeat. Having to come to terms with being outmaneuvered, outmatched, and outsmarted. That’s the test that Kirk never really had to face before. He’s lost people, yes, but he’s always made sure the ship got out. With the Farragut, he didn’t accept the defeat, he carried out around for years and dove right back into fighting the Vampire Cloud when he encountered it again. He always believed that he could find some way to win. But Khan, in the end, offered only a pyrrhic victory. He couldn’t save the Reliant, the Enterprise is all but crippled, the design of the Genesis device is gone, and Spock is dead. He may have survived… but he certainly didn’t win like he was accustomed to.
Or maybe Kirk just feels like he’s been lucky compared to other starship captains. None of the core members of his crew died which, considering the adventures the Enterprise had been on, was a miracle.
The whole point of TWOK is not a commentary on Kirk’s character, but a deconstruction of Trek as a whole. All of Kirk’s sins come to haunt him because the Enterprise was able to warp away at the end of the episode.
But what sins does Kirk have to deconstruct? Was it necessary to manufacture some? Kirk’s real sin is interfering with one culture after another in the name of saving his ship. To me, that’s an interesting fault to dwell on. When I heard the rumor that Too Short a Season was originally supposed to feature Kirk instead of Jameson I thought it was a brilliant end for the character.
The sin is that he left in the first place. The show treated it flippantly, but, in reality, if you frequently womanize or mess up a culture or a world, you will have to answer for it somehow. It’s not an analysis of Kirk so much as it is a deconstruction of Star Trek and Kirk as symbol.
And a pop-culture action movie can’t hit one of those points too strongly if it wants to keep its male viewers. Well said.
Hell of a point. There are two ways I figure anyone can refute it. One is to claim that Kirk is commenting on the ease with which he believes he can personally evade death, regardless of the collateral damage incurred around him.
Or, one could claim that the Kirk in TWOK is so bent on flagellating himself, that he rewrites his own biography for the purpose of making a dramatic point in a conversation. Or perhaps he’s merely commenting on the ease with which he believes he can get past unpleasant experiences. Braggadocio not uncommon in older male executive types.