He wanted to direct. He agreed to do STIII when they let him direct it.
Nimoy said in a biography that he had second thoughts about killing his character off, despite the fact that it was his idea. Hence the possibility of coming back left open in The Wrath of Kahn, when he melds with McCoy.
Using a technique no one had ever seen before (or since). How conveeeeenient!
(I LOVE ST:TWoK, but I think the whole katra thing was unnecessary, for the reasons I noted earlier. I must admit, I liked that the “remember” echoed the “forget” in Requiem For Methuselah. But as soon as I saw the torpedo on the Genesis planet, I knew he was coming back.)
They should have let him direct without acting in it. Maybe it would have been a better film.
For the purposes of the character arc, though, there’s a big difference between a redshirt death and the death of someone as important to Kirk as Spock, though (as unfortunate as that may be for the redshirts). You’re right that Kirk has ordered plenty of people to their deaths, and is not even immune to personal loss (see: Keeler, Edith). But he’s never had to face *his own *mortality, and Spock’s death forces him to come to grips with that. It’s the distinction between the death of an intern at your company and the death of your best friend.
Bryan Ekers makes a great point about how Kirk starts to recognize his age (and by extension, oncoming expiration date) throughout the film, and it’s what makes the ending a conclusion to the film’s grander themes, rather than a nonsensical tearjerker. And it’s why Spock’s death resonates more deeply than, say, that of Kirk’s son in Star Trek III. “The Wrath of Khan” is fundamentally a film about growing old and facing one’s mortality, and the death of Spock is the period at the end of the sentence. David’s death in the sequel, on the other hand, is a J.J. Abrams-style shock moment, designed to wake the audience up with a hard left turn, but not to reinforce any deeper themes of the movie.
Don’t get me started, by the way, on the “death” scene in “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Let’s just say that few remakes have so thoroughly misunderstood the purpose behind their progenitors.
Edited to add:
It should be noted that the entire “katra” and “torpedo landing” scenes were added to the film against the director’s will. Basically, the studio saw the commercial potential of the movie once Meyer put together his rough cut and forced him to open the door to Spock’s return in a sequel.
Agreed. Saavik was up to the task, but Sulu and Uhura outranked her and were far more experienced.
There is indeed a Starfleet Medal of Honor, and Kirk himself had earlier won it: Starfleet Medal of Honor | Memory Alpha | Fandom
Agreed. It was a kindness not to force him to make that agonizing decision, especially given that time was fleeting.
Also true.
Also also true!
They used it again in a Vulcan arc of stories on Star Trek: Enterprise.
If only they had realised that they just needed to inject Spock with some Khan blood. Bet they feel really stupid now
Kirk isn’t even metaphorically impotent during the Khan scream. He’s playing Khan. He wants Khan thinking that he, Khan, has definitively defeated him, Kirk, so Khan won’t bother chasing after Enterprise right away.
Wrath of Khan is a retelling of Moby Dick. Spock is Queequeg and thus dies at the end.
The blueprints show bathrooms at the front of the bridge behind the view screen. It’s why the instruments beep so loudly - to cover up the sound of flushing.
(Excellent analysis in this thread.)
This is, I assume, a joke. Kirk is hardly Ahab. He’s not only not obsessed with Khan, he’s hardly given him a thought in fifteen years.
Khan is Ahab, to the point that he quotes or paraphrases him constantly throughout the film. My guess is that Pixel_Dent was jokingly reversing that.
Other way around - Khan is Ahab. “From hell’s heart I stab at thee” is Ahab’s final speech after all. Which makes Kirk the whale of course, and Chekov is Ishmael. Or something.
Everybody knows that Rhymers have no sense of humor.
It woulda been easy peasy.
As long as we didn’t have to have a hour long subplot about the 24th century equivalent of the minutiae of glorious whale sperm. And considering you have cast Kirk as the White Whale, thank goodness! [shudder]
Harve Bennett saw Shatner in a Speedo and the script just wrote itself.
I guess we should all be thankful the movie came out before they started saving all the deleted scenes for the DVD release.
Harve Bennett saw Shatner completely naked, said “That’s all the ‘rod n’ berries’ this film needs, if you know what I mean,” and fired Gene R.
Because the Federation is a pussy?