Blue Milk Special

How will Khan Noonien Singh defeat the Rebel Alliance’s new ally, the Starship Enterprise? We shall have to wait and see. In the mean time, Khan needs to try asking actual authority figures and not TK 8008, or “White Vader” as he sometimes styles himself.

Interesting story, Leanne lived her whole life, up until recently, having never seen Star Trek I-VI. More amazingly, she had somehow managed to avoid the spoilers concerning what happens to Spock in Wrath of Khan. Yes, hard to believe! She grew up with The Next Generation and had seen Generations, First Contact, Insurrection and Nemesis, but none of the originals, and next to nothing of The Original Series.

So, biting my tongue, I convinced Leanne to watch selected highlights of The Original Series with me before going through the films. I wanted her to get to know Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekhov (well, not so much Chekhov) and Uhura. Specifically, I wanted her to see the bond that Kirk and Spock built up through the series. I knew if I just showed her The Motion Picture, followed by Wrath of Khan, then the impact of Kirk and Spock’s big scene at the end of the latter would not carry as much of a punch.

Somehow Leanne kept her word, avoiding spoilers and searching for anything to do with Star Trek online over the several weeks that this binge watching of The Original Series took. We snuck in a few bad episodes for good measure to give a more rounded take on the series. And of course, we watched Khan’s first appearance.

When we finally reached the scene at the end of Wrath of Khan, it had a renewed impact on me, but was an ENORMOUS shock to Leanne. “What happens to Spock?” “He’s not dead!” “They bring him back, right?!” “Oh my god!”

I have to admit, if I had my way, the version of Khan that we would have used for Blue Milk Special would have been his look from Space Seed. I think he was a much better villain and character in the series, as opposed to the film. In Wrath of Khan, aside from his distracting man-cleavage, he was really just a run-of-the-mill revenge-filled psychopath. Aside from some clever tactics hiding in a nebulous cloud, his obsession with revenge stole a huge amount from his character. In Space Seed he was a charismatic, cult leader, capable of swaying Kirk’s own crew against him and out-thinking his enemy. He wasn’t the almost pitifully consumed villain that he would later become.

As for Star Trek II starring Benedict Cumberbatch, we never went to see it. I didn’t think a whole lot of the first one by Abrams. It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t justify the need for the pseudo-reboot. Recasting classic characters whose actors’ personalities were as much as part of the characters we came to love is never a good idea. Why remake a Humphrey Bogart movie? Bogie’s characters were always shaped by his onscreen personality and what made his movies classics. William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelly… they all made those characters their own and what we came to love about Star Trek. So, if a reboot is going to work, it has to be exceptionally good in all areas.

The second Abrams film didn’t peak my interest. I did not like the style and scenes I had seen promoting it. Incidentally, I really like Cumberbatch, but I’m not a pop-culture whore so there are plenty of comic book and sci-fi movies I happily pass up. I can’t comment on “modern Khan”, so don’t expect him to show up anytime soon.

We ended up sticking with the Wrath of Khan version for BMS because it was the most iconic look for the character, better known by geeks and working better as a sight gag. Because we had given Khan a cameo a while back in BMS, we were able to re-use the artwork and save time while our most precious resource, time, was short.

So those are my Khan memories. Funnily enough, as I wrote this, I just squashed a baby centipede crawling across my chest. One of the scariest things I remember from my childhood is the earwig scene. Not a good time to be writing such a blog!