Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Paramount Pictures, 1982) is the second feature film based on the Star Trek science fiction television series. It was originally released to theatres as Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, but is often referred to as ST2:TWOK , TWOK , or simply Star Trek II. It is widely regarded by fans as the best film of the series, and has been described as enjoyable by both fans and non-fans of Star Trek. This may be partly due to the tone and style of the film, which is firmly character-driven. The film starts a story arc trilogy spanning to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

Plot summary

William Shatner as Admiral James T. Kirk: Captain of the USS Enterprise.
Leonard Nimoy as Captain Spock: Science Officer and second-in-command of the Enterprise.
DeForest Kelley as Commander (Dr.) Leonard "Bones" McCoy: Chief Medical Officer aboard the Enterprise.
James Doohan as Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott: Chief Engineer aboard the Enterprise.
George Takei as Commander Hikaru Sulu: Helmsman of the Enterprise.
Walter Koenig as Commander Pavel Chekov: First officer of the USS Reliant and former navigator of the Enterprise.
Nichelle Nichols as Commander Uhura: Communications officer aboard the Enterprise.
Bibi Besch as Dr. Carol Marcus: Chief scientist aboard Space Station Regula I.
Merritt Butrick as Dr. David Marcus: Son of James T. Kirk and Dr. Carol Marcus.
Paul Winfield as Captain Clark Terrell: Captain of the Reliant.
Kirstie Alley as Lieutenant Saavik: Enterprise navigator.
Ricardo Montalbán as Khan Noonien Singh. Former dictator of Earth's Eugenics Wars.
Judson Scott as Joachim: Khan's second-in-command. Cast
The Wrath of Khan is in some ways a story of Kirk's mid-life crisis. Unsure of his place in the world, unable to break out of his rut as an admiral, it takes his encounter with Khan and his assumption of responsibility for an untried crew to show him where he truly belongs. Unfortunately, the price is high.
Kirk was well-known for bending and breaking rules for expediency; in fact, in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Klingon General Chang accused him of being a "career-minded opportunist" because of how often Kirk disobeyed orders. Kirk chose to ignore Starfleet regulations in the first battle with Khan, and he paid for it dearly, both in the deaths of novice crew members, and ultimately in Spock's supreme sacrifice that saved the ship from Khan's final gambit. Spock's death is widely regarded as one of the most powerful scenes in the history of Star Trek, and when Kirk himself died in Star Trek: Generations, many critics claimed that the scene failed to live up to the standard set by this film.
Ultimately the film is about life, death, and rebirths, and the relationships between two generations: Kirk with David, his son; Scotty with Peter Preston, his nephew; Spock with Saavik, his protege; and Khan with Joachim, one of his henchmen.
Unable to see past his hatred, unable to conceive what life he might still have ahead of him, Khan took his people on a mission of death and, ultimately, suicide. Kirk, by contrast, refused to give in to hate, and through his love for his friends he found a new life for himself. He was also able to bridge the gulf between himself and his son, and his rapproachment with David in many ways best represents the emotional core of the film.
We also see the friendship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy portrayed in greater depth than ever before. In the movie, Kirk is the captain, the head of the ship, and his orders are the final word. McCoy serves to represent the more passionate and romantic aspect of the three, encouraging Kirk to follow his more 'human,' emotional, side. Spock is the logical one, and he tempers McCoy's influences, and provides a more rational, calculated view of things. Their friendship is like a tripod, each highlighting the others in an affecting way, and in this sense the film may be regarded as developing a relationship and theme important to the original TV series.
The Kobayashi Maru test is representative of the no-win scenario. As a cadet, Kirk essentially cheated by secretly reprogramming the simulator so that he could win. In doing so, he missed the whole point. Kirk has made a career of being able to gamble and win, of outwitting his opponents and always having a clever, ingenious trick up his sleeve, even when his opponent is smarter and stronger than he. Kirk himself sums it up: "I've cheated death, tricked my way out of death, and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing." Because of this, he feels that he has never truly faced death because he has been cheating it all his life. Spock's ultimate sacrifice taught him the true lesson of the Kobayashi Maru test: "How we face death is at least as important as how we face life."
In the end, Kirk also realizes that Spock's choice of A Tale of Two Cities as a birthday gift did have a message behind it (despite Spock's claim to the contrary): Kirk may have lived half of his life already, but the possibilities the next half contains could be just as exciting. And so, at the end of the film, Kirk sees his life with a new sense of hope, as opposed to the melancholy he felt at the beginning of the film. He repeats the closing lines of A Tale of Two Cities, spoken by Sydney Carton in which he sacrifices his life at the guillotine to save the life of his beloved's lover, promising her a happy life. Spock made a similar sacrifice to save the life of the crew, and with these words, Kirk understands the importance of facing death and the rebirth that inevitably follows.
During the film, Khan quotes extensively from Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick (just as Picard does in Star Trek: First Contact), while Kirk quotes from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Each character in some ways follows the path of the protagonist of their respective books.
Indeed, even Khan's dying words are a quote of Ahab's dying words. Like Ahab, Khan's blind, destructive quest for revenge only brought him a meaningless death and the demise of those who followed him.

Production
In its departures in tone and subject matter from the previous film, TWOK seems

Expectations and critical reception
Around 1982, an Atari video game based on the film was developed, but was not released.
In 1985 the computer game Star Trek: The Kobayashi Alternative based on the Kobayashi Maru test from the film was released for C64, Apple II and PC.
In the computer game Starfleet Academy a variant of the initial encounter with the Reliant is used as a training exercise for the player's character. As Captain Kirk sheepishly notes as he introduces the exercise, it is intended to teach the importance of obeying the standing orders of raising defenses when a sister ship of the fleet is encountered but refuses to communicate.
The film introduces Star Trek fans to the "red jacket" uniform (a red double-breasted tunic over a color-coded turtleneck shirt), widely regarded as one of the most popular and attractive Star Trek costumes in comparison to the colored shirts and tunics of the original series and The Next Generation. In addition, the fictional history of Star Trek indicates that the uniform seen in Star Trek II, adopted sometime between the events of The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan, was one of the longest issued uniforms of Starfleet, lasting well into the 24th century. (Later versions of this uniform, as glimpsed at in several TNG episodes, would see the turtlenecks replaced by crewneck shirts and the belt eliminated.)
A screenplay for a spin-off prequel to Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan was commissioned in 1982 by Paramount Pictures. Titled "Prison Planet," it told the story of what happened to the Khan character between the events of "Space Seed" and those of the second Star Trek feature film. The film never got out of the development stage.

Franchise follow-up

Character and actor notes
Nicholas Meyer reported on the DVD that he did endless takes with William Shatner so that Shatner would get tired of doing his usual overblown performance as Kirk and fall into a more natural performance.
Among the "antiques" visible in Kirk's San Francisco apartment is an ancient home computer that is recognizably (based on the trapezoidal shape of its monitor) a Commodore PET. At the time Star Trek II was filmed, Shatner was the celebrity pitchman for Commodore computers. (In the DVD commentary for the Director's Edition, the computer is pointed out but referred to as a Commodore 64.)

Kirk and Shatner
Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) were never actually face-to-face at any point during the film. All of their interactions are over the viewscreen or through communicators. Shatner describes in his book Star Trek Movie Memories (ISBN 0-06-017617-2) how their scenes were filmed four months apart.
It was reported that Montalban took a substantial pay cut to reprise his role of Khan, because he enjoyed playing the character so much.
In the original series episode "Space Seed", Khan was described in dialog as being the result of a "selective breeding" program. However, in the movie, Chekov described Khan as being "the product of 20th century genetic engineering." (However, this could be much the same thing as it happened during the Eugenics Wars in the early 1990s in the Star Trek Universe, and given the dialog between McCoy and Spock, it showed that attempts were made to improve the human race through selective breeding and genetics).
Khan, despite never having encountered Klingons, asks "do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold?" It is really from the 18th-century novel Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. The line could also be read as Khan asking if Kirk knows the Klingon equivalent to the proverb, though this reading is less common. Most likely, it intends to be a joke that now-ancient Earth history is now mistaken for being of other planets. This is made light again in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country when Chancellor Gorkon states Shakespeare should be read "in its original Klingon."

Others

The term, "going Wrath of Khan on it" is an often used term in the film business regarding sequels. It basically means in a series of movies after the characters have been introduced in the first movie, the sequel will utilize the already established characters and make a second movie which will press their stories onward (and out of the initial introduction) in a more entertaining way, such as what The Wrath of Khan did with the Star Trek movie franchise. Director Bryan Singer has used this term in relation to Superman Returns and its sequel.
In the Seinfeld television series episode, "The Foundation," Jerry paraphrases a line from this film in an attempt to console the parents of George's late wife, Susan. As a result, Susan's parents founded a charitable organization in her honor and appoint George to sit on its board of directors, much to his dismay. The premise climaxes with George exclaiming "Khaaan!"
Khaaan.com is a website featuring a video clip of Kirk shouting "Khaaan!", complete with audio. The site is occasionally linked to on internet forums when expressing strong dismay in response to another post.
In the webcomic User Friendly, when faced with jail for 14 years for counterfeiting, Pitr threatens to use the 14 years to "think up revenge that would put Khan Noonien Singh to shame."
Some of the footage from the Genesis Device demo video in the film appeared in the laserdisk arcade game Astron Belt. The commentary on the director's edition DVD for the film claims that the visual of the Genesis Device's impact on a barren planet is the first CGI effect ever used in a movie, although in truth, Futureworld was actually the first, using pioneering 3D graphics to animate a hand and face almost six years earlier. The Wrath of Khan was released in the United States 35 days before the release of Walt Disney Pictures' CGI-intensive Tron , released on July 9, 1982. Pixar, which at the time was a division of Industrial Light and Magic contributed to both films.
The Wrath of Khan was the first movie to use fractals to generate the special effects. The visual showing the Genesis Device's impact on a barren planet uses fractal geometry to generate the planet surface. The use of fractals would be revisited in Star Trek: First Contact where Data is ordered by Picard to lock out the main computer, in which Data uses a fractal encryption code which the Borg would be highly unlikely to break.
The opening to "Kill Bill Vol. 1" starts with the Klingon proverb Khan recites in this film: "Revenge is a dish best served cold".
In the song "Grade 9" by the Barenaked Ladies, they mention Wrath of Khan.
In an episode of The Critic, William Shatner is shown as the host of a fictional television show called Celebrity 911. He says that the episode will focus on actor James Caan, twitches for a moment, then yells "CAAAAAAAN!".
In his book Ranting Again, comedian Dennis Miller references "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
In the Family Guy episode "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein," William Shatner stars in a production of Fiddler on the Roof but inexplicably shouts "Khaaan!" during his performance. In a later episode, "Road to Rupert" Stewie, fearing the death of his titular teddy bear, imagines himself as Kirk talking about Spock in the funeral scene stating "of all the souls I have encountered in my travels... his was the most... human". The homage continues to the point of showing Rupert shot out into space and dawn breaking over the planet.
In The Daily Show, Jon Stewart often yells "Khaaan!" when exasperated.
On the Robot Chicken episode "Deep End", a 80s sitcom called Two Kirks, A Khan, and A Pizza Place is featured, starring Kirk Cameron, Admiral Kirk and Khan. While working the register, Khan spills a soft drink, leading Kirk to bellowing Khan's name with a dramatic surge of music.