GWC Podcast #159: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Podcasts Galactic Watercooler
#81

Whazzup, GWC, not taking many calls these days? Although you discussed most of what I brought up in my call anyway, and if you were going to take just one call, FrakkinTalos’s and TopGun’s was definitely the one to take!

Here’s what I was going to say, plus some reactions to this week’s 'cast:

  1. Name change to Galactic Watercooler: you know, if you’re going to change your name, you should get rid of the c’s and change the i into a y just like SyFy, it’s all the rage.

  2. Favourite Klingon forehead: The Motion Picture. It looked like a bone mohawk!

  3. Did you know Mark Lenard has played a Vulcan, a Romulan and a Klingon on Star Trek?

  4. I totally agree with Chuck, the V’Ger reveal was obvious from the get-go – the plot of The Motion Picture basically ripped off the original series episode The Changeling, where an Earth space probe named Nomad was given godlike powers by an advanced alien civilization and posed a threat to humanity.

  5. TOS was definitely ground-breaking. A racially mixed crew a few years after the start of the civil rights movement, a Russian serving with an American (Kirk’s from Iowa) a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Plus the positive look at the future when everyone was living daily under the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. I was 20 when the Soviet Union collapsed, and I think that’s a major difference between my generation and the next.

  6. A main difference I find in the worldviews of TOS and TNG is that in TOS the Enterprise kept coming upon unimaginably advanced civilizations (the First Foundation, the Metrons, the Organians), while the Galaxy in TNG was a lot more technologically egalitarian. Sure, there were the Q, the Wormhole aliens, a few others, but they didn’t compete with the other races for galactic real estate. (I’m sure somebody will come up with some examples that prove me wrong…)

  7. Little known fact: when Montalban did the 1974 Chrysler Imperial commericals, he didn’t say “rich Corinthian leather” but “soft Corinthian leather.” He also admitted in later interviews that there wasn’t actually any such thing as Corinthian leather. (Corinth is known for its columns, not its cured hides…)

  8. I don’t remember a changeover from vinyl to cassettes, I remember a changeover from vinyl to CDs, and cassettes coexisted with both for a while. As late as 1992 I was buying vinyl in mainstream record shops.

  9. I would like to congratulate Audra in the correct use of the subjunctive when she said “I wish there weren’t”. So few people speak the subjunctive correctly in English.

  10. Bitter Beer Syndrome: what’s so censorable about that? Unless it means something other than what I always thought it meant… I just thought it meant when an ugly girl walked into the bar, the guys made a face like the beer they were drinking just turned bitter.

  11. Thanks for the image of Kirk sitting on the toilet! Gives a new meaning to Captain’s log…

  12. You mentioned Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon in The Search for Spock. What about John Larroquette?

  13. Thanks for the pictures of the meetup! Now I know what everybody looks like!

  14. Sean, dude: It was Fantasy Island, not Treasure Island. The Plane, boss, the Plane! Ah, Herve Villechaize, we hardly knew ye…

  15. As a kid geek in the '70s, I totally knew what Voyager (the probe, not the Star Trek series) looked like. I basically had that plaque on it memorized, and the inscription on the golden record. I also had a set of vinyl records with all the sounds on that record, the languages including ancient Akkadian, the Earth sounds like thunder, whales and morse code, and the music like Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, some folk music and Johnny B. Goode. I think I got it in some space museum somewhere in Ohio.

  16. I’m gratified to see so much posting about this podcast! I was half afraid with BSG over, many people would bail, but I should have known better.

  17. Chuck, Sean and Audra: “I have been and ever shall be your listener.”:smiley:

#82

Sorry, I forgot three things:

  1. Welcome to the forum, LuckyCorny!

  2. How did Khan recognize Chekov when Space Seed was a Season One episode and Walter Koenig only joined the cast in Season Two?

  3. GWC, you should discuss Star Trek Phase II! Not bad for a volunteer effort…

OK, I promise I’m done… :wink:

#83

Simple: He was serving on the ship, just not on the bridge. Khan met him offscreen.

  1. GWC, you should discuss Star Trek Phase II! Not bad for a volunteer effort…

That’s a great idea. I’ll add Exeter, Intrepid, and Hidden Frontiers.

#84

Yeah. I didn’t enjoy those nearly as much, for some reason. Maybe like Spock told T’Pring, the anticipation or expectation of wanting a thing very rarely lives up to the reality of having it.

And I never really wanted a romance between Spock and Saavik. Their relationship seemed too much of a mentor/mentee (? de-mented? <g>) for that. So I didn’t quite buy it. (All the planned pregnancy of Saavik in ST IV aside – that child would not have been born out of a romantic relationship, just the blood fever.)

#85

Hello all. I’m a BSG lover who’s been lurking here and listening to the podcast for a while. I decided to sign up when the talk turned to Trek. I’m a fan from way, WAY back and am really looking forward to the new movie. I hope all of the older fans give it a fair chance. I’m going to be there on opening night.

Thanks so much for talking Trek to help us recover from the end of BSG. I’m really, REALLY going to miss Adama and the gang and this stroll down memory lane is really helping with my stages of grief!

I have to admit that listening to your discussion this episode was a bit frustrating for me. I kept yelling at the radio to tell you Saavik is half Romulan and how Persis whatever really cutoff all of her hair and would be really sad to hear you couldn’t tell her dome was real. I know lots of people have already told you these things in this thread so I won’t rehash it all. All I will do is suggest you get an old school Trekkie to sit in with you in your next discussion. I love listening to you guys but I wish you knew more at the Trekverse while having these discussions.

Peace.

#86

Welcome aboard, OldSkool! Like you, I want to be at the new Trek film from the get-go. If there will be any midnight showings in my area, I’m gonna be there with bells on. (Well, not literally!)

I think you would be the perfect choice for the “old school Trekkie” to show our dearly beloved hosts the true path…! :slight_smile:

Glad you de-lurked!

#87

I haven’t posted in any of the podcast forums before–I was a lurker for awhile and didn’t post at all until after the BSG finale. Anyway, I have been listening to the podcast for a little over a year now. I have a lengthy bus commute to the campus where I teach (I live in Seattle, teach in Bothell), and the podcast is one of my favorite companions for the ride.

Which brings me to my point: you all need to dial back the humor a few notches. Today when you were talking about the hotness of David Bowie, and then Audra sang “Spocky plays guitar…” I LOL’ed. Several times. People did that thing where they try to look without looking like they’re looking. Unseemly laughter from a woman sitting alone! It was damned embarrassing.

Oh, and uh…just wanted to share this with y’all. It was made by a friend of mine:

#88

I am an old Trek fan. I can remember Classic Trek when it was originally aired on NBC in the 60s. Someday I hope to write a long post about what it was like to be a sci-fi fan during the long, dry spell during the 70s when there was almost no sci-fi at all, anywhere!

I envy those of you who saw Star Trek: The Motion Picture without knowing the entire story (Roddenberry came to my home town a month before the picture was released to give some advance publicity…he had copies of the script for sale…and the novelization went on sale that day…I had no self control). On the other hand, I got to ask Roddenberry a question at the press conference: “Sir, you have been a TV producer. You have never directed a big budget feature film. How are you managing to produce a $30 million film?” Gene’s answer was that he really did not know what he was doing and that he was just faking it.

Trek 1 was rushed to the theaters; it would have been a much better film if Paramount had delayed the release date by six months. But they could not. They had taken advance money from the theaters and were contractually obligated to have a release date of December 7, 1979. It was set to be shown in over 1,000 theaters (a huge release in those days) and the theaters were paying in excess of $100,000 each for the privilege of showing the film (theaters in Ohio did not start showing the film until late December because Ohio law did not allow them to bid on the film until after they had seen it; one General Cinema bid $150,000 per screen to show it; AMC bid $100,000 for its theaters).

So, 1,000 theaters are bidding $100K+…Paramount had over $100 million in the bank GUARANTEED as long as the film premiered on 12/7/79. You can imagine the panic at Paramount in January of 1979 when they discovered that the special effects company had wasted several months and over $10 million and had no useful footage. The studio hired every special effects house they could and rushed the effects. Meanwhile, Robert Wise was having a helluva time getting the live action footage edited. On the DVD commentary track, he says that they did not have time to get a proper sound effects track finished and he was grateful that the Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack was so good since it masked the minimal sound effects.

So, December 1979 arrives and the movie does…OK at the box office. Not awful, but not not enough for the theaters to make back the huge advances they paid. So there is Paramount…they just made a fortune…and they know that the theater owners probably never want to see another Trek film. So Paramount decided to shoot Trek II as a made-for-tv movie. They fired Roddenberry and brought in Harve Bennett, an experienced producer of TV movies and mini-series. Bennett decided to have Khan as the villain because that was his favorite Trek adversary.

The whole show was ready to shoot as a TV movie…and then theater owners started asking if they could show the film. Just days before shooting, Paramount decided to release Trek II in theaters. But they decided to go ahead with the production as planned (they kept the costumes and sets; they just rearranged the shooting so that it was wide screen instead of TV format). This was a change from what Paramount had done before Trek I; first it was a tv series, then it was a tv movie, then it was a theaterical film…and back and forth. And every time they kept throwing out sets and costumes and personnel. This time, Paramount kept everything the same.

The result was a heck of a lot of TREK fun!

#89

Welcome aboard LuckyCorny, and a heck of a post. That’s news to me, and I thought I knew it all.

#90

That is what I was going to say…all except the Amok Time.

#91

some trivia from IMDB on ST II. (also relevant to the 'cast this week)

Star Trek fans have speculated that Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch) could have been the “little blonde technician” Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) admitted to collaborating with to distract Kirk with a romance in the second pilot episode, “Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (#1.3)” (1966)

Judson Earney Scott’s lack of screen credit for his very large part as Joachim (Khan’s right-hand man) was the fault of his then-agent, who mistakenly opted to waive Scott’s credit believing that that would allow them to negotiate better credit placement later.

One of Admiral Kirk’s antiques is a Commodore PET computer.

It has been widely debated that Ricardo Montalban’s chest was actually a prosthetic piece that he wore during the film. In the director’s commentary in the special edition DVD, Nicholas Meyer is quoted as saying that it was, in fact, Montalban’s actual chest and that he was a very muscular man who worked out. During publicity for the movie, during an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (1962), Montalban explained that he was able to achieve the look seen in the film by doing push-ups. “A lot of push-ups.”

more can be found at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084726/trivia

#92

But I just heard on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me that all of Khan’s henchmen in the film were played by Chippendale dancers. Ha!

#93

Starz has made a bunny episode of Khan!

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1885460458?bclid=1137834943&bctid=16973501001

#94

I would believe this because the host, Peter Sagal, loves very few things more than he loves Star Trek.