Star Trek 2: The Rote of Khan

I didn’t want them to do Khan again. It just didn’t make any sense. In a LOGICAL world, the first thing Spock Prime does after the reboot curtains is find a ship and destroy Khan’s. The very first thing.

So bringing him back sounds creatively lazy. Besides, how on Earth do you top Ricardo Montalban? You just don’t.

But, fine. Your heart is set on Khan. Even in that case then, Into Darkness was utter shit. Khan Noonien Singh, Sikh nobility… Benedict stinking Cumberbatch? Come on. There’s a way to do it, and that wasn’t it. What, a superhuman genius and Sikh Michael Jackson? No.

First, you need an Actual Khan. Someone with some color. Kumail Nanjiani maybe, he was willing and able to get pretty ripped. I didn’t even know his name just now, I just looked up ‘Indian actor ripped‘. Then you need to make it work.

So let’s say Spock Prime DOES go on a Khan hunt, but the ship isn’t where it should be. Turns out its path was disrupted by the gravity madness of Nero’s ship returning at the start of the reboot. It drifted into the orbit of a pre-Contact planet, and for the last ten years Khan’s people have ruled over a tribal civilization as gods. The natives were always handicapped by the presence of a parasitic brain worm, but Khan’s superior intellect devised an immunity that he reserved for his crew. Khan is invincible, he’s living his best life, he’s (I shit you not) wearing Connery’s space Speedo and killing it. They maintained their rule by weaponizing the brain worm’s toxin, but it was still a limited civilization and these evil geniuses have been living as brutal savages, stranded on this primitive world. So there’s a whole boat full of solid bad guys to work with. Sean Bean should be there. And that white guy with the big scar on his cheek/jaw. You know who I mean.

ANYWAY, Spock Prime’s ship detects Khan’s old ship still in orbit. He boards the ship and sees what’s been happening on the planet for the past few years. He considers leaving Khan in exile but first wants to know his ambitions, so he lands on the planet and stuns Khan to meld with him. He sees Khan teetering on madness, but then he tries to make a change, some nudge that he thinks will keep Khan contained. The interference wakes Khan’s consciousness, and he fights back, turning the meld back on Spock and reading HIS mind. This is Spock Prime, so Khan is getting the full Kirk here.

Afterwards, Khan’s shit is officially flipped. He’s already been living in defeat for ten years now, stuck with the inability to get back at people who’d died 200 years earlier. Now though he’s looking at having been defeated twice more, and he has someone he can point his anger at. Respected elder tactician Sean Bean expresses his reservations about leaving their rule to seek war, so Khan kills him. They’ve got Spock’s ship and enough deadly poison to cause a problem, and the opening act ends with Khan and Co. leaving in search of a world worth ruling. From there they plan to use Spock Prime as bait to lure in Neo Kirk, and the movie goes on.

I don’t really have any sense of how it plays out. Spock Prime lives (he’s died enough already), but it’s not his movie so he spends the hard part offscreen in a hospital bed. None of this ‘Khan being manipulated by old Fed generals’ nonsense, Khan is The Man. Maybe he crushes the Feds at their new home, then sets the nation’s industry to expanding poison weapon production for an assault on Earth, and of course only Neo Kirk/Spock can stop him. Let’s say Khan plans to use his old ship to smuggle in a poison armageddon, and just as he’s on the cusp of victory he winds up burning up on reentry, with Earth filling the screen and him looking very Genesis-like for closure.

Through it all, neither Neo Kirk nor Neo Spock die. There’s no need. Different universe. Maybe a little misdirect at the end, make it look like Spock Prime is succumbing to injuries sustained when he saved Neo Kirk earlier in the movie (just thought that up, have to back and write that part in), but NO. Spock doesn’t die, he gets his sunset saving the Vulcan people. Neo Kirk/Spock/Bones have had their prerequisite bonding moments and faced down a credible existential threat, and peace is restored.

And scene.

I would watch the shit out of that movie.

Don’t get me started on Star Wars.