Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (PG)
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A vast improvement over the first Star Trek movie, this swifter sequel begins with Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) stuck in drydock brooding over his career, while Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is busy training upstart cadets to run star cruisers. Fortunately, the training ship--the Enterprise, natch--gets caught in some cosmic intrigue that allows Kirk to reunite with a pair of close acquaintances: Khan (Ricardo Montalban), a thawed-out 20th-century jerk who still bears a grudge over events in one of the old TV episodes; and Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch), a former paramour and scientist in charge of the Genesis Project, which can spawn evolution on a dead planet in about five minutes flat. Khan, wearing a Rod Stewart wig, wants both Kirk and the Genesis capsule. Kirk's dander is up. Battles and tests of will occur. And then there's the matter of Kirk's long-lost son (Merritt Butrick)! Respectable and not at all pretentious, Star Trek II features what is perhaps the sci-fi genre's creepiest creature (a space slug with a shell-like body, inserted into a victim's ear for the purpose of mind control)--and its best-ever one-liner. Faced with an Enterprise attack, Khan growls, "Let them eat static!" (Phil Anderson)
Review by Phil Anderson
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