We did some other Daddy-chosen activities throughout the weekend -- a bonfire in our new backyard fire pit on Saturday night, including s'mores, and lunch out at a place called Grazeland that has about 40 food trucks on Sunday afternoon. But I also took advantage of the chance to guide our Sunday night viewing priorities, as I did last year when I pushed Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the family for a viewing on the projector in our garage.
I thought the kids might want to get a bit more aspirational this year, with a movie aimed a little more at older viewers, and my wife and I had talked before about exposing them to one of our favorite comedies. I'd hoped a viewing of Galaxy Quest would accomplish both things.
Well, my older son laughed one time. It was when Sam Rockwell said "There's a red thingy going toward the green thingy. I think we're the green thingy."
My younger son didn't laugh, but I'm not sure he has the same instincts for comedy that his older brother has. I ultimately didn't really get an assessment of the movie from either of them as we just hurried them off to bed when it was over. Which was fine. At least my wife enjoyed it, as she always does.
After it ended, I did something I almost never do. I took the recommendation by the streaming service (Stan) of another movie to watch if I enjoyed Galaxy Quest.
That movie was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I've heard of it.
That's a joke of course. Star Trek II is the movie that single-handedly salvaged the prospects of me liking Star Trek after I was left so cold by Star Trek: The Motion Picture as a kid. Watching it again now, I am surprised I found it such an action-packed adventure, comparatively speaking, since it really is just a giant chess match between Kirk and Khan. But the nine-year-old me was apparently pretty sophisticated in this tastes, and a love affair with that other major science fiction franchise was born. The only Star Wars movie I have ahead of it on my Flickchart, in fact, is the original Star Wars. It's sitting in the august spot of #23 on my chart, and after another viewing, I've again confirmed Wrath of Khan is worth every little bit of that ranking.
It was especially interesting to watch it in the context of having just seen Galaxy Quest, since I'm now formally convinced of something I probably kind of subconsciously assumed in the past: While Galaxy Quest is certainly a spoof of everything Star Trek, it gets more material from Wrath of Khan than anywhere else.
Consider:
1) Both movies contain an extremely powerful device with the power to destroy worlds. In Khan that is Genesis, a technology that can create a vibrant world on a dead planet -- or will destroy and recreate on a planet that is not dead. In Quest, it's the Omega 13, which happens to be a device that rearranges matter to allow a time shift of 13 seconds -- though for most of the movie they don't know what it is, and worry it could destroy all matter in the universe. In either case it serves as a MacGuffin that that rival captain wants.
2) And let's talk about that rival captain. As epic as Khan is in the pantheon of villains, I'd argue that Quest's Sarris is a well-drawn character who has earned his own high level of cult appreciation. Speaking of chess matches, both Khan and Sarris engage in battles of the wills and intellects with the man who is either Captain Kirk himself or a direct spoof of Kirk, Jason Nesmith's Peter Quincy Taggert. Because this is the dominant technological mode, these tete-a-tete battles are carried out via the big control room screens where they one can see the other -- though one difference between them is that Sarris and Taggert (actually Nesmith) do share the same space at one point, whereas Kirk and Khan never do. (A surprising decision, one would say, that ends up never diminishing the chemistry between the two archrivals.)
3) Both films feature a scene where an inexperienced captain and/or pilot steers a starship out of a docking port. The scene is played hilariously for comedy in Quest, where Laredo -- actually the grown child actor Tommy Webber -- attempts something he has no business doing and scrapes the side of the ship against the port wall, accompanied by an eternal screeching sound and all the other passengers twisting their head sideways in agony. The comedy is there but more muted in Khan, where Kirk displays his obvious nerves over the fact that Lt. Saavik will be supervising for the first time as her crew pilots the ship out of port. That one goes much more smoothly. (Some dialogue I jotted down. Kirk says to Sulu "I'm glad to have you at the helm for two weeks. I don't think these kids can steer." Well, Laredo is literally a kid -- a grown kid, but a kid on the original show -- and all evidence suggests that he cannot really steer.)
4) In Wrath of Khan, Kirk talks about reprogramming the simulation test Kobayashi Maru that presents a no-win situation for prospective captains, because "I don't like to lose." In Quest, Taggart's motto is "Never give up, never surrender."
5) This might be a little more of a stretch, but both movies contain a scene where a character holds a dying man in his arms and says he will avenge him. It's Alexander Dane's Dr. Lazarus cradling Quellek after Quellek has been shot, when Dane finally is genuinely moved to produce his much-loathed catchphrase: "By Grabthar's Hammer, by the suns of Worvan, you shall be avenged." It's actually the villain in Khan, as Khan promises "I will avenge you" to Joachim, whose name I just had to look up, but is listed on Wikipedia as "Khan's chief henchman." Joachim certainly deserves to be avenged, as he's constantly giving Khan good advice that Khan ignores, and it gest him nothing but a large chunk of the Starship Reliant dropped on his midsection.
And in #4, I found my two unexpected bits of Father's Day resonance. In Quellek's death scene, he says to Dane/Lazarus, "And although we had never met, I always considered you as a father to me." Given their age difference and general relationship, you could think of Joachim as Khan's son, surrogate or otherwise. (In fact, it may have been otherwise -- there are certain places on the internet that flatly state that Joachim is Khan's son.)
Of course the most obvious instance of the father theme in Star Trek II is the fact that Kirk meets, for the first time ever it would appear, his own son, David Marcus, whose mother Carol never told him that his father was one of the most famous captains in the history of the federation. Kirk isn't just a deadbeat dad; Carol actually asked him to stay away. "You had your world and I had mine," she says. "And I wanted him in mine, not off gallivanting through the universe with his father."
There's no David death scene; not in this movie, anyway. (Yes, I may have to reckon with Star Trek III for the first time in forever after having my appetite whetted here.) But it was a really nice way to finish the night to see the two have a somewhat awkward but ultimately poignant hug as David formally acknowledges Kirk as his father and says he's proud to be his son.
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