If this is considered the best, I’m already feeling a little disappointed. I re-watched the episode that introduced Khan and I do agree he is a great character and a challenging villain for the Enterprise crew to face. It is disappointing that the wrathful Khan and the farsighted Kirk never physically face one another. They spend nearly the whole time on their respective federation ship bridges. Though I can see that in arm to arm combat after 15 years it would be an uneven fight. With no character who offers muscle like Warf from NG on this crew, Kirk sadly feeling sorry for his old age, and the ships both being greatly damaged, the battles seem to finish before they really get good.

Chekov was not around when the Enterprise crew first meets Khan, yet Khan claims he recognizes Chekov and uses him to get close to Kirk. The alien slugs that Khan uses on Chekov and the captain of the Reliant seemed dangerous but ended up being more dastardly and ineffective. The Genesis device is obviously a big inspiration for the show Firefly. This movie is generally an improvement over the first feature. I just didn’t think it excelled. I wanted more character development and drama than the previous movie, but Dr. David Marcus and Dr. Carol Marcus being Kirk’s son and a woman he had romanced back in the day was not what I had in mind. I don’t think the writing of the scenes between them were very strong. Saavik was good as a new character, but again was not developed too well. All of a sudden Khan’s crew are all young blond men and women. They are all supposed to be genetically engineered like he is, but they have not aged like him at all. Meyer admittedly wasn’t interested in sci-fi and wanted to up the references to the Navy. The costumes were better and some of the ship procedures were ok with this heavier influence, but where was the diversity in the crew. There were some meaningful exchanges between the triangle of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but the scene where Kirk speaks to the radiation poisoned Spock through glass lacked its full impact for me.