REVIEW: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut

Robert Greenberger

Robert Greenberger is best known to comics fans as the editor of Who's Who In The DC Universe, Suicide Squad, and Doom Patrol. He's written and edited several Star Trek novels and is the author of The Essential Batman Encyclopedia. He's known for his work as an editor for Comics Scene, Starlog, and Weekly World News, as well as holding executive positions at both Marvel Comics and DC Comics.

5 Responses

  1. Mindy Newell says:

    Hey, Bob…I never heard that Saavik was Romulan-Vulcan. Where was this established?

    I have always remembered Janet Maislin’s opening sentence in her review of TWOK for the New York Times:

    “Now that’s more like it!”

    • mike weber says:

      It would have been established in the film, but that information was lost in an edit.

      Quoting Wikipedia

      Saavik’s background was never explored on screen. It has, however, been fleshed out in novels and comic books, though none of these sources are considered canon. According to the novels and comics, Saavik was born on Hellguard, an abandoned Romulan colony. She is half Vulcan and half Romulan. (A line of dialogue that would have revealed this in The Wrath of Khan was edited out prior to the film’s release and never restored; as a result, the canonicity of this piece of information has been debated for more than two decades. It does, however, explain her somewhat emotional behavior in that film, though she adopted a more proper Vulcan demeanor in later appearances.) Saavik’s mixed parentage is referenced often in her appearances in Star Trek novels.

      • Why do I recall a longer conversation between Spock and Saavik which referenced that lineage, either after the “He’s so..human” line, or a longer version of that scene, showing up on the TV edit? Am I hallucinating?

        Similarly, I recall a line where the guy who played Duffy Moon’s relationship to Scotty is explicitly referenced. He’s Scotty’s nephew, but I only remember it being mentioned on TV, and in the various bootleg scripts I’ve seen.

        I dunno, three minutes doesn’t sound like enough to make a substantive difference. I’ll give it a look.

        • mike weber says:

          Less than three minutes of added footage was enough to (cinematically speaking) spoil the beautifully-shot and edited last scene of Lethal Weapon II and quite possibly change Mel Gibson’s subsequent career…

        • Mindy Newell says:

          Vinnie, I remember the conversation which established Scotty’s nephew–although why Scotty showed up on the bridge with the nephew’s dead body in his arms never made any sense to me, because the only reason to do so was to blame Kirk, and that didn’t come through to me in the way it was acted–

          –but I have no memory of Saavik’s heritage being mentioned in that conversation between Spock and she, so maybe you are hallucinating? :-)