Star Trek - The Wrath of Kahn: Slowing down in space

It's 40 years old this year, but Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn remains the most thrilling and powerful of all the Star Treks. It has the best villain, the best dialogue and by far the best score, while also being a tremendous action film that knows the value of a little patience.

So many action films can mistake unrelenting velocity for thrills, and the most thrilling of these films always know when to pull it back. Let the viewer catch their breath, let the tension build for the next cinematic assault.

The second Star Trek movie also keeps it narrative simple, even with a weird detour onto a space station and a garden of Eden. Almost the entire film is two spaceships of equal capability, trying to destroy each other in the yawning void of space.

Space is, obviously, very fucking big, and it takes some time to get anywhere, so it's no surprise that so much of Star Trek II is spent waiting - waiting for Spock to finish his surreptitious repairs, waiting for the other ship to show on a distorted scanner, waiting for the warp drive that will save them all to kick in at the end.

And it's not just the crew that are hanging on and waiting, the viewer is part of the game too. We know Khan is coming for Kirk long before he does and the tiny moment of the Federation crew's ignorance as death draws closer is excruciating.

All this waiting does obviously have to pay off, and when it all kicks off, it still kicks off big time. The first face-off between the two mortal enemies is still ridiculously exciting - propelled by that astonishing James Horner score, with some of the sharpest editing in any science fiction movie. The order to fire, the rudimentary computer graphics showing the target lock, the deadly phaser beams flashing out and the carnage that it all creates in engineering.

It all comes crashing on, blowing all the tension in the room right the fuck up, and it over shockingly fast, leaving behind space debris and radiation burns.

There's so much else that makes this the strongest Star Trek ever got - its confrontation of the fear of getting old and useless, the noble sacrifice of Spock and Shatner's best-ever acting as he deals with the loss of his dearest friend. All contrasted by the utter hatred that drives Kahn and provides the narrative thrust right up to his last breath, spat out at his most despised foe.  

There has been a lot of Star Trek at the movies in the past 40 years, and they all have decent moments in them, even the most unloved of them. But few have the patience to follow the simple lessons of this early masterpiece.