Star Trek II takes a tragic turn with Khan Noonien Singh’s young son

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan has become a huge part of the franchise’s legacy and is considered by many to be the best Star Trek film of all, but it was a huge challenge to bring it to the screen . After the relative failures of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, franchise creator Gene Roddenberry was sidelined, allowing for a darker, grittier Star Trek than we’d ever seen before. “The Wrath of Khan” is an operatic epic that follows the crew of the USS Enterprise under Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) as they battle the genetically engineered villain Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán). Khan was one of the most fearsome antagonists from Star Trek: The Original Series, particularly the episode “Space Seed,” so bringing the character back was a big deal. It raised the stakes, as Khan had the ability to do real damage – by stealing terraforming technology called the Genesis Device, which would kill an entire world to turn it into a lush paradise.

Khan seeks revenge on Kirk for forcing him into exile for 15 long years, trapped on a planet that has become completely uninhabitable over time. Despite his murderous plans, he is a somewhat sympathetic villain because he wants to do good for his people and has endured so much suffering. However, in the original plans for The Wrath of Khan, the film made his character even more tragic, including a twist involving his young son.

In the original “Wrath of Khan” screenplay by Harve Bennett and Jack B. Sowards, which was ultimately completely rewritten by director Nicholas Meyer, there is a scene early on in which USS Reliant Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield) and Pavel Chekov ( Walter Koenig) – who serves as the first officer of the Reliant at the beginning of the film – comes across a small child during her discovery of Botany Bay, Khan’s sleeper ship, on the planet Ceti Alpha. The child is supposedly Khan’s son, and he would appear again at the very end of the film, crawling aboard the Reliant’s teleporter pad towards the Genesis device just before Khan detonates the device, killing them all. Although Khan claimed he wanted to create a new future for his people, in the end he was willing to sacrifice his own son to get his final revenge on Kirk. Honestly, it’s a pretty great (if extremely depressing) ending that fits well with the themes and ideas Meyer has already worked with, but perhaps it was just too dark with Spock (Leonard Nimoy) sacrificing himself, to save the Enterprise.

There is evidence that the scene was filmed, as a photo of Meyer enacting the scene with the baby on the telepad appeared in a 1982 issue of StarBlazer magazine, but unfortunately not much else has emerged. Meyer wasn’t exactly a softy and didn’t even shed a tear while filming Spock’s emotional death scene, so the decision to cut the footage featuring Khan’s baby probably wasn’t his. Removing the scenes didn’t change the film all that much, although it would have added even more depth to Khan’s character.

Although it is unlikely that Roddenberry would have wanted to include the subplot involving Khan’s son, as it is far too dark for his optimistic sensibilities, He felt that Montalbán deserved more work with the script. He was highly critical of the film, but praised the actor for saving it by turning some of the more hackneyed lines into something more operatic.

Although not everyone liked The Wrath of Khan, and some critics completely panned it at the time, it became very popular over time. While much of this is due to Meyer’s direction and the high intensity entertainment compared to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Khan is also a pretty spectacular villain. Had those scenes with his son been left in, he might have been even bigger and more complicated, but it’s pretty understandable that the studio didn’t want to completely unsettle audiences with such a disappointing ending.