IMDB’s description:
With the assistance of the Enterprise crew, Admiral Kirk must stop an old nemesis, Khan Noonien Singh, from using the life-generating Genesis Device as the ultimate weapon.
The movie opens on the bridge of Starship Enterprise. I guess these ships can fly themselves because it seems to be captained by barmaid Kirstie Alley. She is supposed to be on a rescue mission and immediately bungles it and gets the entire crew killed by Klingons. Captain Kirk (William Shatner) comes out and says she failed the exam. The moral here being maybe you don’t let an alcoholic tavern proprietor command a major piece of military equipment. It turns out this was a simulation and the test is, of course, the famous Kobayashi Maru. A pointless test, in my opinion, that everyone at StarFleet knows about.
It is Kirk’s birthday and he is reminded of how old he is by all his oldest so-called friends. First Spock and then McCoy. McCoy tells him to seize command at any cost because this is his last chance. This ideal must sit well with Kirk, a man we will come to find out is both a liar and a cheat.
Now we are on a different ship, the Reliant. Surely the most exciting thing you can see in a space movie is the monotony of surveying a dead planet, but we’ll never get to see that on screen. Oh wait! That is exactly what they have given us! Chekov is here, and he beams down with the captain to investigate an anomalous reading. They find a couple of containers and just barge in without a warrant or anything. Chekov reads Botany Bay on something and then freaks out. Probably because he is breaking and entering. They run outside and are captured by Khan. Chekov says “Khan!” This is confusing, because Chekov was not a member of the crew in the TOS episode where this character was introduced.
Khan blames Kirk for marooning him on a planet that was ruined 6 months later when a neighboring planet exploded. And then he blames Kirk for the mind control scorpions which killed most of his people. To be fair, the more we learn about Kirk, the more rational Khan sounds. Khan uses his scorpions to mind control the captain and Chekov. He then takes command of the ship Reliant.
Back on the Enterprise (the real one this time) Kirk comes aboard basically to usurp the command structure and they go on a training cruise. Now we jump to the space station that has a lady doctor Carol (but not an OBGYN) and a guy named David, who are responsible for something called Genesis. Chekov calls them and says they are going to take that technology and the order comes from Kirk. I knew that Kirk guy was no good.
Carol calls Kirk to confront him for stealing her project but he pretends to have a bad signal (he was just in an elevator after all). Uhura, who is in Kirk’s pocket, probably because of that make-out scene in “Plato’s Stepchildren,” says the source of the bad connection is on Carol’s end. Kirk decides this is the perfect opportunity to take command of the ship. Sure he tells Spock it is an order from Starfleet and he doesn’t need command, but he is just playing an intricate game of 3D chess to trick Spock into once again playing second fiddle to him. I mean, he says they are the only ship in the quadrant. The entire quadrant? Come on!
Khan’s henchmen are urging him to forget Kirk and to take their new starship and leave. But Khan recognizes that Kirk is like a small fire. Left unattended it can go out of control and burn the whole forest down. Better to quell that fire sooner than later. Back on the Enterprise, Kirk summons Spock and McCoy to his quarters to reveal the Genesis project. Essentially it a bomb you can drop on a planet to completely rewrite the life (or lack of) there and rebuild it using the genetic material you want. The ultimate terraforming / world destroying weapon. You can immediately see the appeal to Kirk.
Khan sneaks up on Kirk. Kirk’s arrogance is such that even when the other members of the bridge say it is obviously a trap, Kirk ignores it and gets a bunch of people killed as consequence. Just fewer witnesses to his barratry I guess. The Reliant blasts the Enterprise numerous times. Enterprise (aka Kirk) is somehow caught off guard. Khan comes on and demands their surrender. Kirk, liar that he is, says he will come over and bring the details of the Genesis project to him. It’s a double cross on Kirk’s part. He damages the Reliant enough that he is able to sneak away.
Scotty then arrives on the bridge with the charred corpse of a recruit. I don’t remember that ever happening before. Probably this is Scotty’s way of telling Kirk he is on this illegal seizure of the Enterprise and her crew for his own personal gain.
Kirk and crew search the space station that Carol was on. They find dead bodies and eventually find the original captain of the Reliant and Chekov. They beam down to the planet and discover Carol and David had fled the station and took Genesis with them, leaving everyone else on the station to die. This seems cold, until you learn that David is Kirk’s son. Now we know it just runs in the family.
The captain of the Reliant and Chekov then reveal they are still mind controlled. Some rando gets killed and Khan orders that captain to kill Kirk, but at the last moment the captain chooses duty to the law instead of shutting down this traitor and shoots himself. Chekov then ejects his ear slug and passes out.
And here is where we find out the depths of Kirk’s character. When faced with the no-win situation of the Kobayashi Maru, Kirk chose to cheat rather than learn the lesson the scenario was meant to teach. Kristie Alley, with the cold determination of someone who has had too many drinks (which we know she had), calls him out for cheating and Kirk just says “I don’t like to lose.” Spock beams the team back onto the Enterprise. It seems Kirk’s bad behavior is rubbing off on him because he lied about a bunch of work estimates, probably he runs the local union.
Kirk decides to confront Khan again, by running away and attempting to hide in a nebula. Khan gives chase. Kirk plays a cat and mouse game in the nebula where the view screen has what is apparently a bad antenna blowing in a storm on the roof. They shoot shots at each other, each killing more crewmen. Finally Khan seems to be the only one left alive on the Reliant. Kirk orders his surrender, but Khan is too crafty. Sensing Kirk’s insatiable desire to kill him, he lures him in and activates the Genesis project, which will reprogram the nebula.
Kirk finally realizes that all the bad and immoral decisions in his life have all culminated into him being killed, how will he cheat his way out of this one? Fortunately or unfortunately, Mr. Spock knows that a captain’s duty is to his ship and his crew and not to the whims of a tyrannical Admiral. He goes down to engineering and knocks out McCoy so that he can singlehandedly save the ship and be the hero of the film. For this he dies a martyr’s death.
Admiral Kirk, space pirate, lives to terrorize the galaxy another day.