Star Trek II Workprint Clip

[Eric Paddon]

A fascinating piece of audio from the Star Trek II workprint has been posted on YT. It's a line cut from the final print of the film and isn't in other deleted footage where Khan specifically refers to his late wife Marla McGivers by name during the initial scene on Ceti Alpha V.



This release ties into an article on the "Fact Trek" blog that gets to the bottom of why Madlyn Rhue didn't return for the movie. What it shows is that the story of her supposedly being too advanced in MS is not true because Rhue hadn't gone public with the fact she was suffering from MS (and wouldn't until 1987) and at that point in time was still managing to be mobile in what was still steady work on TV (her condition didn't start to worsen until 1985 when she began having trouble getting role and she was eventually confined to a wheelchair). The trivia that's floated around the net for years about Harve Bennett axing the character from early script drafts because of her illness is one of those telephone game rumors someone started long ago without a shred of documentation.

The article reproduces all the scenes that featured McGivers in earlier script drafts (and her name is tellingly misspelled "McGiver") and it shows that the part wasn't that substantive with McGivers serving more the role that we saw the Joachim character fulfilling in the final version. Nicholas Meyer is interviewed and acknowledges his role in having Khan's obsession driven largely because of wife's death. Taken as a whole, and with no legacy of interviews left behind by Rhue before her death in 2003 (she apparently never talked about Trek in any interview. I once read where she turned down an interview request from Starlog), it's doubtful Rhue was ever approached since as they remind us, the script was in development for quite some time before anyone figured out if Ricardo Montalban could be obtained given his schedule with "Fantasy Island" (ironically Rhue appeared in an episode of that show just a few months after Trek II came out which is further proof that she would have likely been able to participate if asked).

https://www.facttrek.com/blog/rhue

I'm glad the site tried to get to the bottom of this because it's a question I've been asking for decades about Trek II that no one ever bothered to pursue. I don't know if that's because Trekkies didn't seem to care, or because Madlyn Rhue was never a favorite of Trekkies (I've noticed that the Trekkie assessment of some guest performers sometimes can be linked to whether they were participants in the Convention circuit, which Rhue wasn't) but whatever the case until now no one tried and I'm glad this site finally did.

[AndyDursin]

As Spock would say -- fascinating!

I wonder where they obtained that...great find

[Paul MacLean]

Nicholas Meyer is interviewed and acknowledges his role in having Khan's obsession driven largely because of wife's death.

McGivers' death was the the primary factor which ignited the wrath of Khan. If her character was still living, it would have removed a very powerful and direct character motivation.

[Eric Paddon]

The fact that drove Khan's wrath is why the removal of the contextual line regarding who his wife was is all the more baffling. It's interesting to note a few years before they were in Trek, Montalban and Rhue were husband and wife in a "Bonanza" episode as an Indian couple trying to assimilate into the white man's culture and when Rhue is murdered it sends him into an angry wrath of revenge. I've always wondered if studying "Space Seed" for WOK also made Montalban subconsciously channel the "Bonanza" episode.

Of course leaving out the element of McGivers death, you'd still have the matter of Khan and his people suffering in horrible conditions because Kirk and Starfleet never bothered to check their progress even from a distance. To that degree, Kirk does bear responsibility for what happened to them and given how he was far more lenient to those in the series who actually committed worse crimes (think of the Kelvans in "By Any Other Name") and I've always felt WOK's one big flaw is that it has no moment of introspection by Kirk on whether or not Khan is ultimately "right".