Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982).  Director: Nicholas Meyer.  Starring: The regulars plus Ricardo (KHAAAAAANN!) Montalban.

The release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979 was met with critical scorn but, apparently, enough box office to justify Paramount's green lighting a sequel.  Gone was director Robert Wise, in was director Nicholas Meyer, who was best known, at that point, for Time After Time (he wrote and directed the film) and the Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven Percent Solution. 

His take on Star Trek was that Kirk was like Captain Horation Hornblower and the spaceships you see on screen were like the old time naval vessels.

Like STTMP, the plot of this film took inspiration from the original series.  STTMP borrowed its plot from "The Changeling" while Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (STTWoK) served as a sequel to "The Space Seed".  It was in this episode of the original series that Ricardo Montalban's character of Khan Noonien Singh first appeared.  Montalban played the leader of a group of genetically altered supermen who are found in suspended animation on the Botany Bay, an old earth cruiser.  The group is reanimated (bad, bad choice, Captain Kirk), and before you can say "Homicidal Meglomaniac", Khan is doing all he can to take over the Enterprise.  He doesn't, of course, and he and his group are imprisoned.  However, rather than have Khan and his people face trial for their actions, Kirk allows them to beam down to an uninhabited green world the Enterprise is currently orbiting.

They are exiled, but Khan remains the king of his domain and everyone's happy.

That is, until the opening moments of STTWoK.  The Defiant, a spacecraft working on the mysterious "Genesis Project", approaches Citi Alpha V.  On board are Walter Chekov and Captain Terrell.  They beam down to the planet and discover, much to their surprise, the remains of an old spacecraft.  Even more surprised is Chekov, who recognized the "Botany Bay" insignia on equipment within the wreckage and realizes the spacecraft belongs to Khan and his crew (a minor continuity glitch here, as Walter Koenig wasn't in the original "Space Seed" episode and therefore shouldn't "remember" anything about Khan and his group!).

Khan and his group turns out to be alive (Khan even remembers Chekov!).  His exile on the green world has become a nightmare.  Citi Alpha V blew up and sent Citi Alpha IV (where Khan and his group were) into an erratic orbit.  The planet turned into an inhospitable desert, but thanks to the superior genetics in Khan and his group, they were able to survive.  They take over the Defiant, learn of the Genesis project, and attack Dr. Marcus' space station.  Admiral Kirk, one foot in retirement and feeling awfully old because he's left to watch over an Enterprise now filled with young and very green cadets, is called to investigate what happened with Marcus' project.  Kirk is ambushed by Khan and, after a vicious fight, the Enterprise is left nearly decimated.  Fortunately, Kirk managed to inflict some damage to Khan's Defiant as well, and for the time being he is able to investigate Marcus' base.  He eventually beams down into the so-called Genesis planet and finds a wondrous world of vegetation.  It represents an early, successful trial of the Genesis bomb, a device that has the potential to wipe out and restart a world, making it more friendly for human habitation.

Khan, however, sees it as the ultimate weapon to get revenge on both Kirk and the Federation.  Khan manages to steal the bomb from under Kirk's nose, but Kirk has a few tricks up his sleeve, too.  The Enterprise isn't quite as badly injured as Kirk and Spock's disinformation communication made her seem.

In the film's final act, Kirk and Khan go at each other mano a mano (or, more precisely, Enterprise versus Defiant).  Kirk gets the upper hand and the Defiant is left a derelict.  Gravely injured, Khan's final act is to activate the Genesis device.  Unfortunately for Kirk and company, the Enterprise's damage extends to its warp drive.  The beloved space ship cannot get away from the Genesis blast under impulse power alone.  Time passes, and Kirk can do nothing...

It is then that one of the beloved cast makes the ultimate sacrifice to activate the warp drive and save the Enterprise and her crew.  The Genesis bomb blows up in a spectacular fashion, forming an all new world.  Following the funeral of a very old friend, Doctor Marcus asks Kirk how he feels.

"Young," he replies.

STTWoK is a tremendous improvement over STTMP, even the far superior "director's cut" released for DVD.  It features nail biting action and suspense along with a genuinely touching story of friendship, aging, past regrets (and correcting these past regrets), and loyalty.  Even those who don't care for science fiction in general and/or Star Trek in particular should enjoy this movie.

When the film first appeared on television, a few scenes were re-inserted into it.  These scenes eventually made their way into this "Director's Edition" of STTWoK.

You know, I've always felt that when you label a film a "Director's Cut" (or, in this case "Director's Edition") you're dealing with something different, perhaps significantly different, either in tone or content, from the theatrical cut.  In my mind, I envision the Director and Studio at each other's throats about a film's final cut.  Eventually the Studio, the people with the money, triumph.  Whatever film is released to the theatres was the one they approved of.  Meanwhile, our Director, until the advent of the DVD, had little option but to move on to his/her next job.

So, when we put in our DVD of STTWoK "The Director's Edition" and find that there are maybe five minutes, tops, of "extra" material returned to the body of the film, and that the most significant change between versions is the revelation that one of the characters introduced within the film (Midshipman Peter Preston) is related to one of the main characters in the old crew, then I became suspicious.  Was this miniscule amount of footage something Nicholas Meyer fought tooth and nail to return to the film?  Really?

In the original theatrical cut of the film, Midshipman Preston was presented as just another of the many cadets on board the Enterprise.  He works in Engineering under the tutelage of Montgomery Scott (Scotty) and is killed in Khan's initial ambush.  A very emotional Scotty lugs his bloody corpse to the ship's bridge following the attack.  Now maybe I'm way, way over analyzing things, but when Scotty appears with Preston's broken and bloody corpse, I envisioned that by his actions Scotty tells Kirk and company the following:

"Look what that bastard Khan did to our cadets!"

Please understand, Scotty doesn't actually say this in the film.  But that was the impression I got by his actions in the theatrical cut.  I felt Preston wasn't so much a character as a symbol of the cadet class on board the Enterprise.  He's young, enthusiastic, and very wet behind the ears.  Now that they've tasted true battle, I felt the filmmakers were making a subtle (metaphorical) statement: this young cadet class is dead.  Those that survived are now women and men, battle hardened soldiers of the Federation.

But if that was the intention of the character of Preston in the theatrical cut of STTWoK, it most certainly isn't in the "Director's Edition".  For in this version, the added scenes reveal that Midshipman Preston is Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott's nephew.  Thus, Scotty doesn't lug the body up to the bridge to show the audience in that (possibly) symbolic way that the young cadets are gone.  Instead, when he lugs the body of his nephew to the bridge, his actions become somewhat...selfish.  It's as if Scotty is saying:

"Hey, Kirk, that fucker Khan killed my nephew!"

To which Kirk would reply: "Jeeze, Scotty, I'm really sorry about that...hey...what about the other cadets down there?  How are they?"

Scotty: "Uhh...Let me get back to you on that."

Needless to say, I prefer the theatrical version.

There were another couple of scenes added here and there, but they were so superfluous.  I do remember a little bit of extra dialogue between Preston and Kirk (something about Preston telling Kirk he's "as blind as a >insert geeky sounding science fictional creature home world< bat").  I also remember Kirk either going up or down a jeffries tube while commenting on the fact that he has a son.  Incidental stuff.  Nothing at all major.

In conclusion, I love the hell out of STTWoK and would recommend everyone see it, even in this "Director's Edition."  Just be warned that this version is not all that different from the theatrical cut and the added scenes clock in at a measly few minutes.  They don't enhance what's there and, in the case of Midshipman Preston, I would argue they actually detract from the original theatrical cut.