Of the 13 existing Star Trek feature films, it is widely agreed that Nicholas Meyer's 1982 sequel Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the best. Many Trekkies like the big character of Khan and Ricardo Montalban's equally heightened performance, as well as the film's thrilling, climactic ship-to-ship battle sequence. To remind readers, Khan climaxes when the eponymous character hijacks a Starfleet ship called the USS Reliant and uses it to fight Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), who is aboard the USS Enterprise. Kirk, you see, left Khan behind on the planet Ceti Alpha V in the series' original episode "Space Seed," unaware that an environmental cataclysm had turned the entire planet into a desert wasteland. Khan barely survived, and when he finally escaped Ceti Alpha V, he had only revenge on his mind.

"The Wrath of Khan," featuring a story credited to Harvey Bennett and Jack B. Sowards (who is also credited with writing the screenplay), deals thematically with facing the consequences. Kirk was previously a straightforward but reckless captain who rarely dealt with the consequences of his actions. The Wrath of Khan not only confronts a forgotten enemy, but he also learns that he has a grown son (Merritt Buttrick) whom he has never met. It's all about growing and reevaluating your life. Then, at the end, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) dies, showing that there will always be consequences. Youth will not last forever and their past can never be overcome.

Bennett was not only the Wrath of Khan story writer, but also a Star Trek producer who was brought into the franchise in 1980 after the financial disappointment of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. After that, he would stay on to produce several more films in the franchise.

In 2010, Bennett was interviewed by StarTrek.com when, naturally, he was asked which of his Star Trek movies he liked best. Perhaps naturally, he said it was "The Wrath of Khan."

It's worth noting that Leonard Nimoy's 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was, by a wide margin, the most financially successful Star Trek film, at least until the release of JJ Abrams' Star Trek in 2009 . Bennett, the producer, was immediately tempted to call "Journey Home" his favorite for that reason alone. But then, after a moment's thought, he had to admit that he, along with most of the world's Trekkies, preferred Wrath of Khan. In your own words:

"My instinct is to say, 'You bet, IV is my favorite,' but then I have to stop and say that I love 'IV,' but 'II' will always have a special place in my heart for the reasons we discussed. and more."

Bennett was not a Trekkie when he was hired to work on The Wrath of Khan and had to go back and watch every episode of the original series to prepare. The episode "Space Seed", explained in an interview with StarTrek.com, spoke with him and left him wondering what Khan would look like 25 years after those events. Interestingly, it took a non-Treks person to create the story for one of the most beloved Star Trek movies ever.

But then, Bennett had more to say about The Voyage Home, because he too had a new concept. It's the movie in which the crew of the Enterprise, after hijacking the Klingon ship they christened the Bounty in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, travel back in time to 1986 to retrieve a pair of humpback whales. A mysterious, all-powerful space probe in the future appears to be scouring Earth's oceans looking for a few humpback whales, and the planet is turned upside down because humanity hunted whales to extinction centuries earlier. Bennett also liked that film, as did most filmmakers.

As noted above, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a commercial disappointment, so a new creative team (without Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry) was brought in for the sequels. Bennett, a novice, struck gold with his idea for The Wrath of Khan, but it was something of a risk at the time. If The Wrath of Khan flopped, it could have been the last Star Trek movie. Fortunately, both that film and The Search for Spock did well and, in Bennett's words, "By the time we got to 'IV' we were confident." Bennett felt that the film's time travel plot was a great way to appeal to a wider audience beyond Trekkies.

That worked. Bennett loved the movie and loved that everyone saw it. Wrath of Khan may have been his favourite, but Voyage Home got more talk from the producer. As he said:

"Going back to the present did something that nothing else could do, which was introduce Star Trek to a non-Trek audience." All you have to do is think back to those scenes on the streets of San Francisco. They refer to the characters as stars from Star Trek, but somehow as another San Francisco nut I adore the lady who responds to Chekov when he asks her "Where can I find the nuke". Wessels “The whole scene introduced Star Trek to people who had never heard of it, so it was the biggest hit and in many ways the most popular of the ones I've done.

The "nuclear revelry" reference comes from Chekov (Walter Koenig) looking for nuclear power for his spacecraft but having no idea where to get it. He knows the nuclear powered naval ships have what he needs, but he doesn't know where they are. So he just starts asking people passing by (including one extra who only got the part because the film's production was towing her car), with a Russian accent, where he might find "nuclear cheerleaders". In 1986, during the Cold War, this was especially funny.