20 Things You Didn't Know About Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (1982)
10. The Idea For The Genesis Device Came From The Art Department
Mike Minor, the art director on Star Trek II, had a long history with the franchise. He got his start in the business with a variety of contributions during the third season of the original television series. These included on-set paintings seen in the episodes “Is There In Truth No Beauty?” and “The Tholian Web,” the design and animation of the web itself, rear-projection graphics, the fabrication of the Melkot alien in “Spectre of the Gun,” and the visual effect for the Beta XII-A “whirligig” entity in “Day of the Dove.”
On the aborted Star Trek II television series and Star Trek—The Motion Picture, Minor worked as a production illustrator, and contributed to the redesign of the U.S.S. Enterprise interiors. On Star Trek II, working under Production Designer Joe Jennings, Minor produced storyboards, production illustrations, and paintings for concepts like the Genesis Cave.
But perhaps his most significant contribution to Star Trek II had nothing to do with his work in the art department. It was Minor’s idea that the movie’s central device should be a terraforming device, rather than the “Omega System” superweapon originally conceived by writer Jack B. Sowards. This led to the Genesis device, and reportedly caused Harve Bennett to tell Minor that his idea saved Star Trek.