10 Star Trek Moments You Never Knew Were Improvised
2. He's Not Really Dead... Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan ends with one of the most tragic scenes in the entire franchise, namely the sacrifice of Captain Spock to save the Enterprise from destruction. With the mains offline, he goes to engineering, exposes himself to radiation while repairing the warp drive, and allows the ship time to escape the Genesis Wave, at the cost of his own life.
After one of the most heartwrenching goodbyes and funeral scenes, Admiral Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Dr. Marcus all gather on the bridge, watching the sunrise on the new Genesis Planet. Dr. McCoy says the line 'He's not really dead, not as long as we remember him.' This was not in the original script.
Director Nicholas Meyer improvised this line during filming. He had recently read an article by Simon Wiesenthal, the famous NAZI hunter, regarding Raoul Wallenberg. Concerning the possibility of Wallenberg being alive, Wiesenthal wrote the above line, prompting Meyer to include it in the script.
Wallenberg himself would be honoured almost forty years later, in Star Trek: Picard. The ships that are seen in orbit of Mars are called Wallenberg-class escort vessels, in honour of the man who saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Second World War.