Just watched the original Wrath of Khan. There is this beautiful moment at the end where McCoy asks Kirk, “How do you feel?”
Kirk, staring at the Genesis Planet, says, “I feel young.”
For a long time, I’ve felt very old, chased by death. Death didn’t catch me. It was never coming for me, not right now anyway. It was coming for my mother. And now that I am no longer living in its shadow? I feel just a little younger. Just a little more full of possibility. My mother is resting now. No longer in pain. No longer sick. No longer a consciousness trapped in a tortured body. And I have my whole life in front of me. How do I feel?
I feel young.
PS It doesn’t hurt that David Marcus tells Kirk that he is proud to be his son. When things like this happens, we find the necessary parallels, or we write them ourselves. I want to do both.