Nicholas Meyer, who made his directorial debut with 1979’s Time After Time, came to this film as a Star Trek novice, but he brought intelligence, ingenuity, and wit to the sequel. Meyer and the screenwriters decided to bring back one of the memorable villains from the TV series, the intergalactic tyrant Khan, and hired Ricardo Montalban to reprise his role from that episode, providing the veteran actor with one of the most memorable screen villain roles of all time.
