Kruge

Kruge, played by Christopher Lloyd, is a fictional character in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Kruge is a Klingon who commands a Bird of Prey and attempts to acquire the Genesis Device, a powerful terraforming device that could be used as a weapon.

Casting
Edward James Olmos was the first choice of director Leonard Nimoy to play the role, but producer Harve Bennett preferred Christopher Lloyd.

Depiction

Kruge acquired his information on the Federation's Project Genesis from his lover Valkris, shortly thereafter killing her upon learning that she had viewed the details of the project herself. Though the Genesis Device was intended to terraform lifeless planets into habitable worlds with biospheres capable of supporting humanoid life, Kruge sought to use it as a weapon: used on an inhabited world, the Genesis Effect would destroy all its existing life-forms. Travelling to the Genesis Planet (formed in the Mutara Nebula at the conclusion of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), Kruge discovered the Federation starship conducting a survey and destroyed it, stranding two crewmembers and a mysterious third person on the surface of Genesis.

These three were Dr. David Marcus (son of Admiral James T. Kirk), one of the principal minds behind the Genesis Project, Lieutenant Saavik, and the resurrected Captain Spock; the Genesis Effect effectively reproduced him as an embryo and sustained his life through a rapidly-accelerated developmental and aging process. Spock visibly aged from infancy to adulthood during his time on Genesis.

Kruge attempted, unsuccessfully, to extract the details of the Genesis Project from Marcus and Saavik before he is interrupted by Admiral Kirk, illegally returning to Genesis in the stolen to search for Spock. Kruge returned to his Bird of Prey and confronted the Enterprise in battle, crippling the Federation vessel. Informing Kirk that he held survivors from the Grissom hostage on Genesis, Kruge demanded the Enterprises surrender; when Kirk refused, David Marcus was killed while trying to prevent Saavik's execution.

Devastated, Kirk offered Kruge his surrender and the Enterprise, but initiated a self-destruct sequence and evacuated his crew to the surface of Genesis as the Klingon boarding party arrived to take the ship and were killed. Overpowering the Klingons guarding Spock and Saavik, Kirk taunted Kruge with news of his survival. Enraged, Kruge transported himself down to Genesis and ordered his lieutenant Maltz to transport everyone except Kirk to his vessel in order to face Kirk alone. Kruge fought Kirk hand-to-hand as the unstable Genesis seismically tore itself apart. Kirk emerged victorious, kicking Kruge, who was dangling over the edge of cliff, into the fiery lavascape below.

Kirk discovered Spock, whose body had aged to roughly to the age at which he had died, and had them both beamed aboard Kruge's vessel. The Enterprise crew subdued Maltz and took the Klingon ship to Vulcan in order to reunite Spock's reborn body with his katra, or spirit, which Spock had transferred to the mind of Dr. Leonard McCoy immediately before sacrificing himself at the end of the previous film.

Trivia
* The scene where James T. Kirk angrily kicks Kruge over the cliff as he says he's had enough of him was referenced at the end of the 1999 animated satire South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, when Satan throws Saddam Hussein down into a fiery pit of hell while saying the same thing.

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