Merritt Butrick played Kirk's son twice and was given a sulk and a planet to do it with. The films around him are better than the part, and the part is most of what he left on screen.
Fi1m perspective
David Marcus arrives in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) in a jumper, and Merritt Butrick plays him as a sulk. We said so at the time and we see no reason to soften it. The character is Kirk's son, a scientist, and a young man with a grievance against Starfleet, and the film mostly needs him to glare at William Shatner until the plot requires otherwise. Two years later, in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), he is sent to the planet Genesis and spends his scenes looking guilty at rocks. Two films, and that is the sum of what he is asked to do.
It was not the whole of his work. He had small television parts first, including two episodes of Hill Street Blues in 1981, and then a real one: Johnny Slash in the sitcom Square Pegs (1982–83), an eccentric teenager who got him noticed. He was cast as David while that series was still in production. After the two films he kept working steadily in television and film until 1988, with a guest part in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a supporting role in Fright Night Part 2 (1988), and a stage performance in the play Kingfish the same year that drew praise. The career stayed supporting, and it was cut short in 1989.
The received view is that the father-and-son scenes with Shatner carry feeling, and we can see where that comes from. Shatner, unusually restrained for most of Khan, listens in those scenes, and Bibi Besch, as David's mother, is warm and quick when the script lets her be. But the feeling belongs to the parents. Butrick is left holding the resentment, and resentment without a reason we can see is just a face. On Genesis we were bored, and we caught ourselves counting the minutes until Kirk arrived; that is a poor sign for the actor left minding the planet, whatever the reason. It is not entirely his fault. Charles Correll shoots Genesis on a sound stage under orange and violet gels, with plastic snow in one corner, and no actor looks his best pretending that is weather.
What he could do is easier to see in the dossier than in the films we have reviewed: the eccentric, the outsider, the quirky boy on television. David Marcus is none of those. He is a straight part in a series that had no idea what to do with a straight young man, and Butrick did not have the tools, or the lines, to make him more than that. He once said he was working on longevity rather than instant success. He was not given the time to find out, and Khan is worth your evening for almost every reason but him.
Biography
Merritt Butrick was an American actor. He played Dr. David Marcus in the films Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). He also appeared as T'Jon in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Symbiosis" (1988).
Butrick was born in Gainesville, Florida, on 3 September 1959. He graduated from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, in 1977 and studied acting at the California Institute of the Arts. His early screen roles included appearances in Hill Street Blues (1981) and a regular part as Johnny Slash in the sitcom Square Pegs (1982–1983). He received praise for his stage performance in the play Kingfish (1988).
Butrick died in Los Angeles on 17 March 1989, aged 29, from toxoplasmosis complicated by AIDS. Two panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt reference his role as David Marcus.
