Suicide is a note on motive and meaning.

“If I haven’t the love I want so bad, there is nothing left,” writes a female, 45, overdose.

“When you left me I died inside.… I cry to God … but he doesn’t listen. There is nothing else for me to do,” writes a male, 31, hanging.

“I am powerless over my emotions.… I am like a helpless 12 year old,” writes a female, 74.

“This should come as no surprise. My eyes have spoken for a long, long time,” writes a husband, 49, to his wife, gunshot to the head.

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Edwin Shneidman, Voices of Death.

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But is Kirk really the true hero? Is Khan entirely the villain?

Admiral Kirk is nothing if not complaisant and smug and living off his reputation. Starfleet cadets fear and worship him. He is merely a Greek god perched high and comfortable dispensing reward and punishment while Khan struggles mightily and heroically down below. Here is a man whose true greatness was written into his very being for whom there is no right time or age. His destiny was to conquer to rule and instead he scratches and scrapes for daily breadcrumbs. Do the jealous gods not punish real heroes who threaten their domain? Yes, they do. They are chained to rocks and consigned to dreary repetition and suffer constant deprivation so that they might never fulfill their destiny. Is Khan not this man and is his story not one of heroic tragedy to bear and to overcome. Still to rise.

In a 2002 interview, Mr. Montalbán explains his rediscovering the character for film decades after portraying Khan in the television episode. The key, he explains, is to understand the truth of character and action born of a sense of injustice and oppression, not of villainy, and the imperative to right the wrong. Even the title of the film was written by the victor. Khan’s cause is not one of wrath as unhinged rage but of outrage. His purpose is not revenge but vengeance.