The topic of the Khan "baby" has been discussed to death in previous threads such as this: Children on "Botany Bay" and TWOK But today as I was going through my morge of magazine clippings I found two photos which should clarify the issue of the baby from TWOK. The following were scanned from a short-lived magazine called RetroVision, and appared in issue #2 in an article called Star Trek Outtakes, by Tom Rogers. 18 ANGLE - THEIR POV 18 A RUINED SERIES OF MAN-MADE STRUCTURES, half buried in sand... As Chekov looks at the porthole, a face suddenly looks back! It is the face of a CHILD! The Apparition scares the daylights out of Chekov -- and us. He screams. TERRELL (continuing) What is it? He comes clumsily over -- CHEKOV A face! I saw -- it was like a child -- Click HERE for a higher rez version (Note the stuffed animal behind the Genesis torpedo, probably used to entice the kid towards the prop.) 213A INT. RELIANT TRANSPORTER ROOM 213A There sits the Genesis torpedo: lights start blinking in response. As we watch, the CHILD we met on Ceti Alpha walks to the torpedo and smiles at the lights. The second image relates to this image posted in another thread by LavianoTS386:
I don't really understand. Do these pictures mean that there was a deleted scene featuring the described script lines? Why wasn't it used? And what does this child have to do with the Genesis device? Wasn't the other discussion about Joachim/Joaquin being Khan's son? Or at least about the strange youthful appearance of Khan's followers? Am I the only one who is a little puzzled?
The photos make it clear they were shot...the scenes with the baby were edited out of the finished film...probably because they didn't matter to the story, and maybe because there was some concern about blowing up and killing a baby.
There was also a set decoration created of a painting of Marla, Khan and child, but it was not seen onscreen. Yes, there was a concern that the film's rating would have been affected if the child had gone kablooey with Reliant. I got to spend a week entertaining Judson Scott when he was in Australia for a convention in the 80s. He said that he and Ricardo Montalban used to get together to rehearse, before filming commenced, and that the angle they developed was that Khan and Joachim were father and son. But that didn't necessarily agree with the script or novelization. It's more likely that Joachim was Joaquin (Mark Tobin from "Space Seed")'s son. And this is the angle used by Greg Cox's novel "To Reign in Hell". Also in the book, their Eugenics genes meant accelerated growth in their teens, but there was a "throwback" effect that made all the children be blond/blue-eyed.
My reaction to "The Khan baby" is that this is a weirdly fascinating detail which adds to the rich backstory of this film. I wonder if there are such deleted moments which add this interesting facet to other Trek films. Probably not. At the same time it's very disturbing, there's something macabre about having a baby crawling on a transporter pad--any pad in Trek--much less with the near-detonating Genesis Device on it. I agree with the decision to pull the scene out, at the same time I wonder what an R-rated TWoK would have been like. And, if Marla McGivers were in the film.
Having the baby onscreen also clearly infers that Marla's death was very recent. Without the child on board, we might assume that Marla died over 14 years ago, and Khan had all that time to go insane. As for unused footage, the "child's face in the window" has the added problem of Nick Meyer improvising, and getting the only available (white) stunt person on duty that day to do the scene - in blackface makeup - of Terrell rolling down the hill, having received a fright (ie. the stunt fall wasn't scripted). When I did an interview with Paul Winfield, just before the film came out, he said that the production was reported to the Stunt Actors Guild for that breach of protocol. As in, it was disadvantaging opportunities for African American stunt workers. So we are unlikely ever to see that scene. Re the painting. I've never seen an image on the 'Net, but it was definitely created. Judson Scott described it to us at the convention. (You'll recall "Space Seed" established Marla as a portrait painter.)
Nuts! This one of the reasons I don't like the TOS movies. Great scenes like this are cut out. Time to read The Khan Saga (Blish's Space Seed, Wrath of Khan, and To Reign in Hell I-III) again
Great scenes are cut out of everything, be it movies or TV shows. But it's the overall film that matters, and not everything "fits" in matters of pacing, theme, or raises questions that distract from the story.
No, the images I posted are from a magazine from around 1997. The one of the kid in the transporter is a full half-page image. The article they're from also has cut bits from other movies, photos to boot. None of them appear to be fakes to my eye. In fact, if you look at he kid in the transporter, his foot goes behind the raised pad, and he casts a shadow over the edge of the pad.
It would be silly to fake shots of scenes that were actually filmed!! Although a couple of the shots look like on-set photos rather than clips from the deleted footage--but yes those scenes were shot. What's also funny is folks say the scenes with the kid would have made the movie 'creepy' & 'bizarre' so forth--- that's exactly the feeling Meyer was trying to evoke with all the Cet Alpha scenes. The music, Khan's madness, the eels, his gloved hand were all meant to creep the audience out. I think the creepy 'super-kid' popping up in the 'porthole' would have been a good fright. The studio probably just wasn't up for killing the kid at the end. Thank god there's no such thing as collataral damage in real life!