I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan story?

Those torpedos all had bodies inside them, but did they have actual functional warheads?

Khan obviously cared for his own people but did he just shove them all into those torpedoes and keep the warheads on them as well?

If that latter is true then maybe he was a bit more wackadoodle then I gave him credit for.

Also while we are at it, while I love this movie and the 2009 movie to bits I did feel a huge WTF? kind of moment when watching it in that why did they rehash the whole Khan story?

What was the point or need to rehash it? Are they going to redo all the old movies to fit in the new timeline, not that I'd complain, I'll probably see them but I just thought surely there must be 100s of new ideas they could have come up with.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

Yes, as indicated when Spock beamed the torpedoes over to Vengeance and detonated them. Also, the reason Khan surrendered to Kirk was to prevent the torpedoes from being fired.

Lindelof has a huge Khan obsession and kept insisting he be the villain for the movie. Even as far back as Trek XI, Lindelof pushed for an end credits scene featuring the Botany Bay but was ultimately overruled. Indeed, for STID the original intent was for the villain to be brand new character John Harrison, renegade Starfleet officer turned terrorist. It was Lindelof's insistence that John Harrison be an alias for Khan, and this time he got his way.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

Thanks for that that is interesting..

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

Well if that's true it was IMHO silly of Paramount to do that. I would have preferred an original idea... But having said that I did like the movie..

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

It was always the plan to redo Khan. The directors commentary of ST'09 mentions them nearly ending that movie on a shot of the SS Botany Bay floating in space.

"Rehashes" are par for the course in reboots. Man of Steel brought back Zod from Superman II, The Dark Knight brought back The Joker from Batman (1989) - it was inevitable that a Trek resurrection would bring back Khan, one of it's most famous baddies. I thought they did a fantastic job.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

If we count the EU, Khan is probably one of the characters that has appeared the least on Trek media.

I'm honestly surprised the EU didn't revisit him more than it did (not unhappy, mind). Outside of Greg Cox's prequels and one showing in the fan contest books, he's never come back as far as I know. No alternate universe versions showing up, no ressurections, no flashbacks etc. A few mentions maybe, and that's it. His dead wife has shown up in more Trek licenced stuff than he has.

Of course, most people don't read the EU.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

For the torpedoes, I get the idea that Khan needed them to still look like weapons so he could smuggle out his people. I imagine the range was reduced with the people inside. Or most specifically the fuel was reduced.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

There's also a story in the Myriad Universes series (basically "what if" scenarios) that explores how things would have developed into the 24th century had Khan won the Eugenics Wars. The story features flashback to the Eugenics Wars and in the 24th century portion a hologram based on Khan is featured.

Also, novels set in the Mirror Universe have mentioned Khan and that there was a Eugenics Wars in the MU which still resulted in Khan losing and the Terran Empire outlawing genetic engineering as a reaction to it.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

As much I enjoy Into Darkness, and its various attempts at certain plot points and themes, the handling of those things are disjointed. The movie is more about the over all feel rather than any particular element. That actually works for me to a large degree.

One issue with Into Darkness is Star Trek: Nemesis was basically a poor rewrite of Wrath of Khan, giving us two rewrites separated by a single movie. Then there is the to close to the original mirroring of the "KHAAAN!" scene in Into Darkness. Trying yet again at it, and the nostalgia pleased me as much as it disappointed me. Over all I think both drag a bit to heavily on the film. Those elements which are original are the starts of good ideas, but don't have the needed follow through. Without that, it makes the reuse of the Khan set of ideas kind of pointless.

Over all, I truly hope they avoid any more rehashes, as those were the worst parts of Voyager and Enterprise. Fortunately, the new director seems to have an appreciation and understanding of Star Trek, and a desire to write an original story. One which actually has to do with exploration. Maybe Kirk will finally be the ultra capable bluffer we know and love, rather than a lucky bastard or scrapes by.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

And that stupid climb up inside the reactor to kick the Star Wars style crystal thingy into place.. Hence why I thought that was way too big to fit inside the ship.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

I've read the Myriad Universes one. I couldn't remember him actually appearing 'in the flesh' at any point, so I kind of chalked that up to just being a mention. I haven't read it since it came out, so you're probably right,

I thought the Strange New Worlds story was interesting though. What would have happened if Khan had actually been woken up in a time where humanity did want and need a military mind-ed leader? Like say, after the Borg have taken over most of the Alpha Quadrant?

'Rise to the occasion magnificently' was apparently the answer. The author must have agreed with McGivers that a big source of PrimeKhans problems is that he couldn't handle being basically obsolete.

I suppose there was that interquel comic miniseries that was totally not an adaptation the final Greg Cox book. And nuKhan had his comic.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

One of the Roleplaying games had a Temporal incidents suppliment that had one timeline where Khan won the Eugenics War and his supermen took over the entire world. They go in to invent warp drive about forty years before Cochrane would have and somehow defeat Vulcan and Andor. By the time Khan is 100 years old his has himself a mighty empire where they use genetic engineering to make custom breeds of humans for life on other worlds and have started to look into augmenting with Vulcan DNA and Andorian DNA.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

That actually sounds interesting. I wonder if that's how they got the whole thing in Andromeda with the Nietzscheans.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

This Enterprise is way bigger the the old one.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

That'd make a great book

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

Not that much bigger. And what we saw in Engineering was HUGE and way too tall for the secondary hull.

The biggest ship there is The Venengeance. That's a beast, and bloody nice.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

Nope. The new one is meant to be nearly double the size of the previous (or possibly even bigger.) There have been many a debate about that 'round these parts, and (besides quibbles about the digital model sometimes seeming to change size) no one has proven the behind the scenes sources were fibbing.

It's something like the roughly 300m original vs the 700m new one.

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

From the designers themselves:
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fswRdvLgU0[/YT]
And here is an awesome cutaway of the new ship:http://trekmodeler.deviantart.com/art/JJ-Enterprise-Cutaway-511151062

But yeah, as with everything else in TV and film, there is some movie magic going on (the shuttle bay for example requires the ship to be 1200m long and engineering is probably too tall)

 

Re: I have a question about those torpedoes and why rehash the Khan st

Or then not.

Khan would have no motivation for providing those torpedoes with warheads. After all,

1) they were unscannable, so nobody could tell whether they had warheads or not,
2) Khan never wanted them to explode, for any reason, under any circumstances, and
3) one of them explicitly did not explode even when the supposed expert Carol Marcus claimed it should! (Obviously, Khan knew better, as it was he himself who suggested opening that torpedo, without providing any instructions as to how.)

Khan would have built duds in hopes that Admiral Marcus would load them into the starship that would be coming after him (he was Marcus' top military advisor, so he could affect the Admiral's thinking a lot). And then he would surrender so that the torpedoes would not be fired and slammed against Klingon bedrock, or fired and left embarrassingly floating outside the starship as they had no fuel. Khan wanted the torpedoes inside the starship, so surrendering would be a key element in the plan.

In turn, Spock, on discovering that these things were duds, would remove the cryopods and instead install a nasty surprise for Khan. Which is why Khan would so carelessly beam the torpedoes aboard his ship when he had all the time in the universe to be careful about it, and supposedly was superintelligent and capable of thinking up all sorts of fiendish scenarios himself. He did not know the torpedoes were capable of exploding!

Furthermore, as Spock would only be able to create IEDs rather than true weapons of war, seventy-two of these going off inside a starship would not do all that much damage, even when seventy-two of these fired against a vast Klingon desert would supposedly eliminate a dug-in criminal!

Timo Saloniemi