One bigass ret-Khan they would need to do... - Page 2

JoeFromEarth · November 16 2009, 09:30 AM

[URL="http://trekbbs.com/member.php?u=559" wrote:

Captaindemotion[/URL]]I wonder what they'll do when they re-issue those books in 20 or 30 years. Assuming that the events of 2001:ASO haven't come to pass in the interim.

They never renamed George Orwell's 1984, so I don't see why they'd rename 2001.

Also, quick thought on the Eugenics War and WWIII: perhaps they're the same war much like WWI and WWII are almost the same war?

Kegg · November 16 2009, 10:58 AM

They really don't have to give dates as to when Khan ruled the Earth. He's an evil genetically engineered dictator from the Earth's past; that's about the extent of backstory we need (one doesn't even need to know he's Sikh, though you may as well).

Basically this is a huge nonissue and I suspect if O&K did put Khan in a movie they'd just sidestep this matter entirely, and they'd be right to.

So no, this isn't something that has to be retconned. Just ignored. The new films will be doing a lot of the latter - it's not likely to be visiting the planet where Apollo or Plato's stepchildren or gangsters or TV-watching Romans hang out, for obvious reasons, but in 'canon' these would still be there.

Shazam! · November 16 2009, 11:15 AM

Myasishchev wrote:

The future of Trek ought to plausibly be our future

Yes, but the history of Trek needn't be our present.

Myasishchev · November 17 2009, 10:37 PM

Dusty Ayres wrote:

Myasishchev wrote:

I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

I don't really want to see Khan or the Augments in Star Trek 12, but if I did, I would be pleased to see them from at the earliest the 2050s.

According to the prequel novels by Greg Cox, the creation of the Augments was a secret project that nobody else in the world knew about, not even the CIA, KGB, MI6, Mossad, or any other intelligence agency-the only one that did was Gary Seven and the Aegis, who tried to stop it as best as they could, but to no avail, since Seven spared the lives of the various kids created by the project, all of whom grew up to start the Eugenics War. BTW, this project was an international undertaking, not just something 'from the East'.

A human genetic engineering program isn't cheap or easy to conceal, though. I mean, who ran it, Hugo Drax?

The secret program/few Augments paradigm I just can't truck with. To be effective, there would have had to have been hundreds of millions of them. A few thousand guys with trebled strength and doubled intelligence? So what, they aren't bulletproof. How do you seize power in (what was it?) forty nations with a few thousand guys?

To be viable, Augments have to have a large presence in the population. Frankly, I think that's more interesting anyway, in that it elevates the Augies beyond supervillains.

Good call on setting the war in the 2050's instead of the 1990's.-in fact, I'd have it be WWIII as well, or set before WWIII.

Now on this, we're in total agreement.

The DY-100 ships were intended for interplanetary travel, not interstellar travel, and would have not made it to another system without something like the HAL-9000 computer flying the ship, which they didn't have in the '1990's'-that's why Khan & Co. never made it to Tau Ceti, and would most likely have died if the Enterprise had not discovered their S.O.S.

Sometimes, I still kind of think they were only like three LY out from Earth. Enterprise got near the location of the discovery real quickly in TWoK, anyway... plus the sublightness of the whole endeavor.

Scrawny71 · November 17 2009, 11:26 PM

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

In fact, I believe that all four of Clarke's 2001 novels (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001) are set in slightly different 'universes'. He even admits this in at least one of the forewords.

Yeah, I think he refers to them as "variations on a theme" in the foreword to 3001. Sensible approach. I think that it's one that could easily have been taken with the new movie without tying it to existing continuity. Tweak what it makes sense to tweak, but keep as much of the important stuff intact as you can.

Corran Horn · November 17 2009, 11:38 PM

startrekrcks wrote:

what go down the Khan road again. What more could they do about him?

Excellent point.

Sabataage · November 18 2009, 10:41 PM

Kegg wrote:

They really don't have to give dates as to when Khan ruled the Earth. He's an evil genetically engineered dictator from the Earth's past; that's about the extent of backstory we need (one doesn't even need to know he's Sikh, though you may as well).

Basically this is a huge nonissue and I suspect if O&K did put Khan in a movie they'd just sidestep this matter entirely, and they'd be right to.

So no, this isn't something that has to be retconned. Just ignored. The new films will be doing a lot of the latter - it's not likely to be visiting the planet where Apollo or Plato's stepchildren or gangsters or TV-watching Romans hang out, for obvious reasons, but in 'canon' these would still be there.

I quit watching ST:ENT during the Xindi arc ("We are evil lizard men bwah hah ha!! ... "

), though I heard that they introduced a ship full of Augments later on in the series. I'm curious how they handled the origin there. Did they re-write their origin, keep it vague and unexplained or just completly ignored it outright?

Kegg · November 18 2009, 11:09 PM

Sabataage wrote:

I quit watching ST:ENT during the Xindi arc ("We are evil lizard men bwah hah ha!! ... "

), though I heard that they introduced a ship full of Augments later on in the series. I'm curious how they handled the origin there. Did they re-write their origin, keep it vague and unexplained or just completly ignored it outright?

Vague.

Which is also exactly the same thing Wrath of Khan did (remember, TWOK was made a mere ten years before 1992, so such claims of an immenient seizure of power by supermen seemed doubtful even then); although not only did TWOK not mention the date it retconned what Khan's guys were (they were not engineered supermen in the original episode... they were made through selective breeding. Er. Right.)

The specific dates of Khan's reign and even the fact he's a Sikh have only ever been things that are important to us, Trekkie nerds. For a new filmic take on him this it's completely irrelevant.

Red Ranger · November 19 2009, 01:45 AM

First, I hope they don't resurrect Khan. But if they do, I agree being vague about some of the details of his backstory would be welcome. BTW, the Augments storyline in ENT was a poor rip-off of both Space Seed and TWOK. -- RR

Myasishchev · November 19 2009, 04:49 AM

Arik Soong as ably played by Brent Spiner was a bright spot in it all, however, despite the arc being mostly lousy. And the torture bit was intense.

The Augments themselves were of course woefully lame, from the depth of their characters to their dialogue to their fashion sense. Seriously weak.