When exactly did Marla McGivers die?

[ZapBrannigan]

Khan's followers in the movie look a lot older than 15 to me. I always assumed they were original sleepers from the Botany Bay, but ones who hadn't gotten on camera in "Space Seed."

[ssosmcin]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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Well, this is more or less what I assumed when I saw the film, too. The question is, though, given the collapse of the ecosystem, what do they eat?

Their parents. That's why Khan is the only person over 21 left alive.

[Timewalker]

Noname Given wrote:

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Honestly, from the dialog of ST:TWoK, I would assume she died BEFORE Ceti Alpha VI exploded - which was 6 months after they were marooned there. So, mid-second Season of TOS at the latest.

Khan's speech to Kirk says that he wants to leave Kirk "as you left me, as you left her, buried alive... buried alive..."

Whereupon Kirk shows us what incredible lung power he has, as his scream of "Khaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!" is heard all the way through solid rock...

This suggests to me that Marla died after Ceti Alpha V's ecosystem went to hell.

Timo wrote:

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Also, since Khan's followers in ST2:TWoK are a phenotypically uniform lot of young kids, it stands to reason that they are all children of the Alpha Male and his principal wife... And that Khan either killed all other children, or did not keep them alive when the planet went haywire, or just plain prevented anybody else from having kids.

The question then becomes, was the mother McGivers (meaning she would have to have lived through half a dozen pregnancies at least), or somebody more likely to provide Aryan offspring for the apparent Sikh prince?

Timo Saloniemi

Khan wanted to make himself an empire to rule. Pretty hard to do that without letting anybody have offspring.

Greg Cox wrote:

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In the book, Khan and Marla had no children, although Khan raised Joaquim (the child of a fallen comrade) as though he was his own son.

Some genetic hand-waving was required to explain why all the second-generation superhumans were blond!

Why? Sure, adaptation and all, but in your own trilogy you did mention "supermen" from other regions of Earth. There had to be SOME who were blond(e).

Greg Cox wrote:

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Indeed! Glad you liked them.


I spoke with Judson Scott (who played Joachim) at a convention once. He believed that Joachim was indeed Khan's son and that's how he played him.

Since this had never been "officially" established, I split the difference and made him Khan's foster son in the book.

That made more sense than the "JoaquiN from Space Seed inexplicably became a blond guy" although they otherwise had the same basic relationship.

Greg Cox wrote:

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This is an odd case, where the screenplay and the casting don't seem to be on the same page. Yes, the dialogue implies that these are same Botany Bay superhumans we saw in "Space Seed," but they look completely different and clearly appear to be at least a generation younger than Khan.

The dialogue says one thing, but the visuals say something else. We have an aged Khan surrounded by a tribe of young, feral-looking Augments . . . .

(Indeed, as I mentioned before, at least one of the actors--Judson Scott--was under the impression that he was playing Khan's son while the movie was being filmed.)

In writing the book, I decided that what we actually saw on screen trumped a couple incongruous lines of dialogue and established that a second generation of superhumans was born during Khan's exile. The way I rationalized it, Khan was just indulging in a bit of poetic license when he was speaking to Chekov and Terrell, or perhaps, after fifteen years in hell, he was a trifle deranged at that point . . . .

But why didn't he address Khan as "Father" then? He always called Khan "My Lord" or used his name.

ssosmcin wrote:

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Their parents. That's why Khan is the only person over 21 left alive.

Judson Scott was clearly not a 21-year-old. He's a very handsome man, but not that young.

[CorporalCaptain]

Timewalker wrote:

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Khan's speech to Kirk says that he wants to leave Kirk "as you left me, as you left her, buried alive... buried alive..."

Whereupon Kirk shows us what incredible lung power he has, as his scream of "Khaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!" is heard all the way through solid rock...

This suggests to me that Marla died after Ceti Alpha V's ecosystem went to hell.

The full line is this:

TWOK wrote:

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I've done far worse than kill you, ...I've hurt you. And I wish to go on ...hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me. As you left her. Marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet, ...buried alive. Buried alive!

Meaning that Kirk might have saved her, if he had checked back in time after Ceti Alpha Six exploded, in other words before Ceti Alpha Five became a dead planet? I agree, that makes a lot of sense.

Just to play devil's advocate though, at this point of Khan's sanity circling the drain, in his somewhat unhinged reference to him and her being left there, Khan could simply be raging about having been marooned at all to begin with.

[ssosmcin]

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Timewalker wrote:

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But why didn't he address Khan as "Father" then? He always called Khan "My Lord" or used his name.

Could have been any number of reasons from Khan wanting it that way to Joachim not wanting to be "daddy's little boy" in front of the others.

Timewalker wrote:

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Judson Scott was clearly not a 21-year-old. He's a very handsome man, but not that young.

He was 30 at the time and I was jokin'. If he was playing a character of the same age, he would have been 15 when Kirk found them. Old enough to eat his parents.

[Greg Cox]

Timewalker wrote:

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Why? Sure, adaptation and all, but in your own trilogy you did mention "supermen" from other regions of Earth. There had to be SOME who were blond(e).

It was more the fact that they were all blond in the movie, whereas Khan's crew was visibly multiethnic in the original TV episode. I figured I needed to try to explain that discrepancy somehow . . .

[Therin of Andor]

Greg Cox wrote:

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I spoke with Judson Scott (who played Joachim) at a convention once. He believed that Joachim was indeed Khan's son and that's how he played him.

And you and I discussed this online before you wrote the book, and it was such a buzz to hear you formulating your plan of attack for how you'd handle events; Judson was a guest at an Aussie con in the 80s - I had to break the news to him (the morning he arrived Down Under) that "V: The Series" had just been announced as cancelled. He'd been told that Lt James was about to get his own ship in Season Two! Ooops.

Judson was invited to Ricardo's house when he was cast and they did script readings together, establishing for themselves their backstory, as actors often do. In a "Starlog" interview, he says of Khan: "He's my Daddy!"

There was a painting prepared as set dressing, though: of Marla (ie a self portrait), Khan and the little kid (who was seen at the porthole in the cut footage), indicating that not too long had passed between Marla's death and the events of ST II, but of course the pic was not seen on screen - and neither Judson nor Ricardo knew that it was created when they worked on their backstory.

I rather like that the Ceti eels went rampant after the planetary orbit shift.

Since this had never been "officially" established, I split the difference and made him Khan's foster son in the book.

And it works rather well. Some people guess that Joachim in ST II is simply an Aryan-revised, misspelled version of "Space Seed"'s dark-haired Joaquin (Mark Tobin).

[Timewalker]

Too bad about V. But I preferred Judson Scott as Bennu in "Phoenix." (that was a Really Short Series!)

[FormerLurker]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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And it works rather well. Some people guess that Joachim in ST II is simply an Aryan-revised, misspelled version of "Space Seed"'s dark-haired Joaquin (Mark Tobin).

Judson Scott is one of these people, and has been since the '80s. He even insists that Joachim, which Ricardo Montalban pronounced onscreen as "YO-uh-KEEM", is pronounced "wah-KEEM". Or at least he did when he was at the Denver Star Trek convention last.

[Timewalker]

FormerLurker wrote:

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Judson Scott is one of these people, and has been since the '80s. He even insists that Joachim, which Ricardo Montalban pronounced onscreen as "YO-uh-KEEM", is pronounced "wah-KEEM". Or at least he did when he was at the Denver Star Trek convention last.

I heard him pronounce it as "KEEN" with a really subtle "n", like some European languages do when "n" is at the end of a word.

[mos6507]

The blonde thing, and probably the youth thing, was in order to evoke images of the Hitler youth. I agree that it clashed with continuity and is one of the biggest issues with Khan.

[scotpens]

CorporalCaptain wrote:

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. . . "Life form" has been applied inconsistently in Star Trek. Often it is used in unqualified form to mean a sentient, if not humanoid, life form. Kirk and Spock stand in a grassy meadow, and Spock says, "Scans show no life forms on this planet, Captain."

Sometimes they got it right and said something like "no animal life", except just don't pay any attention to the entomophilous species.

Well, I just learned a new word today.

The dictionary entry has the notation "compare zoophilic." That sounds like something you could get arrested for.

[Timewalker]

mos6507 wrote:

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The blonde thing, and probably the youth thing, was in order to evoke images of the Hitler youth. I agree that it clashed with continuity and is one of the biggest issues with Khan.

Say what? The ST II-IV trilogy came out around the time we discovered that Central Alberta (the region of Canada where I live) was infested with Holocaust deniers, one of whom was peddling his opinions as indisputable facts to a captive audience - his high school social studies students, who were compelled to parrot this crap back to him in their essays and term papers, or else receive a failing grade (this "teacher" was eventually fired, put on trial, and lost his teaching license - public Holocaust denial is classed as hate speech in Canada and is illegal).

In spite of that, and other equally horrible people around here, the "blond characters in TWOK = Hitler Youth Movement" never crossed my mind even once.

[mos6507]

The whole idea of augments in general is a social commentary on the Nazis and the notion of aryan superiority and their nascent eugenics movement. This was true in the original Space Seed even though the augments shown were not universally blonde. Certainly the casting choices to skew young, beautiful, and blonde, was the team at that time desiring to drive the point home a little too overtly, especially considering that Khan himself was not a germanic type.

I don't dispute that holocaust deniers have been around, but this is kind of a side-issue to whether the general public accepted the idea that the Nazi's believed in a master-race and in eugenics. I don't think there's ever been much debate about that, even among holocaust deniers, who are usually white supremacists who believe exactly that.

A few years after Khan, you had the Bond film "A View to a Kill" in which Christopher Walken had his hair dyed blonde (he looked a lot like Bowie at a time, who they preferred to cast) as an ex-Hitler youth bent on world domination not unlike Khan in a way.

[Shawnster]

Timewalker wrote:

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Too bad about V. But I preferred Judson Scott as Bennu in "Phoenix." (that was a Really Short Series!)

I remember him from Phoenix, but not V. And I watched both series.