Why didnt they include a Khan flashback in STID?

that 'scene' reminded me of Face/Off and Die Another Day..

would've been awesome live action in the brig scene...

wonder why they got rid of his hair? did S31 alter his hair type too? in the movie I assumed it was meant to be unaltered 'Khan Prime' hair just cut shorter

 

Thank you for posting. So the comic changes both Khan's appearance and voice, which is good.

I'm still glad this wasn't in the film, as I don't feel it was needed.

 

Honestly, that just seems stupid to me. Indeed, one of the most stupid and unnecessary things I've seen in Trek. Granted I don't know why Section 31 thought they had to do it, but changing his looks for basically no reason is mutilation. At least I'd think that's how Khan would see it. Why would they think a man of advanced intellect with tremendous pride and a large ego, and most importantly, (thought to be) ethnically Sikh, a very proud people, would cooperate with anyone who mutilated him?

This disfigurement would be embarrassing and humiliating for Khan, and if nothing else, would probably serve to motivate him to do what he did in STID. Why would Section 31 think for a minute he'd passively cooperate after doing such a thing to him?

If they want to change his looks, then why not wipe his mind clean of his memories, too? Make him believe he is John Harrison. Give him false memories of who he is. Who is really is in his mind is more potentially dangerous than how he looks. If he still knows he's Khan, then what difference does it make how he looks?

And, here's another problem: if you can alter his looks so perfectly, then why can't you do something about his physical abilities? They may want his mind, but why not alter him further internally to reduce his strength and make him less of a potential threat? Or, they could've taken the draconian "Roots" way out, and just slashed his Achilles tendon.

Really, this "explanation" is better than just suspending disbelief and accepting that Cumberbatch is Khan?

 

My question would be "Why include Khan at all?"

 

As has been reported in many threads, there was disagreement among the writers about whether or not Harrison should be Khan.

But they did it, and now we live with it.

 

Clearly you haven't read the comic because that is exactly what they did. For some reason, his memories begin to come back when Praxis explodes. Then he has his own "My name is... Khan" moment.

Maybe they hoped to use his physical abilities against the Klingons or other threats.

 

No, I didn't read the comic. Weird they couldn't completely wipe his memory so nothing would trigger it, but at least they addressed it. Your honor, I respectfully withdraw that criticism.

 

But that's a line of dialogue from another timeline, in a story that never happened anymore.

And, honestly, the whole bit about Khan being a Sikh comes from just a couple of lines of dialogue in "Space Seed" and, okay, his name. It was never even mentioned in "The Wrath of Khan."

Granted, I got two books out of that dialogue, but it's not like the original episode and movie made a big deal out of the fact that Khan was a Sikh. Khan is a genetically-engineered superhuman dictator from Earth's past. That's the core of the character.

Heck, even the bit about Khan being a product of genetic-engineering is a bit of retcon, dating back to the eighties. "Space Seed" just mentions selective breeding; it was "Wrath of Khan" that first mentioned the genetic-engineering business.

So this stuff is not exactly set in stone. Trek continuity is more fluid than people often want to admit. Especially when you throw in a time warp or two . . .

 

And the divergence point between the timelines was 2233, as I'm sure you know. Khan is from well before that point and so he should have started out as the Khan we see in Space Seed.

Does it have to be mentioned in every scene to be considered canon?

 

No, but Khan's nationality was hardly the point of the previous versions nor the essence of the character. And, just to put things in perspective, do we really think that casting decisions ought be based on a couple of lines of dialogue from a fifty-year-old TV episode that most of the movie-going audience probably hasn't even seen?

I'm inclined to just chalk it up to poetic license.

A weird analogy: In The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Dr. Frankenstein's fiancee Elizabeth was played by Valerie Hobson, replacing Mae Clarke who had played the part in the earlier 1931 Frankenstein. The two actresses looked nothing alike. Clarke was a platinum blonde, while Hobson was a striking brunette.

Should Bride have included a scene explaining how Elizabeth had somehow gotten plastic surgery and a makeover? Even though Bride picks up only minutes after the first movie ended?

Or did the filmmakers just trust audiences to understand that, at the end of the day, these were theatrical productions and, hey, we're all going to pretend that we didn't switch actresses and that Elizabeth has always looked like Valerie Hobson.

These are movies, not historical documents. It's all smoke and mirrors . . . and "canon" is an illusion.

 

"We wanted to make you Andorian, but couldn't solve the problem of the antennas breaking off."

That's exactly what they do. Eventually he sees through the deception and recovers his memories.

Yes, it's true. NuKhan is Wolverine.

 

Thought of another, less long-winded answer:

No, but if it was just mentioned once and never again in fifty years, maybe you can let it slide.

It's a judgment call. If you have to choose between Cumberbatch and "canon," you can make a case that casting Cumberbatch today trumps two lines from long ago.

 

It isn't the first retcon. Between Space Seed and TWOK, Khan's origin changed from selective breeding to genetic engineering.

(ETA: I guess Chekov's line about genetic engineering can be explained as technically not a retcon because selective breeding is technically a form of genetic engineering, but it certainly changed the general understanding of how the Augments were created.)

 

And his followers went from being a multi-ethnic mix to feral blondes.

"Canon" is whatever you can get away with.

 

But part of the "point" or "essence" of the character who appeared in Space Seed was that he was an exotic foreign prince type, as opposed to a pasty white boy.

It was more than just dialogue.

This part I really don't get. Are we saying there are no actors with Cumberbatch's degree of acting talent who could pass for ethnic Sikh? Isn't that a little unrealistic?

 

And someone came up with the idea that the followers we saw in Star Trek II were actually the children of the people we saw in "Space Seed".

It's a good way to reconcile things.

 

They wasted a lot of time and money shooting a scene where Alice Eve explains why she has an English accent while Peter Weller has an American accent. So...

 

Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of good actors who could have played Khan. (I was rooting for Naveen Andrews myself.) I'm just saying that we shouldn't attach too much importance to a bit of trivia from fifty years ago that was never all that important to the plot anyway. I doubt that the average moviegoer even knows that Khan was briefly labeled a Sikh way back when.

I mean, it's not like Khan ever identified himself as a Sikh or being from India or whatever. Instead he was always going on about how he was a superior being, etc. That was what was unique and distinctive about him.

And, like I said, Wrath of Khan, which is what most people really remember, never mentions his ethic background at all.

Cumberbatch wasn't the only actor who could have played Khan, but why disqualify him just because it wasn't 100% consistent with what Marla said in "Space Seed"?

That was another country and besides the wench is dead . . .

 

Fans of long-running franchises, are in general looking for obvious changes to be reconciled. It happens in Doctor Who all the time, and often in ways that neither harm the episode or cause the whole story to derail for general viewers. A throwaway at least. A whole bonus piece of supplementary drama, like a minisode... which is basically what deleted scenes are sometimes. I suppose you could argue that's exactly what this comic is.

With occasional details going above the audience's head, that they only pickup on them on rewatch, one more wouldn't have hurt. There were ways of doing it, I'm sure. It wouldn't quite have been the same thing as repeated shots from earlier, in the way a later revision to Star Trek VI reminded people of the conspirators. For one set of people it would've been the prisoner picturing Admiral Marcus finding the ship he and his crew came from. For another, a shot would be mixed in there establishing that Khan didn't always look that way. Literally seconds and IIRC they're onto Kirk calling Scotty in a bar, then onto the next scene after that. I would've loved it if there had been something in there, however oblique to tackle the issue.