Can someone explain the time line to me (and maybe a recap of "Space Seed"....haven't seen it for years) cos my understanding was that Khan was originally found floating in deep(ish) space on the botany bay having left earth in the 90's and that when the Enterprise found them, Kirk was in his early 30's or something...... ......So how is it possible in the movie for Khan to have been found and released when Kirk is in his mid to late 20's by the Federation (how did they find him since he was floating in space and the original discovery was by the Enterprise exploring space) is it possible that section 31 discovered knowledge of Khan from Spock Prime (freely or insidiously attained) and the time table for his discovery was pushed forward I'm just wondering if the time line is technically accurate in the film and everything made sense.....i couldn't keep up with everything that was happening in the film
They explain it that Section 31 began exploring deep parts of space for alien technologies to get advantages over their enemies - they also have the transwarp equation which was confiscated, brought up by Scotty. They found the Botany Bay and began using Khan as an agent, giving him a different identity and presumably holding his crew hostage to get him to their bidding. Marcus is seemingly one of the heads of Starfleet and presumably an agent of S31. Prime Spock has a small cameo where he tells Young Spock he can't tell him anything of his own timeline because he needs to find and follow his own destiny.
This presumably would also have been the case in the original time line though So is the transwarp technology, the thing that changes the Khan time line here then....it didn't exist in the original time line and therefore, Khan would not be discovered until the Enterprise found him (even though Section 31 were searching deep space at this time too) is that right
Sorry, I forgot to say they expanded it because of the threat of Nero and the destruction of Vulcan. That never happened in the original timeline, and its why S31 was able to expand its operations. Admiral Marcus (crazy star trek admiral) also believes there is a war with the Klingons coming and wants to be ready/strike first.