When exactly did Marla McGivers die?

[foxhot]

Obviously we did not see the death, but it could have occurred as early as the end of TOS's first year or as late as a day before the events of THE WRATH OF KHAN. My personal estimated guess would be between the second and third years of TOS. I thought the question could be asked, in case anyone has established the stardate time through official novels or even fan fictions.
If McGivers had bought it mere days before Chekov's visitation, I can see that making Khan extra-angry.

[Noname Given]

foxhot wrote:

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Obviously we did not see the death, but it could have occurred as early as the end of TOS's first year or as late as a day before the events of THE WRATH OF KHAN. My personal estimated guess would be between the second and third years of TOS. I thought the question could be asked, in case anyone has established the stardate time through official novels or even fan fictions.
If McGivers had bought it mere days before Chekov's visitation, I can see that making Khan extra-angry.

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.

[Greg Cox]

The movie is ambiguous. When I chronicled Marla's death in my novel To Reign in Hell, I put it about four years after the destruction of the planet's ecosystem.

This was done entirely for dramatic purposes. Marla's death was a big deal; I didn't want to throw it away in the first few chapters of the book. Plus, if Marla was going to be the great love of Khan's life, whose death caused him to be consumed by vengeance, I wanted to spend a good chunk of the book on their romance, which needed time to grow and deepen . . . .

So, yeah, in my version, Marla survived on the planet for at least four years before her fatal encounter with that Ceti eel.

Not sure how they handled it in the comic-book version . . . . .

[Timo]

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

[Greg Cox]

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!

[foxhot]

I agree Khan likely had no actual children. If that were the case, he'd call them by their names, or pay a little less attention to Joachim.

If memory serves, wasn't To Reign in Hell the final installment of the excellent Khan Trilogy?

[Greg Cox]

foxhot wrote:

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I agree Khan likely had no actual children. If that were the case, he'd call them by their names, or pay a little less attention to Joachim.

If memory serves, wasn't To Reign in Hell the final installment of the excellent Khan Trilogy?

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.

[Shawnster]

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.

What part of this dialog led you to that conclusion?

KHAN (continuing)
Let me introduce you to Ceti Alpha V's only remaining indigenous life form; what do you think? They've killed twenty of my people, including my beloved wife. Oh, not all at once and not instantly, to be sure. Their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion. Later, as they grow, follows madness, paralysis -- and death. These are pets, of course -- not quite domesticated.

[Unicron]

According to IDW's comic, Marla died some months after they were marooned and after the explosion.

She was killed by some of Khan's followers who rebelled against him after Ceti Alpha V was devastated, and who disagreed with his acceptance of Kirk's sentence. They infected Marla with an eel and ordered her to kill Khan, but he managed to avoid the assassination attempt. Sadly, she died shortly thereafter from complications.

[MarsWeeps]

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...

The question then becomes, was the mother McGivers

Um...no. Even though Khan's followers looked young, none of them were born on the planet.

TERRELL: What do you want with us? Sir, I demand...
KHAN: You are in a position to demand nothing, sir. I, on the other hand, am in a position to grant ...nothing. What you see is all that remains of the ship's company and crew of the Botany Bay, marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk.
TERRELL: Listen, you men and women, you have a...
KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born.

[CorporalCaptain]

Shawnster wrote:

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What part of this dialog led you to that conclusion?

KHAN (continuing)
Let me introduce you to Ceti Alpha V's only remaining indigenous life form; what do you think? They've killed twenty of my people, including my beloved wife. Oh, not all at once and not instantly, to be sure. Their young enter through the ears and wrap themselves around the cerebral cortex. This has the effect of rendering the victim extremely susceptible to suggestion. Later, as they grow, follows madness, paralysis -- and death. These are pets, of course -- not quite domesticated.

I won't speak for how Noname Given came to that conclusion, but "only remaining indigenous life form" could be a pretty strong statement implying that the only surviving eels are the ones that Khan keeps in captivity.

In fact, the initial scans that the Reliant made of the planet could tend to support that conclusion too, although in not locating Khan's people clearly the scanners weren't really working. With the evident near to total destruction of the ecosystem, the eels in nature could quite easily all die out, having no prey to feed on. In fact, if they still exist in nature after the collapse of the ecosystem, then that would be quite remarkable.

Ergo, getting attacked by an eel before Ceti Alpha Six explodes, while the eels aren't yet all killed off in nature, and before everyone really knows the lay of the land to boot, doesn't strike me as an unreasonable supposition.

[Shawnster]

Now, see, I take the "only indigenous lifeform" line to mean that their entire species survived. What Khan has is just a small sample of the eels that remain.

Further, I always assumed that the eels didn't attack the Augments until after the explosion of Ceti Alpha VI. Before the explosion, the eels had their native/indigenous food source.

[Greg Cox]

MarsWeeps wrote:

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Um...no. Even though Khan's followers looked young, none of them were born on the planet.

TERRELL: What do you want with us? Sir, I demand...
KHAN: You are in a position to demand nothing, sir. I, on the other hand, am in a position to grant ...nothing. What you see is all that remains of the ship's company and crew of the Botany Bay, marooned here fifteen years ago by Captain James T. Kirk.
TERRELL: Listen, you men and women, you have a...
KHAN: Captain! Captain! Save your strength. These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born.

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 . . . .

[Marsden]

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 . . . .

I think it's safe to assume Khan wasn't being 100% truthful, and why should he? Saying These people have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born sounds mor like bragging to convince Terrel to stop rather than a statement of fact. They certainly did look young enough to be the next generation. But I didn't think conditions would allow that to happen. Maybe the planet didn't explode that soon after their banishment, and he just lied.

[CorporalCaptain]

Shawnster wrote:

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Now, see, I take the "only indigenous lifeform" line to mean that their entire species survived. What Khan has is just a small sample of the eels that remain.

Further, I always assumed that the eels didn't attack the Augments until after the explosion of Ceti Alpha VI. Before the explosion, the eels had their native/indigenous food source.

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? It makes me wonder just how many other indigenous life forms in truth also remain.

"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.