Space Seed's sudden ending

[Shat Happens]

I've been meaning to bring this up for a while now.

We all love Space Seed as one of the best episodes and precursor to the best movie and the one that gave us the best villain. (ymmv on this of course, but not by much)

That said, the heroes took the Enterprise back really quick, for all the menace Khan was said to be.

And why in the galaxy Khan would want to blow the ship and kill everyone including himself and his comrades? he seemed to be methodical and implacable, not suicidal crazy. Doors didn't stop him. Guards didn't stop him. Nerve gas didn't stop him. He should still have a battle plan. At least I'd expect him to try and coerce Kirk to surrender the ship again at that point.

And last but not least, the final fight between Kirk and this advanced superhuman McCoy hyped us so much about. Superstrong Khan crushed Kirk's phaser FFS! this fight should be the most epic and hard to win, and absolutely impossible to win by brute force. Right? Instead, Kirk grabbed a club.

Oh and the reactor has a button to stop meltdown in one second.

Of course it was the 60s and the episode had to be only 50 minutes but still they ended it too brusquely. I think.

 

[Albertese]

Funny you mention this. I watched "Space Seed" just last night. A friend has never seen any Star Trek and we decided to introduce him to the series with a "Space Seed" and Star Trek II double feature.

I was thinking kind of the opposite of what you're saying. The fact that he is driven by Kirk's success to engage in suicidal threats, suggests that he already is pretty crazy. The exact same behavior is exhibited in ST2, where he is easily goaded by Kirk "laughing at the superior intellect" to chase into the nebula and get his ass blown up. I see his behavior as pretty consistent. He is very intelligent but that intelligence is sometimes overpowered by his extravagant ego. He is very willing to shoot himself to get his own way.

--Alex

 

[2takesfrakes]

Space Seed is a flawed episode, as mentioned, but the two that I can't escape from are:

Marla's almost voluntary betrayal of the Enterprise, only to have 2nd thoughts on it, relatively soon, afterwards. A lot was made of her fascination with Historical figures in general, and Khan in particular, but I'm not buying it. There's a feeling of a missing scene in there, or something.
And ...
Kirk's display of machismo in defeating the undefeatable Khan as the episode's climax. It could've gone so many other ways, but 'they' decided not to make more work for themselves and took the easy way out. All through the Nineties, nobody thought to pound Khan with a piece of pipe and end the war. That's ... that's something.

 

[Paradise City]

Kahn looks and sounds incisive and methodological. He acts daft though. Both in SS and TWOK.

Crushing the phaser, lol, charmin' Marla, accessing the ship blueprints without hindrance. And what authority does Kirk have to dump these criminal supermen unsupervised on the planet? He's a dangerous war criminal! It's a dumb episode really. But Montalban is absolutely fantastic and carries the episode sky-high.

 

[CrazyMatt]

No, I think it was perfectly paced and cut. I don't consider the ending rushed or truncated.

 

[Timo]

Hmm. I never took Khan's "suicide attempt" at face value. It was just another means of coercing Kirk; there was that quick-cancel button, after all... And all Khan needs to do there is buy time so that his supermen can wake up and take control again. Too bad that he thinks too much of himself - again.

Also, what's wrong with McGivers having second thoughts? Betrayal is what she does for a hobby - why stop at the first one?

A dangerous war criminal? Lies from a parallel timeline. In the TOS one, he was an affable tyrant who never started a war, unlike the other guys.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UnknownSample]

Khan's a very romantically -minded guy, and a grand all-or-nothing gamble (surrender or I blow up the ship) might appeal to him. He can absorb an enormous amount of technical detail easily, without having to be a practically -minded soul to do it. It comes easily to him.

He was a war criminal, just an appealing one. Affable? Just a manipulation tactic, I think.

 

[Timo]

The thing is, he apparently managed to manipulate those who would have been in a position to, and inclined to, label him war criminal. The end result: he wasn't labeled that way - otherwise Kirk or at least Spock would have referred to this when reviewing the historical records.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UnknownSample]

Funny, my whole impression of Khan from all discussion of him was "war criminal", even if those two particular words weren't used. Just sort of a "dashing" one. Like Napoleon. They may romanticize him in history, he may have only attacked after being attacked himself as Scotty? thinks... But after going to war, he clearly did a lot of vicious stuff, like bombing whole populations out of existence. Though I sort of see both sides doing that.

 

[Timo]

Khan lost the war, so that does make it likely that he'd be labeled war criminal - it's the short definition of loser, as losing is the biggest crime of all. But if his reputation is so positive in comparison with all the other players mentioned, who is doing the labeling? Why don't our heroes believe in that team's version of history any longer? And why doesn't Spock challenge their choice of schools of history writing on that rather obvious basis?

It would be pretty difficult to find a historian today that wants to consider Napoleon a war criminal. OTOH, retroactively applying that designation to people who lived before such things even existed is not a popular hobby, either.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UnknownSample]

Timo -- You seem a bit like Spock in that conversation, surprised by humans' capacity for romanticizing bloodthirsty tyrants, if they have strong, interesting personalities. Two versions o f history aren't required for this, just a bit of ordinary, everyday Doublethink!

 

[Shawnster]

And what authority does Kirk have to dump these criminal supermen unsupervised on the planet? He's a dangerous war criminal! It's a dumb episode really.

This goes back to the concept that Trek, Starfleet, etc... was based on the British Empire and navy of the 16th-18th centuries. Ships were far away from port and without contact of higher command. The concept is that captains had relative autonomy. Kirk had the right to imprison/strand/maroon a prisoner the same way those ancient sea captains were seen through literature as having the same right to imprison/strand/maroon a prisoner on a desert island.

 

[Khaless the Unforgettable]

Khan lost the war, so that does make it likely that he'd be labeled war criminal - it's the short definition of loser, as losing is the biggest crime of all. But if his reputation is so positive in comparison with all the other players mentioned, who is doing the labeling? Why don't our heroes believe in that team's version of history any longer? And why doesn't Spock challenge their choice of schools of history writing on that rather obvious basis?

It would be pretty difficult to find a historian today that wants to consider Napoleon a war criminal. OTOH, retroactively applying that designation to people who lived before such things even existed is not a popular hobby, either.

While I don't remember any of the crimes Khan allegedly committed during his reign on Earth, he most certainly was a genocidal maniac. Just because he loved his artificially created people and wanted to defend and protect them, that doesn't change the fact that he wanted to do so by wiping out large portions of normal people in the process by any means necessary.

I mean if he was really only interested in protecting his people, and since space travel was clearly an available option at the time, why not volunteer to colonize the moon or Mars or something instead? Yes, living conditions would be hard, but they have the physical and mental capabilities to see it done, and in the end they'd have a 'world' all to their own for the most part, or at least one where they wouldn't have to worry about being treated like outsiders anyway.

But nope, better to just plan to murder millions if not billions instead. Then, the moment you start to lose, run away like a coward.

That's definitely the trait of a stable, well-intentioned person who was just misunderstood due to losing the war he most likely started in the first place.

 

[Marsden]

Well, as for "War Criminal" I'm just going to throw out some names,

Hitler=war criminal, Stalin, not? But wasn't he? Was Churchill or Roosevelt?

 

[Paradise City]

I'm not sure what episode some of you guys are watchin'. The guy was a scheming tyrant. Hardly was the guy was out of his pod he was plottin' murder and mayhem. I think some of you guys are as susceptible to the Khan charm as Marla Mac.

 

[Paradise City]

This goes back to the concept that Trek, Starfleet, etc... was based on the British Empire and navy of the 16th-18th centuries. Ships were far away from port and without contact of higher command. The concept is that captains had relative autonomy. Kirk had the right to imprison/strand/maroon a prisoner the same way those ancient sea captains were seen through literature as having the same right to imprison/strand/maroon a prisoner on a desert island.

Good post. But we're not dealing with a couple of ordinary joes. We're dealing with psychotic supermen. Smart thing to do is lock 'em and keep 'em under watch. Not dump 'em somewhere and forget about them. If I find Hitler or Genghis Kahn or Ivan the Terrible or whoever your mad conqueror of choice might happen to be be, I'm not lettin' those fellers out of my sight, that's for sure.

 

[DonIago]

I'm fine with the episode given when it was written and the constraints it had to operate under, but it's obviously dated by today's standards.

And I have to wonder what Kirk was thinking locking Khan in a room with only a single guard...a single guard who apparently doesn't even notice as Khan's prying the door open.
Made worse by the fact that we know the ship had brigs with proper forcefields.

 

[UssGlenn]

While I don't remember any of the crimes Khan allegedly committed during his reign on Earth, he most certainly was a genocidal maniac. Just because he loved his artificially created people and wanted to defend and protect them, that doesn't change the fact that he wanted to do so by wiping out large portions of normal people in the process by any means necessary.

Is there any evidence he was genocidal? "We offered the world order!" implies he wanted to rule everyone else not kill them.

 

[uniderth]

I don't think we can consider Khan as genocidal. Yes, he probably did kill some people, but as Scotty points out there were no massacres under his rule. So Khan was not the one bombing populations out of existence.

Khan was definitely a tyrant, and probably killed a few people, but he wasn't a mass murderer

 

[Vandervecken]

Well, as for "War Criminal" I'm just going to throw out some names,

Hitler=war criminal, Stalin, not? But wasn't he? Was Churchill or Roosevelt?

I'm not sure Stalin was a war criminal, but by today's standards, he was guilty of "crimes against humanity."

If we are going to define war crimes as any attacks on civilian populaces, then we are going to find damn few wartime leaders who don't get the label. Lincoln commanded Sherman, among others, who sure did wage total war on the Confederacy. Is Lincoln a war criminal? This could get silly.