Space Seed's sudden ending

[Trekkin]

These are valid points and all applied, I'm sure. Also, Marla's change of heart did not go so far as to have her sort of "wake up" to what Khan "really" was and abandon him ... even when Kirk won. It's noteworthy, in fact, that when Kirk was finally armed and able to deal with Khan, appropriately, Marla made damn sure to pipe up with, "please ... don't hurt him." And, I suppose, it could be argued that when Khan roughed her up, she committed to his cause because he - seemingly - rejected her, which she apparently couldn't handle.

I think the whole point of their last conversation was to show Khan had come to genuinely respect Marla, and things would be different from there on out. Similarly, Marla backstabbing Khan followed up on her request to avoid hurting anyone - she has a moral line she won't cross, even for Khan.

The problem is, whilst you can sort-of understand how Khan might respect Marla after she displayed the cajones to stand up to him, they completely gloss over why Marla cares about Khan. You can head-canon, but all they actually showis that she thinks he's just that hawt.

The killer combination of it being the 60's, and Trek's usual...'deft' handling of romance.

 

[Timo]

...they completely skipped over why Marla cares about Khan. You can head-canon a million reasons why, but all they show in the actual episode is that she thinks he's just that hawt.

Why would that be an unacceptable reason for why she cares?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[UnknownSample]

I think the idea of the eugenics project was to in stall proto-leaders in dozens of different countries/cultures and see them take over. That's why it was so international.

I think the writers had their hands full with Space Seed, not thin king about later possible events, except to ask, "What if a bunch of Supermen tried to build a country as the convicts in Australia did?"

And I think wrath of Khan to some extent guts Space Seed. That hopeful moment at the end of SS is ruined.

 

[uniderth]

And I think wrath of Khan to some extent guts Space Seed. That hopeful moment at the end of SS is ruined.

I agree. You have that great 'what if' moment at the end of Space Seed, only to have it
crushed in Wrath of Khan. But you just never know how those exploding planets affect things.

 

[Richard Baker]

To Marla Khan represented the ultimate alpha male- something she seemed to crave when you look at the subjects of her paintings. Such an attraction is almost primordial and when he filled her needs she felt completed.
Regardless of this relationship the mind is not shut off, her personal morality against killing did exert itself and she prevented Kirk's death.

When I watched Khan crush Kirk's phaser I did wonder why it just crumpled- it he an energy weapon, capable of totally disintegrating matter. You drain a handful and you can power a shuttlecraft. IMO there should have been some evidence of discharged energies, maybe a burned palm. Khan dropping the crackling phaser and then just ignoring the burn would have made that scene even more powerful.

I do love the ending where Kirk leaves Khan and his followers on a new planet to forge their future, While the movie was good I would have preferred to have seen what might have come from the group without having their world devastated. The shows ending gave it promise and was much better than the logical way of dealing with them- just locking them up somewhere

 

[DonIago]

You're expecting a tv show made in the '60s to add effects that aren't essential to the plot and probably wouldn't have looked all that great in any case?

 

[UnknownSample]

I agree about the crumpled phaser... that seems like something you just don't want to do, ever.

There would not be any representatives of the Federation in their "prison". They dumped them at Ceti Alpha and sped out of there as fast as they could, but first making sure they were left with no tech with which to build a space ship anytime soon. This was a Gary Mitchell type dumping.

 

[drt]

Space Seed is is made a better episode retroactively knowing that the loose ends were tied up in Wrath of Khan. Creative serendipity in a way.

Concur. I don't recall "Space Seed" being considered a "top ten" episode in 70s publications, but it usually makes such lists now.

 

[Timo]

"What if a bunch of Supermen tried to build a country as the convicts in Australia did?"

But did Khan ever have such ambitions? It's what Kirk forced upon him - but it appears to be something neither party had considered before. It's an easy out of the plot of the week, and probably consequently not much of a what-if element in the writer's thinking.

it is an energy weapon

...Which is a great excuse for it being so flimsy, as it never has to contain any explosions! But I don't see a pressing reason for energy leakages, either. A revolver wouldn't explode if you tied its barrel into a knot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paradise City]

The thing I never fully understood about this theory was that the augments were all of different nationalities! Why would supermen of different cultures live under a leader of another country? Plus didn't they state that the supermen started to attack each other is what brought them down? So why has Khan's crew come from different countries? Khan, Joachim, Rodriguez, McPherson?
JB

Because the original people who came up with augments were sincere people who wanted to improve the human race and thought they where doing good. So they created augments to represent all the nations of the world. But they went bad, eventually started infighting and subdivided into factions.

 

[Timo]

Or then the creators were rotten to the core and plotted the takeover of the entire world (why settle for less?) and therefore provided their agents with all the necessary faces.

OTOH, faces are flexible things - Khan changed his for ST:ID, but the implication in TOS already was that somebody like Anton Karidian could have changed his if he really wanted. An Augment might be named Khan Noonien Singh one day, Victor Komarov the next, Xi Tao Che the one after that, and Marie-Jeanette Fontanel by the end of the week, as befitted the mission.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[FormerLurker]

When I watched Khan crush Kirk's phaser I did wonder why it just crumpled- it he an energy weapon, capable of totally disintegrating matter. You drain a handful and you can power a shuttlecraft. IMO there should have been some evidence of discharged energies, maybe a burned palm. Khan dropping the crackling phaser and then just ignoring the burn would have made that scene even more powerful.

I agree about the crumpled phaser... that seems like something you just don't want to do, ever.

If you go back and watch, he doesn't crumple the Phaser I or the handle/powerpack, just the main body. What he was doing was making it unusable, not rendering it inert or powerless. If Kirk had had the time, he could have removed the Phaser I and still used it against Khan. Khan wanted Kirk to know he was several steps ahead of him.

 

[2takesfrakes]

The killer combination of it being the 60's, and Trek's usual...deft handling of romance.

Why couldn't STAR TREK reference Shakespeare in love, as it has in every other aspect of The Human Condition? I mean, watch Kirk with Rayna, Leonardo da Vinci's "Perfect 'woman'" True, she's not a pooch like Eleanor Roosevelt was, by any means, but she's hardly perfect ... you know?

She's pretty and sweet, but after knowing her barely a quarter of an hour, discovers that he's in love with her ... even when he discovers that she was fabricated and - OK? - AND goes on to kick Leonardo's ass to run off with her. By comparison, Marla McGivers' falling for Khan was absolutely brilliant. And yet, here I am, questioning how it was illustrated, here. Saying of which, I really liked those illustrations she made, very much. They probably farmed that job out, but I've always suspected that they're Matt Jeffries' handiwork. It just reminds me of other things of his I've seen ...

 

[Vandervecken]

But did Khan ever have such ambitions? It's what Kirk forced upon him - but it appears to be something neither party had considered before. It's an easy out of the plot of the week, and probably consequently not much of a what-if element in the writer's thinking.



...Which is a great excuse for it being so flimsy, as it never has to contain any explosions! But I don't see a pressing reason for energy leakages, either. A revolver wouldn't explode if you tied its barrel into a knot.

Timo Saloniemi

Have to agree that Khan had much more serious ambitions than building a castaway empire, it's why he wanted the Enterprise at first. To be his own spacefaring master and not a planet-bound loser would be a requirement for greater conquest.

 

[scotpens]

When I watched Khan crush Kirk's phaser I did wonder why it just crumpled- it he an energy weapon, capable of totally disintegrating matter. You drain a handful and you can power a shuttlecraft. IMO there should have been some evidence of discharged energies, maybe a burned palm.

Why? Put a microwave oven in a hydraulic press and crush it. Does any energy or heat get released?

Seems to me that if you smash whatever is inside a phaser, you'd destroy its ability to generate energy.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

I agree about the crumpled phaser... that seems like something you just don't want to do, ever.

There would not be any representatives of the Federation in their "prison". They dumped them at Ceti Alpha and sped out of there as fast as they could, but first making sure they were left with no tech with which to build a space ship anytime soon. This was a Gary Mitchell type dumping.

I've been dumped by the best.

 

[Maurice]

Why? Put a microwave oven in a hydraulic press and crush it. Does any energy or heat get released?

Seems to me that if you smash whatever is inside a phaser, you'd destroy its ability to generate energy.

A poor analogy as a microwave oven isn't self-powered but a phaser has a some kind of battery. As to if all the weapon's energy gets released when crushed I guess that depends on how it's stored and how volatile the storage medium is.

 

[scotpens]

A poor analogy as a microwave oven isn't self-powered but a phaser has a some kind of battery.

Well, you don't release a whole lot of energy by crushing a flashlight either.

 

[Maurice]

Well, you don't release a whole lot of energy by crushing a flashlight either.

But if you crush some batteries you release acid. This is why I said it depends on the volatility of the storage medium.

 

[Timo]

Plus, phaser battery contents apparently can stand in for the contents of the fuel tank of a shuttle - so shouldn't there be some physical leakage involved?

(In fact, nobody ever patched the leak in that shuttle, so clearly what came out of the phasers never went to the leaking part of the system. For all we know, the power went to a completely different piece of machinery - the shuttle might have something like three separate drive systems, and the phaser stuff was good for hover power even when it could not fire up the impulse or warp engines.)

Have to agree that Khan had much more serious ambitions than building a castaway empire, it's why he wanted the Enterprise at first.

...Indeed, if Khan's plan was just to escape to a new life far away from Earth, why was his ship sending a "Come get me!" message in Earthlingese?

It sounds likelier that Khan wanted to hide in space for a brief while, hoping that he would be forgotten, and then lure in some hapless Earthling space traveler whose hopefully more modern ship he could hijack for future hijinks. And what he wanted, he got - superior intellect does make for great criminal masterminds.

Timo Saloniemi