Why did Kirk let Khan go at the end of Space Seed?

Discussion in 'Star Trek - The Original & Animated Series' started by The Rock, Feb 14, 2017.

  1. Hela

    Hela Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Pretty certain Kirk broke a few rules when he, er...'charitably' described Mitchell's 'accidental death-in-the-midst-of-murder-attempt,' as dying in the line of duty.

    Regardless of how sympathetic his motives are, Kirk is dishonest with his superiors a lot. He fibs, he obfuscates, he misleads. That's rule breakin'.

    He does however, get way worse in the movies.
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2017
  2. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    What's "a lot"? In the thread I linked to above we found less than half a dozen instances of Kirk bending the truth in his log in 79 episodes.
     
  3. Hela

    Hela Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I wasn't just counting the log.

    I was counting situations, like say...downplaying the severity of a near-fatal stab wound, solely because he wanted Spock to get over his daddy issues.

    And yeah, military has rules about that.

    What's the big problem with Kirk being duplicitous, anyway? One doesn't need to be a model Starfleets officer, to be a great tv hero.
     
  4. Nerys Myk

    Nerys Myk A Spock and a smile Premium Member

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    I think Kirk might have bent a rule or two when he arranged for the Karidian Players to be stranded so he could pick them up and play detective. Even though it meant going 8 light years off the Enterprise's assigned course.
     
  5. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    As regards Khan's evilness, I think we have to differentiate between what he would do when Prince of Millions, and what he would do when cornered, either with his seventy-plus followers or alone. The latter predicament would call for harsher action than the former, and the ruling position would allow Khan to do well by fairly civilized means. I mean, most of the leaders of the world do; labeling a select few of them "tyrants" tells us next to nothing, as many of those were repeatedly elected to power by cheering crowds, while many formal non-tyrants ruled with iron fist and with at most minority mandate.

    Accusing Khan of genocidal intentions is just plain silly. It doesn't derive from anything we know of the Augments. Khan wanted to rule over inferior people, not to kill them. He wanted to kill Admiral Marcus and his cohorts, but that's rather different.

    As for the sources of information on Khan, we get quite a spread:

    1) In the TOS adventure, our heroes study historical records. We thus know the 2260s historical consensus on the issue, with perhaps a few differing viewpoints left unmentioned because our heroes don't give them credence. How wrong can the historians of the time be about Khan? Remember that they don't generally adore 20th century barbarism, so it suffices for Khan to merely be a bit better than the lot - but also that we are 20th century barbarians with barbaric standards, so Khan should look good to us as well. Who would whitewash Khan, when and why? And why wouldn't the whitewash stick in the other timeline where the accusations of war crimes and genocidal motivations are made?

    2) Admiral Marcus is not a credible source for anything, least of all matters relating to Khan and the supermen. And he would be motivated to tell lies about Khan's cruelty and of motivations incompatible with Kirk's, since Khan's true motivation of getting rid of Marcus is parallel to Kirk's and therefore absolutely must be obscured.

    3) Which gets us to the one truly interesting source in the lot. Supposedly our parallel timeline heroes knew absolutely nothing of Khan in ST:ID, prompting Spock to call Spock Prime. And we know one thing Prime told Junior, and can infer another. But this leads to more questions.

    First, why does Prime think Khan is "the most dangerous adversary" the Enterprise ever faced? He failed twice in defeating Kirk, and the "great cost" supposedly paid for defeating him was peanuts: one known dead, namely Peter Preston. Many other adversaries had more success in taking over the ship and using her for evil, and many killed a number of of Kirk's men and women. Folks like Rojan or NOMAD were far more ruthless and posed a greater threat.

    Second, Khan was a pushover in his first appearance, and a raving murderous lunatic in his second. Why is Prime telling Junior stories about the second appearance? Prime knows Junior is facing Khan for the first time, and the superman thus shouldn't be driven into mad vengeance yet. Prime might do better to tell "Do not meddle in the affairs of the Augments, for they are subtle only till they go mad" or something.

    Third, why did Prime put the idea of Khan being genocidal into Junior's mind? That's the one likely source (heck, Marcus might even have edited UFP history books to protect Khan!), but Prime never saw or heard of any genocidal action by Khan, including the stark raving mad version. Quite to the contrary, the man could have leveled planets or entire star systems with Genesis, but chose to expend his single round of ammo on Kirk instead.

    ...Perhaps Spock took a page out of Kirk's book and tried to anger Khan with wild accusations that hurt his savage pride? Now there is a bit of tactical advice that Prime would readily have given: pamper to his superior intellect to goad him to complacency, then get him as mad as you possibly can, and the superman becomes wet tissue.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2017
  6. Tenacity

    Tenacity Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of 148 people in town of Dujail in the early 1980's.

    Crimes against humanity, not "war crimes."
     
  7. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Along with at least a dozen scientists at Regula I, Captain Terrell, and probably at least some of the Reliant crew (I know that most of them were marooned on Ceti Alpha V, but I can't imagine Khan taking over the Reliant without at least some bloodshed). And I'll bet that at least some of those other bloody cadets we saw in sickbay died, too.

    I think we can safely put Khan's body count in TWOK at at least a couple dozen.
     
  8. Scout101

    Scout101 Admiral Admiral

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    Gotta extend that just a tad, too. That led to a BoP's crew dying, Grissom's crew, Kruge's spies, and I'm sure Spock Prime was counting HIMSELF in the body count, as well ;)

    Khan didn't directly murder all of those people, but all died as a direct result of his actions.

    Then again, Kirk only has a BoP and is away from Earth in STIV due to all of this, so maybe it's fair to credit Khan with indirectly saving Earth as well, so he's several billions in the black on this one... :lol:
     
  9. Kemaiku

    Kemaiku Admiral Admiral

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    That and this threat to suffocate the entire Enterprise crew, one by one, unless they cooperated. Although the ship and crew were threatened nearly every episode, that threat seemed more personal and terrifying.

    Khan wasn't another energy being or monster like Charlie or the "Angel" or the Cloud creature, he was a man ready to murder them with his bear hands. And got > < close to doing it.

    So imagine what that 15 year long grudge looked like being taken out on the Reliant crew, and what we know he did to the crew of Regula One.

    And that's just one human man. Prime Spock needed to convay that to Kelvin Spock in what little time they had, not to underestimate this man for a second.

    Kirk's decision to maroon them on a planet was the better idea, I don't know if any Starfleet facility could hold him for long. Look at any of the asylums they had in TOS, he'd have been out in a week.
     
  10. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    As was mentioned, Kirk is not the maverick that he is sometime portrayed as. Why no Oort cloud distant system of warning buoys as ships should be warned before they enter the system? Just in case Khan off of the planet. Same reason no orbiting surveillance satellite or in system ship.
    Finally one less planet should not worry the Reliant something is a miss??
     
  11. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Either marooning Khan is fine with Starfleet and therefore does not warrant any special warning beacons because, you know, Starfleet is already fine with it - or then marooning Khan is against every regulation in the book and Kirk therefore tells nobody, and places no physical warning buoys nor virtual flags in the databases.

    I don't really see the scenario where the buoys would do any good. If an approaching ship isn't already trained to avoid Khan, it won't respect the buoys: they just tell that there's something interesting down on the planet, and therefore no doubt worth examining closely. Especially since Starfleet claims it's a bad idea.

    As for missing planets, those won't be noticed because, well, they are missing. There's no reason for a starship to note that something is not there unless an a priori reason exist to expect something to be there. And if Kirk didn't tell anybody about Khan (we never get the slightest hint that he would have told somebody), he wouldn't have filed a report on the details of the Ceti Alpha system, either. He was never supposed to have visited the place, after all.

    Really, Terrell wanted to find the desert world of the system. How should he proceed?

    a) Go to some theoretically correct coordinates and then look if there's a desert world there
    b) Fly towards the system, scan for its desert world, locate it, and fly there

    The second approach wastes no time and involves no detours. And there's no reason Terrell should give a damn whether the orbital parameters of the planet are this or that - the Genesis experiment won't hinge on orbital parameters. And the rest of the Ceti Alpha system is fantastically uninteresting and unworthy of any attention. Let some silly eggheads from the Anemic Collections Institute or the Uninteresting Errata Studying & Problematizing Agency come there and do charting if they really want to.

    Jonathan Archer might have minded the specifics of the Ceti Alpha system. Terrell has a job to do.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  12. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    In my mind there's absolutely no question that Kirk informed Starfleet about putting Khan on Ceti Alpha V. Don't forget how the scene starts:

    So we know right off the bat that Uhura is recording this hearing for the official record. Kirk & co. are in their dress uniforms, and they're going all out with the pomp and circumstance. And McCoy confirms that Kirk is acting within his authority as a starship Captain.

    If Kirk was going against regulations or doing this unofficially, none of this would be true. And don't forget that Kirk wouldn't just have to hide the fact that he found Khan, he'd also have to explain where his ship's historian went.
     
  13. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    So it was Starfleet's fault there were no beacons nor patrol ships?
    Even without them, what kind of Science officer will not notice a missing planet? Reliant filed no flight plan? If not Starfleet would not tell the Captain, at least?
     
  14. 2takesfrakes

    2takesfrakes Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    The planetary debris of Celta Alpha VI would've certainly created a navigational hazard for Reliant, passing through the system, towards their destination planet. And what that implies is that the system is already known to be unstable. Planets may not find themselves routinely being torn apart by collisions, but Asteroids of Unusual Size are common as are Colossal Comets. Such stark conditions would also significantly lower expectations of Khan's survival on Ceti Alpha V, in the first place.

    Imagine an asteroid impact larger than that which wiped dinosaurs off the face of the Earth hitting Khan's new home. This may give us a glimpse as to how fans might address Reliant's seeming incompetence, in this matter. You know, I've tried reading the book about Khan's Ceti Alpha V years and it was ... bad. Great cover, though! Really cool cover. But I just had to wing it in the trash before I resented the price I paid for it on amazon.com ... all of one cent.
     
  15. Shawnster

    Shawnster Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Oort Cloud warning beacon doesn't make much sense to me. The Oort Cloud is a fair distance from our 5th and 6th planets and I imagine that's pretty standard. We don't know the range a beacon would have for transmission. At the distance of the Oort Cloud, 1 orbit would take years. What happens when a ship approaches the system from the opposite side? What happens if the ship isn't scanning for beacon signals that far out?

    Makes more sense to me to put the warning beacon close to the planet, like in orbit. Today we put warning markers near where the danger is, not miles away.

    As noted above, we have at least 2 confirmed deaths from Khan in WOK. Spock no doubt thought his own sacrificial death was a "great cost." Most here thought so. Maybe you didn't. Actually, more than 2 confirmed deaths. We know for a fact everyone on Regula 1 except for those who beamed down to the Genesis cave were murdered. On screen dialog verifies this.

    Ah, you got me there. However, those crimes against humanity weren't considered worth prosecuting until the 2nd Gulf War. Had the same opportunity to arrest him in the 1st Gulf War. Nobody was interested in prosecuting him until the government was completely overthrown. Instead, everyone is still more interested in blaming Bush for waging a war of aggression on trumped-up motivations for the invasion.
     
  16. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ...All appropriate in the presence of a Prince of Millions. I bet they had a good laugh after the transporter stopped whining. :devil:

    The thing is, Kirk carefully and officially dictated a number of logs that clearly never reached Starfleet. These official recordings need not be any different. If nothing else, Kirk is entitled to second thoughts, as from the log examples we know that his records often (always?) get sent out at a significant delay.

    (Although personally I think the likeliest scenario here is that Kirk was a typical example of Starfleet thinking, and quietly discussed Khan with his like-minded superiors, who agreed to bury the knowledge in insignificant footnotes so that their hero could live the rest of his tormented life in peace. Too bad that Terrell was not the type to read the footnotes.)

    The thing here is, nothing is unexpected in outer space in Trek. None of the above would be remarkable, and none would pose a danger to a mighty starship - a vessel that by definition can ignore orbital parameters and fly beelines or figure-eights as she pleases.

    We know how they do it in TNG. At the conclusion of "Identity Crisis", Picard orders warning beacons to be placed "in orbit and on the surface", for a hazard that is confined to the surface and has no ability reach up even to low orbit.

    Different situations would warrant different warning schemes, though. For Talosians, beacons several lightyears away might not be far enough, as their powers apparently reached all the way from Talos to Starbase 11, two locations that had little plot justification for being even in neighboring systems, let alone closer. And Khan could not be provided with surface beacons because those would quickly be turned into transmitters that Khan would use for evil.

    It hinges on what is "cost" to Spock. NOMAD was stopped at the great cost of hundreds of millions of lives, in one interpretation. In another, those hundreds of millions had nothing whatsoever to do with the stopping, and only Kirk's redshirt deaths should count.

    The Regula scientists did no stopping. The Reliant crew, whether alive or dead, did their fair share of failing to stop, but they weren't Spock's people, or the Enterprise's. That Khan was a menace is undeniable, and that he had a body count is clear. But Spock Prime is making the mistake of equating personal with important: if Khan killed him, that doesn't yet make the superman an exceptionally big threat objectively speaking.

    Basically, we can assume that Prime is lying. He's good at it, after all. He knows that falsely painting Khan as a bogeyman will have the desired effect on his younger self's actions, while a calmly logical analysis would leave Junior ill equipped to cope - Vulcans have difficulty grasping the possibility of defeat, as shown many times.

    Alternately, we can assume that Prime is more knowledgeable than the audience. After the first encounter with Khan, Spock could have done some digging and realized that the human view of the 1990s was badly biased; Alex Marcus could be factually correct, having come up with the knowledge through personal involvement and a suitably perverse mindset, but the rest of mankind would be blind.

    We also have to remember that mankind in the 24th century is more paranoid than ever about the Augments. Perhaps the 2260s were a time of odd revival where every Nazi was a Rommel and every Augment was a Khan, and nobody wanted to consider that Rommel was a swine (if not a Nazi) and Khan was a monster (if not a particularly bad 20th century tyrant)?

    ...Indeed, history is full of "courts" that have sentenced US Presidents in various ways for war crimes or worse. It would take an invasion of US mainland for the sentences to carry weight.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  17. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Kirk let Khan go because he knew what the re-education bases would have done to him considering his force of will and attitude! Bet he would have dropped him off there if he'd have known what would happen later on though!
    JB
     
  18. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    At the beginning of "Dagger of the Mind", Kirk is the foremost proponent of the penal brainwashing colonies, though. Does it suffice to change his mind that he himself's subjected to the standard brainwashing chair not once but twice in such facilities? (By definition, it should!)

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  19. johnnybear

    johnnybear Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I always wondered how Khan knew so much about The Klingons in TWOK? Maybe they had landed there, but if so why not give him passage off the planet or maybe he'd been earwigging in on their transmissions I guess!
    JB
     
  20. JonnyQuest037

    JonnyQuest037 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    And you know this... How, exactly?
    I don't think that anyone who went through the events of "Space Seed" would ever consider Khan a hero. Not even McGivers.