when did TOS take place, 23rd century or 22nd century

[Christopher]

^There have been stories about mad scientists altering human genetics since The Island of Dr. Moreau at the very least. Just because they didn't actually have recombinant DNA before the '70s doesn't mean they couldn't speculate about imaginary alternative methods.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

That...or Marla McGivers owned it and Khan was wearing her arrowhead as a symbol of love and mourning. That might work best as a theory.

Yes, I've long thought that Khan's pendant must have been connected to McGivers somehow.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Oh, and why Khan's necklace has a TOS Movie-era Starfleet insignia on it while in "Space Seed" all the visible Starfleet arrowheads were sewn patches or wall or hull decorations, but perhaps the emergency survival kits Kirk gave Khan and his followers had metallic Movie Era-style arrowheads on them.

I thought he took the arrowhead ornament off a Reliant crew member, off screen at some point.

 

[F. King Daniel]

My impression was that it was Marla's insignia. Yes it doesn't match TOS uniforms but having a sewn patch hanging from his neck would have looked awful. And it's not like Wrath of Khan was a good fit for the world of TMP or TOS anyway.

Plus, Discovery recently retconned metal badges into the era and made the badges into dogtags too, which would work perfectly.

 

[Christopher]

I wish more people would remember that TMP and TWOK were retconning the appearance of Starfleet tech and costumes four decades before Discovery did it.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

I also like to point that out whenever someone pretends that prior continuity was seamless, but the counterargument is that seven years of marginal change plus eighteen years of the Bermanverse, which included the first-ever production Chronology and Encyclopedia, had unretconned however those few movies might have been perceived by their producers, hence the later attempts to recreate TOS or compromise towards it to the best of one’s ability, and the same for the film era as in “Flashback” (VGR).

 

[cooleddie74]

I thought he took the arrowhead ornament off a Reliant crew member, off screen at some point.

Unfortunately for that theory he's already wearing it when he meets Terrell and Chekov. That's before he and the other Augments are beamed up to the Reliant and seize control of the ship.

 

[Christopher]

Unfortunately for that theory he's already wearing it when he meets Terrell and Chekov. That's before he and the other Augments are beamed up to the Reliant and seize control of the ship.

Also, there's a movie-style sickbay bed monitor visible in the background in one of their living compartments on Ceti Alpha V, presumably left for them 15 years earlier.

Which is understandable for real-world reasons, of course. They were making the film on a budget, the only existing Starfleet props they had were the ones made for TMP and for their own film, and they had to make the movie for novice audiences as well as veterans and so there had to be a recognizable throughline from the "left behind" Starfleet paraphernalia to the current stuff. Practical considerations often outweigh strictly literal continuity; and a lot of stuff in visual fiction is more about creating immediate impressions than it is about holding up to detailed analysis after the fact.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Also, there's a movie-style sickbay bed monitor visible in the background in one of their living compartments on Ceti Alpha V, presumably left for them 15 years earlier.

Which is understandable for real-world reasons, of course. They were making the film on a budget, the only existing Starfleet props they had were the ones made for TMP and for their own film, and they had to make the movie for novice audiences as well as veterans and so there had to be a recognizable throughline from the "left behind" Starfleet paraphernalia to the current stuff. Practical considerations often outweigh strictly literal continuity; and a lot of stuff in visual fiction is more about creating immediate impressions than it is about holding up to detailed analysis after the fact.

All true I suppose, but I would so love it if the official films had hired a guy like our late Greg Schnitzer, who provided deeply researched, highly accurate props for Star Trek: New Voyages. Any scene that called for TOS-era props would have been perfect.

And a major motion picture, to say nothing of a series of them, could have easily done that. They just didn't care enough.

 

[cooleddie74]

We're lucky there weren't too many visual inconsistencies. Since we never saw most of the original 72 Augments in TOS we can always conjecture that many of them WERE twentysomething-looking Aryan and Nordic types, so the look of Khan's followers in the film doesn't bother me too much(although the South Asian, Latin and Oriental types are apparently nowhere to be seen even though Scotty clearly sees the wide range of ethinicities in TOS).

 

[Christopher]

We're lucky there weren't too many visual inconsistencies. Since we never saw most of the original 72 Augments in TOS we can always conjecture that many of them WERE twentysomething-looking Aryan and Nordic types, so the look of Khan's followers in the film doesn't bother me too much

First off, if they were twenty-something in "Space Seed," they would've been around 40 by TWOK, and probably aged by decades of harsh living despite their augmentations. Yet they were mostly played by actors who would've been preteens when "Space Seed" was made.

Second, they were supposed to be conquerors and dictators who ruled a sizeable percentage of the Earth. Granted, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world by his mid-20s, but it's still a bit of a reach to think that most of them would've been that young.

Even aside from after-the-fact rationalizations, I have to wonder how Bennett, Meyer, and their casting people thought "Let's cast these mid-20s actors as people who were stranded on this planet as adults 15 years ago" and didn't immediately see what was wrong with that plan.

 

[cooleddie74]

Oh, it was a dumb decision. I'm just trying to make the best of it from a fan standpoint and conjecturing.

The less we try to pick it apart the better off we'll all probably be.

 

[cooleddie74]

For what it's worth Greg Cox conjectured that Joachim was the son of Joaquin from TOS and a female Augment and was born during the exile on Ceti Alpha V so that would explain him were his books canon. It doesn't explain ALL of them but at least Joachim was given an excuse for his youthful appearance.

 

[Kor]

Even purely in the context of TWOK itself, ignoring "Space Seed," having Khan's followers be young enough to be his kids is bit problematic. It's established that they've all been stranded on Ceti Alpha V for fifteen years, and Khan says, "These people [not 'these people's parents'] have sworn to live and die at my command two hundred years before you were born." That would mean his followers in the nineties were a bunch of five to ten-year-olds. Unless, of course, really slow aging was part of their genetic makeup (rather than kids with accelerated aging as has been proposed elsewhere).

I thought he took the arrowhead ornament off a Reliant crew member, off screen at some point.

He was actually already wearing it when he first encountered Terrell and Chekov. Screencap: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=679&pid=72282#top_display_media

Kor

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Unless, of course, really slow aging was part of their genetic makeup (rather than kids with accelerated aging as has been proposed elsewhere).

The elephant in the room there is why Khan didn't look as young as them.

 

[Mytran]

Maybe the young people we saw were the (highly mature) children of Khan's fellow augments, whereas the parents were always standing slightly off camera?

 

[Marsden]

I don't recall any dialog establishing that.

There was nothing in the film that established that.

In Greg Cox's novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, they're claimed to be the swiftly-grown children of the originals, but that's never asserted in the movie. All the movie tells us is that these 20-something people were stranded 15 years earlier, which doesn't add up.

Herbert(s) you are stiff!

I wish more people would remember that TMP and TWOK were retconning the appearance of Starfleet tech and costumes four decades before Discovery did it.

Because that's what Herbert wants. For everyone to be stiff like he is.

Oh, it was a dumb decision. I'm just trying to make the best of it from a fan standpoint and conjecturing.

The less we try to pick it apart the better off we'll all probably be.

That's the way Herbert works, he gets in your mind.

Just like Saavik is or isn't Half Romulan or a whole bunch of other things, the character https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Joachim was supposed to be Khan's son at one point, even if it was cut.
I'm not here to bandy about what's "official" for a 35+ year old movie. It makes more sense than no explanation but then, no one ever said that all of Khan's frozen 72 followers were the same age as he. It could have been 25 adults and their kids. Maybe the Ericksons had a lot of kids. Someone like Khan or some of those other supermen may certainly have had "harems" and many children is not that much of a reach, the children staying in with many of the adults falling prey to the "Ceti Eels"*.

KIRK: The others?
SCOTT: There's no change, and they're mixed types. Western, mid-European, Latin, Oriental.
KIRK: How many alive?
SCOTT: Twelve units have malfunctioned, leaving seventy two still operating. Thirty of those are women.

Those are the only descriptions in the episode


*The name "Ceti eel" is never referenced during the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Khan describes the animal without naming it, and McCoy doesn't recognize it when it exits Chekov's ear, though Chekov had told Kirk and McCoy of it when they were on Regula I.

And I'm joking, mostly, please don't be so stiff you're offended by being called Herbert, you bunch of humorless Vulcans!

 

[Christopher]

It could have been 25 adults and their kids.

If that had been the case, I'm sure it would've been mentioned. If Scotty thought it was worth specifying the women, he sure wouldn't have left out children.

Also, there's no way Kirk would've sentenced children to exile on a wilderness planet. That would be monstrous.

 

[Greg Cox]

^There have been stories about mad scientists altering human genetics since The Island of Dr. Moreau at the very least. Just because they didn't actually have recombinant DNA before the '70s doesn't mean they couldn't speculate about imaginary alternative methods.

As I recall, the H.G. Wells novel (and Charles Laughton movie) simply had Moreau using vivisection to evolve his manimals. I don't think there was any mention of genetics until the Burt Lancaster movie adaptation in the seventies.

 

[Christopher]

As I recall, the H.G. Wells novel (and Charles Laughton movie) simply had Moreau using vivisection to evolve his manimals. I don't think there was any mention of genetics until the Burt Lancaster movie adaptation in the seventies.

Okay, but I remember reading some story from the 1930s or '40s in which some sort of biological mutation was being performed. The basic principles of genetics and selective breeding were worked out by Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s, and as I mentioned, the first groups that advocated using eugenic principles to breed a "superior" form of humanity arose only a few decades later.

The term "genetic engineering" was first used in science fiction in Jack Williamson's 1951 novel Dragon's Island, about the creation of a race of genetic supermen not unlike those in "Space Seed," and he's often given credit for coining the term, but it was around in science a couple of years before that. From the Biology in Science Fiction blog:

https://blog.sciencefictionbiology.com/2009/04/did-science-fiction-invent-genetic.html

And the idea of manipulating genetic material weren't new to Williamson either. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature traced the the idea in pulp fiction to Clement Fézandie's first "Doctor Hackensaw" story (1921) and Norman L. Knight's "Crisis in Utopia" (1940), which used the term "tectogenesis."1

Genetics and eugenics were hot topics in th 1930s and 1940s. The Nobel Prize awarded Hermann J Muller in 1946 likely raised both awareness of genetics and that X-rays and radiation could introduce heritable mutations among the general public... By the time Williamson wrote Dragon's Island,... neither [the] idea of intentional genetic manipulation or the term "genetic engineering" were new.