If he took up Marla's favorite hobby.
Yes. The dates on the script are when they are turned in. Roddenberry likely hammered out his draft on the 12th and into the wee hours of the 13th and turned his work in on that day. Justman may have grabbed it before it went to mimeo, or read it as a secretary was typing it up.
I had AI go through my documents to see if there was an answer to the question; here is what it said:
Who came up with it?
I cannot prove from the uploaded documents that a specific person personally coined the name Khan. The evidence supports this narrower conclusion:
The name was introduced during the Gene Coon / Gene Roddenberry rewrite phase, after the December 7 first draft that still used Harald Ericsson, and before or during the December 12 rewrite revisions. The December 12 rewrite pages show the transition in progress, and the December 13 revised final formalizes the change throughout.
The de Forest Research memo dated December 13, 1966 does not appear to create the name; it reacts to it. It lists Khan in the cast/name check and specifically comments that “Sibahl Khan Noonien” is “not Sikh or Indian in form,” explaining that Khan is a Mongol title that entered some Muslim names in India and Pakistan, and suggesting Govind Bahadur Singh as a more proper Sikh name.
Bottom line
The document trail is:
The name “Khan” first appears in the uploaded production record in the December 12, 1966 rewrite revisions, and it was formally locked in by the December 13, 1966 revised final instruction to change Ericssen to Khan throughout. The documents do not conclusively identify a single person as the originator, but the change belongs to the Coon/Roddenberry rewrite stage, not Wilber’s original outline.
Who came up with it?
I cannot prove from the uploaded documents that a specific person personally coined the name Khan. The evidence supports this narrower conclusion:
The name was introduced during the Gene Coon / Gene Roddenberry rewrite phase, after the December 7 first draft that still used Harald Ericsson, and before or during the December 12 rewrite revisions. The December 12 rewrite pages show the transition in progress, and the December 13 revised final formalizes the change throughout.
The de Forest Research memo dated December 13, 1966 does not appear to create the name; it reacts to it. It lists Khan in the cast/name check and specifically comments that “Sibahl Khan Noonien” is “not Sikh or Indian in form,” explaining that Khan is a Mongol title that entered some Muslim names in India and Pakistan, and suggesting Govind Bahadur Singh as a more proper Sikh name.
Bottom line
The document trail is:
- August 29, 1966 outline: character is Harald Ericsson, not Khan.
- December 7, 1966 first draft: still Harald Ericsson / Ericsson.
- December 12, 1966 rewrite revisions: first clear uploaded appearance of Khan and Sibahl Khan Noonien.
- December 13, 1966 revised final: explicit instruction that Ericssen should be changed to Khan throughout.
- December 13, 1966 de Forest Research: confirms the name was already in use and critiques its linguistic/cultural accuracy.
The name “Khan” first appears in the uploaded production record in the December 12, 1966 rewrite revisions, and it was formally locked in by the December 13, 1966 revised final instruction to change Ericssen to Khan throughout. The documents do not conclusively identify a single person as the originator, but the change belongs to the Coon/Roddenberry rewrite stage, not Wilber’s original outline.
In short, nothing we didn't already know. Naturally it wasn't going to generate anything that wasn't already in the documents, except by hallucinating nonsense.
So you think it's probable that both 12 and 13 are from Roddenberry based on Coon's 12/7 script, and the credit only got updated for the final script? Could very well be. The both scripts seem to be very similar from the little i've seen, and the praise is based on what happened between Coon's script and Roddenberry's rewrites which probably invented Khan.
I think I haven't researched this enough to know. All I can comment on is what Justman said.
I don't think it's valid to characterize changing the existing character's name as "inventing" the character. He was still essentially the same character that Wilber created regardless of what he was called. And characters get their names changed all the time, like how Robert April in the "Cage" outline became Christopher Pike in the final script, or how the second pilot's captain went through multiple names like North and Winter before becoming Kirk just days before filming. I mean, you can see that from the note in the draft script saying "Ericssen should be changed to Khan throughout" -- meaning he's still the same character with the same dialogue and actions, just with a superficial name change. That's not invention, just refinement.
Yes that was kind of crude of me. Wilber invented the character and Coon & Roddenberry refined him. It was a clickbait title, I was just wondering who first mentioned Khan, Sibahl or Noonien. These scripts seem to go through a lot of refinements. No one can top Montalban, but as a nordic person, I would have loved to seen some nordics represented in Star Trek.
Space Seed
This article describes the 12/13 ending. The cut content is in the 12/12 script, but the exchange before Khan and Marla are brought in is not in the 12/12 script. Kirk's speech to Khan is much longer, and he gives him the choice of being rehabilitated or going to Ceti II, as their ship was originally heading. Marla hits Joaquin with a space wrench. Now that I think of it, Roddenberry wouldn't be asking what do we use for wrenches in space. He'd know.
Last edited:
This was from me
A superficial detail. If he was meant to be a eugenic superhuman from the 20th century whom the Enterprise discovered frozen in a sleeper ship, then he was fundamentally the same character. As I already said, it's commonplace to rework the details of a character or idea in the course of the creative process, including things like their name and nationality, so it makes no sense to treat those variations of the same original idea as separate entities. They're just stages in the gestation of a single character.
Maybe I missed it if it was mentioned, but was the name change to Khan and the character's background made after Joseph D'Agosta informed the Genes that he might be able to get Ricardo Montalban for the role? I was wondering if Montalban's ethnicity swayed them away from a Viking to a Sikh...
Sir Rhosis
Sir Rhosis
I'm not sure why casting a Mexican actor would have motivated them to make the character a Sikh, given that they had to put him in brownface anyway.
Anyway, I'm glad they changed it from Ericssen. Wilber's intent was presumably that the character was a product of the kind of eugenics programs that were popular with the Nazis and other white supremacists in the 19th-20th centuries, just lasting longer and producing more successful results. Changing it so that the genetically superior humans were (as scripted if not actually cast) a multiethnic group with a nonwhite leader was a nice subtle repudiation of the cultural presumption that superior humans would be white. After all, genetic vigor and adaptability comes from diversity, not uniformity, so it makes more sense that way anyway. (Which is one of the reasons I'm annoyed at The Wrath of Khan for ignoring that and casting a bunch of pale blond models, who for some reason were in their twenties despite having been stranded as adults 15 years earlier).
Khan's Sikh background doesn't figure much in either appearance. Marla goes "He's a Sikh" and thats the end of it.
Also, Nehru was Hindu (well, a "Hindu agnostic" and scientific humanist) and Jinnah was Muslim, so not a lot of connection to Sikhs -- though TOS's writers probably didn't know or care much about the distinction.
Plus Khan was a bad guy, a tyrant. It was pretty common in '60s TV to depict Asian characters as villains, often played by white actors in brownface. The choice of the name "Khan" may well have been influenced by Genghis Khan (since 1960s American TV writers tended to treat all Asian cultures as interchangeable).
Incidentally, it occurred to me to wonder where the name "Sibahl" came from, as in "Sibahl Khan Noonien." I find no hits for that spelling outside of that character name, but I do find a few references to "Sibhal" as an Indian given name, so Roddenberry must have misspelled it (the same way that Lt. Rahda's name in "That Which Survives" is an evident misspelling of Rhada).
Plus Khan was a bad guy, a tyrant. It was pretty common in '60s TV to depict Asian characters as villains, often played by white actors in brownface. The choice of the name "Khan" may well have been influenced by Genghis Khan (since 1960s American TV writers tended to treat all Asian cultures as interchangeable).
Incidentally, it occurred to me to wonder where the name "Sibahl" came from, as in "Sibahl Khan Noonien." I find no hits for that spelling outside of that character name, but I do find a few references to "Sibhal" as an Indian given name, so Roddenberry must have misspelled it (the same way that Lt. Rahda's name in "That Which Survives" is an evident misspelling of Rhada).
Also, Marla says that he is "probably a Sikh." I don't think it's ever mentioned again, let alone confirmed. So she could just have been mistaken.
Yes, but there's absolutely nothing about Khan's clean-shaven, relatively short-haired, turban-less appearance that would give her any reason to suspect he was a Sikh, so the scene makes no sense.
Unless we assume that she recognized him as Khan Noonien Singh on sight but chose to keep the knowledge to herself, because she wanted to hoard the historic discovery to herself or something.
Similar threads
