in that universe things moved a bit quickerExcept that the Botany Bay launched in the 1990's
Who invented Khan?
- Thread starter Tootai
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The attempt to use "people of color" as a counterargument doesn't work because it was created by Europeans in the 18th-19th century to refer to mixed-race people darker-skinned than the culturally presumed default of whiteness. So it's always been defined in contrast to the white default and thus is simply the other side of the same coin. So yes, naturally it would make more sense if we eradicated the concept of "white" and recognized that pink skin (or beige, as Andy Travis called it in a WKRP episode) is a color too, no more exceptional than any other.
Again, though, this is a case where the definition of what constitutes "white" or "not white" has always been arbitrary and culturally defined. Some have tried to interpret the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets as nonwhite, but in Elizabethan England, a term like "swart" or "black" was used to refer to anyone who wasn't an alabaster-skinned blonde. I probably would've been considered "black" for my dark hair, even though my skin is fairly pale.
Again, though, this is a case where the definition of what constitutes "white" or "not white" has always been arbitrary and culturally defined. Some have tried to interpret the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets as nonwhite, but in Elizabethan England, a term like "swart" or "black" was used to refer to anyone who wasn't an alabaster-skinned blonde. I probably would've been considered "black" for my dark hair, even though my skin is fairly pale.
Thanks for posting that image. Excellent, Khan would say.
Khan Noonien Singh headdress by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Fashion is cyclic...
Restoration by Tom Spina Designs: Khan from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". Original Khan headdress, as worn by the legendary Ricardo Montalban.
It's interesting that Khan returned to his roots. He was a turban wearer while on Earth. And being marooned on Ceti Alpha 5 got Khan to, once again, don a turban, of sorts. Khan's headwear fashion had indeed come full circle.
I still wonder whatever happened to McGivers' painting of Khan. I can't find any information about the whereabouts of that prop, or if it's still in existence.
Looks more like something desert dwellers like the Tuareg would wear.
I think maybe that's closer to a keffiyeh than a turban. And it's a practical garment rather than ceremonial wear, so I'd hardly call it "returning to his roots." We don't even know if he wore a dastar on Earth; as I said, Marla's painting may have been symbolic (especially since it looked more like an Ottoman turban than a dastar), and we don't know if Khan was a member of the Khalsa anyway.
There was also painting, made as set dressing for ST II, but unused. No pics have shown up for this, sadly.
It was a portrait of Khan, Marla and their child (whose face had popped up through a porthole at Chekov and Terrell, causing Terrell to tumble down a sand dune.) The impromptu stunt scene went unused because someone leaked to a trade paper that the only available (white) stuntman had been put into blackface, thus breaching Union rules. This was confirmed to me by Paul Winfield himself, who was astounded that Trek fans had heard this rumour long before the movie came out.
Khan's child in the porthole by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Cut scene from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". (Page 31, "RetroVision" Issue #2.)
Khan's child in the transporter by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Cut scene from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". (Page 32, "RetroVision" Issue #2.)
The child can't be Marla's, though. She died decades prior to the movie.
Did she? I think this is the only mention of his wife
No mention of when the eels killed her, just that they did.
How could she have died decades prior to the movie if Khan and his followers were only exiled for ~20 years?
Also, as Nerys mentioned, for all we know Marla only died three months before the film, or even less. Indeed, in some ways, the more recently Marla died, the more infuriating it would be for Khan to have a potential end to his exile suddenly appear ("If you'd shown up a week ago you could have saved Marla!").
Fifteen years according to film dialogue, though the ST Chronology inexplicably made it 18 years (even Mike Okuda couldn't remember why when I asked him). Either way, I think that photo caption is getting it backward -- the real question is "why there were so many young, hardy followers" when they were stranded as adults at least 15 years earlier. The recent Khan audio drama had to retcon in an unseen group of teenagers aboard the Botany Bay (I guess maybe Khan didn't revive them for his attempt to take over the Enterprise, so we didn't see them in the episode).
Decades?
Bingo. The movie never actually says that Marla died shortly after the cataclysm, when the planet shifted orbit, only that she was killed by an eel at some unspecified point in the past.
I remember rewatching the movie to double-check this when I wrote the novel about their exile -- and deciding that it would be more dramatic if Marla survived well into their years on the planet, allowing time for their love to deepen. So I saved Marla's tragic death until nearly the very end of the story, to give it more weight.
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The casting of Khan's followers in TWOK has always bothered me. In "Space Seed," Khan and his people were all roughly the same age. Now in TWOK, he is significantly older than everyone else? Even saying that perhaps those are children born on Ceti Alpha V and that most of his followers were killed at some point, children wouldn't have had time to age beyond teenagers in the time they were stranded there. And surely *someone* other than Khan from the original group would have survived.
From a real-world perspective, I'm not sure why they chose to do that casting either. I mean, we're seeing Khan having aged and still accepting him as a superman able to challenge Kirk. Why did all of his followers need to be cast as much younger people?
At the time I first read To Reign in Hell I didn't really feel that the character of Marla was in need of any redemption (though reading the commentary about her on this board has weakened my opinion of her as presented in "Space Seed"), but I do think your handling of her went a long way towards making her a character rather than arguably a caricature. It's a shame Madlyn Rhue never had the opportunity to read the book...not that she necessarily would have cared anyway, but it's nice to think that she might have appreciated what you did for Marla.
We've seen no evidence any such painting existed, and the fact that Rhue didn't appear in the film means there would have been likeness issues. They'd have to have paid her, or painted a different face for Marla.
As to the Rugrat of Khan, nothing in any of the production documents suggests it was Khan and Marla's child. Only that Retrovision magazine photo caption hints at that, many years after the fact.
We also don't know that the stunt was cut because of "browning down" a stunt performer, since that happened all the time in movies and throughout the era. That interpretation sounds like an inference on the part of Winfield. We've never been able to find any reporting on this in the trades, and, trust me, we've looked.
Khan's child in the porthole by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Cut scene from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". (Page 31, "RetroVision" Issue #2.)
Khan's child in the transporter by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Cut scene from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". (Page 32, "RetroVision" Issue #2.)
Unit publicist Eddie Egan told us they could not get the shots in the transporter because the Genesis torpedo prop's flashing lights scared the toddler. The stuffed animal behind the prop may have been there to try to entice the tot to approach it. The fact they couldn't get that bookend to the kid is as likely a reason as any for dropping the scenes.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but years of researching this stuff have schooled me that anecdotes are not facts.
I'm honestly glad the kid doesn't appear in the final release. Besides making the film darker than I feel it would really need to be ("Our Heroes killed a kid???"), there would doubtless be people who watched the film and wondered whether the kid's proximity to the torpedo was intended to have any significance going forward...and if not, then why show it at all?
Then you get people clamoring for the Wrath of Khan Jr. assuming he didn't die because of *science*.
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Yeah, and it's not only darker with the kid, it also risks taking the emotional focus off Kirk and Spock. Their big scene in Engineering is the heart of the movie, and you don't want the audience thinking about something else.
Worst case, the audience is thinking "Spock had a life, he had his chances, I care about that child!" This would just destroy the film's strongest scene.
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The obvious title would be Son of Khan.
