"Space Seed" - two-parter?

[Unicron]

I was watching this ep the other day, and thinking that perhaps it might have worked a little better as a two-part episode. It's a good origin for Khan, but there are some things that seem a little rushed- Marla's fascination with him for example. There are some interesting concepts in the story that I think could have been expanded on.

 

[Myasishchev]

Yeah. Khan's motivation and goals are really poorly fleshed-out, too. (Plan 1: Leave on sublight sleeper ship without an apparent destination. Plan 2: Risk everything to take over the Enterprise for some reason, then get hunted like a dog and murdered by the other dozens of ships in Starfleet. Great strategy, Captain Langsdorff.)

 

[ToddPence]

Technically, it WAS a two-parter. It just took fifteen years for part two to come out.

 

[Timo]

I don't see why Khan would have to stoop to having a "plan". With his superior intellect and ambition, he could and would gain control of any situation or realm he ended up in...

However, the episode does nicely leave room for speculating on the details of Khan's original escape from Earth. Did he intend to find a distant world to settle on? Did he intend to loop back and reconquer Earth when the time was ripe? Or did he count on the inevitability of mankind expanding further, sailing out to the stars after him in superior ships, and recovering him, at which point he could do exactly what he did?

It's even possible that he was a prisoner aboard a ship named after a prison colony. Inflicting that sort of excessively expensive and complex punishment would be just up the alley of his superbrothers competing for supremacy...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

The Augments should still have a pretty keen instinct for self-preservation, and engendering the wrath of a hundred billion people* and all their starships sounds like a bad idea.

*Give or take. And at least the six billion of whom living on Vulcan are even better superhumans than yourself. Then there are the Medusans, who can kill you by being naked... and the Deltans, who can fuck you to death...

Wait, why did they outlaw human genetic engineering again?

 

[A beaker full of death]

there are some things that seem a little rushed- Marla's fascination with him for example.

I disagree. TOS didn't spoon-feed us, yet it was easy to see Marla's lust-at-first-sight for the extremely magnetic Khan, as played by the extremely magnetic Montalban.

 

[Red Ranger]

there are some things that seem a little rushed- Marla's fascination with him for example.

I disagree. TOS didn't spoon-feed us, yet it was easy to see Marla's lust-at-first-sight for the extremely magnetic Khan, as played by the extremely magnetic Montalban.

I have to agree with beaker here, but not with his implied, usual criticism of later Trek and modern storytelling. They amply establish, through her paintings alone, that, as Khan noted, she had a fascination with "bold men from the past," her "hobby."

Having said that, I've had some conversations with female Trek fans who hate the character of McGivers. They find her weak and simpering, and rightly so, an embarassment to women.

 

[ToddPence]

Kirk told McGivers "If I had to rate your performance as a member of the landing party, I wouldn't rate it very highly." Too bad McGivers wasn't around for "Requiem For Methuselah." I'd love to see how McGivers would have rated Kirk's performance as a member of the landing party in that one.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Having said that, I've had some conversations with female Trek fans who hate the character of McGivers. They find her weak and simpering, and rightly so, an embarassment to women.

In my younger days, I modeled my treatment of women on Khan's behavior in this episode (after I saw that being a nice guy didn't work). The Khan approach worked remarkably well. Nice topic for a psychology paper sometime. I'm quite sure one could work in the old Grouchoism of not belonging to any club that would have one as a member.

 

[Red Ranger]

Having said that, I've had some conversations with female Trek fans who hate the character of McGivers. They find her weak and simpering, and rightly so, an embarassment to women.

In my younger days, I modeled my treatment of women on Khan's behavior in this episode (after I saw that being a nice guy didn't work). The Khan approach worked remarkably well. Nice topic for a psychology paper sometime. I'm quite sure one could work in the old Grouchoism of not belonging to any club that would have one as a member.

Ah, you're proud of being a misogynist. No surprise there!

 

[A beaker full of death]

Perhaps you missed the "in my younger days" part. I understand; that paragraph did contain an awful lot of words.

 

[Timo]

...It's a bit odd that anybody would find such fault in a character that in fact triumphs in the end. Or, to be sure, at every step of the fun little path.

McGivers wants strong and arrogant men - and gets one of the best in the profession. She's bored with starship life - and very definitively gets out of it. McGivers wants to please Khan - and Khan is extremely pleased. Nevertheless, she doesn't want her colleagues to die - and her actions save them. Despite this re-reversal of allegiances, McGivers still wants Khan - and he takes her as settler wife for a happy-ever-after on an untamed planet. Why, McGivers is an almost unbelievable superhero(ine)!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

...It's a bit odd that anybody would find such fault in a character that in fact triumphs in the end. Or, to be sure, at every step of the fun little path.

"In the end" may be a little much, since her ass got eaten by a sandworm.

 

[Timo]

Most fairy tales agree that "happily ever after" does not need to extend to the last demented ramblings of the 66-year-old Princess on her soiled-through-all-nine-mattresses deathbed in the throes of dysentery... Within the confines of the episode, McGivers certainly triumphed.

As did Khan, to be sure. Funny how this monster and tyrant never quite managed to kill anybody between the opening and ending credits... In the end, it's not all that difficult to swallow that Kirk would have been a fan of Khan Singh as history knew him, and would have continued to be a fan after meeting him face to face.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captrek]

Risk everything to take over the Enterprise for some reason, then get hunted like a dog and murdered by the other dozens of ships in Starfleet.

That’s assuming he stays in Federation space long enough to be caught.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

...It's a bit odd that anybody would find such fault in a character that in fact triumphs in the end. Or, to be sure, at every step of the fun little path.

"In the end" may be a little much, since her ass got eaten by a sandworm.

And of course, no one else ever dies - certainly not in pain, much less by accident or violence. So length of life is a piss poor measuring stick for how one evaluates a person's success in the end.

People like Khan who treat women abusively in an attempt to be attractive are losers - I mean, do you have to try that hard to attract mates?

 

[Myasishchev]

Sure, but a "happy ending" usually consists of more than a couple of years before the neighboring planet blows up, turns yours into Arrakis, and you get digested into spice.

 

[Timo]

Let's remember, though, that in terms of their backstories, both Khan and McGivers might have been quite fond of this sort of "frontier happiness", at least on the level of theory. Probably neither would have had realistic firsthand experience with it - but when it did hit them, they'd be damned if they admitted to not liking it!

(We may also choose to add the morbid detail that McGivers' death could have been as pleasant and welcome and wrapped in glory as Khan wanted it to be, on the mental level at least. As we remember, she'd be "extremely susceptible to suggestion" on her deathbed...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captrek]

People like Khan who treat women abusively in an attempt to be attractive are losers - I mean, do you have to try that hard to attract mates?

We don’t know that Khan treated all women that way. We saw him use that approach with one woman, and it worked immediately. It may be that this is how he always went about seducing women, or it may simply be that he sized up McGivers, knew which approach would work best with her, and did that.

Also, he wasn’t looking for a mate to relieve his loneliness. He was looking for a coconspirator to help him take the ship. He ultimately married her, but that’s not what was foremost on his mind when he was “seductively” abusing her.

 

[T'Bonz]

He was a creep, and she was stupid. Anyone who would let a man treat her like that needs her head to be examined.