"Now Norman if you'd be a cool cat and... coordinate!"
Khan the most dangerous enemy of the original crew?
- Thread starter Noddy
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"Now Norman if you'd be a cool cat and... coordinate!"
The Enterprise has also been successfully hijacked by an android and a bunch of hippies.
More embarressing than dangerous
Yeah. Nero may not have been in the Romulan version of Mensa, but he set the bar damn high for future villains when he created a brand new timeline and then destroyed Vulcan in it, to boot.
The Enterprise has also been successfully hijacked by an android and a bunch of hippies.
More embarressing than dangerous
We reach.
Speaking of hijackings, Spock's hijacking the Enterprise was flawless. Other hijackers should learn from him. The only one to do it better was Data. Barely. Integrity and morality aside, I'd rather have my chances against Khan than against Spock.
The Enterprise has also been successfully hijacked by an android and a bunch of hippies.
More embarressing than dangerous
Had, in TWOK, Kirk ordered to raise the shields as Saavik/regulations suggested, the Reliant wouldn't have been a problem for the Enterprise. Because Kirk + Spock + fully functional ship >>>> Khan + fully functional ship. They would have come up with the prefix code idea as well, but with full power.
So Khan's surprise attack could also count as pretty embarrassing.
It's kind of a wasted opportunity that in The Search for Spock Kirk did not have to answer for that.
The Enterprise has also been successfully hijacked by an android and a bunch of hippies.
More embarressing than dangerous
Had, in TWOK, Kirk ordered to raise the shields as Saavik/regulations suggested, the Reliant wouldn't have been a problem for the Enterprise. Because Kirk + Spock + fully functional ship >>>> Khan + fully functional ship. They would have come up with the prefix code idea as well, but with full power.
So Khan's surprise attack could also count as pretty embarrassing.
It's kind of a wasted opportunity that in The Search for Spock Kirk did not have to answer for that.
With the exception of TMP and maybe TVH, the TOS movies seem predicated on the TOS crew and Starfleet being bumbling idiots. TWOK was the worse of the lot for this.
Fine Enterprise is the only ship in the sector--why the Enterprise is hanging around on a training cruise in a sector that has both a top secret research lab and Kirk's old girlfriend, who knows, but it is. Starfleet should have figured out something was up and sent out an extra ship or two to back up the Enterprise. "Could be nothing, garbled communications"...from your top secret research lab that's building a super torpedo that reformats planets. I think that's worth sending a cruiser or two to back up the outdated training ship full of cadets.
Kirk defies all common sense, even after a junior officer tells him they should raise shields; to top it off Spock calls her down on it. The Enterprise crippled, a lot of the TRAINEE crew wounded, power failing, Kirk decides to continue on to Regula instead--oh I don't know--hauling ass to a starbase or getting out of jamming range and getting a squadron chasing down Khan.
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As long as it's been brought up, if we were going to make a list of the worst blunders ever by a Trek captain, Kirk not raising the ship's shields in TWOK would be in my top three. Everything that happens in the story after that, including Spock's death, unfolds because of that moment of conceit or hubris. Even when I watch TWOK today, I still keep thinking maybe this time Kirk's better judgement will kick in an he'll raise shields. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Actually, Regula-1 was a civilian laboratory, and there was nothing "top secret" about it. The work they were doing there was a secret, but only because Carol Marcus didn't tell anyone but Starfleet what they were up to (in a request for funding) and Starfleet didn't go blabbing it to everyone willy-nilly.
It would be like getting an angry phone from call an antarctic research base about somebody messing around with their polywell experiment; the commander who gets the job of investigating it winds up using a google search to figure out what a "polywell" actually is.
That's his style, dude. He did the same thing against Nero. And it worked -- both times.
Regula - Again, makes no sense. Starfleet knows what they're building, know what it could do, send a trainee ship with no back up. It's more akin to the someone at the Manhattan Project calling Washington DC with a garbled call about someone demanding they hand over their research and Washington shrugging it off as a bad phone line.
Fine Enterprise is the only ship in the sector, but you send another cruiser or two to back up and make sure your plantary WMD is safe. (be fair, the only ship in the sector this is a running issue in Trek)
And we're still have no reason for Kirk to be cruising around Carol's neighborhood.
Kirk:
1) TWOK Kirk is supposedly an older, wiser, Admiral. Spock should have backed Saavik up, instead of calling her down for it. Hell, even McCoy didn't call Kirk out for being an idiot. Much less Scotty who had more of a right than anyone to rip Kirk a new one.
2) In Nu-Kirk's case, we actually have a reason:
(1) Nero is blowing the hell out of everything in his path and his hauling for Earth. He's already destroyed a fleet and one planet, and his packed to the teeth with weapons and is fucking nuts.
(2) We know the fleet is out of range cause they're on the other side of the Federation at the time this all goes down. They're kind of caught there by circumstances.
(3) Inexperience and ego..
Actually, it's more like the lead researcher at CERN leaving an angry/garbled message on his ex-wife's answering machine and the Navy deciding to send somebody to see if he's okay.
Remember, Genesis was INTENDED for peaceful purposes and technically it isn't even Starfleet property.
You're right, they should have contacted the next nearest ship in the sector and sent it over to help Enterprise in case the situation got out of hand.
What WAS the next nearest starship, by the way?
I thought they were cruising around the Sol system and Regula just happened to be relatively close to Earth.
So, his 'style' is to get lucky contrary to common sense, simply because the writers said do.
Talk about a badly written character.
So, Jim Kirk throughout the course of Trek lore in a nutshell?
The filmmakers treating Khan like he was some great Joker-tier antagonist really did feel out of place. The closest Trek ever had a recurring nemesis was with Gul Dukat, and that was for DS9. It sort of the same thing with Darth Vader starting off as a really cool henchman with only one movie where he was really in charge (Empire), but for after awhile the perception of him being the biggest baddest thing in the galaxy exploded, with the prequels going by that sentiment rather than having Anakin's story be something of a tragic subplot.
The public at large wouldn't know Gul Dukat from a seagull.
Unlike Vader, Khan was never a henchman. He was the bad guy in two previous Trek installments.
Harry Mudd appeared in three Treks. Q in several episodes over three different series.
You missed my point. I only brought up Dukat because he was the closest thing there was to a true recurring nemesis, which has nothing to do with how popular he is. My point about Vader is that he became over emphasized among fandom as the baddest villain, something that STID has done with Khan's importance.
It was done long before STID. The fandom amped up Khan's rep over the years purely based on TWOK.
I am with Kirk on this one, I am laughing at the superior intellect!
Someone will say: "But he - yada yada yada." No. Kirk simply "got caught with his britches down." Had Kirk been on his game from the start Khan would have been ashes far earlier than he did.[/nerd]
Someone will say: "But he - yada yada yada." No. Kirk simply "got caught with his britches down." Had Kirk been on his game from the start Khan would have been ashes far earlier than he did.[/nerd]
Dukat's only seems "truer" because of the serial nature of DS9. The ones I mentioned are true recurring nemesis as well. Species like the Klingon, Borg and Romulans count too, even though they aren't individual characters.
Boba Fett is a better candidate of a character taking off in popularity, who really does nothing. He's pretty much the poster child for that. Vader's popularity might be why he becomes Luke's father in Empire and tries to take over in Jedi. He's a cool visual, which is why he's bigger than the Death Star on the posters. He's also the guy who captures Leia and kills Ben. So I think he's a little bit more than a henchman. He's probably as important as Tarkin to the film's villainy.
STID calls Khan the "baddest villain" because he's the villain in STID. They aren't going to have Spock say, "Yeah, he's bad news. But there's this other guy who's worse. Lucky you're not facing him."
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