A post in another BBS got me thinking about Khan

Basically the Post was asking why Khan just didn't allow the Reliant to "rescue" him and his followers. I admit the thought had never occured to me and I've seen the film a million times.

So I wondered, what would have happened if Khan would have gone helpless refugee on Terrel and Chekov?

Chekov would have still said Khan was a criminal of course, and Khan could have said "Hey, you guys woke me up, I didn't have any idea who you were, for all I knew you guys were taking us to be sold as slaves or something. I was acting in the interest of preserving the lives of myself and my followers, I demand to have my voice heard in a court of law to explain my side." What would Terrel and Chekov have to do? Probably take them to a Starbase. Then what? Did the Federation Council or Starfleet even KNOW that Kirk had sentenced Khan to Ceti Alpha V? Like Khan said, NO ONE even bothered to check on them in 15ish years. Surely the public knowledge would spark outrage among the citizenry (like our treatment of prisoners and illegal immigrants does today) and if Starfleet or the Federation Council knew or didn't, heads would need to roll.

I'm willing to bet those heads would be Kirk and his senior staff. Kirk didn't have the political clout or the adoring public on his side to the extent that he did at the end of ST:IV, as he had directly saved the Earth twice by then. So he and his crew would have been the Ideal scapegoats even if the Admiralty knew about Khan. So Ironically Khan could have had his revenge and lived to see it in the courts by probably costing Kirk his career and Kirk being responsible for costing his friends theirs as well, and as an extra "F.U." ending their careers disgraced in the eyes of the public and possibly forever blackening the name "Enterprise". We know Kirks career was more important to him than his life. At the worst for Khan, his followers and he might have been relocated to a Federation penal colony, or possibly resettled on an even better planet. They might have even been offered some form of rehabilitation and been allowed to intigrate into 23rd century society (best case).

 

It's an extremely interesting question...but it precludes the very important facts that

1. Khan's ego would never have allowed him to seek such a solution
2. He had been driven insane by the events of Ceti Alpha V's deterioration, and was beyond reason when it came to his thirst for revenge.

 

Also, Kirk banished Khan, apparently because he bought Spock's argument that the world should never be told about seventy surviving Napoleons, but also thought Khan should live. Why would Terrell feel any differently?

Khan may demand all he wants. But Kirk turned down his demands. Why wouldn't Terrell?

At most, I could see Terrell feeling differently about the "Khan should live" bit, in which case he could either kill the man, or then just leave him be in the altered circumstances that ensure his timely death. Kirk killed plenty of his opponents, or left them to die; this was typically duly noted in his logs. (Although he could apparently edit those logs at will, too.)

If Terrell took the extra step of phoning the HQ first, then it would just become a question of "why would the Admirals feel any differently?". And their powers to adjust logs would probably be even greater than Kirk's or Terrell's.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Khan was too nuts at that point to do something devious.

 

Here is a link to some good info about the making of 'Space Seed' and TWOK:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/inside-secrets-of-the-making-of-star-trek-ii-wrath-of-457250013

In many ways, Trek seems to seldom if ever be one clear vision. No one can agree on what it should be. Stories suffer a lot, because so often they end up being a bunch of separate pieces stuck together in a hodge-podge that defies clarity and cohesiveness. Then you figure in budget, constraints of running time, and all the other factors. It's a wonder that the end product isn't a lot worse than what we get.

Quasi-Vikings in space. How 50s-ish cheesy sci-fi that is. Right at home in the Gold Key treks.

 

And here I thought this here TrekBBS was the last holdout of the "BBS" whatchamacallits.

Anyway, I agree with others above, that Khan just wasn't in the right frame of mind to pull off something subtly cunning and devious.

But if he and his followers had acted all chummy and nice and "poor us, our planet's been wrecked," I wonder if they could have convinced Terrell and Chekov that they at least needed to be relocated to a more hospitable planet. And from there, take over the Reliant.

Come to think of it, we never even saw exactly how Khan and co. took over the Reliant. We see him put the ceti eels in Terrell and Chekov's ears, then the next thing we know, he and his posse are in charge of Reliant with slug-doped Terrell and Chekov along for the ride, having marooned the rest of the Reliant's crew on Ceti Alpha V. In all the chaos that ensued, I hope somebody remembered to have the crew of the Reliant rescued from that dead planet.

Kor

 

Re-listen to Kirk's log at the end of TWOK. He states they're headed to Ceti Alpha V to pick up Reliant's crew.

 

Certain novels postulate all of the Reliant folks had died at that point already; accounts vary on whether Khan killed them and lied to Chekov, or whether Khan marooned them and Chekov did know but this was no consolation as less than a week on CA V is already fatal.

But nothing of the sort need be inferred from the movies themselves. Kirk could be reasonably informed of the status of the CA V folks, from Chekov's witness statement. And it's not as if the planet ought to be instantaneously lethal: just huddling up in Khan's shack, protected from the sandstorms, might suffice, assuming some source of water could be found; food and warmth would be optional extras while, say, oxygen supply apparently was no issue. Also, assuredly no hostile fauna apart from that single surviving species (which may only survive because Khan keeps a few specimen in his terrarium).

Timo Saloniemi

 

And according to the novelization, Khan took it with him when they left CA V.

 

Does that mean that Mr.Kyle is dead too?
JB

 

Think the novel also implies the Reliant's engineering crew were kept aboard, controlled in the same fashion as Chekov and Terrell.

And the crustacean species on CAV were probably still alive, unless they'd turned cannibalistic. They survived because the were desert creatures in what later became a desert wasteland. I wouldn't venture outside the cargo holds without protective gear if I were you (not that you'd want to anyway).

Just saw this movie for the ninth time in theaters (between Cinemark's showing of it in 2016, Fathom's screenings in 2017 and now this week's Flashback Cinemas screening -- I'll not count seeing it as an 8yo back when it was Star "Track" Eleven and no prior movie or TV show was known to have existed). And Khan really is a tragic villain. He has everything he could have wanted for his fellow survivors, and he even obtains ultimate victory -- at Kirk's expense and by his unwitting participation. And he just has to blow it. It even bothers me that he completely disregards the rest of his own crew (did anybody else besides Judson Scott even have speaking parts? I don't think they did).

There's also just something slightly odd about an early Reagan-era ST, with it's themes of patriotism, terrorism, martyr-ism and sacrifice. And of course The Search for Spock gets even weirder. It's almost too bad the Starship America vapor trails during warp will likely never be a thing again.

The collateral damage is insane (and that's about the only thing I remember as an 8yo besides the following scene of burnt patients in the infirmary). On two separate occasions the Reliant bridge should have been instantly depressurized and everybody sucked out into space, snapping necks and spinal cords in the process. There's also that one lady who just keeps blasting her fire extinguisher at the bulkhead. Who needs electrical insulation.

The film is also very stagy. In almost half the scenes in the movie it feels like characters are just facing one way. Now with ST that's sort of inherent (transporting up or down for example, not to mention circular command centers with a forward TV monitor). But in the cargo bay all of Khan's people are just standing behind Terrell and Chekov, doing... what? And later on Spacelab Kirk is debriefing Terrell/Chekov, and everyone's just in a single medium-wide shot talking about Reliant's crew and what-not. Kirk is also badly out-of-focus in most of the movie, apparently at Shatner's own insistence. It's most bothersome whenever he happens to be shot-reverse-shot with another actor such as Kelly or Nimoy. At one point his glasses are in focus but he is not.

Motivation also really falls apart towards the end of second act. Does Khan really think Kirk is stranded and helpless? Everyone loves Kirk screaming "Khaaaaaaan!", but does nobody think that is just really weird? What is THAT about? ("Oh well, you see, he had to trick Khan by appearing helpless because...")... No, I'm sorry. Really? Really? That doesn't follow. Meyer already had to stop Shatner from overplaying Kirk's deception in the earlier scene when he and Montalban are (supposedly) face to face. Made him do enough takes until Shatner got bored and gave a more natural performance.

I must be getting old, because Carol Marcus is absolutely gorgeous. Especially love her neck and collarbone. And her '70s hairstyle. And when she turns around and straightens her shirt.

Finally I've always loved all of Meyers little analog touches (including the fire extinguishers). But what's in real contrast to that are the awfully generic "sci-fi" props they borrowed from... I don't even know where. Namely all those flashing light monitors on Spacelab, which obviously don't do anything. You could argue that some of the TMP background monitor animation loops already looked dated by the time of TWOK (and indeed one of them clumsily resets behind Montalban in the scene where he realizes Kirk is not dead). But the Spacelab stuff just looked like 1978 TV movie of the week. Looked even more dated than most of TOS, in which everything at least appeared functional.

 

Forgot about Chekov and Terrell. They literally told Kirk that Khan had introduced parasites into them, specifically to control them, and nobody on the away team (including McCoy, who was squatting right there) gave it any thought.

 

Yep.
and as an augment built for specific purposes, Khan can't be seen entirely as human. He was designed to rule, and that doesn't involve being ferried around by Captain Terrell and forced to stand trial when he regards himself, with some legal backing, as a sovereign leader in his own right whose ship's mission was interrupted and violated by an invading crew from an alien power.
Of course he took the ship. He had to.

 

"Course plot to intercept Enterprise ready, sir." Bad line reading. Clumsy voice-over insertion in out-of-order scene sequence. And the lady has been doing stand-up ever since. That said, she had a line. Just not on camera.

The best one was the guy that put his hand on Khan to steady himself when Reliant entered the Mutara Nebula. They shook the set, and the actor put his hand on Montalban, who turned and glared at him. Meyer loved it, and used the take.

 

That did get a reaction in last night's screening, now that you mentioned it, and I wondered why. I guess I've never noticed his glare. And I've seen the movie too many times to look.

 

Fixed for you.

 

Nothing triggers my continuity tic like hearing "away team" in a TOS context.

 

He's really not dead. As long as we remember him.

 

Same here.

 

(And here I've been accused on previous forums of being a TNG hater.)