Also, what the heck happened with no supervision of Khan in exile?

[Dale Sams]

There's only one fanwank theory that makes the vaguest of sense:

Starfleet lost Kirk's report.

If Starfleet quarantined the Ceti Alpha star system, then there's no way The Reliant could have just wandered along into the system. That's the exact reason for a quarantine is to prevent the things that happened in TWoK.

And even that theory requires Spock to have a brain fart. I would think Spock would be fascinated by what Khan could do with the resources he had. Spock's going to wonder what the hell is up when he can't find any probe reports.

The only thing I can think is that maybe Spock had scheduled a check-up after 15 years and only 14 had passed.

Edit: And I'm going to assume McGivers has no family.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: Also, what the hell happened with no supervision of Khan in exile?

There's only one fanwank theory that makes the vaguest of sense:

Starfleet lost Kirk's report.

If Starfleet quarantined the Ceti Alpha star system, then there's no way The Reliant could have just wandered along into the system. That's the exact reason for a quarantine is to prevent the things that happened in TWoK.

And even that theory requires Spock to have a brain fart. I would think Spock would be fascinated by what Khan could do with the resources he had. Spock's going to wonder what the hell is up when he can't find any probe reports.

The only thing I can think is that maybe Spock had scheduled a check-up after 15 years and only 14 had passed.

Edit: And I'm going to assume McGivers has no family.

Kirk might have left a few things out of his report.

Kirk probably thought being stranded on a planet without any technology was enough to keep them "under control".

 

[Dale Sams]

Re: Also, what the hell happened with no supervision of Khan in exile?

There's only one fanwank theory that makes the vaguest of sense:

Starfleet lost Kirk's report.

If Starfleet quarantined the Ceti Alpha star system, then there's no way The Reliant could have just wandered along into the system. That's the exact reason for a quarantine is to prevent the things that happened in TWoK.

And even that theory requires Spock to have a brain fart. I would think Spock would be fascinated by what Khan could do with the resources he had. Spock's going to wonder what the hell is up when he can't find any probe reports.

The only thing I can think is that maybe Spock had scheduled a check-up after 15 years and only 14 had passed.

Edit: And I'm going to assume McGivers has no family.

Kirk might have left a few things out of his report.

Kirk probably thought being stranded on a planet without any technology was enough to keep them "under control".

I know NuKirk has been shown to do that, but I have a hard time seeing Kirk do that and Spock and anyone interested in the matter going along with it. Even a junior officer like Chekov seemed to know all the details.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: Also, what the hell happened with no supervision of Khan in exile?

I know NuKirk has been shown to do that, but I have a hard time seeing Kirk do that and Spock and anyone interested in the matter going along with it. Even a junior officer like Chekov seemed to know all the details.

He's done it before:

KIRK: Captain's log, Star date 1313.8. Add to official losses, Doctor Elizabeth Dehner. Be it noted she gave her life in performance of her duty. Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, same notation. I want his service record to end that way. He didn't ask for what happened to him.

COCHRANE: Captain, don't tell them about me.
KIRK: Not a word, Mister Cochrane.

The crew apparently went along with it.

 

[Maurice]

I'm still of the opinion that most such questions about Khan are based on hindsight after TWOK. Kirk and crew had lots of adventures and lots of missions they in theory could have revisited. TWOK aside, Khan and Co.were of no bigger importance than Miri's planet or Vaal's planet or a dozen other places/situations they visited. I mean, really, except for Starfleet being brain dead re the Reliant, a few dozen people, supermen or not, marooned on a backwater planet, aren't all that interesting and won't be able to do a whole lot in the span on one generation. Basically, it's Gilligan's Island... and smart as Khan is, his people aren't going to build a nuclear reactor out of coconuts.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I'm still of the opinion that most such questions about Khan are based on hindsight after TWOK. Kirk and crew had lots of adventures and lots of missions they in theory could have revisited. TWOK aside, Khan and Co.were of no bigger importance than Miri's planet or Vaal's planet or a dozen other places/situations they visited. I mean, really, except for Starfleet being brain dead re the Reliant, a few dozen people, supermen or not, marooned on a backwater planet, aren't all that interesting and won't be able to do a whole lot in the span on one generation. Basically, it's Gilligan's Island... and smart as Khan is, his people aren't going to build a nuclear reactor out of coconuts.

He'd have to be a High School science teacher to do that.

 

[Lance]

I'm still of the opinion that most such questions about Khan are based on hindsight after TWOK. Kirk and crew had lots of adventures and lots of missions they in theory could have revisited. TWOK aside, Khan and Co.were of no bigger importance than Miri's planet or Vaal's planet or a dozen other places/situations they visited. I mean, really, except for Starfleet being brain dead re the Reliant, a few dozen people, supermen or not, marooned on a backwater planet, aren't all that interesting and won't be able to do a whole lot in the span on one generation. Basically, it's Gilligan's Island... and smart as Khan is, his people aren't going to build a nuclear reactor out of coconuts.

The obvious one that immediately sprang to mind for me is whether they went back to see the Yonada people reach their new home-world, which was explicitly promised at the end of "For The World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky". Maybe they did. But maybe they didn't, and McCoy went alone. Who knows.

What the heck happened with no supervision of Khan in exile?

There's only one fanwank theory that makes the vaguest of sense:

Starfleet lost Kirk's report.

If Starfleet quarantined the Ceti Alpha star system, then there's no way The Reliant could have just wandered along into the system. That's the exact reason for a quarantine is to prevent the things that happened in TWoK.

And even that theory requires Spock to have a brain fart. I would think Spock would be fascinated by what Khan could do with the resources he had. Spock's going to wonder what the hell is up when he can't find any probe reports.

The only thing I can think is that maybe Spock had scheduled a check-up after 15 years and only 14 had passed.

There's every possibility that somebody did check up on conditions in the Ceti Alpha system within the first year (before the explosion of its sixth planet) and found no anomalies. And it doesn't mean they went down and personally checked on Khan and his survivors, maybe it was just a long range scan of the system, and after that it was just done and dusted: "No problems, they're doing fine, rubber stamp it and move on".

Also Kirk theorizes at the end of 'Space Seed' about going back in decades to come and seeing what happened there, but there's nothing to say it was something he was actually under orders to do.

Even a junior officer like Chekov seemed to know all the details.

When the Reliant first heads to the Ceti Alpha system in TWOK, Chekov raises no concerns. The name of the system alone means nothing to him, he never raises Khan with Captain Terrell. It isn't until he actually sees the Botany Bay pods on the surface that he's reminded of Khan and the whole business.

 

[HIjol]

I lean towards the idea Maurice proposes above, that TPTB had many other things going on, and figured Khan and Company would be reasonably safe and secure on Ceti Alpha 5. The thing I cannot get straight, and remember thinking as Chekov realized who he was facing is, how could Chekov have forgotten the star and the planet as soon as they realized it was Ceti Alpha, as Lance alludes to?

 

[Captain Rob]

So have we established that all of the events of TWoK are Chekov's fault?

 

[Ithekro]

Well maybe they did assume Ceti Alpha V was destroyed, and they were scanning Ceti Alpha VI.

Unless somehow the altered system following the "explosion" of Ceti Alpha VI adjusted the system in such a way that V and VI switched places rather than destroying Ceti Alpha VI.

Or they had known about the destruction of a planet in the system (someone went to investigate maybe five years later) and assumed it was Ceti Alpha V that blew up, meaning there would be no supermen problem anymore. There was no real need to explore the system more, and even when Reliant arrived it didn't correctly scan that there were humanoid lifeforms on the planet.

 

[Timo]

If TOS is any indication of the pace at which our heroes go through planets and adventures, it's not plausible for them to even remember that Khan existed in the first place! Kirk puts out Federation's bush fires and has his hands full with that: his missions are decidedly of the fire-and-forget type. It would be somebody else's mission to keep track on whether Kirk's successes took root or whether his few failures spawned something evil.

That said, I'm positive Kirk chose not to file a report on the Khan affair at all. He liked the guy and wished all the best for him, but filing a report would just reveal Kirk's own failures, the fact that one of his officers chose to betray and defect, and the needlessly panic-inducing fact that a shipful of Napoleons did survive the 1990s purges. Lying to his superiors would keep them, the McGivers family and the general population happier.

As for noticing something amiss at the Ceti Alpha system, this would require the sidekick crew to actually scan the system. We never see Kirk practice such idle curiosity: if there's a planet of interest, no mention is made of the other planets in the system, and if the entire system is of interest (say, a space monster ate it all), then unless a specific distress signal was sent out, our heroes only notice the interesting issue at point blank range. Idle "star charting" is a specific mission that the crew only practices when told or when not busy (we don't know which was the case in "Corbomite Maneuver").

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Melakon]

If Ceti Alpha VI exploded though, wouldn't the loss of a planetary body cause CA-V to drift further from the star, creating a colder climate instead of a desert? Though I think it had only been six months since the event. Seems like there should have been an asteroid field that wasn't on the charts.

 

[Timo]

wouldn't the loss of a planetary body cause CA-V to drift further from the star

There's no particular reason why it would have any effect at all. The perturbations created by rocky planets on other rocky planets here at Sol are negligible, and Mars or Venus suddenly disappearing would probably not be felt in any way at Earth.

What this explosion caused, exactly, we don't know. And it might rather be that whatever caused the explosion was also directly responsible for the climate change at CA V - possibly the explosion itself played no role in the change.

Though I think it had only been six months since the event. Seems like there should have been an asteroid field that wasn't on the charts.

Would there even be charts on the system? Kirk was in the middle of a wasteland when finding Khan (this was rather the point - nobody ever went there, which is why it took Kirk to find Khan). He then spent a short time towing Khan's ship towards a nearby base, but then Khan took over the ship and cut loose the derelict. Kirk then took back his ship; odds are that he was still in the wasteland, far away from civilized space. He'd look for the nearest decent planet to maroon Khan on, and might well be the first in UFP history to visit Ceti Alpha. And if he failed to file a report, he would also fail to provide Starfleet with close-up maps of the system.

The Reliant folks were looking for a specific and evidently very rare type of desert world. Perhaps their records told them that CA system might hold one, but they clearly weren't detailed enough to let them determine whether CA VI would be suitable for Genesis, or merely a possible candidate.

The other possibility is that they had no records on the system at all, and had merely been wandering in search of a suitable world - spotting CA V from a distance, considering it worth checking out, and proceeding with that. (They do call the place "CA VI" in the introductory log already, though, suggesting they did have records and were fooled by those into thinking that the local desert world must be CA VI. Otherwise, the log would have referred to CA V or not given the planet an ordinal at all.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dale Sams]

I lean towards the idea Maurice proposes above, that TPTB had many other things going on, and figured Khan and Company would be reasonably safe and secure on Ceti Alpha 5. The thing I cannot get straight, and remember thinking as Chekov realized who he was facing is, how could Chekov have forgotten the star and the planet as soon as they realized it was Ceti Alpha, as Lance alludes to?

Yeah, I thought of something like that his morning. The Federation is expanding and exploring at an incredible speed. The report, and promise to reconvene on the matter are forwarded to Memory Alpha and two years later...ooops!

 

[Marsden]

I think another point is there probably is no statue of limitation on genocide or war crimes which Khan is probably wanted for, so if Kirk did mention him there would be a law enforcement party to arrest him. Kirk did say

Captain's Log. Stardate 3143.3. Control of the Enterprise has been regained. I wish my next decisions were no more difficult. Khan and his people. What a waste to put them in a reorientation centre.

I think reorientation center is a place like Dr. Adams ran, or in quaint terms, jail. Kirk didn't want Khan in the klink, so he left him there unmentioned. I guess Marla was just MIA, that happens to historians sometimes.

 

[Dale Sams]

I think another point is there probably is no statue of limitation on genocide or war crimes which Khan is probably wanted for, so if Kirk did mention him there would be a law enforcement party to arrest him. Kirk did say

Captain's Log. Stardate 3143.3. Control of the Enterprise has been regained. I wish my next decisions were no more difficult. Khan and his people. What a waste to put them in a reorientation centre.

I think reorientation center is a place like Dr. Adams ran, or in quaint terms, jail. Kirk didn't want Khan in the klink, so he left him there unmentioned. I guess Marla was just MIA, that happens to historians sometimes.

My only problem with 'Kirk fudged the details' is it requires 430 people to never mention "That time we unfroze 'Hitler', and he and his High Command took over the ship. Then we stranded him on a planet."

Though the image of Kirk pondering that very problem in his quarters is hilarious: "Hmmm...I can count on my officers to keep it on the hush, as for..'Crewman Joe the Janitor'. Who's going to believe him?? Bahahaha."

 

[Silvercrest]

Even if Kirk kept quiet about Khan the first time, I'm curious how he reported the events of TWOK to Starfleet. "Some maniac with a 'superior intellect' who claims he knows me ... I have no idea who he was." But if Khan revealed his identity to the Genesis people or the crew of Reliant, Kirk would have to hush them up too.

 

[Gassy Man]

I never understood why people were troubled by this. Do we realize how big a planet is? If we marooned someone on an island on earth, even with the technology to build a boat, they might end up there for the rest of their lives anyway. Putting Khan and his people on Ceti Alpha Five without the technology to get off the planet was as much as sentencing him to life sentence there.

The script suggests that the Reliant mistook one planet for the other because of the shifting orbit. It may strain credulity, but it is plausible.

 

[drt]

The script suggests that the Reliant mistook one planet for the other because of the shifting orbit. It may strain credulity, but it is plausible.

I think Khan stating that VI "exploded" was just hyperbole.

What probably makes more sense is a rogue planetoid hit VI, and that in the ensuing cosmic billards, a large body of debris established a stable orbit inside the orbit of V, so that V now appeared to be the sixth planet out. This is the only way that the crew of Reliant aren't complete morons that can't count. I'd guess that 15 years or so should be enough time for gravity to pull the remains of VI and the rouge back into circular bodies. (There were probably a lot more asteroids in the system than there used to be, but that may have been overlooked - or attributed to incomplete records from Enterprise's visit.)

We can then assume that an enormous amount of smaller debris from the collision rained down on V during all of that, which was responsible for all of the dust and sand flying around - so the desertification is really more of a nuclear winter.

 

[Timo]

This is the only way that the crew of Reliant aren't complete morons that can't count.

The other way is that they looked up "desert worlds" in their catalog and saw "Ceti Alpha VI" listed, went to Ceti Alpha and homed in on the local desert world, totally ignoring all the others.

It takes special effort to spot planets, let alone determine their orbits. A starship's navigational sensors might do that as a matter of routine at system entry - but they also might not, as the odds of a distant planet being relevant to insystem navigation are pretty much zero. The Reliant would not make a careful count of planets in order to determine which one was VI; rather, her sensors would point to the world with the (roughly) correct physical characteristics, and orbital parameters be damned (because the previous guy probably got those wrong anyway).

I think Khan stating that VI "exploded" was just hyperbole.

Well, what would Khan know? He probably didn't even have a telescope - and that would have become useless anyway once the skies over V changed. He might have seen a kaboom, he might not; it might have been the planet going, it might have been a space battle, it might have been a weird spatiotemporal anomaly that teleports, miniaturizes or phases planets. Khan couldn't have checked; Terrell had at first no motivation and then no opportunity to check; and Kirk had at first no opportunity and then no motivation to check.

Timo Saloniemi