Another Pic Surfaces of Khan's Baby from TWOK

From the blog, "My Star Trek Scrapebook":

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_of7mShM5N1g/SpfniPl9F-I/AAAAAAAAAKg/hF-ZvMOg02Q/s1600-h/khans_son.jpg


And the article it's taken from:

http://mystartrekscrapbook.blogspot.com/2009/08/man-who-saved-star-trek.html

 

I had no clue. I thought all Trek had been mined.

My god, that's a horrible idea.

Joe, sonny

 

Cool. I know a lot of people are on the fence about this angle, but I think it could have added something more to the story of the supermen to have included the baby subplot--- so much as it was.

 

It's really pretty damn disturbing to me.

 

How was this subplot meant to work?

 

It wasn't much of a subplot. In the script, Chekov is startled to see a child through a window of the containers on Ceti Alpha V, and Terrell thinks he's nuts. Inside, they find the baby, then Chekov spots the Botany Bay name. The only other time the bay appears in the scripts is during the ending, when it toddles into the transporter, attracted by the Genesis Torpedo's lights.

 

And a still of the original fight between Kirk and David where david kicks kirk's butt.

 

Yep, they're saving those scenes for the super-ultimate extended director's cut of TWOK, that will finally contain all the cut scenes.

 

Ooo, neat. I had that magazine! That image of the baby always looked like a Muppet to me.

 

Now, that would be cool. Maybe at the 30th Anniversary of TWOK (2012)? Still, I kind of find it a bit on the extreme side that after spending 15 years on Ceti Alpha V, Khan's baby would be an infant? Would make more sense to have him be at least 10 or 12, no? I mean, he was "super-gentically enhanced", no? Khan shoots blanks?! Doubtful...the only birth control on the planet were Ceti Eels...effective but, deadly.

 

Ooohhh... yeah, the thing with Chekov seeing the baby is included in the novelization of Wrath of Khan. When I read it I was like "what...?" I mean the author didn't follow it up with anything at all other them them finding the baby then getting found by Khan & Co, and readers are left to assume that the baby was taken on board the Reliant and I guess killed when the ship was destroyed. Niiiiice.
Glad they cut it from the movie, it's sort of weird. That being said, a Son-of-Khan plot in later movies/series/books may have had potential.

 

As has been pointed out, Khan's child didn't go anywhere story-wise, so it was easy to cut. However, as the novelization goes, Vonda McIntyre would have been working from the script, and not knowing that the scene where Chekov sees the baby was cut in the editing room, she would have put it into her manuscript. That the later scene, with the child in the transporter room, didn't make the novelization is suggestive that it might not have been in the script and was something Nick Meyer decided on during filming, perhaps to give the baby some purpose narratively. Of course, it didn't work, and the scenes were excised entirely.

 

Damn, that is a disturbing picture. I'm glad they cut it out.

 

I was referring to what the script contained. The painting's not mentioned in the scripts I've read.

It's in the script.

 

...that's a joke, right?

 

Sadly, no.

However, it wouldn't have been the first time a Star Trek production had ran afoul of the acting guilds. Roddenberry got slapped on Star Trek: The Motion Picture for the Rec Room scene; the various fans in the crew weren't members of the Screen Extras Guild. Yes, there was a guild for extras; now they're just part of SAG.

 

Do the writers only have the scripts to go by for the novelizations? I think I always assumed they built the manuscript around the script, saw the movie and perhaps polished it off then. I only thought this because some scenes are described almost identically to how they were acted, but that being said some scenes are a lot different. One that comes to mind was Spock's death scene, where in the book Kirk kind of throws a bit of a fit after Spock dies, and as we all know from the movie, he just sorta sits there dumbfounded. Given that she does use such creative licence, I'd have thought it would be allowed that she could remove the baby as it creates a little bit of a plot hole (in that it's not followed through.)
I'm not being critical, I really like her writing. Perhaps with the omniscient narrative used it made writing about a scene like that (on the transporter) simply too awkward. I have neither read the script, nor do I know if the writers get to see the film, I just assumed they got a preview.

 

It's very rare when a novelizer gets to see the film. Usually, the film is still being shot, or it's deep into editing, when the writer is working on the novelization. Alan Dean Foster got to see Star Trek when he was working on the novelization, because Abrams' film was done. McIntyre didn't have that luxury, and often novelizations are written on a crash deadline that would make your head spin. (Diane Carey wrote the novelization of "Broken Bow" in something like two days, for instance.)

Sometimes, a script will specific scene blocking. Usually, they won't, because it's a waste of time for the screenwriter; the director will shoot the scene as he sees fit. And the actors bring their talents and instincts to the scene as well.

That's why I've always found Harlan Ellison's rant about how one of his westerns was butchered by the director for not shooting his script as it was written to be laughable; the director shoots what he wants, and the writer is pretty much the least important person in the process.