Did Khan Have A Point?

[SiddFinch1]

As for never checking on Khan: I do have to agree, Kirk should have done a follow-up. The explosion of Ceti Alpha VI was certainly newsworthy. I doubt there'd be a reason for Kirk never to find out about it. Kirk probably figured Khan died in the explosion and that was the end of that.

Agreed. If not Kirk, then Spock certainly would have read about it and wanted to investigate.

 

[CobraCommander]

Even regardless of whether Khan could have been rescued earlier, it woudn't have changed the man. It was in his nature to dominate and control. A Crocodile cannot change its nature just as Khan could not. Those who can not change and adapt die.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Khan was always a tyrant to be sure. But the evidence suggests that, prior to his experience on Ceti Alpha V, he was a tyrant who was also intelligent and structured his plans in a logical and ordered way to achieve his objective. The experiences of being on that planet, however, so distorted his thinking that he became obsessed with revenge and could focus on nothing other than vengeance against Kirk. As Joachim pointed out, he had a powerful starship at his disposal and could have easily gone to any number of worlds and become absolute ruler. Instead, he chose to pursue Kirk to the point of losing everything.

 

[SeerSGB]

^ Khan was always a tyrant to be sure. But the evidence suggests that, prior to his experience on Ceti Alpha V, he was a tyrant who was also intelligent and structured his plans in a logical and ordered way to achieve his objective. The experiences of being on that planet, however, so distorted his thinking that he became obsessed with revenge and could focus on nothing other than vengeance against Kirk. As Joachim pointed out, he had a powerful starship at his disposal and could have easily gone to any number of worlds and become absolute ruler. Instead, he chose to pursue Kirk to the point of losing everything.

Well Kirk and Khan are two sides of the same coin: Neither one likes to lose, their both passionate about what they believe in and they are both drive by those passions to the point of recklessness when they lose control.

 

[Timo]

Regardless of if a report was filed or who knew he was there, someone should have checked up on him.

Why? It was Khan's original intention to settle and tame some wild planet out there. He got temporarily sidetracked when the opportunity arose to hijack a starship and conquer the universe. Kirk returned him to his original track, though. Khan would not have needed nor deserved any supervision or assistance, and indeed would have been superbly pissed off had somebody offered him some under the original plan.

In "Space Seed", Kirk wondered idly if it wouldn't be interesting to check up on these people at some later point. But he knew fully well that Khan wouldn't have wanted that, and he knew fully well that Starfleet wouldn't have wanted that (Starfleet obviously wanted Khan to "stay dead", or in practice to die ASAP). He himself would have had no reason to do so, save for idle curiosity.

The explosion of Ceti Alpha VI was certainly newsworthy.

But TOS "Doomsday Machine" clearly establishes that Starfleet cannot know about exploding planets unless a starship goes into that very star system and directly observes the explosion or its aftermath. Hell, even if a star system is inhabited by people of Federation origin or affiliation, trouble there may go unattended for a full year, as in "Operation: Annihilate!". It thus makes perfect sense that nobody would have heard of the tumult at Ceti Alpha, a wayside system.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lt.Cmdr.LaForge]

Yes I believe Khan did have a point. Most good film directors/writers intentionally make the audience sympathise with the antagonist. This allows the character to become something more than just a two dimensional evil ‘baddy’. However despite Khan having a dam good reason to want revenge on Kirk his methods are not at all justifiable.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Khan would not have needed nor deserved any supervision or assistance, and indeed would have been superbly pissed off had somebody offered him some under the original plan.

In "Space Seed", Kirk wondered idly if it wouldn't be interesting to check up on these people at some later point. But he knew fully well that Khan wouldn't have wanted that

Then how do you explain how pissed Khan is at Admiral Kirk for never bothering to check on their progress?

 

[McCoy]

It's entirely possible, speaking in universe wise, that some ship did pop into the system, ran a few scans, detected no more than a blip of life-- remember, Reliants more advanced sensors [compared to TOS] only was picking the odd reading nothing really concrete, the ship scratched it off as a dead system-- no survivors, and kept on moving down the road.

This is actually a good point. Didn't Khan say the explosion of the other planet happened only 6 months after they were dropped off? It's quite possible that Starfleet did come by to check on them a year later but noted what happened and that no life signs were detected, so they moved on and never returned.

Of course that doesn't explain why Reliant doesn't realize the change in the system.

Perhaps a passing civilian ship reported no life in the system without including the number of planets, and Starfleet simply added that information to their database.

 

[Timo]

Then how do you explain how pissed Khan is at Admiral Kirk for never bothering to check on their progress?

That is pretty obvious: things went wrong and Khan needed somebody to blame. He was mentally incapable of blaming himself, of course, so Kirk was his next best choice.

Khan was not particularly rational by the time we again saw him in ST2. But Kirk was rational when marooning Khan, and Khan was rational when accepting that. Both acted like gentlemen, under the gentleman rules for megalomaniacs at any rate, and knew that other people would not understand this sort of behavior, so it's just natural that they'd not spread the word much. Khan just ceased to be a gentleman when he was "tasked" sufficiently.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Messianni]

This thread is just serving to show me once more why I like TWOK so much.