Khan’s starfleet jacket

[Captain Crow]

I have a similar gripe about TUC. In the climax of the film, Scotty is wearing his vest (with white turtleneck) in engineering. He's in full uniform (with the gold undershirt) when they beam down to Khittomer. Yet, when they come back to the bridge, he's back with his vest and white turtleneck. Did they wait until Scotty went to his quarters to change before they all went to the bridge?

I've always just assumed Scotty switches to the standard uniform to comply with the conference's dress code as to not stick out like a sore thumb and there was a time jump between them stopping the assassination and the bridge scene. I figured Scotty returned before the others, who stayed for the rest of the conference, to make repairs the Enterprise.

Okay, so Khan got his jacket from Terrell, but what about the rest of the crew? Where did they get their jackets?

https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twok-dc-hd/chapter10/st2-twok-dc-1223.jpg

The same way Mirror Archer and his flunkies got their hands on Defiant uniforms. They ransacked the ship.

 

[Damian]

McGivers was murdered?

Sorry, should have clarified. In the novel To Reign in Hell, she is intentionally infected by a Ceti Eel by a faction of Khan's supermen who were opposed to Khan. In the movie it was just noted that the eel killed his 'beloved wife.' The novel built on that.

They did that so she can be forced to betray Khan. But like Chekov in TWOK, when the time came for her to kill Khan she found the strength to refuse due to her love for Khan and she died (by this time they had been on Ceti Alpha V for several years, I believe over 10 by that point in the novel).

 

[J.T.B.]

Sorry, should have clarified. In the novel To Reign in Hell, she is intentionally infected by a Ceti Eel by a faction of Khan's supermen who were opposed to Khan. In the movie it was just noted that the eel killed his 'beloved wife.' The novel built on that.

Ah, thank you.

They did that so she can be forced to betray Khan. But like Chekov in TWOK, when the time came for her to kill Khan she found the strength to refuse due to her love for Khan and she died (by this time they had been on Ceti Alpha V for several years, I believe over 10 by that point in the novel).

Well I guess that's progress, that she didn't betray Khan the way she did her captain, shipmates, service, government and oath as an officer.

 

[Damian]

Well I guess that's progress, that she didn't betray Khan the way she did her captain, shipmates, service, government and oath as an officer.

I guess sometimes love trumps all. She was written in the novel as a character who grew in strength as the years passed. Partly due to Khan's faith in her strength despite not being an augment. And partly because of the circumstances. You were either strong or you died.

She was probably the only person Khan loved and appreciated. Which also goes to explain his singular focus on vengeance against Kirk. Even though one of his own men was responsible for her death, Khan blamed Kirk first and foremost.

 

[danellis]

In the context of Wrath of Khan, it's Marla's uniform insignia Khan wears around his neck. That they didn't have those (oversized, belt buckle) insignias in TOS matters as much as Khan's skin colour changing and his followers becoming Aryan teens. Or all of Discovery.

This has come up a couple of times and gotten me confused: I thought the same actor played Khan in both things (episode and film)so is any change of skin colour such a big deal?

dJE

 

[Damian]

This has come up a couple of times and gotten me confused: I thought the same actor played Khan in both things (episode and film)so is any change of skin colour such a big deal?

dJE

From a real world perspective his skin was darkened for "Space Seed"--a practice that wouldn't really be considered acceptable by the 1980s.

In universe I suppose you could say living the way he lived his skin could have grown paler over the years. Of course you'd have to assume suspended animation had preserved his 'tan' for 200 years.

I don't recall the novel addressing his 'paler skin' by the time of TWOK. However the first 2 Khan novels (The Eugenics Wars duology) does explain why Khan is a Sikh sans a beard (in short, he did have a beard once but as his arrogance grew he felt he was 'above' such observances and shaved it off as a sort of defiance). As for how his followers all became an 80's hair band from Scandinavia? Those were mostly the children of the original settlers (which also explained why they appeared so much younger than Khan when in "Space Seed" they were more his peers--and also explains why his right hand man was a dark haired man named Joachim in the episode, and a blonde younger man named Joaquin in the film--who was Joachim's son). Something about the original genetic engineering resulted in the children of that particular line of Augments all having blonde hair and blue eyes.

Now, that doesn't sound particularly racially sensitive---but that's how they appeared in canon so Greg Cox had to come up with a way to explain how they all appeared in TWOK. Sometimes an imperfect solution is the best you can do (he also had an imperfect, but probably the best solution he could do, with how the Reliant lost a planet---but that's another thread --see TWOK Glaring Plot hole thread for that one).

 

[J.T.B.]

Which also goes to explain his singular focus on vengeance against Kirk. Even though one of his own men was responsible for her death, Khan blamed Kirk first and foremost.

Which makes no sense. The only reason Khan had any time at all to spend with McGivers was that Kirk bent (probably broke) the rules to send them to the planet together. What was the alternative, separate cells on Tantalus?

What happened to Reliant, Regula and Enterprise is Kirk's fault, though. He should have been court martialed for it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I never gave much thought to how Khan got his uniform jacket. I just figured he wasn't on the bridge the entire time he was on the Reliant. He probably had to leave to eat and sleep (Augment or not, even supermen have to eat and sleep at some point). I always just figured he snagged a jacket during one of those periods.

He has been known to grow fatigued.

 

[Damian]

Which makes no sense. The only reason Khan had any time at all to spend with McGivers was that Kirk bent (probably broke) the rules to send them to the planet together. What was the alternative, separate cells on Tantalus?

What happened to Reliant, Regula and Enterprise is Kirk's fault, though. He should have been court martialed for it.

In the novel Khan began to grow upset the Kirk never checked on them (or sent someone to check on him). He figured Starfleet, or Kirk, would stop by to check on them every so often. So initially after the disaster he thought eventually they would be rescued and exiled somewhere else. But as the years passed and there was no help he started growing angry and incensed. His wife was murdered after several years of the living hell they went through, so by the time she was killed his anger was already at a high level and her death was the tipping point that basically sent him over the edge.

 

[Kor]

...
What happened to Reliant, Regula and Enterprise is Kirk's fault, though. He should have been court martialed for it.

Well, at the beginning of TVH, Kirk was being "charged with nine violations of Starfleet regulations." Maybe some of that included how he handled things in TWOK. But in the hearing at the end of TVH, only stuff that happened in TSFS was listed in the charges. And those only add up to six, not nine. So maybe they quietly wrote off the TWOK stuff.

Kor

 

[F. King Daniel]

This has come up a couple of times and gotten me confused: I thought the same actor played Khan in both things (episode and film)so is any change of skin colour such a big deal?

dJE

Ricardo Montelban was in not-very-PC-nowadays brownface in TOS. Khan Noonien Singh was originally meant to be an Indian Sikh (albeit a did-not-do-research Sikh, since he was clean shaved and had a waxed chest and only wore a turban in Marla's fanart), then in the classic movies he had his natural white skin tones. Was he still meant to be Indian? They changed his squad into a bunch of Aryan teenagers and altered his origin from selective breeding to genetic engineering, so I'm not sure continuity was high on their list of priorities.

 

[Timo]

Kirk had a ship full of kids. The intent appears to have been for Khan to mirror this. And obviously there would be selective breeding involved on Ceti Alpha V, with only the alpha pair engaging...

But Khan's men and women were all-Aryan in the original episode already. Not a single non-Caucasian to be seen anywhere; all the males would have been eligible for Waffen-SS, and all the women for breeding with said under the rule of that decidedly non-Aryan mustache fellow.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

I would say that, in-universe, Marla could have been completely incorrect about Khan probably being a Sikh. We as the audience are supposed to take this line of dialog at face value and accept that Khan had a Sikh background.

But in the episode, nobody else confirms McGivers' conjecture. As far as we know, it could just be a wild guess on her part, as Khan doesn't have certain identifiable traditional accoutrements such as turban, beard, and metal bracelet. So how did she get "probably a Sikh" from looking at him in the sleeping chamber for five seconds? Further, while all male Sikh initiates have the surname Singh, there are also non-Sikhs who also have the name.

Of course, it was basically a throwaway line to give the character an "exotic" air for the typical American casual viewing audience of the day, who was not sitting there with a pile of reference materials (or the internet at their fingertips) ready to fact-check and nitpick stuff like this like we are doing fifty years later.

Kor

 

[Timo]

I would say that, in-universe, Marla could have been completely incorrect about Khan probably being a Sikh. We as the audience are supposed to take this line of dialog at face value and accept that Khan had a Sikh background.

Or then we are supposed to think that this is a filthy lie, just as pretty much everything else McGivers is spewing, and she's already well into planning her eloping with the hunk.

Whom she probably recognizes as Khan Noonien Singh at sight, being a historian and all. In which case she would do well to start blathering about Sikhs if Khan never was one - but it's also possible she might let slip this correct fact before she realized she better obfuscate.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

...
But Khan's men and women were all-Aryan in the original episode already. Not a single non-Caucasian to be seen anywhere; all the males would have been eligible for Waffen-SS, and all the women for breeding with said under the rule of that decidedly non-Aryan mustache fellow.
...

Scotty's line of dialog indicates more diversity than the handful of Khan's followers we saw on camera: "they're mixed types. Western, mid-European, Latin, Oriental."

Kor

 

[Timo]

Which may indicate that Khan firmly believed in the superiority of the Californian race, and relegated those mixed types to off-camera roles (or indeed failed to wake them up altogether).

Or then Scotty was a) mistaken, or b) describing the exact ingredients of the bland mixture that characterizes Khan's whole crew...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[fireproof78]

I would say that, in-universe, Marla could have been completely incorrect about Khan probably being a Sikh. We as the audience are supposed to take this line of dialog at face value and accept that Khan had a Sikh background.

But in the episode, nobody else confirms McGivers' conjecture. As far as we know, it could just be a wild guess on her part, as Khan doesn't have certain identifiable traditional accoutrements such as turban, beard, and metal bracelet. So how did she get "probably a Sikh" from looking at him in the sleeping chamber for five seconds? Further, while all male Sikh initiates have the surname Singh, there are also non-Sikhs who also have the name.

Of course, it was basically a throwaway line to give the character an "exotic" air for the typical American casual viewing audience of the day, who was not sitting there with a pile of reference materials (or the internet at their fingertips) ready to fact-check and nitpick stuff like this like we are doing fifty years later.

Kor

Yeah, it was a weird line from McGivers' that hasn't aged particularly well. I always chalked it up to her being incorrect and Khan manipulating her accordingly.

 

[Damian]

Yeah, it was a weird line from McGivers' that hasn't aged particularly well. I always chalked it up to her being incorrect and Khan manipulating her accordingly.

I did like the explanation in the Eugenics Wars novels. That he was indeed a Sikh, and when he was younger he did indeed have a beard and wore a turban (which would also help explain Marla's painting, she was painting an actual picture she recalled of him when he still wore a turban).

But then as he grew more arrogant he decided he didn't need to respect such 'ordinary' customs and he stopped wearing a turban and shaved his beard in defiance of those customs. It is in keeping with his character traits.

In reality it was sloppy writing. First of all Montalban didn't even have the right background to begin with (though in the 1960's it was a common practice, hell it even happens today sometimes)--and they didn't even do some basic research on how a Sikh might appear so they didn't even have Montalban look the part. In a way Marla's painting makes the sloppiness even more perplexing. Someone knew Sikh wore turbans since her painting had him wearing one.

But I can buy the explanation Greg Cox gave us in the novel. Knowing Khan as we do, even in "Space Seed" I can see his arrogance leading him not to respect the customs he would have been born into. I can absolutely see him believing he is 'above' such observances, and even disrespecting those as a way of showing just how above all that he was.

 

[Timo]

Or then Khan would get the shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits after his fall from power, to hide his identity from those chasing him.

The oddity there would be the one historical picture of him, dug up by Spock: he appears clean-shaven there, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Damian]

Or then Khan would get the shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits after his fall from power, to hide his identity from those chasing him.

The oddity there would be the one historical picture of him, dug up by Spock: he appears clean-shaven there, too.

Timo Saloniemi

In the novel he shaved and got rid of the turban after the massive chemical accident in India back in the 1980s I believe it was (Cox incorporated real historical events into his novel). Long story short for a time Gary Seven had recruited Khan to be part of his organization to guide humanity, but Khan wanted to take a more active role that Seven's organization would allow, and it was around that time he changed his appearance.

I would just assume that picture was taken sometimes after that (I believe the implication was that picture was taken sometimes during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s).

Of course that's all from a novel and it should be noted that's not 'canon.' I generally follow the novel continuities when they are not contradicted by canon, and it's a continuity that makes sense, not to mention I greatly enjoyed those 3 novels, esp. the last one, To Reign In Hell which took place between "Space Seed" and TWOK. I'd actually highly recommend that novel to any fan of TWOK. It really builds a great backstory for Khan as seen in TWOK, addresses some inconsistencies between "Space Seed" and TWOK in a way that makes sense, and it's just a great book. It graphically portrays the hell Ceti Alpha V became after the disaster (and we get to read about how it was before the disaster, an untamed, though eminently livable planet). The movie certainly shows us some of that, but the book goes into even more detail. Simple things like food and water become scarce. And it is true to an extent that Khan's superior intellect and abilities really do help their colony to survive (though it is mostly the children of the original exiles we see in the movie--Khan was actually one of the few of his band of merry supermen to actually survive).

But as it is not canon, fans are, of course, free to follow other Khan backstories if they exist, or imagine their own.