News "Khan" podcast by Meyer, Beyer and Mack
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
- Start date
Oh, I'm sure he killed plenty of people, just enemy combatants in the heat of battle rather than civilians.
Does that even need to be questioned? Obviously it's a ludicrous suggestion on the face of it. Only a conspiracy nut who knows nothing about Kirk's character could possibly think that.
The theory that Kirk suppressed the knowledge of what had happened is equally nonsensical, because the trial scene literally begins with Uhura confirming that it's being recorded. The audiodrama claims that the knowledge was suppressed, but it can't have been Kirk who did it.
Well, the only way any "eugenics" program could actually work is if it embraces hybrid vigor, rather than the racist ideas of "purity" that drove the real-world eugenics movements of the 19th-20th centuries. So even if the creators were located in a single place (like, say, the Noonien-Singh Institute in Toronto), they would've naturally selected gene donors of all ethnicities.
I agree with this. I didn't even think about combat in war, that was an oversight on my part. I was thinking of him more as a ruler. I'll make a change in my post to distinguish between the two. Thanks!
EDITED TO ADD: I've changed "hasn't killed anyone" to "hasn't killed civilians".
Agreed, but this also makes me think- it's funny that we give Star Trek (2009)/Picard a hard time because realistically, there would be warning signs in advance, but don't tend to criticize TWOK for the same thing. I've always taken it to be that there was some artificial event- often thought it would be interesting if this was just sort of the side fall-out of a completely different story, some vast battle or time-hopping event or inter-Q conflict or something (like the supernovas in The Q and the Grey)... something that might one day be revealed (seems like an STO thing, to be honest, if they haven't already) with Ceti Alpha VI as collateral damage of some totally unrelated plot. (Bonus points if some sort of sensor distortion or echo or general interference leads to the otherwise-inexplicable Reliant's sensor error in not being able to correctly map a solar system or count the number of planets on it).
While it would require either an alien-invader subplot or uncovered Section 31 conspiracy or something else outlandish, most likely, to realistically fit into the Khan series, I do wonder if they will attempt to provide any explanation for what happened... maybe claim that the instruments left behind by the Enterprise included some basic sensors or something, so that Marla can technobabble explain what they just witnessed in the sky... after all, they seem to have enough knowledge to be aware that a neighboring planet exploded, it would be interesting to see how they determined that. (Unless it was a Vulcan's-sister-planet scenario with a much-closer-than-usual twin planet visible in the sky...)
I can remember three different novel-based explanations for Ceti Alpha VI exploding, all of which involved unforeseeable external influences (New Frontier had a piece of unstable alien technology explode after it was activated by a survey team, Vanguard had it destroyed by an alien weapon of mass destruction that the Starfleet operators who discovered it hadn't realized was a weapon until they started pointing it at things and turning it on, and I think To Reign in Hell had something about a rogue black hole that passed through the system, which has the bonus of nicely explaining how the orbits of the other planets were affected so drastically).
As for how Khan would know, that seems pretty obvious. Charting the night sky to build a local calendar would be a priority so they could track the seasons, and it wouldn't take more than a few days or weeks of observation to recognize which lights in the sky were planets and which ones were stars. The difference would probably be apparent immediately for sharp-eyed augments without any light-pollution, since planets don't twinkle like stars do (they're visually larger from the ground and aren't distorted as much by the atmosphere). As for the "explosion" part, a planet is pretty big, the flare from any kind explosion might be visible for days, even while the sun is up.
The problem is, the energy required to disintegrate an entire Earthlike planet would be comparable to the Sun's entire energy output for a week, and that amount of energy released in minutes or less would be bright enough to considerably outshine the star itself. Even if the Federation didn't have FTL sensors, the Reliant would've seen the flare as soon as it came within 15 light-years of the system (or 18 per the revised Chronology dating). So the idea that they could've been unaware of the planet's destruction is one of the many, many things in TWOK that fall apart if you apply any intelligent thought to them.
I mean, just the fact that when they arrived at the system, they didn't do a basic sensor scan of it and notice the number of planets was off from previous surveys, has always bothered me. That's why I wouldn't mind some sort of little dropped in exposition line about how sensors will be scrambled in this system, or something. Anything to make that less dumb.
Either way, I'm just curious as to how they will deal with the event, and if they will try and pack in any retroactive explanations like that, or if they will just have it a mysterious, unexplained event observed from the surface and nothing more.
Either way, I'm just curious as to how they will deal with the event, and if they will try and pack in any retroactive explanations like that, or if they will just have it a mysterious, unexplained event observed from the surface and nothing more.
