A bit Finnish, are we?
Khans line "how little man has changed"
- Thread starter Vaughn Falstaff
- Start date
I thought that was @Nyotarules' statement was pretty clear. We've seen plenty of non-augmented despots on Star Trek, so why single out genetically augmented people as a problem?
I guess the people having a problem with that would be the ordinary dictators, being bested in their own game. They would also be the ones with the means to do something about it, such as declare a jihad against the Supermen or whatnot.
Actually, Jante's Laws are originally Danish. Or Norwegian, take your pick.
Timo Saloniemi
Actually, Jante's Laws are originally Danish. Or Norwegian, take your pick.
Timo Saloniemi
I don't understand your reference to ”Jante’s Laws”. Try writing a bit more clearly. Thank you.
Thanks. Google rules.
I'm sure a 60s viewer would have seen anything like Khan as another form of master race like those guys in the funny suits on Hogan's Heroes. An interesting character similar to Khan was The Golden Amazon. In her first incarnation she was a kind of sci-fi Tarzan trope but later she is revamped into something more like Khan, an augmented human who tries to take over the earth, fakes her death in the wake of the war against her, returns to guide/rule through more subtle means. Not great writing but a fun concept.
https://thepulp.net/pulpsuperfan/2019/07/15/introduction-to-the-golden-amazon-series/
'Fearn revamped the character of Violet Ray for a series of books in 1944. Some sources claim he reworked the stories, but that is not so if you take a deeper look at the character. Now, Violet Ray Brant was the subject of a glandular experiment as a baby that turned her into a superhuman during the German Blitz of World War II. She would have increased strength and intelligence, golden skin and hair, with the hope that she’d lead the world into peace. Instead she nearly destroys the world with atomic power, and is able to escape the world’s wraith by creating a synthetic duplicate of herself who dies in her place in the first book.'
I think Trek's attitude was predictable for the 60s but it was a retrograde view to maintain so long and stringently in the 80s and 90s. The Luddite attitude the 21st century shows take is simply appalling.
I always viewed Khan's comment as being telling of his very specific mindset.
For all intents and purposes man has changed in the 250 plus years since the Eugenics Wars, but few of it has really been to what Khan would have seen as being beneficial overall. Even beyond the lack of selective breeding/genetic engineering Singh would view the cultural evolution of humanity a not being all that worthwhile either. Its not hard to imagine Khan hoping that he and his followers would wake up to an Earth society that the very least that would have become one that embraced superior beings of some type as the natural leaders.
Its why Starfleet and the Federation initially would be such a disappointment to him. Spock is physically and mentally superior to the Captain and yet works under him quite willingly. Kirk is an intelligent and capable man in many ways yet is very much not the kind of Caesar ruling Rome that Khan believed himself to be. Singh essentially sees people with the kind of traits to make them best equipped to rule over others (for their benefit no doubt) but with none of the real ambition or willingness to do it.
All the technological achievements of the 23rd century, same backwards thinking of the 20th, at least in his eyes.
For all intents and purposes man has changed in the 250 plus years since the Eugenics Wars, but few of it has really been to what Khan would have seen as being beneficial overall. Even beyond the lack of selective breeding/genetic engineering Singh would view the cultural evolution of humanity a not being all that worthwhile either. Its not hard to imagine Khan hoping that he and his followers would wake up to an Earth society that the very least that would have become one that embraced superior beings of some type as the natural leaders.
Its why Starfleet and the Federation initially would be such a disappointment to him. Spock is physically and mentally superior to the Captain and yet works under him quite willingly. Kirk is an intelligent and capable man in many ways yet is very much not the kind of Caesar ruling Rome that Khan believed himself to be. Singh essentially sees people with the kind of traits to make them best equipped to rule over others (for their benefit no doubt) but with none of the real ambition or willingness to do it.
All the technological achievements of the 23rd century, same backwards thinking of the 20th, at least in his eyes.
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...And it's probably his own damn fault: had he not been such a splendid success back in his day, people might have continued to experiment with his type of holistic self-improvement (or improvement of servants at any rate), and would indeed have evolved.
But Khan blew it by being too superior, and now everybody fears and hates this sort of progress with religious fervor that curbs all relevant experimentation and even makes people adopt deliberately backward-looking fashions and customs and turns of phrase...
Timo Saloniemi
But Khan blew it by being too superior, and now everybody fears and hates this sort of progress with religious fervor that curbs all relevant experimentation and even makes people adopt deliberately backward-looking fashions and customs and turns of phrase...
Timo Saloniemi
I
I have no idea what this person is saying. Are you attempting humour of some sort?
Are you Vulcan?
Terran.
[hammer drop]
Just another day in modland.I assume it's clear now.
Carry on.
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I'm 55 years old and have just started watching all the old Star Trek episodes that I didn't watch as a child (which were most of them). Now, as a middle-aged man (and definitely not a "Trekky"), in quarantine due to COVID, I'm watching all of them with a life's experience to appreciate these timeless works of art.
They are treasures of philosophy and all sciences to be appreciated for as long as humans exist.
They are treasures of philosophy and all sciences to be appreciated for as long as humans exist.
He's dead, Jim.
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