Link Between Discovery and a Contentious Element of the Kelvin films

[Timo]

Of course, it would make no sense for Khan to look like Montalban during these events, in-universe.

Khan is now John Harrison, a secret agent. It wouldn't do to give him a face that any recognition program nails as that of Khan Singh! I mean, Starfleet has everybody's face on record, from Khan to Kodos the Executioner to Jackson Roykirk. And this carries no weight as evidence in court, as we see with Kodos - which goes well with the idea that Khan could change faces at the drop of a turban.

That Voq undergoes this bizarre ordeal in order to become Tyler, instead of just undergoing classic cosmetic surgery, in itself supports the idea that cosmetic surgery is commonplace in the 23rd century and doesn't really help in hiding one's identity in the long term. Case in point, Arne Darvin...

Whether Khan ever was Sikh, we don't know. Marla McGivers is the one to recognize him as one - and she has probably recognized him as Khan Singh instead and is doing her best to hide this fact from her captain. But Khan did choose to rule under the name Singh. Then again, he chose to rule under the title Khan, which might not go down well with today's Sikhs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mudd]

They never said in the film that Khan had been altered, so no. It was just a different actor playing the same part.

 

[Timo]

"They never said in the film" basically never works. Except in giving some people an excuse to bicker about needless exposition.

Faces consistently don't work as recognition features in Trek. Which is the very reason McCoy is taking a blood sample, it seems. (The real real reason is that the blood will later save Kirk, but that's not real in-universe.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

Doesn’t mcGivers have a painting of him wearing a turban?

Anyways Sikhism is a religion, he could have been adopted into a Sikh family.

 

[Timo]

And Hitler and Himmler, out of all people, thought everybody ought to be Aryan. There really isn't any pressing need for a leader to be a follower of rules.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mudd]

"They never said in the film" basically never works.

It always works.

It's called "canon" - it eliminates trying to decide who's right and wrong in continuity debates because the answer is always " if not on screen, the issue is unsettled. If contradictions exist on screen, the contradiction is canonical."

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Doesn’t mcGivers have a painting of him wearing a turban?

Anyways Sikhism is a religion, he could have been adopted into a Sikh family.

 

[KBEnterprise]

Of course, it would make no sense for Khan to look like Montalban during these events, in-universe.

Khan is now John Harrison, a secret agent. It wouldn't do to give him a face that any recognition program nails as that of Khan Singh! I mean, Starfleet has everybody's face on record, from Khan to Kodos the Executioner to Jackson Roykirk. And this carries no weight as evidence in court, as we see with Kodos - which goes well with the idea that Khan could change faces at the drop of a turban.

That Voq undergoes this bizarre ordeal in order to become Tyler, instead of just undergoing classic cosmetic surgery, in itself supports the idea that cosmetic surgery is commonplace in the 23rd century and doesn't really help in hiding one's identity in the long term. Case in point, Arne Darvin...

Whether Khan ever was Sikh, we don't know. Marla McGivers is the one to recognize him as one - and she has probably recognized him as Khan Singh instead and is doing her best to hide this fact from her captain. But Khan did choose to rule under the name Singh. Then again, he chose to rule under the title Khan, which might not go down well with today's Sikhs.

Timo Saloniemi

Well, what if Khan had his personality similarly 'overlapped'? The difference being, unlike Voq, he was never meant to 'wake up'. One of the big failings of Voq's procedure was that he did not really convert well back to his Klingon personality. It took seeing himself in the Mirror Universe to fully undergo the change! If Khan did undergo a similar procedure, I wonder what it took to 'bring him back'?

They never said in the film that Khan had been altered, so no. It was just a different actor playing the same part.

No, but they do call John Harrison a constructed identity which implies a new look as well as a new name for Khan. The fact of the matter is, it is canon - 100% canon - that Khan looked like this before being found by Starfleet:

It's pre-Nero, so it's canon. Unlike the other characters, who we just have to naturally assume look more or less like their younger TOS counterparts did. We have a canon look at what Khan looked like.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

One of my favorite aspects of Discovery season one is Ash Tyler's arc and the reveal that he is, in fact, a surgically altered Klingon. My first instinct as a fan was to connect the dots between Voq's procedure, the House of Mo'Kai, and Arne Darvin in Trouble With Tribbles, who was later revealed to be a surgically altered Klingon.

However, also as a fan, my mind wandered to one of the more frustrating aspects of Trek continuity, which is the [in my opinion] unfortunate casting of Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in the Kelvin timeline. Not only did changing Khan's race and overall appearance/identity seem like a slap in the face to the fans, it also simply didn't make sense!

But it seems to reason that, if the Federation was widely aware of the choH'a' procedure, the ne'er-do-wells in that universe's Section 31 could replicate the process on Khan. Sure, this is a different universe where, presumably, the events of Discovery did not happen, but the fact that this process was shown at all leads me to believe that Khan went through a similar procedure.

Having seen Into Darkness since watching Discovery's first season, it does seem to make it a little more bearable to put up with the drastic changes to Khan. I understand some comics have explained this as well, but I haven't read all of those yet.

Did anyone else make the (indirect) connection between the choH'a' and Khan from Into Darkness?

Even if we were to believe that Cucumberpatch's Khan had his appearance surgically altered to conceal his identity and pose as John Harrison, instead of just being a recast where you're supposed to assume Khan had always looked like that, there's nothing connecting Khan's hypothetical surgical alteration to the incredibly elaborate and physically/mentally destructive one performed on Voq/Tyler in Discovery where they had to make his external appearance and internal organs look human instead of Klingon, and pass extensive biometric scans and medical exams.

Khan, if scanned, would presumably just look like an exceptionally physically gifted human with a higher lung capacity and so forth, but nothing that would necessarily set off alarm bells in a routine scan. He's peak human+, not an alien made to look human. He can get by with the Dr. Crusher laser face alteration mumbo jumbo to visit the planet of the week.

 

[Vger23]

 

[KBEnterprise]

Even if we were to believe that Cucumberpatch's Khan had his appearance surgically altered to conceal his identity and pose as John Harrison, instead of just being a recast where you're supposed to assume Khan had always looked like that, there's nothing connecting Khan's hypothetical surgical alteration to the incredibly elaborate and physically/mentally destructive one performed on Voq/Tyler in Discovery where they had to make his external appearance and internal organs look human instead of Klingon, and pass extensive biometric scans and medical exams.

Khan, if scanned, would presumably just look like an exceptionally physically gifted human with a higher lung capacity and so forth, but nothing that would necessarily set off alarm bells in a routine scan. He's peak human+, not an alien made to look human. He can get by with the Dr. Crusher laser face alteration mumbo jumbo to visit the planet of the week.

Obviously the procedure is more extensive on Voq than on Khan, assuming they have anything in common. The main concern I'd have is, did Khan have a similar 'personality overlap' where he legitimately believed his name to be John Harrison and his origin to be different than his true self? Alas, those are details that we will never know based on the film we have, but they're interesting dots to connect!

Even though the storylines don't have much in common, I am more concerned with how much more enjoyable Into Darkness is given the foreknowledge of what happened to Voq. It certainly settles the score (for me, at least) on this flub in the Trek canon!

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Obviously the procedure is more extensive on Voq than on Khan, assuming they have anything in common. The main concern I'd have is, did Khan have a similar 'personality overlap' where he legitimately believed his name to be John Harrison and his origin to be different than his true self?

No, because Khan's previous identity was key to what they needed him for, so they wouldn't want to lose that by wiping his memory and personality. They needed his 20th century "savagery" and warlike nature, which they claimed to have lost by the 23rd century, even though Admiral Marcus' belligerent and murderous behavior throughout the film completely belies that notion.

 

[KBEnterprise]

No, because Khan's previous identity was key to what they needed him for, so they wouldn't want to lose that by wiping his memory and personality. They needed his 20th century "savagery" and warlike nature, which they claimed to have lost by the 23rd century, even though Admiral Marcus' belligerent and murderous behavior throughout the film completely belies that notion.

Presumably, whatever procedure Khan underwent (as was the case with Voq, it seems) allows some aspect of his personality to seep through. After all, one can think he is person X, not person Y, and both still be savage.

You also bring up a good point though, that Khan did say Marcus used his crew to 'control' him. So, if this is true - we have two options:

1. Marcus did not use Khan's crew to blackmail him until after Khan 'woke up' (which, having remembered that particular line, does sound like a stretch - but more or less plausible)
   
2. Khan always knew he was Khan and just 'went along with it' for the sake of keeping his crew alive

The actions of Khan in the film, however, seem to imply that he just very recently 'figured out' he was Khan.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

Starfleet has everybody's face on record, from Khan to Kodos the Executioner to Jackson Roykirk.
[emphasis mine]

No matter where I go, they hunt me down.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

The actions of Khan in the film, however, seem to imply that he just very recently 'figured out' he was Khan.

I don't think it was a matter of Khan recently regaining his memory (or ever having it erased), I think he just realized that once he had finished working on Marcus' warship and the Klingon War had been set in motion, his usefulness to Marcus was over and Marcus would cut off any loose ends by killing him and his people to cover up what he did.

 

[KBEnterprise]

I don't think it was a matter of Khan recently regaining his memory (or ever having it erased), I think he just realized that once he had finished working on Marcus' warship and the Klingon War had been set in motion, his usefulness to Marcus was over and Marcus would cut off any loose ends by killing him and his people to cover up what he did.

Could be. But it's also worth noting that Khan and his crew would have been a great asset to the war.

 

[DaveyNY]

Presumably, whatever procedure Khan underwent (as was the case with Voq, it seems) allows some aspect of his personality to seep through. After all, one can think he is person X, not person Y, and both still be savage.

You also bring up a good point though, that Khan did say Marcus used his crew to 'control' him. So, if this is true - we have two options:

1. Marcus did not use Khan's crew to blackmail him until after Khan 'woke up' (which, having remembered that particular line, does sound like a stretch - but more or less plausible)
   
2. Khan always knew he was Khan and just 'went along with it' for the sake of keeping his crew alive

The actions of Khan in the film, however, seem to imply that he just very recently 'figured out' he was Khan.

Wow...
I didn't get that at all, even after watching it several times.
Khan was being blackmailed by Marcus right from the moment he woke up, with his crew/followers.
It appeared to me that Khan went through all the changes JUST to save his people and none of those changes included having his mind altered.
He was playing along with Marcus until he felt that the right moment came along for him to turn the tables.
It's at first not clear to the viewer, due to the way the movie is edited to keep us guessing, but the intent I got out of it was that they both were SOB's and Khan outplayed Marcus at his own game.

 

[dahj]

I think he was just pale in STID because they drew too much miracle blood from him.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, having two villains who practice villainy chiefly unto each other can be confusing, but also ultimately highly rewarding!

No matter where I go, they hunt me down.

Have you considered a career in frontier acting? It usually works.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Spot261]

I think he was just pale in STID because they drew too much miracle blood from him.

Genetic engineering = Vampirism, do keep up.