One bigass ret-Khan they would need to do...

[Sabataage]

If Khan Noonien Singh and his merry band of supermen re-emerge in the Abram's Trek (while I hope the do not) I feel they should alter his origin by swapping a zero for a one: change "tyrant from the late 20th century" to "tyrant from the late 21st".

By doing so they'll save themselves the headache of trying to explain to everyone how the hell we had a Eugenics war and at least one inter-planetary spaceship sitting around 17 years in our past without anyone remembering it.

Despite this being a "huge" departure from continuity I think hardcore Trekkers (who hated XI) can get on board this for one good reason. It establishes that no, this not the same universe as the Roddenberry Trek. In Roddenberry's universe we had interplantary spaceships and genetically enhanced supermen by the late nineteen eighties and mid-nineties. In Abram's universe we did not.

All of the departures and changes from the continuity that happen in the Alternate Reality happen not because of some fanwank about Nero's incursion changing the course of history but because its a whole new universe that bears only a striking similarity to this other one that existed before it.

The bickering about Chekov's age, the ship's size, Romulan and Klingon appearance, bridge design, costumes changes, where the Enterprise was built, how many Nacelles are needed on a ship, etc... all becomes moot*... because its a whole new universe!

*while 'moot' in fact mean debatable or open for dispute, I'm going for common usage here. As in "insignifigant, pointless, or academic."

 

[Captaindemotion]

Another smaller but equally important issue about any re-use of Khan is his attitude to Kirk. In Space Seed, he had no real grudge against Kirk. Kirk and his ship were merely a means to an end, a way of him regaining power. At the end of the episode, there was arguably a degree of grudging respect.

By the time of TWOK, he had spent years on a desert planet and watched friends and his beloved wife die. For which he blamed Kirk. Hence a vengeful Khan on a personal mission in that movie.

If Khan were to appear in any of the next couple of movies, with their TOS time-frame, he won't have the same motivation against Kirk that he had in TWOK and which made that movie so memorable. They'd have to come up with some new reason for him to hate Kirk with that degree of passion and to allow the new actor to bellow his lines with the same amount of venom.

 

[startrekrcks]

what go down the Khan road again. What more could they do about him?

 

[Myasishchev]

If Khan Noonien Singh and his merry band of supermen re-emerge in the Abram's Trek (while I hope the do not) I feel they should alter his origin by swapping a zero for a one: change "tyrant from the late 20th century" to "tyrant from the late 21st".

By doing so they'll save themselves the headache of trying to explain to everyone how the hell we had a Eugenics war and at least one inter-planetary spaceship sitting around 17 years in our past without anyone remembering it.

Despite this being a "huge" departure from continuity I think hardcore Trekkers (who hated XI) can get on board this for one good reason. It establishes that no, this not the same universe as the Roddenberry Trek. In Roddenberry's universe we had interplantary spaceships and genetically enhanced supermen by the late nineteen eighties and mid-nineties. In Abram's universe we did not.

All of the departures and changes from the continuity that happen in the Alternate Reality happen not because of some fanwank about Nero's incursion changing the course of history but because its a whole new universe that bears only a striking similarity to this other one that existed before it.

The bickering about Chekov's age, the ship's size, Romulan and Klingon appearance, bridge design, costumes changes, where the Enterprise was built, how many Nacelles are needed on a ship, etc... all becomes moot*... because its a whole new universe!

*while 'moot' in fact mean debatable or open for dispute, I'm going for common usage here. As in "insignifigant, pointless, or academic."

I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

I don't really want to see Khan or the Augments in Star Trek 12, but if I did, I would be pleased to see them from at the earliest the 2050s.

 

[ThePlumsofWrath]

Does anyone SERIOUSLY believe that we'll ever see Khan again?

Come on guys, wake up.

 

[Shazam!]

Just because we've reached the 21st Century it doesn't necessarily follow that fiction should parallel real world events.

We're not actually looking into the future when we watch Star Trek

 

[Shazam!]

I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

Yeah, and whilst we're at it let's rename 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

[Kataaran]

Off-topic but still Khan related. It may just have been me but when I first saw TWoK (I think I was about 8 years old) I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Khan had boobs.

I think they should avoid rehashing old story lines, if they must use the characters then make them totally different, in a mirror universe kind of way except not so polarized.

 

[Myasishchev]

I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

Yeah, and whilst we're at it let's rename 2001: A Space Odyssey

If they rebooted Clarke's universe, maybe they should.

There's also the matter of reconciling WW3 with the Eugenics War, which imo is far more important than its chronological placement...

That said, I'd be willing to accept even this ridiculously alternative history as long as it didn't involve the Eugenics War being "fought in secret" ala the novels.

 

[Alientraveller]

That's one reason Khan shouldn't be in the next film: audiences would like to see a new world, not a dated alternate history for Earth.

That said, I like the notion of Gary Seven pushing back Khan's reign. (http://canonfodder.ex-astris-scient...ry_&_Cartography:The_Planar_Time_of_Star_Trek)

 

[Shazam!]

If they rebooted Clarke's universe, maybe they should.

They haven't 'rebooted' Trek though. Everything pre-Kelvin still includes historical events detailed in TOS and beyond.

I don't know why it's so hard to accept that in the fictional Star Trek universe there was a war in the 90s.

 

[Sabataage]

Yeah, and whilst we're at it let's rename 2001: A Space Odyssey

In Clarke's follow-up 3001, characters referr to the events of the first two books as happening sometime in the 2030's and 40's.

 

[EJA]

I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

I don't really want to see Khan or the Augments in Star Trek 12, but if I did, I would be pleased to see them from at the earliest the 2050s.

This is the conclusion I eventually came to as well. In writing my biography of Khan, I had him born in 2001, rise to power in 2042, and be overthrown in 2046. Read about it here:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5440000/1/Khan_Noonien_Singh_A_Biography

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Just because we've reached the 21st Century it doesn't necessarily follow that fiction should parallel real world events.

We're not actually looking into the future when we watch Star Trek

Or maybe we are - now! That would explain why the original universe had these discrepencies (communicators larger than cell phones, Eugenics Wars that don't begin on schedule). JJ Abrams has finally put Trek in the correct timeline - ours!

 

[Captaindemotion]

Yeah, and whilst we're at it let's rename 2001: A Space Odyssey

In Clarke's follow-up 3001, characters referr to the events of the first two books as happening sometime in the 2030's and 40's.

I wonder what they'll do when they re-issue those books in 20 or 30 years. Assuming that the events of 2001:ASO haven't come to pass in the interim.

 

[Myasishchev]

If they rebooted Clarke's universe, maybe they should.

They haven't 'rebooted' Trek though. Everything pre-Kelvin still includes historical events detailed in TOS and beyond.

I don't know why it's so hard to accept that in the fictional Star Trek universe there was a war in the 90s.

Because it places Trek in a universe not remotely our own, meaning that the triumph of the society in that fictional universe is in no way actually connected with the evolution of the society in our own.

Basically, it takes one of the central premises of the whole franchise--that if we play nice, we can have a great world too--and undermines it. The future of Trek ought to plausibly be our future, not the future of a world where genetic engineering technology was being perfected in the early 1960s and interstellar ark ships were being built in the mid-1980s. Also--and I'm still no booster of seeing Khan in the Abramsverse--no audience wants to see an alternate 1992 that has no bearing on their own memories of 1992. Imagine Voyage Home being populated by bands of young Augments. It'd have been silly. Even sillier than the whale thing, and a lot less relevant. Heck, Kirk maybe could've avoided the dangers of time travel back to the future by putting himself, his crew, and the whales in freezeless stasis, apparently on the cusp of being developed in the 1980s inasmuch as it was an incredibly robust technology in the mid-1990s, and sailed out on a DY-100.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

I've been advocating abandoning the foolishness of irrevocably dating the Eugenics War in the 1990s for a while. It didn't even make sense in the late 1960s. For Khan to have been a ruler of a quarter of Earth in 1992 or whatever it was, "Space Seed" was asking us to believe that there was a massive genetic engineering or selective breeding program being undertaken somewhere in the East even as the episode premiered.

I don't really want to see Khan or the Augments in Star Trek 12, but if I did, I would be pleased to see them from at the earliest the 2050s.

According to the prequel novels by Greg Cox, the creation of the Augments was a secret project that nobody else in the world knew about, not even the CIA, KGB, MI6, Mossad, or any other intelligence agency-the only one that did was Gary Seven and the Aegis, who tried to stop it as best as they could, but to no avail, since Seven spared the lives of the various kids created by the project, all of whom grew up to start the Eugenics War. BTW, this project was an international undertaking, not just something 'from the East'.

Good call on setting the war in the 2050's instead of the 1990's.-in fact, I'd have it be WWIII as well, or set before WWIII.

The DY-100 ships were intended for interplanetary travel, not interstellar travel, and would have not made it to another system without something like the HAL-9000 computer flying the ship, which they didn't have in the '1990's'-that's why Khan & Co. never made it to Tau Ceti, and would most likely have died if the Enterprise had not discovered their S.O.S.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Abrams can't mess with Khan too much, since his reboot doesn't "start" until the destruction of the Kelvin. Anything before that should be the same as in the prime timeline, Khan included.

 

[Sabataage]

Abrams can't mess with Khan too much, since his reboot doesn't "start" until the destruction of the Kelvin. Anything before that should be the same as in the prime timeline, Khan included.

Which is why I agree with others that they should leave him alone, for now. I'd save him for the third or fourth movie when they actually have a good idea for how to use him and can get around or change his origin without making too much of a fuss.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Yeah, and whilst we're at it let's rename 2001: A Space Odyssey

In Clarke's follow-up 3001, characters referr to the events of the first two books as happening sometime in the 2030's and 40's.

In fact, I believe that all four of Clarke's 2001 novels (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001) are set in slightly different 'universes'. He even admits this in at least one of the forewords.