I'm not a fan of the because of Khan et al ban genetic engineering from the Federation. How else did McCoy live past 130?
Plot hole in Wrath of Khan, or am I thinking wrong?
- Thread starter Leathco
- Start date
When did Khan do either of those things? We never hear of him passing any sort of legislation, either in "Space Seed"/ST2 or in ST:ID - and "genocide" is never mentioned in connection with Khan until Spock accuses him of it in the climax of ST:ID, on no known basis at all. The technicalities of his rule remain unknown, too.
By getting rejuvenated at least twice ("The Deadly Years" & "The Lorelei Signal")?
In any case, genetic engineering is fine and well in the UFP as long as it is conducted by the UFP. A government facility in "Unnatural Selection" openly works towards creating supermen. It's just that Richard Bashir can't be allowed to do the same in his flitter garage.
Timo Saloniemi
If we are now discussing the genetic engineering component of SS/STTOWK, let us remember that life spans continue to grow longer. Genetic engineering is not really a necessity. The only thing required according to Dr. McCoy is a series of cloned organ implants.
The interesting question there is whether McCoy died prematurely because of all those space maladies and beatings he got; outlived the Average Joe by several decades thanks to being privileged to the wonders of Starfleet medicine and alien cures; or merely struck the happy average for anybody born in the first half of the 23rd century.
O'Brien once said he wanted to die at 150, peacefully in his bed, surrounded by loved ones. It would be odd for 24th century people on the average to live much past 150, then - but also odd if 150 were totally beyond reach (without the sort of miracles that might be standard for space adventurers, that is). Is the 24th century different from the 23rd in that respect? From the 22nd? From Khan's days? The latter at least we can nod at, because Khan's days are supposed to be the same as ours, with but minor aberrations such as Khan himself. And one might expect Khan's biological superiority to have taken a blow calling for dialogue if it turned out that ordinary medicine had increased the lifespans of Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and pals to exceed the 20th century standard and put Khan's putative longevity to shame.
Although of course it may also be that Khan was engineered with a shorter lifespan than average for humans, perhaps an unfortunate byproduct of him maturing faster and living more vigorously, perhaps a safety measure installed by his creators...
Timo Saloniemi
O'Brien once said he wanted to die at 150, peacefully in his bed, surrounded by loved ones. It would be odd for 24th century people on the average to live much past 150, then - but also odd if 150 were totally beyond reach (without the sort of miracles that might be standard for space adventurers, that is). Is the 24th century different from the 23rd in that respect? From the 22nd? From Khan's days? The latter at least we can nod at, because Khan's days are supposed to be the same as ours, with but minor aberrations such as Khan himself. And one might expect Khan's biological superiority to have taken a blow calling for dialogue if it turned out that ordinary medicine had increased the lifespans of Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and pals to exceed the 20th century standard and put Khan's putative longevity to shame.
Although of course it may also be that Khan was engineered with a shorter lifespan than average for humans, perhaps an unfortunate byproduct of him maturing faster and living more vigorously, perhaps a safety measure installed by his creators...
Timo Saloniemi
I read a Star Trek Myriad universe novel where Khan won the Eugenics War and lived to 200 years old. The point being that augmented humans had longer life spans, more intelligence, stronger bodies and were extremely arrogant (the negative side effect?). So non augmented McCoy living to 130 plus was probably not that unusual. In real life the number of centenarians is growing.
Yes, it is true. It is also true that most of the characters continue to serve Starfleet in some capacity. Even Spock returns from Romulus and is given an Admirals commision
Its in one of the Shatnerverse novels. The one after the Return I believe.
That argument only holds if you limit canon to literally the events depicted on screen and not those referenced. If characters overtly recognise each other then it isn't an assumption to infer they have had prior interactions or knowledge of each other.
The fact of recognising each other is itself canon and therefore requires a canon explanation. Once that premise is accepted Occams razor, if applied correctly, no longer precludes their having met. In fact it becomes the simplest explanation, given that knowledge of the events of "space seed" seem not to have been widely disseminated outside of the enterprise crew and there are no other known instances of khan interacting with sf personnel.
Therefore the burden of proof falls on you to demonstrate they did not meet rather than on others to demonstrate that they did.
They met in the lower decks when Khan was being escorted through the ship somewhere.
Or not: http://sevspace.com/stupidarchive/sevtrek059.asp.htm
Kor
Or not: http://sevspace.com/stupidarchive/sevtrek059.asp.htm
Kor
There seems to be some rather fundamental confusion on the essence of "continuity" and "contradiction" here. If an installment of Star Trek from date T2 were only be allowed to repeat what an installment from earlier date T1 had already shown, we wouldn't have much of a show, now would we? T2 is entitled to add to T1, especially when it comes to subject matters T1 didn't even touch upon.
Piling into the theaters for TWoK, we didn't know beforehand that Kirk had kept Khan's marooning a relative secret. Contradiction? Only in the sense that the writer of "Space Seed" had not intended this (Kirk makes official logs and holds on-the-record hearings and all). But the word of the writer is only heard if spoken on screen - backstage muttering is irrelevant. And taking TOS as a whole, we learn Kirk lies a lot in his official logs and keeps secrets from his superiors, so the non-contradiction in TWoK shouldn't even be much of a surprise.
Things can come completely out of the left field, too. Ceti Alpha VI exploded? Wow, didn't see that coming! Khan has mind control Ohrwurms? Oh boy. There's no element of continuity there to be followed or contradicted - stuff just happens.
And then there's the deliberate contradiction that does not defeat continuity. Klingon Empire has no Emperor? Borg are interested in people after all? Stupid us for not realizing that from the very start? Nope, just life as it usually happens, with incomplete information, disingenuous characters and all.
In the end, plot holes are subjective. If you trip and hurt your ankle, it's definitely a plot hole for you, and no matter of "how silly of you, there's no contradiction there, and I can prove that for you" is going to help. But I guess the big point here is that we Star Trek fans should have become acclimatized to a certain base level of roughness in the road, and the potholes in TWoK shouldn't register above and beyond that base level. It's a complex universe where everything can be explained away but nothing can be researched to conclusion, for one and the same reason: imagination allows for explanations, but the source material is all imaginary to begin with. And people simply have different types of imagination - but people converging around Star Trek tend to expect a certain type as default, for good and ill.
Timo Saloniemi
Piling into the theaters for TWoK, we didn't know beforehand that Kirk had kept Khan's marooning a relative secret. Contradiction? Only in the sense that the writer of "Space Seed" had not intended this (Kirk makes official logs and holds on-the-record hearings and all). But the word of the writer is only heard if spoken on screen - backstage muttering is irrelevant. And taking TOS as a whole, we learn Kirk lies a lot in his official logs and keeps secrets from his superiors, so the non-contradiction in TWoK shouldn't even be much of a surprise.
Things can come completely out of the left field, too. Ceti Alpha VI exploded? Wow, didn't see that coming! Khan has mind control Ohrwurms? Oh boy. There's no element of continuity there to be followed or contradicted - stuff just happens.
And then there's the deliberate contradiction that does not defeat continuity. Klingon Empire has no Emperor? Borg are interested in people after all? Stupid us for not realizing that from the very start? Nope, just life as it usually happens, with incomplete information, disingenuous characters and all.
In the end, plot holes are subjective. If you trip and hurt your ankle, it's definitely a plot hole for you, and no matter of "how silly of you, there's no contradiction there, and I can prove that for you" is going to help. But I guess the big point here is that we Star Trek fans should have become acclimatized to a certain base level of roughness in the road, and the potholes in TWoK shouldn't register above and beyond that base level. It's a complex universe where everything can be explained away but nothing can be researched to conclusion, for one and the same reason: imagination allows for explanations, but the source material is all imaginary to begin with. And people simply have different types of imagination - but people converging around Star Trek tend to expect a certain type as default, for good and ill.
Timo Saloniemi
Similar threads
