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Space Seed. Seems like just the middle of a story.

There is a new comic out by IDW publishing last year called "Khan Ruling in Hell" that covers the same scenario as coxs novels anyone read it?

It didn't do for me. I rather liked Cox's novel that explains how the blond young people in ST II are the throwback, rapidly matured, 14yo offspring of the multiracial adult superhumans we met in "Space Seed". Thus Judson Scott's Joachim, in ST II, is the son of dark-haired Joaquin (Mark Tobin) of "Space Seed". Marla is quite a strong character in the novel and the reader really feels for her when she falls out of favour with some of the superhumans.

In the IDW comic mini-series, blond Joachim is supposed to be the same character of Khan's right-hand man, Joaquin, from "Space Seed". Marla is no where near as sympathetic in the comic, and it's not as tragic when she's killed.

Interesting, other than the differences with Marla and such is there any other contradictions between the comic and the novels? Was wondering because I thought they were both supposed to cover the same thing in different aspects and not cancel each other out.
 
No, they're two different versions of the same story. I love what Greg Cox did with it (even purchased the hardcovers of all three books, which I never do for Trek fiction) and, especially after reading feedback here, have no interest in the comics series.
 
No, they're two different versions of the same story. I love what Greg Cox did with it (even purchased the hardcovers of all three books, which I never do for Trek fiction) and, especially after reading feedback here, have no interest in the comics series.

Ah ok so you either have to take one or the other they dont go together I get it. Wondered because usually they try not to make trek works contradict.
 
GNDN and Nerys Myk have pretty much said what my thoughts are, but did a better job of it. In looking back on this thread, the point has been made before as well. What's it going to take to settle it? Maybe it's just going to keep reviving, because someone want's a "complete story", when in fact it wasn't necessary for the material long since created, and won't ever be filled in either.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if we do see a sci-fi movie at some point that deals with genetically engineered people who try to take over the world... and ultimately fail. I'd highly doubt it would be crafted as a prequel for the character of Khan in the Star Trek franchise... but one could always just pretend that it does. That perhaps "Khan" was his secret name, not revealed during his reign. But quite frankly, at this point I'm so tired of all these try-to-be-epic major catastrophe upheaval type movies, I probably wouldn't see it.
 
Even reading the word "prequel" makes me wanna throw up.

For me it's "reboot." Can't just do a new take on a character or a book, now it has to be a "reboot." oh, this Spiderman's suit is a little more red than the last one! Major continuity violation! It must be a reboot! Branagh's Hamlet? Total reboot. Too bad they didn't flash back to Olivier's and explain that there had been a temporal distortion causing this Hamlet to be different from that one. How do I reconcile them in my little brain???

LOL. I couldn't help but to think of the 2007 TIN MAN miniseries perversion of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ while reading this. (Did we really need to see a Gen Y version of the Wicked Witch with tramp stamps of demon bats on her chest?) For me, it isn't so much the notion of prequels that's the problem. The STAR WARS anthology was just fine with me conceptually speaking. But the notion that "we're not doing a remake, we're doing a re-imagining" is just ridiculous. The point of creativity that is lost on contemporary Hollywood is that you don't do a remake of a movie just for stylistic reasons. (Doing so usually results in a flop anyway.) As a rule, you don't remake an old story unless you're going to really do something fresh and ambitiously so. A STAR IS BORN is an excellent example. How many times has this movie been remade? Apparently, too many.
 
For me "Space Seed" told a complete story. The only desire I would've had for a follow-up story would have been either a continuation (we see Kirk encountering Khan on Alpha Ceti V after having been left there) or a conceptual revisiting (we see other "eugenic supermen", not connected to Khan, menacing the cosmos.

Montalban did a pretty decent job bringing the Khan character to life, but he was only semi-convincing as a Sikh. The second TREK movie soured on me. It was seriously overrated. Maybe it's just me, but I do not think Paramount did a very good job resurrecting the "Khan monster" who strives to commandeer a Federation starship and terrorize the Universe. For me, the biggest plot hole in both "Space Seed" and THE WRATH OF KHAN was the utter futility of a small band of super-rebels thinking that they could somehow get away with that, not just once but twice. Kirk put Khan back in his box once, so now we have to see him steal another ship and try to raise Hell again? The movie just trivialized the episode it was based on.

For me, if we had to see Khan again, why would he have to steal a starship? Why wouldn't he try to build his own? (The whole exploding planet thing was farce, BTW.) I'm not saying that Kirk had to go back to Ceti Alpha V to find a crude copy of a Connie aimed at him. Maybe it would be more interesting if Khan's boys built a bunch of NX-Alphas and started harassing their interstellar neighbors. The way WRATH presented the vengeful madman Khan was laughably silly. If Ceti Alpha V had been devastated, he should've died. Instead, if Kirk were dispatched to deal with an unknown fleet of ships that turned out to be Khan, that would've been far more interesting.

The real allure of "Space Seed" wasn't Khan/Montalban anyway. It was the idea that our era gave birth to a future menace that looks like a cross between Rocky and bin Laden. That's why ENT revisited the concept with the "augments". It's scary to think that there could be a super-menace in our future, and that spacefarers centuries later might have to deal with that menace like a bad weed you just can't evict from your garden. That's a great concept the audience can grasp and get interested in.
 
In my opinion, the fact that Kirk and Khan never actually met was by far the coolest thing about ST2:TWoK. It was a battle of wits from beginning to end, and Trek movies have never managed anything like that again. Nor have other notable action or scifi movies of late, for that matter. The most recent Trek film brought Kirk and Nero to within shouting distance of each other - and then went the cliched James Bond route and had the hero tackle the villain's muscular chief henchman. Not quite as satisfactory as keeping the antagonists completely separated, but I guess variety is good.

Timo Saloniemi
 
In my opinion, the fact that Kirk and Khan never actually met was by far the coolest thing about ST2:TWoK. It was a battle of wits from beginning to end, and Trek movies have never managed anything like that again. Nor have other notable action or scifi movies of late, for that matter. The most recent Trek film brought Kirk and Nero to within shouting distance of each other - and then went the cliched James Bond route and had the hero tackle the villain's muscular chief henchman. Not quite as satisfactory as keeping the antagonists completely separated, but I guess variety is good.

Timo Saloniemi
That's while I half jokingly call TWOK a remake of Balance Of Terror.
 
Wondered because usually they try not to make trek works contradict.

The writers at IDW shouldn't have to read Pocket ST novels to create a comic, and vice versa. Sometimes two licensees will work together, but there have been many cases of incompatibility.

other than the differences with Marla and such is there any other contradictions between the comic and the novels? Was wondering because I thought they were both supposed to cover the same thing in different aspects and not cancel each other out.

I haven't catalogued all the differences, but let's say the two stories are fictionalized accounts based on different participants' memoirs. Happens in real life all the time. They don't have to "cancel each other out". Read each one on its own terms.
 
Leaving aside the film's popularity, I objected to it on a different principle......not for killing Spock, but for making us wait two years for what was another temporary death.

Noting that, when TWOK's script was being done, Lenoard Nimoy very specifically WANTED Spock to be killed off, so he could opt out of further movies. TMP had, apparently, NOT been a happy experience at all.

LN then totally changed his mind during TWOK's filming, it being a very very good experience in every respect for him. Which led to some hurried tweaks and rewrites.
 
Noting that, when TWOK's script was being done, Lenoard Nimoy very specifically WANTED Spock to be killed off, so he could opt out of further movies. TMP had, apparently, NOT been a happy experience at all.

Not quite. In the 70s, Nimoy became convinced he needed to break away from Spock (TOS heavily in syndication and rating well) in order to keep broadening his acting repertoire.

He resisted signing up for "Phase II" and only returned for TMP when Wise insisted that Spock needed to be in it. Paramount finally settled on $$$$ for allowing the use of his image, and he got the "favoured nations" contract with Shatner parity. ie. a huge pay rise.

It wasn't a bad experience on TMP, it was not needing to ever play Spock again.

LN then totally changed his mind during TWOK's filming, it being a very very good experience in every respect for him. Which led to some hurried tweaks and rewrites.

Again, not quite. Spock's death was shifted to the end of the movie after Susan Sackett (acting for a sulking Roddenberry) deliberately blurted out about the plan to kill off Spock at a huge London convention. Nimoy insists it was never his demand to kill off Spock, but he was tempted by the concept when that offer was dangled.
 
In my opinion, the fact that Kirk and Khan never actually met was by far the coolest thing about ST2:TWoK. It was a battle of wits from beginning to end, and Trek movies have never managed anything like that again. Nor have other notable action or scifi movies of late, for that matter. The most recent Trek film brought Kirk and Nero to within shouting distance of each other - and then went the cliched James Bond route and had the hero tackle the villain's muscular chief henchman. Not quite as satisfactory as keeping the antagonists completely separated, but I guess variety is good.

Timo Saloniemi
That's while I half jokingly call TWOK a remake of Balance Of Terror.

Very good way of putting it--I hadn't considered that before.

I do agree that the portrayal of "older Khan" was a bit trivialized. I don't think such a man would allow revenge to consume him so, to sacrifice his opportunity just to kill Kirk. He was bigger than that, which was what allowed him to lead a vast army of super humans back in his day. He was also humble enough to know when to quit, escaping in the Botany Bay life support craft.

The Khan I expected would have taken the Reliant and headed off somewhere else... to several planets that other DY-100 class ships were sent to (Khan's ship apparently went off course, adrift in space), in hopes of finding descendants of his original followers. THAT would've been much more believable. And of course, Kirk would be called in on the chase.
 
The only thing that bugged me about Space Seed was the ending.

So you've got aboard one of the greatest villains in history. He just took over your ship and threatened to kill multiple of your crewmen, while... possessing (for a want of a better word) one other. And after all that... you just let him go to an uninhabited planet, with said possessed crewmember. I was like... what? Seriously, Kirk? Aren't you overdoing your goody-ness a little? It's like begging for a disaster to come back and bite you in the backside.

I never had any problems with its pacing. Just this really weird ending.
 
I think, like the characters, the audience was supposed to have a begrudging respect for Khan.
 
The only thing that bugged me about Space Seed was the ending.

So you've got aboard one of the greatest villains in history. He just took over your ship and threatened to kill multiple of your crewmen, while... possessing (for a want of a better word) one other. And after all that... you just let him go to an uninhabited planet, with said possessed crewmember. I was like... what? Seriously, Kirk? Aren't you overdoing your goody-ness a little? It's like begging for a disaster to come back and bite you in the backside.

I never had any problems with its pacing. Just this really weird ending.

Well KALONTAS you have part of the reason a few people feel the story is less than completely satisfying. I think i fyou you keep exploring other aspects of the story you have mentioned in your post, you will no doubt uncover the main glitch of the thing.
 
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