There was a lot of hand-wringing about Paulo. Who was Paulo again? He did not leave enough of an impression for me to remember him from previous weeks, but they were talking about him like he ought to be a big deal.
The 'no, you can't get away/Khaaaaaaan!' felt especially strained this time. I know some have felt these callbacks were overdone- this was the first time it felt a step too far, to me. (I didn't mind the 'I didn't want to kill you, I wanted to hurt you', though, as that just fit as a Khan-standard-tactic that he would revisit on his enemies).
Khan's psychology here makes no sense to me. Apparently he was willing to abandon all his people, do a complete one-eighty from his defining trait for seven episodes, because he... lost faith in the goodness of Augments, and just wanted to start over with his daughter? But then he hears a little pep-talk from Marla on leadership and decides to leave behind the one person he has sacrificed his entire worldview for? It's just too much character whiplash. He'll betray his entire people for his daughter, then he'll abandon his daughter for Marla's impression of him... his motives and moral compass seem to shift on a dime. The 'one thing that he'll sacrifice all other things for' changes every five minutes, as does the subject of his vengeance. (Remember when it was Ceti Alpha V he raged at and had a dialogue with? That didn't last long...)
And the idea of leaving his daughter because he's not good enough for her is one of those ideas that works on paper, but feels like it was written by someone who was not a parent. (No offense intended to the authors if that is not the case; that's just the vibe it gives off- not really understanding the parental bond.)
Meantime, he is prepared to abandon his people, they turn against him- and because he chooses to come back, we're suddenly at unswerving 'these people vowed to live and die at my command 200 years before you were born' loyalty again, as if none of that had ever happened?
Khan still maintains his hatred of Kirk- that he 'left them there to die' in spite of knowing that the destruction of Ceti Alpha VI had an artificial cause... and the one that did cause it, he forgives? And the murdering traitor that tried to usurp him, he forgives, while talking about how capable of change he is?
Certainly, it's because of Delomnda's actions toward his daughter (and I understand her all-importance leading to protecting her being a very big gesture in his eyes, though again that means his voluntary choice to leave her is even more credulity-straining.) And Ivan is apparently based on his sudden leadership guilt-trip from Marla's speech. And then his heart is hardened by the coming of madness. On paper, I kinda get it.
But even so, the idea that he would forgive both personal betrayals- the person responsible for the hellish destruction of this planet that lied to him for 5 years about it, and the person that betrayed his trust and tried to kill him and now tried to usurp his leadership- while one person that he already knows did not leave him on an unstable planet and instead left him to pursue his own dreams (that he was pretty enthusiastic about until the Elboreans came and ruined them) still has his undying hatred...? If the intention is that he has been so fixated on hatred for Kirk for so long that even knowing none of this was his fault and knowing the actual cause can shift his hatred, it has not been well established enough to be plausible. Maybe the idea is that Kirk is the only one *left* he can blame... and I can fill in that mental blank myself. But it feels like, with a character study of a specific individual whose singular obsession was his defining trait, I shouldn't *have* to fill in why that obsession became his defining trait, something that only happens in the off-screen epilogue narration.
And that brings us to the ending. Okay, Khan assumes Kali is dead and then becomes the familiar obsessed Khan... offscreen. Both transformative periods of grief that reshape his character go unportrayed during a time jump. But okay. And the crew of the Venture assume that there are probably few Augment survivors? But still... the logic of the lack of rescue defies plausibility.
Firstly, Khan leaves Kali in a fit of leadership-based-guilt, remembering his responsibility to his people... but then STILL instructs Delmonda not to send help, betraying his people? (Devil's advocate, maybe it's less of his responsibility to his people and more of seeing himself as a coward like Cortez and thus unfit to be a part of Kali's life; but I really have trouble that Khan, fueled by the love of a parent, obsession to make a better world for his child, and his own pride and arrogance about his own status and greatness, would come to such conclusion with such a paltry few words and so impulsively in such a short time after just having fought so hard for the opposite.)
He acts as if Kali getting a peaceful upbringing somewhere, and a (non-Federation) rescue ship being dispatched to see if there were any survivors, were mutually exclusive. That's really not rational.
But then, Delmonda dies shortly thereafter, and Mehdo is left in charge of Kali. And she has absolutely *no* reason not to send some civilian freighter back to Ceti Alpha V to look for survivors, including her one true love. She could have done it anonymously, without revealing her connection to the planet- just contract some guy, pay in advance, don't go with them. Or even defy Khan's wishes and tip off Starfleet. If the idea is that she just respected Khan's wishes, carried secondhand through Delmonda, so much that she never sent rescue...? It ends up feeling like the guest-of-the-week that ends up getting off of Gilligan's Island, leaving the castaways behind, and for various reasons doesn't tell anyone about them. In a setting like the Star Trek galaxy, where Mehdo made it to civilization and had a loved one left behind (even if there was some question about survivors, there was no certainty that there had been none), and so many options were available, it just doesn't wash that no rescue was ever sent.
