The Omega Glory...

[johnnybear]

No I don't accept the visiting freighter story as if that had happened and the team died from the Omega virus, as did the Exeter crew, then there would have been a satellite placed in orbit around the planet to warn space travellers of impending death!!
JB

 

[FormerLurker]

No clue. But Alpha Ceti is correct.

Only if it's that system. If you would go ahead and read the two posts I quoted, it could be a very different system, named from a different standard, and be Ceti Alpha as stated onscreen.

To be honest, as far out as the Botany Bay is supposed to have gotten, it couldn't be the Alpha Ceti system anyway.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

No I don't accept the visiting freighter story as if that had happened and the team died from the Omega virus, as did the Exeter crew, then there would have been a satellite placed in orbit around the planet to warn space travellers of impending death!!

In the novel, after the freighter (the ECS Philadelphia) visited Omega IV, the ship disappeared and was never heard from again. So nobody ever found out what happened to the Philadelphia or its crew.

Thus, this doesn't violate continuity - the Exeter in TOS was, and still is, the first recorded encounter with the Omega virus.

Now of course it is possible that after the events of "The Omega Glory," there WAS a warning beacon placed in orbit so that no other ships would visit the planet and thus risk their crews being exposed to the virus (even though there's now a cure). But this has nothing to do with the Philadelphia - unless the ship itself turns up sometime in the fuure, nobody will ever know that the virus killed ITS crew as well as that of the Exeter.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, today is October 12. It's also 12 October. Go figure.

 

[Kor]

...
To be honest, as far out as the Botany Bay is supposed to have gotten, it couldn't be the Alpha Ceti system anyway.

No doubt, Botany Bay must have (like Voyager VI) "disappeared into what they used to call a black hole" and emerged somewhere else.

Kor

 

[johnnybear]

Perhaps it was a wormhole that took the Botany Bay out that far that or earth's technology was more impressive back then than was originally thought?
JB

 

[Phaser Two]

Only if it's that system. If you would go ahead and read the two posts I quoted, it could be a very different system, named from a different standard, and be Ceti Alpha as stated onscreen.

To be honest, as far out as the Botany Bay is supposed to have gotten, it couldn't be the Alpha Ceti system anyway.

I read everything. I was trying to be polite, but since you insist: I don't find that argument very persuasive.

All they say at the end is that their heading takes them near "Ceti Alpha." Menkar is 250 LY from Earth, which already visited the farther (and correctly designated) Mira/Omicron Ceti system in TSOP, so I don't find that distance to be suspicious given the Enterprise's speed. I also doubt that Kirk wanted to put Khan & Co. In the main travel lanes. The real stretch is that Kirk had the authority to leave superpowered war criminals alone on a planet at all.

 

[johnnybear]

He was worried what a retraining/re-education centre would do to such fine specimens! Yeah, right!
JB

 

[Marsden]

He was worried what a retraining/re-education centre would do to such fine specimens! Yeah, right!
JB

Maybe he was worried that they would take over the colony the re-education center was located. Better they have an uninhabited world to conquer than one with Federation citizens.

 

[johnnybear]

Yes, you're probably correct but Kirk did seem worried what such a place would do to a group of twentieth century supermen! I think he thought how wasteful it would be to turn them into useful citizens as such?
JB

 

[MAGolding]

I read everything. I was trying to be polite, but since you insist: I don't find that argument very persuasive.

All they say at the end is that their heading takes them near "Ceti Alpha." Menkar is 250 LY from Earth, which already visited the farther (and correctly designated) Mira/Omicron Ceti system in TSOP, so I don't find that distance to be suspicious given the Enterprise's speed. I also doubt that Kirk wanted to put Khan & Co. In the main travel lanes. The real stretch is that Kirk had the authority to leave superpowered war criminals alone on a planet at all.

I'll answer you before FormerLurker does, since I will probably be more polite.

When FormerLurker wrote:

To be honest, as far out as the Botany Bay is supposed to have gotten, it couldn't be the Alpha Ceti system anyway.

FormerLurker wasn't referring to the speed of the Enterprise or the the Enterprise's ability to reach Alpha Ceti, but the Botany Bay's speed and ability to reach Alpha Ceti, or anywhere close enough to Alpha Ceti that the course of the Enterprise after finding the Botany Bay would take it anywhere "near" to Alpha Ceti.

The distance to Menkar or Alpha Ceti is given as 249 plus or minus 8 light years, or 76 plus or minus 3 parsecs. That is about 241 to 257 light years, or 73 to 79 parsecs. Do you know how many miles are in a light year?

Almost six trillion miles. 5,878,625,000,000 miles to be a bit more precise.

So if Alpha Ceti is about 241 to 257 light years from Earth, and there are about 5,878,625,000,000 miles in a light year, Alpha Ceti should be about 1,416,748,600,000,000 to 1,510,806,600,000,000 miles from Earth.

If one assumes that the Enterprise traveled 50 to 100 light years from the place where it found the Botany Bay to Alpha Ceti, the Botany Bay should have been about 141 to 357 light years from Earth when found by the Enterprise. Therefore, the Botany Bay should have traveled about 141 to 357 light years, or about 828,886,120,000,000 to 2,098,669,100,000,000 miles, during the time that it was on its journey.

So how long did the voyage of the Botany Bay last?

SPOCK: Much older. DY-100 class, to be exact. Captain, the last such vessel was built centuries ago, back in the 1990s.

If the Botany Bay and other ships of its class were built centuries ago, that should have been less than 1,000 years, and thus the Botany Bay should have been travelling for less than 1,000 years.

(Kirk uses something metal in his hand to break the glass and open the compartment. The man is slid out on a trolley, gasping and awake. He tries to speak.)
KHAN: How long?
KIRK: How long have you been sleeping? Two centuries we estimate. Landing party to Enterprise. Come in.

KHAN: I remember a voice. Did I hear it say I had been sleeping for two centuries?
MCCOY: That is correct.

KHAN: Captain, I wonder if I could have something to read during my convalescence. I was once an engineer of sorts. I would be most interested in studying the technical manuals on your vessel.
KIRK: Yes, I understand. You have two hundred years of catching up to do.

KIRK: Name, Khan, as we know him today. (Spock changes the picture) Name, Khan Noonien Singh.
SPOCK: From 1992 through 1996, absolute ruler of more than a quarter of your world. From Asia through the Middle East.

This establishes that their belief that Khan and the Botany Bay left during the 1990s was correct. Thus their earlier estimate of two centuries (200 years) was correct.

Assuming the widest possible meaning of two centuries, and they might have said two centuries if the actual time span was anywhere between 100 years and 300 years. If the Botany Bay traveled 141 to 357 light years in 100 to 300 years it would have traveled at an average speed of 0.47 to 3.57 light years per year, or 2,762,953,700,000 to 20,928,690,000,000 miles per year.

Was the Botany Bay, a DY-100 class space ship, capable of such speeds?

SPOCK: A strange, violent period in your history. I find no record what so ever of an SS Botany Bay. Captain, the DY-100 class vessel was designed for interplanetary travel only. With simple nuclear-powered engines, star travel was considered impractical at that time. It was ten thousand to one against their making it to another star system. And why no record of the trip?

MARLA: Captain, it's a sleeper ship.
KIRK: Suspended animation.
MARLA: I've seen old photographs of this. Necessary because of the time involved in space travel until about the year 2018. It took years just to travel from one planet to another.

So the DY-100 class space ships took years just to travel from one planet to anther.

Assuming that it took a DY-100 class ship 1 year to travel to Neptune, the farthest solar system planet presently recognized by the IAU. Neptune is 30.33 Astronomical Units, or 2,819,349,600 miles, from the Sun at Aphelion, when it is farthest from the Sun. If A DY-100 ship traveled to Neptune at Aphelion in one year, stayed there for months or years for research, and returned in anoterh year-long voyarge, the total trip time would be over two years. And the average speed during the voyage to Neptune would be 30.33 Astronomical Units, or 2,819,349,600 miles, per year. About one thousandth of the minimum speed necessary for the voyage of the Botany Bay to get to a position so far from Earth that Kirk would decide to take the supermen to Alpha Ceti.

This rough calculation should show why some people, like FormerLurker, believe that it would be mathematically impossible for the Botany Bay to reach a position close enough to Alpha Ceti for Kirk and the Enterprise to take the supermen to Alpha Ceti.

 

[Phaser Two]

FormerLurker wasn't referring to the speed of the Enterprise or the the Enterprise's ability to reach Alpha Ceti, but the Botany Bay's speed and ability to reach Alpha Ceti, or anywhere close enough to Alpha Ceti that the course of the Enterprise after finding the Botany Bay would take it anywhere "near" to Alpha Ceti.

Thank you. I was aware of that and bore that in mind. My post stands.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Left all alone, they'd reinforce what they already believed. I imagine he might have let Marla go with Khan's people partly to escape certain court-martial, partly to hopefully be a calming influence on them.

 

[UnknownSample]

On parallel development... of course it's extremely improbable for it to happen. That was the point, in a way. More than improbable, it was a gnat's wing short of being absolutely, totally impossible. The only thing that makes the impossibility not 100% total in that space is infinite, and in an infinite universe, the most remote possibilities can be played out.
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Then the problem with the premise becomes the seeming impossibility that such a twin planet would conveniently exist in the same galaxy as ours, reachable by a starship.
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A "plausible", more mundane explanation would gut the story.
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Now the flag and all that... I remember that it seemed hokey, and seemed like... us Americans patting ourselves on the back and revering ourselves a little too much... even when I was a kid in the 60s, it seemed that way.
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Thinking about it now, it may not have been flag waving at all. These "Americans" are worshipping the flag and documents they don't understand, like gods. They kill casually. The flag has become an empty symbol. WE (Americans) are primed to respond to that symbol with "patriotism", or are usually expected to react to that symbol that way. That doesn't necessarily mean Gene R expected that. It's a pretty devalued image here.
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It may be no more a call to patriotism than the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes is. For me, the flag here gives me a similarly creepy feeling of things turned on their head.
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Without that overwhelming sudden shot of the flag, shot as it was, the whole scene might have even been seen as anti-patriotic.
===========
As for the Constitution, honoring documents like that works against mindless nationalism. All humanity can feel proud of those and embrace them. That's human evolution.

 

[Timo]

I also doubt that Kirk wanted to put Khan & Co. In the main travel lanes.

...Or to deviate much from his original course, lest Starfleet find out about his embarrassing little adventure.

The real stretch is that Kirk had the authority to leave superpowered war criminals alone on a planet at all.

War criminals? Kirk seemed to consider them war heroes if anything. The only allusion to crimes comes from that lying bastard Marcus, and even if he were technically right, Kirk might (justly or falsely) feel that the real criminals in that ancient case were the judges. Although he may also well agree with the old logic of never telling the public about the survival of eighty Napoleons, especially as we see the anti-eugenics thing has grown into a major religion in the UFP of Picard's time, and perhaps of Kirk's time already.

That Kirk would have "authority" has never been in question. He is making an official log about dropping all (Starfleet) charges against Khan, after all. But the bit about dropping Khan, McGivers and the lot off is strictly off the record, coming only after the case is closed. And no different from him writing off assorted crew as "lost in the line of duty", or hiding the continuing survival of Cochrane, etc.

That Ceti Alpha would be at a given distance is not a matter exclusive to "Space Seed", of course. By the same argument that the action need be local, ST2 shows that Ceti Alpha is within an easy joyride from Earth because Regula/Mutara is. OTOH, "Twilight" shows that Ceti Alpha is within an easy ride from Earth on those warp two tramps. But all of this involves warp, while Khan's ride does not. Then again,

If the Botany Bay traveled 141 to 357 light years in 100 to 300 years it would have traveled at an average speed of 0.47 to 3.57 light years per year, or 2,762,953,700,000 to 20,928,690,000,000 miles per year. Was the Botany Bay, a DY-100 class space ship, capable of such speeds?

If she were, relativity might also kick in, and take a few decades off Khan's subjective journey - so he would have slept for two centuries rather than three.

But with non-warp travel methods, one would also assume acceleration to be far more significant than speed. A ship that can attain half lightspeed might still struggle mightily for the first few months or years to achieve that. Indeed, it might be an expected feature of a drive system that can do interstellar on something resembling rocketry - low acceleration combined with the capability of sustaining that for years on end. Cryosleep would then indeed be a major requirement for delivering miners to Ganymede or explorers to Miranda or Eris. And what sufficed for that would then suffice for taking people to stars as well. Except even if Earth did attempt to use the tech that way, Cochrane's warp experiment would still take precedence, arriving at all locations sooner and making the sublight travelers an uninteresting footnote in history.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BillJ]

...Or to deviate much from his original course, lest Starfleet find out about his embarrassing little adventure.

No way Starfleet didn't know. We have Kirk's log entries, plus he is missing one historian that had just been assigned.

 

[Timo]

Kirk is always missing people, and lying about it. (And nobody really missed this historian who had been assigned ages ago and had found no employment until the ep...)

Heck, Kirk misplaced a Galactic Commissioner once!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

All that is required in Metamorphosis is a single lie of omission, that the man discovered was a Cochrane but not The Cochrane.

As for Khan, his disposition was part of the recorded court proceedings:

Spoiler: Quote from Space Seed

UHURA: Record tapes engaged and ready, Captain.
KIRK: This hearing is now in session. Under the authority vested in me by Starfleet Command, I declare all charges and specifications in this matter have been dropped.
MCCOY: Jim. Agreed you have the authority
KIRK: Mister Spock, our heading takes us near the Ceti Alpha star system.
SPOCK: Quite correct, Captain. Planet number five there is habitable, although a bit savage, somewhat inhospitable.
KIRK: But no more than Australia's Botany Bay colony was at the beginning. Those men went on to tame a continent, Mister Khan. Can you tame a world?
KHAN: Have you ever read Milton, Captain?
KIRK: Yes. I understand. Lieutenant Marla McGivers. Given a choice of court martial or accompanying them there.
KHAN: (gazing into her eyes) It will be difficult. A struggle at first even to stay alive, to find food.
MARLA: I'll go with him, sir.
KHAN: A superior woman. I will take her. And I've gotten something else I wanted. A world to win, an empire to build.
KIRK: This hearing is closed.

 

[Timo]

All that is required in Metamorphosis is a single lie of omission, that the man discovered was a Cochrane but not The Cochrane.

And him leaving the Commissioner behind? How is that different from leaving Khan behind?

In both cases, it's easily covered with a lie. A dying woman was buried in space (and never mind the protestations of potential next of kin and whatnot); a deadly threat was gunned down, with one Starfleet casualty in the action. Except Kirk didn't go the latter route, but instead made an official log about Khan having survived - right at the juncture where he had already decided to maroon him.

Mind you, Kirk has the explicit power (if not the right) to edit his logs afterwards, as per "Court Martial". But this is usually beside the point, as Kirk clearly dictates his logs after the fact and thus can spin them any way he wants.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

Oh, Timo, you keep trying to sell it but no ones buys it.

In Metamorphosis, Kirk has more to account for than just leaving a Commissioner behind, if his intent were to cover up, which it isn't. From the hijacking of the shuttlecraft to the crash landing to the Enterprise search to getting McCoy and Spock to back him, well the whole notion is absurd that he could forensically expunged the generated logs and data. No, he reports it just as it happened with the single omission, to honor his promise to Cochrane ("Don't tell them about me." "Not a word".) Novelverse notwithstanding, there is nothing in this episode to indicate a vast cover-up of the incident.

And that's about as far off-topic as I am going to go..