The Star Trek Encyclopedia getting first update since 1999!

[Mr. Laser Beam]

When Khan in STID said he wanted to "continue the work we were doing before we were banished," Spock (the younger one) replied, "Which, as I understand it, involves the mass genocide of any being you find to be less than superior." Which does conflict with the line in "Space Seed" that there were no massacres under Khan's rule.

I don't see the conflict. Dictators like Khan are obviously going to keep a tight rein on whatever information gets into AND out of their territory. The only reason the records show that there were no massacres under Khan's rule is because he didn't allow word to get out.

Tyrants commit massacres. It's what they do. Especially Augments like Khan - they were literally MADE to do such things.

Besides, anybody who thinks Khan isn't capable of massacres, should ask the families of the crew of Regula 1...

 

[F. King Daniel]

Something I liked about Into Darkness was how Khan and Marcus had very different versions of Khan's backstory. Of course, both have agendas the size of the USS Vengeance so neither is trustworthy. It ties pretty well into the comments from Spock in "Space Seed" that records from that era are fragmentary. Khan doesn't actually acknowledge Kelvin-Spock's claim that Khan's work was to commit genocide (which I thought was a reference to Khan's final solution in Greg Cox's Eugenics Wars novels, which Bob Orci definitely read prior to writing ID)

Of course, ambiguity isn't so easy to carry across into an Encyclopedia...

 

[Lakenheath 72]

No government can keep secrets. Governments are sieves. Information gets out.

People knew NAZI Germany was massacring milions of civilians in concentration camps. People inside NAZI Germany were getting the information out, either directly or indirectly through the refugues who found aid and were given an escape route. This is true of any dictactorship in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. (In other words, I can accept dictatorships in earlier centuries had a greater control over information. There were less sources of information. We can see this in the change over the number of reported police brutality cases. Police have always been brutal against minorities in this country. It just was not as well known, then there came the profusion of personal recording devices. It is does not mean they will change. A person did a study on a group of individuals in Finland to see how people lived with constant surveillance. Over weeks, they got used to it and behaved as they would if there was no surveillance.)

I see the change in Khan's character as a reflection of our times. Many of our villains in films and episodes nowadays are genocidal, revenge happy freaks carrying weapons of mass destruction. Like the increasing size of the starships. Many of the villains of the 1960s are not very threatening to us nowadays. Make the character something of our time - someone who would throw a suicidal bomber into a government installation, someone who would fly a vehicle into a building to kill a large number of people to make a statement.

Personally, I see the Khan of Space Seed/TWoK as being different than the Khan of the Kelvin Timeline.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I also feel it's important to point out that even if the "no massacres" line is to be taken at face value (which I still don't), there was also "as little freedom!" under Khan's rule. So he's not exactly the good guy here.

 

[Lakenheath 72]

I take it at face value.

Dictators can rule without massacres. They concentrate on eliminating political opposition; however, they do not target whole segments of population. And, there can be "good" dicatators, like Nasser of Egypt who can change their nation and make it stronger. And, some like Bolivar are remembered later fondly as heroes of their nations.

It's a complex discussion. Personally, based on my understanding of what is stated in the Space Seed, I see the original Khan as being more of a Nasser figure, who overthrew an existing government and brought in his own government. However, he was brought down by the in-fighting between Augments, like the in-fighting that occurred with the generals of Alexandria after his death who fought against each other. I find it interesting that the original Khan and the Augments were compared to Alexander and Napoleon. They were not compared to Hitler. This is a point often missing in the discussion.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Any information available in the Trekverse 1990's could not only have been lost during the Eugenics Wars, but during subsequent World War III and the post-atomic horror as well. Newspapers may have survived telling of Khan's genocides, or the lack therof, but all would be subject to the agenda of whoever wrote it. And, as said above, who knows what evidence was found in one timeline and not another?

I'm all for ambiguity. Of course ID's Khan is a different take on the character IRL, but in-universe, I think there's enough wiggle room to reconcile them. It's not like Khan didn't have a few premises changed between "Space Seed" and "Wrath of Khan", and then have his backstory mixed around a bit by novels, comics and Enterprise's Augment arc.

I guess it's precisely debates like this that are why they added that little caveat about changes to the timeline perhaps rippling both ways.

 

[Vanyel]

This probably should be its own thread, but what was Khan and the other Augments like in the Mirror Universe?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Canonically speaking, we have no idea.

Although I would guess that the augments were like kids in a candy store in that universe. They probably let themselves run wild. Who knows, they probably even ran the Terran Empire.

 

[Vanyel]

Or Khan and his followers escaped after failing to bring democracy and justice to the Empire.

 

[F. King Daniel]

This probably should be its own thread, but what was Khan and the other Augments like in the Mirror Universe?

Only mention of them I can think of was in a conjectural mirror universe timeline in one of the (unlicensed) Best of Trek books, which was based on The Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology and went up to the DC comics MU arc. The Eugenics Wars ended in the 2000's with the "Olympians" (their term for Augments) winning; Khan pushing for space exploration and conquest; an eventual uprising; Tarsus IV was an attempt to purge remaining Olympian DNA from that colony's gene pool; the Empire had been researching black holes as a means to enter alternate universes for centuries (very apt, post-ST'09) etc

The author botched notably by forgetting that "Mirror, Mirror" established Pike's murder at the hands of Kirk.

 

[DonIago]

There is also the Myriad Universes story that depicts a timeline in which Khan ultimately won the Eugenics Wars.

 

[Idran]

In the Litverse, one of the proposed candidates by the high-ups in Starfleet to replace Emperor Spock was said to be a direct descendant of Khan as reason for supporting him, which suggests that there definitely was a certain amount of respect for the Augments in the MU.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The IDW alternate reality comics

Spoiler

show a Mirror AR good Khan who wants to live in peace but is capable of violence when necessary; he checks it mostly unless people are in peril. He ultimately sacrifices himself so the NuTrek prime universe Enterprise can return home.

 

[Ronald Held]

I thought most data losses occurred during WW III and afterwards.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The only reason the records show that there were no massacres under Khan's rule is because he didn't allow word to get out.

That's also a distinct possibility. And I'm sure there were always those who suspected as much...

 

[Markonian]

Does the Encyclopedia give any word on the ENT lunar shuttle, the S.S. Emmette?

 

[Lakenheath 72]

Markonian,

No.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There is also the Myriad Universes story that depicts a timeline in which Khan ultimately won the Eugenics Wars.

And which puts the lie to the constant talk about

Spoiler: story

there being no massacres under Khan's rule, as we can see (from the flashback scenes) that life under Khan was basically nothing BUT massacres...

 

[publiusr]

A large book on just starships should come out.

 

[Cyfa]

A large book on just starships should come out.

- 100% YES! It's a shame that Unseen Frontier never made it to print, and that Photographing Starships isn't real - at least, not in this reality...