The ship was taken over. People would have known.
What if Khan and company was not sent to Ceti Alpha V?
- Thread starter dswynne1
- Start date
The ship was taken over. People would have known.
It shouldn't even hinge on that.
- Kirk's ship is small - it's a gossipy little village where every inhabitant is more or less forced to interact with everybody else on a daily basis. Rumors would spread lightning-fast.
- Kirk simply cannot entertain guests without everybody knowing. In "Mudd's Women", said ladies were being paraded through a gauntlet of extremely interested crewmen and -women, not because Kirk ordered a parade but apparently because getting anybody from the transporters to officer territory involves a highly public catwalk.
- Khan was a celebrity, as evidenced by the dinner scene where random personnel of random rank attend for no discernible reason, other than the opportunity to see the charming demigod. Inevitably, at least 10% of the crew would have Khan's autograph in an intimate body part, and Chekov is a very likely candidate here, what with being a representative of the impressionable youngsters demographic group.
Now, none of this should be taken to mean the crew would actually be aware of what is going on most of the time. Rumors and gossip would spread, but Kirk appears extremely stingy with actual information. Khan comes, bad things happen, Khan is gone: one rumor would say that Kirk tore the villain's head off with his bare hands, while another would insist an Admiral came aboard and walked Khan away while holding a contract on a PADD for him to sign. Marooning probably would not be a leading candidate among the scenarios, and Kirk would be likely to have an officer (Uhura?) dedicated to rumor management anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
- Kirk's ship is small - it's a gossipy little village where every inhabitant is more or less forced to interact with everybody else on a daily basis. Rumors would spread lightning-fast.
- Kirk simply cannot entertain guests without everybody knowing. In "Mudd's Women", said ladies were being paraded through a gauntlet of extremely interested crewmen and -women, not because Kirk ordered a parade but apparently because getting anybody from the transporters to officer territory involves a highly public catwalk.
- Khan was a celebrity, as evidenced by the dinner scene where random personnel of random rank attend for no discernible reason, other than the opportunity to see the charming demigod. Inevitably, at least 10% of the crew would have Khan's autograph in an intimate body part, and Chekov is a very likely candidate here, what with being a representative of the impressionable youngsters demographic group.
Now, none of this should be taken to mean the crew would actually be aware of what is going on most of the time. Rumors and gossip would spread, but Kirk appears extremely stingy with actual information. Khan comes, bad things happen, Khan is gone: one rumor would say that Kirk tore the villain's head off with his bare hands, while another would insist an Admiral came aboard and walked Khan away while holding a contract on a PADD for him to sign. Marooning probably would not be a leading candidate among the scenarios, and Kirk would be likely to have an officer (Uhura?) dedicated to rumor management anyway.
Timo Saloniemi
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I would wish for Khan and company to get the 'death of personality' treatment as seen on Babylon 5, and for Khan to be given the personality of a certain fictitious 1930's genetically engineered surgeon/physicist/inventor/adventurer who used his gifts to help humankind rather than to subjugate it. That would be the best thing to happen, ever, and be ironic as well.
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The Eugenics Wars did not completely devastate the planet. Neither, apparently, did World War III. So there was still infrastructure left by which starships could be built.
Not so on Ceti Alpha. There was never any technology there to begin with.
Two crew members over coffee in the rec room.
Crewperson 1: Hey, did you pass out when all the decks were flooded with anesthetic gas?
Crewperson 2: Yeah, I guess so. It's not really any of my business, though.
People would have known he was there, yes. But that doesn't mean they would have physically seen him, or have been told what Kirk decided to do with him. That was on a "need to know" basis, and clearly there were very few people on the ship who needed to know.
I don't buy into the idea that Chekov was among the "need to know" people. He was way too far down the totem pole at this point - so far down that he wasn't even on-screen. It's more reasonable to assume that Khan saw him off-screen, either in Engineering or on the crew roster (if you woke up on a spaceship centuries in the future and were given access to the computer, wouldn't you want to know who else was on the ship and if they had skills or weaknesses you could use?).
It's also more reasonable, in my opinion, to assume that Chekov didn't find out until much later in his career what happened to Khan. A First Officer's rank carries a lot of privilege, including the privilege of gossip with other high-ranking officers. My personal theory is that he and McCoy were reminiscing over drinks some shore leave and McCoy let it slip: "Khan? Oh, yeah... we put him down on Ceti Alpha V, nice place, they should do okay there... where's that waitress? Another mint julep, please."
The "random personnel" could have been department heads in various areas of the ship.
Not only did Chekov recognize the ship name "Botany Bay" as an "oh crap we need to leave, NOW!" thing, he recognizes Khan as soon as Khan's face is seen. He also knows Khan was left on Ceti Alpha V, where there was life...a fair chance. Add to this that Khan recognizes Mr. Chekov as well. ("I'd never thought to see your face again".)
What is missing here is why USS Reliant's sensor thought Ceti Alpha V was Ceti Alpha VI. Chekov said they were having trouble with one scanner, but that was because it was picking up life on what was suppose to be a lifeless planet and that would have messed up their probably already too long and tedious mission for Genesis. They seemed to be tired of looking for an exactingly dead world for Dr. Marcus by this point. They were looking for anyway to get the mission over with it seems. Perhaps to the point they were getting sloppy in their star system scans.
If it was in fact a twin planet, and the blast hadn't completely blow up Ceti Alpha VI, but shifted their orbital paths enough so they essentially swapped places, than it might have been enough for Starfleet to think Ceti Alpha V was the other planet and thus there was no reason to be concerned. Perhaps Starfleet thought Ceti Alpha V was destroyed and thus had written off Khan entirely 14 years before. Chekov still thought that Khan had brought his followers, somehow, to Ceti Alpha VI up until Khan angrily corrects him on to what planet they are standing on.
What is missing here is why USS Reliant's sensor thought Ceti Alpha V was Ceti Alpha VI. Chekov said they were having trouble with one scanner, but that was because it was picking up life on what was suppose to be a lifeless planet and that would have messed up their probably already too long and tedious mission for Genesis. They seemed to be tired of looking for an exactingly dead world for Dr. Marcus by this point. They were looking for anyway to get the mission over with it seems. Perhaps to the point they were getting sloppy in their star system scans.
If it was in fact a twin planet, and the blast hadn't completely blow up Ceti Alpha VI, but shifted their orbital paths enough so they essentially swapped places, than it might have been enough for Starfleet to think Ceti Alpha V was the other planet and thus there was no reason to be concerned. Perhaps Starfleet thought Ceti Alpha V was destroyed and thus had written off Khan entirely 14 years before. Chekov still thought that Khan had brought his followers, somehow, to Ceti Alpha VI up until Khan angrily corrects him on to what planet they are standing on.
This still leaves open the possibility that the faces of the two characters would have appeared in visual records of some sort. But IMHO it's not a possibility worth pondering much. I mean, Khan probably was bored stiff on the planet and might have gone through all sorts of records (including 23rd century ones, so that he learns "Klingon" proverbs), but Chekov "later" stumbling on records of Khan is worse than him seeing the man in "Space Seed" because it needlessly shortens the time in which he could have forgotten Khan.
Because V looked like VI to the sensors? I mean, it did. If there were any inaccuracies or mismatches, surely those would rather be chalked up as inaccurate records than an error in the reality of the universe. They come looking for the local desert planet, they see the local desert planet from afar, they head for the local desert planet, they enter orbit above the local desert planet. Why look anywhere else?
As you say, they had exacting specs for "dead planet". They couldn't be doing a blind search, as that would get them nowhere. They were ticking off desert planets from some sort of a list, then. And it then wouldn't be of any interest to them to study anything but the desert planet in each of the systems on their list.
Or then the records gave orbital parameters X for CAVI, and when our sidekicks saw the parameters in their sensors in fact were Y, they went "Stupid records and their errors! Okay, call Ensign Wossname down at Archives Department and tell him, her, I don't care, to punch in the correct parameters for future use".
It's not as if our heroes would ever have relied on the orbital parameters of a planet. To the contrary, they had seen their share of mobile planets... And when they did rely on more localized coordinates in "Mark of Gideon", see where that got them!
Timo Saloniemi
I never understood the problem here. Reliant arrived looking for a barren, lifeless planet roughly X million kilometers from its star and found one. Khan's language about the orbit of CA-5 being shifted and everything being laid waste is sufficient explanation for the confusion.
...A typical layman's worry here would be "but it's the fifth rock from the star - how can they mistake it for the sixth?". But realizing it's the fifth would require carefully locating at least four other planets in the system and calculating their orbits, and the heroes should have zero interest in performing this chore.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
It's a total failure of "spacemanship." They weren't looking for some random lifeless planet, they were going to a specific planet in a known system. Unless the disaster moved CA6 into the exact orbit of the former planet, it's a big navigational error, and Reliant's captain only finds out about it because Khan tells him. It's a big enough hole that some further explanation would be welcome.
The "legal" proceedings in "Space Seed" are absurd, too, unless one wants to believe that the Federation condones kangaroo courts where the victim has jurisdiction to dismiss the charges in his own case. It's a fun episode, but it's not without some dumb points.
Say too that the system had 8 planets and imagine further that they were counting from the most distant planet inwards...8...7....6...BINGO!
I see the spacemanship issue from the opposite angle. An automated probe would have proceeded to "library coordinates" and found nothing there, then having to engage in a procedure to sort out the crushing failure of expectations and get the mission back on track. The crew of the Reliant demonstrates spacemanship by making a judgement call: they arrive at the assigned star system, then proceed towards the type of planet specified as the target, and the mission exploiting that type of planet can immediately commence. This immensely simplifies and hastens everything.
Is it bad to simplify and hasten? Only if there's a risk of things backfiring. But it then becomes a matter of risk analysis, which again is spacemanship. Did the Reliant crew err in their risk analysis? We do not know - that they did hit a snag is not the sign of a faulty analysis as such, because it's also possible a truly low-risk event actualized by chance.
We should give these people the benefit of doubt. They have been to space, and supposedly have learned that there's little point in relying on archived data on planetary orbits and the like. Going to coordinates would have resulted in an error of navigation. Going to apparent target merely actualized a risk.
Surely the victim can do that unless the crime specifically is of a type that precludes this? "Yes, you sleuths established my wife beat me, but no, you can't prosecute her because I say there's no case, so fuck off" is legal reality all over the globe today, and for a good reason.
Kirk never pressed charges on Sulu for fencing on the bridge, supposedly. How is Khan having violent fun on Kirk's ship different?
Certainly. But much of scifi worldbuilding is dumb, even in (and especially in) those cases where the real world later turns out the same way. We certainly shouldn't place our expectations over the implicit greater expertise of the characters when we're by definition out of our depth in this alien worldscape.
Timo Saloniemi
It shouldn't be a chore. Entering a solar system, counting the number of planets and verifying their positions with Starfleet records should be easy and automatic with the technology they have to work with. As another poster said, it should be done automatically by computer, and the computer should warn the crew when, oh, say, I don't know, like...a planet is missing????
I wondered why it was so difficult to find a lifeless planet in the first place. I mean really? Life is so prevalent in the Star Trek universe that it's hard to find a planet without it? Wow.
Remember what Carol said. "There can't be so much as a MICROBE, or the show's off."
How likely do you think it would be, to find a planet that is completely devoid of all life - even down to that level?
How likely do you think it would be, to find a planet that is completely devoid of all life - even down to that level?
At least 99% of the rocky bodies out there should meet those criteria ITRW.
But clearly the criteria of the Genesis Project are more exacting. And we get an idea of them by looking at Ceti Alpha V. Sure, it's Sandstorm City (and the actual target, CA VI, probably was very similar, just sans those sand eels). But it has got free oxygen - Khan wears no breathing gear, and his huts aren't airtight. How likely is that?
ITRW, "flat out impossible" would be an understatement. Free oxygen doesn't stay. But Trek could have quite a few previously life-bearing, probably artificially terraformed planets that have recently gone fallow: the life is gone, but some of the oxygen still lingers, not having been eaten by the rocks yet. Possibly Phase Three was to test a practical application, that is, the instantaneous (re-)terraforming of a planet that would subsequently become a source of vegetable wealth for the Federation, rather than immediately collapse for being the wrong type in the wrong place. Perhaps the lingering oxygen was a vital element. Or perhaps the lingering oxygen was but the one surefire indicator of otherwise suitable parameters, as it stood extremely direct proof of the world once having been exactly as desired.
Except it isn't. Spotting just the presence or absence of a planet takes quite a bit of effort in TOS, and it wouldn't make sense for the technology to have evolved much by the time of TWoK if it hasn't evolved before.
Why is spotting such a chore? For the real-world reason that planets are very difficult to see, even at close ranges? For some Trek-specific reason that also explains why "we today" (that is, our Trek equivalents) haven't seen all the wonders of the Trek sky even though they are there? For doctrinal reasons ("Don't scan or the Klingons will know you're there")? We don't know. We just know that spotting planets is a chore in Trek.
Timo Saloniemi
But clearly the criteria of the Genesis Project are more exacting. And we get an idea of them by looking at Ceti Alpha V. Sure, it's Sandstorm City (and the actual target, CA VI, probably was very similar, just sans those sand eels). But it has got free oxygen - Khan wears no breathing gear, and his huts aren't airtight. How likely is that?
ITRW, "flat out impossible" would be an understatement. Free oxygen doesn't stay. But Trek could have quite a few previously life-bearing, probably artificially terraformed planets that have recently gone fallow: the life is gone, but some of the oxygen still lingers, not having been eaten by the rocks yet. Possibly Phase Three was to test a practical application, that is, the instantaneous (re-)terraforming of a planet that would subsequently become a source of vegetable wealth for the Federation, rather than immediately collapse for being the wrong type in the wrong place. Perhaps the lingering oxygen was a vital element. Or perhaps the lingering oxygen was but the one surefire indicator of otherwise suitable parameters, as it stood extremely direct proof of the world once having been exactly as desired.
Except it isn't. Spotting just the presence or absence of a planet takes quite a bit of effort in TOS, and it wouldn't make sense for the technology to have evolved much by the time of TWoK if it hasn't evolved before.
Why is spotting such a chore? For the real-world reason that planets are very difficult to see, even at close ranges? For some Trek-specific reason that also explains why "we today" (that is, our Trek equivalents) haven't seen all the wonders of the Trek sky even though they are there? For doctrinal reasons ("Don't scan or the Klingons will know you're there")? We don't know. We just know that spotting planets is a chore in Trek.
Timo Saloniemi
This is what I always wondered. Were they just being lazy and didn't feel the need to do a long-range scan to verify the position of the planet they were heading for? I would have thought some form of automated warning would have come on somewhere that a planet is missing. The system was in Starfleet's charts.
I understand it's to serve the story, but the crew of the Reliant didn't seem exactly top-notch.
But the point remains, they're no different from Kirk's crew, which in turn isn't indicated to differ from Starfleet norm.
Kirk never cared about the position of the planet he was heading for. For all he knew, the planet might dodge, and so it was fruitless to anticipate.
Also, why warn about a missing planet? It's no risk to anybody, indeed it's pretty much the opposite.
This is the reality in which our heroes live and work. Not some wide-eyed NASA sortie into space in a raft that has to mind celestial mechanics, but constant hard work fighting unimaginable adversity with machines for which gravity is no concern.
Timo Saloniemi
Kirk never cared about the position of the planet he was heading for. For all he knew, the planet might dodge, and so it was fruitless to anticipate.
Also, why warn about a missing planet? It's no risk to anybody, indeed it's pretty much the opposite.
This is the reality in which our heroes live and work. Not some wide-eyed NASA sortie into space in a raft that has to mind celestial mechanics, but constant hard work fighting unimaginable adversity with machines for which gravity is no concern.
Timo Saloniemi
Back to the original question, I think if Khan and company was not sent to Ceti Alpha V, we would likely not be having this particular discussion about the confusion over Ceti Alpha V vs VI. No life would have been found on the selected planet,the Genesis device would have worked as planned, and maybe at some point someone in-universe may have wondered just what the hell happened to Ceti Alpha VI.