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What if Khan and company was not sent to Ceti Alpha V?

...Alas, there would have been those Ceti Eels down on what Terrell and the Marcuses mistook for Ceti Alpha VI, and when Genesis hit those, a new master race would have emerged to take over the universe.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
...Alas, there would have been those Ceti Eels down on what Terrell and the Marcuses mistook for Ceti Alpha VI, and when Genesis hit those, a new master race would have emerged to take over the universe.

Timo Saloniemi
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Maybe TNG is actually set in a different timeline and that is what did happen - how else do you explain the Ferengi????
 
Timo said:
On the issue of the planetary mixup, there's no precedent to our heroes idly scanning planetary systems for the presence or absence of planets. Indeed, "Doomsday Machine" nicely shows how much effort such a thing takes: Sulu is "within the limits" of the star system L-370 before he notices that all the planets there are now gone. And that's a system that Sulu is revisiting after having himself participated in charting it less than a year ago.

When approaching Earth, Chekov would be extremely unlikely to check whether Pluto, Mercury or Mars still existed. Indeed, as far as we know, he has never done such a thing. When approaching the jungle planet in System X-123, he would likewise be extremely unlikely to check whether the local ice planets and rock planets and gas giants were in place, or off by a smidgen, or taking a vacation altogether. Consequently, if his sensors showed a jungle planet, there'd be no way for him to tell whether that's X-123-IV or X-123-VI, and he'd be utterly disinterested in knowing.

And if X-123-Jungle itself were a few million kilometers from where it "should" be, Chekov would just make a trivial course correction. After all, "should" is neither here nor there as regards "is".

Getting back to the thread topic, it's an interesting issue, but rather unrelated to the above, that Chekov doesn't appear to realize at first that Ceti Alpha equals Khan. The three interpretations are clear, choosing between them less so:

1) Chekov doesn't remember that Ceti Alpha is where they marooned Khan.

2) Chekov doesn't know that Ceti Alpha is where they marooned Khan.

3) Chekov thinks that being on Ceti Alpha VI is sufficient reason not to worry about Khan, who is stuck on Ceti Alpha V and probably dead anyway.

It's easy to plead #1 because our heroes get around - Khan is just a forgettable adventure among hundreds, and his place of exile a mere name and a number among tens of thousands. But then we have to consider why Chekov hasn't refreshed his memory on the topic of the star system they are approaching. And there we have to decide whether Khan has been omitted/erased from records, or whether Chekov simply doesn't give a damn about records. The former is IMHO likelier, because Chekov was raised by Spock who always gives the obligatory exposition about the target planet at this stage of an adventure.

It's not difficult to plead #2, either. We didn't see Chekov in "Space Seed". He was probably aboard because Khan claims to remember his face and even correctly associates it with his name; stardates would have us believe he came aboard for "Catspaw" at the very latest, 130 SDs (probably a month and a half) before Khan. But he wasn't the navigator on duty when Khan's ship was found, and it's possible he wasn't the navigator on duty when Khan was marooned, either. And Kirk never tells his crew where the ship is going or what she's doing.

Dramatically, #3 is the least satisfactory - Chekov's surprise appears far too complete, his dawning recognition of the name Botany Bay at odds with the idea that he would rapidly shift mental gears from "Khan is over there" to "Eek, Khan is here!".

Timo Saloniemi
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I thought the earliest star date with Chekov on board was in Patterns of Force? 2534.0 and I know it's been rejected or something somehow somewhere...
JB
 
Chekov got a bump on the head and forgot. (There's not a plot defect that can't be explained away by a timely concussion; love them concussions :techman:)

Kahn is a bit like Moriarty in TNG, they forgot about him as well. Sailed straight out of the mind!

And of course neither man nor hologram take being forgotten too well.:mad:
 
It's just that "Patterns of Force" has no stardate. It's not mentioned in the dialogue, and there are no Okudagrams where it could be glimpsed, either. Memory Alpha has the dirt on this, as usual.

Apart from that, we don't have many relative dating cues built into the episode (no, "don't date relatives" doesn't count - it's not there). But I guess the significant thing is, "Catspaw" does have dialogue to the effect that Chekov there is new to the bridge, or at least risks being considered "green". Read as much into that as you wish.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
Khan himself was redefined as "genetically engineered" back in ST2:The Wrath of You-Know-Who already. Doesn't mean anything much - eugenics is genetic engineering, although genetic engineering today isn't limited to eugenics.

So far, we have learned of no selective breeding program existing as such, not in the Trek 20th century or before. It appears Khan emerged out of thin air, not out of umpteen generations of almost-supermen. And for all we know, he emerged fairly shortly before his big coup, aging faster than normal humans, as his children in ST2:TWoK seem to reach full adulthood within fifteen years or so. All this may better fit the ENT take of things than any 1960s-style interpretation of the "Space Seed" dialogue.

Spock in "Space Seed" associates the 1990s Eugenics War(s) with an "attempt" to better mankind with selective breeding. Perhaps a program was launched at that date, instead of completed? Perhaps it was launched by engineering superior creatures and then trying to stop the non-superior ones from breeding? The first part obviously worked, while the second may be what was left at the "attempt" stage.

Or then there was secretive selective breeding for several generations, and we just haven't heard much of it. Perhaps Spock feels the World Wars aka the Eugenics Wars were all about racial purging, and Khan and his ilk are just part of that continuum, either because the Nazis or whoever kept on breeding supermen in some secret Himalayan cave, or because Spock sees no reason to differentiate between the 1980s lab project to create Khan in a petri dish and the global experiment with killing the inferior around the 1930s-40s.

The bottom line is that there's no bottom line yet - the full story remains to be written. Or, more accurately, filmed, as there are novels that do spell it all out.

Timo Saloniemi
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As a kid in the 80s, I always made the mental comparison between Khan's engineering, and an arc of the original GI Joe cartoon, where Cobra literally creates their new Emperor by grave robbing the tombs of history's greatest warriors and leaders for DNA samples.
 
alensatemybuick1 said:
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.;)
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Well then the question asked becomes, what would have happened to Khan, and what kind of civilization would he have built, on a different, lush tamable planet somewhere else?

And what would the Federation have done with Genesis?
 
Khan probably wouldn't have built any civilizations anywhere if not for the events of "Space Seed". He just doesn't sound the type - and the very idea appears to take him by surprise at the conclusion of that episode.

So, if Kirk doesn't send him to Ceti Alpha V, he just takes over the starship again and so yes, "they would be dead".

If Kirk doesn't even encounter him, his alarm clock never rings and he's still drifting through uninteresting space, deep asleep, as TNG folds. Then those couple of followers of his whose cryochambers had failed would soon get company, and so yes, "they would be dead".

And the Federation would have fired Genesis on the Moon to combat that horrible interstellar famine, and missed, and so yes, "they would be dead".

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well I assumed the question was, what if they were dropped on a *different* planet, instead of Ceti Alpha? Therefore, one that doesn't have a sister planet explode?

If Kirk doesn't even encounter him, his alarm clock never rings and he's still drifting through uninteresting space, deep asleep, as TNG folds. Then those couple of followers of his whose cryochambers had failed would soon get company, and so yes, "they would be dead".
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Or, they would have been discovered in the TNG era, by different people. What if the 20th century people Picard discovered back in S1 was actually the Botany Bay? ;)

Are you implying they would have terraformed Earth's moon? Is there any canon evidence of what the Moon is used for in the future?


If Khan and his people had enough time and resources on a lush, tameable planet, I had the rather interesting mental picture of them starting with 19th century technology in order to rig the most basic designs necessary for spaceflight, based on his readings of the 23rd century tech, producing some strange retro steam punk crazy looking space craft that shouldn't be able to fly, but does..... kind of like how 60s Doc had to reproduce 80s components in back to the future, and made the car look all crazy and retro.
 
...The Moon looks exactly like it does today whenever we see it in the TOS movies.

Riker claims to Cochrane that it looks different in the 24th century (where we don't actually get to see it up close, except in "Conspiracy" where again we see stupid old craters and nothing else, although admittedly that's not the Earth-facing side), but he's probably bullshitting the old fool. It's daytime in the movie, and it would be very difficult to see anything on the Moon. Riker mentions Lake Armstrong - a highly reflective body of domed-over water, or perhaps a remarkable new basalt feature, perhaps the result of a doomsday weapon being wielded against a Moonbase? (That'd have to be after WWIII, because that war was already over when Riker made his claim.) A fully terraformed Moon is the least likely option.

The thing is, Marcus claimed Genesis would help fight interstellar famine. It wouldn't do to fire the thing at each starving planet's respective Sahara Desert - way too much risk. So a separate dead body would need to be converted. But in order to haul the involved immense amounts of bulk - say, grain - that body ought to be close to the end user. So, good old Luna for those starving Parisians and Muscovites and whatnot...

It's sorta ironic that Khan is forced by Kirk to engage in colonizing the wilderness - and ends up using a terraforming tool in his revenge.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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