I did enjoy that one Myriad Universes story: "King Khan".
Oh. As in, from the seed. Took me a moment. Good one.
As a follow-up to this, the workprint only includes the bits with the child in Khan's Ceti Alpha settlement at the beginning of the film. As noted, it feels really strange in the cut to set it up without the final follow-through in that transporter room scene.
Unit publicist Eddie Egan told us they could not get the shots in the transporter because the Genesis torpedo prop's flashing lights scared the toddler. The stuffed animal behind the prop may have been there to try to entice the tot to approach it. The fact they couldn't get that bookend to the kid is as likely a reason as any for dropping the scenes.
Publicity photos.
The biggest thorn in my side about the Ceti alpha thing is that a planet exploded...wouldn't that have shown up on long range scans etc? and how does a planet simply explode?
Why not just say that a massive asteroid struck the planet and destroyed nearly all life...same effect but much more credible situation
Why not just say that a massive asteroid struck the planet and destroyed nearly all life...same effect but much more credible situation
Sounds cooler to have two planets crash into each other.
that would destroy both and then Pavel never gets worm brain....
Given the number of crazy anomalies and phenomena we've seen Our Heroes encounter throughout the franchise, it's easy enough for me to believe a planet could "just explode". The novels proposed at least two different ways for how it could have happened.
I can believe that Starfleet doesn't monitor the state of all planets all the time, and hence the explosion could have been missed easily enough. How Reliant didn't realize what had happened is more of a poser, though the TWOK novelization, IIRC, made it a bit of a combination of crew tedium after months of trying to find an appropriate planet for Genesis testing, and assuming that the old probe data they were working with was simply inaccurate, with it being implied that they didn't have knowledge of the E's former visit to the system.
I can believe that Starfleet doesn't monitor the state of all planets all the time, and hence the explosion could have been missed easily enough. How Reliant didn't realize what had happened is more of a poser, though the TWOK novelization, IIRC, made it a bit of a combination of crew tedium after months of trying to find an appropriate planet for Genesis testing, and assuming that the old probe data they were working with was simply inaccurate, with it being implied that they didn't have knowledge of the E's former visit to the system.
It should have stood way out, plus a system chart check should have made it easier to count to 5 and not 6.
Right. The energy required to disintegrate an Earth-sized planet would outshine the planet's star, so even if Starfleet didn't have FTL sensors (which they do), it would've been visible as soon as the Reliant came within 15 light-years.
The recent Khan audio drama came up with an explanation both for that and for how the crew could've gotten the fifth and sixth planets mixed up. It didn't make it into the actual series, but the writers talked about here on the forum, I think. It involved a special kind of chaotic orbit where two bodies orbit close together in resonance and shift unpredictably within a range of orbital paths, sometimes inverting with one another. So the Reliant crew knew that one of the twin planets had exploded, but guessed wrong about which one because they didn't know the orbits had flipped. As for why the planet exploded, that was explained too, but it's a spoiler.
End result of grade inflation.
With Starfleet sensors, yes, but in real life that would be harder than it sounds. It's doable, but you'd have to spend some time taking photos and comparing them to see which tiny dots move against the stars.
Since the Ceti Alpha system was already mapped, Reliant would think they knew exactly where planet 6 should be. Either planet 5 was in exactly that orbit and spot, by an unbelievable coincidence, or Reliant's navigator laid eyes on the shifted planet 5 and said "Huh! That's not where 6 was supposed to be! But whatever. If I mention the discrepancy, it might turn out to be my mistake and I'll look like a fool."
It reminds me of Walter famously admitting that he didn't mention his absense from "Space Seed" because he feared they would cut his part in TWOK. Sometimes people don't tell you things, for reasons of their own.
I wish that were just a joke, but the youtube videos showing young adults with no knowledge are terrifying. Primary and secondary education fell off a cliff in the U.S. circa Covid. And they're filtering into the universities, which have had to dumb down rather than flunk so many customers.
there was a story in my local paper about it that's gotten some media attention.
I would think the discrepancy would stand out.
Where does it say decades for Marla's death?
I never thought it was a fact that the child was Khan's. It was only reference to a supposed prop painting -- in an interview with someone in a magazine?
I wish people would stop assuming the Ceti Alpha system only has six planets.
Star Trek is full of unbelievable coincidences, so, why not one more.
Khan explained it:Ceti Alpha IV exploded, so, I assume only a debris field (large and possible dispersed by the shock wave) was present. The shock wave also shifted Ceti Alpha V's orbit to Ceti Alpha VI's orbit, and I assume it ploughed through some of the Ceti Alpha VI debris field which laid waste the planet. With orbital passes over the next 14 and 1/2 years, Ceti Alpha V coincidentally now looks like Ceti Alpha VI in both appearance and in Ceti Alpha VI's old orbit. Apparently, the Reliant never did a system wide scan to remap the system nor look for Ceti Alpha V, hence the screw up. YMMV
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Which is completely impossible. The most basic issue there is that there are no "shock waves" in a vacuum, something sci-fi almost always gets wrong. (Well, there are very faint shock waves in the interstellar medium, but since shock waves are basically sound waves, they're so weak as to be functionally nonexistent.) Not to mention that shock waves don't actually push things, just pass through them. (Being hit by a shock wave from an explosion wouldn't send you flying through the air, it would cause a fatal overpressure shock in your circulatory system, or burst your organs where you stood.) Blast waves, the expanding gases from an explosion, can push things, but how could a blast wave suck a planet inward into the same orbit as the thing that blew up?
The redistribution of gravitational forces in the system as the debris from the destroyed planet spread out could affect the other planets' orbits, but I doubt it would cause the next planet inward to move outward to that extent; if anything, it would have the opposite effect, since planet V would no longer be receiving periodic outward tugs from planet VI as they passed each other. But such redistribution would be relatively minor and would probably take thousands of years at least. Not to mention that an orbit has at least six distinct parameters defining its size, shape, and orientation, and the odds that any disruption could move one planet into the identical orbit of a different one are infinitesimal.
As I said, the only good explanation anyone's ever come up with for this is the one from the Khan audio drama/podcast by Kirsten Beyer & David Mack. The two planets were in a chaotic resonant orbit with overlapping, unpredictable orbital paths that sometimes switched their relative positions, which is the only way one could have been confused for the other.
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