He was already pissed and crazy. That why he was abandoned in the first place. It’s also why he was floating on that derelict cryoship. Kirk was justified. Earth of the past was justified.
Sleep well.
That, and he committed genocide.
well, yeah. that’s why he and his crew ended up in space in the first place,
Well, he had reason to become more pissed and crazy.
Earth of the past chickened out of solving its problem. What was done wasn’t observing humane (in case they decided he deserved a humane treatment), and wasn’t effective either (in case they didn’t).
Earth didn’t chicken out, Khan escaped with his most trusted people and the non-augmented humans won the war.
My bad here. I’ve always assumed people froze them on purpose. I have actually seen that episode, but has been a long time.
Kirk chickened out in Space Seed.
Did he? Or did he do the humane thing as befitting a Starfleet officer? Just because it didn’t turn out well in the end doesn’t mean he was in the wrong to do it. He was in the wrong never coming back to check on Khan, especially when he left one of his crew behind.
You know who I think the real villain of The Wrath of Khan is?
Carol Marcus.
She used military resources to create and test a device that could obviously be used as a weapon (it was even supposed to be loaded into a torpedo) that was not stored securely enough. And she claimed it was intended only for peaceful uses.
People tried to find peaceful purposes for nuclear weapons as well. They just didn’t fool themselves that what they were doing was for the good of the world (or the galaxy in Carol Marcus’ case).
On top of that, she had the Reliant explore the Ceti Alpha system and there had to be Starfleet records that the system was inhabited even if the specific planet wasn’t, making testing the device an inherent risk. Expecting me to believe that there are no lifeless bodies in uninhabited systems is ridiculous.
(Why no one noticed a planet was missing in the Ceti Alpha system is a question I can’t answer.)
She offered Khan a chance to escape his planet, get control of a powerful ship and steal a weapon of mass destruction.
Also, on a more minor note, she didn’t tell David that his father existed and made him hate Starfleet.
My head canon for what happened to Ceti Alpha and Khan is Kirk submitted his captain’s log and Star Fleet classified it out of fear of an unfinished rivalry built up around the conclusion of the Eugenics Wars. The Reliant had no ability to access that information and only had the same stale info on Ceti Alpha that Kirk had a decade prior.
The real villain is the Federation for funding what could easily be a weapon AND hiding details of an exiled war criminal. There are so many skeletons in the Federation closet that with enough radiation it would be a Halloween episode if Section 31 ever became a show.
yeah, i’m sure that Kirk finding the Khan Noonian Sing - the mastermind and worst of the worst from The Eugenics Wars - and then just dumping him on some planet isn’t something that Starfleet blabs to any Tom, Dick, and Captain Tyrell. However, it would have been nice of Kirk to leave a warning buoy in orbit containing a message along the lines of “DANGER: GENOCIDAL MASS-MURDERER ON THE SURFACE OF THIS PLANET ALONG WITH HIS ENTIRE CREW OF GENETICALLY-MODIFIED PSYCHOPATHS! DO NOT LAND HERE-- EVER!!”
although, had the USS Reliant detonated the Genesis device on Ceti Alpha V with Khan & The Gang still on the surface, would it had made a new Class M planet with a bunch of Khan-derived life-forms? Since it would have been made from their constituent parts, would the whole planet been full of Khans and Joachims, etc? Or, perhaps, a bunch plants and primates, etc. that just looked a lot like them?
Joachim
although, had the USS Reliant detonated the Genesis device on Ceti Alpha V with Khan & The Gang still on the surface, would it had made a new Class M planet with a bunch of Khan-derived life-forms?
According to LD, any living thing caught up in the Genesis device’s explosion becomes part of its matrix.
Which should mean that the planet on ST III would have been partially Khan-derived. Maybe that’s why it was a mess.
The in-universe explanation for that was because they used protmatter, according to David Marcus. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also the fancy CGI presentation suggested that the Genesis device was supposed to be delivered to a planet surface, it was actually detonated in a nebula. And it apparently created not only a planet but a star in a few hours.
That was backed up in season 4 of LD. Apparently it can turn a nebula into a planet.
Also, somehow, that nebula is within close enough orbit of a star that it can support human life once it’s a planet.
🤷
And when Khan had basically won and Kirk & Co. we’re trying to limp to safety he was all like:
“No, I must risk everything to kill Kirk!”
Khan and his crew could have gone off and found a Class M planet to settle on but he was too obsessive.
Khan’s first officer even tells him that exact plan and Khan doubles down on murder.
Yep.
Joachim : We’re all with you, sir. But, consider this. We are free. We have a ship, and the means to go where we will. We have escaped permanent exile on Ceti Alpha V. You have defeated the plans of Admiral Kirk. You do not need to defeat him again.
Khan : He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I’ll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition’s flames before I give him up!
His obsession with Kirk was his own downfall. It’s actually an interesting parallel with Spock’s sacrifice. Spock sacrificed his life because he believed that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. Khan sacrificed his people and then his own life because he believed his own needs outweighed the needs of his people.
At the risk of stating the well-known, Khan’s line references Moby Dick:
He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.
and:
Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up.
I did not know that, thanks for posting!
when Chekov is in the Botany Bay cargo carriers/shelters and looks at the bookshelf, there’s a very conspicuously-placed copy of Moby Dick sitting there.
As Kahn is activating the Genesis device he directly quotes Ahab from chapter 135, starting with “to the last…”
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
Reading the text of Moby Dick? Okay, cool.
Hearing it performed by Ricardo Montalban? Some of the best goddamn poetic prose ever.
Exactly. Kirk is his white whale and his obsession with killing him ends up being his death.
And years later, Picard overcame his White Whale.
Kahn read Moby Dick, was in the habit of quoting it, completely missed the point of the book.
I’m laughing at the ‘superior intellect.’
Hey man, tell it to Spock. He’s the one who called Khan “quite intelligent,” which is not exactly something he’d say about most of his fellow crew.
Of course, Khan then proved himself to be a complete idiot afterward, so maybe it’s just that Spock is a poor judge of these things. Maybe McCoy was the genius all along.
Counterpoint: Khan tried to take over the Enterprise and kill Kirk with basically no provocation. Kirk even found out he was a 20th century dictator and all he did was confine him to his quarters. He didn’t even put him in the brig. It sucks that Ceti Alpha IV became inhospitable to life, but the fact that he let him live freely on a planet instead of spending his life in a Federation prison was a pretty sweet deal.
Kirk’s only crime was not coming back to check on Khan or sending anyone else to check on him either, although that could totally be down to Starfleet command. Although even if SFC didn’t send anyone, you would think Kirk would want to make sure his former crewmember was doing all right.
Yeah, it definitely would have been consistent with Kirk’s character to want to check in. But honestly, if he was like, “You tried to blow up the ship and kill my entire crew. I’m giving you some supplies and then you’re on your own,” that would have been more than fair. Now, if he knew Ceti Alpha VI blew up and was like, “meh, not my problem,” that would be one thing, but it seems like everyone in the Federation was caught off guard there.
Fair apart from Lieutenant McGivers being left behind too. That is the one inconsistent part. That he didn’t check on her welfare.
Fair enough. I can’t remember exactly how much she helped him, but I’m guessing she didn’t help him set the engines to self- destruct, so it’s not like she tried to kill anyone. You could argue that she made the choice to join them instead of facing court-martial, so it’s not on Kirk’s head, but I probably would have checked in, if for no other reason than to make sure she wasn’t being abused by the übermenschen.
if for no other reason than to make sure she wasn’t being abused by the übermenschen.
Although there’s also a question if Khan and his augments really were superior anymore. Sure, you have to apply some “triumph of humanity” mumbo-jumbo that Gene was fond of, but normal human Kirk outhinks Khan in both Space Seed and Star Trek II and Khan’s physical strength doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage in the 23rd century when humanity mixes with alien races far stronger than any augment could hope to be. Spock physically deals with Khan very easily in Space Seed and you could argue that he’s a sort of natural augment, being a mixture of human and Vulcan genes (and apparently getting all the advantages of the Vulcan genes).
Even in the 24th century, Julian and the other augments when they came to DS9 didn’t really help with anything and almost made things worse. In fact, pretty much the only augmented human that seems to have actually had some truly useful superior abilities by then was Julian.
Maybe the Eugenics Wars really failed because Khan’s genetic enhancements didn’t give he and his people the advantages it had been hoped they would have. Maybe that’s why Kirk thought his lieutenant would be okay. But I know I would have checked to make sure.
Although there’s also a question if Khan and his augments really were superior anymore…normal human Kirk outhinks Khan in both Space Seed and Star Trek II and Khan’s physical strength doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage in the 23rd century.
Very true. You could argue that it was really Spock that out-thought Khan in the end of the second movie (“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates 2 dimensional thinking.”). But the TOS episode definitely makes it seem like Khan was overhyped. The entire time he’s built up as his mental and physical superior, and Kirk’s brilliant gambit to defeat him is, “beat him with a pipe.”
True about Spock out-thinking him to the point of defeat in STII. I was thinking about Kirk taking over the Reliant and lowering its shields without Khan realizing he could even do that. It wasn’t the final defeat, but that should have just been an obvious contingency for Khan to plan for if he had the superior intellect he was supposed to have. He learned how to control the Enterprise in a very short amount of time, but he didn’t even check the Reliant’s computer to find out if it could be remotely accessed with a code that an admiral would probably be able to get.
It’s even made clear in dialogue in the film that Khan never thought of it.
SPOCK: Reliant’s prefix number is one six three zero nine.
SAAVIK: I don’t understand.
KIRK: You have to learn why things work on a starship.
SPOCK: Each ship has its combination code.
KIRK: To prevent an enemy do what we’re attempting. Using our console to order Reliant to lower her shields.
SPOCK: Assuming he hasn’t changed the combination. He’s quite intelligent.
So I don’t know about Spock’s assessment of his intelligence. Even in the alternate 1990s of TOS… there had already been remote-controlled space probes by 1967 when Space Seed came out.
He also gave him the choice, and Kahn picked CA4.
Better to rule in hell…
Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that! Also, I was wrong, it was Ceti Alpha 5, not 4.
THIS is Ceti Alpha Five!!!
Oh yes we all read that in his voice!
I read it in Gerard Butler’s voice.
Yeah, I can’t believe I got that wrong. That’s the third most iconic line in that film.
Yea I get justifiably angry too, but I’m not jamming bugs in people’s ears, before stealing a tank and driving it through Greg’s house!
God damn it, Greg!
I’ll just stick with water torture
Anyone else think this was about Genghis Khan? No just me ok…
Is like to learn the justification for his wrath tbh
hunh. And I was listening to the soundtrack tonight too.
