S02.E03: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

[millennium]

Was La'an's description of Khan as a "mass-murderer" a retcon?

Memory Alpha records:

Quote

From 1992 to 1996, Khan was absolute ruler of more than one-quarter of Earth's population, including regions of Asia and the Middle East. Considered "the best of tyrants"; Khan's reign was considered the most benevolent. His regime was free of much of the problems that plagued Earth history of that era – as Khan was never known for engaging in genocide or wars of aggression. However, the citizens of his regime enjoyed little freedom. Khan had little, if any, respect for individual liberty, which was also a key issue for Earth history. As such, personal initiative and financial investment were low, and scientific progress suffered as a result.

I don't recall him being described or considered a "mass-murderer" in Space Seed.   Had that been the case, I think he would have received an entirely different reception from Kirk and crew from the very start.

[paigow]

1 hour ago, millennium said:

Was La'an's description of Khan as a "mass-murderer" a retcon?

Memory Alpha records:

I don't recall him being described or considered a "mass-murderer" in Space Seed.   Had that been the case, I think he would have received an entirely different reception from Kirk and crew from the very start.

 

[millennium]

3 hours ago, paigow said:

 

Khan was given a captain's dinner.   He leaves the impression he was a tyrant and fascist -- a genetically engineered political strongman who posed a dire threat to freedom on Earth.   But nothing about mass murder.

Once more, the SNW writers are proving their unfamiliarity with TOS.   They have improperly elevated Khan to the level of Hitler or Pol Pot, possibly so they can passively suggest that cliche fantasy debate, If you could go back in time to kill Hitler, would you do it?

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by millennium

[marinw]

This has already been mentioned upthread but I can't get past the "Bribing a border guard" thing. Good luck with that! Unless Kirk and La'an are also adept at Jedi Mind tricks "You don't need to see our identification"

Edited July 5, 2023 by marinw

[tv-talk]

3 hours ago, millennium said:

They have improperly elevated Khan to the level of Hitler or Pol Pot,

Right? I would imagine there arent too many Germans who kept the last name "Hitler", yet here we are century later and the "Noonian-Singh's" are still going strong. That speaks more to the history we get from Space Seed. Khan may have been a dictator and strongman but genocide wasnt on his agenda. Well not until after he was left on Set Alpha5 anyway!

[paigow]

5 minutes ago, tv-talk said:

Well not until after he was left on Set Alpha5 anyway!

And Reliant lost the ability to count planets... And Chekhov was retconned into TOS!Space Seed...

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, millennium said:

Khan was given a captain's dinner.   He leaves the impression he was a tyrant and fascist -- a genetically engineered political strongman who posed a dire threat to freedom on Earth.   But nothing about mass murder.

Once more, the SNW writers are proving their unfamiliarity with TOS.   They have improperly elevated Khan to the level of Hitler or Pol Pot, possibly so they can passively suggest that cliche fantasy debate, If you could go back in time to kill Hitler, would you do it?

 

Even if we were to accept that it was true that Khan was not a genocidal tyrant in the original timeline, this episode shows the timeline has changed. Khan was originally supposed to have reigned in the 1990s. Now it is 2022 and he's but a pre-teen. 

But I don't think one gets to be a tyrant or fascist on the scale that Khan and his fellow supermen were without also falling in the category of "mass murderer" -- especially from the perspective of the enlightened 23rd century Federation people. 

I think in the clip that was provided  above and the rest of Space Seed it's clear that Khan and his like were like Hitler and Pol Pot, and responsible for millions of deaths.

Indeed, as Memory Alpha points out, Picard named Khan in the same breath as Hitler.

If you want to get on the show for going on the well-worn "should we kill baby Hitler" trope, that's fair. But it's not a deviation from TOS to do it. 

13 minutes ago, tv-talk said:

Right? I would imagine there arent too many Germans who kept the last name "Hitler", yet here we are century later and the "Noonian-Singh's" are still going strong. That speaks more to the history we get from Space Seed. Khan may have been a dictator and strongman but genocide wasnt on his agenda. Well not until after he was left on Set Alpha5 anyway!

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yvqx8x/meet-the-hitlers-matt-ogens-interview-183

[Sandman]

14 hours ago, millennium said:

Wasn't the Kelvin Kirk also born in space?

Good point!

[tv-talk]

2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I think in the clip that was provided  above and the rest of Space Seed it's clear that Khan and his like were like Hitler and Pol Pot, and responsible for millions of deaths.

I'd say there is a big difference between wars fought between local dicators and actual, intentional genocide. Khan was battling the other augments right? Wasnt that the eugenics wars? At no point did he ever express the sentiment that regular humans, as inferior as he felt them to be, should all be wiped out for his master race...unless I'm forgetting something anyway

[Chicago Redshirt]

22 minutes ago, tv-talk said:

I'd say there is a big difference between wars fought between local dicators and actual, intentional genocide. Khan was battling the other augments right? Wasnt that the eugenics wars? At no point did he ever express the sentiment that regular humans, as inferior as he felt them to be, should all be wiped out for his master race...unless I'm forgetting something anyway

We don't really know much about the details of what the Eugenics Wars involved from what was on screen in Space Seed and Wrath of Khan. (And as this episode says, factors have intervened to make it so the Eugenics Wars that TOS characters knew about happened differently anyhow).

As we saw in the clip above from Space Seed, the dinner conversation had Khan putting a pretty face on what went on during them. Spock fences with Khan about it, with Khan playing down what had happened and acting as though he wasn't one of the tyrants until Khan finally admits that he was part of the group offering order.

We are told elsewhere in Space Seed IIRC that the supermen controlled a quarter of the globe at one point. So it's not just wars fought between local dictators. It was WWIII.

What each of the tyrants did in order to fight with the other tyrants is again unclear. 

I think it safe to say in a conflict called "The Eugenics Wars" with genetically engineered superhumans, there was some amount of weeding out "undesirables"
and that such weeding out of undesirables can be classified as genocide.

But again, I do not think there is an actual line or scene from TOS that actually shows that Khan and the rest were not genocidal, and there is a line from TNG that equates him with Hitler. 

[tv-talk]

fwiw:

 

Quote

It was unknown how he viewed or treated those under his rule, although they had very little freedom. Unlike the other Augment despots, however, Khan's reign had enjoyed peace. The people were not massacred, and Khan avoided war until his region was attacked. Khan considered himself a benign dictator or one who led by a form of "gentle authoritarianism", as such he was thus among the most admired of the so-called "tyrants" into the 23rd century, being called the "best of the tyrants" by James T. Kirk. (TOS: "Space Seed"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; ENT: "Borderland")

 

[marinw]

On 7/2/2023 at 5:10 PM, paigow said:

These Time Cops will definitely show up to make sure that Pike does not avoid his accident...

I've been thinking about that. The SNW writers have given themselves a huge out when it comes to sticking with the TOS Canon. Pike's injuries will still  happen, but it will happen much further in the future, or Pike's injuries won't be as severe, or all the messing around with the time line could bring about some huge medical breakthrough. Pike revisiting or not revisiting Talos 4 seems a lot less consequential than Khan's influence on Earth's history being delayed by a few decades.

Edited July 5, 2023 by marinw

[Raja]

10 minutes ago, marinw said:

I've been thinking about that. The SNW writers have given themselves a huge out when it comes to sticking with the TOS Canon. Pike's injuries will still  happen, but it will happen much further in the future, or Pike's injuries won't be as severe, or all the messing around with the time line could bring about some huge medical breakthrough. Pike revisiting or not revisiting Talos 4 seems a lot less consequential than Khan's influence on Earth's history being delayed by a few decades.

They wouldn't dare retcon away the franchise pilot 

[Chicago Redshirt]

53 minutes ago, tv-talk said:

fwiw:

 

 

Unfortunately, it is not worth much to me.

It's unclear how much of that is what actually happened vs. revisionist history.

As I said: from what was in Space Seed and TWOK, there is very little that is actually said about what went on.

Space Seed said the records that survived from then were fragmented, that Khan personally controlled a quarter of the globe before being ousted. Scotty says there were no massacres under his rule and that he had admiration for Khan. There's the verbal jousting about what happened at the dinner above. That's about it.

TWOK doesn't go into detail about what happened during the Eugenic Wars either.

It's been a while since I saw Borderland, so I'm going to assume much of that summary comes from there. If so, it likely comes from either an Augment or the Soong character Brent Spiner plays, neither of whom I would take as a reliable narrator for what had happened in the Eugenics Wars.

But taking the entry as true, it doesn't stop it from being the case that Khan was benevolent toward his people but genocidal toward those ruled over by other tyrants. Being the best of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini doesn't mean that you aren't a genocidal monster.

Edited July 5, 2023 by Chicago Redshirt

[tv-talk]

8 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Being the best of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini doesn't mean that you aren't a genocidal monster.

Obviously it's fine if that's how you think of the character, I'm just pointing out that per Millenium's point above- there is no actual evidence that he was a genocidal maniac. In fact, if my memory serves, in Space Seed the crew did end up knowing exactly who he was and Kirk's decision was to give him a legit chance to build his own society and world. Hell who knows what would have happened had the planet not gone to shit? It seems a little odd to say the least that Kirk would have chosen to give a genocidal maniac another chance at empire.

At the end of the day of course, all this ymmv and fans can fashion canon as they see fit in this case.

[millennium]

1 hour ago, tv-talk said:

here is no actual evidence that he was a genocidal maniac. In fact, if my memory serves, in Space Seed the crew did end up knowing exactly who he was and Kirk's decision was to give him a legit chance to build his own society and world. Hell who knows what would have happened had the planet not gone to shit? It seems a little odd to say the least that Kirk would have chosen to give a genocidal maniac another chance at empire.

Precisely.   IMO, the rebranding of Khan as "mass murderer" is either a major screw-up or a deliberate violation of the canon to suit SNW's immediate story-telling needs.

If Khan was indeed a "mass murderer," how can we possibly believe that TOS Kirk didn't know?  Or that TOS Spock was unaware?   La'an and Kirk and Spock are contemporaries.   If people in La'an's time know Khan as a "mass murderer," (and we must assume that because La'an is genuninely surprised when Alternate Kirk doesn't recognize her infamous name) how is it that just ten years later (in the TOS timeline), Kirk and Spock have a different perception of who Khan is?  It doesn't make sense.

Even 25 (or however many years later) there is still no identification of Khan as a mass murderer or a genocidal agent in Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan (although the potential was there had be been able to deploy Genesis on a populated planet).

In the Kelvin timeline, Khan orchestrates the bombing of a Section 31 facility and presumably many people were killed in that incident -- which would qualify him as a "mass murderer."  Even so, that happens after Kirk has had command of the Enterprise.  I would add that Kelvin Spock consulted TOS Spock in that movie, and while TOS Spock described TOS Khan as the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced, still no mention of "mass murderer."  SNW is supposedly in the TOS universe, so TOS Spock is the authoritative voice here.

 

 

 

Edited July 5, 2023 by millennium

[baldryanr]

4 hours ago, marinw said:

I've been thinking about that. The SNW writers have given themselves a huge out when it comes to sticking with the TOS Canon. Pike's injuries will still  happen, but it will happen much further in the future, or Pike's injuries won't be as severe, or all the messing around with the time line could bring about some huge medical breakthrough. Pike revisiting or not revisiting Talos 4 seems a lot less consequential than Khan's influence on Earth's history being delayed by a few decades.

That would wipe out the entire point of Pike's arc in S1.  They'll use it to explain away the other stuff that doesn't match up like Chapel knowing T'Pring even though she was completely oblivious about her in TOS, the whole business with the Gorn being a mystery species in TOS even though Spock, Uhura, and Chapel have already dealt with them, etc.

[millennium]

Just wanted to add, SNW ought to leave the TOS alone.   Make your own stories, show.   New stories (like last week's episode).  Boldly go, you know?  Or would you have us believe that Captain Pike had no autonomy?  No adventures entirely independent of James Kirk's five year mission?  Are we to think that Pike's whole career was in service to the captain and crew that came after him?

What an opportunity this show is squandering.   They have a platform to build new stories, to write in a way that honors and conforms to the TOS yet expands our understanding of the Star Trek universe.   Instead, they go back to the fucking Khan well for the umpteenth time.   Idiots.

There's no vision, no sense of wonder  The TOS often drew from stories by established science fiction writers.   This show is apparently written by hacks.

Edited July 5, 2023 by millennium

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, millennium said:

Precisely.   IMO, the rebranding of Khan as "mass murderer" is either a major screw-up or a deliberate violation of the canon to suit SNW's immediate story-telling needs.

If Khan was indeed a "mass murderer," how can we possibly believe that TOS Kirk didn't know?  Or that TOS Spock was unaware?   La'an and Kirk and Spock are contemporaries.   If people in La'an's time know Khan as a "mass murderer," (and we must assume that because La'an is genuninely surprised when Alternate Kirk doesn't recognize her infamous name) how is it that just ten years later (in the TOS timeline), Kirk and Spock have a different perception of who Khan is?  It doesn't make sense.

Even 25 (or however many years later) there is still no identification of Khan as a mass murderer or a genocidal agent in Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan (although the potential was there had be been able to deploy Genesis on a populated planet).

In the Kelvin timeline, Khan orchestrates the bombing of a Section 31 facility and presumably many people were killed in that incident -- which would qualify him as a "mass murderer."  Even so, that happens after Kirk has had command of the Enterprise.  I would add that Kelvin Spock consulted TOS Spock in that movie, and while TOS Spock described TOS Khan as the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced, still no mention of "mass murderer."  SNW is supposedly in the TOS universe, so TOS Spock is the authoritative voice here.

We're at the "agree to disagree" stage. I just want to make a few quick points.

1. There really IMO isn't that much daylight between "tyrant" and "mass murderer." So I don't think it is a deviation from canon for him to be a tyrant who had no massacres under his rule (as Space Seed explicitly says) and simultaneously to be a "mass murderer" (as the characters in this episode say, and as Picard alluded to in the TNG episode I referred to above when he put Khan in the same category as Hitler). There are lots of ways that one can be a mass murderer without committing massacres: executing people unjustly, taking no prisoners in war or treating prisoners harshly, using brutal or indiscriminate means to wage war, targeting certain genetic/social/religious groups in ways ranging from persecution to concentration camps etc.

2. If you were to pick a number of actual political figures from the last hundred years, you probably could find a reasonable swath of people who would label them a "tyrant"/"mass murderer" even if objectively they were not. And on the flipside, some people who are objectively tyrants/mass murderers would have their evil ignored/glossed over/rationalized in certain quarters.

3. Space Seed inherently has the problem that Khan is supposed to be infamous and yet no one recognizes him initially and then at some point it flips and everyone claims knowledge about him and his reign. Spock IIRC also explicitly says that records from that time are fragmented. So it's entirely possible that the records that the characters in Space Seed are aware of are very different than the records that La'an and the Romulan spy are aware of, or the records that Picard was aware of.

4. So it doesn't really bother me if there's some inconsistency in who recognizes the name Khan or Noonien Singh and what their reactions to it might be. Different people are going to have different reactions to a name or a historical figure, as again we see in Space Seed. Kirk, Spock, Scotty all had different takes on Khan. It is worth noting that actual SNW-era Kirk does not flinch when La'an introduces herself to him with her last name. 

[paigow]

2 hours ago, millennium said:

This show is apparently written by hacks.

Primarily Hackiva Goldsman

[millennium]

2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

It is worth noting that actual SNW-era Kirk does not flinch when La'an introduces herself to him with her last name. 

We have no indication that Khan existed in Alternate Kirk's timeline.

If he did, and if he were as infamous as La'an suggests, a captain with Kirk's education and training would have recognized the name.  

2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Spock IIRC also explicitly says that records from that time are fragmented.

Given that TOS was made in the 1960s, I can understand why writers then may have thought the problem of fragmented records could still be a possibility 300 years in the future.   It's a very 20th-century mindset.   We have to accept it though because that's what TOS tells us.   (Personally, it  it seems impossible to me that records from one of Earth's major wars could have been lost or fragmented -- even more impossible now that living people like La'an are apparently walking around just ten years earlier with information about Khan)

 

2 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

There are lots of ways that one can be a mass murderer without committing massacres: executing people unjustly, taking no prisoners in war or treating prisoners harshly, using brutal or indiscriminate means to wage war, targeting certain genetic/social/religious groups in ways ranging from persecution to concentration camps etc.

Except none of these transgressions are associated with Khan only ten years after La'an calls him a "mass murderer."   Kirk and his officers even wore their dress uniforms to the dinner!

SNW is making it up as they go along.

Edited July 6, 2023 by millennium

[paigow]

5 hours ago, millennium said:

Even 25 (or however many years later) there is still no identification of Khan as a mass murderer or a genocidal agent in Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan

Khan -using his superior intellect - knows that a ruler cannot wipe out huge segments of his own subjects while concurrently fighting external enemies and hope to prevail. If he was eradicating dissidents, then mass murderer could apply... but that is not necessarily genocide.

[paigow]

8 minutes ago, millennium said:

Given that TOS was made in the 1960s, I can understand why writers then may have thought the problem of fragmented records could still be a possibility 300 years in the future. 

Even Skynet did not know which Sarah Connor to target....

[millennium]

Just now, paigow said:

Khan -using his superior intellect - knows that a ruler cannot wipe out huge segments of his own subjects while concurrently fighting external enemies and hope to prevail. If he was eradicating dissidents, then mass murderer could apply... but that is not necessarily genocide.

I don't disagree, but we have no evidence that anything like that occurred.  FWIW, I think TNG took similar liberties with the canon when Picard compared Khan to Hitler (Godwin says it was probably inevitable Picard would do that).

[Chicago Redshirt]

1 hour ago, millennium said:

We have no indication that Khan existed in Alternate Kirk's timeline.

If he did, and if he were as infamous as La'an suggests, a captain with Kirk's education and training would have recognized the name.  

Given that TOS was made in the 1960s, I can understand why writers then may have thought the problem of fragmented records could still be a possibility 300 years in the future.   It's a very 20th-century mindset.   We have to accept it though because that's what TOS tells us.   (Personally, it  it seems impossible to me that records from one of Earth's major wars could have been lost or fragmented -- even more impossible now that living people like La'an are apparently walking around just ten years earlier with information about Khan)

 

Except none of these transgressions are associated with Khan only ten years after La'an calls him a "mass murderer."   Kirk and his officers even wore their dress uniforms to the dinner!

SNW is making it up as they go along.

I was talking about Khan existing in the SNW timeline, which he clearly does. La'an introduces herself to SNW's James T. Kirk and he does not flinch or act funny when he finds out she is La'an Noonien-Singh. So it could be that Kirk is just mellower than the average bear about it, or it could be that La'an is paranoid and carrying baggage about the name, or it could be that he suppressed his reaction to the name in politeness//hopes of hooking up/etc.

I think it is a little idealistic to think that the problem of fragmented records would not exist in the future. First of all, we don't know if the ways records are kept will necessarily be safe from conventional attacks. If nukes are used, I would imagine some records kept electronically would go. I would also imagine that dictatorships would purposefully destroy some records or not keep others in the first place. But more importantly, one would think that information would be the target of attacks themselves. We already see hacking as a front for attacks now. Add in the notion that the ultimate victors would not necessarily want all the information about what happened out there -- the story explicitly tells us that the history books lied about/covered up the escape of 80 of the supermen.

You are making an artificial distinction between what is associated with Khan and what is not. I just rewatched Space Seed and what we are told is mostly in general about the Eugenics Wars: that "whole populations were bombed out of existence," for instance. That the supermen were Napoleons, brutal tyrants. We are told that Khan was the most dangerous of these tyrants, that there were no massacres under his reign and that Scotty admired him sort of. That he had absolute control over a quarter of the globe.

I don't see why the show needs to connect the dots that to get to and maintain that control, Khan must have killed a lot of people. 

[millennium]

Maybe he promised them a tribble in every pot.  😛

As you said earlier, agree to disagree.

[tv-talk]

8 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

First of all, we don't know if the ways records are kept will necessarily be safe from conventional attacks

Being as records were kept with little wooden cassettes, I think they may have been ok! ;-)

 

8 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

We are told that Khan was the most dangerous of these tyrants, that there were no massacres under his reign and that Scotty admired him sort of.

This is the crux, suppose I admire Khan a bit too. Well not in the evil tyrant sort of way but rather Ricardo Montlaban's Khan may have been the best non-crew character on Star Trek ever! That episode and Khan in particular is too good, Montalban is just perfect. Definitely had superior charisma and probably why now painting him as a genocidal maniac like Hitler doesnt square for some.

[paigow]

19 hours ago, Raja said:

They wouldn't dare retcon away the franchise pilot 

With these hacks... a knock-off of this must be coming....

[Prevailing Wind]

The historical records are fragmented because somebody took a bunch of classified ones and stored them in his bathroom at Khan-A-Lago.

[paigow]

9 hours ago, Prevailing Wind said:

The historical records are fragmented because somebody took a bunch of classified ones and stored them in his bathroom at Khan-A-Lago.

And when he bailed, the victorious Non-Augments burned the place down...

[millennium]

The whole prohibition against genetic/biological modifications is silly when you think about it.   Presumably it's to maintain some natural balance of power and potential among the different species, but can there be such a thing in a universe populated with beings like the Organians, Metrons, Thasians, Q's, etc., who could squash even the most augmented humanoid in the blink of an eye?  (Which reminds me, why didn't the Metrons or Organians ever lift a finger against the Borg?  They got their robes all in a twist over Federation vs. Gorns and Federation vs. Klingons, respectively,  so why not the conflict between the Borg vs. every single other race in the galaxy?)

[paigow]

50 minutes ago, millennium said:

(Which reminds me, why didn't the Metrons or Organians ever lift a finger against the Borg? 

They thought Q should clean up the mess... but going back to TNG era super beings... the old dude that wiped out all Husnak with a single thought would have been helpful at Wolf-359

[millennium]

2 hours ago, paigow said:

They thought Q should clean up the mess... but going back to TNG era super beings... the old dude that wiped out all Husnak with a single thought would have been helpful at Wolf-359

At the very least he could have planted the Burger King "Whopper whopper whopper whopper" jingle in the Borg's minds to make them kill themselves.

[paigow]

9 hours ago, millennium said:

At the very least he could have planted the Burger King "Whopper whopper whopper whopper" jingle in the Borg's minds to make them kill themselves.

Locutus: Whopper is irrelevant... Flame Broiling is futile

[Prevailing Wind]

Whoppers will be assimilated.

 

Honestly, I could go for assimilating a Whopper right now...

 

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Prevailing Wind

[PurpleTentacle]

Did they just casually move the eugenics wars from the 1990s to the 2030s, because they were too cheap to set this in the 1980s?

Well great, that doesn't totally fuck with the whole Star Trek timeline or anything. And people ask me why I hate the NuTrek-writers...

[PurpleTentacle]

On 7/2/2023 at 2:35 AM, AWhittle said:

In the Terminator movies, it was said in T3 that the events of T2 didn't prevent the Skynet/Judgement Day. It still happened later on. It was just delayed. In a similar vein, (and from what the Romulan time spy said) all these temporal shenanigans moved Khan's birth/Eugenics War/ Botany Bay exile from the mid 90s to the mid 21st century.

Yeah but in the Terminator Universe that erased the original timeline and changed everything. The only constant was that Skynet came about eventually and in the latest Terminator film it wasn't even Skynet anymore, it was Legion.

Here we are supposed to believe that the eugenics wars were delayed by 40 years, but everything else in the Star Trek Universe played out exactly the same. Pike's Enterprise is in the same time period, the TNG crew (Picard) is in the same time period, the Federation is the same, etc.

What a load of steaming horseshit!

On 7/5/2023 at 11:34 AM, millennium said:

Khan was given a captain's dinner.   He leaves the impression he was a tyrant and fascist -- a genetically engineered political strongman who posed a dire threat to freedom on Earth.   But nothing about mass murder.

Once more, the SNW writers are proving their unfamiliarity with TOS.   They have improperly elevated Khan to the level of Hitler or Pol Pot, possibly so they can passively suggest that cliche fantasy debate, If you could go back in time to kill Hitler, would you do it?

To be fair here. Kahn was one of the rulers who took part in the eugenic wars and made his people fight for him. That much is clear. 30 Million people died in the eugenics wars. I think at that point you can call him a mass murderer, even if he didn't have death-camps.

On 7/5/2023 at 9:26 PM, millennium said:

If Khan was indeed a "mass murderer," how can we possibly believe that TOS Kirk didn't know?  Or that TOS Spock was unaware?   La'an and Kirk and Spock are contemporaries.   If people in La'an's time know Khan as a "mass murderer," (and we must assume that because La'an is genuninely surprised when Alternate Kirk doesn't recognize her infamous name) how is it that just ten years later (in the TOS timeline), Kirk and Spock have a different perception of who Khan is?  It doesn't make sense.

Well the canon is all fucked to hell anyway. There is no way at least Spock shouldn't know who Kahn is, having served with La'an, yet he doesn't, for some reason.

The answer is that these writers don't give a fuck about canon.

[QuantumMechanic]

50 minutes ago, PurpleTentacle said:

The answer is that these writers don't give a fuck about canon.

Well, that was crystal clear from the moment Chapel saw T'Pring or everyone saw the Gorn back in season 1.

(Unless the crew all suffers traumatic brain injuries or gets memory-wiped right before Kirk takes over command of Enterprise.)

[norcalgal]

On 7/1/2023 at 3:42 PM, CarpeFelis said:

Having watched The Vampire Diaries I just see him as Stephan Salvatore in a Starfleet uniform. Likewise our Romulan agent as Mary, Queen of Anachronistic Prom Dresses.

Bingo! That’s how I felt watching this episode as well.  Just one minor correction:  Stefan, not Stephan.

Signed, fan of The Vampire Diaries and Reign (but not so much as the seasons went on)

[Affogato]

On 7/5/2023 at 8:59 PM, millennium said:

 

Except none of these transgressions are associated with Khan only ten years after La'an calls him a "mass murderer."   Kirk and his officers even wore their dress uniforms to the dinner!

 

They probably wanted to hear Khan's side of the story. Even if he was a mass murderer, the draw of why he did it, those times in the past, could be very strong. In addition, history is written, as they say, by the winners. He might not be as bad as they all say.

In order to get his story they would have to look actually interested and be polite. If he was planning something they would want information on that, too.

I don't know if I would want to sit down to dinner with Hitler, but I think I might want to get some idea of who he was and why he did what he did, directly and for myself.

[Affogato]

19 hours ago, millennium said:

The whole prohibition against genetic/biological modifications is silly when you think about it.   Presumably it's to maintain some natural balance of power and potential among the different species, but can there be such a thing in a universe populated with beings like the Organians, Metrons, Thasians, Q's, etc., who could squash even the most augmented humanoid in the blink of an eye?  (Which reminds me, why didn't the Metrons or Organians ever lift a finger against the Borg?  They got their robes all in a twist over Federation vs. Gorns and Federation vs. Klingons, respectively,  so why not the conflict between the Borg vs. every single other race in the galaxy?)

I understood it wasn't prohibited in the federation to correct genetic defects/birth defects.

It doesn't have to be different species. If you have the ability to enhance skills of (say)  people who can afford the treatments (or maybe you divide by color or education) , eventually people who can't afford the treatments will fall behind, and at some point you may have a seriously unequal and unbalanced society. A large group of these people, too, will have little possibility of advancement and the society could become very rigid.

[PurpleTentacle]

1 hour ago, Affogato said:

They probably wanted to hear Khan's side of the story. Even if he was a mass murderer, the draw of why he did it, those times in the past, could be very strong. In addition, history is written, as they say, by the winners. He might not be as bad as they all say.

The clip made it pretty clear that they didn't know who Kahn was. Him revealing that he was one of the dictators was treated like a big gotcha-moment.

1 hour ago, Affogato said:

I understood it wasn't prohibited in the federation to correct genetic defects/birth defects.

That's a pretty unclear definition. What is a birth defect and what is just normal variation or what is eVoLuTiOn, the Starfleet judges harped on about last episode?

Julian Bashir couldn't tell a dog and a cat apart when he was 6. That seems like a pretty severe mental disability and likely a birth defect to me. Yet fixing that birth defect was illegal.

1 hour ago, Affogato said:

It doesn't have to be different species. If you have the ability to enhance skills of (say)  people who can afford the treatments (or maybe you divide by color or education) , eventually people who can't afford the treatments will fall behind, and at some point you may have a seriously unequal and unbalanced society. A large group of these people, too, will have little possibility of advancement and the society could become very rigid.

The federation has perfect space communism with perfect health care. That wouldn't be a concern.

[paigow]

4 hours ago, norcalgal said:

Just one minor correction: Stefon Stefan, not Stephan.

[millennium]

4 hours ago, Affogato said:

They probably wanted to hear Khan's side of the story. Even if he was a mass murderer, the draw of why he did it, those times in the past, could be very strong. In addition, history is written, as they say, by the winners. He might not be as bad as they all say.

In order to get his story they would have to look actually interested and be polite. If he was planning something they would want information on that, too.

All I go by is what's in the script.   I suppose there are different ways to fanwank "Space Seed" so that it comports with La'an's description of Khan, but that's not the story as originally written. 

I have only watched the full run of Enterprise twice so my familiarity with the episodes is limited.   But I can't recall any glaring instances where that show just wantonly crapped all over canon the way Discovery and SNW do (in Discovery's case it's more like projectile diarrhea).   The irony is, I'm sure there are people who will insist that Discovery and SNW are canon now.

When a show like SNW demonstrates blatant disregard for lore that is known so well -- obsessively some might say -- by so many people, it tells me the showrunners are wildly arrogant or embarrassingly ignorant, or perhaps snugly ensconced somewhere between those two extremes.   Wherever the truth lies, I can't take a show like that seriously.   I can't even imagine myself rewatching any of these episodes, because they don't seem like they legitimately carry forward the story of the original Star Trek.

[paigow]

17 minutes ago, millennium said:

I have only watched the full run of Enterprise twice so my familiarity with the episodes is limited.   But I can't recall any glaring instances where that show just wantonly crapped all over canon the way Discovery and SNW do (in Discovery's case it's more like projectile diarrhea).   The irony is, I'm sure there are people who will insist that Discovery and SNW are canon now.

There are many episodes of Enterprise that I have never seen.. but the Xindi destroy Florida arc made no sense... And did the Time Cops let Trip change history??? 

[millennium]

7 minutes ago, paigow said:

but the Xindi destroy Florida arc made no sense

No comment, lol.

 

8 minutes ago, paigow said:

And did the Time Cops let Trip change history??? 

I'm not sure.   Last time I watched must have been 8-10 years ago.

[Prevailing Wind]

From what I recall, Florida still had the north-south trench and Tripp's sister was still dead by the time the series ended with that god-awful final episode.

[millennium]

20 minutes ago, Prevailing Wind said:

that god-awful final episode

That I remember.

[CarpeFelis]

8 hours ago, norcalgal said:

Bingo! That’s how I felt watching this episode as well.  Just one minor correction:  Stefan, not Stephan.

Signed, fan of The Vampire Diaries and Reign (but not so much as the seasons went on)

Thanks! I’d forgotten it was Stefan.

[tv-talk]

13 hours ago, millennium said:

I can't even imagine myself rewatching any of these episodes, because they don't seem like they legitimately carry forward the story of the original Star Trek.

I mean, alt-Kirk and La'an did a high-speed car chase in what looked like 2023 Toronto all leading to La'an unloading a full clip into the baddie, just like 10,000 buddy cop movies. It wasn't even Star Trek to me.