Growing up I loved Star Trek. I mean not to the point where I’d consider
myself a trekkie, that was for my sister, but I loved the show and a lot of the
intricate details about it. For
instance, while I did not own the blue prints for the USS Enterprise, I had
seen them, studied them, and understood them.
So when “Star Trek Into Darkness” the title that needs a
colon, came out, I was obviously interested in how this sequel to a pretty bang
up reboot to the series was going to do.
Then came the big reveal that Benedict Cummerbatch, who up to this point
had been billed as “John Harrison” was in fact the famous Star Trek villain “Khan”!
This reveal came out of the blue, and felt so, so out of
place. In the original string of movies,
“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” pulled material out of the original series
episode “Space Seed”, which established not only Khan as a villain, but
established his relationship with Captain Kirk.
When Khan Noonien Singh, played by the scenery chewing Ricardo Montalbán,
showed up, the audience familiar with the backstory felt the thematic weight of
the moment. When they name dropped him
in “Into Darkness”, it felt phoned in and like they were pulling from material
they didn’t earn. Frankly it pissed me
off and I’ve never really forgiven the franchise for this move, especially since
while I love Benedict as an actor, he looks nothing like Ricardo. Seriously…
Nothing like him.
Then I found this.
This is from a tie in comic called “Star Trek: Khan” which
actually explains what the hell was going on here. The episode “Space Seed” takes place
centuries after the eugenics war, where Khan and his crew were created as super
soldiers. That’s the rough cut and about
as deep as I’m willing to go. So when
Spock and Nero jumped back in time and re-routed history, the ripple effect was
felt far and wide. Rather than leave the
super soldiers floating in space, the evil admiral Robo-Cop…I mean Admiral
Marcus thaws out Khan, alters his memories and gives him extensive plastic surgery
so people would see him walking around and think “Oh hey, that’s a famous
criminal from history!” Because in Star
Trek, the average man on the street passed Earth History 101.
Now this makes perfect sense. This is why Khan hates Marcus, why he
suddenly dropped the John Harrision identity, went off the reservation, and
revealed his identity with such conviction.
It makes you kind of root for him a bit more too, knowing what he had
been put through, which actually brings us back to OG Khan…
The original Khan just wanted his people to live happy,
peaceful lives. That’s what Kirk
promised in the original series and almost delivered…until everything went
sideways. The neighboring planet blew
up, shifted their planet’s orbit and turned their world into a wasteland. Which Starfleet would have known if Kirk had
ever done follow up missions to check on their status. Because of this, Khan’s wife was killed and,
being a warrior who’s had the most important thing taken from him, Khan swore vengeance
on Kirk. Which again makes sense because
it is kind of Kirk’s fault.
So this new information helps me forgive the character of
Khan from “Into Darkness”, however it doesn’t help the movie overall because
this information should have been given to the audience during the actual
film. That would have smoothed over a
major plot hole.
As always, thanks for reading.
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