“The Enterprise encounters brutal super humans led by Khan Noonien Singh, who battles Kirk for control, turning a trusted colleague against Starfleet”
KHAAAAAAAAAN!!!
The Enterprise has picked up an unknown vessel on its sensors, but can’t see it on the viewscreen. Suddenly, Uhura picks up a signal - Morse code. The ship appears on the viewscreen and determine it was built in the 1990s. Bio scans show there are life forms aboard, but their hearts are only beating at 4bpm.
After an hour, the ship has still not responded to the Enterprise’s presence. They’ve found the name of the ship - Botany Bay - but records from the 90s are incomplete because of World War III. I’m not going to comment on the speculation about Earth’s future as of the 1960s, which is hard af considering my personality, so I’ll just say I bet the have a badass grunge soundtrack aboard the Botany Bay.
They put a tractor beam on the ship and prepare to board. They include a historian, Lt. McGivers. McCoy doesn’t want to beam over because he doesn’t like transporters, but he goes anyway.
McGivers says it’s a sleeper ship, because until 2018 it took too long to travel in space. If only we’d had warp technology in 2018...
One of the sleeper pods starts activating, and the person inside wakes up. It is, of course, Khan himself. KHAAAAAAN!
McGivers is already into Khan. Lord. Ricardo Montalban was a good-looking guy, sure, but that wig was...unfortunate. He also wasn’t Indian, but ok.
The sleeper pod malfunctions, and they have to break it open to get Khan out. And yes, they haven’t said that’s who it is yet, but I’ve seen this episode and the movie so I don’t care. They beam Khan and McCoy back to the Enterprise, but wait to open any other pods until they know Khan is safe.
12 other pods have malfunctioned, leaving 72 still functional. Spock still can’t find a record of the ship in his database, but Kirk remembers that Botany Bay was a penal colony. Spock says that sending criminals into space at that era in human history was illogical. I think they just said farewell to your bricks and mortar, farewell to your dirty lime, farewell to your gangways and your gangplanks, and to hell with your overtime.
***
In sickbay, they’ve put Khan in a sleeveless, low-v cut hospital gown, like you do. Gotta maintain the sexy!
McGivers arrives to drool over Khan. Kirk takes her aside and says she can’t let her attraction get in the way of her duty. She says she’s just interested in him professionally, as a historian. Ok, lady.
After everyone leaves, Khan wakes up. He does some weird stretches, then steals a knife from a display of antique surgical equipment and fakes sleeping in time for McCoy to enter. When McCoy checks on him, he grabs his throat with one hand and holds a knife to his throat with the other. McCoy is unfazed and tells him to choke him or cut him, but make up his mind. Kinda digging the straight-up badassery of Bones here.
Khan demands to know where he is. Bones says he’s in bed, holding a knife to his doctor’s throat. Khan insists he answer, and Bones tells him the best way to kill him would be to cut his carotid artery, and tells him where to find it.
Khan lets him go and returns the knife. He says he has many questions for the captain.
When Kirk arrives, Khan asks where they are going and how many of his people have survived. He then says he’s too tired to answer any of Kirk’s questions, but would love to read the technical manuals about the Enterprise. This is not treated as incredibly suspicious.
On the bridge, Spock has discovered that 80 to 90 genetically enhanced humans were unaccounted for after the Eugenics War. Gee...
In sickbay, McGivers is back, and Khan is making the moves like crazy. She wants to ask questions, but he tells her that her hair would look better if she wore it down, and starts unpinning her curls. It’s super creepy. She says she’ll come back when he’s willing to be less creepy.
***
McGivers has suggested a dinner to welcome Khan to their century. Kirk asks McCoy how attracted she is to him, and he says romance isn’t illegal but she’s definitely into him big time.
Khan shows up at McGivers’ quarters in a gold achkan with no shirt, to maintain the sexy, and compliments her paintings. She is now wearing her hair down, which he also compliments. Then he discovers she’s been painting his portrait as well. They kiss dramatically.
At the dinner, Khan pretty much outs himself as a wannabe dictator. When he realizes this, he politely but firmly declares that he will return to his quarters.
***
McGivers arrives at Khan’s quarters to apologize for how the dinner turned out. Khan tries to kiss her, but she says no. He tells her to leave or stay but only do what she wishes to do. And then he says he’s tired of this, and now she has to ask to stay, WHICH SHE DOES. Because there are no red flags in the future? JFC.
He takes her hand, and then suddenly starts crushing it and saying he’s going to take over the ship. She doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. He tells her to leave, BUT SHE STAYS!!
AAAAAAAARRRFGH *flips tables*
Stepping out of the recap, I think most of you know I’m an emotional abuse survivor. This is making me SO ANGRY. I get that it’s trying to show that he’s manipulating her, but damn, they sped up the timeline to fit the runtime. Ugh.
Back into the recap now.
SHE PROMISES TO HELP AND BEGS TO STAY. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK GODDAMNIT FUCK.
***
Kirk and the senior staff are discussing who Khan is. Evidently he controlled 25% of the Earth at one point. Scotty admits to having secretly admired him. If he was that famous, why did it take this long to figure out who he was?
Spock is shocked and disgusted that humans have any admiration for him. Kirk handwaves it as humans having a streak of barbarism. Considering current events, ugh. Bad Kirk. Bad.
***
Kirk arrives at Khan’s quarters and reveals he knows who Khan is, and interrogates him about his purpose in space. Khan makes it clear he aims to misbehave. Kirk leaves, and Khan breaks out of his quarters.
Meanwhile, McGivers has taken over a transporter room. Khan beams back to his ship and awakens his superhumans, who have the interesting uniform choice of red jumpsuits for the men and skintight gold net leotard things for the ladies. His movie outfit is better, with the deep-V top made of rich Corinthian leather.
Kirk is notified that Khan has escaped. He’s trapped on the bridge - the “turbo elevators” (not turbolifts yet, it appears) are inoperative and communications are jammed. Life support is being controlled in Engineering, where Khan and his minions are holding Scotty hostage. Khan proceeds to tell the bridge crew the things they’ve already discovered, but ok.
Kirk orders Spock to flood all decks with neural gas, but Khan is controlling the nature computer system. Khan says they’re going to be out of air soon, so they may as well surrender.
Kirk, naturally, uses part of this air to record a log entry. But he’s recommending posthumous commendations for the bridge crew, so that’s nice. Then he passes out.
***
Khan has clearly done some off-camera rounding up of crew members, because we cut to a conference room where he’s monologuing to Uhura, McCoy, Spock, Scotty, and bridge crew members we saw unconscious before. McGivers watches impassively. Kirk is nowhere to be seen.
Khan wants the crew to join him. Scotty demands to know where Kirk is. Khan tells Uhura to engage the viewscreen, but she silently refuses. One of the minions drags her to the controls, but she continues to stare like “fuck around and see!” The minion chooses to fuck around and backhands her. She stands up and glares at him, and he prepares to hit her again, but McGivers intervenes.
The screen is activated, revealing Kirk in a decompression chamber with the air being sucked out. Khan says each crew member will be killed in the chamber unless they join him, and help him find a planet to conquer. McGivers asks if she needs to watch this, and Khan lets her leave, while saying he hoped she’d be stronger.
They lose the feed from the chamber. The minion who smacked Uhura asks how to turn it back on, then prepares to hit her again, but Khan says it doesn’t matter because by now Kirk is already dead. He has Spock taken to the chamber.
***
McGivers distracts the guard on the chamber, knocks him out with a hypospray, and frees Kirk. She asks Kirk not to kill Khan, because of course she does. Spock is led in by a guard, and Kirk jumps the guard while Spock delivers the neck pinch. Freed, they begin using neural gas on all decks except the one they’re on.
When the gas starts filling the conference room, Khan exits hurriedly while holding his nose, which is about as dignified as it sounds. Scotty chases him. Everyone else passes out.
Spock reports that the gas has been cut off in Engineering, so Kirk determines Khan must be in there. Khan can hear all this, so he hides up against a wall as Kirk runs into the room. They fight. Khan takes Kirk’s phaser and breaks it with his bare hands. He reveals he has sabotaged the engines, and they fight some more, this tube with obvious stunt doubles. While Khan taunts Kirk, Kirk unscrews some random handle and uses it to bludgeon Khan into submission. He then undoes the sabotage and saves the ship.
***
Later, Kirk convenes a hearing and stated that he has dropped all charges. McCoy is shocked, but Kirk says they are passing the Ceti Alpha system, and the fifth planet is habitable, at least as much as Australia’s Botany Bay colony was. He intends to leave Khan and his people there. He then gives McGivers the choice between staying with Khan or being court martialed, and she chooses Khan, for literally no good reason. We all know how this turned out.
Khan asks Kirk if he is familiar with Milton. Later, Scotty asks what that meant. Kirk quotes, “It’s bette to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
Spock wonders what the planet will be like in 100 years. We all know the answer to that, too.
***
So that episode is pretty significant, since we all know how Khan’s story ends. And Ricardo Montalban played the hell out of the character. But McGivers was THE WORST. Joining Khan because of the power of lady boners is bad writing - her only motivation was the hope of sexytimes with the mysterious new guy.
Plus, the fact that Khan was objectively bad, but the senior officers admired him anyway, is also bad writing. They didn’t show any redeeming qualities other than “as far as dictators go, he wasn’t Hitler.” That’s...that’s not good enough. The message that dictators are OK as long as they’re Montalban-hot is silly, especially in Cold War-era America, when this episode was released.
So, overall, definitely a good episode plot-wise but problematic character-wise.
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