Space Seed (SD 3141.9; Montalban’s appearance as Khan) occurs after “Catspaw” (SD 3018.2; Koenig’s first appearance as Chekov), even though they aired in seasons 1 and 2, respectively. Therefore, Chekov was aboard the Enterprise during the events of Space Seed (but in the boiler room, as Koenig said )
Khan has superior intellect and probably eidetic memory. Not only did he read up on starship operations (which is why he knew how to operate everything), but he read up on the crew, to know their weaknesses.
Khan took over the whole freakin’ ship, so naturally, everyone on board knows who he is, even if they didn’t interact with him directly.
Commander Chekov’s reaction years later isn’t from meeting Khan before, but from remembering when some power-mad villain from the 20th century took over the whole freakin’ ship.
My take on that sequence was slightly different. Note that the ship which had been raided by Reavers showed no signs of combat whatsoever. No bullet holes, no temporary barricades or blocked doors, no signs the crew had even tried to fight back. The Reavers seem to have taken it over and killed everyone with no resistance, and left only the one crazy guy alive. Later we learn that Pax causes most people to just sit there passively and do nothing, except for the small percentage who go completely insane. I figured that the the Reavers must have pumped that ship full of Pax after docking and killed the passive crew, leaving the one guy who was one of the few that Pax turns into a Reaver.
In that same episode the human allies received a whole bunch of P90s. I couldn’t help but wonder why they weren’t given M16s or something the U.S. already had a bunch of lying around.
My take on that episode which I thought of before seeing Serenity, with only the show to go by.
Reavers are a myth plain and simple, now this doesn’t mean there aren’t robbers, rapists, and psychopaths out there in space. It is just that when someone runs across a robbed and raped transport they create the legend of Reavers to explain the inhuman brutality they find evidence of.
The guy Serenity finds wasn’t a survivor, he was a plant. He likely picked a ship going through remote areas to become a passenger of so he could act as an inside man, disabling locks and sensors etc. Maybe they left him on board after the robbin’ and rapin’ and killin’ so he could do the same thing again to the salvage ship that found them, only the Serenity crew was smart enough not to fall for it.
The Reavers can maintain and fly spaceships, which sort of negates them being berserker maniacs.
For every stupid thing Lucas has done, there is something a thousandfold more stupid coming from the EU. Like maybe, we should make a race of dog people! And they conveniently wear collars. And rey can ralk rike Scooby Doo.
And you know this how? Were you in Roddenberry’s head?
If there weren’t two motives, why was Chekov Russian?
Well, it was the first depiction of a black/white kiss on TV. Seems a bit pedantic to mention that the actors didn’t actually touch lips, when what the camera depicts is an interracial kiss.
As bad as the prequels were they had perhaps the greatest chess master villain ever in Palpatine, and have some serious moral ambiguity that they don’t scream and point at(clone troopers). In fact Lucas managed to show in a realistic way how you could corrupt white knight characters without it seeming silly, if only he could have had Anakin’s turn be more sensible.
I still think Lucas purposefully made the prequels so bare bones it borders on incomprehensible so he could have the expanded universe money printing machine explain it for a couple decades.
Please read The Making of Star Trek (published 1968) by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry. (I get the impression you haven’t already.)
In it, you will find that, yes, Roddenberry wanted to throw in an “irreverent, Beatle-type” character, “Like that smallish fellow who looks to be a hit on ‘The Monkees’,” in order to increase the show’s appeal to the younger audience.
The character was specifically made Russian because of an editorial in Pravda that criticized STAR TREK as being “typically Capitalist” and excluding Russians from the show.
Roddenberry admitted the Chekov thing was a major oversight on TOS’s part, and he was embarrassed they didn’t have a Russian from the beginning.
The letter that Roddenberry sent to Pravda in response to the criticism is reproduced in Star Trek: The REAL Story (published 1996) by Herb Solow and Bob Justman.
As referred to in TMoST, the article was generally favorable, but still complained about the lack of a Russian in the crew. According to Solow/Justman, the article said the show was “typically Capitalistic.”
Yes, they were going to add a youth-oriented character, but made him Russian in light of the article. Originally, he was going to be an “English-accent type.” I don’t have the book with me at the moment, but IIRC both decisions were made during the show’s 1966–67 hiatus, which is why Chekov wasn’t in the first season.
That too, but the idea of a Russian was, once again, inspired by the article in Pravda.
Star Trek’s Data, much has been written in Nit-pickers Guides about his inability to understand simple idioms. And yet, there is an easy and canonical explanation. His history was explained in the first season episode Datalore. His creator made Lore first. The colonists were upset by Lore being too perfect. So when Data was made, the creator deliberately programmed features that would constantly remind people that he isn’t human. These features explicitly included Data’s understanding and use of language.
This is an acceptable explanation, if you have the show as aired. However, the original pilot, also named Serenity, which introduced the characters and actually discovered River in the box and all that, actually had Reavers in it. Reavers were real from episode 1. We just didn’t get to see episode 1 until after the show was canceled. (Actually, it was a 2 hr pilot, and the reavers didn’t show up till the second half, so you could call that episode 2 if you like. It still didn’t air until after the show was canceled.)
Someone has pointed out that the complete show (as seen on the DVD) obviates that theory. But even if it didn’t, I would be inclined to take Zoe’s word for it; she is quite credible. She’s the sort of person who is almost always right – not because she’s infallible, but because she doesn’t speak unless she is certain, and she’s only certain if she has evidence.
Or he’s basically saying “DUDE!! I’m not playin’ with you! Cut the shit before you actually get hurt!” Either way, blurting out stuff isn’t a “plot hole”.
That’s different from re-shooting something that’s awesome into something that sucks.
The plot hole isn’t that they would run out of food. Presumably an intersteller cargo freighter has plenty of food stores.
The plot hole is that they traveled from the Hoth system to the Bespin system without an FTL hyperdrive. Relativistic time dilation would have made it seem like days or weeks at near light speeds, but it would have taken years unless the systems are very very close to each other.
Do you think they never told the new guy stories about how Kirk defeated a genetically engineered mastermind! Even assuming he never saw a picture of Khan on some Enterprise security camera footage or old news reels (wasn’t Kahn sort of a big deal during the Eugenics Wars?), I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to put two and two together and figure Botany Bay (BOTANY BAY?! OH NO!) plus badass who just walked in equals Khan.
A bigger plot hole is why they didn’t realize Seti Alpha Five was missing its brother Seti Alpha Six (or other way around…maybe it’s actually pretty easy to mix up).
Oh man, why’d that guy have to go and get banned. Some in there called him a troll, but I call him a comedic mastermind.
Do they even have paper in the Star Wars galaxy? I can’t recall off hand ever seeing any paper (not just toilet paper, which most movies, even set here on Earth, rarely show).
Makes you wonder if they have the three seashells or some other method going on in that galaxy far far away.
Khan recognized Chekov… he never forgets a face. So Chekov couldn’t have just been relying on stories, he had to have had some interaction with Khan that we just never saw before. It really isn’t a big deal, there are lots of people on the Enterprise we never see, Chekov just went from being one of those during Space Seed to bridge crew in s2.
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