All the brilliance in the world is useless without sufficient inputs and data.
The true danger in this situation was that Khan would have enough time to learn Starfleet’s tactics, order of battle, standard contingency plans, etc. And he wouldn’t have needed very much time, because with his intelligence he was an incredibly fast learner. Khan’s problem was that he was in a situation where all the raw intelligence in the world was no match for (competent) hands-on experience.
Now, if Khan had been facing an incompetent commander, he might have won anyway. But Kirk made sure that Khan did not have enough time to learn what he needed to learn. Therefore, Khan’s defeat was genuinely inevitable.
I was confused by the original TV episode, whenever they referred to the Botany Bay. I couldn’t figure out how they ended up on just part of a spaceship. It being the part with the plants made sense, so they’d have oxygen and could grow food, but why would the botany bay have it’s own warp drive? Where’d the rest of the ship go?
Wasn’t until years later that I learned that there was a town called Botany Bay, and they were on a whole ship that was named after it.
“Genius” like going from “marooned on dead planet” to taking over and commandeering an interstellar warship built over 250 years after he was born and then stealing what is effectively that civilization’s “Manhattan Project” within a few days?
I mean keep in mind that Kirk and Spock and the rest of the crew aren’t dummies either.
I always figured the “superior intelligence” thing was largely bullshit anyways. Working with “Star Trek is always a metaphor for the 20th Century”, I assumed the Genetic Wars were largely a metaphor for racism and white supremacy. These guys told themselves, and everyone else, that they were “destined to rule” because they were just so much smarter than everyone else, just like White people did for several centuries. But when push came to shove, that was just them deluding themselves. Sure, maybe they had a few better genes for strength, or health, but no one really knows the genetics behind intelligence. That’s a big part of what makes racism so stupid.
It really doesn’t take much brains to be ruthlessly self-centered, and that’s the most important attribute for taking over the world.
Kirk even mentions that. Scotty says he gave as good as he got after the first battle. Kirk retorts that he did no such thing, he merely knew something about Federation ships that Khan didn’t.
That part - illustrated in both the first battle and Mutara Nebula - was very well written. We DO see, over and over, Kirk using experience and knowledge to beat Khan:
Using command access codes to get a shot in in the first battle
Using trickery and wordplay and knowing his enemy will intercept his transmissions to trick Khan into thinking Enterprise cannot repair itself quickly
Outsmarting Khan in the Mutara Nebula
Which of course is a twist on the overarching theme of Act One, which is Kirk’s despair at growing old. His age is effectively what saves him and his crew.
Again, though, to that point we are TOLD Khan is smart, not shown. Movies are always better when they show, not tell. It’s a small criticism, but it’s there.
Yeah, I always got that sense too. Khan was really, honestly supposed to be genetically engineered - that is deeply embedded on multiple levels of canon, across multiple shows. But his ATTITUDE is the problem, and I really like the idea that he might be less actually superior than he likes to believe. The allegory of racism is impossible to miss, though never said out loud, which is allegory of the very best sort (and the kind just totally missed in “Star Trek Into Darkness.”)
And on the “show, don’t tell issue”, above, it’s mentioned that Khan did manage to take over the Reliant, which suggests that he is smart.
Except, does it really show that? The plan worked because Khan put the Brain Slugs in Chekhov and the Captain. Brain Slugs that evolved on the planet completely outside of Khan’s control. The only reason Khan knew about the Brain Slugs is because they lost many of their crew to Brain Slug infestation during their early days on the planet.
So the only thing Khan had to do was notice that the Brain Slugs produced a period of suggestibility in their victims, and then be ruthless enough to actually use that in order to take over the Reliant. Once he had the Captain under his control, taking over the rest of the ship would have been a simple matter of issuing the right commands to get Khan’s people on board the ship.
Khan’s entire plan doesn’t even exist if the Brain Slugs didn’t just happen to exist in exactly the right place.
I mean, it was still an opportunity to demonstrate his intelligence if you show his employing a really tricky plan to fool people into letting him get hold of the ship. Or show us how swiftly he can learn to control a starship.
Khan’s speech about the brain slugs is one of the best deliveries in cinema.
And as for genetics, I guess Nurture can mitigate Nature. Khan probably spent his whole life being told he was the ne plus ultra of evolution. This made him very susceptible to underestimating his foes while overestimating his capabilities. Doesn’t matter how high-octane your DNA is if you’ve been poorly raised to believe your own propaganda.
Spock provided the analysis in the Mutara Nebula. Kirk made the decisions based on that. But I liked how even though the movie finally acknowledged the third dimension in space, it still treated the combat as two-dimensional. The Enterprise didn’t dive and swoop around like in a dogfight. It dropped like it was on an elevator, maintaining the same orientation to the plane as the Reliant. It was more like submarine warfare.
And poo on Roddenbury and his “Starfleet is not the military” mantra. He was trying to have his cake and eat it too.
This is a pointless nitpick. There’s nothing in Space Seed that shows that Chekov wasn’t there and that Khan didn’t meet him. It’s not like the episode depicted every waking moment on the Enterprise.
All this talk about the movie not showing Khan’s superintelligence, I wonder how much of his intelligence was overwritten by insanity while on Ceti Alpha V? Also, Khan’s intelligence gave way to his need for revenge as ST2 is a sci-fi retelling of Moby Dick.
This. To be honest, I’m about Khan’s age in the film, and I couldn’t figure out how to run a starship* in a short time, even with access to the full tech manual package. And I’m pretty s-m-r-t.
(To be honest again, Starships, even in Kirk’s time, should have security. Anything requiring access to weapons, controls, transporters, certain the systems, should be code locked to the on-duty staff. It wouldn’t have prevented Khan from taking over the Reliant, see: brain slugs, but it would in other cases.)
It never occurred to me but I like the idea that Khan’s superior intellect isn’t as superior as he thinks. That his ego is also genetically engineered to match his physique. Most times, he probably IS the smartest guy in the room, providing the room isn’t too big,
*well, maybe 1701-D. “Computer, Plot a course to Regula One.” “Computed.” “Engage”
Not just a town—it was a penal colony where the British dumped their convicts. In those days, Australia might just as well have been on the far side of the Moon.
Stealing a loaf of bread was enough to get you shipped overseas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before Australia was discovered, convicts and rebels were transported to North America, among other places.