In the novelization - its stated that the majority of the ships crew had the ear worms. You can assume they were shown what button(s) to push on the bridge, but were’nt smart enough to ask where the over-ride was.
Ugh. But that just adds more questions. Too much detail that only makes it worse.
If Khan was brain slugging the crew, why did he get rid of them before The Battle of the Mutara Nebula. They might have been helpful. Tactics, damage control, someone to push the buttons, make coffee.
I know why - so Kirk wasn’t responsible for the deaths of the entire Reliant crew. I hope he remembered to go get them from wherever Khan left them before the brain slugs killed them. Since Khan murdered everyone on Regula One, I guess it’s lucky he didn’t murder the entire Reliant crew, too,
Well, as you said, the brain slugs were known to kill people*. So they probably all died before the Big Battle.
Which kind of emphasizes my point: Khan ain’t all that smart. Military (
) vessels have large crews specifically so they have extra bodies around when people start dying. So keep most of them locked up, and only Brain Slug a skeleton crew’s worth at a time. As they die off, replace them with new Brain Slug Crew.
*Unless you’re Russian, of course. If we’re talking plot holes on WoK, Chekhov conveniently surviving the brain slug is a big one!
I may be misremembering ‘majority’ - I believe some were also stranded on CA5. Point was that they had enough crew that they didn’t have to ‘learn’ everything - but just enough.
And apparently I am mis-remembering entirely - USS Reliant personnel | Memory Alpha | Fandom - Reliant, U.S.S. | Star Trek
On the one hand, we don’t know how long it takes for the brain slug to kill someone. Khan only said “eventually”. Could be hours, could be days of indescribable pain. (The fan fiction of how Khan put one in McGivers is not canon, but is frightening).
On the other hand, it would seem the Russian brain can force a brainslug out again through sheer force of will! 
The first two aren’t in conflict with Kahn having a superior intellect. As noted, they are based on information that Kahn simply doesn’t have.
But the third has always bugged me. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since Kahn was in space; not understanding that space is 3-dimensional is just plain stupid. I like that Kahn’s pride and ego overrode his intellect and drove him to chase the Enterprise into the nebula - that makes sense. But he should still be smart once he’s in there.
I took that to be not that he was piloting the ship as if it were on an ocean, but more that he didn’t tactically think in three-D. He’d revert subconsciously to flat thinking, even as he was moving in 3D.
But you have to imagine the battle is longer than it was shown, and we’re seeing the condensed version. Because as presented, Spock has nothing to base is assumption on.
Like in the movie that is the primary inspiration for the look and feel (if not even some of the plot that isn’t Moby Dick!) of TWOK, 1951’s Captain Horatio Hornblower. Hornblower pulls a great Kirk maneuver in attacking the Natividad. He passes down wind, so the Natividad’s gunports are underwater. Then he turns around and does it again. It’s an awesome battle sequence, but you know how long it would take to turn a ship like that and obtain the best position again, under sail? Probably longer than the run time of the entire movie. Same with The Battle of the Mutara nebula. IMO.
I’m calling BS on that first one. Most people seeing the movie for the first time could figure out the days = hours code being used so why couldn’t Khan?
For the second, I don’t think it was about moving in 3D, I’m sure they did but I imagine Khan was searching in a planar fashion before changing his “altitude” hence Kirk’s elevator move. Maybe it was a question about how do you use curve paths in 3D when hunting prey you cannot see OR possibly (and my preferred theory) the single-track mind Khan had at the time. Joachim had to bring Khan back on track at least twice in the movie when Khan was to focused on revenge.
Yeah, that was my take as well. Not that Khan “forgot” that space is 3D, but that his training and experience didn’t include it, so he didn’t fully know how to guard against non-lateral attacks. There are, presumably, volumes and volumes of military theory on how to deal with attackers in a 3D battle, with specific strategies for all sorts of variations based on ship class and angle of attack and so forth. A Star Fleet captain and his bridge crew have spent years studying those until they’re second nature. Khan’s never even seen any of them. It’s not, “I didn’t know space had three dimensions,” but more like, “I didn’t instinctually know the correct way to angle the deflector shields to protect against that attack vector, and lacked the muscle memory to tell me exactly where that control is on the console.”
That was clumsy writing. It would have been better if Spock had said something like, “I haven’t seen damage this severe since the incident on Arglebargle V. It will take at least three days to get systems on line,” and Kirk knows that the incident on Arglebargle V was resolved when Scotty lied about how long the Enterprise would be in drydock. Something that is based on knowledge Khan didn’t have access to, and which re-enforces the “experience trumps natural talent,” theme the movie was working on.
Exactly. Kirk knew the repairs on Arglebargle V took 3 hours and not 3 days but Khan would have no clue.
Perhaps so, but I think that it was written more for the audience (so that the bright ones could say to themselves, “oh, wait, I bet they’re talking in code!”), than to truly be a code that a “real” Khan would have no hope of figuring out.
That said, truly brilliant writing would have had an “Arglebargle V” reference to a season 2 or 3 episode of TOS, and thus (a) be something that Khan would not have learned about during his time on the Enterprise in The Space Seed, and (b) be a reference that hardcore Trek fans could have twigged to.
I always wondered when Kahn had time to read about Klingon proverbs.
I guess he could have read about the Klingons while in sickbay after his initial rescue.
Or even a joke, “Mr. Scott gave his usual estimate of 3 days.” meaning of course 3 hours.
and not give the key in the same sentence - “If Hours were like Days, Admiral”
Spock had a hand in all three, of course.
One of the things I really like about Wrath of Khan is exactly this. Huge starships swooping around each other like fighter jets in “Top Gun” looks incredibly silly to me. Almost all space battles in Star Trek, or shows like The Orville, are like that. They look stupid.
In Wrath of Khan - and of course the TOS episode they clearly learned from, Balance of Terror - the ships act like WARSHIPS. Detection and getting a first shot off is everything. Actually being hit by weapons fire is extremely consequential. This approach raises the stakes and makes the audience genuinely apprehensive about what is happening. A loud swirl of special effects is no longer impressive anyway and fails to inform the audience about what’s happening and who is at risk - the battle at the end of the first season of Discovery (or at the end of Picard season one, or the swirling dogfight of ST Nemesis, or the Kaylon battle in The Orville, and on and on) where we see a thousand or more ships firing ten of thousands of shots with no consequence that is easy to understand, is little more than a fireworks show. Wrath of Khan is the opposite of that. When phasers are fired they make a scary electrical sound and a ship being hit is ripped open and people die. It’s striking and makes your heart skip a beat, as opposed to the headache-inducing bullshit in so many other shows and movies.
Yeah, I’ve never understood this. Space Seed isn’t some first person Khan diary.
That wasn’t my point. Kirk and Spock use something Khan DOESN’T have; experience. That can be in contract in general with Khan’s intellect, but, again, the movie is just a bit weaker for not showing us his intellect. He doesn’t have to show it at those particular moments.
I would guess few people figured it out, actually. Why would you? Spock’s throwaway “minutes could seem like hours” line doesn’t initially seem like much.
My sister’s in the Navy, and she likes to talk about the surface warfare “idiots” who don’t take into consideration the needs of aircraft for little things like fuel and how long it takes for them to travel from point A to point B. It’s not that they’re actual idiots (most of the time), but they’re not used to thinking in terms of aviation needs when they’re scheduling a plane to fly by for training exercises.
It was clumsy writing. But in the show at least, it’s been established that there’s a myth that Vulcans cannot lie.
It’s one hundred percent a realistic weakness to give Khan. Watch a person playing a video game that involves dogfighting. If they are unfamiliar with such games, or just real life flying, they will attempt to win by turning. It’s just natural for humans to think that way if they are not trained to do so, because we can’t fly. We mostly live in a two dimensional space. People experienced with such games, or who have real life flying experience, will fight in three dimensions, understanding the value of altitude and energy.
He exaggerated…
You’re not too far off – there was a book written later (Kobayashi Maru maybe?) that included a bit of an explanation where Khan meets Chekov while the latter is on the night shift.