Wasn’t the joke that EVERYONE know about quadrotriticale but Kirk?
As an aside, I only recently found out that triticale was a real thing.
Ah, Khan. What a nutjob. I remember the time he kidnapped Victoria Jackson, put one of those brain slug things in her and we just sat around getting stoned and asking her the most innocuous questions possible. What her favorite color was. Whether she liked cats. That sort of thing. Drove her completely nuts. She couldn’t ever figure out why the whole brain slug thing for just that.
Anyway, what was the question again?
But then where would Kirk and company be when the whale probe comes a knockin’?
They would be in earth orbit with a fully intact Enterprise.
Kirk would put the moves on a ceti ET, and the planet would be doomed decades before Wolf359
Well, it was a Russian invention. 
Indeed. His vast superhuman intelligence comprehended the benefits of living as a peaceful, productive member of Federation society, and all he did was quote Milton: “Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven”. Then he throws his toys out of the pram because Hell turns out to actually be Hell instead of the Garden of Eden, through no-one’s fault, least of all Kirk’s.
@cochrane: that’s “inwention”, surely? 
They would have been caught off guard just like everyone else. Their saving grace in the movie was that they were en route home and got the message to watch out.
This.several months pass between Treks II-III and IV; the training mission would have been long over by then.
I’ll let this hijack go, but with one more comment - why don’t you think they could have been on another training cruise when the whale talkin’ probe showed up? When the plot demands it, there will be one!
(Of course, I think the first thing the two whales would have told their alien overlords that humans had killed them all, and then the probe would have killed all human life on the planet. But then, I hate that movie. 
)
Kirk: “Mr. Spock, can you make sure our next Ship’s Historian is a frail old man?”
What does God need with a Star Gate?
[QUOTE=wevets ]
I thought they knew that one of the planets in the system exploded, but just thought that it was the wrong one - just a mix-up between which one was Ceti Alpha V and which one was Ceti Alpha VI… and presumably a mix-up on which one had Khan on it.
[/quote]
They are literally there to survey the planet to test the Genesis device on. Seems to me that “mixing up” which planet is which is pretty incompetent.
Not to mention, did Kirk just dump Kahn and his gang of criminals there and not tell anyone? I mean wouldn’t the ships computer chime in with some sort of travel advisory that they were approaching a makeshift Federation penal colony?
Or did Kirk just say “fuck this dude”?
I like the Memory Alpha explanation given up thread
Say whatever else you will about the new movies, but divesting Chekov of that habit makes the whole exercise worthwhile.
Yes. And Marla McGivers followed orders.
Captain, I sense… Sexiness. Rich, Corinthian sexiness.