Current Events > The Federation in Star Trek are a bunch of pious hypocrites.

(+) Yeah! (+)

ROBANN_88 posted...

i've never actually seen Khan
what's the deal with Khan?

Star Trek's backstory is that there was once a horrific series of conflicts called the Eugenics Wars where a number of genetically engineered warlords seized power across the world. The first and most notorious one was Khan, who eventually ruled about a quarter of the planet.

This is the primary reason Earth (and by extension, the Federation) is so deeply against genetic engineering.

ROBANN_88 posted...

i've never actually seen Khan
what's the deal with Khan?

He was a genetically engineered warlord (basically Captain America, but through DNA manipulation instead of a chemical) and was part of a shadow government controlling Earth behind the scenes. When he and his buddies were overthrown, he got out of Dodge on a 'sleeper ship' to bide his time until he could conquer someplace else.

The Enterprise finds him and brings him onboard, he wakes up, turns on the charm to seduce a woman in the crew, then thaws the rest of his people out and tries to take over the ship. Kirk stops him (because he's Kirk) and decides to maroon the group on an uninhibited planet where they can't harm anyone, with the woman crew member choosing to go with them.

Fast-forward twenty-some years and he's rediscovered by accident, but now he's major-league pissed at Kirk because there was a planetary cataclysm which nearly destroyed their world and indirectly caused the death of his wife. He hatches a plan for revenge and executes it, very nearly killing Kirk but being undone, in the end, by arrogance and belief in his own superiority.

The Borg has evolved beyond war.
Join. Resistance is futile.

To be fair, Eddington totally calls this out in Deep Space 9.

Half of DS9 is just people going "Yeah, TOS and TNG hyper morality doesn't really make sense in the real world."

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

him (because he's Kirk) and decides to maroon the group on an uninhibited planet where they can't harm anyone, with the woman crew member choosing to go with them.

Just to add to this:

Kirk didn't force them. He just said it was pointless sending them to a penal colony and gave them the option of re-colonizing a planet instead (apparently Kirk has the authority to do this lol) and Khan took it.

The Wrath of Khan movie kinda quietly drops the fact it was Khan's choice.

Maze_ posted...

To be fair, Eddington totally calls this out in Deep Space 9.

Half of DS9 is just people going "Yeah, TOS and TNG hyper morality doesn't really make sense in the real world."

A lot of that was Roddenberry. Let us not forget, this is the guy who decided that children who lose their only parent wouldn't cry. -_-

As Nicholas Meyer put it: "He was a utopian, he believed in the perfectibility of man. I dont."

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

He was a genetically engineered warlord (basically Captain America, but through DNA manipulation instead of a chemical) and was part of a shadow government controlling Earth behind the scenes. When he and his buddies were overthrown, he got out of Dodge on a 'sleeper ship' to bide his time until he could conquer someplace else.

The Enterprise finds him and brings him onboard, he wakes up, turns on the charm to seduce a woman in the crew, then thaws the rest of his people out and tries to take over the ship. Kirk stops him (because he's Kirk) and decides to maroon the group on an uninhibited planet where they can't harm anyone, with the woman crew member choosing to go with them.

Fast-forward twenty-some years and he's rediscovered by accident, but now he's major-league pissed at Kirk because there was a planetary cataclysm which nearly destroyed their world and indirectly caused the death of his wife. He hatches a plan for revenge and executes it, very nearly killing Kirk but being undone, in the end, by arrogance and belief in his own superiority.

lol these guys ruled the world in 1992-1996

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29bQrNPbGYI

Just Imagine Kirk and Scotty casually praising how much they admire Stalin and Hitler.

Maze_ posted...

Just Imagine Kirk and Scotty casually praising how much they admire Stalin and Hitler.

Khan didn't genocide anyone tbf. He was kind of like Dr. Doom. His empire enjoyed peace, they just had absolutely no freedom.

pegusus123456 posted...

Khan didn't genocide anyone tbf. He was kind of like Dr. Doom. His empire enjoyed peace, they just had absolutely no freedom.

so how did he get an Empire? sounds like people bought into lies

ROBANN_88 posted...

i've never actually seen Khan
what's the deal with Khan?

He was the enemy of the week in a ToS episode and would have been forgotten if he wasnt included in the movie.

WingsOfGood posted...

so how did he get an Empire? sounds like people bought into lies

It's not known exactly, most of the records from that era were destroyed.

pegusus123456 posted...

It's not known exactly, most of the records from that era were destroyed.

How convenient.

Khan: My Empire is sooo ethical! All we know is peace! No way did I build it over bodies!

WingsOfGood posted...

How convenient.

Khan: My Empire is sooo ethical! All we know is peace! No way did I build it over bodies!

Well, all of the Augments would have taken power the same way. As Kirk more-or-less says, he was the best of the worst.

pegusus123456 posted...

It's not known exactly, most of the records from that era were destroyed.

there's no record of a hurricane ever hitting Springfield, not after the Hall of Records mysteriously blew away

Foppe posted...

He was the enemy of the week in a ToS episode and would have been forgotten if he wasnt included in the movie.

Maybe now, but Star Trek fans back then had probably seen every episode at least 4-5 times.

Justin2Krelian posted...

Maybe now, but Star Trek fans back then had probably seen every episode at least 4-5 times.

Back then you could only rewatch the reruns.
Now you can stream them however you want, and multiple series got references to him, everything from namedropping him to have relatives on the ship, heck we even got Khan novels post-2000.

pegusus123456 posted...

It's unfortunate for people like Bashir, but I kind of don't see a better solution. Genetic engineering is very often done poorly, leading to complications for people like Jack, Lauren, and the rest. If it's ever both successful and prolific, they begin to unfairly out-compete normal people. And as always, there's the looming threat of making another Khan.

Or maybe, instead of a "Blanket Ban" on Genetic Engineering, just ban engineering specific harmful genetic traits like:
"Increased Aggression"
"Increased Belligerance"
"Increased Ambition"
etc.

Humans naturally already have plenty of those traits, we don't need to amp those traits up in Genetically engineered people.

That doesn't solve the issue of genetically engineered people unfairly out-competing normal people or that it leads to people suffering when done poorly.

And it's not like people in the old world deliberately engineered Khan and the rest to be aggressive and ambitious, there's every chance that that's just what happens when someone is literally better than normal people. Even in the utopian Earth that exists, you get plenty of characters like the Drumhead admiral who are just real shitbags.

pegusus123456 posted...

And it's not like people in the old world deliberately engineered Khan and the rest to be aggressive and ambitious,

Actually, they did, but only as a mistake while trying to make the Augments.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Augment

Despite their superior abilities, there were major defects in their genome as the Augments were belligerent, arrogant and ambitious, with a diminished sense of morality. One of the scientists behind their creation said, "Superior ability breeds superior ambition." DoctorArik Soong later theorized that a defect in the genomes of the Augments created a malformation in the base-pair sequences that regulate the neurotransmitter levels in their brains, causing them to be highly prone to aggression and violent behavior, and considered fixing this defect before incubating some embryos.

WingsOfGood posted...

lol these guys ruled the world in 1992-1996

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29bQrNPbGYI

Maze_ posted...

Just Imagine Kirk and Scotty casually praising how much they admire Stalin and Hitler.

And consider that's not Kirk speaking.

That's Roddenberry.