quote:Mind you, Khan and the rest of the "Augments" were supposed to be as intelligent as they they were strong, so it's not much of a leap that they made advances ... that were either lost in the war or classified and intentionally buried by the various governments that defeated them.
Possible, yes. But it was no secret to Kirk or Spock that Earthlings would be flying around their star system in cryogenics-equipped ships in the early 1990s; and it in no way surprised McGivers that she found solid footing after beaming over to the Botany Bay.
So Khan and his mad scientists may have invented cryogenics, artificial gravity and interplanetary propulsion - but they also appear to have sold those to the highest bidder, who then sold them forward, until all the inventions made it into history books. Alternately, Khan's cohorts improved existing technologies enough to allow interstellar flight, but not so much that they would be unrecognizable for 1990s tech.
I rather wonder if Khan's ship was even theoretically capable of founding an offworld colony. It might rather be that Khan simply did the best he could to get away from Earth for a while, but lacked the resources to mount a complete colonization mission. Heck, he probably planned on spending 50 years in cold sleep and then returning to Earth to start over - but the steering system jammed...
Okay, Earth in the 1990s might well have been planning interstellar colonization, and might even have had some hardware suited for that. Perhaps it was already known that there would be Class M planets galore, just waiting to be settled. However, Rain Robinson's excitement over the possible space aliens suggests that those 1990s people were not yet QUITE convinced that there would be life of any sort outside Earth. Would a colony on a non-M planet have stood a chance?
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Again with the star going nove. It didn't! The next planet out went blooey (although I know of no astronomical reason why this would happen), and that altered Ceti Alpha V's orbit and fucked over the global climate.
--Jonah
Maybe it was hit by a "Michael Bay" class global killer asteroid?
quote:Possible, yes. But it was no secret to Kirk or Spock that Earthlings would be flying around their star system in cryogenics-equipped ships in the early 1990s; and it in no way surprised McGivers that she found solid footing after beaming over to the Botany Bay.
That could be explained by saying that by the 23rd century, they're aware that there was quite a bit of technology that was being kept out of the public domain, or it was so expensive that only the black ops budgets could afford it (hence the low budget look of the Ares IV).
quote: I rather wonder if Khan's ship was even theoretically capable of founding an offworld colony. It might rather be that Khan simply did the best he could to get away from Earth for a while, but lacked the resources to mount a complete colonization mission. Heck, he probably planned on spending 50 years in cold sleep and then returning to Earth to start over - but the steering system jammed...
I kind of like the idea that they had no idea where they were going and were just in a blind dash, though I kind of like the idea that they might have been on a course that would bring them back in a few hundred years, say get to alpha centauri, see if there's anywhere worth settling, if not then head back and hope mankind had bombed each other into the stone age so they could re-build it in their image.
There's an alternate universe story in there somewhere, perhaps the true origins of the Mirror Universe is that Khan actually made it back after WWIII?
I'm reminded that a few years back I collaborated with fellow flareite Kenny (Axeman), we tried to put together a mini-movie of Khan's escape. The concept was that the launch was from some secret complex in south-east asia (propper Bond villan stuff) and all the footage would have been from "real" cameras that would have been there (this is before BSG stole our idea ). We had a whole story rouged out as to how it was a rushed launch with 3 DY-100's taking off in rapid sucession. The third one clearing the tower just as the base was hit by a tactical nuke, knocking it out of the sky. The blast wave & EMP just caught the second DY, causing it to have to limp in low orbit to try for a slingshot out of orbit, where it was to be taken out by a defence satellite (yes, like the Gary Seven one.) Leaving the Botany Bay as the lead ship to make it out of orbit by the skin of it's teeth; having escaped a missile by dumping some of their cargo pods in it's path.
Needless to say it was all a little too ambitious and we didn't get very far, though I might still have a test screen shot of the launch somewhere.
Seeing this enhanced footage made me wish we'd managed it.
quote:Originally posted by TSN: I don't think that's true. I mean, Khan was a despot. Kirk rescued him from eternal floating in space, and Khan repaid him by stealing his ship and trying to kill him. Kirk sentenced him to exile. Seems fairly reasonable.
Totally right...except that at some point, Kirk learns that Kahn, Kahn's 70 pals and a former starfleet officer are in real danger and does...nothing. Seriously, it's inplied Kirk knew exactly how boned Kahn's colony was.
We call that second degree murder here in the States...criminally neglegent homicide- minimum.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Exactly how could Kirk know? Even if they had swung past after Ceti Alpha VI went kerblewy and figured out that the orbits had been shifted, got into orbit and did a full scan, all they would have seen would be a "minor energy flux reading on one dyno-scanner" (whatever that means) and assumed the colony was toast.
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: I gotta say, those stupid twiggy solar panel thingers bug me bigtime.
I've always assumed they were heat radiators for the engines. Solar arrays are pretty much useless once you're a bit past Mars.
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Reverend -- The exchange between Terrell and Kirk.
Terell: "He blames you for --" Kirk: "I know what he blames me for."
Except that at no point from when Kirk was first poleaxed by seeingKhan on the bridge of the Reliant did Khan actually bitch him out for abandoning him, etc. Yet somehow Kirk knew. This may have just been sloppy writing on Nick Meyers' part, or it could have been intentional. Either way, it's been used by a lot of people to support the theory that Kirk knew about the ecological devastation of Ceti Alpha V and didn't do anything to see if Khan and his minions made it.
As for the Botany Bay's launch, the novel Strangers from the Sky had a cool tidbit. Parts of the book are set in the early 21st century, and Our Heroes help a couple shipwrecked Vulcans off-planet, as they weren't supposed to be known about yet. They hit up an abandoned launch complex in equitorial Africa, where there should have been three unused DY-100s. To their surprise, there were only two, and scorch marks around the third, empty launch tower...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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quote:Reverend -- The exchange between Terrell and Kirk.
Terell: "He blames you for --" Kirk: "I know what he blames me for."
Except that at no point from when Kirk was first poleaxed by seeingKhan on the bridge of the Reliant did Khan actually bitch him out for abandoning him, etc. Yet somehow Kirk knew. This may have just been sloppy writing on Nick Meyers' part, or it could have been intentional. Either way, it's been used by a lot of people to support the theory that Kirk knew about the ecological devastation of Ceti Alpha V and didn't do anything to see if Khan and his minions made it.
I'd say it's fair to suppose that Kirk deduced why Khan was pissed at him from 2 things he saw on the view screen. Firstly the appearance of Khan and his followers was clearly weather beaten and ragged, now CA5 was a hostile planet from the get go, but given 20 years a man like Khan should have been able to at least get basic textiles sorted so they shouldn't have been wearing rags and the remains of starfleet issue clothing. Secondly, McGivers was clearly not at Khan's side where she would most likely be if she were still with him.
While that doesn't tell you everything, those two bits of evidence indicate that (1) The colony suffered some kind if natural disaster and (2) McGivers was dead. That plus Khan's demenor should have given Kirk a goood idea what happened and whom Khan blamed it on.
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Dudde, that's a fuck of a lot to instantly grasp just after your ship got it's ass kicked. I dont buy it.
As to "If Kirk knew about what happened, why did the Reliant still end up there?" Because somehow all reports of Kahn's colony (indeed, everything about the system) seem to be missing from Starfleet records. I'm sure someone on Reliant made a routine background check on the system before deciding it was prime Genesis fodder.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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Also, Ceti Alpha VI. Dude, I don't need a scanner to count.
"Shit, there's a LOT of debris here that isn't supposed to be..." "Huh...hey, Not-Spock. What say you?" :::checks::: "...The hell?? There's supposed to be 6 planets but I only find 5. And a shitload of rubble." "Barney, Betty, or Bam-Bamm?" :::sighs::: "Sir, it's about 300 years too early for Braxton humor." "Right. Sorry."
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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The whole Kahn thing makes me wonder how many other exploits of Kirk and crew were never made public knowledge.
A lot of stuff would be classified (the Gateway time portal for instance) and some would be just...unbelievable.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
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IIRC, CA6 blew six months after the Big E left Khan there. Given that the Enterprise was typically the only ship in the area, it is likely that Kirk might not have heard of the incident until months after that and then in some minor report on astronomical phenomena. They could very well have been on an assignment that precluded a rescue attempt.
The thing that got me about the whole explosion of CA6 is how it affected CA5. You would almost have to assume that both planets were close in their orbits. Perhaps it was the debris of 6 that hit 5 and did the "Dino-stinction" on it.
As to the K-crew's other exploits....they DID have 2 more years we never saw....
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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Terrell: "He blames you for --" Kirk: "I know what he blames me for."
Right. For aborting his dreams of world domination, for stopping him from capturing a starship, for marooning him on an uninhabited planet at the edge of nowhere, with slim odds of survival and none of escape. Plenty of reasons for all this wrath stuff.
That dialogue doesn't mean Kirk would know about the recent extra hardships or anything. It suffices that Kirk knows what he did, and who Khan is, and what his delusions and disagreements about his position in the universe are.
"We call that second degree murder here in the States...criminally neglegent homicide- minimum."
That's what Kirk was doing in the first place, and probably with full authority (even if off the record). He would have been within his rights to up the ante to first degree murder by giving the good old sonic crowbar a final swing when bringing Khan down at Engineering; he'd probably have gotten a medal out of it.
"I'm sure someone on Reliant made a routine background check on the system before deciding it was prime Genesis fodder."
Well, they wouldn't have been there unless some records stated "Ceti Alpha V - deserted Class M, potentially suited for harebrained scientific experiments". They couldn't have been flying blind across the galaxy, searching for the one hay in a needlestack. OTOH, they couldn't have been studying well-charted systems. If the entry already said "Ceti Alpha V - deserted Class M, DEFINITELY suited for harebrained scientific experiments", there'd be no point in sending a starship.
So most probably they just hopped from poorly charted system to poorly charted system, zeroed in on the desert planet there (with the assumption that it would be the one mentioned in the records) and gave it the once-over, then warped away.
It's not as if a planet would carry a label telling it's the fifth from the star; such identity can only be assigned to a planet by charting the entire star system and ascertaining that there are exactly four pebbles between the target and the star. And the Reliant would have little incentive to do that. They weren't looking for new life and civilizations, they were looking for desert worlds of exact criteria.
Let's remember "The Doomsday Machine". When does Spock notice that half the planets in the star system they themselves charted barely a year ago are missing? When the rubble starts hitting the windshield. What is his next observation? "Oh, Jim, you might like to know that, uh, the scanners show every star system in these parts in the same state..."
Sleeping at the wheel? If Spock does that, then it's probably SOP.
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Dudde, that's a fuck of a lot to instantly grasp just after your ship got it's ass kicked. I dont buy it.
It's possible, the bloke is supposed to be a master tactician and part of that is quick thinking, deduction and intuition.
Anyway, it need not be an instant revelation, since that statement was made hours after the encounter. Plenty of time to come up with a few running theories as to what happened.
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