The Rewatch 19: Space Seed.

Series: Star Trek (The Original Series)
Episode: 1.22 Space Seed (2-16-67)
Rating: 4/5
Redshirt Status: 0/22

Notable Guest Stars:
Ricardo Montalban – Khan Noonien Singh. Its Khan.  Need I say more?
Madlyn Rhue- Lt. Marla McGivers.  She was a popular actress during the sixties.

Review:

Khan is probably the most memorable of Kirk’s personal nemesis.  He’s got his own movie after all.  Well, this is the episode that started it all.  The Enterprise stumbles upon the SS Botany Bay, a sleeper ship from the 1990s during the Eugenics war.  Star Trek was quite ambitious in what it thought the world was capable in the next 30ish years. Given the time period, eugenics must have been a hot topic because they would have had to had to start producing these augmented humans not too long after the moon landing.  And have a world war.  TNG blurs this timeline up quite a bit too.

Back to the episode, Khan is woken up as the leader of the people on the ship. He tries to charm over the ship as he secretly plots to take it over and use it to take over a colony and build his empire. He succeeds at taking over the ship, but eventually the crew wins it back.  Kirk decides to let him have what he wanted, which really made no sense to me. 

Many things about this episode don’t make sense.  The timeline, but I’ll forgive them for that, they couldn’t know that we got lazy and didn’t move forward in science. (not that eugenics hasn’t come up, or that it is good but seriously we don’t have spacecraft that goes beyond the moon.  Or to the moon even). How Kirk managed to not get brain damage from being asphyxiated twice. Or decompensation sickness.

Interesting Notes:

• Directed by Marc Daniels
• Written by Gene L. Coon & Carey Wilber
• Introduction of the Prime Directive, although its not really followed.
• There are some obvious goofs in this episode, particularly the black out windows in the lodging house.

Pros:

• The idea that there is a historian on board (even if she seems more like an artist.  Where are the maps?  The books?)
• Introduction of Khan.

Cons:

• Marla McGivers. Maybe its just me, but I would have preferred a woman who might have fallen for Khan, but was still aware of her job/duty to the crew.  But then Kirk didn’t seem to think much of her either.