Space Seed

One of the things I like about sci fi stories that take place somewhere in the distant future is when they pause for a minute or two to provide some explanation of how the universe got from our times to the world of tomorrow. Such glimpses are fairly rare in the original Star Trek, so they’re to be savored when they appear. This is such an occasion.

While trekking through empty space, our heroes encounter an anomalous object: a spacecraft from the 1990s. Way back in those days the Earth was mired in a global conflict called the Eugenic Wars, which made it odd that at the time anybody would have bothered with a deep space exploration mission. The ship – which looks like a submarine got dropped on top of a file cabinet – turns out to be the S.S. Botany Bay (a reference to a penal colony in Australia), and its crew is in suspended animation.

The first revived – no small task, considering how long they’d all been in the freezers – is the captain, a man who identifies himself only as Khan (Ricardo Montalban). Records from the time are spotty, so even the ship’s historian, Lieutenant Marla McGivers (Madlyn Rhue), can’t tell exactly who he is.

And that’s a darn shame, because the Enterprise’s new guest is none other than Khan Noonian Singh, a genetically-engineered “superman” who once ruled a quarter of the entire Earth. With the help of McGivers – who naturally has the hots for him – he seizes control of the Enterprise. Of course he can’t get it to go anywhere without the cooperation of the crew, which he attempts to extract by dropping Kirk into a decompression chamber.

Which turns out to be a bad move, because it’s more than McGivers is prepared to stomach. So she sneaks away and sets Kirk free (recompressing him so rapidly that it’s a wonder he doesn’t emerge from the chamber with the galaxy’s worst earache). Back at large, the captain swiftly rallies the crew, subdues the 20th century supermen and sets everything right again.

And here in the last five minutes is where things get really interesting. Kirk convenes a hearing to determine what to do with the “guests.” He decides to beam them all down to Ceti Alpha V, a desolate but inhabitable world. And rather than court martial McGivers, he offers Khan the option to take her along. Oddly enough, he accepts. So let me get this straight. She betrayed Star Fleet to side with you. Then she betrayed you to side with Star Fleet. Now you want her back? Knock yourself out. Our loss I’m sure.

In retrospect it seems like such an obvious sequel set-up that it should come as no surprise that this tidy little arrangement served as the back-story for the second Star Trek movie. And of course it’s a pleasure to watch Shatner and Montalban in a dead heat to see who can chew through the most scenery. Beyond all that, however, this is a reasonably sound episode.

Episode rating:

Stardate: 3141.9

Episode type: Dangerous alien

Written by: Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilbur

Original air date: February 16, 1967

The Return of the Archons / A Taste of Armageddon

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