Script: Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilbur
Story: Carey Wilbur
Director: Marc Daniels
Producer: Gene L. Coon
Well, ladies and gentlemen, here he is - Khan Noonien Singh, played by Ricardo Montalban, in his full true glory. In many ways, the character is never better than he is here.
The Enterprise discovers a sleeper ship drifting in space. A relic of Earth's distant past, the occupants were placed in suspended animation due to the extreme duration of space travel before warp drive was invented. The leader, a Sikh Indian, is awakened and brought aboard ship. Marla McGivers, the ship's historian, is assigned to try and figure out who he is and want the purpose of the ship was.
However, McGivers is one of those people who romanticizes figures of the past. She views "modern" men as timid, tame and the "great men" of the past as bolder, more colourful. She wants a man who takes what he wants. Unfortunately for her, Khan is just such a man. The episode is really quite explicit in depicting the way that Khan emotionally and physically manipulates and abuses McGivers into coming over to his side and assisting him in his ultimate goal: the awakening of his fellow sleepers and the takeover of the Enterprise.
It is mostly Spock who pieces together Khan's true identity -- the product of a genetic engineering program to create better human beings, which led to the "superior" humans seizing power in many nations, as Spock notes superior ability breeds superior ambition. Khan controlled most of the Middle East, until the tyrants were overthrown in a conflict called the Eugenics Wars. Khan and his followers then stole their spacecraft and launched themselves into exile, hoping to find a new world to win and conquer.
The majority of the episode, effectively, is a battle of wits. Many dialogue scenes pit Kirk against Khan, and the air is electric in their encounters as they trade verbal barbs. Khan's superior intellect learns the Enterprise's systems quickly, and once his intentions are out in the open, he quickly takes over the ship using its own intruder control systems. It's only through McGivers that he's defeated -- she can't bear to see her shipmates killed and releases Kirk, who manages just barely to defeat Khan in a melee battle in Engineering.
The ending of the episode provides the title, and is also probably top on Kirk's List of Retrospectively Bad Decisions. Kirk decides to drop Khan and his followers on an untamed, uninhabited planet, daring them to tame a world. McGivers is given the choice of exile or court-martial, and chooses to go along with Khan.
If you've only ever seen Khan in The Wrath of Khan, Montalban's rendition here is a revelation. It's the same guy, but the feature film version has been twisted by fifteen years of bitterness and blinded by revenge. This initial Khan on the other hand is perhaps an even greater threat: ambitious, intelligent, driven, confident, powerful. He's definitely the most challenging enemy faced on the series by this point.
If you've only ever seen Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, jeez, I'm real sorry for you. Please do yourself a favour and check out this episode and wipe that sad sad excuse for a performance from your mind.
This is the good stuff.
Rating: 4 out of 4
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