Space Seed
KHAAAN!
The Enterprise stumbles across an old DY-100, which Spock claims comes from the 1990s. And on board is everyone’s favorite Star Trek baddie. Thus begins Space Seed (Memory Alpha; SD Video)
This episode is awesome.
We’ve got a little bit of future history, close enough that it would seem imminent and dangeous to the audience of the 1960s (even if it seems a bit ridiculous now). We’ve got a mysterious past that the crew can fill us in on, and we’ve got a genuine bad guy, who is all the more menacing because he is, to some extent, correct.
We’ve also got this incredibly smart scene, which I’m pretty much quoting in full:
Spock: Khan Noonien Singh.
McCoy: The last of the tyrants to be overthrown.
Scotty: I must confess, Gentlemen: I’ve always held a sneaking admiration for this one.
Kirk: He was the best of the tyrants, and the most dangerous. They were supermen in a sense: stronger, braver, certainly more ambitious, more daring.
Spock: Gentlemen, this romanticism about a ruthless dictator!
Kirk: Mr Spock, we humans have a streak of barbarism in us. Appalling, but there, nevertheless.
Scotty: There were no massacres under his rule.
Spock: And as little freedom!
McCoy: No wars… until he was attacked.
Spock: Gentlemen!
[Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty laugh]
Kirk: Mr. Spock, you misunderstand us. We can be against him and admire him all at the same time.
Spock: [Pause] Illogical.
Kirk: Totally.
And then, because McCoy gets all the best lines:
Kirk: Care to join the landing party, Doc?
McCoy: Well, if you’re actually giving me a choice…
Kirk: I’m not.
Also awesome is the scene where Khan is running out of a room as it fills with knock-out gas. Scotty stands, runs toward the cloud of gas, punches one of the mooks out, and only then does he run out of the room, too.
Begin Spoilers
There are some minor issues. For instance, why doesn’t Spock just join Khan? It’d be the logical move, short-term. And he could always double back if Kirk finds a way to get the upper hand. The only reason not to is loyalty, which sounds emotional to me. But then again, I don’t think emotions and logic are really that separable (which is one of the reasons why the Vulcans are interesting; it’s an exploration of that idea).
The resolution is a little trite, as well, and comes very close to marking the episode down, but it really is one of the finest written, best plotted episodes so far.
End Spoilers
Grade
A+
