“A terrible man but a great leader.”
“At least Mussolini made the trains run on time.”
“We can be against him and admire him, all at the same time.”
That last quote comes from Captain Kirk about Khan Noonien Singh, the villain of “Space Seed” and perhaps the most famous villain to ever come out of Stark Trek. The conversation comes roughly at the middle point of the episode, as Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty run through Khan’s historical “achievements,” which included establishing a dictatorial empire that ruled over one quarter of the Earth’s population, “from Asia to the Middle East.” Spock objects to the vaguely congratulatory discussion as “romanticism about a ruthless dictator.” Kirk replies with the quote above, which Spock derides as illogical. “Totally,” says Kirk.
McGivers, Kirk, McCoy, and Scotty investigate the S.S. Botany Bay, launched (very optimistically) in 1996. As Kirk notes, Botany Bay was a prison colony in Australia. In early drafts, Khan was a criminal named “Harold Erickson” who had been put on a prison ship as punishment. As such, the name of the ship here is somewhat vestigial. It’s commented upon as a potential clue to its purpose, but Khan makes clear he left Earth as a fugitive rather than a prisoner.
From nearly the first scene, “Space Seed” puts its themes at the forefront, and quite literally in the center of the camera. Upon locating a derelict Earth ship from the long lost past of the 1990s, the Enterprise crew beams onto the craft to investigate faint heartbeats heard onboard. Going along with them is the ship’s historian, Marla McGivers, finally given “something to do for a change” as Kirk winkingly puts it. McGivers is defined briefly in three ways. One, she’s beautiful. Two, she spends her spare time painting the Great Men of History, including Lief Ericson, Napoleon, and Richard the Lionhearted. Third, she believes these “men were more adventurous then, bolder, more colorful,” than the men of her time. She is, in short, a deeply conservative woman, and thus the perfect mark for Khan Noonien Singh.
The derelict ship, the S.S. Botany Bay, is his. Back in 1996, Khan fled Earth after his empire came crumbling down in the Eugenics Wars. He was one of many "genetic supermen” bred as the evolutionary future of the human race by scientists too myopic to realize the danger of their creation. These supermen quickly established themselves as dictators in no less than 40 nations, leading to a “third world war” so destructive that records from the time are scattered and incomplete. Khan was “the best” of them, and fled Earth to find a planet upon which to rebuild his empire with 72 of his closest followers. While he’s the villain of the episode, he ultimately gets exactly what he wants.
Khan (Ricardo Montalban) explains himself over dinner while Marla McGivers (Madlyn Rhue) looks on. Montalban was born in Mexico City and was one of the first Hispanic actors to be given prominent roles in Hollywood, although here he plays the explicitly “Sikh” Khan Noonien Singh. He reprised the role in The Wrath of Khan fifteen years later. Rhue had coincidentally portrayed Montalban’s wife on an episode of Bonanza in 1960 and was a regular TV guest actress throughout the 60s and 70s.
The Enterprise accidentally awakens Khan from cryosleep and brings him aboard to provide medical attention. Upon his recovery, Khan immediately begins plotting to take control of the Enterprise as a conquering weapon, and has no trouble seducing McGivers to join him. McGivers has been critiqued in the past as a sexist depiction of a weak-willed woman overcome by Khan’s superhuman body and magnetism. I wouldn’t argue against that, but think it does breeze past a more interesting read of McGivers as a conservative woman with a high level of internalized misogyny. She’s an almost perfect representation of the “trad wife” posters you see online right now. Trek cannot outrun allegations of sexism simply because it contains no women of note, besides Uhura, who are not primarily defined by their relationships to men. McGivers is too, but the contextualization provided for her interest in Khan makes it a more interesting relationship than ones you typically see on the show.
Khan’s plan works flawlessly. He’s charming and intriguing to all of his captors, except Spock, immune to the man’s baser appeal. It’s only too late that they realize he has recruited McGivers and managed to revive his followers, and he floods the bridge with knockout gas to capture them all. He demands that the crew join him or die one by one, with Kirk the first to go. McGivers lacks the stomach to see it through though. She frees Kirk and Spock, who pull the same trick on Khan’s followers and subdue the dictator himself after a long fist fight with Kirk. At a court martial hearing, Kirk decides to maroon Khan on an abandoned planet, with McGivers agreeing to join him. He seems almost unbothered. “A world to win, an empire to build.”
Khan ambushes Kirk and demonstrates his superhuman strength. Shown here in the last of five different outfits, Khan set the record for costume changes by a single guest star on the show.
“Space Seed” is bluntly interested in the Great Men of History. Khan is described as a Napoleon and a Caesar, he thinks in “militaristic” terms and finds himself admired by even his enemies. He’s respected, virile, explicitly superhuman. He’s the subtext of a cult of personality literalized as a genetic superior.
But of course, Khan’s story does not end in this episode. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the most remembered and beloved of the original series films. Before starting this blog, it was one of the few pieces of Star Trek media I had seen. Khan returns as the villain, escaping from his exile with a terraforming device and the same plans he has always had. He is defeated again, but the defeat costs Spock his life. As this blog has documented, the friendship between Kirk and Spock is the heart of Star Trek. The tension between their perspectives, what they represent, is the ultimate power source of the show. Like Neo and Trinity’s bond in The Matrix Resurrections, it keeps the universe going.
What then to make of the ending here? There’s no way around the fact that Kirk makes perhaps his greatest mistake in marooning Khan rather than securing or killing him. The historical parallels caution against it; Waterloo happened after Napoleon’s first exile. It’s a decision the show barely bothers to explain, one which ultimately kills Kirk’s best friend and fulfills Khan’s desires, even after he has shown himself to be a duplicitous, cunning, and ruthless man. In the hearing, the man favorably compares himself to Lucifer himself, albeit Milton’s. A Great Man, certainly.
One of Gustave Dore’s illustrations done for a new edition of Paradise Lost, the epic John Milton poem referenced by Khan. The villain here alludes to a classic Lucifer quote from the work: “Here we may reign secure; and in my choice / To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: / Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
The only honest reading to endorse is that Kirk’s “illogical” perspective got the better of him. Spock was simply right. Immune to Khan’s charms, the magnetism of his forceful and domineering worldview, he sees the man for what he is. A tyrant. A dictator. An evil man, which precludes greatness. When paired with its sequel, “Space Seed” has a clear message. These are not men to be admired. Great dictators are still dictators. Being effective at domination is not worthy of respect but worthy of even more condemnation. Kirk and McGivers essentially believe the same thing and they’re wrong to believe it.
Because Mussolini didn’t even make the trains run on time anyway.
Stray Thoughts
This episode went through multiple drafts, as did many Star Trek episodes, that changed its content significantly. Khan went through multiple names and ethnicities before settling on Sikh, although his full name is inspired by an old Chinese friend of Gene Roddenberry’s: Noonien Wang
The original script draft was written by veteran television writer Carey Wilber, who adapted an idea he had already produced on his previous television series, the immortally named Captain Video and His Video Rangers, which aired from 1949-1955.
As usual for early Star Trek, the episode went overbudget. The $17,000 overrun was largely caused by the need to create the Botany Bay miniature and shoot new scenes involving both it and the Enterprise model.
Photo Credits
On board the S.S. Botany Bay: https://www.tor.com/2015/08/25/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-space-seed/
Khan and McGivers: https://www.startrek.com/article/the-evolution-of-space-seed-part-6
Khan overpowers Kirk: https://midnitereviews.com/2016/01/star-trek-episode-22-space-seed/
Dore illustration: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Paradise-Lost-epic-poem-by-Milton