Space Seed
The Enterprise finds the SS Botany Bay, an old Earth vessel, floating in a region of space where ships from Earth haven’t travelled for years.
A landing party consisting of Captain Kirk, doctor McCoy, Chief Engineer Scott, and Lieutenant Marla McGivers beams aboard the Botany Bay. They discovers dozens of humans in suspended animation. One of the sleepers starts to wake up. His sleeping unit starts to malfunction. Kirk breaks it open.
The man is brought back to the Enterprise and taken to Sick Bay. Once he wakes up he insists on talking to the captain. Kirk vista Sick Bay but before McCoy’s patient will answer any questions he has a few for Kirk.
Lieutenant McGivers visits Khan in Sick Bay. he is very taken by her appearance as she is by him. He later reveals to her that he plans to take over the Enterprise and that he wants her help. He is very insistent and uses physical violence against her to emphasize his points. She tries to argue with him but his mind is made up. She agrees to help him.
Kirk and the others figure out that Khan is a renegade warlord from late 20th century Earth. Kirk has him confined to his quarters with an armed guard placed just outside. Khan escapes from his quarters and, with some help from Lieutenant McGivers, he transports back to the Botany Bay.
Khan wakes up his followers and proceeds with his plan to take control of the Enterprise. Kirk, Spock, and the bridge crew soon discover that Khan has locked all exit routes from the bridge. He has also taken control of Engineering and cut off the air supply to the bridge. It is just a matter of time before they suffocate.
The bridge crew passes out. Everyone except Kirk is brought to the conference room. Kirk is put in the decompression chamber and once again slowly suffocated. Lieutenant McGivers has second thoughts and helps Kirk to escape. Kirk and Spock flood the ship with sleeping gas but Khan escapes to Engineering. Kirk finds him there and the two men have a knock down, drag out fight which Kirk wins.
Kirk holds a court martial but decides to drop all charges against Khan and instead maroons him and his people on Ceti Alpha V. Lieutenant McGivers chooses to go with Khan rather than be court martialed.
Thoughts
It is pretty clear (during the fight in Engineering) that stunt doubles were used at a few points for both men.
I love the moment where Scotty gets in a punch on one of Khan’s men just as the room is getting flooded with sleeping gas. There are a lot of things that I remembered from previous viewings of this episode but this was one that I did not recall.
Khan wears a few different outfits over the course of this episode.
The story of Khan is later continued in Stark Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which takes place 18 years later.
This episode is not perfect but it holds up in a big way. I contend that much of that has to do with Ricardo Montalban’s performance in this episode. Without his magnetic performance it would not have been the same.
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