Star Trek Social Club

The title may be a reference to the Aristotelian concept of the common good, although that has been used to justify utilitarian positions, where the correct decision is deemed to be one that benefits the greatest number of members of a given community. Of course, that means that the minority may bear the brunt of the disadvantages.

The synopsis of the episode confirms the spelling of Elborean and Delmonda.

McGivers’ log says it’s the 208th day of the exile, which means about a month has elapsed since the last episode.

Delmonda says a “pandem” is “a collection of minds bonded beyond convenience or aptitude”. Given the literary proximity of Khan’s story to Milton’s Paradise Lost, one can’t help but think of “pandemonium”, which was Milton’s name for Hell, or “the place of all demons” (pan + demon).

The deception that Delmonda detects from Khan is of course his spin on how he came to Ceti Alpha V - not by choice, but because Kirk exiled them there.

Joachim calls the Elboreans “Elbs”. Erica says he’s the best fisherman of their group and the first one to chart the “Sunless Sea”, taking the name from McGivers’ quoting of the opening of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”: “Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea.”

Ursula says her and Madot’s baby is due in eight more weeks (two months), which is consistent with it being about seven months since the start of the exile, since the baby was conceived about a week into the exile (KHA: “Paradise”).

Khan says the four most terrifying words in the English language are, “We come in peace.” In DIS: “The Vulcan Hello”, T’Kuvma exhorts his people to “lock arms against those [the Federation] whose fatal greeting is… ‘We come in peace.’”

McGivers alludes to the fairy tale of “Hansel and Gretel” when she says “no wandering through the caverns without breadcrumbs”.

As noted at the start of “Paradise”, in 2287 (six years prior to 2293) an “anonymous source” (or so she told the Starfleet Civilian Resource Allocation Committee) gave Lear McGivers’ logs recorded while on Ceti Alpha V. She now reveals that it was Delmonda.

Currently region-locked - hopefully they'll fix it soon.

This is a new promotional site for SFA - it looks like they've put a fair bit of work into it.

There may be updates following the NYCC panel later today.

I consulted an expert: Matt Mitovich, a respected veteran TV industry and entertainment reporter, known for breaking news....The answer came in the most recent edition [of his column]:

“You can rest assured that Wiseman will appear on Starfleet Academy, as a guest star in one episode.”

Sulu dates the scans made by Enterprise of the Ceti Alpha system as Stardate 3143.1. TOS: “Space Seed”, according to the logs, takes place between Stardate 3141.9 and 3143.3. The latter log is apparently recorded just before the hearing where Kirk decides Khan’s (and McGivers’) fate. This is consistent with Kirk already having decided to offer Khan exile before the hearing commences.

The ban on genetic augmentation is such a core part of Star Trek lore now that it’s easy to forget that it was only inserted into continuity in DS9: “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” - Season 5, Episode 15, in 1997. Indeed, in episodes like TNG: “Unnatural Selection”, 9 years earlier, Picard and Pulaski come across a genetic manipulation program on Darwin Station and don’t even blink.

Lear asks why Kirk never checked on the “seeds he planted”, echoing Spock’s last words from “Space Seed”: “It would be interesting, Captain, to return to that world in a hundred years and to learn what crop has sprung from the seed you planted today.”

Ceti Alpha VI’s explosion places this episode six months into the exile, which is about two months after the previous episode where Khan and McGivers are married. McGivers confirms this a few minutes later into the episode.

Khan uses the same phrase (“laid waste”) as he does in ST II to describe the consequences to Ceti Alpha V of Ceti Alpha VI exploding.

Joachim’s advice to Erica about aiming the pointy end echoes a line from The Mask of Zorro, where Alejandro Murrieta is asked if he knows how to use a sword and replies, “The pointy end goes in the other man.”

McGivers relates the events of Zefram Cochrane’s first warp flight, making a warp-capable ship from a nuclear missile, and making contact with Vulcans, as chronicled in First Contact. She would be unaware of the involvement of time-traveling Borg and the crew of Enterprise-E, of course.

“Superior” is an adjective often used by and with Augments. In “Space Seed”, Spock notes that “superior ability breeds superior ambition,” a sentiment Archer echoes in ENT: “The Augments”. Khan describes McGivers as a “superior woman” as he accepts her going into exile with him. In ST II, Joachim and Kirk both refer to Khan as the “superior intellect”, although Kirk does so mockingly.

The alien is Delmonda of Elboria, many thousands of light years away, and they have journeyed two “spans”, presumably meaning years. I am not certain of the spelling of Elboria (and for a minute I thought he was saying El-Auria, i.e. Guinan’s system), but the Alborians are a reptilian race that appeared in the DS9 YA novel The Pet, and they don’t fit the description of these aliens.

McGivers quotes the first lines of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 1797 poem “Kubla Khan: or A Vision in a Dream”. Famously, Coleridge claimed he composed the entire poem in an opium-induced dream, but only managed to get a few stanzas down before he was interrupted by a “man from Porlock” on business, causing him to forget the 200-300 line poem.

The lines are also used in Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen Kane to describe the opulent estate of the titular Charles Foster Kane, an extension of Kane’s ego and hubris but ultimately a crumbling ruin where he dies in isolation - foreshadowing the fate of Khan’s colony, perhaps?

It’s important to remember some fallacies

In the minute possibly that a TOS continuation were to happen, where should they start from?

Would they go from end of TAS in 2270, or would they start from end of TOS in 2269, overlapping in time with TAS?

In the latter case, I would hope they do it so it’s in-between star dates of TAS to avoid bungling the chronology.

This also opens up the possibility for retelling some TAS episodes; I think most TAS episodes best belong in TAS, with the TAS camp and overall continued TOS storytelling conventions being fundamental to their charm. Live action remakes of a lot of these episodes would probably serve just to strip them of their soul rather than add anything.

The main exception I can think of might be “Yesteryear”; I think having an “extended version” as a full 50 minute episode or even possibly a 2-parter could allow them to add more depth to the story in a way that doesn’t severely break canon, showing more of Spock’s family life and school life as well as Vulcan society in general. I think this is a big story well-suited to newer Trek’s more dramatic storytelling style.

I think the biggest difficulty might be how they would handle young Michael Burnham in this episode. I think the easiest thing to do would be to just say Burnham’s parents were killed in December 2236 and “Yesteryear” happened in January 2237 a couple weeks to a month before Sarek took in Burnham. While I don’t necessarily hate the idea of young Burnham, I think Spock dealing with suddenly having a new adoptive sister would unnecessarily convolute the plot, so my solution works around that. I don’t want Yesteryear to be turned from a coming-of-age and being different story to one about sibling bonding. Then again, maybe they can pull it off and make something good.

What are your thoughts on this? Any other TAS episodes you think could benefit from being adapted into a live action episode?