Although there’s also a question if Khan and his augments really were superior anymore…normal human Kirk outhinks Khan in both Space Seed and Star Trek II and Khan’s physical strength doesn’t seem to be much of an advantage in the 23rd century.
Very true. You could argue that it was really Spock that out-thought Khan in the end of the second movie (“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates 2 dimensional thinking.”). But the TOS episode definitely makes it seem like Khan was overhyped. The entire time he’s built up as his mental and physical superior, and Kirk’s brilliant gambit to defeat him is, “beat him with a pipe.”
True about Spock out-thinking him to the point of defeat in STII. I was thinking about Kirk taking over the Reliant and lowering its shields without Khan realizing he could even do that. It wasn’t the final defeat, but that should have just been an obvious contingency for Khan to plan for if he had the superior intellect he was supposed to have. He learned how to control the Enterprise in a very short amount of time, but he didn’t even check the Reliant’s computer to find out if it could be remotely accessed with a code that an admiral would probably be able to get.
It’s even made clear in dialogue in the film that Khan never thought of it.
SPOCK: Reliant’s prefix number is one six three zero nine.
SAAVIK: I don’t understand.
KIRK: You have to learn why things work on a starship.
SPOCK: Each ship has its combination code.
KIRK: To prevent an enemy do what we’re attempting. Using our console to order Reliant to lower her shields.
SPOCK: Assuming he hasn’t changed the combination. He’s quite intelligent.
So I don’t know about Spock’s assessment of his intelligence. Even in the alternate 1990s of TOS… there had already been remote-controlled space probes by 1967 when Space Seed came out.
Did Kahn ever demonstrate superhuman intelligence? He and his men apparently have the ability to learn how to fly space ships 3 centuries newer than they are, like they don’t seem to have trouble flying Reliant around, but they did have Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov as brainslugged captives.
Kahn didn’t pick up on that painfully simple “hours may seem like days” code, for example.
Space Seed is the same way. Khan is presented to us, the viewers, as a superior form of human, mentally and physically, but the episode itself doesn’t really show that.
Very true. You could argue that it was really Spock that out-thought Khan in the end of the second movie (“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates 2 dimensional thinking.”). But the TOS episode definitely makes it seem like Khan was overhyped. The entire time he’s built up as his mental and physical superior, and Kirk’s brilliant gambit to defeat him is, “beat him with a pipe.”
True about Spock out-thinking him to the point of defeat in STII. I was thinking about Kirk taking over the Reliant and lowering its shields without Khan realizing he could even do that. It wasn’t the final defeat, but that should have just been an obvious contingency for Khan to plan for if he had the superior intellect he was supposed to have. He learned how to control the Enterprise in a very short amount of time, but he didn’t even check the Reliant’s computer to find out if it could be remotely accessed with a code that an admiral would probably be able to get.
It’s even made clear in dialogue in the film that Khan never thought of it.
So I don’t know about Spock’s assessment of his intelligence. Even in the alternate 1990s of TOS… there had already been remote-controlled space probes by 1967 when Space Seed came out.
Did Kahn ever demonstrate superhuman intelligence? He and his men apparently have the ability to learn how to fly space ships 3 centuries newer than they are, like they don’t seem to have trouble flying Reliant around, but they did have Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov as brainslugged captives.
Kahn didn’t pick up on that painfully simple “hours may seem like days” code, for example.
Space Seed is the same way. Khan is presented to us, the viewers, as a superior form of human, mentally and physically, but the episode itself doesn’t really show that.