History Recap / StarTrekS1E22SpaceSeed

* BewareTheSuperman[=/=]NoTranshumanismAllowed: Khan is the ''reason'' why, as far forward as ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', BioAugmentation is forbidden.

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* AluminumChristmasTrees: Played with. When Scotty examines the Botany Bay's equipment, he mentions "bulky, solid...transistor units." While transistors were around for about a decade, they didn't fully replace vacuum tubes until the late 60's, after this episode first showed.

Kirk and Spock question Khan some more and he as good as admits that he was one of the superhuman {{Evil Overlord}}s from the '90s. Since EvilIsSexy, [=McGivers=] takes Khan's side and apologizes to him for how rude everyone else was. He then manipulates her into agreeing to help him hijack the ship. With her help, he unfreezes his EvilMinions and takes over Engineering. It turns out he actually learned a bit from those tech manuals and cuts off life-support systems to the bridge. After everyone has passed out, he treats them to Kirk's torture in a decompression chamber, offering to let him live if someone joins him.

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Kirk takes in Khan and his men after he finds them floating in space and on the verge of dying when their ship systems fail. Khan returns the favor by [[UngratefulBastard attempting to kill Kirk and take over his ship]]. Much, much later, in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', Chekov calls out Khan for this, pointing out that Khan and his people were marooned precisely because of this.

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture:
** The establishment of the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s naturally caused the franchise some problems when it was still going strong [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS3E8FuturesEnd when the decade actually came around]].
*** One of the novels [[note]]The two-volume ''The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh'' by Greg Cox[[/note]] makes a truly heroic effort to fit it into real history, explaining how the wars could have happened with no one knowing about them (however that requires omitting a lot of the history the episode recounts on this).
*** The ''Star Trek: Khan'' comic miniseries goes the AlternateHistory route instead, depicting Khan and his followers nuking Washington DC and Moscow -- in 1992!
*** ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'', meanwhile, suggests that the Eugenics Wars have been moved forward in time to the mid-21st century, overlapping with World War III, as a result of the Temporal Cold War. [[spoiler: In the episode, "[[Recap/StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsS2E03TomorrowAndTomorrowAndTomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow]]", Khan is about 10 years old in 2022.]]
** The slower-than-light ships like the ''Botany Bay'' will be obsolete in 2018.[[note]]Meanwhile, here we are past the real 2018 without having sleeper ships or even having left the solar system.[[/note]]

*** ''Series/StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds'', meanwhile, suggests that the Eugenics Wars have been moved forward in time to the mid-21st century, overlapping with World War III, as a result of the Temporal Cold War. [[spoiler: In the episode, ''[[Recap/StarTrekStrangeNewWorldsS2E03TomorrowAndTomorrowAndTomorrow Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow]]'', Khan is about 10 years old in 2022.]]

* InnocuouslyImportantEpisode: At first glance, ''Space Seed'' is just another example of episodic 60's-era TV: a bad guy named Khan tries to take over the Enterprise, but Kirk outwits Khan, exiles him and his followers to an uninhabited planet, and life goes on.
** However, fifteen years later, Khan returns as the villain in the second Trek feature film, ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan''. Not only do the events in that film '''greatly''' influence the rest of the TOS-era movies, but the [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan second]], [[Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock third]], and [[Film/StarTrekIVTheVoyageHome fourth]] films are popular enough to convince Paramount to launch the [[Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration TNG era]], which continue today in the [[Series/StarTrekDiscovery Nu-Trek]] era. ''Space Seed'' and ''[[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan TWoK]]'' also set up several plot points for both the [[Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine subsequent]] TV [[Series/StarTrekEnterprise installments]] and [[Film/StarTrek2009 the reboot movies]].
** Taken together, all of this makes ''Space Seed'' possibly '''the most important''' episode in Trek history, elevating ''Star Trek'' itself from a popular 1960's science-fiction series, to a multi-billion dollar, global franchise.

Kirk, Bones, Scotty and Lt. Marla [=McGivers=] (Madlyn Rhue, our GirlOfTheWeek) beam onto the ''Botany Bay'', finding it full of {{Human Popsicle}}s. Creator/RicardoMontalban, who [[FakeNationality we're told is Indian]], wakes up and [=McGivers=] falls in LoveAtFirstSight. In Sickbay, he's discovered to be superhuman, holds a knife to [=McCoy's=] throat and says his name is "Khan", but refuses to answer any other question. Kirk decides it's a good idea to let Khan look at all the technical information on the ''Enterprise''. Meanwhile, [=McGivers=] gets to have a rather lame love scene with Khan in which we learn she wears her hair in a 1960s updo (which looks uncannily like a wig) because it's "comfortable."

The FanNickname for this episode is, of course, "JustForFun/TheOneWith Khan".

* InnocuouslyImportantEpisode: At first glance, it seems like another example of episodic 60's-era TV: a bad guy named Khan tries to take over the Enterprise, Kirk outwits him and exiles him and his followers to an uninhabited planet, life goes on. Then Khan returns in ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan'', and the ensuing events greatly influence the rest of the TOS-era movies and set up some plot points for the subsequent Trek TV series and the reboot movies.

* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Come on, Kirk, his name is ''[[UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan Khan]]''. WhyDontYaJustShootHim Of course, technically, "Khan" is his title, not his name, which is "Noonien Singh."

* PlanetBaron: Khan becomes this after he is defeated but given a planet to colonize and rule, though we learn in ''The Wrath of Khan'' that the planet later died, prompting Khan to seek revenge on Kirk for marooning him there.

** Probably unintended at the time, but Spock's musing on what they would find upon returning to the planet on a later occasion essentially serves as a SequelHook leading into ''Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan.''

Kirk and Spock question Khan some more and he as good as admits that he was one of the superhuman {{Evil Overlord}}s from the '90s. Since EvilIsSexy, [=McGivers=] takes Khan's side and apologizes to him for how rude everyone else was. He then manipulates her feeble [[ValuesDissonance female]] mind into agreeing to help him hijack the ship. With her help, he unfreezes his EvilMinions and takes over Engineering. It turns out he actually learned a bit from those tech manuals and cuts off life-support systems to the bridge. After everyone has passed out, he treats them to Kirk's torture in a decompression chamber, offering to let him live if someone joins him.

** The 1990s are repeatedly described as being two hundred years ago, which would place the episode in the late 22nd century or possibly the early 23rd century. This is especially the case if you consider the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbRPDY3DLRs original preview trailer]], which uses the phrase "slightly over two centuries ago." Later canon places the events of "Space Seed" in 2267, at which point a figure of "nearly three centuries ago" would probably have been more accurate.

** The fact that sleeper ships became obsolete in 2018 would seem to imply that that's the year that FasterThanLightTravel was invented. {{Creator/James Blish}}'s 1968 episode novelization outright states that, "they didn't have the warp drive until then," and as late as 1985, ''The Official Star Trek Quiz Book'' places the discovery of warp drive in 2018. This is, of course, at odds with current canon, in which the warp drive was invented in 2063. Michael Okuda's official {{Retcon}} is that sleeper ships were made obsolete by "advances in sublight propulsion technologies," which seems unlikely given the vast distances in space.

** The establishment of the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s naturally caused the franchise some problems when it was still going strong [[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS3E8FuturesEnd when the decade actually came around]]. One of the novels [[note]]The two-volume ''The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh'' by Greg Cox[[/note]] makes a truly heroic effort to fit it into real history, explaining how the wars could have happened with no one knowing about them (however that requires omitting a lot of the history the episode recounts on this).
** In contrast, the ''Star Trek: Khan'' comic miniseries dispels all pretense and pushes it straight into AlternateHistory, depicting Khan and his followers nuking Washington DC and Moscow -- in 1992!

** In contrast, the ''Star Trek: Khan'' comic miniseries dispels all pretense and pushes it straight into AlternateHistory, depicting Khan and his followers nuking Washington DC and Moscow... in 1992!

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Khan's female followers all wear form fitting bodysuits, but no shoes.

[[SarcasmMode We're sure that leaving them behind will in no way]] [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan come back to bite the crew later on...]]

* {{Human Popsicle}}s: Khan and Company, before being woken up.

** The 1990s-set Eugenics Wars are described by Spock as, "your last so-called world war." From this, we can presume that the Eugenics Wars is the conflict that's meant when Spock mentions WorldWarIII in, "[[Recap/StarTrekS2E25BreadAndCircuses Bread and Circuses]]." Of course, this would be retconned by ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', which moved World War III to the mid-21st century.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The fact that sleeper ships became obsolete in 2018 would seem to imply that that's the year that FasterThanLightTravel was invented. {{Creator/James Blish}}'s 1968 episode novelization outright states that, "they didn't have the warp drive until then," and as late as 1985, ''The Official Star Trek Quiz Book'' places the discovery of warp drive in 2018. This is, of course, at odds with current canon, in which the warp drive was invented in 2063. Michael Okuda's official {{Retcon}} is that sleeper ships were made obsolete by "advances in sublight propulsion technologies," which seems unlikely given the vast distances in space.

* AllThereInTheScript: In the original script, the Botany Bay's log stated that the ship was originally headed for the Tau Ceti star system. Examination of the ship reveals a damaged steering system, which has sent the Botany Bay careening off-course into deep space.