Khan Noonien Singh

"Space Seed" Khan makes his introductory appearance as the antagonist in the episode "Space Seed", first broadcast on February 16, 1967. According to the backstory revealed in the episode, Khan is one of a group of genetically engineered superhumans, bred to be free of the usual human mental and physical limitations, who were removed from power after the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. Khan had been both the most successful conqueror and the most benign ruler of the group, ruling more than a quarter of the Earth's area across Asia to the Middle East from 1992 to 1996 with a firm but generally peaceful hand until he was deposed. While most of the supermen were killed or sentenced to death, Khan and 84 others escaped Earth by way of the sleeper ship SS Botany Bay. Botany Bay is discovered by the crew of the Starship Enterprise in 2267, with Khan and 72 of the 84 crew members of Botany Bay still alive, cryogenically frozen in suspended animation. When Khan's sleep chamber malfunctions, he is transported to the Enterprise, where he reawakens and learns he is in the 23rd century. Given spacious quarters while Botany Bay is towed to a starbase, Khan fascinates and charms the ship's historian, Marla McGivers (Madlyn Rhue), while using his access to the ship's technical manuals to learn how to take over and operate the Enterprise. McGivers agrees to help Khan revive the other supermen, allowing him to organize an attempted takeover. To coerce the Enterprise crew to cooperate with him, Khan places Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) in the ship's decompression chamber and threatens to kill Kirk unless the crew submits. McGivers cannot stand by as her captain dies and frees Kirk, who neutralizes Khan's men by using a neural gas. Khan heads to engineering and sets the ship's engines to self-destruct, whereupon he is incapacitated by Kirk. Captain Kirk conducts a hearing, sentencing Khan and his followers to exile on an uncolonized world, Ceti Alpha V. Khan accepts Kirk's challenge—evoking the fall of Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost—and McGivers joins Khan rather than face court-martial. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) wonders what the "seed" Kirk has planted will bear in a hundred years. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Khan returns as the antagonist in the 1982 feature film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Captain Clark Terrell (Paul Winfield) and First Officer Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) of the USS Reliant are searching for an uninhabited world to test the Genesis device, a powerful terraforming tool. They beam down to what they believe is Ceti Alpha VI; however, Chekov soon discovers the Botany Bay and realizes their true location. After Khan and his people capture them, Khan confirms that the barren world is in fact Ceti Alpha V; Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after he and his people had been marooned, and the resulting shock shifted the orbit of their planet. The cataclysm rendered Ceti Alpha V nigh-uninhabitable. Twenty of the survivors, including McGivers, whom Khan had married, were subsequently killed by the only surviving animal life, the Ceti eel. Swearing vengeance on Kirk, now an admiral, for abandoning them to die, Khan infests Terrell and Chekov with young Ceti eels; the creatures enter their brains, rendering them vulnerable to suggestion. Khan, intent on seizing control of the Genesis device, then seizes control of the Reliant. Author Greg Cox penned three Star Trek novels featuring Khan, published by licensee Pocket Books. In the two-volume The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Khan is depicted as a North Indian from a family of Sikhs. "Khan" is a title; his adoptive parents are from Chandigarh, Punjab, India and are both eugenic scientists. At the end of the second novel, Khan and his followers are placed aboard the Botany Bay by Gary Seven as part of a deal to stop Khan's machinations on Earth. The 2005 follow-up, To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, relates what happened to Khan and his fellow exiles between the events of "Space Seed" and The Wrath of Khan. A different version of Khan's exile on Ceti Alpha V is depicted in IDW Publishing's 2010 comic miniseries Khan: Ruling in Hell. From 2013 to 2014, IDW published a five-part series of comic books telling the story of the Into Darkness incarnation of Khan. The first issue in the series acknowledges the discrepancy of Khan's physical appearance compared to that of the previous incarnation. In keeping with the prime timeline's backstory, Khan's beginnings, rise to power, and involvement in the Eugenics War are depicted. It is also revealed his birth name was Noonien Singh and that he adopted the title "Khan" out of admiration for Genghis Khan. The series goes on to mention that Khan's anatomy and memories were altered per Marcus's orders, so that Khan would initially believe himself to be the fabricated Harrison. Star Trek: Khan (audio drama) A new take of Khan's backstory is presented in the nine-part 2025 audio drama Star Trek: Khan, which explores his nearly two decades of exile on Ceti Alpha V. Written by Kirsten Beyer and David Mack, based on a story by Nicholas Meyer, and directed by Fred Greenhalgh, it is conceived the first canonical bridge between the events of Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan. The series depicts Khan (voiced by Naveen Andrews) and his followers – including Marla McGuyvers (voiced by Wrenn Schmidt) – as they attempt to build a new society after their banishment by Captain Kirk. Confronting dangerous species, including the neuroinvasive Ceti eels, as well as environmental instability and planetary threats following the destruction of the neighbouring planet, Khan's leadership is tested and his community faces mounting losses. The narrative introduces additional factions on the planet, expanding the political and moral pressures shaping Khan's rule, tracing his transformation from a self‑styled visionary into a hardened figure driven by grief and betrayal. The framing story, set a few decades later, introduces archaologist Dr. Rosalind Lear (voiced by Sonya Cassidy), working with Captain Hikaru Sulu and Ensign Tuvok (voiced by their original actors George Takei and Tim Russ) on the U.S.S. Excelsior. ==Development==

Initial development Writer Carey Wilber pitched "Space Seed" to Star Trek producers Gene Roddenberry, Gene L. Coon and Robert H. Justman with an 18-page outline dated August 29, 1966. In the outline, Wilber envisioned the crew of Botany Bay as criminals sent on a 1,500-year journey to make room on Earth for others. Khan was represented as a Nordic criminal with a "magnificent" body, Harald Ericsson. The first draft of the script introduced the character as John Ericssen—who is revealed to be a man involved in "The First World Tyranny", named Ragnar Thorwald. The character of Thorwald was more brutal than Khan in the final version, killing guards using a phaser. In the original script, Kirk forgives Ericssen and offers him and his people a chance at a fresh start—something that remained in the final episode—but the character committing murder would have precluded such an ending, as NBC censors would have necessitated the "bad guy" be punished for his actions. By the final draft, Khan is Indian; a character guesses that Khan is from Northern India and "probably a Sikh". Khan's full name was based on that of Kim Noonien Singh, a pilot Roddenberry served with during the Second World War. Roddenberry lost touch with his friend and had hoped that Singh's similar name might attract his attention and renew his old acquaintance. In "Space Seed", Khan is presented as having several positive characteristics: he is gracious, smiling, fearless, and generous. He is not threatened by the success of others and encourages their self-esteem. He is also ambitious and desiring a challenge commensurate with his abilities, but this ambition is not tempered by any consideration of the rights of others. Author Paul Cantor asserts that Khan is a mirror image of Kirk, sharing his aggressiveness, ambition, and even his womanizing tendencies, but possessing them in far greater degree. The character's superhuman appearance and accent (Montalbán was born and raised in Mexico in a Spanish speaking household) strongly differentiate him from most Star Trek characters. The Wrath of Khan ) and his followers in The Wrath of Khan After the disappointing response to the first Star Trek feature film, The Motion Picture's plot and direction, Paramount executives appointed Harve Bennett, a television producer who had never watched Star Trek, to be executive producer for the sequel. Bennett watched all the original series episodes and chose Khan from "Space Seed" as a possible villain for the film. Early drafts of the script had Khan as a shadowy tyrant leading a planet in revolt; later drafts added the "Genesis device", which Khan would steal. Costume designer Robert Fletcher wanted to emphasize the effects of their harsh environment on Khan and his followers. "My intention with Khan was to express the fact that they had been marooned on that planet with no technical infrastructure, so they had to cannibalize from the spaceship whatever they used or wore. Therefore, I tried to make it look as if they had dressed themselves out of pieces of upholstery and electrical equipment that had composed the ship," he said. Director Nicholas Meyer told Montalbán to keep Khan's right glove on at all times in order to give viewers a puzzle about which they could form their own opinions and add mystery to the character. Meyer has been repeatedly asked if Montalbán wore a prosthetic chest for his scenes, as his uniform was purposefully designed with an open front. Meyer replied in audio commentary for the film that Montalbán (who was 61 during filming) Montalbán recited his lines with a script assistant, instead of to William Shatner. Khan quotes the character of Ahab from Moby-Dick throughout the film, driving home his lust to make Kirk pay for the wrongs he has inflicted upon him. Writer Damon Lindelof declared that Khan's "intense gravity," particularly regarding the character's delivery of monologues, made him an obligatory character to use, even if its iconic status made the crew afraid of the fan reaction. Lindelof jokingly stated that "it was never really a 'Should we or shouldn't we?' as much as it was 'We really have to do this but if we don't get it right people are going to kill us.'" As part of the secrecy campaign, Benedict Cumberbatch denied that he was playing Khan during interviews, describing Harrison as simply a terrorist with his own purposes, as well as "someone that's activated and manufactured in a way by Starfleet, and it's a scene that has come back to haunt him." He discussed the character's moral ambiguity saying it fit the adage "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," adding parallels to the current world order "whether it's U.S. foreign policy or the actions of some terrorists". Into Darkness writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman added that they used the character of Khan not just for his popularity with the fandom—"It's so easy to fall into the trap of doing something because you think people are going to love it. You must come up with what the movie can be on its own and then, if it turns out the villain maybe can be Khan, then you can do it. But you can't start there."—but for fitting the sequel's theme of "how far will we go to exact vengeance and justice on an enemy that scares us." Some protested Cumberbatch's casting as Khan, believing that a person of Indian descent should have been given the role instead. ==Analysis==

Superficially, Khan has been compared to Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the "Übermensch" (superman or overman). Khan is mentally and physically superior to any normal human. In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Borderland", Malik, the leader of a group of "supermen" created from the same genetic engineering project as Khan, quotes Nietzsche, telling Archer that "Mankind is something to be surpassed". Professor William J. Devlin and coauthor Shai Biderman examined Khan's character compared to the Übermensch and found that Khan's blind pursuit of revenge is against Nietzsche's ideals of transcendence and self-creation of a meaningful life. Instead, the authors offer Spock's self-sacrifice in The Wrath of Khan as a better example of the Übermensch. ==Reception and legacy==

Montalbán's performance as Khan was favorably received by critics. Discussing the Star Trek motion pictures, the Associated Press noted that Star Trek films were measured by how menacing their foe was, and that Khan was among the best in the series; Though he felt that the villain of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, V'Ger, was more cerebral and interesting, author James Iaccino notes that most fans and moviegoers preferred the archetypical good-versus-evil fight that the struggle between Khan and Kirk represents. Villains in subsequent Star Trek films have been measured by the standard of Khan, with Paramount promising fans that the villain of Star Trek Generations would be equal to the genetic superman. IGN ranked Khan as the best Star Trek villain, noting that he set the pattern for revenge-seeking villains in the series; in the decades since the film's release, "even those with a passing interest [in Trek] know the name." Star Trek producer Rick Berman called the villain "threatening and memorable." In 2006, Emmy Magazine voted Khan "TV's Most Out-of-This-World Character", beating out other science fiction characters such as the Doctor and Commander Adama. Editors wrote that "Khan was so cool we would've bought a Chrysler Cordoba if he'd told us to," alluding to an ad campaign Montalbán appeared in for Chrysler. In "Borderland", "Cold Station 12" and "The Augments", a 22nd-century scientist is portrayed as having revived genetically engineered embryos from Khan's time and raised them as "Augments". Enterprise producer Manny Coto described these characters as "mini Khan Noonien Singhs". A descendant of Khan, La'an Noonien-Singh, appears in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds; in the time-traveling episode "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow", Khan appears as a child played by Desmond Sivan. Benedict Cumberbatch's performance in Star Trek Into Darkness drew praise from critics with Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine calling it a "tour-de-force to be reckoned with" and his character "a villain for the ages". Joe Neumaier of New York's Daily News wrote that Cumberbatch delivered "one of the best blockbuster villains in recent memory". Jonathan Romney of The Independent specifically noted Cumberbatch's voice saying it was "So sepulchrally resonant that it could have been synthesised from the combined timbres of Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart and Alan Rickman holding an elocution contest down a well." The New York Times praised his screen presence saying "He fuses Byronic charisma with an impatient, imperious intelligence that seems to raise the ambient I.Q. whenever he's on screen." Christian Blauvelt from website Hollywood.com criticized the casting of Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness as being "whitewashed into oblivion". Star Trek: Voyager actor Garrett Wang tweeted, "The casting of Cumberbatch was a mistake on the part of the producers. I am not being critical of the actor or his talent, just the casting." Co-producer and co-screenwriter Roberto Orci addressed the issue of the casting: ==References==