Synopsis: The Enterprise encounters an old Earth vessel, The S.S. Botany Bay, and Khan Noonien Singh.
This episode shows us what happens when science works to perfect the physical human and his rational mind but neglects the workings of the human soul.
“Space Seed” introduces one of the most enduring adversaries to Starfleet characters in all of Star Trek, that of Khan Noonien Singh. Khan is identified in this episode as an absolute ruler of more than a quarter of Earth from 1992-1996, and as a product of the Eugenics War in which an attempt was made to improve the human species through selective breeding. Oh course, the attributes that were selected were of strength and mental prowess. But as Mr. Spock surmises: “Scientists forgot that superior ability breeds superior ambition.” I would also argue that the scientists neglected the development of the irrational soul in their genetically modified super-humans.
Yet, Khan himself seems to understand the importance of the soul and its related feeling organ, the heart. Historian Marla McGivers was immediately attracted to Khan when she saw him aboard the Botany Bay. When McGivers comes to him, he demands: “Open your heart. Will you open your heart?” Khan physically wrestles her to the ground; McGivers yields and tells him: “I’ll do anything you ask.” Here Khan demonstrates that he has some understanding of how to appeal through Eros, yet in his dealings with Captain James T. Kirk and the other officers aboard the Enterprise he is all calculating, rational Logos. McGivers leaves with Khan in the end, the other officers seem content to rid themselves of him. Although, in some respects, leaving Khan and his followers on the uninhabited planet Ceti Alpha 5 is redoing the same experiment that the scientists who created these genetically altered humans did two centuries earlier. This is reflected in Spock’s closing line: “It would be interesting to return to that world in one hundred years and see what crop had sprung from the seed you planted today.”
Original post created 27 January 2021
mydailysoultrek 