Star Trek’s Greatest Villain Unleashed Due To Federation Incompetence

In this Star Trek movie, even the most casual moviegoers know the Big Bad is Khan Noonien Singh, a villain from The Original Series who is back for vengeance. In the original show, he tangled with Kirk and, after getting defeated, was consensually dumped (along with his fellow genetically engineered warriors and new Starfleet girlfriend) on the planet Ceti Alpha V.

This was meant to be a merciful gesture on Kirk’s part…instead of Khan rotting away in a Federation prison, he would get a chance to conquer a brand new world.

Fast-forward to The Wrath of Khan and Kirk’s former crewman Chekov is now serving onboard the USS Reliant, where he is tasked with finding a suitably lifeless planet for Project Genesis. This innovative project is capable of turning barren planets into thriving worlds full of life, but if a planet is already inhabited, it will kill everything already there.

That means this innovative Star Trek tech could be used as an ultimate weapon, so it’s not really a surprise that the villain Khan wants to utilize it in his quest to take over the galaxy.

What is surprising, however, is exactly how Khan gets unleashed on the galaxy. In trying to find a suitably lifeless planet, Chekov and his new captain beam down to what they think is Ceti Alpha VI. There, they encounter Khan, who informs them that this planet is Ceti Alpha V, and that it became a nearly apocalyptic planet to live on after its orbit changed due to Ceti Alpha VI exploding only six months after Kirk dropped everybody off.

On paper, this backstory connects nicely to Khan’s earlier Star Trek appearance while providing additional context for the villain’s hatred of Kirk (especially when we hear about Khan’s wife dying early on). But pretty much everything about this plot makes Chekov and the rest of the Reliant crew look deeply stupid. Like, all those fancy ship sensors couldn’t detect that an entire planet was missing from this solar system?

For that matter, it seems wild that the ship’s sensors couldn’t detect that this planet was wildly out of orbit. Even if we accept that they somehow couldn’t clock the existence of a whole missing planet (the novelization claims they just assumed the outdated star chart was wrong about the solar system having six planets), they should have been able to see that this remaining planet wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Frankly, if these Star Trek heroes had done their job, they wouldn’t have been so surprised to discover the villain Khan lurking on the surface.

Finally, all of this happens because the crew can’t tell if they are picking up real signs of life on the planet below or if there’s a problem with the equipment. There are really only two possibilities here, and both of them make everyone look bad: either technology has somehow gotten infinitely worse 15 years after The Original Series (where it was always easy to scan ships and planets for humanoid life forms), or this crew doesn’t know how to troubleshoot their own gear.

Either way, we are left with the conclusion that Star Trek’s worst villain was unleashed on the galaxy due to major Federation incompetence.

If it needs to be restated, I love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and I think it might be the single best way to introduce newcomers to this franchise. But the circumstances surrounding Khan’s release have always been the fly in the ointment of an otherwise perfect movie. Star Trek icon William Shatner may yell out Khan’s name in a memorably silly way, but when I think about the incompetence in this film, there’s only one “villain” whose name I scream: “CHEKOV!”