Star Trek Arcs II: Khan

The second Star Trek arc is probably the most famous arc of the whole franchise: Khan Noonien Singh. 

Khan comes from our own lifetime, a genetic superman who rose to power in the 1990s as part of the Eugenics Wars, which other than this biographical detail have never been explored except in books. (Slightly more examined but still sketchy: WWIII.) Anyway, Khan loses power, is exiled into space in a sleeper ship called the Botany Bay, there to linger for hundreds of years until stumbled upon by Kirk and company near the end of the first season of the original series in “Space Seed” (which, for those keeping score, is of course before Chekov joins the cast).

And Khan immediately attempts his old shenanigans again, and once more finds himself in exile for his efforts, this time on a planet called Ceti Alpha V.

And then, in the second film of the franchise, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he returns once more. Fans still claim this particular adventure is the high water mark of at least the films, and were none too pleased when Star Trek Into Darkness revisited it. Like the other Kelvin films it essentially exists in its own timeline, so it doesn’t technically connect with the rest of the arc, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to the story.

Enterprise provides that. Remember how Data’s creator was named Noonian Soong? Well, we meet his ancestor, Arik, whose work begins with other “augments” from Khan’s heyday, similarly revived for additional mayhem, in the trilogy of episodes “Borderland,” “Cold Station 12,” and “The Augments,” before he decides to switch to robotics (the evolution of which itself carries into the first season of Picard).

That’s still not the end of the story!

The augments, during the course of their misbegotten adventures, crossed paths with the Klingons, and in “Affliction” and “Divergence” we learn the canonical explanation for the lack of ridges in the original series: they attempted an experiment to create augments of their own, and mostly the results were cosmetic (mostly so they didn’t accidentally annihilate themselves!).

A side note: Deep Space Nine revisits the idea of genetic engineering in “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?,” in which we learn that Bashir, naturally enough, is controversially entangled in it, thanks to his parents, and that the Federation still finds it otherwise as much a taboo as the Genesis Planet Khan helped create.