Voyager - Future's End

[Madner Kami]

This covers everything up through movie 6,

No, it really doesn't.

[McAvoy]

How many of these augments were there to begin with? A thousand? Ten thousand? Hundred thousand.

A whole army of nothing but augments or were they the elite and had regular soldiers?

Augments would make excellent special forces if anything.

Id imagine the augments would have better accuracy with guns. On the flip side, they could be wearing full armor since they are much stronger and able to handle that much weight. So they were like walking tanks.

Who knows.

Perhaps Spock's observation on Khan thinking two dimensionally is a direct link to Khan's knowledge of planet bound warfare. On the ground he is a Napoleon. Unbeatable in his tactics and strategies. He is charismatic too having followers.

[Nealithi]

You make a great point there that I hadn't considered. The ''Into Darkness'' Khan is basically Captain America crossed with Wolverine. You can't hit him, you can't outsmart him, and you can't kill him because he just heals back up again. But that wasn't what Khan was in TOS. He was stronger and faster than Kirk, but he was still knocked out by a steel pipe. He was smarter than Kirk, but his lack of experience at piloting a starship and inability to adapt is still what ultimately got him killed. You get the impression that whilst the original Augments were probably a formidable foe when cracking a whip against unarmed prisoners, actually, an M-16 will kill one just as quickly as it would kill a human. Yeah... I cannot see how the Augments really would have been able to overrun NATO based on their augmentations alone.

I read your response and it got both of my brain cells firing. Let's use the Into Darkness Khan from one scene. Fighting off the klingon squads. He has strength enough to one hand a heavy weapon. Speed to keep agile, and the tactics to turn him into a one man fire team. This is how an augment would be against regular soldiers in the field.

Now as others mentioned Khan was not in the US he was in India. But he was not the only augment warlord. He is the one that got away. With 72 of his most trusted followers. They imply there were dozens of warlords and thousands of super soldiers. So them taking small countries for a while is conceivable to me. They eventually get removed by forces from countries that did not get conquered. If warlords like Khan had gotten their hands on nuclear launch codes we would be seeing a variant on Ukraine today. No one wanting to be too involved lest the nukes fly. So then the big tech issues are nullified and the augments need to be removed the old fashioned way. As you said they are not immune to bullets. But a weakness to bullets does not make them a credible threat. Because, well why do we have weak to bullets people on the ground.

Now what I do consider ludicrous is Khan thinking with one starship and 72 augments, that he had a chance of taking over the Federation.

[Riedquat]

Now what I do consider ludicrous is Khan thinking with one starship and 72 augments, that he had a chance of taking over the Federation.

One starship, 72 augments, and a device that could kill every living thing on a planet (hang on, are we talking Space Seed or Wrath of Khan?)

[Nealithi]

Now what I do consider ludicrous is Khan thinking with one starship and 72 augments, that he had a chance of taking over the Federation.

One starship, 72 augments, and a device that could kill every living thing on a planet (hang on, are we talking Space Seed or Wrath of Khan?)

I was talking Space Seed.

Though the Genesis device gives him power. He really needs to make more before he threatens with it.

[clearspira]

You make a great point there that I hadn't considered. The ''Into Darkness'' Khan is basically Captain America crossed with Wolverine. You can't hit him, you can't outsmart him, and you can't kill him because he just heals back up again. But that wasn't what Khan was in TOS. He was stronger and faster than Kirk, but he was still knocked out by a steel pipe. He was smarter than Kirk, but his lack of experience at piloting a starship and inability to adapt is still what ultimately got him killed. You get the impression that whilst the original Augments were probably a formidable foe when cracking a whip against unarmed prisoners, actually, an M-16 will kill one just as quickly as it would kill a human. Yeah... I cannot see how the Augments really would have been able to overrun NATO based on their augmentations alone.

I read your response and it got both of my brain cells firing. Let's use the Into Darkness Khan from one scene. Fighting off the klingon squads. He has strength enough to one hand a heavy weapon. Speed to keep agile, and the tactics to turn him into a one man fire team. This is how an augment would be against regular soldiers in the field.

Now as others mentioned Khan was not in the US he was in India. But he was not the only augment warlord. He is the one that got away. With 72 of his most trusted followers. They imply there were dozens of warlords and thousands of super soldiers. So them taking small countries for a while is conceivable to me. They eventually get removed by forces from countries that did not get conquered. If warlords like Khan had gotten their hands on nuclear launch codes we would be seeing a variant on Ukraine today. No one wanting to be too involved lest the nukes fly. So then the big tech issues are nullified and the augments need to be removed the old fashioned way. As you said they are not immune to bullets. But a weakness to bullets does not make them a credible threat. Because, well why do we have weak to bullets people on the ground.

Now what I do consider ludicrous is Khan thinking with one starship and 72 augments, that he had a chance of taking over the Federation.

I'm suddenly thinking of the Islamic State. They did pretty well for a time and they had nothing but jeeps and AK's. You can see how if they had access to just a bit more firepower they could have overrun the Middle East and beyond.

Plus, whilst you can't really apply real world events to this, in the 1990s there are a whole host of civil wars and massacres in Asia and Africa that could have greatly weakened the human forces. There is the Bosnian war, Rwandan civil war, the Somali civil war, the Afghan civil war, the Gulf War, a massively weakened Russia in the wake of the fallen Soviet Union and all of the uprisings that came from that. Star Trek obviously didn't plan it this way but actually 1992-1996 is actually a pretty good time for a new actor to come along and take these continents.

[Fianna]

I always assumed Khan's plans for conquest involved getting lots of non-augmented people to work and fight for him. Which he's confident he can do, because he's so much smarter than them, and can play them like a fiddle.

[Frustration]

I'm not sure what Khan's plan would have been in ST2 if Kirk hadn't shown up. Take the Genesis Device and create a viable planet in an 'impossible' location for his people to live on? Destroy the Earth in vengeance?

[CrypticMirror]

I'm not sure what Khan's plan would have been in ST2 if Kirk hadn't shown up. Take the Genesis Device and create a viable planet in an 'impossible' location for his people to live on? Destroy the Earth in vengeance?

Raid somewhere else, name drop Kirk again while doing so, lather-rinse-repeat until Kirk shows up. Genesis was always incidental to Khan's "plan"; his plan, if we can call it that, was to find some way to lure Kirk into a battle and kill and humiliate him. Getting Genesis was just the icing on the cake. Note that one of Khan's followers specifically calls him out on that, when he has Genesis, he's already beaten Kirk twice, and has a ship capable of going anywhere long before Starfleet could stop him, but one comms broadcast from Kirk telling him he's "laughing at the superior intellect" has Khan abandon all that and go right back to trying to kill Kirk no matter the risk to his ship, crew, and own life. Getting Kirk was always the plan, the start and end of it.

[McAvoy]

I'm not sure what Khan's plan would have been in ST2 if Kirk hadn't shown up. Take the Genesis Device and create a viable planet in an 'impossible' location for his people to live on? Destroy the Earth in vengeance?

Raid somewhere else, name drop Kirk again while doing so, lather-rinse-repeat until Kirk shows up. Genesis was always incidental to Khan's "plan"; his plan, if we can call it that, was to find some way to lure Kirk into a battle and kill and humiliate him. Getting Genesis was just the icing on the cake. Note that one of Khan's followers specifically calls him out on that, when he has Genesis, he's already beaten Kirk twice, and has a ship capable of going anywhere long before Starfleet could stop him, but one comms broadcast from Kirk telling him he's "laughing at the superior intellect" has Khan abandon all that and go right back to trying to kill Kirk no matter the risk to his ship, crew, and own life. Getting Kirk was always the plan, the start and end of it.

That is pretty much what I thought too. His whole goal was to get back at Kirk. I don't think he thought much past that. Maybe take the ship far away from the Federation and make a colony.

The fact his second in command more or less said that Khan won and they had Genesis but Khan wanted to finish Kirk overrided that. Khan also pushes the guy out of the way the way when he warned him of the dangers of the Nebula.