MovieChat Forums > Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) Discussion > How did Khan and his pals get on the Rel...

How did Khan and his pals get on the Reliant?


In the next film Saavik and David can't get Baby Spock beamed up from the Genesis because of Star Trek regulations / risk of contamination. Even earlier, David is refused beaming the life form up for the same reason.

Therefore how did Khan and Co manage to get beamed up without any special conditions and seize control of the reliant?

reply

Khan put the Ceti Eels in Captain Terrell and First Officer Chekov’s heads, placing them under Khan’s control.

He then ordered them to say whatever needed to be said to get beamed back up to the Reliant.

Remember that Captain Esteban was portrayed as kind of a stickler rule follower and was in charge. Terrell did not seem to be as much a stickler, and since both the captain and first officer were down on Ceti Alpha V, the two highest ranking officers were under Khan’s control to manipulate.

reply

Yeah, I get that Chekov and the Captain were under Khan's control.

I'm talking more about protocols I guess - regardless of them being under control, they'd have to presumably ask the transporter room folks to beam Khan et al up either before or after they themselves beamed up. Either way it's still going to be against regulations and require non compromised crew to go along with it...

reply

Terrell and Chekhov would just ask the transporter room to beam them up... nothing suspicious there. Then, once beamed up, they stun the transporter crew (who would suspect nothing was amiss) and operate the controls themselves.

Once they had a few of Khan’s men on board, they would overwhelm the small, mostly science officer crew, and take control of the ship. Terrell, as Captain, would even have all the command codes to lock everyone else out.

So it would have been really easy to do... basically the same trick he pulled using Terrell and Chekov to fool Kirk when he left them behind on the Regula station.

reply