Interesting factoid is that McGivens knows Zefram Cochrane’s true motivation for building the first warp ship. When we see people talk about Cochrane after the fact, like Archer in ENT or even with Kirk and co met Cochrane or even the TNG crew. They all idolize him. McGiven’s, being a historian, oddly does not. As a historian I think it makes sense that she’d have a much more intimate knowledge of actual historical facts. In retrospective, her characterization in this audio drama is extremely different (and much more interesting) then her depiction in Space Seed.
In Space Seed she seemed to idolize historical figures. But in this drama she seems to almost be more cynical about it. I do think this makes her character a lot more interesting, so I’m not knocking it. The naive book worm having a crush on the genocidal dictator is not exactly compelling Star Trek. Her being the voice of reason, and even trying to offer a modern counterpoint to Khan’s dogmatic caveman (relatively speaking) thinking is good Star Trek. It’s just a shame she doesn’t have much political power to enforce the Federation’s ideals on these warmongering primitives.
I also like that even after Ceti Alpha VI blew up, it will take months before it effects Ceti Alpha V, giving Khan and co time to prepare. Also, nice to know that some of his company is intelligent enough to know they need to start to prepare, while Khan is prioritizing the wrong things and even possibly could have saved his people if he’d listen to Mcgiven’s and stop being so xenophobic.
I wonder if they’ll ever explore his feeling guilty, if he just listened to McGiven, Wrath of Khan would never have happened. But instead he unwittingly doomed them all.
This isn’t exactly the Star Trek I wanted, but I am pretty happy we got something to hold us over until the next series.
khaosworks@startrek.website 3 hours ago
Annotations for 1x05 are up at: startrek.website/post/30064816