Headscratchers / Star Trek S1 E22 "Space Seed"

• Khan is known to be a genetic superman, with strength, memory and intelligence all enhanced from regular human beings. And God knows he's ambitious. Hospitality aside, why in the world would Kirk give him an Enterprise technical manual?
  • Perhaps he figured progress had left Khan so far behind he wouldn't be able to catch up just by reading a manual. Still, this is the sort of thing that's classified in a real military/security organization, and Kirk should be in real hot water over it. It's hard to believe that the Enterprise didn't have some magazines or novels on board for Khan to read if he was that bored. Maybe even some newspaper archives, so Khan could get caught up?
    • The image of Khan lying in sickbay, annoyedly paging through back-issues of "Redbook" and "Seventeen," comes to mind.
  • Consider the type of man Kirk is, and the society that he lives in: each person strives to do their level best to improve themselves, with little if any thought towards bringing another low. He was probably hoping that Khan, realizing how much had changed, would use his advanced mind to better the world around him rather than attempt to destroy/conquer it.
  • Kirk had no idea who Khan was at this point. Khan was refusing to answer all questions, and claimed to be a ship engineer of the Botany Bay. He was given the tech manuals, presumably, because Kirk sympathized with his Fish out of Temporal Water situation and like above, didn't believe he would be able to catch up with 200+ years of technological progress.
  • It was, nonetheless, extremely stupid. If you find yourself in a Pentagon waiting room, or a military hospital, they don't hand you schematics for the F-35 fighter and just assume you won't understand them!
  • The tech manuals for such a big ship would probably be thousands of pages if printed out. Maybe Khan was only given the superficial, preliminary stuff on the less vital systems, which *seemed* harmless enough.
  • Khan also specifically asked for technical manuals, to familiarize himself with the technology of the century he now found himself in, and Kirk agreed. It's unlikely they gave him specific plans to Enterprise herself, but more likely generic materials on technology in the 23rd century and some non-classified material on Enterprise, and Khan was just smart enough to actually put it all together in a way he could exploit.

• Khan and his crew may have been adrift in the Botany Bay for nearly 300 years, but they did so as Human Popsicles. Which means that from their perspective the Eugenics Wars were literally something that happened yesterday! By rights, shouldn't Kirk's immediate response have been to drag them back to Earth to face a war crimes tribunal? After all, it's not as if they had served any kind of prison sentence (that they were conscious for). One would expect that a spacefaring civilization possessed of cryogenics technology would be savvy enough to have modified their Statute of Limitations to cope with cases where criminals attempt to wait out the timeframe during which they can be prosecuted by going into stasis.
  • Kirk didn't prosecute them for trying to murder him and commandeer the Enterprise, so why would he take them back to answer for crimes 300 years old? Obviously Kirk had broad latitude in determining what to do with Khan and company, and he exercises it by exiling them. It does come back to bite him later.
  • When they find out who Khan is, Kirk, Scotty, and McCoy show a certain degree of respect for him, noting that there were no massacres under his rule and that he did not fight wars until he was attacked. Spock is dismayed by their attitude, but does not challenge the stated facts. This suggests that Khan, while a ruthless dictator, was not actually a war criminal.
  • Presumably their exile was the result of some kind of tribunal to begin with. Since they haven't done anything else, it would be double jeopardy to try them again for the same offense. If anything, sending them to Ceti Alpha V is adhering to the spirit of the original punishment.
    • Nobody knew what had happened to Khan and the other eugenic "supermen" until the Botany Bay was discovered. That is more consistent with a last-ditch escape than with a formal judgment and exile.
    • Another objection to the idea is raised in the episode:
      Spock: If you're suggesting this was a penal deportation vessel, you've arrived at a totally illogical conclusion.
      Kirk: Oh?
      Spock: Your Earth was on the verge of a dark ages. Whole populations were being bombed out of existence. A group of criminals could have been dealt with far more efficiently than wasting one of their most advanced spaceships.