Spoiler Warning: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season OneStar Trek: Strange New Worlds is a prequel series working off of a complicated history. One that tries to respect The Original Series while expanding the world that came before it. One of the biggest places they have to walk this tight rope is in the case of Khan. The screenwriters gave themselves quite the challenge when they decided to add La’an Noonien Singh (played by Christina Chong) to the cast. Of course, with that risk comes a great reward in the form of the mystery of her connection to Khan and how she managed to join Starfleet despite the history of the augments. But despite putting this quixotic character on board the Enterprise, they haven’t spoken much about the political history behind her race.
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La’an has pointed out that she is a descendant of Khan, the genetically augmented super-human that started the events that led to World War 3. He used his biological superiority to conquer nearly a quarter of the Earth and rule over humans as a dictator. World War 3 was mentioned in the third episode of Strange New Worlds, which also referenced the Eugenics War that eventually created that conflict with Khan.
Historically, according to Star Trek, this is where humanity’s fears of genetic alteration come from and why such research is outlawed on Earth. So what were they, and how will Star Trek: Strange New Worlds bring them to bare in the series?
What Are the Eugenics Wars?
Paramount
Quite simply, the Eugenics Wars are a series of conflicts that created World War 3. But they started as simple experiments in the early post-WW2 era of humanity, wherein scientists began experimenting with the human genome through selective breeding and genetic engineering. Intending to create a race of “super-humans” that would lead humanity to peace and out of the Cold War, they failed to regulate the beings’ personalities, and they gained a huge desire for power. One of the augments’ creators, noted the error, writing “superior ability breeds superior ambition.” He was later killed by the augments he created.
Though Star Trek is vague on Khan’s origins, he rose to power in the early 1990s conquering Asia and most of the Middle East by 1992 and ruling over a quarter of the Earth’s population at that time. While the scientists had since realized their mistakes by then, these genetically engineered humanoids followed Khan’s lead and began conquering other nations. Although Khan had a fairly reasonable reputation as a benevolent dictator, he was still a dictator, and he ruled over humanity in a very authoritarian manner.
Each of the Augments was their own tyrant and those tyrants eventually began warring between each other, unable to quell their own ambition. This infighting created an opportunity for other human nations to exploit the situation and depose some of these tyrants from power after defeating most of the Augments in these conflicts that became the Eugenics Wars. Casualties resulted in 30-37 million people, dead. And Khan, though he was condemned as a war criminal, managed to escape with roughly 84 of his fellow augmented super-humans on a sleeper ship, which left the solar system traveling at sub-light speeds in 1996.
How Will the Dynamics Aboard the Enterprise Change?
Paramount
Obviously, this conflict resulted in humanity’s fear of genetic experimentation and eventually led to the outlawing of such research well into the 24th century. When the crew of the Enterprise landed on the colony of Illyria in the third episode of Strange New Worlds, they explained that it was also the case that humans who exploited genetic experimentation were not allowed into Starfleet, which resulted in Illyria being isolated from the rest of humanity. But La’an managed to get in despite racial prejudices because she had no control over how she was born.
The Eugenics War will likely be a point of contention in the future of the series, simply because La’an is aboard the ship. And although the colonists on Illyria were dissolved by an energy storm and took on existences that were closer to being forms of pure energy, it’s likely that the Enterprise may run into more colonies of genetically altered humans now that it’s been established that they exist.
It probably isn’t too difficult to imagine that the Enterprise may run into a group of humans that are especially hateful towards La’an because of her genetic background. We’ve already seen her act especially privileged because of her genetic superiority, but the series is focusing on her imperfections and vulnerabilities as well, taking special care to humanize a character that until now has been more than human in the Star Trek canon.
It may be the series’ goal to play out a “nature vs. nurture” argument with La’an. Thus demonstrating that Khan might have only been evil because of the environment in which he was raised, and La’an is not genetically predisposed to conquer humanity.
