Section 31 Just Made the Star Trek Timeline Even More Confusing With Khan Callback
0 Comments The new movie Star Trek: Section 31 takes its heroes deep outside of Federation space. But in the Star Trek universe, you can’t go anywhere without hearing the word, “KHAN!”
No one in Section 31 actually names Khan Noonien Singh, but the 20th century warlord’s presence hangs over one of the main characters. The black ops team is led by Alok (Omari Hardwick), a no-nonsense tough guy tasked with holding together the rag-tag band. We don’t know how Alok holds his own against the outrageous threats they face, at least not until late in the film, when he reveals his backstory.
Alok hales not from the 23rd century where the movie takes place but from the 1990s, the period of the famed Eugenics Wars. The Eugenics Wars were first mentioned in The Original Series episode “Space Seed,” which also introduced Khan. Khan was the most powerful of the Augments, a race of genetically-modified superhumans who became rulers of the world in the mid-1990s. At some point during this period, war broke out between humans and the Augments, and within the Augments themselves. The humans managed to overthrow the Augments, with Khan and 84 others escaping in cryosleep aboard the USS Botany Bay.
Alok reveals that he was right in the middle of the Eugenics Wars. Born in the 20th century, Alok managed to fight back against the Augments that destroyed his village. His valor impressed the Augments’ leader, Giri the Marked, who Augmented Alok against his will and forced him into her army.
Giri hasn’t been mentioned in previous Star Trek entries, so it’s hard to know exactly how she relates to Khan. It seems likely that she’s one of the other Augments who followed after Khan, ruling as an absolute ruler without achieving any of the peace that marked his reign. However, Alok’s description of sleeping for centuries with a small band of others recalls Khan’s experience on the Botany Bay.
The more confusing element may be the basic timeline itself. Most of Trek history placed the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s, even as it put the world of Star Trek in an alternate reality instead of an extension of our own world. However, in the Strange New Worlds episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” Kirk (of the Paul Wesley variety) and La’an found Khan as a child in 2012, well after he was supposed to have ruled a large portion of Earth as an adult. That episode puts Star Trek on a sliding timescale, suggesting that the Temporal Cold War seen in Enterprise and referenced in Discovery changed the exact dates of certain events. However, Alok’s story clearly takes place on the original timeline.
There are a few different ways of explaining this. Section 31 continues the story began in Discovery and, after Disco‘s distinctive Klingons appeared in an incursion outside of the Prime Universe in the series finale of Lower Decks, some have suggested that the show takes place in a different timeline than the main Trek shows. Thus, the Temporal Cold War altered version of events in SNW might be in one universe, and Alok, Section 31, and Discovery in another.
Others might point out that the Temporal Cold War created a sliding, unfixed timeline, which doesn’t necessarily hold events at a certain point. And so, Alok may very well have fought with Khan in the 1990s and Kirk and La’an may have found kid Khan in 2012 without any contradiction.
Finally, it might just be sloppy writing, which is pronounced in the very bad Section 31, but not necessarily unique to this movie. Worf taught us how to deal with canon contradictions in the great Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-lations,” when his crewmates noticed the differences between smooth-headed TOS Klingons and ridge-headed Klingons like himself: “We do not discuss it with outsiders.” So instead of worrying about canon and dates, it’s probably better to just take the events at face value.
That’s especially true because there’s value to Alok’s story. We’ve heard a lot about Khan, but the Eugenics Wars raged across the entire planet and brought humanity to its low point, the point right before Zefram Cochrane created humanity’s first warp-capable ship and caught the attention of the Vulcans, as seen in Star Trek: First Contact. But we don’t spend enough time thinking about the people caught in the crossfire, the victims of the Eugenics Wars whose suffering made way for humanity’s advancement.
If just for that reason, Alok’s story is worthwhile.
Star Trek: Section 31 is now streaming on Paramount+.
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