Star Trek Fans Debate Who Deserves Credit For Defeating Khan

While Khan is one of Star Trek's most iconic villains, and fans adore his appearances in the franchise, one Star Trek fan started a conversation about whether Kirk or Spock deserves credit for shutting down Khan.

First appearing in the original Star Trekseries, Khan Noonien Singh was a genetically modified human who had been cryogenically preserved aboard a ship with his fellow survivors after action was taken against the Augments (as the genetically modified humans were known) due to their attempted conquest of Earth. After the crew of the Enterprise inadvertently free him and have to curtail his renewed attempts at taking control, Captain Kirk exiles Khan and his people to an uninhabited world, where the villain would remain until the events of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan,a film popularly considered the best Star Trek movie.

While the credit for Khan's defeat at the end of the film is generally accredited to Kirk, who was in command during the film's events, Reddit user Seraphim1982 thinks that the glory should go to someone else. On the site’s r/startrek subreddit, the user penned a short complaint under the header “History records the Kirk defeated Khan but really it was Spock,” and points out that it was Spock and not Kirk that made the all-important observation that Khan was maneuvering his ship as if it existed on a two-dimensional battlefield as opposed to the three-dimensional theatre of open space. This observation is the key to turning the tide against Khan and lets the heroes defeat him in arguably one of Star Trek's most important battles.

Going further, Seraphim1982 pointed out that if Spock had retained command during the encounter, he would have followed protocol and had shields up at the time of Khan's first surprise attack, which would have left Khan's commandeered starship Reliant in a losing battle with the Enterprise, which was the more powerful ship despite both being some of the best starcraft at that point in the Star Trek timeline. Other fans