Big Ship = Big Crew?

[Crazy Eddie]

But (according to Khan) what you see is all that remains, certainly not "53."

"What you see" would be what Terrel and Chekov can see in the containers. We can't see everything they see; there's quite a lot of ground to cover behind the camera's point of view, even assuming there are only those two containers and not a third one they didn't get a chance to see.

But even excepting that, Khan isn't exactly giving them an inventory here. He's making a big dramatic speech to the two people he's just captured: he's not going to say "What you see, in addition to fourteen others on the south ridge, plus the hunting team seventeen kilometers due south who are gathering meat for this evening's supper, and lest I forget those two assholes I put on latrine duty around the corner..."

The best we can say is that there are at least fourteen of them. Possibly more, possibly less.

Sure we saw him in Space Seed, he was referred to by name

IIRC, Khan pronounces his name differently in Space Seed than he does in TWOK. Differently enough that it would be consistent with them not being played by the same actors since they are not actually the same person.

Either way, though, it stands to reason that Khan had considerably more than fourteen people in his crew when he took over Reliant; he apparently couldn't run the Enterprise with 72 unless he got a couple of the Enterprise crew to help him. Reliant may have been easier, but not THAT much easier.

 

[Sybok]

to me the 1000 people of the enterprise-d actually seems pretty small considering how huge it is, i always figured vast swaths of it must be empty. lets assume 1/3 were family, civilians or guests - that leaves 670 starfleet, with all the science stuff lets say at least one third of that are in all of those laboratories doing all sorts of science experiments and maintaining science equipment. that makes 220 science/blue shirt starfleet.

of the 450 left, lets say one half is medical/shuttle operations (lot of shuttles on the d)/sensors (like data's girlfriend)/ bridge and command staff/miscellaneous.

that leaves engineering 225. so if they're on 3 shifts then thats 75 engineers and maintenance for warp, impulse, and computer operations per shift. keep in mind we always see people in jefferies tubes, geordi in particular, doing stuff be it inspections or repairs from ordinary use. also remember there seems to be all sorts of stations through out the ship that need to be manned, like even the inside of the warp engines there is people on duty like we saw "eye of the beholder". so despite the advanced technology there seems to be a decent amount of work on that massive ship to keep my theoretical 75 busy.

 

[Timo]

Either way, though, it stands to reason that Khan had considerably more than fourteen people in his crew when he took over Reliant; he apparently couldn't run the Enterprise with 72 unless he got a couple of the Enterprise crew to help him. Reliant may have been easier, but not THAT much easier.

Yet the point is that the number of supermen aboard the two captured starships would at best be a gauge of Khan's ignorance, not of the technical specs of the starships.

It may well take fifty supermen a month to figure out how to run the ship with the powers of a chimpanzee and two trainees, as designed! And conversely, if the ship actually absolutely requires the input of at least 150 people, super or not, Khan having 72 or 53 aboard doesn't mean the ship could work on that number. It merely means Khan had no more men, women and mature-looking children to spare - and the ship wasn't running in an operationally efficient manner.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

"What you see"

What we see in the cargo container shelter, are the same people we see aboard the Defiant later. These "other supermen" are never in view at any time.

That's because they don't exist, it's the same 2 actors, along with the same 12 extras, wearing basically the same costumes throughout the movie.

And that Eduardo Loco is all there is.

 

[Timo]

Well, the same is true of the eight Borg in ST:FC: they don't change costumes in order to appear more numerous, even though we never ever see two distinct Drones wearing the exact same costume. It's just movie magic, is all.

For in-universe rationalization, Khan might have a close circle of trusted young followers, and then a larger number of older cohorts (i.e. potential competitors) who aren't allowed that close, nor allowed to crew the bridge stations of the hijacked starship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Well, the same is true of the eight Borg in ST:FC

Do we know that the Borg Queem beamed aboard the Enterprise with more than eight drones?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

"What you see"

What we see in the cargo container shelter, are the same people we see aboard the Defiant later. These "other supermen" are never in view at any time.

Not exactly. We can tell for sure that not all of them are on the bridge when Enterprise takes them down in the nebula, which suggests Khan assigned some of his people to crew positions elsewhere in the ship on a semi-regular basis. More to the point, we're not meant to suppose that what we see IS what we get since Khan never actually gives the number of his crew. We only know a lower limit for how many of them died.

That's because they don't exist, it's the same 2 actors, along with the same 12 extras...

Yes, exactly. That's the number of ACTORS. The crew of the Enterprise only contains about 3 times that number of extras, but it would be silly to assume from a headcount that the Enterprise is operating with a crew of 40 trainees plus Kirk and company. It makes even less sense to assume that Reliant was running with a five-man crew just because that's all we ever see on the bridge.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well, the same is true of the eight Borg in ST:FC

Do we know that the Borg Queem beamed aboard the Enterprise with more than eight drones?

It doesn't really matter: the Borg reproduce by assimilating others, not by cloning themselves in the replicator. We see THE same 8 drones in every scene, and IIRC one of them gets killed 3 different times n 3 different ways.

 

[Timo]

Actually, the Borg Queen gets the same body twice. That is, out of four Queens seen, two have been of one body while two have been of another. Is that because the species of the preferred body, S125, has less individual variety than other humanoids (perhaps something akin to the Benzite thing)? Or is it because former S125 individuals are merely used as templates for cloning ideal bodies as needed?

If the latter, and if it's not something limited to Queens, then there could indeed be just eight distinct types of Drone aboard the E-E...

However, the Borg supposedly assimilate in order to make life better for the former individuals. Every clone created would detract from that noble purpose!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Actually, the Borg Queen....

I have no knowledge of this "borg queen" of which you speak and I very much prefer to keep it that way.