Corrected entry: Khan has the ultimate weapon on his ship. Certainly Kirk must have known he would use it. Why not destroy the Reliant before Khan got the chance to destroy both ships?
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3rd Aug 2019
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Correction: Kirk underestimated how nuts Khan had become and didn't anticipate that he would destroy himself and what's left of his own people out of spite. Kirk arrogantly thought he still understood Khan's motivations. Note he dismissively cuts off Terrell with "I know what he blames me for" when he tries to explain, but Kirk doesn't even know what happened to Ceti Alpha V and what Khan had been through, and because of this he leaves himself wide open for Khan's final move.
3rd Aug 2019
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Corrected entry: Certainly there must be some regulation about how to deal with personnel who have been under the control of the enemy. So unnecessary for Terell to have died and Khan to have discovered the location of Genesis, not to mention the death of another scientist.
Correction: I fail to see what you mean here. Kirk and crew didn't know Chekov or Captain Terell had the Ceti Eel's inside their heads until it was too late. And Terell turned the weapon on himself and took his own life in order to resist the Ceti eel making him shoot his allies. And also, by what you said, you expect a Scientific Military operation like Star Fleet to have regulations about how to handle people under mind control?
Chekov told them they put "creatures" into their bodies to control them. That should have been enough to convince them they could still be under the influence of their previous captor, Khan. But, then if Khan did not find Genesis, that would have changed the whole storyline.
15th Jan 2019
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
Corrected entry: Khan says he doesn't know Terrell, but remembers Chekov. Chekov wasn't a part of the crew at the time of "Space Seed", when Khan was first introduced.
Correction: This has been submitted and corrected in the past. Chekov was not part of the bridge crew during this episode, but it's entirely possible that he was part of the Enterprise crew in some other capacity.
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Correction: Far too much speculation on this. Kirk was under stress of the situation and they also just inflicted heavy damage to the Reliant's bridge. As you saw, Khan was almost dead from that, and moments after activating the Genesis he in fact did die from his wounds before it detonated. Kirk didn't know that Khan survived the attack. And not guessing that Khan might use the device is just an error in human judgment. Not a mistake, and not really stupidity either.
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Well, they had to have a way of killing off and bringing back Spock, and as plots go, coming back by the use of the Genesis planet, was not a bad idea. But given Khan's homicidal tendencies from the Original Series, and how other enemies, such as the Romulans would blow up their ships, it would seem prudent to put as much space as possible between ships, and being unable to do so, remove the threat altogether.
Which is exactly what they did. The Enterprise was badly damaged, and Khan was out for blood. The reason they didn't jump to warp speed sooner was the system was damaged with Scotty working to try and fix it. They went into the cloud to level the playing field between the two ships and for Kirk to be able to outsmart Khan and get the upper hand. Khan was not going to stop until he saw Kirk and his ship destroyed, and the Enterprise had no way of escape before they would be destroyed. Once they were able to get the literal drop on the reliant in that nebula, Kirk himself had a moment of pride staying there to show off to Khan that he won, that he had best him. That and to survey if they did actually defeat the Reliant or would it start going after them again. By this time, Scotty was then close to finishing the repairs on the warp drive, and they then detected that Khan activated the device. Kirk was full of adrenaline and rivalry with Khan. How they handled the situation and only turning to run when their sensors picked up the Genesis being activated, was human. Was natural. And lucky for them, Scotty was then able to get the warp drive fixed. But before that point, it wasn't fixed, so they had no reason to even try to put distance between them and a ship that could easily overtake and destroy them.
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