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You know who I think the real villain of The Wrath of Khan is?
Carol Marcus.
She used military resources to create and test a device that could obviously be used as a weapon (it was even supposed to be loaded into a torpedo) that was not stored securely enough. And she claimed it was intended only for peaceful uses.
People tried to find peaceful purposes for nuclear weapons as well. They just didn't fool themselves that what they were doing was for the good of the world (or the galaxy in Carol Marcus' case).
On top of that, she had the Reliant explore the Ceti Alpha system and there had to be Starfleet records that the system was inhabited even if the specific planet wasn't, making testing the device an inherent risk. Expecting me to believe that there are no lifeless bodies in uninhabited systems is ridiculous.
(Why no one noticed a planet was missing in the Ceti Alpha system is a question I can't answer.)
She offered Khan a chance to escape his planet, get control of a powerful ship and steal a weapon of mass destruction.
Also, on a more minor note, she didn't tell David that his father existed and made him hate Starfleet.
My head canon for what happened to Ceti Alpha and Khan is Kirk submitted his captain's log and Star Fleet classified it out of fear of an unfinished rivalry built up around the conclusion of the Eugenics Wars. The Reliant had no ability to access that information and only had the same stale info on Ceti Alpha that Kirk had a decade prior.
The real villain is the Federation for funding what could easily be a weapon AND hiding details of an exiled war criminal. There are so many skeletons in the Federation closet that with enough radiation it would be a Halloween episode if Section 31 ever became a show.
yeah, i'm sure that Kirk finding the Khan Noonian Sing - the mastermind and worst of the worst from The Eugenics Wars - and then just dumping him on some planet isn't something that Starfleet blabs to any Tom, Dick, and Captain Tyrell. However, it would have been nice of Kirk to leave a warning buoy in orbit containing a message along the lines of "DANGER: GENOCIDAL MASS-MURDERER ON THE SURFACE OF THIS PLANET ALONG WITH HIS ENTIRE CREW OF GENETICALLY-MODIFIED PSYCHOPATHS! DO NOT LAND HERE-- EVER!!"
although, had the USS Reliant detonated the Genesis device on Ceti Alpha V with Khan & The Gang still on the surface, would it had made a new Class M planet with a bunch of Khan-derived life-forms? Since it would have been made from their constituent parts, would the whole planet been full of Khans and Joachims, etc? Or, perhaps, a bunch plants and primates, etc. that just looked a lot like them?
Joachim
although, had the USS Reliant detonated the Genesis device on Ceti Alpha V with Khan & The Gang still on the surface, would it had made a new Class M planet with a bunch of Khan-derived life-forms?
According to LD, any living thing caught up in the Genesis device's explosion becomes part of its matrix.
Which should mean that the planet on ST III would have been partially Khan-derived. Maybe that's why it was a mess.
The in-universe explanation for that was because they used protmatter, according to David Marcus. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also the fancy CGI presentation suggested that the Genesis device was supposed to be delivered to a planet surface, it was actually detonated in a nebula. And it apparently created not only a planet but a star in a few hours.
That was backed up in season 4 of LD. Apparently it can turn a nebula into a planet.
Also, somehow, that nebula is within close enough orbit of a star that it can support human life once it's a planet.
🤷