Daystrom Institute
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Episode Guides
The /r/DaystromInstitute wiki held a number of popular Star Trek watch guides. We have rehosted them here:
- Kraetos’ guide to Star Trek (the original series)
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: The Next Generation
- Algernon_Asimov’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- Darth_Rasputin32898’s guide to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- OpticalData’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
- petrus4’s guide to Star Trek: Voyager
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I've always been a little unconvinced about this particular story. Memory Alpha seems to suggest "Kim Noonian Wang": https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh#Background_information
But, I dunno... it seems like a little bit of an odd way to reach out to an old friend. This friend was supposed to be Chinese... if so, why give him the additional decidedly un-Chinese names of Khan and Singh (and in more prominent positions)?
There's also an odd pan-Asian quality to the name: Khan is a South Asian name, usually given to Muslim men; Noonien is apparently supposed to be Chinese; and Singh is usually associated with members of the Sikh faith.
This calls to mind the origin of Sulu's name: the Sulu Sea, apparently so named because Roddenberry wanted Sulu to represent all of Asia.
In both cases, we have this peculiar situation of various Asian backgrounds being smooshed together into a single character. Now, don't get me wrong, there are lots of people with mixed Asian backgrounds, so it's not that either Sulu or Khan are impossible. But... I dunno. It just makes me think that Roddenberry came up with a cool-sounding name and then figured out an impossible-to-prove backstory to provide for it.
I guess we should take a step back, then to determine whether this as a person existed. If the person as an individual didn't, then perhaps it was a group of buddies named Kim, Nyguen, and Singh. Probably a stretch, though.
I'm just wondering if there are no photographs or any other of Roddenberry's war buddies can corroborated this guy's existence. Should he also not have shared wartime stories with his children and wife? AFAIK, they haven't shared any information but it's also possible that no one had asked them.