"Space Seed" (season one, episode twenty-two; production code: 024; 16 February 1967): Wikipedia-link.
Commentary: Khan! "Space Seed" is the only episode of The Original Series with a direct cinematic sequel, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). The force of Ricardo Montalbán's performance is monumental.
A theme throughout the episode is the tension between Kirk's (& McCoy's & Scott's) simultaneous admiration for Khan & opposition to Khan's ambitions. They know he's a brutal conqueror (Khan tortures Kirk in a decompression chamber, & would have killed Kirk had Khan's paramour Lieutenant McGivers not intervened), but they also admire Khan's verve & courage. Spock finds this very human tension contradictory & confusing. In the end, Kirk dismisses all charges against Khan & exiles Khan, his Augment* supermen, & McGivers to the untamed world Ceti Alpha V, instead of returning them to the Federation, where they would have been sentenced to a penal colony. I find all this entirely consistent with Star Trek's opposition to cultural stagnation & endorsement of Theodore Roosevelt's "Strenuous Life."
Khan & the other "tyrants" are said to be the result of "selective breeding," but that doesn't really work with the Eugenics Wars taking place in the 1990s. Later episodes, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" (season five, episode sixteen; 1997) to Star Trek: Enterprise's *three-part arc "Borderlands," "Cold Station 12," & "The Augments" (season four, episodes four, five, & six; 2004) establish that direct genetic engineering was involved in creating these Augments.
I've never seen Star Trek Into Darkness (2013, an alternate-timeline remake of The Wrath of Khan) & I never will. I wish I had never seen the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" (season two, episode three; 2023).
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