Wil Wheaton may have solved a plot hole from Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds may have closed a little-discussed plothole.

One of the biggest problems when it comes to the worlding building of Star Trek is trying to make all of the constant timelines and such a lineup. One storyline in one show may alter or change the history that is trying to be cemented in another show. That’s bad enough when you have shows like Deep Space Nine and Voyager airing side-by-side, as they’re mostly in the same time period, but when you start creating shows that come before, during, or after other shows; you end up having a problem.

Strange New Worlds as a show suffers from that issue, as did Discovery before it. They’re both smacked dabbed in between Enterprise and The Original Series and too close to the original series not to seriously affect the show’s entire canon.

We’ve seen how overzealous and self-involved showrunners and executive producers have damaged the series’ continuity by not respecting what came before, and creating unnecessary plot holes, but shockingly, Strange New Worlds has a chance to do the exact opposite as so many shows before it; It has the chance to close a plot hole.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds can easily close a plot hole

Strange New Worlds created an unexpected plot hole by introducing La’an Noonien Singh, the ancestor of Khan Noonien Singh. Then the series decided to muck it all up by giving her an, admittedly very cute, love story with James Kir. The same James Kirk who would end up becoming Khan Noonien Singh’s greatest rival.

Despite this threatening to cause some issues, it actually sets up a possible way to close a storyline plot hole that was created in the original series in the first place; why would Kirk leave Khan on Ceti Alpha V? He’s a mass-murderer and hellbent on killing anyone and everyone, why would Kirk risk him escaping?

Love.

Well, at least that’s kinda the idea. An idea that came from Wil Wheaton, of all people. On the Ready Room show, Wheaton came up with an idea to help close that lingering plothole while speaking to La’an Noonien Singh actress, Christina Chong. During their talk, Wheaton reveals one way to explain away Kirk’s lapse of judgment during the events of “Space Seed”, saying;

"I rewatched The Original Series “Space Seed” and I remember making a joke to my wife and the end of the episode that Kirk is like, “Well, I mean, listen, [Khan] is a eugenicist and killed, like, untold numbers of people, but listen, I’m gonna drop him off on Ceti Alpha V and it’s gonna be totally fine. This is absolutely not gonna come back and be a problem for us in the ’80s.” And I was watching [Strange New Worlds’ musical], I thought, “Wait a minute, could it possibly be that Kirk’s connection to La’an affects his decision to give her ancestor that opportunity at some kind of redemption in exile?”"

Wheaton’s idea actually makes total sense, and when you add new content to an old story, it can drastically change the perception of that older content. So thanks to Strange New Worlds, we may finally understand Kirk’s decision-making just a little bit better.