QuoteMe Wednesday—
Revenge. Obsession.
And the ability to find humor when observing it in others. Particularly when it’s directed at us, personally.
Kahn Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montelban) was revisited as a character first introduced in the original 1960s Star Trek television series. Tried to take over the USS Enterprise; Captain Kirk thwarted that effort, put Kahn on a planet — rather than smoking him for what he’d done — giving Kahn the option of starting life fresh.
Unfortunately, as we learn in the 1980s film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn (1982), that the aforementioned planet, Ceti Alpha V, ran into some issues. Went from garden spot to all-but uninhabitable. Kahn’s wife died there. Kahn blamed Kirk for that. Hijacked the starship Reliant and set out to exact his revenge upon Admiral James T Kirk.
As is pointed out to Kahn later in the film, he has a starship. He can go anywhere. Do anything. But Kahn is blind to all that. Thus, this quote, by Captain Terrell (Paul Winfield), explaining the situation when Kirk arrives to rescue him from the box in which Kahn had locked Terrell en route.
“He tortured those people. But none of them would tell him anything. He went wild. He slit their throats. He wanted to tear the place apart. But he was late. He had to get back to Reliant in time to blow you to bits.”
It’s one of those quotes that I find myself using in ebbs and flows. I suppose that’s the nature of anger and evil and unbridled passions: They tend to move in packs, draw others into their wakes. So I say it, never as a compliment, but as a reminder of how such things invariably harm the perpetrators more than those they seek to victimize. Yeah, I admit it: I’m mocking them (laughing at their superior intellects, as it were).
Also good to keep in mind when our own impulses seemingly beckon us away from more positive pursuits.
