How is La’an related to Khan Noonien Singh? Minor spoilers follow for the new episode of Star Trek Strange New Worlds.
Family is a major theme in Star Trek. It’s explored through the familial bonds shared between a crew, and then much more explicitly with Star Trek characters like Worf, the Siskos, and Jean-Luc Picard. But, as we all know, family can also be pretty complicated.
In the case of the new Star Trek series Strange New Worlds, the Enterprise’s chief of security knows this more than most because she’s related to one of the greatest Star Trek villains of all time: Khan. First seen in the TOS episode Space Seed and making his grand return in Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan, the evil augment is a living legend, and he’s related to La’an. But how exactly are Khan and La’an related?
How is La’an related to Khan in Star Trek Strange New Worlds?
Khan is simply described as an ‘ancestor’ of La’an’s, which does keep things rather vague. But, as they share a second name, it’s safe to assume that La’an is Khan’s granddaughter, with many generations separating them.
How many generations? I’m glad you asked, because we’ve done the number crunching. The Star Trek timeline – and when exactly Khan was born and active – is slightly unclear after the new episode, but, if we take the original 1996 date as when Khan departed Earth, it’s not too hard to work out how far removed the two are from each other.
A generation is generally between 20-30 years (so let’s say 25) and Strange New Worlds is approximately set in 2559. That’s a whopping 263 years after Khan left Earth on the SS Botany Bay, which is around 10 or so generations.
With a bit of flexibility baked in and accounting for the wobbly timeline, we’re fairly certain that Khan is La’an’s distant grandfather (great-great-great etc.) removed by between 8-12 generations. As Strange New Worlds continues on, we should get a better understanding of exactly how this all fits into place. But for now, this’ll do.
For more on the latest of Star Trek, find out which Star Trek captains would survive in a zombie apocalypse, and check out our Star Trek Strange New Worlds season 2 review, as well as our explainers on the Crossfield class, Pelia, and Lanthanites. You can also find out how we celebrated Captain Picard Day, before learning how Patrick Stewart’s pride nearly killed Picard season 3.