The USS Reliant is scouting potential sites for testing of the Genesis Device, a program that reorganizes a planets matrix, wiping out everything on the planet and replacing it with a virgin, terraformed planet. Their latest stop is Ceti Alpha V, which appears to meet the qualities needed for the test. However, a scanner picks up evidence of a life form, and Captain Terrel and Mr. Chekov beam down to see if they can transplant it. Unfortunately, they meet the murderous Khan Noonien Singh, who is hell bent on revenge on James T. Kirk for leaving him and his crew there some 15 years previously. Khan tells his captives that Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after they were dropped off, destabilizing the orbit of Ceti Alpha V, killing off most of the planets life and his crew, including his wife. Forget that Chekov wasnt on the show during the Space Seed episode. Lets talk stellar cartography. We know that Ceti Alpha has at least six planets. We also assume that theyre in the same configuration as our own solar system, on a reasonably flat plane and the planets are in reasonably concentric orbits. We can safely assume that if Starfleet had assigned a name to the system, they had done a scan and recorded how many planets were in the system, along with their types. We can assume that Kirk updated it when he dropped Khan off 15 years earlier. We can also assume that an approach scan was made by the Reliant upon arrival to the system. Why didnt anyone notice that the system had one less planet than it did the last time someone checked? A simple script change would have fixed this problem. If the Reliant had been aiming for Ceti Alpha IV instead, and Khan had said that Ceti Alpha IV had exploded, the approaching Reliant would have assumed that Ceti Alpha V (Khans planet) was in fact IV, and that VI was in fact V.
