The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

10. Reliant's Weak Password

Kirk Wrath of Khan
Paramount

The prefix code is a good idea for thwarting a hostile takeover of a starship, but a code of only five numbers is in the range of your upper end bicycle combination lock: 90,000 possible combinations.

Have you ever looked at that bank of switches Spock flips to input the code? There are 10 switches, one per number from 1–9 and 0, and each switch stays flipped after he uses it, thus each number can be used only once per code. This means no prefix numbers like 16303 or 01701, let alone 66666. This cuts down the possible combinations by two-thirds to 27,216.

Most public wifi passwords are harder to crack.

Also, after Khan’s been prefix-coded and handed his arse, it’s surprising that Mr, Superior Intellect doesn’t figure out this is what happened and try to locate the Enterprise’s own prefix code in order to turn the tables on his “old friend” Kirk.

But that would mean showing Khan as actually intelligent...not just telling us.

 
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Contributor
Contributor

Maurice is one of the founders of FACT TREK (www.facttrek.com), a project dedicated to untangling 50+ years of mythology about the original Star Trek and its place in TV history. He's also a screenwriter, writer, and videogame industry vet with scars to show for it. In that latter capacity he game designer/writer on the Sega Genesis/SNES "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — Crossroads of Time" game, as well as Dreamcast "Ecco the Dolphin, Defender of the Future" where Tom Baker performed words he wrote.