Khan's Botany Bay Ship In Star Trek Has A Grim Real-World Namesake
"Star Trek" has always loved a deep-cut starship name. In the original series, the U.S.S. Farragut borrowed a name from a Civil War-era Union Navy officer. In "Star Trek: Lower Decks," every California Class ship is named after a different city in the West Coast state, from Redding to Riverside. Figures ranging from Ursula K. Le Guin to Thomas Edison to Elmer Fudd have all gotten the starship name treatment, but one of the earliest named starships in the series had a much less admirable origin story.
The S.S. Botany Bay made its first appearance in the "Star Trek: The Original Series" episode "Space Seed," which introduced viewers to the infamous villain Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). Viewers with a keen sense of geography may have realized they were due to meet a baddie before Khan ever appeared, though, because Botany Bay holds a uniquely horrifying place in history.
The real-life Botany Bay is a place in Sydney, Australia, that has become representative of one of Imperial Britain's most creatively terrible leadership decisions. Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay in 1770 and pretty much immediately decided it — and Australia at large — would make for a good penal colony. According to the Collaborative Organization for Virtual Education, over 160,000 convicted criminals were sent to the area from the time of its discovery to 1850. Many convicts were lost to sickness and poor conditions, while local Aboriginal populations also suffered greatly from the abhorrent actions of British colonialists.
Bad (space) seeds
While Botany Bay wasn't actually the central hub for criminals being relocated to Australia (that ended up being Sydney Cove), the name of Cook's first choice is still synonymous with the penal colony in public imagination today. With this nasty bit of history in mind, it seems likely that series creator Gene Roddenberry and "Space Seed" writers Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber wanted to give viewers a clue to Khan and his augment colleagues' true natures before the episode itself revealed its twist. The Enterprise crew initially finds the Botany Bay floating in space and assumes whoever's on board must need help. After beaming down, they find Earth villain Khan and other genetically modified individuals in stasis aboard the ship.
The S.S. Botany Bay, fans eventually learned, was launched in 1996 after Khan's defeat in the Eugenics War. Ironically, at the end of "Space Seed," Captain Kirk (William Shatner) chooses not to send Khan to a penal colony of his own. Instead, the Federation sends the tyrant to Ceti Alpha V, an uninhabited planet with rough survival conditions. This, too, seems like a nod to Australia's Botany Bay, albeit one that doesn't acknowledge the pre-existing Indigenous peoples who were disrupted by British rule. Of course, the Botany Bay would return once more down the line, this time in the franchise high point "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."
Hilariously, footage of the Botany Bay also pops up in the season 2 episode "The Ultimate Computer," though it's meant to be standing in as the Starfleet freighter Woden the second time around. In "Star Trek" canon, the Botany Bay is now abandoned on Ceti Alpha V, a piece of refuse left behind by unruly visitors years ago.