Augment (Star Trek)

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The Augments were a genetically enhanced group of humans in the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Enterprise. They were also referred to as Supermen, an accurate description considering their superhuman abilities. Augments made their debut in the episode "Space Seed" and representatives also appeared in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In Enterprise, Augments were introduced in "Borderland", which also introduced the name "Augments", and were the focus of a three-episode story arc that continued in "Cold Station 12" and "The Augments".

1 Overview
2 Appearances
3 See also
4 External link

[edit] Overview

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Augments, a group of genetically engineered "supermen", born in the late 1960s as the result of an ambitious project to improve the human race. Scientists used a selective breeding program combined with genetic engineering to achieve their aims, and in many ways they succeeded; the "supermen" were mentally and physically superior to ordinary men and women. They were roughly five times stronger than the average person, their lung efficiency was 50 percent greater than normal, and they had an increased capacity for learning. What the scientists failed to anticipate was that creating a superior race meant creating a superior ambition; the "supermen" felt that their advanced abilities obliged them to benevolently rule the rest of "primitive" humanity.

In 1992, a group of "supermen" seized power simultaneously in more than 40 nations. Khan was considered the most dangerous of the ambitious cadre. At his most powerful, he ruled all of Southeast Asia and half of the Middle East — more than a quarter of the entire planet — but even this was not enough for him. He envisioned ruling the entire world, but so did the other genetically engineered leaders, and they ended up fighting among themselves.

This led to the Eugenics Wars, during which whole populations were bombed out of existence and the entire planet was threatened with a new dark age. Fortunately, by 1996 the tyrants were brought under control by a rebellious population. Most of the "supermen" died or were sentenced to death, but 84 of them, including Khan, escaped aboard the sleeper ship SS Botany Bay. This vessel would later be encountered by the Starship Enterprise more than two centuries later.

Although initially civil (if forceful) toward James T. Kirk and his crew, Singh's desire for power and conquest made him too powerful to be allowed to roam free. After a failed attempt at taking over the Enterprise, Khan was exiled to Ceti Alpha V, an uninhabited but habitable planet where he would be allowed to reign. Several months later, a nearby planet fragmented and broke apart, destroying Ceta Alpha V's environment. Over the next 16 years, Khan and his followers suffered on the planet, abandoned by Starfleet. Eventually, they were able to hijack a starship, and attempt to take their revenge upon Kirk.

Unknown to Khan, some eighteen hundred discarded Augment embryos from the 1990s were left behind on Earth. They were preserved and after the founding of Starfleet were stored at the Starfleet Medical facility Cold Station 12. Dr. Arik Soong was director of the facility, and stole 19 of the embryos. Soong, like Khan, felt that it was a tragic waste that the senseless destruction wrought by the Eugenics Wars had been allowed to taint policy and views regarding genetic engineering for centuries afterwards, and believed that if he could prove with his Augments that the Wars had been isolated and improbable events, that he could convince the earth government to rethink its stance on the issue.

Dr. Soong secretly brought the Augments to a remote, secluded planet and raised and schooled them as his own children. The Augments were indoctrinated at an early age to the idea that they were far superior to humans both physically and mentally. When Soong was incarcerated, the Augments were left to fend for themselves for a number of years, a fact which hardened them and made them resentful of the inferiors who took their father away. Eventually, they escaped their planet and commandeered a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, killing the crew with their bare hands. They subsequently took hostages at CS-12 and were reunited with Soong who sought to obtain thousands more Augment embryos (Interestingly, the Augments themselves did not know of Khan's sleeper vessel SS Botany Bay, which Soong dismissed as a "myth," as all records concerning its launch were destroyed).

Ultimately, the Augments were destroyed by the Enterprise NX-01 in the episode "The Augments" when they refused to surrender their nearly-destroyed Klingon Bird-of-Prey, although Soong himself was recaptured.

The ability of the Augments to defeat a group of Klingons caught the interest of the Empire, which was able to obtain a few surviving embryos. These were used in genetic experiments to augment Klingon DNA. However, the experiment went wrong when the human augment DNA proved to be more dominant than the Klingon genes, and mutated into a deadly virus that quickly transformed many Klingons into human-looking creatures. (A cure was found to keep the virus from being lethal, but did not change its appearance altering effect. Since the vast majority of Klingons were afflicted they were left with the more human-like facial appearance for a few centuries.)

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine revealed late in its run that Dr. Julian Bashir was the subject of similar augmentation experiments that gave him acute mental and physical abilities.