It never works when you shoehorn a character into an existing plot. Reading the writer's explanation reminds now again, why Transformers movies sucked (well the 1st was tolerable), and why Prometheus sucked (well, it was not completely bad, but the Spaights script was better). And with the latest Orci temper-tantrum...I'm a writer and you the audience should be lucky enough to watch the stuff I write...I'm not surprised that they thought they could do anything and it be awesome. I agreed with others that said it made more sense to (a) have John Harrison just be a brand new villain; or (b) have Cumbertwit play Joachim and lead up to a 3rd film that had an epic space battle with Khan. I think what a lot of us 30 somethings that grew up with WOK though ID sorely lacked was a epic ship to ship battle. Not the quick 5 min. battle. The character of Khan was just too big to shoehorn into an already existing storyline. It minimized his character and also there were no real costs in this film other than no-name red-shirts and Admiral Pike. I mean Kirk dies and is resurrected in 5 min. (Jesus even took longer.) And as others have said, this young series DID NOT earn the ending it got. You can't have two guys who had a lifetime of friendship as in the classic be compared to two guys that rarely had signs of friendship at all and have the same emotional impact of the death scene. They should have gone original, which would have satisfied all the newbie Trek fans (as they could care less about Khan or even know who the flip Khan was) and the old fans like me would have been fine with something original in the new timeline.