I remember as a kid, asking my dad when we watched, it only made sense to check regularly on the megalomaniac.
He said, Captain Kirk was a cowboy and could be unprofessional, and not surprising he forgot. I assumed he knowingly meant to leave Khan to die.
I kind of get the idea that the Federation at the time was just this gigantic shitshow.
Within the Federation, humanity has affectively taken over as the prime species, with the other founding members withdrawing a lot to their home systems. Vulcans are barely there in Starfleet and seemed to be judged a lot by their peers for doing so. Tellarites and Andorians are even less prevalent, making a lot of their service a novelty.
So you've got the youngest of the four members leading expansion through their territory and it goes just about as well as you'd think.
You could be right, after a recent rewatch it did seem to devil may-care on ship.
You thought this was ....Ceti alpha six....
It was at that exact moment Kahn realized he was about to fuck all kinda shit up.
