Nicholas Meyer’s ‘Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V’ Launching As Scripted Podcast

Nick Meyer made a surprise appearance at Star Trek Day 2022 to announce a new audio drama podcast of Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V. Meyer had previously hinted this was in works back in June of this year.

The scripted podcast will examine what happened in the years after Captain Kirk left Khan on the untamed world of Ceti Alpha V and tells the story of Khan and his followers prior to the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Khan’s followers on Ceti Alpha V, from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

“Nick made the definitive ‘Trek’ movie when he made ‘Wrath,’ and we’ve all been standing in its shadow since,” said Alex Kurtzman. “Forty years have offered him a lot of perspective on these extraordinary characters and the way they’ve impacted generations of fans. Now he’s come up with something as surprising, gripping and emotional as the original, and it’s a real honor to be able to let him tell the next chapter in this story exactly the way he wants to.”

This original story hails from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan writer and director Nicholas Meyer. Alex Kurtzman, Aaron Baiers, Trevor Roth and Rod Roddenberry will serve as executive producers on this project as well.

No release date has been set for Ceti Alpha V.

Season 3 of Star Trek: Pod Directive coming in February

Also announced today was the next season of the official Star Trek podcast, Star Trek: The Pod Directive in February 2023. Tawny Newsome and Paul F. Tompkins told the crowd about the season 3 renewal of their podcast before introducing Nicholas Meyer.

Star Trek official podcast announcement

With unparalleled access to “Star Trek” luminaries, celebrity super-fans and behind-the-scenes creative professionals, Star Trek: The Pod Directive takes a smart, witty and thoughtful look at all things “Trek” – both old and new. Offering a high-level discussion of the themes, ideas and characters that resonate across the history of the franchise’s storied universe, episodes will also explore the brand’s 50-plus-year legacy and influence. Each episode features an in-depth personal interview with a notable guest, coverage of a “Star Trek” event or a discussion of a specific topic with one or more guests.

New episodes will be released in early 2023, and past guests have included Ben Stiller, Stacey Abrams, Michelle Yeoh and Tig Notaro, among others.

Fans can listen to Star Trek: The Pod Directive on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and via StarTrek.com.


Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.

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I suppose there’s a chance it could catch on and get adapted for TV as was originally intended. It’s definitely a consolation prize being given to Meyer like a Chairman Emeritus position to keep him occupied, but I look forward to hearing it.

Meyer must be relieved. After 40 years of telling the same stories of the making of Khan over and over he’ll have some new material now. Onward to the next 40 years.

Sounds like fun. Actually a bit excited to hear it now.

Who could voice khan I hope the person can sound like Ricardo

Agreed. I imagine they’ll cast an Indian actor.

It will probably be Hugh Grant instead! ;D

Lol

LOL!

Right?

Ha!

It will be Cumberbun himself.

I’ve always thought of khan as a hispanic who happens to be sikh not all Sikhs are indian my cousin is sikh

IIRC in Space Seed Spock mentions that Khan comes from Northern India.

This has been done twice already, albeit in non-canon licensed work, in Greg Cox’s novel and then again in IDW’s comic which I think was also pretty much the same as the novel basically. Nick Meyer’s a talented guy but I’m not quite sure what he’ll add that hasn’t already been said in those prior works.

Also seems they couldn’t even get a budget for this to be done animated.

I’m not sure the grim horror of screaming Marla McGivers and other Ceti Eel victims that’ll feature in this podcast is what I was looking forward to in the next Trek audio drama. Oh well, we’ll see how widely it’s listened to.

I liked the Cox novels. Good use of Gary Seven. Didn’t read (don’t read) comics.

Nicholas Meyer, along with Harve Bennett, SAVED Star Trek.

Show some respect and give this man a limited series.

I like to see shows focusing on Star Trek’s heroes; I have no interest in focusing on Star Trek’s villains. Sure, Khan was a good villain in “Space Seed” and in TWOK, but that doesn’t mean that I want to follow him around during the years in between.

Wake me up when SNW and Prodigy come back. :-)

Villains are cool.

Not in Star Trek!

I dunno. I always thought Sloan was pretty cool 😎

dukat, weyoun, borg queen, kruge, chang,

Dukat was a dickhole

Definitely plenty of great villains in Star Trek but I get Corylea’s point, none of them has had their own story until now. Villains are there to be defeated end of the day and not really celebrated.

And while I always liked Khan, I never got this odd obsession with him that some people have, especially the current creators of Star Trek. The character was killed off in TWOK, I was pretty happy that he stayed dead. But what they are doing is fine too. Fans have wanted a story surrounding his time on Ceti Alpha Five and now they will finally get it. Maybe not in the form they wanted but still cool IMO.

khan’s shadow still hangs over the franchise with the movies and now SNW

Yeah like a cold sore.

You give me fever (blister.)

There’s Garth, if you want to buy into the neverending story of peters’ (lowercase deliberate) Axanar movie/short/gimmick-for-cash-windfall.)

I prefer “antagonist.” Star Trek doesn’t need moustache-twirling bad guys, but it needs forces (people/cultures/natural phenomena/ideas) that challenge both the crew and Federation ideals.

But Trek needs conflict. Despite some claims here to the contrary over the years, I can’t think of any TOS episodes, other than maybe the second pilot, that were solely about exploration. Instead, most episodes were sparked by a distress call, communication outage or some other mission) responding to a distress call.

GALILEO 7 was ‘supposed’ to be just about exploration. And I think you can say that notion fuels RETURN TO TOMORROW.

HAHA moustache-twirling bad guys exactly describes Harry Mudd :P

I wonder if it’ll be considered canon?

It’s crazy town when we get 4 seasons of Disco, Lower Decks, etc and they give Nick Meyer a podcast. Something any kid with a $10 microphone could make in their garage.

It’s not actually that easy to produce a good podcast.

The budget of one live-action episode would pay for an entire podcast series and then some, but sure.

Hopefully the Mercury Theatre players will be available for the project.

Give him a limited TV series to tell the story instead! Cancel the other current TV Trek drek if your worried about money none of them will be missed by mainstream audiences…!

Uh…no. Sorry you don’t like any of the new shows, but I would keep any of them (yes, including Discovery) instead of a 3 hour story telling us how a group of Augments survived on a dead planet we already know the ending to from over 30 years ago.

40

40 is over 30.

How about a freaking novel and audiobook? I mean I’ve never listened to a podcast in my life

It’s basically an audiobook, I assume just chapterized and broken up over time. Can’t imagine there will be much difference in the experience if you wait to listen when it’s been fully released.

Yeah it sounds like an audiobook basically. I’m guessing maybe the podcast will have different actors for different roles unlike audiobooks where it’s just one narrator reading all the dialogue. If so that does sound better actually, but yeah who really knows?

Please please please 🙏🥺 just call Scripted Podcasts by their Classic Names,”Radio Shows,” “Audio Dramas,” “Books On Tape”…Scripted Podcasts sounds like those early morning Radio Herbal Little Blue Replacement Pill Infomercials on AM and some FM bands…Late great pitchmen Ron Popiel and Billy Mays, are spinning in their graves: “We’ll return to your Scripted Podcast of ‘Kirk Gets the Alien Girl, AGAIN!’, in Just A Moment…I Friends Quark for FerengiSellsANYthing.com! Do you want Sandwiches? Do you want Drunk Food?? Then consider the Portable Ferengi DrunkMan’s Friend, the best countertop Snack maker in the Quadrant!! BUT WAIT–THERE’S MORE!!!…”

Right? Scripted Podcast sounds like “our heroes in uniform” or “beloved soft drink” – phrases that the legal department required to avoid any use of copyright.

Should’ve been a movie like Rogue 1. “Star Trek: Khan” written & directed by Meyer. starring Benicio Del Toro as Khan, Liam Hemsworth as Joachim, Lily James as Marla, TOS Shatner Kirk CG cameo in opening, TWOK Chekov & Terrell in the suits at end. TOS & TWOK aesthetics throughout

I seem to recall that Nicholas Meyer is an excellent storyteller. The fact that they have literally nothing else for him to do but tell elaborations on the same story is very surprising to me.

You just put your finger on the weirdness I’ve felt about this notion for a very long while now. His first Holmes book added something new to the canon, as did his TREK work. This treading back over an area left deliberately vague is very Lucas-like, which I think of as antithetical to Meyer-when-he’s-good.

Then again (the things you think of right before you hit SEND) … TUC is basically just a do-over for Meyer’s COMPANY BUSINESS, which was wrecked by the studio a year before TUC. I’m not sure that BUSINESS would have ever been great, even w/o tampering, but it does show that Meyer is willing to deal with the same subject matter — though the setting is clearly different. And he did fix TVH after doing TIME AFTER TIIME, though I do think those are different animals (TVH doesn’t have ANYthing as good as Warner showing McDowell what is on TV … when I had that on VHS, I’d leave the tape cued up to that whenever I needed to see a brilliant bit of cynicism.)

Having gotten into podcasts and audio dramas over the past couple of years, I’m quite interested in seeing how this one turns out. Having Meyer on board is certainly a positive. Is the Seven/Raffi audio story considered canon?

Meyer disappointed me with his Sherlock Holmes novel about Fake News which ends with nothing less than fake news about Russia. Regrettable.
And a series on Khan… totally unnecessary, but I guess it’s in the fashion of doing villain biographies.