It was two years ago on Star Trek Day 2022 that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (and Star Trek VI) director Nicholas Meyer officially announced a new audio drama titled Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V. Originally developed as a streaming TV mini-series, the project had morphed into an official Paramount podcast series set to examine what happened in the years after Captain Kirk left Khan Noonien Singh on the untamed world of Ceti Alpha V, telling the story of Khan and his followers prior to the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. We haven’t heard much about the project since then, but TrekMovie just got an exclusive update from Meyer himself.
Casting for Khan – Ceti Alpha V
Ahead of the release of his latest novel Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell next Tuesday as well as his Labor Day weekend appearance at a 70 MM screening of Star Trek II at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills (part of a TOS movies marathon), TrekMovie caught up with Meyer to talk about his history with Trek, and more. This included getting an update on Ceti Alpha V. When asked if the project is still going he was clear, “It’s alive!” He added:
“I’m thinking [recording will start] with within the next year. They’re casting.”
According to Meyer, he had written three one-hour episode scripts for a TV mini-series and those now “form the nucleus” of the audio drama podcast, which he expects will end up being nine or ten episodes in length.
Nicholas Meyer announcing Ceti Alpha V project at Star Trek Day 2022 event in Los Angeles
Khan as the hero
Meyer offered some backstory on the project as he described his approach to the story:
“It started with a suggestion by made by Alex Kurtzman. We were sitting in a deli and he said, “What ever happened to Khan on Ceti Alpha V?” And I suddenly remembered that exchange in Citizen Kane between Kane and Boss Gettys. And Gettys says to Kane, ‘You know if it were anyone else, I’d say that what just happened to you would be a lesson. But you’re going to need more than one lesson. And you’re going to get more than one lesson.’ So this is about Khan discovering that there are more things in heaven than Ceti Alpha V than were dreamt of in his philosophy. And it’s how he copes.”
Khan is considered one of (if not the) greatest Star Trek villains. But Meyer explains how the Star Trek: The Original Series episode that first featured the character allowed an opportunity to reframe him as a protagonist:
“[In Ceti Alpha V] Khan is the hero. [In TOS “Space Seed”] Kirk says to him, ‘You think that genetically engineered man is the measure of all things. I’ll give you a chance to prove it.’ I’ll put you on an Eden-like planet, and let’s see if you can build your own Utopia, as you claim that you’re able to do… By the end of the story, I wanted people to weep for this man. I hope that you understand where he’s coming from and what his destiny is and why it is.”
In 2022 when the project was officially announced, executive producer Alex Kurtzman said in a statement:
“Nick made the definitive ‘Trek’ movie when he made ‘Wrath,’ and we’ve all been standing in its shadow since. 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.”
There are no details available on how Paramount plans to distribute the audio drama podcast, nor is there a release date, but this is the biggest update we have had all year.
Meyer tour for new Holmes book starts Tuesday in LA
Nicholas Meyer’s sixth Sherlock Holmes novel Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell, arrives on Tuesday, August 27. On that same day he kicks off a nationwide book tour where he will be doing readings from the book along with discussions. The first stop is Diesel, A Bookstore in Brentwood, CA. at 6:30 pm PT. The thirteen-stop takes him to cities across the USA, returning to LA for an event on Monday, September 30th. More details at nicholas-meyer.com.
Meyer at Labor Day weekend 70MM TOS movies marathon in Beverly Hills
Nicholas Meyer will be one of the Star Trek vets appearing during a special Star Trek screening series at the historic Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills, CA. They will be showing the TOS era movies in Super 70MM starting on Friday, August 30st, wrapping up on Sunday, September 1st. Other luminaries lined up for the event include actresses Robin Curtis (Saavik) and Catherine Hicks (Dr. Gillian Taylor), executive producer Ralph Winter, producer Steven-Charles Jaffe and composer Cliff Eidelman. Leonard Nimoy’s son will also appear to discuss his film For the Love of Spock.
Tickets are available on the Fine Arts Theatre website, fineartstheatrebh.com and on the Fine Arts App available on Google Play Store and the Apple App store, as well as at fandango.com and atomtickets.com. Free Parking is available at the Beverly Hills City Garage, 321 South La Cienega Boulevard.
More to come from Nick Meyer
TrekMovie had much more to talk about with Mr. Meyer so keep an eye out for more from that interview here on the site and via our All Access Star Trek podcast feed.
Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
I feel no need to weep for Khan, but ok.
I dunno, IMHO the best villians are the ones you can somewhat sympathize with. Villains that are pure evil are frankly boring. I don’t personally need more Khan in my life but if I trust anyone to do it it is obv this man.
I have at least some sympathy for him because everything he went through on Ceti Alpha V was Kirk’s fault.
Someone should have been looking into Khan and his people regularly, if for no other reason than Starfleet was so paranoid about genetically engineered people that a century later, they were going to drum Bashir out just because he was one.
Agreed. Even if you don’t care about them, look in to see they aren’t creating the next army to destroy the galaxy
He’s a villain, sure, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t merit exploration as a character. Villains are interesting, moreso when they’re relatable.
I think I’m done with Khan now. Time to move on.
Same here, no interest.
I’m done with other people messing with Khan who isn’t Nicholas Meyer, but Meyer gets a free pass from me, considering he’s the man who made Khan famous in the first place. This is arguably the first actually-Khan story since 1982.
As usual he is misremembering stuff, the planet was no paradise, it was deliberately chosen as a challenge by kirk, one khan relates to Marla as a challenge just to stay alive.
I wouldn’t have called it a paradise per se but it certainly wasn’t meant to be the barely livable desert hell it turned into. That happened because Ceti Alpha VI exploded in space and knocked V off of it’s original orbit.
Thanks so much for this update and coverage, looking forward to the podcasts and the new Sherlock Holmes book. The Super Star Trek Series sounds fantastic!
I want to be excited about this. I genuinely want to. Nicholas Meyer is extremely talented and he gave us the three best movies, II, IV, and VI. And yet, I can’t muster much enthusiasm. Khan’s story on Ceti Alpha V has been extensively explored in the novels and in the comics, so there’s really no need to retread that ground. Ricardo Montalban was mesmerizing in his two performances, but there’s just not much to the character; Khan is one-dimensional and not very good at what he does. After two episodes and two movies, spanning two TV shows and two realities, what more is there to say about a guy who claims to be superior but has been beaten four out of four times he’s tried to prove it (the Eugenics Wars, Space Seed, TWOK, and STID)? Khan just isn’t that formidable a villain, as he has repeatedly proven. Like certain celebrity politicians and nepo baby businessmen who claim to be geniuses and winners, he’s repeatedly proven himself to be a failed leader and a fascist loser.
This story could very well be about how a narcissistic strongman can lead people to ruin, or further ruin. In that context, it could be interesting. Not sure how I would “weep” for such a person, though.
We shall see. I mean, hear.
So, Khan is, TRUMP, now?
No, Khan has better hair.
But really it could apply to any number of strongman leaders throughout history and across the world currently.
No Khan is not that awful.
HA! Right?!?!?
No, that would just degrade Trek as a whole.
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I tried posting a reply here three times last night and twice again this morning and in each instance, it just hung up and refused to post. But when I post the word test as an experiment, it goes through no problem.
Have to figure there are certain words or groups of words that this system won’t allow to be posted (and I’m NOT talking cuss words.) If true, then apparently there are house rules limiting free speech here that I don’t think I’ve encountered anywhere before.
Is this AI in action?
You could say the same of historically evil figures like Napolean and Hitler. OBV they were pure evil but it would be hard to argue they weren’t effectrive leaders. It’s really easy to cater to the worst forms in hate in a society and twist that and bend it to your will. That’s pretty much exactly who Khan is, minus all the genetic engineering stuff.
When was the last time you actually were excited about anything Trek, Lorna? Not trying to be an a** here, I am actually asking a legit question. Because over the years on these boards, you haven’t exactly given much praise for anything.
I know this isn’t the movies or tv or streaming but I wonder if this is going to be considered canon. No, it really doesn’t matter but I am still curious if Kurtzman will choose to build off of this story i a future project.
Good question. But would this still be considered canon if this Khan came from 1996 and not whenever baby Khan showed up in SNW timeline?
Or maybe it just proves SNW is not part of the prime timeline anymore?
I’m so confused. 😂
LOL me too buddy!
I doubt that Meyer cares about such minutia.
I don’t mean him, I’m talking about Kurtzman and TPTB. They are the ones who has to think about the bigger picture.
And this was written years ago before the SNW stuff was a thing. My only guess is this will just be treated like an audiobook and not considered canon to the shows.
Wondering if they’re going to cast a Montalban sound-alike or go in a different direction.
Montalban AI?
Wish they would give Nicholas Meyer a Trek series. I bet SNW would have improved over Season 1 vs. jumped the shark had they had him in the show runner chair. He got Trek the nautical exploration action/adventure on the frontier better than even 90s “prophet” Roddenbery. Above all he seemed to make the actions of a single starship bridge crew and the Enterprise feel like a capital ship.
Everything after ST VI feels like starships are a dime a dozen that rush each other like jet fighters that last 2 seconds in combat while starfleet command is right there on speed dial.
Season 2 did improve over Season 1’s spectacular debut. Loved every episode! Blush emoji.
We will have to agree to disagree, I thought Season 2 was pretty trash vs the excellent season 1 (exception, the ship, the cast, the bridge and sets are still perfect.. except the bridge decolorization between Discovery and S1, that’s a mistake, way better in DIS). Wish they could do that time travel episode where they go back in time and redo the season with more space exploration on the final frontier, leave the nonsense for the cartoon show.
AUDIO WHAT??
I love Meyer’s first two Sherlock Holmes novels, and the two or three Star Treks they were involved in. But the latest Sherlock novel is about fake news and ends with fake news in the afterword, very strange and very disappointing.
What Star Trek novels was Meyer involved with?
None, though his late assistant used cut material from TUC as a basis for his abysmal trek novel.
One of the greatest western films of all time, one that Meyer almost certainly saw as a teen, revolves around fake news. John Ford’s THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE revolves around myth vs truth and ends with the very cynical ‘print the legend.’
I haven’t read his Holmes stuff (not a fan of Holmes at all to be honest), but he did write CONFESSIONS OF A HOMING PIGEON, which I thought was a fantastic novel when it came out the year before TWOK (plus it hinted at what we’d see in that film, thematically.) Probably read it ten times since. Also, his THE LOVE STORY STORY on the making of that film was clever and personal, as he made his obvious fascination with Allie McGraw as a significant element as much as the making of the film itself.
I don’t really care about this but will listen to it. Maybe after this they can finally move on from Khan and look forward again from the 25th to the 32nd century. Lots and lots and lots of new stories and characters to tell between this time period.
And we’re already getting one Space Hitler movie with Adolf and Section 31 I don’t think we need another one with Khan. But hopefully it will be good at least.
okay….I know this is a me problem only most likely but – I had to re-read a few times to realize that the headline was saying they are hiring actors, not that the show was released.
Since it uses the term and is about a podcast, saying that it’s now ‘casting’ was confusing. Again….time for coffee.. D:
It’ll be a radio drama mini-series released directly to the public, like a podcast.
I understand that.
I’m saying the title of this article, in using the words “is now casting” made my constant podcasting brain babblefished to “is now available”
While I feel Khan’s story has been told (and re-told) on screen in 2 movies and countless novels, I am curious because:
1) Nick Meyer took all the pieces of Star Trek II that people had assembled and combined it all and rewrote it, adding his own work in a very short time and gave us the best Trek movie EVER in ST2:TWOK.
2) Nick Meyer wrote EVERYTHING in Star Trek IV in the 20th century.
3) Nick co-wrote ST6:TUC.
Nick is responsible for so much of the look/feel/traditions that are familiar in all Trek.
Nick and Harve saved Trek.
So I trust him to give us a good story.
And then, YES, it’s time to move on from Khan!
Can we not use terrible AI generated images for this? The thumbnail is terrible as well as the main image
What? That is from one of the early poster concepts by Bob Peak from the 1980s. And the type treatment added on top comes from Paramount plus when they announced the podcast.
If AI could do Robert Peak that well, then maybe it IS time for the machines to take over.
I’m already seeing how misperceptions about AI are hitting the way the letters CG and CGI did starting before the turn of the century. To some people, EVERYthing was CG, even stuff clearly done with models or traditional vfx techniques, because they don’t seem inclined to learn the distinction.
I was going to comment on that art as being really nice, wherever it came from!
If this project is so great, why a podcast rather than investing the money into a movie or miniseries? That makes no sense to me.
You have probably heard that Paramount is in a bit of financial trouble.
To be honest, I’m surprised that this project hasn’t been shelved completely. After we hadn’t heard any progress about it for so long I expected that they had abandoned the project. As to why it’s a podcast and not a movie or series: My guess is they estimated that the expected viewing numbers wouldn’t justify the costs of a bigger production. A podcast gives Meyer more freedom to expand the story and not be limited by costs for sets or VFX. Also, recording voice actors is much cheaper than actually filming stuff for real.
Because they probably don’t have the money and they fear not enough fans are interested enough to make it successful as a show or film. So this was the other option and yes the safer one given Paramount’s money woes these days.
And Terry Matalas confirmed the original mini series was canceled to make room for Picard which they knew would be an automatic hit. But he also made clear Star Trek doesn’t have a bottomless money to make whatever it wants and this was back in 2018. It’s much more dire today.
Thank you for your input, you pretty much verified what I thought. Just a shame that a towering Star Trek presence like Nick Meyer has to be treated so shabbily (and that he is willing to accept it).
I mean, someone seems to be pushing to keep this project alive.
Meyer seems to well-regarded among Trek fans but it seems to me like he never had much of a career outside of the 3 Star Trek movies he did 30-40 years ago.
His last bigger credits seem to be a consulting producer in 2015 on the last half-season of “Crossing Lines” before it was ultimately cancelled, and a consulting producer in 2017 on the first season of Discovery (however, I don’t think anybody knows what his contribution to the season actually was). He is also listed as a creator (together with someone else) of the TV show “Medici” in 2016, but it seems like he wasn’t involved in that show beyond the pilot episode.
Yeah Star Trek fans still hold him in high esteem but in terms of Hollywood itself, that seems to have ended back in the early 90s after TUC. He only has one other directing credit for a movie under his belt after that and it was a TV movie or pilot IIRC.
To be honest, I don’t really understand it either. It seems like he would have at least more work considering the Trek films he did were so acclaim. But I guess the fact that it’s still Star Trek maybe didn’t get him any real attention beyond that. Looking at all the other directors, JJ Abrams and Justin Lin are probably the most successful and they both already had thriving careers. Most others from Trek alum like Frakes and Nimoy to one time directors like David Carson, Willaim Shatner and Stuart Baird (less said about the last two, the better) never hit a big directing movie career. Some may have done 1-2 movies outside of Trek but very little beyond that. I don’t count Robert Wise since he’s really the only esteem director they got to make a Star Trek film.
Sadly Star Trek is a franchise that probably holds more people back than open doors for them most of the time. I’m not saying that’s what happened with Meyers but it certainly didn’t propel his career either.
Late to this particular party (been under the weather), but just wanted to have it on the record that your research on Meyer’s career highlights could. . . definitely use some work. Yes, his obituary will probably always lead-off with THE WRATH OF KHAN and his near single-handed revival of the Trek franchise, for better or worse, a fact of life he seems to have wryly accepted as the decades have rolled by. But he was already well-known as the writer of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche “The Seven Percent Solution” (and the screenplay of the well-received film adaptation), and as the co-writer and director of TIME AFTER TIME, the H.G. Wells vs. Jack The Ripper thriller that Meyer stated on several occasions (and I agree) he thought was a better film than TWOK. He directed THE DAY AFTER, which I don’t think is all that good but turned out to be the TV event of the decade and which according to some accounts (including those of one Ronald Reagan) may have changed history by dramatizing what was truly at stake in a nuclear arms race. When not returning to the Trek fold he worked on a number of other projects in different genres and various capacities, some successful; others not. But even if you eliminated everything Trek-related his Hollywood resume would be considered a success by any reasonable standard.
Paramount sure loves to give us new Star Trek productions that no one asked for…
Can we petition Paramount and Mr. Meyer to make a relatively low-budget, original Star Trek standalone movie or TV movie that concentrates on story and acting instead of $100 million worth of unnecessary CGI?
Nice to see this is still happening. Don’t have a lot of interest in it but will definitely listen to it when it does come out.
Just crazy something like this is taking three years and the scripts were written before it was even announced. Now we see why the movies continue to be DOA when an audio podcast takes this long to get made lol.
But yeah tired of going backwards, let’s keep going forward again with new stories once they finally got this out of their system.