Star Trek’s most notorious adversary Khan Noonien Singh is returning in a brand new scripted audio series. The project was announced in 2022 and today CBS Studios revealed they have now wrapped production. They also announced actor Naveen Andrews (Lost) plays Khan, with Wrenn Schmidt (For All Mankind) voicing Marla McGivers.
Khan is back
This project first began as a TV miniseries penned by Nicholas Meyer, director (and uncredited writer) of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The idea was to fill the gap in Khan’s story between his original appearance in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Space Seed” and his return in the 1982 classic film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The concept was later rejiggered as an audio drama, previously titled Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V and now simplified to just “Star Trek: Khan.”
Here is the official synopsis:
The exciting expansion of the Star Trek universe will explore the dramatic untold events that unfolded in the desolate world of Ceti Alpha V after Captain Kirk left Khan and his followers stranded there, paving the way for the iconic clash in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan… History remembers Khan Noonien Singh as a villain, the product of a failed attempt to perfect humanity through genetic engineering whose quest to avenge himself on Admiral James T. Kirk led to unimaginable tragedy and loss. But the truth has been buried for too long beneath the sands of Ceti Alpha V. How did Khan go from a beneficent tyrant and superhuman visionary with a new world at his fingertips to the monster we think we know so well? Recently unearthed, the rest of Khan’s story will finally be told in Star Trek: Khan.
Star Trek: Khan is based on a story by Nicholas Meyer with Star Trek authors Kirsten Beyer and David Mack serving as writers on the audio series. It is being produced by CBS’ Eye Podcast Productions along with Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Executive producers include Alex Kurtzman, Aaron Baiers, Kirsten Beyer, Molly Barton, Fred Greenhalgh, Trevor Roth and Rod Roddenberry. Supervising producer is Robyn Johnson and the audio series was directed by Fred Greenhalgh. Realm serves as the production studio for the series.
Nicholas Meyer announcing Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V project at Star Trek Day 2022 event in Los Angeles
TrekMovie first broke the news that the project was in development years ago and last summer reported that casting had started, but CBS hasn’t provided any official updates since announcing the project at Star Trek Day 2022, so it does come as a bit of a surprise that they have already wrapped production and plan to premiere the audio series for streaming on all major podcast platforms later this year.
In 2022 Simon & Schuster released the audio drama Star Trek Picard: No Man’s Land as an audiobook. But a scripted audio series released as a podcast is still another franchise first, coming just one month after Star Trek: Section 31, the first streaming movie for the franchise.
Ricardo Montalban as Khan and Madlyn Rhue as McGivers in TOS “Space Seed” (Paramount)
A new cast
British-born actor Naveen Andrews is probably best known for playing Sayid Jarrah on the hit series Lost, which garnered him a Screen Actors Guild Award as well as nominations for a Golden Globe and an Emmy. He began his career in the early ’90s, appearing in major films like The English Patient. He has appeared in several television series over the last three decades, most recently starring in the Freevee sitcom The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh. According to CBS, in Star Trek: Khan, Andrews “takes on the role of the iconic villain Khan, exploring his complex psyche and the depths of his anger, ambition and pain.”
Naveen Andrews in recording booth as Khan (photo credit, Jasper Lewis)
Joining Andrews is Wrenn Schmidt, best known for her role as Margo Madison in the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind. For Star Trek: Khan, Schmidt is taking on the role of Lt. Marla McGivers, a former Starfleet historian who followed Khan into exile on Ceti Alpha V as seen in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Space Seed.”
Wrenn Schmidt (photo by Briana Dunning)
According to CBS, additional cast will be announced at a later date.
Keep up with news for the Star Trek Universe at TrekMovie.com.
I hate the description but it’s the creative team that really matters and they’re spectacular.
a trek fan that hates something… shocked
Star Trek: KHAAAAN!!!
lol now that right there would have garnered more listeners. Not that I don’t wish it the best.
So! Surprisingly I think I might be really into this? That’s some great casting, I’ll give them that.
I’m still confused will this be the Khan who ruled in 1992 or the alternate timeline SNW created?
I have a feeling it’s going to be the former and if so will only make things even more confusing than they already are. Maybe it will be the alternate timeline but if not this is why I hate prequels. Just leave it alone and keep moving forward.
But with this and Section 31 finally both done, they can get it out of their system and move on since most people weren’t begging for either. Hopefully though this will actually be good.
Aging franchises have to revise their continuity now and then. It’s best not to overthink it too much.
Like the novels and Star Trek Online, this is basically B-canon anyway.
Interesting. I thought they said this was part of their Canon in one of the older articles about this?
In my previous reply that this is replacing, I didn’t notice the person you’re replying to’s last sentence, apologies!
We don’t know for sure one way or the other yet. It would’ve been canon if it’d made it on-screen, but now that it’s in this form, we don’t really know one way or the other.
You’re probably right. It’s not a big deal and I’m guessing the majority of fans don’t really care eitherway which timeline it’s in.
I’m just really really ready to move on from Khan again.
Yep, Honestly Khan’s story ended brillliantly after STII and with the exception of a passing mention here and there referring to the Eugenics Wars should have never been revisited again.
I’m going to respectfully disagree here.
Into Darkness was released over 30 years after Wrath of Khan. And with ’09 clearly establishing that it was set in an ‘alternate reality’ it was the perfect set up to reintroduce Khan. In fact ’09 should have had a post-credit scene of the Botany Bay being discovered to set up anticipation.
But they blew it with that ‘John Harrison’ nonsense. Imagine if during the run up to ‘The Dark Knight’ Nolan and Ledger stated his character was ‘Tom Smith’ for a year, and then after half a film of him acting like a generic bad guy, in the jail scene we hear him say ‘Some people call me Tom Smith to others my name is…..The Joker.’
It would have ruined that trilogy……kind of like what happened to the Kelvin Trilogy.
Sure but most fans really didn’t want Khan back. Of course they can do what they want but seeing just how badly they screwed it up it probably was best just to leave it alone completely.
And for me, what you described is exactly why I DIDN’T want a TOS reboot in the first place. I was really afraid they were going to just redo old TOS storylines in big budget movie form and that’s exactly what STID tried to do.
And that’s what they wanted, their own version of the Joker and it just didn’t work.
wow, you said it so much better and in so many less words lol
Lol, nice!
Welp, reintroduce him in a new universe so long as it is not prime? ok. But STID was clearly trying to try and copy the success the success of The Dark Knight. I mean it’s right there in the name. “Dark”. Hey, let’s bring bak the hero’s greatest villain! I mean it’s a reboot so why not? The problem is that the Nolan trology was a 100% reboot and the JJ movies were not. Add to that the fact that Khan from STID was nothing like Khan from TOS whereas Joker from TDK was very much at heart like Joker from the comics in one way or another. They got so much wrong. It wasn’t the idea that they did it SOOO badly. No offense as well my friend :-D
Nah, I like Khan but I had no real interest in seeing him in JJ verse. You can’t top TWOK, don’t even try.
Well they tried…and well.
I agree… STII was perfect in every way, and in no need of addendums or retellings. The only reasons to revisit it are lack of new ideas, or a corporate attempt to cash in on past successes. In my opinion…
I’m thinking that won’t focus on his pre-Botany Bay history, that it will be purely about the 15 years of Ceti Alpha V exile, so it is the same man, whether from the late 20th or early 21st century.
If they do his pre-space life, I think they’ll stick with the continuity as originally written based on “Space Seed” and TWOK.
My thinking as well. And it won’t confuse all the people who don’t watch SNW.
SNW is not an alternate timeline. Why do people keep saying this sh!T? It is the prime timeline.
I think he’s talking about the episode that moved the Eugenics Wars up in the timeline, back to “our” future.
I don’t really see it as an alternate timeline. Just an update that comes with real time catching up to Star Trek dates that have become anachronisms.
Best not to get to worked up about it and enjoy it in the spirit intended.
I wasn’t talking abiut the entire show, just the issue with Khan himself which they made as clear as day was now in an alternate timeline.
I get what you’re saying, but even then “alternate timeline” wouldn’t be the right phrase because it isn’t a different timeline at all, but instead an adjustment to the Prime timeline that’s always been there per SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”.
Again this is why I wish they just left it alone. Because we’re going to get arguments like these for years to come over something that didn’t remotely needed to be changed in the first place.
But here is the problem, according to SNW Khan was born decades later than in TOS. I’m completely fine with that. I don’t care eitherway. But according to TOS he’s still born in the 20th century. Both of these things cannot be right…if it’s the same timeline.
Which means either SNW is simply running in a different timeline, at least when it comes to Khan, OR that you’re correct and that we have to pretend this was somehow always been there thanks to the TCW, which means Space Seed and TWOK is simply no longer canon. It’s one or the other. And of course Goldsman wants to have his cake and eat it too by saying one thing is now true while completely ignoring the other which only compounds the problem if they are still canon. And no one seems to want to just say they aren’t anymore because yeah.
And I know as Star Trek/sci fi geeks we can go around this merry go round all day long but imagine being a first time viewer to Star Trek and you’re told SNW is a ‘prequel’ to TOS only to be utterly confused trying to reconcile the two shows with all the crazy alternate paths SNW has taken with its characters and storylines; the entire Khan nonesense being up there with everything else. Here is a great example, watch Ad Astra per Aspera and then watch Space Seed and ask yourself why is Kirk and crew talking about Khan and augments as some new thing when they went through an entire trial about it with the ships former first officer being outed as an augment and Kirk basically forming a relationship with descendant who also served on the same ship just a few years ago. People would genuinely be at a lost with a lot of it and SNW is only 20 episodes old so far.
End of the day you can just tell yourself it’s all fiction and justify it however you want in your head; but if you want story consistency, this isn’t how you do it at all. It just muddy’s the water over something that never needed to be muddied in the first place.
And this podcast probably won’t be considered canon so if it sticks to the original timeline which it probably will won’t be a big deal. But it would still be stating the obvious and the original timeline is what ultimately matters for most fans or why not change it to make it conform to the modern era.
And this why I really hate prequels.
“Here is a great example, watch Ad Astra per Aspera and then watch Space Seed and ask yourself why is Kirk and crew talking about Khan and augments as some new thing when they went through an entire trial about it with the ships former first officer being outed as an augment and Kirk basically forming a relationship with descendant who also served on the same ship just a few years ago.”
Haha, so true. It’s like they completely forgot La’an or Number One was ever on the ship. Kirk knows all about this as much as Spock does because as we have seen, he was around for all of this and directly hanging up with La’an. But then Space Seed happens and “DERP, I don’t remember any of this!”
Yep they have certainly made a mess of things, especially the Eugenics war dates. Most people never cared about this at all. I started watching Star Trek two years after the Eugenics wars was supposed to happen, wasn’t remotely bothered it didn’t because it’s fiction. None of this will happen and if it does, nowhere close to the Trek’s timeline.
And now you changed the date to something that will just confuse more people in time. The point about new fans trying to understand why SNW contradicts or just plain ignornes so much of TOS continuity is why it’s better to just consider it being in a different timeline when you have things like Spock and Hot Chapel now in a CW romance, the entire Gorn storyline, pretending Dead weight Kirk was besties with Pike and crew, T’Pring on the Enterprise, having a Noonien Singh serving aboard the Enterprise and now completely changing the Khan timeline just five years before he shows up in TOS but still arriving from the 90s on that show.
No one with a straight face can remotely pretend newbies won’t be completely confused with all the contradictory storylines happening between both shows. And it will probably get even worse next season when Korby shows up and now he and Spock will probably be fighting for Chapel when A. Spock never ever met bro before in TOS and B. Because he was supposed to be missing. THey will probably blame that on the Temporal War too haha.
I really like this show but I just think of it being in an alternate timeline now because that’s how it’s been acting from literally the start.
Yep!
Here is an actual real world example. A poster on another site last year started watching TNG as her gateway into Star Trek and then got into LDS and SNW next. She then started watching TOS and was completely confused when she got to Amok Time because everyone acted as if they didn’t know who T’Pring was. And she didn’t know why Spock was being so cold to Chapel since, you know, they used to date and all and now Spock is barely giving her the time of day. Why isn’t Spock and Chapel talking about T’Pring? Yeah…good question.
She thought she missed an episode somewhere. People responded and explained it but then it disappointed her because she thought that dynamic would continue with those characters only to learn T’Pring was just a one off in TOS and the Chapel stuff is nonexistent. I didn’t think about that at the time how they are building up these three so much that you could assume it would continue in some fashion in TOS.
The Khan thing isn’t really a huge deal since it really adds nothing outside of more minutaie unless it comes back up again. But it still will be confusing for plenty of people if they are not invested on a level like we are.
And I forgot about Dr. Korby coming next season. Ugh. Another thing not needed.
It’s best not to consider TOS as cannon, if anything it’s a rough draft of what ST would become. It’s pretty much the odd one out when linked to the other shows. Anyway TOS is terrible, only a masochist could stand to watch it these days. I’m glad SNW is rewriting the cannon.
Tiger2
They do not think of it as alternative timeline. Trek has from literally TOS given dates that are not possible to put into a coherent frame. Not even using dates as rounded numbers. It simply cannot work. But very likely few people consider those changes to be creating events for an alternative timeline each time its occurred. Just attempts to make their story telling universe more consistent (or in some cases because they literally had no clue or didn’t care especially from the 60’s where consistent story telling was not an expectation from television productions). Hell it wasn’t until Wrath of Khan that we first got a consistent (for the most part) time frame of when Trek was occurring, with the show provided a time frame that gave a versions from 2 hundred to 5 hundred from current earth events. Clearly not possible and clearly even using rounding not possible.
Now I can understand the desire from fans to stick as set in stone episodes with a solid date, and just ignore the episodes that have a wildly divergence time periods.
But one of the other must go, and either way you look at it, one of the other at the bare minimum cannot be right.
Star Trek Picard is the show that set the events of Khan now firmly in our still to exist future. And then built in more detail in SNW season 2. But even Voyager gave the first hints that Trek was positioning future events to first mentioned in the 60’s to still be part of the future that has yet to happen for us the viewers of Trek and there are interviews with the writers who talk about it. And their solution was to give the audience leeway to make their own choice.
The current production team just has openly stated that to be the case both in interviews and its written on screen material.
But regardless there has always been and always will be issues with time in Trek that cannot match every episode that preceded it. and with the exception of episodes and films that are stated to be alternative universe, are all intended to be part of what the call the time Prime timeline.
But let’s be very clear here. The expectation that it should is unreasonable. Almost no shows are built or produced to create a fully coherent universe. While it’s gotten more common to have a more fully realized universe for shows, almost none are 100%. And even today some shows simply don’t even care.
And to expect that from a franchise that started when no one made shows designed to be internally consistent and in fact didn’t, and to have that be the frame work for others to build on is not be its very nature ever going to be internally consistent. It simply isn’s something that is possible.
I mean we have a SNW episode with time travel and a Romulan plot with Khan, and sure go alternated timeline.
But then you must also logically do the same with Tomorrow us Yesterday, where while we see them try to limit the exposure, but exposure still happens. To films like Voyage Home where time travel impacts both 1986 and events in the 23rd century. So clearly even from 1986 forward there is no primetime line. Scotty just saying who knows if the guy invented it, isn’t the same as saying the guy did invent it. Trek is full of these short of things.
So if you are going to bring in alternative timelines you must be logical and admit that from the very first use of time travel in season one, we can hold no event or episode as being not impacted by the events of time travel. And that every episode we see could be different timelines.
Ands its only the Prime timeline due to the producers saying tis the Prime timeline.
Sure yeah no problem. That’s LITERALLY why they created the time cops in the 29th century and the Department of Temporal investigations because they knew with all the time travel shenanigans that people would naturally wonder if they were just creating other timeliness? We literally saw that with Enterprise and the Borg after the events in First Contact. It literally created an alternate timeline, but just done in a clever way. But I guess people are OK with it because we now see everything from that moment would flow onto the history we know but yeah just like Baby Khan changed the timeline as well.
And I have argued foreveronce we learned about The Temporal Wars then history was already changed. They literally SAID this in the show because the Xindi never attacked Earth until The Temporal Wars started. It was a big part of the plot. So yeah this isn’t new. This has happened multiple times over 20 years ago lol.
Just like we know when Nero showed up in the Kelvin universe and created an alternate timeline there.
I guess the difference is we didn’t know about those histories but here we do ans it’s bothering people I guess.
I don’t think calling something that is clearly an alternate timeline when you spent an entire episode making that clear is a bad word. It’s STAR TREK, this is what they do. If they didn’t want people to assume moving an iconic character birth date into another century wouldn’t be considered altering time then they wouldn’t have done it.
But this why I soooo hate prequels. But it’s done now, so whatever.
And btw, I said this in the past, the week that episode aired and that for Star Trek they are probably creating new timelines CONSTANTLY. I pointed out Voyager specifically because how often that ship was time traveling to the point Janeway had became infamous lol.
But I remember saying people don’t look at it as a big deal because every time they done it was always in their present day, ie, we never had a clue what was actually changed if anything once they went back to their original time. The only time we knew the timeline changes went too far is when they accidentally wiped out the Federation lol.
But this is the rare case we DO know what happened in the original timeline and they didn’t reset it. Its only the second time outside of the changes with the Borg confrontation on Enterprise we knew how it originally unfolded. But I have said this and will try and find it. I even remembered who I was talking to about it which was ML31.
Found it!!
OK, I guess I didn’t respond to ML31 but to Lorna Dune. But this exchange was written the day “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” aired, over a year and a half ago now as the dates below notes. Notice everything I said to you I said below because I have been saying this for decades now. Yes, Star Trek has been creating alternate timelines for a long long time and I never had a problem with it because A. it would just make sense given all the crazy time travel that happens on this show and B. What difference does it make either way? Clearly not much since it hasn’t bothered people in the last 50+ years.
Here is the exchange below. I included Lorna Dune’s post as well so you can get my full context.
————————————————————–
Lorna Dune
June 29, 2023 12:37 pm
“So does this episode rewrite all of Trek history?”
No, that happened two decades ago on ENTERPRISE. After the Sulliban and other groups kept messing around with time, the resulting timeline was never the original one again. That would have been impossible after all the changes. This episode just pointed it out.
===
Tiger2
Reply to Lorna Dune
June 29, 2023 7:38 pm
Exactly. But I will say the difference is we didn’t know anything about the 22nd century, Archer or anything that took place leading up to the Federation other than the Romulan war of course. But we have to assume the TCW had changed things in a major way even if it all still stayed on course enough to the Federation forming. But the entire Xindi story line was never suppose to happen. It’s not like the Romulan war, it was manipulated through temporal agents and TCW, so that was a pretty big red flag time was altered. And the other thing is they never resetted it. It wasn’t like a Year in Hell, it has now become part of history and the effects of that has been flowing ever since JUST like when Nero showed up from the 24th century in the Kelvin universe destroying Vulcan. The irony is it’s the same thing. We just look at the Xindi conflict differently because it happened in a time period we knew zip about and didn’t know what were suppose to happen to those characters. But Trip would still have his sister in an unaltered universe. He may have even lived to 100 himself. We just don’t know.
But the problem is when we get to the TOS timeline and beyond, we already know everything that is suppose to happen. So when it DOESN’T happen as we saw originally it obviously just feels out of place. But yes, you can certainly argue history was being rewritten in the 22nd century which had an effect on the 23rd century. That lines up fine IMO. And I watched another YouTube video discussing this episode that made an interesting point that while TCW changed things in the TOS timeline for SNW, but by the time we get to the 24th century and TNG era, time has corrected itself enough for those events to follow basically what we saw during that era.
It really does work, but sadly we had to wait all this time to actually incorporate what started in Enterprise in these new shows.
———————————————————–
Funny enough, I never got a response from anyone lol.
But I acknowledged everything you said and more, correct? Yeah I obviously never had a problem with it lol. I don’t understand why others do? But it’s been going on a long time as I made clear and yes you can literally argue everything from the 22nd century through the 32nd century has always been altered history thanks to the TCW and obviously all the time travel shenanigans that has been happening from TOS to yeah, SNW.
Now if you simply don’t like this idea, I get that too and probably a big reason people didn’t like the idea of the TCW and what they now did in SNW. But this stuff has been happening for a long time now. As I pointed out, the two biggest differences were A. they tried to rectify it as much as possible with basically reset buttons and why keeping Khan in the 21st century was a headscratcher in itself and B. until we got prequels like Enterprise and SNW, we never knew just how much history was altered because we were always going forward in the present timeline and assumed it mostly worked itself out.
So yeah, not a problem for me at all. Because it’s fiction, just go with it. ;)
Honestly in a way SNW said it themselves in Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow with the 21’st century Romulan Infiltrator mentioning the Temporal Cold War causing Khan’s delay. Till that moment I would have agreed with you.
I understand where you’re coming from, but in this instance that’s not what they were saying. They’re not intending to refer to SNW as an alternate universe the way others try to, but they are acknowledging the confirmed “nudge” to the prime universe’s continuity as stated in SNW: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, that’s all.
Who said SNW was an alternate timeline?
‘The fact that Nicholas Meyer authored this, I doubt tit will contemplate much at all from SNW.
It appears from the article that Meyer authored the original story, but that the actual script was written by others who may have more connections with modern Trek. I’ll be very curious to see if and when he publicly gives the project his approval.
But wasn’t “Project Khan” also part of the project that Soong whomever was working on in Picard Season 2? So the alternative continuity is there at least twice. But I will happily forget both. My Khan is 1990s all-the-way….
Agreed
Given this is Nick Meyers and Ceti Alpha V I am betting on the former as well. I still say that the alternate timeline is contained in the Temporal Cold War and was erased by Archer/Daniels in Stormfront and Alterrnate Khan never happened as a result!
ST-Lower Decks shunted all of the streaming stuff into it’s own universe (if you read it that way, and it’s clearly always been it’s iwn thing anyway) .
Does Cumber-Khan end up on Alpha Ceti V?
Considering this is Meyer, I’m inclined to think it takes place in the Shatner/Nimoy/Kelly timeline.
Greg Cox wrote a Khan novel that takes place before & after the Alpha Ceti cataclysm. It’s kinda pro-forma, but Cox tells it well.
There may be a little more to tell there, but it’s still a ‘Man v Nature’ story.
I don’t think Lower Decks really implied all the new shows are in a separate timeline from the classic shows but my brain is hurting enough lol.
KHAAAAAAINDIAN KHAN or KHAAAAAAANADIAN KHAN?
I was reading a piece recently on what Amazon should do to James Bond now that they’ve bought him. It suggested they set it back in the 1950’s. One line jumped out at me: “The conjecture that Bond is “timeless” is mere backward reasoning. It’s an unnecessary artifact of nerdzor fanboys’ obsession with making sure that every last thing in their favorite movies is canonical.”
OK, that’s a bit harsh, and Trek (with shows that span casts and eras) is not one-man-show James Bond, but it’s a point. To take a random example, some flexibility with random lines said in TOS has to be allowed: They had no idea there would ever be another series, let alone that people would still remember them in 1992.
Thank you!
Exactly, because it’s not real. Nothing Star Trek presents in its own universe will probably ever be proven ‘real’ in ours unfortunately (or in this case fortunately ;)).
And I’m guessing nearly everyone who watches it understands that and why no one abandoned the show in the actual 90s when the shocking reality hit people that supermen with advance generic abilities didn’t take over the world after all. Maybe Rick Berman got a few letters about it but he was probably too busy with the shows and getting Firsf Contact ready for the theaters to think that hard about it.
According to Star Trek World War 3 literally begins next year (get your fallout shelters built now kids before they get too pricey). Is anyone here going to stop watching the show when that (hopefully) doesn’t happen either? Is it going to feel less real because coutries aren’t tossing nuclear warheads at each other?
No, because believe it or not, even the most obsessed fans understands it’s FICTION and know the longer it goes the less it will correspond to real life events. Unless you just reboot the show and start from scratch in the 25th century with a complete revamp of its fake history then most people will accept that reality as they already did over 30 years ago when the Eugenics war never happened.
And of course the simplest solution is if you don’t want people thinking about Star Treks fake history, then just stop bringing it up every two episodes and focus on the actual future where the show takes place.
Good point. Although I will say that “This was all supposed to happen in 1992 and I’ve been stuck here for thirty years!” is one of my favorite lines from the current Trek. (The other is “Hey, Migleemo! Read the *sign*!”)
Weird that this is a series. I have a difficult time believing there’s more that two hours of story here. We know the beats already. Post apocalypse. Living in a camper. McGyvers dies of a brain worm. Chekov shows up. Meyer better have something compelling to tell beyond needing a pay check.
We’re kinda assuming there will be flashbacks to the rise of fall of Khan on Earth.
This is a deeply cynical take and I find it sad.
It’s deeply cynical for an enlightened franchise to ask me to sympathize with a malevolent dictator twice in one year.
So, what will his accent be? Andrews is British-born, naturalized American. Can he do a decent Mexican accent? Because Khan should have a Mexican accent.
I don’t think Khan should have a Mexican accent. That was the first actor to have the role, in a time when accurate accents and etnicity were not a priority (looking at you, Chekov and Scott). I think this new Khan could have an English accent, maybe with a bit of Indiana thrown in, as a nod to his supposed Asian heritage (although it seems he was raised in Canada, LOL).
As this is supposed to be an interquel, I prefer keeping as close to Montalban’s performance as possible. I don’t care if him having a Mexican doesn’t make sense, to me, Khan should always sound like Montalban.
Bonus points if they throw an in-joke/reference to possible surgical alterations and changing his accent.
LOL!
Well I suppose if Khan was a global ruler in the 90’s (or whenever now UUGGHH) then he could theoretically have developed an accent anywhere). I myself am Indian by heritage but I have an American northeast accent having been born and raised here.
Oooof boy that Canada thing seems so weird now that you mention it. I liked the idea of someone from a former British colony rising to world power. I assumed his Sikh origins suggested he was actually raised in India. That was sort of a statement for the 60s, wasn’t it? Strange to make him western raised.
1. There is a significant Sikh population in Canada, indeed the largest outside of India by far.
2. These days, being an “immigrant” can mean something very different from what it did until, say, WWII and arguably even until the 1990s — it’s less a permanent relocation, where you visit “the old country” once or twice in your post-migration life, and more about living in two communities. I’ve lost count of the number of Irish and Israeli entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who basically live on planes.
3. Immigrant communities often tend to be more hawkish on “old world” civil conflicts than populations back home. Examples include Armenian-Americans being more irredentist on Karabakh than actual Armenians, or Israeli-Americans being disproportionately likely to live in West Bank settlements, or Irish-Americans supporting the IRA. Indeed, the Sikh community in Canada has a reputation for being disproportionately sympathetic to the Sikh independent (“Khalistan”) movement. There are allegations that India ordered the assassination of a Canadian Khalistan activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, last year, and Khalistan activists bombed an Air India flight from Montreal to London in 1985.
4. There are also real-world examples of diaspora figures returning home to engage in politics in their ancestral countries. For example, Valdas Adamkus was a Lithuanian, born in Lithuanian, who became a US citizen (even serving in the Reagan administration, IIRC), returned home after independence, and served as president. IIRC there have been similar figures in Armenia.
5. Turning to Star Trek, I have always thought that Khan’s politics were a *reaction* to irredentist confessional politics in India. His name combines Muslim (“Khan”) and Sikh (“Singh”) elements. He presents himself as a “child of India” and does not (at least post-Botany Bay) wear the turban.
It is easy to think that this kind of movement might also have arisen in a diaspora community as a reaction — “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” — to the likes of Hardeep Singh. Also, Canada like the US is a nation of immigrants. Khan may some Latin American ancestry as well as subcontinental. Hailing from the diaspora may have helped Khan position himself as a “child of India.”
What all this means is that I think it is plausible for Khan to have spent some of his formative years in Canada, and that he returned to India at some point.
Won’t be the first Khan with a British accent…too soon?
See, I would have accepted Cumberbatch more if he had done a Mexican accent as Khan.
Lol. That would’ve been interesting.
Somehow now I can’t help trying to picture Cumberbatch doing an impression of the bandits in TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, sneering, ‘we don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!’
Lol!
And even if you can get Cumberbatch to sound more like Montalban I don’t see how that would’ve made a difference when he still didn’t look or acted anything like the guy.
I think actually looking more like the character is more important than sounding like him. You would never mistake Zachary Quinto’s voice for Nimoy when playing Spock anymore than you would mistake Pine’s voice for Shatner but they both play the characters close enough to buy it.
You could’ve dubbed in Montalban’s voice for Cumberbatch no one still would’ve bought him as Khan.
LOL =D
Anyone remember the old SCTV bit ‘The Ricardo Montalban School of Fine Acting,” featuring Eugene Levy?
Khan isn’t Mexican. The only reason he has a Mexican accent is because of the actor. Not the character.
I actually thought Montalban was attempting an Indian accent for the first few watches of Space Seed and WOK.
Love the cast, love the project, love that Nick Meyer was the originator of the story. Hope Beyer e Ward did a good job of handling all necessary retcons. Looking forward to more details, and I pray that they have the actors locked in in case they want to bring the project as a telemovie or a miniseries later on.
The casting of Wrenn Schmid makes me wonder. Like they could have cast anyone to play her but they cast someone who actually looks reminiscent of the character, so who knows?
The curves are quite definitely dissimilar. But this actress has been great in FAM, and was also very very solid playing a pretty despicable character in THE LOOMING TOWER.
You know who might have made a great McGivers in TWOK if they had wanted to use the character but not the original actor? The other Madeleine, Madeleine Stowe.
I didn’t even realize she still acted, last time I saw her must have been 12 MONKEYS. She was usually quite good though. I think the only time she missed the mark in stuff I saw was in THE TWO JAKES … but then again, almost everything in that movie missed.
Congratulations to all involved. Truly hope this heralds more Star Trek radio dramas.
Fully agreed! Audio dramas are such a fantastic medium for storytelling and I loved seeing it (very) slowly pick up steam in the U.S. Big Finish has done an amazing job with Doctor Who, and Graphic Audio has been doing wonderful work converting novels to audio dramas. I’d love to see much more of this from both Trek and Star Wars.
Here, here! Something we need far more of!
Naveen Andrews as Khan? Okay, NOW you’ve got me. That is PERFECT casting.
Agreed. He’d have made a great Khan visually, too, had the TV miniseries come to anything.
WAAIIITTTT!!!!!
Trek audio dramas aren’t really new, pretty sure we had one some years back with Jeri Ryan and Michelle Hurd for a Picard tie-in
That’s mentioned in the article.
A scripted audio drama is new. There are many Trek novels that also have been turned in to audio books, but those don’t fall under the category of a scripted audio drama. I think it’s long overdue for Paramount to do a scripted Trek audio drama, and I for one hope that it is entertaining, done well, and is quite successful so there can be more. You have to pull people in with something familiar, like Khan, so you can get enough revenue to try new things.
Wait really? I gotta look that up! Was it sort of a Legacy prequel?
It is set between season 1 and 2 of Picard.
“Not Penny’s Lifeboat” :-)
I actually think Naveen Andrews will be good for this, his accent in LOST was meant to be Iraqi and I never questioned it, had presumed he was middle eastern origin of some sort. So if he is British as mentioned in other comments, then he should be able to echo a Montalban vibe without hamming it up.
It does seem like not a lot of story beats to play with but it’s a good experiment with a different format – like, er, Section31 but less risk and expense.
Shouldnt have sided with Locke.
What, you’d rather he went with the mirror-smashing, skeptical-to-the-point-of-idiocy doctor? I’d side with Locke myself, but even neglecting him, I’d sooner side with Ben Linus than with Shephard. ;-)
Great casting- looking forward to this.
“How did Khan go from a beneficent tyrant and superhuman visionary with a new world at his fingertips to the monster we think we know so well?”
Um, wasn’t he a monster from jump?
I hate these sympathetic villain origin stories. I didn’t care what made Maleficent or the Wicked Witch of the West a bad person and I think it’s fairly clear what made Khan a bad person. Enough prequels cashing in on our familiarity with the characters to make us want to pay attention. I expected more from Nicholas Meyer.
I can’t wait for “Gul Dukat: Origins” to hear about how this once well-meaning family man with good intentions became so hated that there isn’t a single statue of him on Bajor
In a way I think Dukat had a point in DS9. The Occupation of Bajor was not his fault and he wasn’t the worst Cardassian out there that could have ruled Tarok Nor. I mean he was a womanizer to be sure. An abvuser even. But he didn’t just kill everyone that move and did try to save lives at first if he could. But he was under orders from an empire, not a benevolent Federation. Even after he lost the Station he tried to make nbice with Sisko. It was really the downfall of Cardassia at the hands of the Klingons and the Maqiuis and the loss of his position that made him go nuts and succumb to the Dominion. Just myt $0.02 :).
I think this is a very interesting tale. Some people still seem to think there’s such a thing as benevolent tyrant. Khan could be the vehicle for this messsage. I bet the Eugenics Wars began with the motto Make Humankind Great Again. :-P
The Khan of Space Seed was forceful, but remember.. he “offered the world order”. Khan was not exactly evil.. but he was hardened further by his stay on a ravaged Celtic Alpha V fighting to survive.
He was pretty brutal to Kirk and crew using torture and terror to get his way, and that was before the ravaging events on Ceti Alpha V. Perhaps being hunted and persecuted and driven from earth flipped his switch, but he doesn’t strike me as “beneficent.”
the best villains are the heroes of their own story. Pretty much only Ledger’s Joker as just a pure agent of chaos (who has motiviations, we just don’t know them…) are the exception
“he ‘offered the world order’.”
Hard to consider this evidence that he was “not exactly evil.” This sort of thing is never benign.
Well, they did a decent job keeping this actual production under the radar. Maybe it holds out hope that Paramount is actually making a movie and keeping it top secret.
Nah…..
This is a very pleasant surprise, and my initial thought is, boy.. Kurtzman isn’t playing.. getting everything he can underway or under production before Skydance takes over. Lol. I’m really excited to hear this…
“Beneficent tyrant” … that’s rich! Can we just call a murderous tyrant what they really are? Descriptions aside, I’m curious to see what story Nick cooked up and David Mack has my respect with the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy. Those were some of the best Star Trek books I ever read. This has potential!
There certainly have been authoritarian modernizers in history: Lee Kwan Yew, for instance. The phenomenon is well-studied.
And Struensee maybe? Usurper in the cause of Enlightment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Struensee
I honestly appreciate your thoughtful and intelligent remark. And that may be, but was Khan really beneficent? Initially, it seemed history had recorded him as so, but I think he proved himself a torturer with malevolence and unbridled thirst for power and control pretty soon after he thawed out. Did he not?
The only real data point we have is Scotty’s comment that “I’ve always had a sneaking admiration for this one,” to which Kirk replies, “he was the best of the tyrants.”
Scotty then adds, “there were no massacres under this rule” and McCoy that there were “no wars until he was attacked.”
Spock counters all this by observing that Khan was a “ruthless dictator.”
This is the authoritarian modernizer debate in a nutshell. Some of them end up transitioning to democracy (Ataturk being the clearest example), others (e.g., the shah of Iran) not. Freedom House ranks Singapore today as “partly free.”
It would not entirely surprise me that 20 years of exile on a geologically unstable planet, presumably with food shortages and a daily struggle for survival, would make Khan much more mentally unstable than he was on Earth. Indeed, he was clearly more unstable in TWOK than “Space Seed.”
That comment alone proves that there’s a lot to mine from this character. I trust Nicholas Meyer to see all this stuff. I hope it gets to the final product.
They’ve been making noises about this for a while. Of course, even today we know that such things are a fool’s errand if not much worse. But the appeal remains for many people. (On both ends of the political spectrum.)
That’s great casting. Very impressed. I don’t often listen to audio plays, but colour me interested in this.
And I hope we can see both of these actors in live action Trek someday. I’ve enjoyed their previous work.
This is really really exciting to me. I’ve long hoped for Trek to do more with the audio drama format, which imo is boiling over with possibility (just look at what Big Finish has done with Doctor Who or Graphic Audio’s work with converting novels into audio dramas). I hope this is the first of much much much much more. It’s the perfect medium for stories that don’t necessarily need to be on screen. So so so excited!!!
“How did Khan go from a beneficent tyrant and superhuman visionary with a new world at his fingertips to the monster we think we know so well?”
We already know….
KHAN: Admiral? Admiral! Admiral… Never told you how Admiral Kirk sent seventy of us into exile on this barren sand heap with only the contents of these cargo bays to sustain us?
CHEKOV: You lie! On Ceti Alpha Five there was life, a fair chance.
KHAN: This is Ceti Alpha Five. …Ceti Alpha Six exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of this planet and everything was laid waste. Admiral Kirk …never bothered to check on our progress. It was only the fact of my genetically engineered intellect that enabled us to survive! On Earth, …two hundred years ago, …I was a prince, …with power over millions.
CHEKOV: Captain Kirk was your host! You repaid his hospitality by trying to steal his ship and murder him.
KHAN: You didn’t expect to find me. You thought this was Ceti Alpha Six! Why are you here? …Why are you here? …Why? …Allow me introduce you to Ceti Alpha Five’s only remaining indigenous lifeform. …What do you think? They’ve killed twenty of my people, including my beloved wife. …Oh, not all at once, …and not …instantly, to be sure. …You see, their young enter through the ears …and
This says it all
IIRC, Naveen Andrews lost his nomination for the Emmy to William Shatner!
Strange that they chose to do this as an audio series instead of a miniseries or TV movie.
It was written as a miniseries, but doing it as a podcast is much cheaper.
Wow. Everyone really does have a podcast these days.
Great. More Khan.
Man, Star Trek certainly is going on a spree trying to rehabilitate genocidal dictators lately
It’s trending in America right now…
P+ Investors, Kurtzman and all the executive producers who are reading this thread must be havinga blast, laughing at all the comments below.
I wonder if they mess up in the writing room, or in purpose, don’t answer to these doubts when they cast an actor or write the script.
Sometimes we wait years to know the answer. =D
Will it answer the following questions?:
Are Joaquin from Space Seed and Joachim from TWOK the same person?
Why is Khan the only one to have aged?
If the eels are the only remaining life form, what do they eat? What do Khan and his people eat?
Why no children?
Where had Khan and his people gone to when Chekov and Terrell arrived?
Joachim looks too young. (Son of Joaquin?) Maybe they were all the kids of the original and Khan was the only original we saw?
There were deleted scenes with a toddler running around, both on the planet and on the Reliant right before it blew up. They were really creepy.
My predictions….
Will it answer the following questions?: Probably not all.
Are Joaquin from Space Seed and Joachim from TWOK the same person? – Gonna say yes, and he’s also “John Harrison” pretending to be Khan. Records from 1992-1996 are sketchy.
Why is Khan the only one to have aged? – Stress does that to you.
If the eels are the only remaining life form, what do they eat? – Sand worms.
What do Khan and his people eat? – Food rations at first. Followed by sand worms.
Why no children? – Don’t be so sure.
Where had Khan and his people gone to when Chekov and Terrell arrived? – Burying one of their own.
While this is interesting, it will be “chewing gum” for Trekkies.
Since we already know what’s happened to both of these characters, there’s no real dramatic tension.
Of course, I’ll listen, and I’m sure the performances will be stellar.
From a business standpoint, I can see why CBS didn’t spend tens of millions of dollars to produce it.
For myself, Trek works best when everything is on the line.
“We don’t have a few minutes!”
“We need warp speed in 3 minutes, or we’re all dead!”
I hope it’s successful and we get more of them if only to flesh out the back story for existing characters or add context between seasons of Trek shows…
No interest at all, but wish them luck.
I’m curious to see how similar or how different it is to the Ruling in Hell comic put out by IDW back in 2011. There is such a thing as going back to the same well too many times, whether it’s ‘alpha canon,’ ‘beta canon,’ whatever. Anyway, I’ll give it a listen.
Bonus points if at some point during the show Naveen Andrews voices a brief commercial break to promote a luxuriously appointed car with “Corinthian leather…”
Pocket Books did one too, part of a three-parter that began with two volumes on the Eugenics Wars and how they tied into real history and Gary Seven.
Will definitely give this a listen. I don’t really care either way about it, but hey, it says Star Trek in the title, so…
And it can’t be worse than Section 31. Maybe that should’ve just been a podcast instead.
Sounds like there’ll be a “present day” backstory. Like, I don’t know, Picard discovering the records?
This sounds more interesting than the live action shows in production right now.
It seems a little oxymoronic to describe Khan as a beneficent tyrant. To quote everyone’s favorite Star Trek movie, “there are no benevolent dictators.” Even though the crew was oddly gushing about him in Space Seed, Khan was always a monster.
I think we can explain a lot of that gushing as the gap of history creating misplaced nostalgia, combined with the famous loss of records. Which I think was kind of the whole point when he later tried to kill them all.
Star Trek is becoming reactionary and authoritarian. It’s been happening since long before the election, but I’m sure that’s helping it along.
I wish this was at least animated,,,,
skim reading thru the comments about the SNW timelines and ID has my head spinning so I will simply say this..
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!
Superior intellect breeds superior ambition. Plus…it is very cold in spaaaaaaccccceeee.