There was a time when Khan Noonien Singh was one of many many one-off villains in Star Trek: The Unique Sequence, with Ricardo Montalbán having performed him within the 1967 episode “House Seed.” Then Montalbán reprised the baddie in a decade and a half later within the Nationwide Movie Registry-worthy Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Khan’s significance to the franchise skyrocketed, with Benedict Cumberbatch later taking part in an alternate timeline model of the favored Star Trek villain in Star Trek Into Darkness. Now Star Trek: Khan is revisiting the unique model of the character, and co-writer Kirsten Beyer defined to CinemaBlend why this story was switched from a TV miniseries to a podcast collection.
Star Trek: Khan originated from Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, who supposed to point out what occurred to Khan between the occasions of “House Seed” and the 1982 film over the course of three TV episodes. Nonetheless, as Beyer, who tailored Star Trek: Khan into podcast kind with David Mack, advised me, there got here a degree the place she realized what Meyer had provide you with wasn’t essentially going to work in its unique kind. As she defined:
I feel, although, that there have been a few points initially, which primarily needed to do with the truth that when Nick first made Wrath of Khan, there have been like 80+ hours of Star Trek in existence. Now there’s like 900 and, for higher and worse, I’ve all that in my head. So I might perceive immediately how sure issues that he was doing and ways in which he was taking part in with the story had been gonna even have large impacts that rippled out into what now exists that he is unaware of, and which can be gonna type of take folks out of the story.
She’s proper, when The Wrath of Khan got here out, the Star Trek franchise mainly consisted of The Unique Sequence, the animated collection follow-up and Star Trek: The Movement Image, which got here out in 1978. Now there’s double digits value of each Star Trek TV reveals and flicks, and Kirsten Beyer is well-versed on this lore, having written books, comedian ebook collection and TV episodes for the franchise stretching again to the early 2000s. So it occurred to her that parts of Star Trek: Khan would possibly rub some followers the improper approach, persevering with:
Since you by no means need your readers or your followers watching a narrative and being like, ‘Wait, that is not what I already assume I do know. How am I speculated to make sense of those two issues collectively? As a result of that takes them out of the story and you have misplaced them, form of. So needing to do this was a giant a part of it.
Khan, his fellow Augments and Marla McGivers, the Starfleet historian who turned romantically enamored with him, had been exiled to the planet Ceti Alpha V on the finish of “House Seed.” Star Trek: Khan chronicles the almost 20 years between then and The Wrath of Khan, throughout which era Ceti Alpha V turns into a wasteland after Ceti Alpha VI blows up, and Marla died earlier than Khan and the others might escape the planet. The podcast collection additionally sees George Takei and Tim Russ respectively reprising Hikaru Sulu and Voyager’s Tuvok in a framing story, which Kirsten Beyer advised me was crucial to include:
And in addition, it was my notion from the very starting that we had been gonna must set to inform not solely the story of Khan, however discover a option to converse to its relevance to the broader Star Trek universe and historical past. And that’s the place the framing story comes from, giving some characters the angle that the viewers has. Which is, ‘Okay, we keep in mind the place Khan began. We all know the way it led to Wrath of Khan. We predict we all know this man,’ After which we take them on the journey.
Beyer described Nicholas Meyer’s model of Star Trek: Khan as a “tragedy” that follows “this man who was terribly misunderstood by historical past and take us by the collection of occasions that led to that occuring.” Whereas I definitely would have been recreation to see this story as a TV miniseries, it seems like what Beyer and David Mack got here up with retains this core premise, whereas additionally making it match higher throughout the general Star Trek mythology. Misplaced’s Naveen Andrews and For All Mankind’s Wrenn Schmidt respectively voice Khan and Marla McGivers.
The primary episode of Star Trek: Khan is now accessible wherever you get your podcasts, and new episodes drop on Mondays going into November 3. On the Star Trek TV entrance, Star Trek: Unusual New Worlds will quickly wrap its third season on the 2025 TV schedule, Starfleet Academy will premiere to Paramount+ subscription-holders in early 2026.