George Takei & Tim Russ Return In Star Trek: Khan
Captain Sulu and Ensign Tuvok are back to dig up the dirt on Khan.
In amongst the hubbub of the two heavy hitters, news about a scripted audio drama would be easy to overlook, even if that audio drama does quite literally scream "I… AM… KHAN". Instead, the titular tyrant makes a splash wherever he ends up, in this case at San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) via Ceti Alpha V. Star Trek: Khan, a scripted podcast series, has been a long time coming. During the Star Trek Universe panel on Saturday, we finally got a release date and a look at a trailer with some new, yet VERY familiar, voices.
Star Trek: Khan, the audio series, was officially first announced all the way back on Star Trek Day in 2022. It wasn't until February this year that we began to find out more details. The series had wrapped production, set to debut later in the year. Lost actor Naveen Andrews would be playing the lead. Joining him as Marla McGivers was actress Wrenn Schmidt, perhaps best known as Margo Madison in For All Mankind.
Yesterday's 'Official Trailer' out of SDCC added George Takei and Tim Russ to the already impressive cast list, as CAPTAIN Sulu and ENSIGN Tuvok respectively. Star Trek: Khan will now begin on Monday 8th September on all major podcast platforms. Episodes will then be available weekly up to, and including, 3rd November.
From what we can glean from the trailer, the series appears to use Sulu and Tuvok (aboard the Excelsior) as a framing device to explore Khan's story. Another character, 'Dr. Rosalind Lear,' played by Sonya Cassidy, approaches Sulu, looking to "find the truth," "the rest of the story," having found "new pieces" of the Khan "puzzle" in logs on Ceti Alpha V. Lear goes on to state that she believes Khan was "much more than a mad tyrant".
Khan was, of course, dead/turned into a planet by the time Sulu was made captain. The past tense is the only option. "Khan WAS one of humanity's greatest mistakes," Sulu states ardently in the trailer. Tuvok, we know, graduated from the Academy and was assigned to the USS Excelsior in 2293, eight years after the events of Star Trek II.
We caught a glimpse of Tuvok's time on the Excelsior in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Flashback. It will be interesting to see, or rather, hear, if the series will also include younger versions of the characters, particularly Sulu. Will there be appearances from any other actors that we don't know about yet?
As for Khan himself, the official synopsis for the series released in February seems to link back to Doctor Lear's discoveries. "Recently unearthed, the rest of Khan's story will finally be told in Star Trek: Khan." It asks the question: "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?"
One might argue that there are no nice dictators, but for the story, we'll have to wait and see. In 2018, Star Trek II director (and largely uncredited screenwriter) Nicholas Meyer had originally pitched the idea as a limited TV series. Live action would be… unfeasible, but the SDCC trailer does come with its own set of (fairly simple) animations.
If not already, there is always the possibility to turn these episodes into a set of animated shorts. Will Star Trek: Khan also be canon after all this? We don't know. Good luck arguing with a Ceti eel to find out!