Naveen Andrews Is Khan In Director Nicholas Meyer’s Return To Star Trek
After radio silence, the Ceti Alpha V audio series 'Star Trek: Khan' wraps with an impressive cast.
Earlier this week, news broke that William Shatner was in serious discussions for a possible return to Star Trek. Yesterday, it was confirmed that Kirk's greatest foe, Khan Noonien Singh, would soon be making a come-back to the franchise. Officially announced on Star Trek Day 2022, the long-awaited Nicholas Meyer scripted audio series Star Trek: Khan has now wrapped production. It is set to debut later this year on "all major podcast platforms". It notably stars Naveen Andrews, most known for his role in J.J. Abrams' Lost, as the voice of Khan.
Joining Andrews as Khan's fateful companion, Marla McGivers, is actress Wrenn Schmidt. Schmidt is no doubt best known for her role as Margo Madison in For All Mankind, a show helmed by another Star Trek alum Ronald D. Moore. Other members of the Khan cast will be announced "at a later date," StarTrek.com reports. A cast fit for a Long Trek, never mind an audio drama.
As its official synopsis notes, the Khan series will explore what happened to the infamous Augment and his followers during their time on Ceti Alpha V, "paving the way for the iconic clash in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". We do know that Ceti Alpha VI blew up only about six months after the formerly frozen of the Botany Bay's exile at the end of Space Seed. What we don't know, in canon, is why.
"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?" the synopsis goes on to add. Star Trek: Khan will tell "the rest of" his story, and hopefully a good deal of McGivers' too! There is a large gap in our knowledge about the former lieutenant and ship's historian of the original Enterprise — that both before and after she was 'stranded,' somewhat voluntarily, with all those eels. Of course, by the time of The Wrath of Khan, McGivers was no longer around, killed by some suddenly harsh conditions.
Not unlike the wait for Khan and others on the hellish planet, the Khan series itself has been in development for a while. Back in 2017, Meyer, legendary director (and uncredited writer) of The Wrath of Khan, was serving as consulting producer for the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. It was during that time that he wrote what was originally titled Star Trek: Khan — Ceti Alpha V.
At first a three-part television mini-series, the project suffered pushbacks. It was "just sitting there," Meyer noted in a post to Twitter. By mid-2022, Meyer was dropping hints before the official reveal that the series was being redeveloped into a podcast.
A scripted audio drama is now a first for Star Trek, produced by CBS' Eye Podcast Productions Inc., "CBS Studio's podcasting arm," as StarTrek.com points out. Meyer remains a writer on the show, alongside Trek novelists and screenwriters Kirsten Beyer and David Mack. Could this be Star Trek's answer to Big Finish's success with Doctor Who audio dramas?
Given that Star Trek: Khan is very much a continuation of Meyer's work, we would also not expect the story to explore the changes to the timeline introduced by the Temporal Wars in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. In any case, the precise date for the rise of Khan, the Eugenics Wars, and the flight of the so-called 'supermen' from Earth, need only now be a footnote for the building rage on Ceti Alpha V!