Star Trek Is Turning Its Greatest Villain Into a “Hero”
Has the most compelling Trek origin story not yet been told?
When Khan (Ricardo Montalbán) avenged himself upon Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the USS Enterprise in The Wrath of Khan, he felt he was perfectly justified. And, interestingly, his specific reasons for being so furious with Kirk are somewhat murky. Of course, Khan wasn’t created wholly for the film, even though, generally speaking, after 1982, people tended to have seen the film before The Original Series episode, “Space Seed.”
But between “Space Seed” and The Wrath, there are two decades in which Khan goes from reformed outlaw to stark-raving outer space madman. How did he get this way? For several years, there has been talk of miniseries exploring Khan and his follower’s exile on Ceti Alpha V. In 2022, this was confirmed to be an original fiction podcast, written by Nicholas Meyer, the visionary behind The Wrath of Khan. And very recently, Meyer dropped an intriguing update on what fans can expect from the upcoming Khan miniseries, currently titled Ceti Alpha V.
Ahead of his new Sherlock Holmes novel — Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell — Meyer spoke to TrekMovie and revealed that the Khan podcast series is currently casting and that the project that was announced two years ago is very much “alive.”
Meyer also illuminated his approach to how Khan will be written in the new series. In the 1967 Original Series episode “Space Seed,” the crew discovers Khan, a genetically engineered tyrant from Earth’s past, preserved in suspended animation. Although passing as a noble person, Khan nonetheless is a ruthless man out of time and tries to take over the Enterprise. In the end, Kirk and the crew beat Khan and retake the ship, but instead of sending Khan to space jail, Kirk takes pity on this once-great man and leaves Khan and his followers on a harsh, uninhabited planet called Ceti Alpha V.
Kirk versus Khan in “Space Seed.”
Fast forward to The Wrath of Khan: The environment of Ceti Alpha V became nearly unlivable six months after the Enterprise dropped everybody off, which transformed Khan from a shifty idealist into a desperate survivalist. And it's in this shift that Meyer plans to reveal a new side to our perception of Khan.
“[In Ceti Alpha V] Khan is the hero,” Meyer told TrekMovie. [In “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...”
Without space travel or cameos from regular Star Trek characters, it seems possible that Ceti Alpha V could be the Trek franchise version of Dune, on a slightly smaller scale; a story of how one man sees himself as the hero and becomes a villain. “By the end of the story, I wanted people to weep for this man,” Meyer said. “I hope that you understand where he’s coming from and what his destiny is and why it is.”
