There was a time when Khan Noonien Singh was one of the many one-off villains in Star Trek: The Original Series, with Ricardo Montalbán having played him in the 1967 episode “Space Seed.” Then Montalbán reprised the baddie in a decade and a half later in the National Film Registry-worthy Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Khan’s importance to the franchise skyrocketed, with Benedict Cumberbatch later playing an alternate timeline version of the popular Star Trek villain in Star Trek Into Darkness. Now Star Trek: Khan is revisiting the original version of the character, and co-writer Kirsten Beyer explained to CinemaBlend why this story was switched from a TV miniseries to a podcast series.
Star Trek: Khan originated from Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, who intended to show what happened to Khan between the events of “Space Seed” and the 1982 movie over the course of three TV episodes. However, as Beyer, who adapted Star Trek: Khan into podcast form with David Mack, told me, there came a point where she realized what Meyer had come up with wasn’t necessarily going to work in its original form. As she explained:
I think, though, that there were a couple of issues initially, which mainly had to do with the fact that when Nick first made Wrath of Khan, there were like 80+ hours of Star Trek in existence. Now there's like 900 and, for better and worse, I have all that in my head. So I could understand instantly how certain things that he was doing and ways that he was playing with the story were gonna actually have massive impacts that rippled out into what now exists that he's unaware of, and that are gonna sort of take people out of the story.
She’s right, when The Wrath of Khan came out, the Star Trek franchise chiefly consisted of The Original Series, the animated series follow-up and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which came out in 1978. Now there’s double digits worth of both Star Trek TV shows and movies, and Kirsten Beyer is well-versed in this lore, having written books, comic book series and TV episodes for the franchise stretching back to the early 2000s. So it occurred to her that elements of Star Trek: Khan might rub some fans the wrong way, continuing:
Because you never want your readers or your fans watching a story and being like, ‘Wait, that's not what I already think I know. How am I supposed to make sense of these two things together? Because that takes them out of the story and you've lost them, kind of. So needing to do that was a big part of it.
Khan, his fellow Augments and Marla McGivers, the Starfleet historian who became romantically enamored with him, were exiled to the planet Ceti Alpha V at the end of “Space Seed.” Star Trek: Khan chronicles the nearly 20 years between then and The Wrath of Khan, during which time Ceti Alpha V becomes a wasteland after Ceti Alpha VI blows up, and Marla died before Khan and the others could escape the planet. The podcast series also sees George Takei and Tim Russ respectively reprising Hikaru Sulu and Voyager’s Tuvok in a framing story, which Kirsten Beyer told me was necessary to incorporate:
And also, it was my notion from the very beginning that we were gonna need to set to tell not only the story of Khan, but find a way to speak to its relevance to the broader Star Trek universe and history. And that is where the framing story comes from, giving some characters the perspective that the audience has. Which is, ‘Ok, we remember where Khan started. We know how it ended in Wrath of Khan. We think we know this guy,’ And then we take them on the journey.
Beyer described Nicholas Meyer’s version of Star Trek: Khan as a “tragedy” that follows “this man who was terribly misunderstood by history and take us through the series of events that led to that happening.” While I certainly would have been game to see this story as a TV miniseries, it sounds like what Beyer and David Mack came up with retains this core premise, while also making it fit better within the overall Star Trek mythology. Lost’s Naveen Andrews and For All Mankind’s Wrenn Schmidt respectively voice Khan and Marla McGivers.
The first episode of Star Trek: Khan is now available wherever you get your podcasts, and new episodes drop on Mondays going into November 3. On the Star Trek TV front, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will soon wrap its third season on the 2025 TV schedule, Starfleet Academy will premiere to Paramount+ subscription-holders in early 2026.
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