While Khan Noonien Singh and Marla McGivers are the stars of the new scripted podcast Star Trek: Khan, their main narrative is accompanied by a framing story that takes place years later. That story is anchored by new character Rosalind Lear, played by Sonya Cassidy, and along for the ride are George Takei’s Hikaru Sulu and Tim Russ’ Tuvok from Star Trek: Voyager. Kirsten Beyer, who worked with fellow writer David Mack to turn Star Trek: Khan from a TV miniseries into a podcast, went over CinemaBlend why it was the “most obvious” to loop in these two popular characters rather than go in a different direction.
Star Trek: Khan’s framing story takes place several years after the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, when Hikaru Sulu is captaining the USS Excelsior and Tuvok is an ensign aboard the ship. It’s also three months after the beginning of Star Trek: Generations, when James T. Kirk is thought to have died during the maiden voyage of the USS Enterprise-B. Beyer explained to me why it made more sense to go with Sulu rather than pick Kirk and place the podcast earlier in the timeline as follows:
What you needed was proximity to the events of Wrath of Khan. And frankly, Excelsior and Sulu were the most obvious for that unless you were going to use Kirk… There were just a lot of reasons why story-wise, having Sulu be motivated to be protective of Kirk and his legacy. Because at that moment, coincidentally, from Sulu's point of view, Kirk has just died. We all know the truth, but he doesn’t.
The audience does indeed know the truth, as Kirk was actually trapped in the Nexus for nearly 80 years, and then died for real helping Jean-Luc Picard stop Soren (although a new comic book series has brought him back to life). So with Kirk gone, Sulu, who met Khan in The Original Series episode “Space Seed,” is among the people who are determined to keep his spirit alive. That includes agreeing to take Rosalind Lear, a Starfleet doctor, to Ceti Alpha V and analyze the recently-discovered logs covering Khan and Marla’s nearly 20 years spent on that planet.
As for Tuvok, Star Trek fans learned about his past with Sulu in the Voyager Season 3 episode “Flashback,” with that chapter of his past taking place concurrently with the events of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. So from there, it was only logical, as a Vulcan would say, to include Tuvok as well, with Beyer telling me:
All that kind of stuff is so fun to play with in our universe. It's one of the things that makes it so unique. What happens is you're looking for the thing, and then you hit the moment and you get chills and you're like, ‘All right, that's it!’ And knowing that Tuvok had served with [Sulu] and would have been there in the earliest days, right around the time that Kirk would have been presumed dead,… you just go, ‘Oh yeah, no, that's it, totally.’ And you're there.
Khan, Marla McGivers and the rest of the surviving augments that had been put in stasis alongside Khan in the late 20th century were exiled to Ceti Alpha V at the end of “Space Seed.” They waste no time in starting to build a new civilization, though as Star Trek: Khan explores, the planet wasn’t without its dangers. Ultimately, it was revealed The Wrath of Khan that Ceti Alpha VI exploded six months after their arrival, which shifted V’s orbit and turned the world into a wasteland. Sadly, we also learned that Marla died before Khan and his remaining followers were able to escape Ceti Alpha V.
New episodes of Star Trek: Khan drop Mondays wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up for a Paramount+ subscription so you can get your fill of Star Trek movies and TV shows, including the recently-concluded Strange New Worlds Season 3.
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