At the end of the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Space Seed,” Khan Noonien Singh, his fellow superhumans and Marla McGivers were exiled to the planet Ceti Alpha V to build a new civilization. Unfortunately, Ceti Alpha VI exploded several months later, turning Ceti Alpha V into a wasteland, as revealed in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But what if Ceti Alpha V hadn’t been ravaged? With Star Trek: Khan pointing the spotlight back on its title character, I asked the podcast’s lead actor and one of the writers what they thought about this hypothetical scenario.
What Actor Naveen Andrews Said
Following in the footsteps of Ricardo Montalbán. Lost and Sense8 actor Naveen Andrews voices Khan in Star Trek: Khan, which was originally going to be a TV series. The podcast co-starring co-stars Sulu and Tvok in a framing story delves into the nearly two-decades that passed between when Khan and the others started to build their new lives to when the survivors were found by the USS Reliant in The Wrath of Khan. When I asked Andrews what he thought might have happened to Khan if Ceti Alpha V’s climate had stayed the same, he answered:
It's hypothetical, of course, but if adopting this hypothesis, I'd see him somehow succeeding against all the odds. Just because of his sheer determination and burning zeal, he seems to have.
As those listening to Star Trek: Khan week to week know, Ceti Alpha V had its dangers and threats even before Ceti Alpha VI exploded. So building that new civilization was never going to be easy, but Naveen Andrews is confident that Khan would have led his followers and Marla McGivers to a brighter future. Unfortunately, what actually happened saw many being killed by either the new unforgiving environment or the parasitic Ceti eels, Marla McGivers falling into the latter category.
What Writer And Executive Producer Kirsten Beyer Said
Later on, I posed the same alternate history question to Kirsten Beyer, who co-wrote Star Trek: Khan with David Mack based off of The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer’s original TV idea. She started off by saying:
I actually think that is the central tragedy of this piece because I think he would have built something extraordinary. Now, there were certainly forces working against him. There were challenges that he was facing that even in the early episodes he's not even quite aware of. That shift between what he and his people had been before, which are basically soldiers, to leaders and civilization builders is an incredibly challenging one, and that's just what he was beginning to grapple with.
Beyer (who also wrote one of Strange New Worlds Season 3’s episodes and is also working on the new show Starfleet Academy) is referring to the Eugenics Wars. Within the Star Trek timeline, this global conflict took place in the 1990s and saw Khan Noonien Singh and other subjects from a human genetic engineering project trying to dominate the world. Khan was the most benevolent of these rulers, controlling a large chunk of Asia and the Middle East.
Khan’s first reign ended with him being overthrown, then fleeing Earth with 84 of his followers on the USS Botany Bay, 72 of whom were still alive when they were found in “Space Seed.” Star Trek: Khan now follows its main protagonist trying a different way of being a leader, and like Naveen Andrews, Kirsten Beyer believes he would have accomplished this goal, adding:
But I personally think he would have succeeded, and that's one of the things that makes all of this so tragic for me. I don't think what happened in Wrath of Khan had to happen given who Khan was, but this is the story of why it did.
Unless the Star Trek franchise ever starts telling alternate history stories, we’ll just have to imagine how Khan’s society on Ceti Alpha V had turned out had that catastrophe never happened. As for the events that did unfold and lead to his mission of revenge against James T. Kirk in The Wrath of Khan, continuing listening to Star Trek: Khan as new episodes drop Monday wherever you get your podcasts.
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