I’m a huge Star Trek fan, but I had trouble getting excited about most of the announcements from this year’s Star Trek Day. For this middle-aged nerd, it didn’t help that many of the announcements were clearly youth-coded, including a YouTube cartoon aimed at preschoolers and new comics that will be published on WEBTOON. But one announcement might be the most exciting franchise development in years: the release of the Star Trek: Khan podcast, which fleshes out Trek’s scariest villain while bringing back some fan-favorite actors.
Paramount has been at a creative crossroads lately because it doesn’t know exactly who to target with its Star Trek content. Traditional wisdom says they should market everything towards younger audiences, which is presumably why we have gotten multiple Trek cartoons in the last few years, even as the live-action shows focus more on sex and violence. Many older fans worry the franchise is turning its back on them, but Star Trek: Khan is everything we have been hoping for and more.
Ricardo Montalban as Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
What is Star Trek: Khan about, though? Simply put, it explores what happened to Khan between Kirk dropping him off on Ceti Alpha V in The Original Series and him being a mustache-twirling supervillain in The Wrath of Khan. It’s a great bit of lore for the podcast to focus on because it’s something fans have been asking about for decades, and something that was never answered by Khan’s appearances in other media like Star Trek Into Darkness and the brief cameo on Strange New Worlds.
While there are countless fan-run Star Trek podcasts (I’m partial to The Greatest Generation myself), part of what makes Khan so special is that it’s scripted. That means instead of listening to fellow nerds jabbering about your favorite franchise, you get a compelling narrative to follow instead. Best of all, that narrative is being brought to life by professional actors, including famous faces fans know and love.
Naveen Andrews on Lost.
Naveen Andrews, best known for his role in Lost, voices Khan, and so far, he is doing a great job filling the big shoes left by Ricardo Montalban. Even more exciting for fans is that George Takei has returned to voice Sulu, who is once again the intrepid captain of the Excelsior. As a pleasant surprise, Tim Russ returns to voice Tuvok, whose Voyager character once served as an ensign under Sulu’s command.
For me, another big deal about the Khan podcast is that it’s canonical, meaning that everything that happens to Khan, Sulu, and Tuvok becomes part of their official lore. While I’m not huge on canon, it’s rewarding to see a creative work outside of the usual Trek movies and shows that gets to develop some of the franchise’s greatest characters. If you grew up reading Star Trek books like I did, this is like the best of both worlds (er, the phrase, not the TNG episode): a new Star Trek story you can listen to on the go, but that is, unlike all those classic Pocket Books, actually canonical.
Captain Sulu in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
Only one episode is out now, but Star Trek: Khan is off to an awesome start. It will be released weekly through November 3rd, and it’s a great way to get your Original Series fix after Strange New Worlds airs its Season 3 finale. And trust me: if you’re an old-school fan holding your nose for most of the NuTrek era, this podcast is exactly what you’ve been waiting for!
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
