In addition to the recent news of William Shatner’s possible return to the role of Kirk (Screenrant.com), which I can’t say I’m terribly excited about, there was other Star Trek news this past week that genuinely piqued my interest and anticipation.

CBS has just announced that production has wrapped on the long-rumored audio drama-podcast called “Star Trek: Khan” (formerly “Star Trek Khan: Ceti Alpha V”); based on a story from Star Trek heyday writer/director Nicholas Meyer (“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”), with scripting by Kirsten Beyer (“Star Trek: Discovery”) and David Mack (a longtime Star Trek novelist who’s worked on “Deep Space Nine,” as well as “Lower Decks,” and “Prodigy”). Fred Greenhalgh has directed the series.

From the CBS press release, via Trekcore.com :

The exciting expansion of the Star Trek universe will explore the dramatic untold events that unfolded in the desolate world of Ceti Alpha V after Captain Kirk left Khan and his followers stranded there, paving the way for the iconic clash in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. STAR TREK: KHAN will be available for streaming on all major podcast platforms later this year.

History remembers Khan Noonien Singh as a villain, the product of a failed attempt to perfect humanity through genetic engineering whose quest to avenge himself on Admiral James T. Kirk led to unimaginable tragedy and loss. But the truth has been buried for too long beneath the sands of Ceti Alpha V. How did Khan go from a beneficent tyrant and superhuman visionary with a new world at his fingertips to the monster we think we know so well? Recently unearthed, the rest of Khan’s story will finally be told in STAR TREK: KHAN.

In this highly anticipated audio series, Naveen Andrews takes on the role of the iconic villain Khan, exploring his complex psyche and the depths of his anger, ambition and pain. Alongside him, Wrenn Schmidt is set to play Lt. Marla McGivers, a former Starfleet historian who followed Khan into exile on Ceti Alpha V. 

The series will is expected to be available from Spotify and other major podcast platforms later this year.

Despite my Samuel T. Cogley-level love of physical books (I have far too many, in fact), I’ve become increasingly enamored of audiobooks and audio dramas, as well. My wife and I share an Audibles account, which I use extensively during my weekly 4-mile walks, and I have a sizable collection of audio dramas on CD (remember those?), including a few Doctor Who Big Finish productions, a collection of old Mercury Theatre Radio Plays with Orson Welles, and even a few Star Trek audiobooks from Pocket that I bought at a Crown Books liquidation earlier this century (some are still on cassette–which makes me grateful my 23-year old Honda still has a tape deck). So this news perked my ears up far more than the news of a CGI-Kirk in a William Shatner vanity project.

Note: Truth be told, I wasn’t terribly fond of the equally unnecessary “Star Trek: Picard” series either, save for a handful of installments; that series’ second season was, in my opinion, one of the worst seasons in all of Star Trek.

Part of what makes me cautious about a possible Kirk series is, ironically, the same force behind my curiosity for “Star Trek: Khan”; Star Trek’s tendency of late to strip-mine canonical characters and rehash old stories (the never-ending ‘villain seeking revenge’ story). Unlike the prospect of Kirk exploring a post–“Generations” afterlife, the untold story of Khan Noonien Singh and his followers’ 15 years of exile on Ceti Alpha V between 1967’s “Space Seed” (written by Carey Wilber & Gene L. Coon) and 1982’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” practically begs for further exploration. This 15-year interval includes the collapse of Khan’s colony following neighboring planet Ceti Alpha 6’s destruction, as well as the loss of twenty or so of Khan’s followers–along with his wife, former Starfleet officer and Enterprise historian, Marla McGivers.

There were a few non-canonical attempts to fill in the blanks with Khan’s backstory and exile years on Ceti Alpha V, including Greg Cox’s novel trilogy, “The Eugenics Wars, Volume 1” (2001), “The Eugenics Wars, Volume 2” (2003), and “To Reign in Hell” (2005). In Cox’s books, the Eugenics wars of 1992-1996 still happened, but they were an elaborate, top-secret, “X-Files”-style global conspiracy which was only later declassified. The Botany Bay was an experimental interplanetary spaceship from Area 51 based on Ferengi technology (DS9’s “Little Green Men”); Area 51 is also the same place were Nomad (TOS “The Changeling”) was being programmed by Jackson Roykirk for its top-secret 2002 launch.

Cox, a meticulous writer, does his admirable best to tie in the mythical Eugenics Wars with actual Earth history, incorporating real-world events such as the Union Carbide chemical disaster in 1984 Bhopal, India and other seemingly unrelated disasters. Cox also brings in the canonical extraterrestrial-trained human agent Gary Seven (TOS “Assignment: Earth”) as Khan’s Obi-Wan Kenobi-like mentor, before the younger man’s ruthlessness and ambition turned him to the ‘dark side.’

The final book, “To Reign in Hell,” is where the series falls apart a bit; as Cox practically flop-sweats his way out of some continuity gaffes, such as Joachim (from “Wrath…”) somehow being the 14 year old son of “Space Seed” thug Joaquin, even though the character of Joachim (Judson Scott) looks like a 30-year old man. Shortcomings of the third book aside, the first two books in the trilogy are great reads, and would make a nice-enough miniseries themselves; sort of a Star Trek meets The X-Files mashup.

IDW Comics also took a stab at chronicling Khan’s years in exile on Ceti Alpha V with its graphic novel “Ruling in Hell” (2011), written by brothers David and Scott Tipton, who later adapted Harlan Ellison’s original un-filmed “City on the Edge of Forever” script into a graphic novel in 2014. The exile years of “Ruling in Hell” are a bit less clumsy than Cox’s, though they’re also a bit predictable as well; perhaps an unavoidable consequence, given the book’s prequel nature. I imagine master storyteller Meyer’s podcast miniseries will use its audio drama format to better explore character over individual story beats.

More recently, the live-action Trek series “Strange New Worlds” hit the reset button on the Eugenics Wars yet again, with its pilot episode and second season episode “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” which blames a Romulan-spearheaded temporal Cold War for shifting the events of Khan and the Eugenics Wars from the 1990s into the mid-21st century. I used to believe that Star Trek should incorporate our own history and current events in its storytelling to remain aspirational. However, I no longer believe that. It feels a bit disingenuous these days. Perhaps the 1990s Eugenics Wars would be best framed as simply another alternate reality within Star Trek’s greater multiverse.

Enter writer/director Nicholas Meyer (“Time After Time,” “The Seven Percent Solution”), the writer/director who, along with producer Harve Bennett (“The Six Million Dollar Man”), steered the Star Trek movie franchise into a very lucrative run from the early 1980s through the early 1990s. Meyer is a natural storyteller, who’s extremely well-versed in the classics. His heroes are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, which gives his Star Trek productions a strong literary vibe. He even got Admiral Kirk to read Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Conceptually, “Star Trek: Khan” began back in 2017 during Meyer’s early involvement with “Star Trek: Discovery.” Sadly, Meyer was not invited back for Discovery’s second season (no doubt to the series’ detriment). However, Meyer had already written three scripts set to be filmed as a live-action miniseries for CBS-All Access, which later became Paramount+. This latest miniseries has taken those stories and tweaked them just a bit for the audio drama format.

The casting of this audio drama has me every bit as excited as if the project were live-action. Actors Naveen Andrews (“Lost”) and Wrenn Schmidt (“For All Mankind”) could just as easily play their respective characters of Khan and Marla in live-action, for my money; they are each worthy successors (and near-lookalikes) to the late Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009) and Madlyn Rhue (1935-2003). In fact, Naveen Andrews is a far better physical choice for Khan than the inexplicably cast Benedict Cumberbatch (“Star Trek Into Darkness”); who is a marvelous actor (I love BBC’s “Sherlock”), though he couldn’t be more physically wrong for the part.

Note: My reasons for despising “Star Trek Into Darkness” are many, and go waaay beyond its whitewash casting of Cumberbatch as Khan. The story is an absolute mess.

Perhaps what I’m looking forward to most of all is that, without costs or worries over expensive sets and visual FX, audio dramas place character above spectacle. This could be precisely the shot in the arm the increasingly expensive and unwieldy Star Trek franchise needs right about now. A quality I love most about older episodes of Star Trek, including the TNG-era, is that they work largely without visuals. The “Captain’s Log” narrative device is practically lifted straight from 1930s radio plays, in fact. Often, I find myself streaming episodes of classic Trek while cooking, or doing other chores around the homestead. This is something virtually impossible to do with modern Star Trek, which tends to be extremely reliant on visuals and action to carry its stories. Turn your eyes away for five minutes and you’re quickly lost.

Unlike the prospect of a heavily CGI de-aged, uncanny valley William Shatner once again “boldly going” where he’s gone many times before, the “Star Trek: Khan” audio drama is a great opportunity for younger Trek fans to get a taste of that more innocent time of Star Trek fandom back in the 1970s and early 1980s; when new live-action Star Treks were few and far between. Back in those days, we Trekkies (taking it back) listened to records, audiotapes and read lots of books chronicling fascinating, if non-canonical adventures of the starship Enterprise and its crew. There were also the Bantam ‘fotonovels,’ too…

Back in those days, we couldn’t simply stream nearly a thousand hours of live-action Star Trek content on our laptops, phones or tablets. Our imaginations had to do the heavy lifting for us, and I think we were better off for it. To quote Khan (Ricardo Montalban) from the original “Space Seed”: “It was a time of great dreams, great aspirations…”

While I’m not a religious person, I do appreciate a differently contextualized, yet somewhat fitting quote from 2 Corinthians: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Live long and prosper, folks.