star trek khan backstory

To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh

• View history
• 2 Background information
• 3 Characters
• 4 References
• 5 External link

Summary [ ]

Background information [ ].

• The novel spans the gap between Khan's marooning in " Space Seed " and his rediscovery in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . Author Greg Cox knew that this novel would be the obvious follow-up after filling in Khan's backstory in the Rise and Fall duology, but had only a few lines of dialogue in the movie to go on, considering it " [the] big challenge: Could I get an entire book out of a few dozen people stuck on a barren rock for fifteen or so years? " ( Voyages of Imagination , p. 145)
• Cox noted that this third novel in the series strikes a very different tone: " grimmer, more tragic, and less rife with opportunities for cute fannish in-jokes and cameos. " Early on, he determined that there was no place for the involvement of Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln (who had been central to the previous duology), and appearances by known Trek races would go against the idea that Khan and his followers had been alone for the fifteen years set out. ( Voyages of Imagination , p. 145)
• He also felt it was important to give McGivers a central role in the novel: " In my head, I always thought of her storyline as 'The Rehabilitation of Marla McGivers'. […] My goal was to toughen Marla up some, and give her more of a spine, while still remaining consistent with the character we met in the original episode. " ( Voyages of Imagination , p. 145)
• The original title of the novel was A World to Win , based on the final line of dialogue by Khan in " Space Seed "; however, Pocket editor Marco Palmieri suggested using the John Milton line spoken by Kirk at the end of the episode instead. ( Voyages of Imagination , p. 145)
• Marla McGivers refers to the events of TOS : " The Conscience of the King ", " Shore Leave ", " Arena ", and " Tomorrow is Yesterday " whereas Sulu recalls those of TOS : " The Galileo Seven ".

Characters [ ]

References [ ], external link [ ].

• To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh at Memory Beta , the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
• 2 USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-G)
• 3 Star Trek: The Next Generation

'Wrath of Khan': Ricardo Montalbán on 'Star Trek's Iconic Villain and His Workout Transformation (Flashback)

The actor explained to ET in 1982 how he got into shape to face off against Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew.

Among Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan ’s enduring legacy, which already boasts the introduction of the Kobayashi Maru, as well as Captain Kirk ( William Shatner ) and Mr. Spock’s ( Leonard Nimoy ) powerful goodbye scene, is Ricardo Montalbán’s iconic performance as Khan Noonien Singh. 

To celebrate the movie’s 40th anniversary, ET is looking back at Montalbán’s in-depth interview leading up to The Wrath of Khan ’s premiere on June 4, 1982. 

One question on everyone’s mind at the time was a bit superficial, but nevertheless imperative following Montalbán's appearance in the movie’s trailer and posters. Are those your real muscles? And if so: how did you get in shape?

“Before I did Khan , I started to do a lot of push ups,” Montalbán said with a laugh, confirming those pectorals on the big screen were the real deal. “Because, after all, [Khan] was supposed to be a physically strong man.”

Montalbán had the unique distinction of reprising the character over 15 years after he guest starred on the original series. In the season one episode, “Space Seed,” Kirk and crew encounter Khan, a genetically engineered human who’s been in suspended animation following a world war on Earth nearly 200 years ago. With enhanced strength and intellect, Khan seeks to take over the Enterprise and revive more of his superhuman peers. But his attempt is foiled. Instead, Kirk sends Khan and company to an uninhabited planet where they could fulfill their destructive ambitions, without bringing harm and chaos to the Federation in the process. 

“I venture to say I received more fan mail from that episode than anything I've ever done in my life,” Montalbán shared. 

By the time producer Harve Bennett came calling about literally reviving Khan for Star Trek ’s second film, Montalbán had become a household name from his role as Mr. Rourke on Fantasy Island . Already many seasons into the hit TV series, Montalbán felt confident and comfortable as the show’s lead character. And when the moment came to step back into Gene Roddenberry’s universe, he discovered maybe he had become a little too comfortable. 

“When you play the same character for so many years, I get to know him so well that it becomes a little bit of a part of you, as you become a part of it,” Montalbán explained. “And when I first started to articulate the dialogue of Khan, and I was alone at home in my room and study, and the first time I say the words out loud I heard Mr. Rourke. And I couldn't get away from him and I didn't know what to do.”

“I asked Bennett, the producer of [ The Wrath of Khan ], to send me a tape of the original show I had done… He may be older and more bitter, but nevertheless, I have to discover his fingerprints,” he continued. “And so I saw the show. I ran it several times. And about the fourth or fifth time I began to remember what I did then. The thoughts came back to me. And it was really quite remarkable… Then, I picked up the script and all of a sudden there was Khan. And I think I eradicated Mr. Rourke.”

Following the mixed reception of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979, producers went back to basics for the next installment in terms of story, tone and antagonist. As Kirk endures the woes of a midlife crisis, Khan reenters the fold and is dead set on revenge. In Star Trek Into Darkness , Spock later warns his Kelvin timeline counterpart ( Zachary Quinto ) that "Khan Noonien Singh is the most dangerous adversary the Enterprise ever faced." 

“A saint doesn't know that he's a saint. He does saintly things. And people around him say he's a saint,” Montalbán said, adding that likewise, “An evil man or a villain, I don't think he thinks of himself as being evil.”

Khan’s multifaceted nature and rich backstory is still paying off dividends. On Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , the character's DNA literally runs high. The Enterprise's chief of security, La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong), is a descendent of Khan. Over on Star Trek: Picard , the season 2 finale hinted Dr. Adam Soong (Brent Spiner) aided Khan's creation as a young scientist.

Alongside the Borg Queen and Gul Dukat, Khan continues to be heralded as one of Star Trek 's best villains, which is a legacy that can be attributed to Montalbán's thoughtful approach to creating a three-dimensional antagonist.

“When I played Khan… I had to give him some human qualities. Something of goodness,” Montalbán explained. “And I imbued Khan with a very sincere and a very beautiful love of his wife, who died. And that great love now turned into great hate for Admiral Kirk, who he blames for the death of his wife… Because if you play everything good-good, and everything bad-bad, then it's a caricature. There's no such thing. We all have a balance.”

Still, there was the age-old acting dilemma of finding the right tone. Even for an established film actor, having previously starred alongside movie icons like Clark Gable ( Across the Wide Missouri ) and Lana Turner ( Madame X ), Montalbán felt challenged by translating Khan for the cinema.

“Playing this character presented great difficulty. If I played him safely… I'm afraid the character would have been not a worthy antagonist to Admiral Kirk,” Montalbán said. “The only way I could do it then was to play it not safely but daringly. And really play it as fully as I could, because after all, [ Star Trek ] is a fantasy thing.”

Maximum warp to 2021, Jerry O'Connell told ET at Paramount+'s 2nd Annual "Star Trek Day" Celebration that he wants to follow in Benedict Cumberbatch 's footsteps by playing the infamous tyrant one day (even though he's already in the family as the voice of Ransom on Lower Decks ). 

The actor revealed, "Huge props to Ricardo Montalbán, who did amazing work not only in the original series but in [ Star Trek II ] as well, [but] I want a shot to play Khan at some point."

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan streams on Paramount+. 

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Star Trek's Khan Is Returning To The Franchise In A New Story Set Before Star Trek II

Despite the sheer number of villains who have appeared throughout the many installations of the "Star Trek" franchise, there's no doubt that the greatest antagonist the series has ever seen is Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán) — the malevolent superhuman who made his debut in the classic "Star Trek" episode "Space Seed." After suffering defeat at the hands of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and the crew of the Starship Enterprise, Khan would later return to enact his vengeance in the film "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," which would infamously lead to the death of series staple Spock (Leonard Nimoy).

The immense devastation that Khan wreaked throughout "The Wrath of Khan" catapulted the character to the very top of the "Star Trek" rogues' gallery, and more than 40 years later, he remains the most well-known villain in the entire franchise – and one of the most iconic antagonists in science fiction history. Indeed, Khan is so popular that he was even brought back to the franchise through 2013's "Star Trek Into Darkness," where he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch and given a completely new backstory.

Now, it seems like Khan will be returning to the franchise once again through "Star Trek's" first ever scripted podcast; in a brand new story that will explore his 15 years of exile on the Ceti Alpha V.

The original Khan is returning in a new scripted podcast

Longtime fans of "Star Trek" will remember that, following Khan's defeat in "Space Seed," Captain Kirk exiled the villain to Ceti Alpha V with the majority of his followers – where he would spend the next 15 years biding his time before the events of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." Now, a new scripted podcast from "Wrath of Khan" director Nicholas Meyer will explore exactly what happened during those years of exile.

"Nick made the definitive 'Trek' movie when he made 'Wrath,' and we've all been standing in its shadow since," said producer Alex Kurtzman in a September 2022 press release. "Now he's come up with something as surprising, gripping and emotional as the original, and it's a real honor to be able to let him tell the next chapter in this story exactly the way he wants to" (via Gizmodo ).

The podcast, titled "Star Trek: Khan – Ceti Alpha V," is set to arrive sometime in early 2023, though as of right now we still don't have a concrete release date for this exciting new project; nor do we know who will be voicing the titular villain (via IGN ). We do know that the podcast will tell the story of exactly what Khan and his followers were up to during their lengthy exile on Ceti Alpha, and Kurtzman's comments make it clear that this prequel story will be well worth the time of anybody who tunes in. In any case, the return of Khan to the franchise should be something that every longtime "Star Trek" fan ought to be excited for.

What Star Trek Canon Could Mean for This Important Character's Future

With Star Trek's complex lore, there's little place for new characters to have a long future, especially when they're introduced in a prequel series.

This article contains spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds , now available to stream on Paramount+.

Star Trek has been gracing the screens and lives of its fans for over 50 years and, in that time, has built up a strong, long-lasting canon of content spanning in-world centuries. With this plethora of lore comes the challenge of introducing new figures, especially in prequel series, of which there are many. One such example is a key member of the hit new Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds' La'an Noonien-Singh. In fact, La'an's involvement in the greater canon goes beyond just that of a new character -- she has ties to its most iconic villain, Khan Noonien-Singh.

La'an has become an incredibly important part of the series and franchise at large, not least of all because of these connections. With the Gorn becoming one of the central villains of Strange New Worlds, La'an's first-hand knowledge is invaluable to the success of her crew and Starfleet. Moreover, her ongoing 'situationship' with Kirk ingrains her into the backstory of one of the series' most iconic characters. Her time-travel romance featured both a long-term intimacy with the franchise's flagship captain and a definitive tie to her ancestor Khan and his future. La'an's future is up in the air, with her volatile, self-destructive personality offering a few possible outs to align with her lack of involvement in the existing canon. Still, her story intertwines her in a way that would make ignoring her impact a risky move.

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How Strange New Worlds Ties La'an, Kirk and Khan

Strange New Worlds Season 2, Episode 3, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," cemented La'an's impact on Star Trek's lore in an irreversible way. In this one episode, where La'an chose to save the life of a future genocidal maniac and her ancestor Khan, the writers corrected the prime timeline, and La'an kept in motion the events that would follow her around for her whole life. The emotional episode saw La'an choose the life of an innocent child over freedom from a burden that weighs on her daily, thus allowing the Eugenics Wars to occur as they did in Star Trek canon. In choosing La'an, a new addition to the franchise, to correct the timeline, the minds behind Strange New Worlds created an irreversible moment in the primary timeline in which La'an was not only involved but directly impactful. This episode also saw her become intrinsically linked to Captain James Kirk, an Original Series icon with a complicated history with Khan himself.

Although the Kirk from "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" is not the same as the Kirk in the primary timeline, the Season 2, Episode 9 musical special, "Subspace Rhapsody," saw him confess that he feels as if he knows La'an, despite having no memories of his alternate self. Kirk then revealed that, though he feels a connection to La'an, he cannot act on it because of his pregnant girlfriend, Carol Marcus . Carol would go on to work on creating the Genesis Planet as a direct result of Khan's work during the war. Kirk and Carol's son David would later be killed on the Genesis planet, so when following the threads, it can be said that La'an's choice to save Khan led to the death of Kirk's son. Kirk's relationship with La'an is strong and complicated, so it would be strange if she didn't come to mind during his future interactions with Khan. Additionally, part of their connection centers on the fact that Kirk doesn't see her as connected to the actions of her ancestor, so following that notion could mean that he simply doesn't think of her in the same vein as he does of the villainous Noonien-Singh.

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La'an Noonien-Singh Is a Warrior

With the Gorn forming such a major and repeated threat to Strange New World's Enterprise, La'an's other defining backstory moment has been vital to the crew's survival. As the ship's security officer, La'an is one of the most skilled warriors because of her status as the sole survivor of a Gorn breeding planet. Her difficult life and traumatic childhood have led to an understandably standoffish personality that often leads her to put herself in harm's way. Although La'an has undergone an arc that seems to be opening her up to vulnerability and the need for teamwork, it wouldn't be out of character if her demise came during a big battle or in the throes of conflict. In fact, it would be the easiest way to write out her character.

This path, while simple, would do a massive disservice to her character. La'an's primary objective throughout the series so far has been the safety and happiness of her crew, who serve as her chosen family. She has often put their lives above her own, and a big part of her character development has been her self-belief and the hope for a future she has gained. If killed off, her impact on Star Trek canon would be diminished, as the franchise would have no reason to add her to future events if revisited. Further, her arc as a character would come to a dissatisfying close, punctuated by the fact that those in lasting canon she is closest to, i.e. Spock, Uhura, Kirk and now potentially also Scotty , go on without acknowledging her.

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A Time Travel Alternative Can Work - La'an's Already Been Through It

One way the series could avoid killing off La'an would be to lean into themes the franchise frequently explores, namely time travel. Star Trek has long explored time travel as a trope ; from episodes in The Original Series or in Discovery -- the series has done almost every iteration of the narrative possible. In addition to traveling in the main timeline, there have also been multiple instances of alternate timelines and dimensions, especially in Strange New Worlds. La'an is involved in both instances in her show, first in the Season 1 finale, where she serves as Kirk's Number One on the Farragut, and the other in the aforementioned episode, where she saves Khan.

La'an's exposure to the Department of Temporal Investigations, as well as alternate timelines , sets her character up for a time-related event in which she disappears, and the members of Starfleet are bound not to speak of her, similar to what happens with Discovery . If the writers were to take a similar route, it would easily transition La'an out of the narrative in a way that didn't cut her off entirely, as killing her would. The major downside to this route is that similar to a warrior's end, it would likely result from a sacrificial moment, diminishing her character development. What the team behind Strange New Worlds choose to do with La'an remains to be seen.

Still, hopefully, they lean into the same idea that saw her exit during the Season 1 finale, choosing to pursue humanitarian work that would see her take a step away from Starfleet without losing her conscious contributions to the story. Whatever her end may be, here's hoping it's a long way off, and fans get to continue to enjoy all that her character, and Strange New Worlds , offer to the world of Star Trek.

Strange New Worlds Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Paramount+.

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock Cost The World A Full-Blown Khan Spinoff

Khan Noonien Singh's trajectory as a fictional character is the opposite of his in-universe life story. He was once a superhuman tyrant who ruled much of the Earth — after being overthrown, he fled to space aboard the SS Botany Bay. Upon reawakening, he was bested twice by James T. Kirk and died failing to avenge himself. For audiences though, Khan went from a villain of the week ( in the "Star Trek" episode "Space Seed" ) to the greatest of all "Trek" villains thanks to his reappearance in the film "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."

Before "The Wrath of Khan," however, "Star Trek" was in trouble. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" underwhelmed, Paramount was hesitant about a sequel, and Leonard Nimoy had to be convinced to return as Spock. That's why the film famously ends with his character dying — except, during shooting, Nimoy changed his mind about exiting. Thus, when "The Wrath of Khan" ended up being a success, the sequel — "The Search for Spock" — was all about bringing back the late Vulcan. Nimoy even directed the movie and the subsequent fourth film, "The Voyage Home."

This wasn't the only plan Paramount had, though. According to the "Star Trek" oral history book "The Fifty-Year Mission" by Edward Gross and Mark Altman , there were plans to take the franchise in a different direction — one that looked backward in a more literal way.

"Search for Spock" Unit Publicist Eddie Egan told Gross and Altman that Harve Bennett, who co-wrote both "Wrath of Khan" and "Search for Spock," wanted to do a prequel spin-off chronicling Khan's life between his debut in "Space Seed" and his return in "The Wrath of Khan."

Star Trek: Prison Planet

In "Space Seed," Khan and his "augmented" followers choose to be exiled to planet Ceti Alpha V, a lush but untamed world. In the words of John Milton, it's better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. Then a planetary cataclysm disrupts the environment of Khan's new world, truly turning it into the Hell he'd described. The terrible desert Ceti Alpha V has become is only glimpsed in "Wrath of Khan" before Khan's people leave it by hijacking the Starfleet vessel the USS Reliant. So, we're left to imagine how torturous 15 years there must have been.

Bennett crafted a treatment titled "Star Trek: Prison Planet" to show audiences firsthand. Ricardo Montalbán would have returned as Khan and the film would be a "vehicle" for him, per Egan. However, "Prison Planet" fell by the wayside when Paramount decided to prioritize "Star Trek III." This story illustrates how Hollywood has changed in the intervening decades. Nowadays in the age of unkillable franchises, Paramount executives would be thrilled to have both a sequel and a spin-off to a hit film. Rather than choosing one film over the other, they would likely turn "Prison Planet" into a Paramount+ mini-series.

As fate would have it, Nicholas Meyer, director of "Wrath of Khan," proposed doing a Khan mini-series, "Ceti Alpha V,"  in 2021 . The project has since evolved into an audio drama (which saves them the trouble of finding an actor who can completely imitate Montalbán — Benedict Cumberbatch ain't it ).

Star Trek spin-offs about Khan

Before the 2010s when franchise recycling hit its max (driven by the streaming service glut), interquel stories would be saved for tie-in media catered to the niche of dedicated fans. The story of Khan's exile is one that "Star Trek" authors did not ignore.

For previous tellings of Khan's time on Ceti Alpha V, there is "To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh." This 2006 novel by Greg Cox is a sequel to his earlier two-volume work, "The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh," which chronicled Khan's backstory on 20th century Earth . There is also "Star Trek: Khan — Ruling In Hell," a 2010 comic mini-series by Scott & David Tipton and Fabio Mantovani. Both works' titles call back to Khan quoting Milton in "Space Seed," but beyond that and fitting into the confines of "Wrath of Khan," they're mutually exclusive.

I've admitted only read the comic; issue #1 opens with the Enterprise leaving the Botany Bay and her crew on Ceti Alpha V. The issue then ends with Ceti Alpha VI exploding; as detailed in "Wrath of Khan," the shockwave is what ruined its sister planet. Over the mini-series, Khan's initial gratitude to Kirk for a second chance turns to hatred as Khan loses more and more, including his "beloved wife," while the Captain never comes to his rescue.

You don't need more than "Wrath of Khan" itself to understand the villain, but seeing Montalbán play the character again in "Prison Planet" would have been a treat. His presence is obviously lacking in this comic and novel, and now Meyer's forthcoming mini-series too.

The Future of ‘Star Trek’: From ‘Starfleet Academy’ to New Movies and Michelle Yeoh, How the 58-Year-Old Franchise Is Planning for the Next Generation of Fans

“I can’t believe I get to play the captain of the Enterprise.”

“Strange New Worlds” is the 12th “Star Trek” TV show since the original series debuted on NBC in 1966, introducing Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a hopeful future for humanity. In the 58 years since, the “Star Trek” galaxy has logged 900 television episodes and 13 feature films, amounting to 668 hours — nearly 28 days — of content to date. Even compared with “Star Wars” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Star Trek” stands as the only storytelling venture to deliver a single narrative experience for this long across TV and film.

In other words, “Star Trek” is not just a franchise. As Alex Kurtzman , who oversees all “Star Trek” TV production, puts it, “‘Star Trek’ is an institution.”

Without a steady infusion of new blood, though, institutions have a way of fading into oblivion (see soap operas, MySpace, Blockbuster Video). To keep “Star Trek” thriving has meant charting a precarious course to satisfy the fans who have fueled it for decades while also discovering innovative ways to get new audiences on board.

“Doing ‘Star Trek’ means that you have to deliver something that’s entirely familiar and entirely fresh at the same time,” Kurtzman says.

The franchise has certainly weathered its share of fallow periods, most recently after “Nemesis” bombed in theaters in 2002 and UPN canceled “Enterprise” in 2005. It took 12 years for “Star Trek” to return to television with the premiere of “Discovery” in 2017; since then, however, there has been more “Star Trek” on TV than ever: The adventure series “Strange New Worlds,” the animated comedy “Lower Decks” and the kids series “Prodigy” are all in various stages of production, and the serialized thriller “Picard” concluded last year, when it ranked, along with “Strange New Worlds,” among Nielsen’s 10 most-watched streaming original series for multiple weeks. Nearly one in five Paramount+ subscribers in the U.S. is watching at least one “Star Trek” series, according to the company, and more than 50% of fans watching one of the new “Trek” shows also watch at least two others. The new shows air in 200 international markets and are dubbed into 35 languages. As “Discovery” launches its fifth and final season in April, “Star Trek” is in many ways stronger than it’s ever been.

“’Star Trek’s fans have kept it alive more times than seems possible,” says Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., who executive produces the TV series through Roddenberry Entertainment. “While many shows rightfully thank their fans for supporting them, we literally wouldn’t be here without them.”

But the depth of fan devotion to “Star Trek” also belies a curious paradox about its enduring success: “It’s not the largest fan base,” says Akiva Goldsman, “Strange New Worlds” executive producer and co-showrunner. “It’s not ‘Star Wars.’ It’s certainly not Marvel.”

When J.J. Abrams rebooted “Star Trek” in 2009 — with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldaña playing Kirk, Spock and Uhura — the movie grossed more than any previous “Star Trek” film by a comfortable margin. But neither that film nor its two sequels broke $500 million in global grosses, a hurdle every other top-tier franchise can clear without breaking a sweat.

There’s also the fact that “Star Trek” fans are aging. I ask “The Next Generation” star Jonathan Frakes, who’s acted in or directed more versions of “Star Trek” than any other person alive, how often he meets fans for whom the new “Star Trek” shows are their first. “Of the fans who come to talk to me, I would say very, very few,” he says. “‘Star Trek’ fans, as we know, are very, very, very loyal — and not very young.”

As Stapf puts it: “There’s a tried and true ‘Trek’ fan that is probably going to come to every ‘Star Trek,’ no matter what it is — and we want to expand the universe.”

Every single person I spoke to for this story talked about “Star Trek” with a joyful earnestness as rare in the industry as (nerd alert) a Klingon pacifist.

“When I’m meeting fans, sometimes they’re coming to be confirmed, like I’m kind of a priest,” Ethan Peck says during a break in filming on the “Strange New Worlds” set. He’s in full Spock regalia — pointy ears, severe eyebrows, bowl haircut — and when asked about his earliest memories of “Star Trek,” he stares off into space in what looks like Vulcan contemplation. “I remember being on the playground in second or third grade and doing the Vulcan salute, not really knowing where it came from,” he says. “When I thought of ‘Star Trek,’ I thought of Spock. And now I’m him. It’s crazy.”

To love “Star Trek” is to love abstruse science and cowboy diplomacy, complex moral dilemmas and questions about the meaning of existence. “It’s ultimately a show with the most amazing vision of optimism, I think, ever put on-screen in science fiction,” says Kurtzman, who is 50. “All you need is two minutes on the news to feel hopeless now. ‘Star Trek’ is honestly the best balm you could ever hope for.”

I’m getting a tour of the USS Enterprise from Scotty — or, rather, “Strange New World” production designer Jonathan Lee, who is gushing in his native Scottish burr as we step into the starship’s transporter room. “I got such a buzzer from doing this, I can’t tell you,” he says. “I actually designed four versions of it.”

Lee is especially proud of the walkway he created to run behind the transporter pads — an innovation that allows the production to shoot the characters from a brand-new set of angles as they beam up from a far-flung planet. It’s one of the countless ways that this show has been engineered to be as cinematic as possible, part of Kurtzman’s overall vision to make “Star Trek” on TV feel like “a movie every week.”

Kurtzman’s tenure with “Star Trek” began with co-writing the screenplay for Abrams’ 2009 movie, which was suffused with a fast-paced visual style that was new to the franchise. When CBS Studios approached Kurtzman in the mid-2010s about bringing “Star Trek” back to TV, he knew instinctively that it needed to be just as exciting as that film.

“The scope was so much different than anything we had ever done on ‘Next Gen,’” says Frakes, who’s helmed two feature films with the “Next Generation” cast and directed episodes of almost every live-action “Trek” TV series, including “Discovery” and “Strange New Worlds.” “Every department has the resources to create.”

A new science lab set for Season 3, for example, boasts a transparent floor atop a four-foot pool of water that swirls underneath the central workbench, and the surrounding walls sport a half dozen viewscreens with live schematics custom designed by a six-person team. “I like being able to paint on a really big canvas,” Kurtzman says. “The biggest challenge is always making sure that no matter how big something gets, you’re never losing focus on that tiny little emotional story.”

At this point, is there a genre that “Strange New Worlds” can’t do? “As long as we’re in storytelling that is cogent and sure handed, I’m not sure there is,” Goldsman says with an impish smile. “Could it do Muppets? Sure. Could it do black and white, silent, slapstick? Maybe!”

This approach is also meant to appeal to people who might want to watch “Star Trek” but regard those 668 hours of backstory as an insurmountable burden. “You shouldn’t have to watch a ‘previously on’ to follow our show,” Myers says.

To achieve so many hairpin shifts in tone and setting while maintaining Kurtzman’s cinematic mandate, “Strange New Worlds” has embraced one of the newest innovations in visual effects: virtual production. First popularized on the “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” the technology — called the AR wall — involves a towering circular partition of LED screens projecting a highly detailed, computer-generated backdrop. Rather than act against a greenscreen, the actors can see whatever fantastical surroundings their characters are inhabiting, lending a richer level of verisimilitude to the show.

But there is a catch. While the technology is calibrated to maintain a proper sense of three-dimensional perspective through the camera lens, it can be a bit dizzying for anyone standing on the set. “The images on the walls start to move in a way that makes no sense,” says Mount. “You end up having to focus on something that’s right in front of you so you don’t fall down.”

And yet, even as he’s talking about it, Mount can’t help but break into a boyish grin. “Sometimes we call it the holodeck,” he says. In fact, the pathway to the AR wall on the set is dotted with posters of the virtual reality room from “The Next Generation” and the words “Enter Holodeck” in a classic “Trek” font.

“I want to take one of those home with me,” Peck says. Does the AR wall also affect him? “I don’t really get disoriented by it. Spock would not get ill, so I’m Method acting.”

I’m on the set of the “Star Trek” TV movie “Section 31,” seated in an opulent nightclub with a view of a brilliant, swirling nebula, watching Yeoh rehearse with director Olatunde Osunsanmi and her castmates. Originally, the project was announced as a TV series centered on Philippa Georgiou, the semi-reformed tyrant Yeoh originated on “Discovery.” But between COVID delays and the phenomenon of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” there wasn’t room in the veteran actress’s schedule to fit a season of television. Yeoh was undaunted.

“We’d never let go of her,” she says of her character. “I was just blown away by all the different things I could do with her. Honestly, it was like, ‘Let’s just get it done, because I believe in this.’”

If that means nothing to you, don’t worry: The enormity of the revelation that Garrett is being brought back is meant only for fans. If you don’t know who the character is, you’re not missing anything.

“It was always my goal to deliver an entertaining experience that is true to the universe but appeals to newcomers,” says screenwriter Craig Sweeny. “I wanted a low barrier of entry so that anybody could enjoy it.”

Nevertheless, including Garrett on the show is exactly the kind of gasp-worthy detail meant to flood “Star Trek” fans with geeky good feeling.

“You cannot create new fans to the exclusion of old fans,” Kurtzman says. “You must serve your primary fan base first and you must keep them happy. That is one of the most important steps to building new fans.”

On its face, that maxim would make “Section 31” a genuine risk. The titular black-ops organization has been controversial with “Star Trek” fans since it was introduced in the 1990s. “The concept is almost antagonistic to some of the values of ‘Star Trek,’” Sweeny says. But he still saw “Section 31” as an opportunity to broaden what a “Star Trek” project could be while embracing the radical inclusivity at the heart of the franchise’s appeal.

“Famously, there’s a spot for everybody in Roddenberry’s utopia, so I was like, ‘Well, who would be the people who don’t quite fit in?’” he says. “I didn’t want to make the John le Carré version, where you’re in the headquarters and it’s backbiting and shades of gray. I wanted to do the people who were at the edges, out in the field. These are not people who necessarily work together the way you would see on a ‘Star Trek’ bridge.”

For Osunsanmi, who grew up watching “The Next Generation” with his father, it boils down to a simple question: “Is it putting good into the world?” he asks. “Are these characters ultimately putting good into the world? And, taking a step back, are we putting good into the world? Are we inspiring humans watching this to be good? That’s for me what I’ve always admired about ‘Star Trek.’”

Should “Section 31” prove successful, Yeoh says she’s game for a sequel. And Kurtzman is already eyeing more opportunities for TV movies, including a possible follow-up to “Picard.” The franchise’s gung-ho sojourn into streaming movies, however, stands in awkward contrast to the persistent difficulty Paramount Pictures and Abrams’ production company Bad Robot have had making a feature film following 2016’s “Star Trek Beyond” — the longest theaters have gone without a “Star Trek” movie since Paramount started making them.

First, a movie reuniting Pine’s Capt. Kirk with his late father — played in the 2009 “Star Trek” by Chris Hemsworth — fell apart in 2018. Around the same time, Quentin Tarantino publicly flirted with, then walked away from, directing a “Star Trek” movie with a 1930s gangster backdrop. Noah Hawley was well into preproduction on a “Star Trek” movie with a brand-new cast, until then-studio chief Emma Watts abruptly shelved it in 2020. And four months after Abrams announced at Paramount’s 2022 shareholders meeting that his 2009 cast would return for a movie directed by Matt Shakman (“WandaVision”), Shakman left the project to make “The Fantastic Four” for Marvel. (It probably didn’t help that none of the cast had been approached before Abrams made his announcement.)

The studio still intends to make what it’s dubbed the “final chapter” for the Pine-Quinto-Saldaña cast, and Steve Yockey (“The Flight Attendant”) is writing a new draft of the script. Even further along is another prospective “Star Trek” film written by Seth Grahame-Smith (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) and to be directed by Toby Haynes (“Andor,” “Black Mirror: USS Callister”) that studio insiders say is on track to start preproduction by the end of the year. That project will serve as an origin story of sorts for the main timeline of the entire franchise. In both cases, the studio is said to be focused on rightsizing the budgets to fit within the clear box office ceiling for “Star Trek” feature films.

Far from complaining, everyone seems to relish the challenge. Visual effects supervisor Jason Zimmerman says that “working with Alex, the references are always at least $100 million movies, if not more, so we just kind of reverse engineer how do we do that without having to spend the same amount of money and time.”

The workload doesn’t seem to faze him either. “Visual effects people are a big, big ‘Star Trek’ fandom,” he says. “You naturally just get all these people who go a little bit above and beyond, and you can’t trade that for anything.”

In one of Kurtzman’s several production offices in Toronto, he and production designer Matthew Davies are scrutinizing a series of concept drawings for the newest “Star Trek” show, “Starfleet Academy.” A bit earlier, they showed me their plans for the series’ central academic atrium, a sprawling, two-story structure that will include a mess hall, amphitheater, trees, catwalks, multiple classrooms and a striking view of the Golden Gate Bridge in a single, contiguous space. To fit it all, they plan to use every inch of Pinewood Toronto’s 45,900 square foot soundstage, the largest in Canada.

But this is a “Star Trek” show, so there do need to be starships, and Kurtzman is discussing with Davies about how one of them should look. The issue is that “Starfleet Academy” is set in the 32nd century, an era so far into the future Kurtzman and his team need to invent much of its design language.

“For me, this design is almost too Klingon,” Kurtzman says. “I want to see the outline and instinctively, on a blink, recognize it as a Federation ship.”

The time period was first introduced on Season 3 of “Discovery,” when the lead character, Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green), transported the namesake starship and its crew there from the 23rd century. “It was exciting, because every time we would make a decision, we would say, ‘And now that’s canon,’” says Martin-Green.

“We listened to a lot of it,” Kurtzman says. “I think I’ve been able to separate the toxic fandom from really true fans who love ‘Star Trek’ and want you to hear what they have to say about what they would like to see.”

By Season 2, the “Discovery” writers pivoted from its dour, war-torn first season and sent the show on its trajectory 900-plus years into the future. “We had to be very aware of making sure that Spock was in the right place and that Burnham’s existence was explained properly, because she was never mentioned in the original series,” says executive producer and showrunner Michelle Paradise. “What was fun about jumping into the future is that it was very much fresh snow.”

That freedom affords “Starfleet Academy” far more creative latitude while also dramatically reducing how much the show’s target audience of tweens and teens needs to know about “Star Trek” before watching — which puts them on the same footing as the students depicted in the show. “These are kids who’ve never had a red alert before,” Noga Landau, executive producer and co-showrunner, says. “They never had to operate a transporter or be in a phaser fight.”

In the “Starfleet Academy” writers’ room in Secret Hideout’s Santa Monica offices, Kurtzman tells the staff — a mix of “Star Trek” die-hards, part-time fans and total newbies — that he wants to take a 30,000-foot view for a moment. “I think we need to ground in science more throughout the show,” he says, a giant framed photograph of Spock ears just over his shoulder. “The kids need to use science more to solve problems.”

Immediately, one of the writers brightens. “Are you saying we can amp up the techno-babble?” she says. “I’m just excited I get to use my computer science degree.”

After they break for lunch, Kurtzman is asked how much longer he plans to keep making “Star Trek.” 

“The minute I fall out of love with it is the minute that it’s not for me anymore. I’m not there yet,” he says. “To be able to build in this universe to tell stories that are fundamentally about optimism and a better future at a time when the world seems to be falling apart — it’s a really powerful place to live every day.”

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Screen Rant

'star trek into darkness' prequel comic reveals villain backstory.

IDW Publishing is set to release a six-part comic book prequel series tracing the backstory of controversial 'Star Trek Into Darkness' villain John Harrison.

It goes without saying that the following post contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Star Trek Into Darkness . If you have not yet seen the film and do not want to know the identity of the main villain, you have been warned!

For over a year, moviegoers picked-over every single piece of Star Trek Into Darkness marketing, in order to figure out the role that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing in the film . Most fans assumed that Cumberbatch would play a new version of iconic Star Trek villain , Khan Noonien Singh (previously portrayed by Ricardo Montalban); however, other rumors suggested that the Sherlock actor was set for classic Starfleet member Gary Mitchell or possibly an entirely new character.

To help keep the identity a mystery, J.J. Abrams along with writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, provided the mysterious antagonist with a less suspect name, John Harrison . Still, halfway through the film, it was revealed that Harrison was nothing more than a fake identity created by Fleet Admiral Alexander Marcus to hide the character's true nature - as genetically engineered super-human, Khan.

Since Khan shares the same origins as his classic series counterpart, splitting from the prior storyline only at the point Admiral Marcus (instead of Kirk and the Enterprise crew) finds Khan adrift in space, Abrams didn't spend very much time detailing the character's backstory for Star Trek Into Darkness . While that approach worked for some fans that were already familiar with Khan, other viewers (and many critics) considered the hasty explanation of Khan's motives and backstory to be a significant missed opportunity (or downright confusing). For all the pre-release speculation, and a strong performance from Cumberbatch, the brief time spent developing and/or exploring the character left some viewers feeling Into Darkness actually underserved the Khan's legacy and failed to provide a good reason for bringing the villain back in the first place .

Now, in order to fill-in some of the missing information for newer fans (or anyone who wants to see the differences between the "classic" and "new" Khan timeline), IDW Publishing is set to release a six-installment prequel series that follows the creation, escape, and resurrection of Cumberbatch's Khan. We first got word of the prequel series around the time of the original Star Trek Into Darkness release but IDW has now offered-up actual details about what fans can expect from the books.

The press release does not give a specific release date but claims the first issue will make its way to stands in October. In order to bridge the gap between movie and print, Kurtzman supervised production of the miniseries - with "veteran" Star Trek comic book alums Mike Johnson and Claudia Balboni handling story and art.

Check out the full cover for Star Trek: Khan issue #1 below (click to enlarge):

As mentioned, the series will trace the origins of the character, clarify how the alternate timeline impacted Khan's original timeline and, according to Johnson, show on the "Eugenics Wars" - a key moment in Star Trek canon that was only briefly mentioned in passing during Star Trek Into Darkness :

"We're traveling back in time to show Khan's rise to power and give fans their first look at the legendary Eugenics Wars. As the series unfolds we will see the events that led to Khan leaving Earth aboard the Botany Bay, and then jump forward to witness his awakening in the future by Admiral Marcus." "Now that Into Darkness is in theaters, fans reading the ongoing series from issue #1 will pick up on details, both specific and thematic, that set up the movie and the stories that follow it."

IDW's Chief Creative Officer, Chris Ryall, promises that the series will help flesh-out the character and add layers that may have been missing in the recent film:

"Much like the way the Star Trek: Countdown comic book and our follow-up Nero miniseries helped flesh out that character after the first Star Trek movie. Khan will add dimension and depth to this new iteration one of the most classic villains in all of Star Trek lore."

Countdown and Nero were both used in a similar fashion, to help provide backstory for Star Trek antagonist Nero (Eric Bana), and it's likely that IDW will find similar success with Khan . Casual audiences will probably not need to read the upcoming comic series, as the film includes enough information to set the stakes for Into Darkness , but for filmgoers or Star Trek fans who want to explore the character's implied backstory in greater detail, Khan should be quality non-required reading. Still, IDW promises that readers who do choose to consume the upcoming Khan comic will also find plenty of fun "Easter Eggs" that link to the larger movie and TV universe.

It's unfortunate the series wasn't available at the time of the film's original release - waiting six months to debut book #1 - as buzz around the character and the larger movie has certainly died-down. That said, with a Blu-ray/DVD home release scheduled for September 10th (and digital downloads available as early as August 20th), there's bound to be plenty of new (and returning) viewers who'll be interested to delve a bit deeper into the twisted (revised) history of Khan Noonien Singh.

In the meantime, check out our Star Trek Into Darkness episode of the SR Underground podcast (featuring a spoiler-filled interview with the film’s writer Roberto Orci).

Star Trek: Khan debuts in October 2013.

Follow me on Twitter @ benkendrick for further updates on Star Trek as well as future movie, TV, and gaming news.

Source: IDW

We Now Know Exactly When Michelle Yeoh’s Star Trek Movie is Taking Place

Section 31 will feature at least one captain of a starship called Enterprise.

Michelle Yeoh is back in the Final Frontier. As the duplicitous Mirror Universe character Philippa Georgiou, Yeoh starred in three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery , but later in 2024 she’ll return in her own movie — Section 31 . Named for the clandestine espionage organization within Starfleet, Section 31 has just been described as a “spy thriller” by a new article in Variety . We’ve also got a new image of Yeoh as Georgiou, seemingly integrating someone with some very cyberpunk-looking gear. But the big news for Trek fans is something even bigger. It seems like we finally know when exactly Section 31 will be set.

Here’s why the revelation of a very specific Starfleet captain reveals roughly where we can expect Section 31 to take place.

Section 31 will feature an Enterprise captain

Kacey Rohl in 2019. In Section 31 , she’ll be the first person to play Rachel Garrett since Tricia O’Neil originated the role in 1990’s “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

As reported by Adam B. Vary for Variety , the character of Rachel Garrett will appear in Section 31 and be played by actress Kacey Rohl. In the larger Trek canon, Rachel Garrett is famous for being the captain of the USS Enterprise-C which was destroyed fighting the Romulans in the year 2344. At that point, Captain Garrett (as played by Tricia O'Neil) was a woman in her mid-forties. But, in Section 31 it seems we’ll be meeting “...a young Rachel Garrett.”

This one detail all but confirms that at least one aspect of the storyline for Section 31 will have to take place sometime before 2344, likely in the 2320s or 2330s. Which, believe it or not, is a largely undocumented and unexplored period of the larger Star Trek timeline.

A 24th-century TNG prequel

Captain Garrett’s time on the Enterprise-C is largely untold. But what happened before that is even hazier.

Because Section 31 features a younger version of Rachel Garrett, this means that at least part of the movie will be a full-on prequel to the era of The Next Generation . And, interestingly, this period of Trek history, from roughly the end of the TOS -era movies, to the start of TNG is a roughly 70 year-gap. The Undiscovered Country and the first part of Generations take place in 2293. The first TNG episode takes place in 2364. During this gap, a lot of Trek history happens, including the Federation’s war with the Cardassians, the finalization of peace with the Klingons, and Jean-Luc Picard’s tenure as Captain on the USS Stargazer .

But if Section 31 takes place in the 2320s, even some of those events are still in the future. If you take a hardcore deep-dive onto the ever-reliable Star Trek wiki, Memory Alpha, you’ll find that there are almost no notable events in the 2320 s at all, other than Jean-Luc Picard starting his studies at Starfleet Academy. When Georgiou was sent back in time in Discovery Season 31 by the Guardian of Forever, we were told that it would be close to a time period in which the Prime Universe and Mirror Universes had yet to fully drift apart.

Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) steps into the Guardian of Forever in Discovery Season 3.

And yet, by putting Georgiou in the early 24th century, the new movie will likely sport a lot of retro Star Trek aesthetics. We know Starfleet officers were still rocking the “monster maroon” uniforms first introduced in The Wrath of Khan, and Strange New Worlds Season 1 even gave us a taste of what a modern redesign of those uniforms might look like. Plus, if this movie is filling in the backstory of Rache Garrett, this means the show will not only be a prequel for The Next Generation but also the origin story of an underrated Enterprise captain!

As of this writing, Section 31 is a stand-alone movie starring Michelle Yeoh. But, with this cut into the timeline of Trek, one can’t help but wonder if there’s not room for even more adventures in this very specific slice of Trek history.

Section 31 is expected to hit Paramount+ in late 2024.

• Science Fiction

Star Trek: Discovery's Captain Rayner is an alien that you may forgot existed

S tar Trek is bringing in several new characters for the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Discovery. Yet, the name that has brought the most interest from the fandom is the new character played by Callum Keith Rennie, who once played Leoben on Battlestar Galactica. Also known as No. 2, he played arguably the most vile and complicated of all the Cylons.

Now, Rennie will jump to Star Trek, where he'll play a new Starfleet officer, named Captain Rayner. Once fans saw him, many wondered if he'd be a Vulcan, due to his pointy ears. Yet, others surmised that he may be a Romulan, as the show is now set in the 32nd century and anything is up for grabs storywise.

Yet, it turns out Rennie isn't come on board to play any one of a dozen familiar characters, but a lesser-known alien. According to Michelle Paradise at SXSW (via ScreenRant ) it was revealed that Rayner is in fact a Kellerun.

[Captain Rayner is] a Kellerun. We were looking for a species that not a lot had been done with them. We definitely wanted another non-human on the ship and taking care of things. And Kellerun is one that had not been explored a whole lot. So we were able to also build some backstory for him and for his planet that we’ll come to learn more about later.

For those unfamiliar, the Kellerun only got one episode on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a season two episode called "Armageddon Game". The episode's depiction of them did in fact feature the obvious ears that we've seen in advertisements for the character, but also a far more outlandish hairstyle as well. The hair of the Kelleruns in the episode is dark black and pulled back, almost like a traditional Samurai bun.

Yet, we can clearly see that after 900-plus years, things have clearly changed. It'll be interesting to see what backstory has been added to this admittedly underutilized aliens.

This article was originally published on redshirtsalwaysdie.com as Star Trek: Discovery's Captain Rayner is an alien that you may forgot existed .