To Eel And Back

This is Ceti Alpha V! Discover the untold story behind a legendary villain in new audio drama Star Trek: Khan

- WORDS: NICK SETCHFIELD

FORGET KLINGONS OR the Borg; Khan Noonien Singh stands as Star Trek's greatest antagonist (would you argue with a chest like that?). Introduced in classic 1967 episode “Space Seed” before a vengeance-fuelled big-screen encore in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan (1982), this genetically-engineered tyrant still casts a formidable shadow over the final frontier.

Now, a new audio drama is exploring the untold story of his exile on Ceti Alpha V, charting the tragic chain of events that gave us not only the death of Spock, but Kirk's eternally quotable cry of “Khaaaaaan!”

“It was the mystery that I saw at the heart of this thing when I began looking at it,” says Kirsten Beyer, co-writer with David Mack of Star Trek: Khan, the long-running franchise's first scripted podcast. “The Khan we meet in 'Space Seed' is quite different from the Khan that we meet in Wrath, and I don't just mean that he's angry and vengeful and violent in the movie. The guy in 'Space Seed' has so many layers and there's so much going on there.

“The obvious question was, ‘Well, how did that happen?’ Beyond the few tidbits of facts that we learn in The Wrath Of Khan, like his planet exploded, his wife died and everything was laid waste? Clearly he had a hard time, but to me there was just so much more there than I remembered.

“The point of this exercise was you should be able to watch “Space Seed” and