Khan TV show

Is CBS planning to revisit a classic Star Trek character?

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It may soon be a great time to be Star Trek fan as rumours state a classic character from the original series may get a show all of his own.

Website Geek Exchange is reporting that Nicholas Meyer – a name well known to committed Star Trek fans – is working on a standalone Khan TV series for CBS.

Meyer, for those who aren’t aware of his work, helped write and directed two of the most-loved Star Trek movies, II: Wrath of Khan and VI: The Voyage Home – helping to create the ‘every odd-numbered Star Trek movie is bad‘ meme. More recently, he has apparently scripted an episode for the upcoming CBS Star Trek revival Discovery as well as working as a consultant on the first two episodes.

The Khan Noonian Singh character, originally played by Ricardo Moltabán, first appeared in Star Trek as part of the 1967 episode ‘Space Seed’ – episode 22 of the show’s first run. There, the story saw the character, one of a selectively bred group of ‘superhumans’ found in suspended animation on board a sleeper ship called the SS Botany Bay, attempt to take over the USS Enterprise. After being defeated by Kirk et al, Khan and his cohorts – including erstwhile Enterprise crew member Maria McGivers – were left to fend for themselves in the harsh environs of Ceti Alpha V.

That planet will, the Geek Exchange story states, be the location for the series Meyer is proposing. It will fall into the Trek canon between the events of Space Seed and Khan’s return in the second movie.

In that story, you may recall, Khan seeks revenge on Kirk after the explosion of sister-planet Ceti Alpha VI, leaves his new home a desolate dessert – eventually killing off the majority of his followers. Presumably, this post-apocalyptic survival scenario will form part of the drama.

Khan, of course, again returned to Trek franchise in the Kelvin timeline of Star Trek Into Darkness, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Let’s not talk much about that, though, eh?