Nicholas Meyer's Khan Star Trek series may be resurrected as a podcast
"Star Trek Mission New York - Fri P5 @ 6PM - Nicholas Meyer Q&A before TWOK Screening 69" by Mike Muegel is licensed under CC BY 2.0and Khan Noonien Singh, as seen in STAR TREK’s “Space Seed”
JUNE 14, 2022 - “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!”
Now that I’ve got that out of my system…
According to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, his script for a limited series featuring Khan Noonien-Singh is close to becoming a reality as a radio play, via podcast. Speaking with Page One: The Writer’s Podcast in an interview picked up by TrekMovie.com, Meyer shared his hopes for the project, and why he feels an audio experience can sometimes have advantages over film.
For Nicholas Meyer, this project has been a part of his life for six years. Originally commissioned in 2016 by Star Trek executive producer Alex Kurtzman as “a three-hour or three-night event”, the script hasn’t moved closer to production until recently.
Meyer reported to Page One that his Khan-centered miniseries will move forward, albeit in a different format. Meyer said he is “concluding a deal to turn it into a podcast” which he “will write and presumably direct”. This doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the line for the project after production. Meyer is still hoping to film the limited series. “If the podcast is a hit,” he said, “then maybe we’ll revisit it on film of some kind.”
When it came to turning his screenplay into an audio drama, Meyer went back to his roots as a director of radio plays at the University of Iowa. He took a moment to reflect on the value of imagination, and the power it has to help tell a story. “I love radio plays […] I believe that all great artistic media rely for their success on something that they leave out,” he said. “It is the imaginative contribution of the listener, the reader… When your imagination complements the sounds[...] Film alone has the hideous capacity to do everything for you. [...] And radio is a great way for things to leave out. Imagination does not need any training.”
There’s no official news from Paramount on when the podcast is expected to be made available. To listen to the full interview with Nicholas Meyer, checkout Page One: The Writer’s Podcast episode #109 wherever you get your podcasts.