There was a time when Khan Noonien Singh was one of the many one-off villains in Star Trek: The Original Series, with Ricardo Montalbán having played him in the 1967 episode “Space Seed.” Then Montalbán reprised the baddie in a decade and a half later in the National Film Registry-worthy Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Khan’s importance to the franchise skyrocketed, with Benedict Cumberbatch later playing an alternate timeline version of the popular Star Trek villain in Star Trek Into Darkness. Now Star Trek: Khan is revisiting the original version of the character, and co-writer Kirsten Beyer explained to CinemaBlend why this story was switched from a TV miniseries to a podcast series.
Star Trek: Khan originated from Wrath of Khan director Nicholas Meyer, who intended to show what happened to Khan between the events of “Space Seed” and the 1982 movie over the course of three TV episodes. However, as Beyer, who adapted Star Trek: Khan into podcast form with David Mack, told me, there came a point where she realized what Meyer had come up with wasn’t necessarily going to work in its original form. As she explained:
