Ain’t It Cool’s own Merrick put that question mark after the words “Cumberbatch Role Revealed?” this morning but the cautious and reliable folks at another website are subsequently reporting that “Sherlock” icon Benedict Cumberbatch is definitely playing time-displaced man-made Asian superhuman Khan Noonian Singh:
… TrekMovie has also confirmed this with a number of sources so we no longer consider it to be a rumor. Khan is back in 2013, however sources indicate that the film is not a rehash of "Space Seed," the original Star Trek episode where Kirk and crew first encounter the genetic superman from the past.
Not a rehash of “Space Seed”?
A digression of pure speculation: What if Old Spock Prime dispatched a heavily armed crew to where he knew the Botany Bay would be drifting? What if Khan and his crew were (likely against Old Spock's protests) quickly caged and “broken” and repurposed into Starfleet Team Six, the Federation’s most deadly secret weapon? And what if this “tamed” Khan, with his genetically-engineered superior intelligence, has spent years biding his time as Starfleet puts more and more of its trust in him? End digression.
Perhaps just as excitingly, TrekMovie says those other iconic villians, The Klingons, will not be deleted from next year’s “Trek” feature:
… TrekMovie sources indicate that this time the Klingons are not a sub-plot that could be easily cut out of the film, so we will finally see the JJ-verse version of Klingons on the big screen.
Another speculative digression occurs! What if the Klingons are utilized early on to demonstrate how badass Khan’s Starfleet Team Six is? (Recall a similar strategy was once employed to demonstrate how badass V’ger was.) Will we finally get to see a Khan-Klingon throwdown?
And which Klingons would Khan humiliate with humane Earther capture? Kor? Kang? Koloth?
Directed by J.J. Abrams from a screenplay by Bob Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, the untitled 2013 Trek movie has finished its soundstage photography and is currently shooting on location in Northern California. It is poised to hit cinemas in one year and 17 days.
Find all of TrekMovie’s story on these matters here.
