Star Trek's most infamous villain, Khan, has again entered the fold in Star Trek: Strange New World, but creatives behind the scenes wanted to make sure his dramatic resurgence wasn’t what fans had seen before.
First appearing in the aptly named Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan, Khan Noonien Singh is one of the most notorious villains in canon. The Augment was at the center of the Eugenics War as part of a project to genetically alter humans. The conflict was so egregious that it caused the outlaw of genetic modification. He reappeared in Star Trek: Into Darkness with the same MO of manipulation and domination. But when he appeared in Strange New Worlds, he was something else altogether. When his decedent La'an (Christina Chong) time traveled to contemporary Toronto, she found something unfamiliar: an innocent child. She had to decide whether to kill a future threat for the greater good.
Showrunners for Strange New Worlds told CinemaBlend they were intrigued by the idea that Star Trek fans who understood Khan's legacy would see him in a different light. “[N]o one’s ever seen Khan like that,” Henry Alonso Myers reflected on the episode that contained a major timeline change. "This is a Khan that you’ve never seen on television before. That was exciting to us." In a literal sense, this is true. Khan has never been a child onscreen before. But seeing Khan in a different place emotionally was just as important.
La'an has struggled in her past to make peace with being related to one of the most vicious tyrants to attack Starfleet. Like the Augments who have been outlawed, La'an also faced judgment and prejudice. When confronted with the decision that the world would be better without Khan, she had to consider it. The emotional stakes at the moment were high, forcing La'an to decide if it was better to kill a child who had done no wrong, even if he would in the future.
But, of course, this is Star Trek. The show doesn’t have the gritty and morally gray area of other sci-franchises that even Star Wars has. In recent years, series such as Andor have shown the darker side of the space opera subgenre. Star Trek has always stood apart because of its optimism. It is a salve to the wound of reality, set in a world where poverty and inequality don't exist, at least on the surface.
Star Trek is all about doing the right thing, so La'an doesn’t kill a child innocent of wrongdoing. She grappled with heartache in the episode, but not where Khan was concerned. Instead, she left the child alive, meaning there is an opportunity to revisit the character going forward.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2 is streaming on Paramount Plus.
Source: CinemaBlend