Star Trek fans are in store for a new and unique experience coming very soon. The long-awaited Ceti Alpha V story is underway, with casting currently going on. The story will be an audio drama and will feature various actors and actresses bringing the plot to life for anyone to listen to. The audio play was once conceived as a limited television series, with the idea bouncing around and taking different forms over the years.
Nicholas Meyer, the man who brought fans Star Trek's The Wrath of Khan (II), the Voyage Home (IV), and The Undiscovered Country (VI) will serve as the lead on the project. This is something fans should wholly embrace, as Meyer directed the second and sixth installments of the films, and wrote the second, fourth, and sixth.
Considering those are considered "great" films by the fandom, Meyer knows how to touch the heart of the Star Trek franchise. Yet, this won't be the same thing that he's tackled before. Instead of continuing with the timeline or looking back at the cast and crew of his films, he's instead looking to expand the lore on Khan Noonien Singh.
Singh, played masterfully by Ricardo Montalban, was a murderous dictator who believed in genocide and eugenics. Not exactly a sympathetic figure, yet Meyer is going to try and expand is lore even further. Yet, we're left wondering if such extended universe content should be considered canon. It's hard enough to get things like books, video games, and comic books to be considered canon, yet an audio drama?
Those aren't exactly the most sought-after forms of media and it's fair to say that it may not be the most consumed piece of Star Trek content when it's finished and published. So should it be canon? It's hard to say. The comics are the next best thing to the extended universe, which (at least for now) are considered canon.
Yet not every fan reads them. Should a television show or movie opt to tackle a similar concept, there's no doubt that the comics canon will be dropped and ignored. If that ever happens with the Ceti Alpha V of it all, is that something that everyone involved will be ok with?
With Star Trek always looking to expand and view its stories through reboots and rehashes, it may be too tempting for someone to not do a live-action version of Ceti Alpha V. Then we'll have to wonder what version is canon. Which version is the real story? If that's the case, does it make sense to force the audio drama into being canon or should we just enjoy it for the world story that it is?