Star Trek Into Darkness's Mystery Villain: If NOT Khan or Mitchell, Then Who?

Benedict Cumberbatch has, in cooperation with the Star Trek Into Darkness writers and producers, kept fans totally in the dark so far as to the identity of his villainous, mysterious role in the upcoming science fiction epic. That said, with the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey about a week away and many IMAX prints of that film featuring a nine-minute introduction to the new Star Trek film, we should get some more clues as to who the villain is during the fairly sizable chunk of the movie Paramount intends to tease audiences with on Friday. For that reason, it seemed an ideal time to look at the most likely candidates. We've already examined both Gary Mitchell and Khan Noonien Singh, the two most popular choices by far but also a pair of characters who have been expressly denied by filmmakers and actors involved with the production. Today, it seemed as good a time as any to look at some of the other choices that have been suggested to us by Trek fans.

Garth of Izar Garth of Izar is the Ralph Nader/Ross Perot of this conversation. If we had to quantify what we were hearing from fans, it would be about 40% for Khan, 40% for Mitchell, 5% to 10% for Garth of Izar and then "Other." We'll take a look at a few of the "other" votes later on, but who is Garth of Izar? We'll defer to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki: "Garth of Izar was a decorated, highly-regarded officer in theFederation Starfleet, who rose to rank of Fleet Captain in the course of his service through the mid-23rd century. His career dissolved in a dramatic descent into madness and attempted genocide, resulting in his commitment to the Elba II asylum for the criminally insane." As a former Starfleet commander, many of the same reasons we came up with for why Gary Mitchell was a good candidate (a relationship with the crew, his choice of clothing) would be applicable to Garth, plus another thing: his easy manner in the command chair, as seen in the trailer, would make sense if he were ACTUALLY a suspended captain. He also has powers, which would explain some of the seemingly-enhanced things Cumberbatch does in the trailer, but not supreme powers like Mitchell, which would explain the need to have a gun with him in several shots.

Charlie Evans First appearing in the episode "Charlie X," that's what he's commonly referred to by many fans. Evans was a tortured soul, marooned on a desolate and inhospitable planet for years before being discovered. During that time, he claimed to have taught himself how to speak and survived on whatever he could. The natives had apparently granted him impressive powers, including telekinesis, telepathy and matter manipulation, and were unable to remove those powers in order for Charlie to return to his family and live a normal life. For this reason, his story ended when they came to return him to the barren wasteland where he'd spent much of his life. Before they did so, he briefly went crazy and took control of the Enterprise. This is another case of the Gary Mitchell thing, though; it seems unlikely that Charlie X would be seen bouncing around punching people and using guns when he's got the ability to simply make things disappear if he doesn't want them there.

Gary Seven Probably the least likely one on the list, but since one of our readers claims to have pulled his name from a message board conversatio on the topic, we figured we'd look into it. Gary Seven was a genetically-engineered human designed to be physically perfect. He was the descendant of a family abducted by aliens in 4000 BC and ultimately ended up serving his alien masters in a top-secret mission on Earth in the '60s, which focused on preventing mankind from going to nuclear war. The episode he appeared in was supposed to be a pilot for a spinoff, but that spinoff never got off the ground and the character remained more or less in limbo. He was most recently seen in the IDW comics series Star Trek: Assignment Earth, written and drawn by John Byrne. Joachim Back to Memory Alpha for this one:

"Joachim was a Human Augment and faithful disciple of Khan Noonien Singh, who fled Earth along with a number of his followers in the year 1996. After Khan and his fellow Augments managed to take control of the USS Reliant, Joachim manned the helm and weapons. When Khan voiced his intention to use the Reliant to take his revenge on James T. Kirk, Joachim attempted to advise Khan against the necessity of taking revenge on Kirk, but deferred to Khan's wishes. Joachim was eventually killed when the Reliant faced the Enterprise in battle in the Mutara Nebula, leading Khan to swear that he would avenge his death." For this, many of the same things--including the motivation and the wardrobe--that we attributed to Khan might be applied to Joachim, but his status at the helm of the Reliant would also explain some of the more Starfleet-themed stuff in the trailer. If they were to do a twist on Joachim's story, it could also set the stage for Khan to return in the third film and, best of all, sidestep the issue that many fans had with using Khan in the second movie (that he didn't have any particular motive for revenge established).