While speculation has run rampant about who exactly Benedict Cumberbatch is playing as the villain in "Star Trek 2" — with some folks utterly convinced he's Khan (or some kind of relation) — it looks like J.J. Abrams is throwing it back even further, should this report turn out to be on the level.
Doing the rounds for "Dredd," which premieres at Comic-Con this week, Karl Urban spoke to SFX and when asked about working with Cumberbatch on the sci-fi sequel, he let a bit of intel slip out saying: “He’s awesome, he’s a great addition, and I think his Gary Mitchell is going to be exemplary.”
As SFX notes, Gary Mitchell appeared in the original "Star Trek" TV series "Where No Man Has Gone Before." It was actually shot as a second pilot for the show, but wound up running as the third episode of the first season. Anyway, originally played by Gary Lockwood, Gary is a former Academy pal of Captain Kirk's, who gains telepathic and telekinetic, godlike powers. Spock advises Kirk to kill Mitchell, but he initially resists and tries to maroon him on a remote, industrial planet instead. But that effort fails and he's forced to take more drastic action.
So, is "Star Trek 2" really going to center around some friend of Kirk's with telekinetic powers? Is Gary Mitchell just a reference to the show in name only? Is this another classic Abrams piece of subterfuge? Or has Karl Urban truly slipped up? We'll see. It should be noted that Robert Orci recently told JoBlo that Gary Mitchell was not going to be one of the characters in the sequel. But he also said Megatron wasn't going to be featured in "Transformers: Dark Of The Moon" only for the robot to be a key character.
We'll find out eventually, but not at Comic-Con as Paramount is skipping San Diego this year. So talk amongst yourselves and wait until May 17, 2013 to find out. Watch "Where No Man Has Gone Before" below.