Today's Trek News: Spiders and KHAAAAN???

So I had to check out IMDB just now, to verify that Chris Pine was indeed in Princess Diaries 2 (and no, he couldn't act then either), when I see these two items of Trek related news:

William Shatner’s ‘Kingdom of the Spiders’ Coming To DVD

To some, nothing is scarier than spiders, unless you consider William Shatner’s career in the late 70’s (zing!). But there were a few exceptions and even Chris Pine can admit it’s pretty difficult to follow Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk. One film that Shatner did before throwing the maroon jumpsuit back on was a little film called Kingdom of the Spiders in which he takes down a legion of evil spiders.

Shatner played Dr Robert Hansen, who is sent to a small town after a serious of mysterious animal deaths, only to discover that it was only the beginning, and that an evil spider army was behind the whole thing. Finally, the film is making it’s way to DVD for all of us to relive, and we even have the original trailer for you to get excited for all over again.

Special features on the DVD include an all new interview with Shatner, audio commentary by Director John Bud Cardos, Producer Igor Kantor, spider wrangler Jim Brockett and Cinematographer John Morrill. Also included is a Spider Wrangler featurette and rare behind the scenes footage.

YEAH MORE SHATNER COMMENTARY! I hope it's as good as the stuff on Incubus.

But then there's this:

The rebirth of Khan: should he be played by an unknown in Star Trek 2?

Rumours abound that JJ Abrams - if he is to helm the revamped Enterprise's second outing - will cast Lost hunk Nestor Carbonell in the role made famous by Ricardo Montalban. Is that playing too safe?

Directors have their favourites. Follow David Lynch on his latest journey to Planet Weird and you'll probably find Laura Dern landed some time before you; pick up a Sam Raimi flick and don't be surprised if he's found some way to shoehorn in Bruce Campbell.

One of the things about last year's Star Trek revamp that impressed me most was that Jj Abrams didn't fall back on tried and tested actors from his previous ventures to populate the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Sure, there was Simon Pegg, who starred in the director's debut movie in charge, Mission Impossible 3, and Zoe Saldana from his Bad Robot production company's TV series Six Degrees. But Chris Pine was a near unknown, and the likes of Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban (whose Eomer in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was over half a decade ago) were plucked from Heroes - in which Abrams had no involvement - or obscure genre fare like Pathfinder.

We should perhaps give the film-maker the benefit of the doubt, then, over a new report that Nestor Carbonell, aka the mysterious Richard Alpert from Abrams's TV series Lost, is set to play Khan in the forthcoming sequel to Star Trek. The casting is not yet confirmed, and it's not even certain that the next installment of the adventures of Captain Kirk and co will focus on the bad-guy portrayed so memorably by Ricardo Montalban in 1982's excellent The Wrath of Khan. But the story emanates from comingsoon.net, who just posted a one-on-one interview with Abrams, so it's not too hard to imagine that it might have been sparked by some off-the-record comments that couldn't be published as part of the main piece.

NOOOOOOOOO! For the love of all that is good and pure in the world, DON'T DO KHAN! That is a surefire way to torpedo this new franchise in the second movie, DON'T DO IT!!!!

Expect more discussion of this on the next show.