I thought CBS's podcast studio was one of the producers?
Oh, was it? I didn't know that. I heard them saying "Eye Podcast Productions," but I thought it might be "I Podcast Productions," so I didn't make the connection to the CBS eye logo. I guess I was wrong, then.
Wouldn't the fact that it is produced includes all of the major producers from the modern shows pretty much put it on the same level as them?
Not necessarily. Lucasfilm produced Genndy Tartakovsky's
Star Wars: Clone Wars animated shorts, but still felt free to contradict them with
Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Marvel Studios produced the
Agent Carter short film, but that didn't stop the
Agent Carter TV series from contradicting it. A side production with a niche audience is generally considered supplemental or secondary even if it's from the original production company.
On the other hand, the main Secret Hideout Trek productions have largely treated
Short Treks as canonical. So maybe they'll consider
Khan that way as well. Although, again, I doubt the specifics of what happened on Ceti Alpha V are likely to be relevant to any future screen story, so it's probably an academic question, at least where this audio is concerned.
I'm really enjoying Khan, so suddenly pushing future podcasts over to Big Finish just seems like an unnecessary complication.
And unlikely to happen. As long as CBS/Eye is making its own audio dramas, I doubt they'd sell the audio license to anyone else.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, I checked Wikipedi and IMDB, and almost ever actor who plays a named character has dozens of live action screen credits to their name.
I was talking about
Star Trek screen actors specifically, as the rest of the paragraph makes clear. I meant that Takei and Russ are the only veteran
Star Trek cast members to appear in this one. I was continuing the point that it would probably make more sense logistically to keep Trek audio production in North America for the sake of actor availability, presuming that future audios want to use more veteran Trek actors reprising their characters, as opposed to new or recast characters.