The only thing I don't want to see is more relationship mumbo-jumbo with Spock and Uhura
I'm sure many people have commented on it before, I can deal with it being in the background, but using it as a major storyline...no way, its just too Un-Spock (even though this is NuTrek) Part of the reason the character of Spock is so brilliant, is his struggle between his Human and Vulcan sides, subtle hints of humanity were rife in TOS and this is what made him arguably the most popular character. It made be hard for new fans to grasp and Alien character that struggles with his two sides, but its certainly not hard when you have an excellent actor such as Zachary Quinto portraying Spock, he is the natural successor to Leonard Nimoy for the character...Anyway back on topic
I think if they were to effectively pull off having Harry Mudd in the film, they would have to refine his personality, what we know from Harry Mudd is that he is a Conman, a Swindler and pretty much Anti-Federation, if you want to dampen the comic side, you would need to make him highly intelligent, albeit with questionable mental stability, which in Mudd's case would just not work...As for Gary Mitcell, to me, this is the most interesting idea, however with his lack of appearance in the first film, it doesn't seem likely, unless of course in the Nutrek Universe, Gary is a childhood friend of Kirk's who went rogue and became a terrorist, similar to Calvin Hudson in DS9...Then again in TOS Kirk is a few years older than Mitchell so they couldn't have been childhood friends
The Talosians are probably the best bet...Still I do not think that its very likely that anything in the authors story is entirely correct, similar to how we were told that in XI Spock would use the GOF to travel back in time chasing Nero to prevent him from destroying Kirk and his younger self