I'm still not in favour of Khan as the villain. However, I did see someone speculate that Khan could have been wakened earlier in this new timeline by the Klingons or the like. I remember in the Shatnerverse Mirror Universe novels the mirror Picard was a sort of Klingon regent. The suggestion of Khan leading a Klingon house or even empire does appeal to me.
This is actually more along the lines of what I was thinking. There would also be potential to weave the Augments into the story somehow along with the two Klingon "races."
No where in my OP did I say anything about recreating "Space Seed" or
TWOK. The theme of my post was that the character had so much unused potential mostly due to the two mediocre and short-sighted stories he was showcased in.
And, obviously, you could just as well write a story for any fill-in-the-blank villain, but the whole point is Bad Robot is presented the opportunity to reuse a character who's already a household name. Can't create that kind of PR overnight. For example, if it weren't for the legal restrictions, I think it's pretty clear that Broccoli/Wilson would have use SPECTRE instead of Quantum with Craig-Bond.
But I don't want him to just be content with unleashing destruction. That always seemed beneath him to me. I always pictured him as seeing himself as another Caesar or Hitler. (Per what he does in WWIII.) He prides himself on always being five steps ahead of his advisories while he insidiously manipulates people to do anything he wants.
And suddenly he wakes up in the 23 century with a whole galaxy to play with. You think he's actually going to just settle for a single space ship? Even if it was meant to be a means to an end, if he's really as brilliant as he's supposed to be, he'd still be way ahead of the game.
I've also always wondered why he was frozen in the first place. I doubt the WWIII age was above capital punishment yet.
One thing I came up with once is he had devised a biological weapon of some kind and he and followers where the delivery vehicle. Like just being around them exposed one to the virus or whatever, but it would be released en masse if the host was killed. This would have huge suicide attack potential.
