Alan Tudyk

Star Trek 2: We Cast the Starlogged Sequel

By now, even jaded, nit-picky Star Trek fans have decided to either like the new movie along with the rest of the world or dislike it just to be contrary. Whichever you’ve chosen for yourself, congratulations! You either are or are not, in the Vulcan parlance, a dickhead. Now we can set about the business of figuring out which actors we want to join this merry band in the next installment. There’s only a few more crew members left to show, but there are plenty of rogues, aliens and monsters to cast! Here’s who we wanna make a stardate with.

Blake Lively as Nurse Christine Chapel

Dr. McCoy’s right-hand woman (originally played by Gene Roddenberry’s future wife, Majel Barrett) needs to be tough and blonde, two traits Lively exhibits every week on Gossip Girl. In the original series, she crushed on Mr. Spock; maybe this time she and Uhura can have an Obsession-style catfight over him?

Nick Frost as Harry Mudd

The portly, mustachioed con man who sold wives to miners and the Enterprise to a planet of androids, we can think of no one better suited to play the scheming Mudd than Frost, Simon Pegg’s hetero life partner and Hot Fuzz co-star. He sported a mustache back when the pair were both on Spaced, and he looked very untrustworthy, indeed.

Laura Vandervoort as Yeoman Janice Rand

While Rand started out as Kirk’s aide-de-camp and worked her way up to Communications officer, her job on the show was mainly to stand around and flirt with the Captain, as well as any other young stud who came on board. We could watch Into the Blue 2’s Vandervoort stand around all day.

Antonio Banderas as Khan Noonien Singh

Online fans are pushing for Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men, but only aging Spanish heartthrob Banderas has the machismo (and accent) to pull off the role. We’ve seen him go dark before, in Assassins, and before anyone points out that he’s now pushing 50, we should remind you that Ricardo Montalban first played the cryogenically frozen super-soldier when he was 47, and reprised the role at the ripe old age of 62. Besides, if you want to cast someone to play a tyrant, why not get the man who played Italian dictator Benito Mussolini?

Christian Bale as Bele from Cheron

On the planet Cheron, all of the inhabitants have skin that is black on one side and white on the other, but those who are white on the left side fiercely hate those whose white is on the right. Given left-sider Bele’s rants (courtesy of actor Frank Gorshin) about how his people are superior, we might need Bale to give Bele one of his patented American Psycho meltdowns.

Hugh Jackman as Q

Although not introduced until The Next Generation, the omnipotent, omnipresent Q Continuum has been around since the Big Bang, so there’s no reason they can’t pop up on the Enterprise a little earlier than planned. Hmm... who can we get to play the overly theatrical, frequent costume-changing representative of the Q? While I’m sure John DeLancie would reprise the role in a heartbeat, we’re going to aim high for Jackman, as long as he plays it more like the Boy from Oz and less like Logan.

Taraji P. Henson as Guinan

Considering that the Enterprise-D’s long-lived bartender was living in San Francisco at the dawn of the 20th century, we’ll assume that she had to break into the space-bar-management field sometime, so why not on the original Enterprise? Henson saw some sci-fi in Benjamin Button — maybe she’d like to see some more?

Jason Statham as Kor the Klingon

The original series showed us some freaky-looking Klingons with no cranial ridges, but we’d rather just skip that very hard-to-explain period of their history and go full Klingon for their first appearance in this alternate reality. Hopefully, Statham would be willing to put on a big forehead and armor to play a Klingon commander, as long as he was able to take off his shirt and kick some ass at the end. Maybe he could do it in the transporter room. Get it?

Khloe Kardashian as a Cardassian

We’re sure any of the Kardashians could be turned into a Cardassian given enough time, makeup and facial ridges, we just thought Khloe would require the least amount of work.

Alan Tudyk as a Borg

As the voice and face of the robot in I, Robot and the stone-cold killer Alpha on Dollhouse, Tudyk would be a great representative for the Borg, a race of emotionless cyborgs who live in cubes and assimilate ships and their crews. Sure, the TNG crew discovered them, but they’ve been around for hundreds of thousands of years, and the sooner Kirk and Spock get to fight them, the better.

Paul Giamatti as a Ferengi

We know Giamatti isn’t afraid of makeup (see him as an orangutan in the Planet of the Apes remake), so we think he’d be perfect for the race of short, weasely traders. Just imagine him muttering something about "gold-pressed latinum" and tell us he’s not Ferengi material.

The Rock as a Gorn

In the original series, Kirk was forced to fight his counterpart from this lizardlike race in hand-to-hand combat, and the Gorn captain was just a guy lumbering around in a rubber suit and a gold mini-dress. We say give Dwayne Johnson some lizard-like scales and eyes, maybe a Voldemort nose, and then turn him loose on Chris Pine. We smell a smackdown!

Disagree with our casting choices? Of course you do. Let us know what we got wrong below.