Get Into the Sci-Fi Mood with New ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ Images

This month's Empire magazine is giving us a late Christmas gift, or possibly a very early Chanukah 2013 gift, with new images and interviews from the cast of Star Trek into Darkness. The folks over at TrekMovie were nice enough to skirt past intergalactic law and post the images and excerpts from the interviews for us. But like anyone who cares at all about Star Trek, the only thing people want to know is whether Benedict Cumberbatch's (aka B. Batch) villainous John Harrison is actually the infamous Khan Noonien Singh, who may or may not be wrathful.

Of course, everyone remains ambiguous and vague about it. B. Batch himself remarked that:

He's sort of superhuman, pretty much unbeatable. Brainy and brawny. He manipulates situations. He's incarcerated when Kirk is talking to him and yet he still gets Kirk to do his work for him. He pushes him into a corner where the only route to salvation is cooperation. There is a real Hannibal Lecter quality to him. 

J.J. Abrams was equally noncommittal about who he actually is.

He was within Starfleet and has now turned against the organization and is hell-bent on revenge. He's responsible for a very violent, horrific attack in London and then one in the States. He believes he and others were wronged and is focused on destruction. He's an incredibly brilliant strategist who is aware of various truths that Kirk is not privy to.

And Kirk himself made sure to comment on Harrison.

He is Kirk's shadow of death, his Achilles' heel. He is just a big mirror reflecting all of Kirk's insecurities back at him. He is just as intelligent and logical as Spock, but is also one very bad motherf—er.

Star Trek Into Darkness opens May 17th, 2013.