Kurtzman, Orci Remain Coy on Star Trek Villain

In brief comments to TrekMovie, Star Trek Into Darkness writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci commented on the name of John Harrison for the movies big bad as played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Roberto Orci had indicated months ago that the character would be a familiar one to Trek fans but (so far) that does not seem to be the case. When asked if he had lied about that, he just said "We will have to wait and see."

Alex Kurtzman said, "Well without revealing too much what I can tell you is that in the same spirit as "can the Enterprise be under water? What does that mean? How are we going to justify this? How are we going to explain it?" We went back and we talked a lot about things that made us want to make the first movie in the first place as fans. And what do we feel was successful for the fans. A lot of that had to do with honoring the history — honoring the show. But we also want to come up with a way to make the stories feel fresh and unpredictable. So without revealing too much, we applied the same thinking to Harrison."

Long story short, it seems my alias theory remains alive. The name is probably used in the movie but I think its the name used to infiltrate Starfleet, not the actual name of the character that will learned as the Enterprise crew attempts to stop whatever his master plan is.