It’s amazing how far Nestor Carbonell has come. One minute he’s playing second fiddle to Brooke Shields, the next he’s fighting off producers with a bat!

Though the man’s never been out of work – he was rarely off our TV screens in the 90s, appearing on such shows as “Suddenly Susan” and “The Tick” – he’s become quite the ‘star’ in recent years. And it’s likely thanks to J.J Abrams.

Due to his showy, terrific turn as Richard Alpert on Abrams’ TV hit “Lost”, Carbonell’s star has risen quite a bit. And though movie producers left, right and center are hot to cast the , Abrams isn’t letting go of his, er, find just yet.

According to Coming Soon, Abrams thinks Carbonell might make a good Khan if and when his “Star Trek” (2009) sequel gets off the ground.

The site stipulates that Paramount aren’t drawing up a contract yet – just that they may be in the future.

”Now, before you go shouting Nestor is KHAAAN! There are way too many variables right now, including the fact that the Khan character may not even be in the sequel”, says Coming Soon. ”We just know that if they started filming today, he would be their man.”

The script for “Star Trek II” – or whatever they call it – is still being written, so it’ll be quite a while before everyone outside of the Bad Robot production offices find out whatever Khan’s actually in it.

According to backstory given in the character’s first appearance, the Star Trek original series episode “Space Seed”, Khan is a genetically engineered superhuman tyrant who once controlled more than a quarter of the Earth during the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s.

The character returns in the 1982 film ”Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”, set fifteen years after “Space Seed”, in which Khan escapes his imprisonment and sets out to seek revenge upon Kirk. The character was portrayed by Ricardo Montalbán in both the television episode and in the movie.

It’s widely believed those involved in the new “Trek” reboot are planning to bring back the character for the upcoming sequel.