The old Chronat was pretty cool, but scripting won't be enough to remake it. For us to be able to do it with scripting, KC would need to expose the ability to freeze individual cells into the API, then we would need some way to display to the player which cells are frozen, and after all that there is a new question on what to do with all the new enemy units - should they too become frozen, or should they act, if they spawn Creeper should it appear frozen or should it not be spawned at all...
I think the best thing to do is forget it happened. If you think about it, had KC never shown the old Chronat, nobody would ever have this idea. It is only that this concept periodically comes back is because KC decided to show us a cool thing he tried in the early days. So in the end, if he thinks it doesn't make for good gameplay, we should respect that, because making less videos is a much more sane alternative to keeping every experiment ever shown in the game.
All that said, if we could freeze cells by script, that might lead to some cool things. I've done a lot of cell based features in CW3 so I have some experience with the idea, I could end up using it. Only thing is that I don't know yet how difficult it will be to create a custom way to mark individual cells, to show the player they are special cells in some way.
EDIT: I thought about it more and pin fields basically freeze a cell, so it would be enough if fields ever make their way back.