For anyone who cares, Paramount has posted a high-quality version of that very cool teaser trailer for the perhaps-not-so-cool Star Trek reboot. You can check it out at the movie’s official website.
Jan212008
Star Trek
Jan212008
Redefining Faithful
John Kenneth Muir, a prolific writer and unabashed fan of the genre TV and movies of the 1970s and ’80s, has a few comments inspired by that Star Trek reboot trailer I mentioned on Friday. While I’m not as receptive to this project as he seems to be, he nevertheless hits several nails squarely on their heads, and he even manages to give me a new perspective on how and why Abrams-Trek (as I’m starting to think of this project) may be a good thing:
In the months ahead, we’re all going to be tempted to second guess the new movie. Is the right actor playing young Kirk? Do the Vulcans look like Romulans? Where is Gary Mitchell? Didn’t Kirk serve on the Farragut before serving on the Enterprise? That’s what fans like us do. We can’t help it. I know I can’t help it.
…I want a faithful Star Trek movie, but at the same time, I desperately want a Star Trek movie that my son Joel, when he is old enough, will love. I want a film that will inspire a generation of kids. I want today’s kids to grow up with a reinvigorated, exciting, adventurous and bold Star Trek…a moral, progressive and heartfelt franchise like the one I grew up with and which, in many ways, made me the person I am today. I don’t want Next Gen political correctness, I don’t want the Love Boat in Space where the crew’s family beams up to the Enterprise to go through some uninspiring family drama. I don’t want fictional adventures in Holodecks…that’s masturbation, not boldly going. And I don’t want the United Nations in Space. I want what Star Trek was once about: space exploration….going where no man has gone before. I want excitement, adventure, and heart. I want Captain Horatio Hornblower in space again…not some kind of incestuous, insular vision that only a few die-hard Trekkies can appreciate. We must re-define faithful, I believe, in this case. I want a film that is faithful to Star Trek‘s pioneer spirit and Star Trek‘s swashbuckling heart. If I get that, but Kirk never served on the Farragut, well…so be it.
Much of the bloviating I’ve done on Star Trek over the years has been along these same lines, if not in these exact words: in my opinion, what all the spin-offs lacked and what the franchise drifted farther and farther away from over time is what Muir terms a pioneer spirit and a swashbuckling heart. (Thanks, John, for giving me the framing that I’ve never quite managed to articulate!) I would dearly love to see a film or television series that successfully resurrects that same spirit and heart, that inspires kids to look to the future with hope and imagination instead of indifference or fear, and which makes cynical old farts like me feel young and wide-eyed again.
Jan182008
Under Construction
This image is the first official still released from the upcoming feature-film reboot of Star Trek, and our first glimpse of what the good ship Enterprise is going to look like in this all-new take on the classic TV series. Just consider it the photo that launched a thousand blog posts. Click on it to be taken to a nice, big, magnifiable version that we can all obsess over.
As you can see, it depicts our old friend under construction. It’s a powerful image, capable of inducing Pavlovian drool responses in old-school fanboys like myself, not to mention the spontaneous generation of truly astounding levels of geeky analysis.
Dec212007
That Which Endures
Wil Wheaton’s been watching classic Trek, specifically the episode where Kirk fights the reptilian Gorn, which Wil hasn’t seen in years:
I’d … forgotten about Spock’s suggestion that maybe the Gorn were protecting themselves when they attacked the human outpost on Cestus III, and Kirk’s initial refusal to consider it. It was pretty brave to put the idea out that someone you automatically assume has evil intentions may have a very good reason — from their perspective — to think the same thing about you. A big part of American mythology is that we’re always the Good Guys who are incapable of doing anything evil or wrong, and I thought it was daring to suggest — on network television in 1967, no less — that maybe it’s not that simple.
Even though Star Trek frequently looks silly and cheesy, I think it says a lot about the writing and the stories that audiences have not just overlooked that, but embraced it, for the last 40 years. I’ve seen movies that spent more on special effects for one shot than Star Trek spent in an entire season’s worth, but I didn’t care about the characters, and the story didn’t stay with me for one minute after it was over. We know it’s just a guy in a silly rubber suit, but when Kirk empathizes with him and doesn’t kill him, it’s still a powerful moment, and the message it sends about compassion and empathy is a powerful one that’s just as relevant now as it was then.
Yep. That’s why Star Trek endures. It’s got nothing to do with the dated special effects that everyone seems to be so concerned with these days. It’s the one quality that classic Trek consistently had and which all its successors achieved only intermittently, and that’s good storytelling that actually has something to say. Something that, more often than not, remains relevant — or at least interesting — even after 40 years. God, I love this show… and I’m thinking that maybe I’ll throw a few of my Trek DVDs onto the agenda for my holiday break…
(Incidentally, if you didn’t catch it, this post’s title is a play on another classic Trek episode I’ve always especially liked, “That Which Survives.” Lee Meriwether turning sideways into a two-dimensional line and shrinking into a dot, the way the picture on the old black-and-white TV I had as a kid used to when I turned off the set, really freaked me out when I was young. Still does, actually… a very eerie effect.)
Nov262007
“The Mangerie,” and My Manifesto on Digital Tinkering
A couple weeks ago, The Girlfriend and I, along with several of our friends from the subgroup I like to think of as “The Usual Suspects,”*attended something rather unusual: a one-time-only theatrical screening of “The Menagerie,” an episode of the original Star Trek television series. The screening was essentially a promotional gimmick for the release of the series on the HD-DVD format, so naturally what we were seeing was the “remastered” version of the episode — that is, the one with all the new digital “enhancements.” Not that anyone except me seemed to mind. We shared a sold-out house with several hundred enthusiastic members of the uniform-wearing faithful (there was even a guy there in full-blown Andorian make-up, complete with antennae!), and there was much ooh-ing and aah-ing over the digital recreations of scenes we’ve all seen a thousand times. Even I have to grudgingly admit that whoever is behind the CG tinkering is doing a very nice job of it. The new footage is very faithful to the look of the original series — the Enterprise isn’t suddenly an unnaturally manuverable cartoon — and there has been no “Greedo shoots first” revisionism to any of the stories that I have seen. I will even concede that some of what’s been done is an improvement. (Click here for a gallery of screencaps and judge for yourselves; my thanks to Mike G for sending me the link.) Nevertheless, as my Three Loyal Readers can probably predict, I remain opposed to the updates on basic principle.
My stubbornness on this point led to a pretty interesting conversation following the screening, which in turn led me to a whole new understanding of my own thoughts on this matter of updating old movies and TV properties, and which types of changes bother me and which types don’t.
Oct262007
Star Trek: Rebooted
As you may have heard, Paramount is hoping to revive its venerable — and highly profitable — Star Trek franchise with yet another feature-film adventure for the original Enterprise crew, i.e., Kirk, Spock, etc., only this time there will be a whole new gang of young actors playing the iconic characters. J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost and Alias, is writing and directing, and the final member of the core cast was announced just last week. Here’s the run-down:
- Chris Pine (Kirk)
- Zachary Quinto (Spock)
- Simon Pegg (Scotty)
- Zoe Saldana (Nyota Uhura)
- Karl Urban (Leonard “Bones” McCoy)
- Anton Yelchin (Pavel Chekov)
- John Cho (Sulu)
The photoshopped image above (courtesy of ScreenRant.com) provides an idea of how the newbies may look in their roles as well as how they compare to the original actors. As usual, give it a click it to blow it up larger.
In addition to the core cast above, Eric Bana will be playing a villain named Nero, who is rumored to be a Romulan (plausible, considering the name and the fact that the Romulan culture of the original Trek was modelled on ancient Rome), and Leonard Nimoy is said to be appearing as a more, ahem, mature Spock in a brief cameo. That last bit suggests we can expect either a time-travel story (another one? Ho-hum…) or a frame story of some kind, no doubt intended to help legitimize the new cast by having one of the classic actors “identify” them as his old friends.
Based on what I’ve seen out there on the blogs, people seem to be generally positive about this effort to reboot Star Trek, with opinions ranging from flat-out enthusiastic to cautiously optimistic. I, however, am far more dubious of the whole — forgive the pun — enterprise.
Oct032007
Sulu Gets His Own Asteroid!
Via Wil Wheaton, the very cool news that George Takei, a.k.a. Sulu in Classic Star Trek, has had an asteroid named in his honor:
An asteroid between Mars and Jupiter has been renamed 7307 Takei in honor of the actor, best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in the original “Star Trek” series and movies.
The celestial rock, discovered by two Japanese astronomers in 1994, was formerly known as 1994 GT9. It joins the 4659 Roddenberry (named for the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry) and the 68410 Nichols (for co-star Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura). Other main-belt asteroids have been named for science fiction luminaries Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov.
I’ve had the honor of meeting Mr. Takei on two occasions. The first time was at one of those “meet ‘n’ greet”-style conventions I’ve written about before, those impersonal things where you pay an outrageous admission fee for the privilege of standing in line for an hour or three so you can experience 20 seconds of face-time with your celebrity hero, snap a personal photo (if you’re lucky, anyway; some stars — Shatner, for example — don’t allow those), and walk out with an autographed 8×10 glossy.
The second occasion was much more interesting and satisfying. It was intended to be a big meet ‘n’ greet with a lengthy roster of genre talent, but it wasn’t very well organized or advertised and, well, nobody showed up. To be honest, I wouldn’t have gone myself if a friend of mine who knew the promoter hadn’t gotten me some freebie tickets. My buddy seemed so pleased with himself for doing me this huge favor that I simply couldn’t find a reason not to at least check it out.
At first glance, it was one of the most depressing events I’ve ever attended.
Sep272007
I Can Has Scenery Chewing?
You know, there was a time in my life when I would’ve been ashamed to admit that I even understood this, let alone thought it was funny:
Hi, my name is Jason, and I’m a nerd.
(Actually, when you think about it, this is really a fascinating example the cross-connections within popular culture. Imagine trying to explain this to someone from the year 1975, say…)
[Update: Here is a version with sound, for that full, Shatner-esque effect.]
Aug232007
Now We Know Where Starfleet Got Its Inspiration…
So, this afternoon, I’ve been rummaging through a folder of random crap that I’ve been meaning to blog about, looking to see if any of it still interests me, and I ran across the following image:
I ganked that picture from this site, which identifies the fancy red vest as “The Cosmoboy,” a then-cutting-edge design from Pierre Cardin which was featured in the August 1967 issue of Cavalier magazine (which I believe was a nudie mag, ahem, gentleman’s lifestyle periodical along the lines of Playboy).
Is it just me, or does that look really familiar? Maybe like… something from the 23rd Century?
My mom has always told me that if you hold onto an article of clothing long enough, it will eventually come back into style. Guess she was right…
May302007
Ever Wonder How Big the Enterprise Really Is?
Okay, so we all know intellectually that those imaginary spaceships we love in movies and on TV would be really frakkin’ big if they were real, but do you have a genuine, visceral sense for how big? Have a look at the image below:
***IMAGE MISSING***
That’s the handiwork of one Jason Fortuny, who decided to see how the U.S.S. Enterprise (the Next Generation version) would relate to his home town of Seattle. Various sources put the ship’s official length at 643 meters. As you can see, that’s gobsmackingly big in relation to real-world objects we can actually relate to, about seven city blocks long. Click the image to see it larger, and then click through to Jason’s site to see the ship’s silhouette laid over a GoogleEarth map of the city. Neat stuff…