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Has somebody made a detailed study on the common, everyday objects used in the episodes either as is, or as parts of a larger set? I fondly remember how a painted Logitech trackball was used in the captain's chair as a controller in the Next Generation series.

In TOS, Dr. McCoy once used a "white sound" device to mask the heartbeats of the people on the bridge, so as to isolate the heartbeat of Finney in Engineering. It's easy to see that the prop was just a Shure microphone.

>new Star Trek series
Yay.
>from the producer of JJTrek
Boo.

To hell with this crap. Better just watch the fan-made New Voyages.

Star Trek Continues is a fantastic fan series. I've been watching Star Trek fan films since the first episode of Star Trek New Voyages, Come What May, was released. It has been amazing to witness the subculture grow with the technology that enables its existence.

And consider what this says about Star Trek as a cultural force. It was an optimistic message during pessimistic times. In the 60s people needed hope for the future. Star Trek filled that need so well that now, in very different (but still uncertain) times, we end up with Star Trek spontaneously manifesting itself into existence all over the place. It's like a program embedded into the cultural psyche: Need hope? Go to Star Trek. No Star Trek? Make Star Trek. Humans are crazy.

I'm not sure if new episodes of my favorite 60s television show will really offer hype to today's post-modern outlook. I would love to see a Star Trek allegory on contemporary identity politics and the formalization and modeling of all of reality into the data-mined, consultant-approved Matrix we all inhabit today. It would probably have to be DS9esque in outlook, though. On that note, I thought Caprica was going to be the crown-jewel of socially-relevant contemporary science-fiction television but it got shit-canned after two seasons. Imagine if that happened to Babylon 5, what we would have missed out on? Now we have Doctor Who, whose offered fantasy is "leave the whole fucking planet behind". Huh.

Star Trek New Voyages just released their 9th official episode and a new one is out soon this month. Starship Exeter finally released the last act of their second episode last year, after a nearly 10 year wait. Check them out!

http://www.startreknewvoyages....

Yet Another Fan Made TOS? Here's the first group I heard of: http://www.startreknewvoyages.... They actually got Sulu. What's this new one got?

Somebody's never heard of Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II, in spite of one episode nearly winning a Hugo Award and nearly a dozen actors from TOS contributing to various episodes, and even some of the original writers on board contributing new scripts? I hope it's just ignorance that motivated the OP and Soulskill to promote this to the exclusion of ST:NV and all the other Star Trek fan productions in active production. This is not "the most faithful re-creation of the original series".

series site
Wikipedia
list of episodes

A bunch of fans sweet-talked CBS/Paramount into allowing them to continue the original Star Trek series on the internet. See http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ and the download pages at http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/?page_id=74

A bunch of fans sweet-talked CBS/Paramount into allowing them to continue the original Star Trek series on the internet. See http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ and the download pages at http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/?page_id=74

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/?p=2329

What I didn't know about was Star Trek-Phase II, a not for profit, fan financed ST series that almost has three episodes finished. Below is a link to their webpage, looks real good.

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

This site, http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/, still runs on OS/2, many others can be found at http://www.os2world.com/

Well, that wouldn't be enough. They probably couldn't filter out someone with just a couple of plants anyway. But if you have say 3kW of growing lamps going on and off at the same second every day then maybe, if added to other suspicious activity it could warrant some form of action.

I've been told that this is one way police look for marijuana farms here in sweden.. whether there's any truth to that I do not know.

Hence the problem. I have 3kW of 2 tons worth of servers and UPS, and rack and misc equipment always running in a garage-converted-to-office. There's a very decent (ie: noticeably large) variance, at roughly the same times every day, caused by the AC cycling from fan to cool. And my only drug is Iron Maiden, which AFAIK, isn't illegal in this state.

Being a night person (and programmer/designer), I am in and out at odd hours of the night. I've got customers who come in during the afternoons and evenings to drop off computer repairs - which creates certain appearances for the casual observer, since they run in, drop off a machine, give us some info and run out (with similar appearances for pickups).

So, the only thing they will be noting is (a) I repair computers from a legitimate business, (b) I run the Star Trek Phase 2 websites and production servers (and a few other sites) and (c) I like programming late evening into the night, when it's quieter (less interruptions, AC cycling from fan to cool a lot less).

I am sure I am not the only one with similar "incriminating" scenarios (at least a few of my friends fit under similar scenarios).

Such actions without additional solid basis, are simply fishing expeditions.

Ah... well, try their Extreme105 then, since that's what I am talking about when it comes to weird throttling and caps. Or try a bunch of bittorrent and see how fast you get throttled. I could never use them... I use bittorrent a lot (in bursts every few months for weeks straight). Oh, I should clarify, I use it for LEGITIMATE purposes, such as helping to seed our newest Star Trek Phase 2 Episodes, or to grab copies off the torrent to check out what speeds our viewers should be seeing (ie: how the seeds are handling it, etc).

I had Comcast down in MD for a while... switched to one of the dish providers. I was much happier (I already had high speed Internet from elsewhere, so that loss that most people would feel didn't apply to me - though for a while, we were using them, and could never get rated speeds, to which they kept pulling out the "up to" clause while our connection was down at dial-up speeds). Glad to hear they're at least treating you well, but contrary to the "hardly typical" usage patterns you think you have, you don't fit the criteria for the points I made - not being an Extreme 105 customer - nor being someone who uses a protocol that fits within their regular throttling scheme.

Here ya go!

http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/10/12/17/1943224/Stargate-Universe-Cancelled
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/06/18/batman-fan-film-city-of-scars/
http://www.starwreck.com/
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/
http://www.pioneerone.tv/

I still use OS/2 whenever I need to format 2 floppy disks at once while compiling C-Kermit and browsing the web.

That "need" come up often?

Hmmm.... dunno about that need, but I know I still use OS/2 when I want to serve high volume websites such as Star Trek New Voyages: Phase 2 on very minimalist hardware (Quad 550MHz), alongside 2 dozen other sites and an FTP server that handles a few terabytes each direction a month - while being able to format two floppies at once.

I can't do that on any version of Windows Server (the site USED to run on it (when hosted by someone else) when it had 1/10th of the traffic... not a pretty scene). And while Linux is an alternative, even it doesn't perform as well on slower hardware (or take as great advantage of faster hardware). It performs far better than Windows - but still not quite as good. Oh, and I am in love with a full featured, integrated REXX - amazing what REXX and PHP can do together.

OK... all but the floppy formatting part is true.

Wow, just like Star Trek TOS!!!

Oh, I know... most of you (except hard core Trekkies, or someone like me who helps make the stuff) miss the reference. Watch "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and you will see them using gesture based computing. Sadly, the concept didnt make it beyond the second pilot (probably because it was too ahead of it's time and would not be a recognizable input method, unlike the even greater quantity of buttons used in the 2nd episode onwards to replace gesture computing).

Yet another piece of Trek technology making it into today's world. :-)

You'll only need 8 Mb/sec to get that 2.7 TB over a 30 day period. If I fully utilized my (Danish connection) I could get more than double of that. Koreans and Japanese would get 20 times. I suspect both UL and DL are included.

We regularly hit that, and though the "download" traffic isnt actually initiated on our end (it's actually uploads to our server), I am sure it's still measured the same way. The post production work for Star Trek Phase 2 eats a LOT of bandwidth in both directions. The website on the other hand is only 1/4 to 1/2 a terabyte (outgoing - and of course roughly 1/10th incoming).

Fortunately, we've got a business account, and no traffic throttles or such. Dreading the day when/if more US ISPs decide to start metering again.

A quick read of TFAs and some links within them lead me to think this is a non-story. They write that BP had blank screens and photoshopped them to be not blank, saying "Why were they blank? coffee break ?" There's a ton of reasons they could be blank. A bit stupid of BP to 'shop them though.

Very true... I would expect 3 guys to be sitting there staring at blank screens instead of... oh, I dunno... what's going on at the spill site. Oh wait, that would make things even more incongruous with their claims of hundreds of vessels and such involved, that are all being monitored from this control center.

Guarantee you that was the motivation. Whoever took the picture didnt realize that (a) some (all?) 3 of the people "monitoring" were monitoring nothing when the picture was snapped (looking the wrong direction at blank screens) and (b) making things look less busy and involved and "in control" by having blank screens was probably a bad idea. I would also surmise that the photoshopping was not done by a photographer, but by someone higher up at BP. It would explain the horrendous job.

Heck, people claim we are amatuers, yet if you watch the opening teaser to Star Trek Phase 2: Blood and Fire Part 1, you will see a few bridge scenes where Spock is not at his station (camera showing Kirk and Chekov). He WAS at his station. We removed him because it made the scene look too busy. We removed it from full motion video, and no one has caught it (here's the key... look at the blinkies on Spock's library computer - slow fade on and off (instead of blink on and off) - those are the scenes Spock was removed from). Yet a pro photographer couldnt properly photoshop one image?. Bullshit. I would bet this is some unskilled upper management type who botched the Photoshop job. People who play with Photoshop could do better.

That of course makes this a worse offense, if my guess is correct.

The stats on the servers I run also show very different figures. Those stats at least are from all viewers, and not just a sample pool.

On Star Trek New Voyages Forums, the stats are as follows (yes, the crowd MAY be more tech savvy):
1. Firefox 6,939 41.89%
2. Internet Explorer 6,055 36.55%
3. Safari 1,548 9.34%
4. Chrome 1,249 7.54%
5. Opera 556 3.36%
6. SeaMonkey 105 0.63%
7. Mozilla 55 0.33%
8. Camino 25 0.15%
9. Konqueror 7 0.04%
10. Mozilla Compatible Agent 6 0.04%"

IE's breakdown is as follows:
1. 8.0 75.44%
2. 7.0 17.09%
3. 6.0 7.46%

On one of our general websites, the stats are a bit different:
1. Internet Explorer 44.44%
2. Firefox 33.33%
3. Chrome 12.70%
4. Safari 8.73%
5. Mozilla 0.79%

The breakdown for IE isn't too far off there as well:
1. 8.0 67.86%
2. 7.0 23.21%
3. 6.0 8.93%

The thing to note though, is that the site type/genre, definitely seems to be a major factor in determining the browser that will be used... though, regardless, IE6 is barely being used on any of our sites. 8.9% of IE's 44% share of site users on one, and 7.5% of IE's 37% share on the other.

Maybe on the whole, if someone else had been cast as Kirk, the character would have worked far better

Try watching Star Trek Phase II. The acting is mostly competent, but they guy they got to play Kirk really makes you miss Shatner.

Your wish is granted.

No, sorry. I've been a technician (IBM trained, A+ Certified) for over 23 years, and what canajin56 said is true and does happen in households where people smoke the somewhat average one pack a day. And it's not just that cigarette smoke harms the machine, it's nasty, leaves poisonous residue (look it up) and spreads the same toxic crap into the air when being dusted out. Now living in a dusty environment... gee, that's not toxic, is it? And pet hair? Yeah it clogs smaller vents - but can still generally be blown out - unlike stuck on tar and gooey dust.

There is no comparison to the two scenarios you are trying to compare.

www.aibpc.com / www.startreknewvoyages.com

the legal right to produce

Preventing everyone from producing something just because someone else has produced that same thing before. Yes, from the economic, legal and ethical perspectives, it falls very close to the realm of 'crazy'. And it certainly isn't compatible with a free market economy. Even the use of the phrase 'legal right to produce' indicates how far from a free market it is.

What about derivative works? For instance, being the bigtime Star Trek fan that I am, I create, produce, film, and distribute my own 'Star Trek' series with different non-canon characters and new storylines. Per the studios, I'm not allowed to do this. IIRC, Desilu Studios holds the copyrights on the original Star Trek series, and they can sue me for making my own 'Starship X' series even if I put 'Based Upon 'Star Trek' Created By Gene Roddenbery' in it someplace.

So far, though, nobody who does this strictly as nonprofit has been sued, such as Hidden Frontier and James Cawley's 'Phase 2'.

Very true...

I've actually been waiting for this to come out for quite some time - one of my friends did a bunch of the promotional stuff for them - the amazingly talented Jeff Hayes (check his "One Sheet Design" pages), whom I work with on Star Trek New Voyages. Hope this episode is as well done as his promotional graphics for it.

Legal Torrents:
http://www.jamendo.com/ -CC music
http://bt.etree.org/ -Live music archive
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ -Fan made movies (allowed by trademark owners)
http://www.getmiro.com/ -Free video downloader/player with Free content.
http://azureuswiki.com/index.php/Legal_torrent_sites -List of many more

Plenty of Legal uses for the technology.

Interesting to note that James Cawley will appear in this new Trek film as an undisclosed Enterprise crew member. See the story at Cawley Set to Appear in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.

A perhaps telling quote from Cawley: "Early on, I was concerned about the look of the Enterprise, but after meeting and getting to know J.J. and his perspective on this film, I'm no longer concerned with little details like that. J.J. knows what he likes about Star Trek and that is Gene's original vision-preserving that message is his primary concern."

Maybe all the grinches here should come down off the chimney and give the thing a chance - you've barely seen a few teaser action scenes.

I imagine everyone here knows New Voyages already. If you haven't seen it, you should watch some. James Cawley gets it.

My favorite of the TOS movies was 6 because the enemy overestimated Kirk's racism and underestimated his intelligence and dedication to duty. The turning point was when, instead of starting the war he was expected to start, he said "signal our surrender." In TOS, Kirk was never a warmonger or really prone to violence at all. Not a hothead. Maybe these people watched the old series and noticed all the fights and shit without noticing that Kirk didn't start hardly any of it. And when he did start a fight, it was more to prove a point or to keep someone else from having to fight. Kirk doesn't like losing. Anything. That's the fundamental truth of Kirk.

I don't expect this movie to show an old, wise, thoughtful Kirk, but let's not turn him into a stereotypic cocky youth.

"I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy."

Younger fans that don't give a crap about the franchise will love the new iLook, in all probability. But those of us that have been fans all our lives aren't going to like this very much. Most of us are, frankly, sick of the retconning in the cannon. We fought for years to get Rick Berman kicked out of the franchise for precisely this kind of garbage. "Canon? Fuck that! If we can eke out another Nielson's point or two, lets do yet another time travel story and totally screw the franchise history up! It'll be Die Hard on a Starship!"

You'd expect some minor touchups to take advantage of current technology, but this is a complete retooling of the classic series, a reboot. Real longtime fans would probably be happier with Jim Cawley's New Voyages/Phase II. How ironic that an Elvis impersonator has more love and respect for the series than the current movie's creative team does.

If we had a world without copyright, then you could say goodbye to mass media as we know it. All the book companies would dry up tomorrow. As would the music studios and the movie companies.

Instead we'd live in a world where content is created and paid for:
* by the creators who do it because they love it. E.g. Star Trek: New Voyages.
* Those who refuse to create unless paid up front through donations. E.g. The Guild
* People who use their creation as an advertisement for hard to reproduce goods such as t-shirts. E.g. Questionable Content
* People who perform live such as in concerts or theatres.

In fact I think if we lost copyright we'd completely lose the movie theatre (whose experience is now up shit creek) and would see a boom in live theatre. I think we could stand a chance where we live in a world that has Star Trek episodes performed in theatres rather then on televisions.

The draw would become seeing it in person, as well as getting the story. These groups would also film a closed session and put it on the internet for free after a week or two as a form of advertisement.

In such a world only a very few would be able to afford to live off the fruits of their labour.

That, sadly will happen to all of you... I mean us... ;-)

But it will also happen to eyesight, reaction time, ability to accurately gauge/apply brake and/or throttle pressure, etc.

Warning systems are not adequate to address these issue. I, for one, when I get to that point, will simply sell my car and turn in my license for a State Issued ID. Sounds unbelievable, I know... but my grandmother did something much similar one day with no one prompting her to - and she still drove better than many younger drivers out there... just not good enough by her own judgement I guess.

Having a brother who is an EMT, and me having regularly driven everything from motorcyles to small trucks to construction equipment to starships, I've gained more than sufficient respect for what damage I can do behind the wheel if I dont take such steps as I get older.

Been to Vegas, but didnt know this existed till recently... I've been too busy with my own Star Trek Experience helping make this... Star Trek New Voyages

But, as for longest running franchise, I guess you aren't including Paramount? Dunno... I wonder if some of the original Trek based franchises from the early days are still around? And possibly Pocket Books' Trek franchise predates it.

Very valid points... in addition, I'd love to know what the real dialup vs broadband statistics are.

What I do know is a site I help manage (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/) shows that in the last year, out of 1,147,097 visits (559,135 unique visitors), only 3.92% (based off visits) use dialup (44,943 users).

I'd love to see other sites' statistics on the matter... ours is probably not representative as I would guess that Star Trek TOS fans are more tech saavy and have broadband if and when possible.

Many people who just check their email, read a forum or IM probably dont need broadband - which I am sure accounts for the non-adopters (while the rest are probably the people who want it but just cant get it).

PayPal tells me that a copy of "Dirty Wings" is headed in my direction. I tasted two or three tracks and liked them - so I bought a copy. If you like SF/Star-Trek try New Voyages or Star Wreck They both use the same model. If you're into some seriously cool (although the business model is somewhat more commercial) DVDs try Animusic. They aren't free, but they are self-published.
C:\>

Star Trek New Voyages is an absolutely amazing fan "series" and Star Trek: Of Gods and Men is an amazing mini-series (only part 1 has been released) and that are ONLY available online.

Well, I live in the Star Trek Universe quite often lately (check out http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/)...

But, that aside, this IS Slashdot... I'm pretty sure every geek... I mean Slashdotter here knows what a Class M planet is... and if not, you just provided them with the necessary explanation ;-)

Well, that would be a relevant possibility if the article title on /. weren't so erroneous.

Above is inaccurate...

The current web team has been laid off... no indication has been given that the site is being shut down - and actually, no other announcement as to what happens with the site has been made either.

A more logical scenario is that the team at CBS Interactive, currently responsible for their other online web ventures, will be assuming control of the startrek.com domain. Whether that means it will stay the same, be refocused to reflect it's relationship to the upcoming movie of the same name, or have various changes implemented has yet to be announced.

Robert

In the meantime, feel free to watch the rest of Kirk's 5 year mission (Seasons 4-5) at:
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

and it includes D.C. Fontana and many of the original Startrek series crew.

The episodes are free, and some extend old story lines.

Over all, very enjoyable!

You make very valid points - I wish the rest of the computer illiterate world understood them.

I think that understanding is severely hampered because the RIAA is going all out to try to equate file sharing apps with illegal sharing - period (as in that is ALL they are for). Since most people have no idea what BitTorrent or other P2P apps are, and all they see in the press is that they are used for illegal file sharing, the general public (which includes many computer/technology illiterate judges, jurors and journalists) believe them.

I think until public perceptions on the matter are not driven by the RIAA, things wont change nearly as fast as they need to - which is why this battle is so important - because the only leash to prevent new laws outlawing P2P software and many other technologies are currently things like the FSF... so again, in total agreement with you...

I am on the production team for Star Trek New Voyages and we use BitTorrent to legally release virtually all of our episodes. We have had something approaching 50 million or 60 million downloads so far. I for one have no idea how, an entirely volunteer effort, relying on others to help us distribute the episodes, and our own money to fund production and our own site, could ever manage to afford to deliver our episodes to that many people without something like BitTorrent (or one of us to hit the jackpot - which hasnt happened).

(Thus we have) a perfectly legal, legitimate, large scale use of P2P software - that the RIAA demonizes and wants to make illegal. One of only many examples.

I'm all for this battle and the FSF's involvement... because if the RIAA gets their way, we (and many other legitimate companies) will have crippled, costly distribution methods.

If I had MOD points, I'd mod you up as high as it would let me... (which is I guess only +1 more) ;-)

If they had any guts at all they'd cast James Cawley as Kirk. His performance on Star Trek: New Voyages evokes Shatner's hamminess occasionally, but more often you forget it's someone else playing Kirk and you're just watching Star Trek again. If you've soured on the franchise like some posters have I encourage you to watch some episodes:

Uh, that's the entire point of Trek XI- like http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/'s fan fiction, this movie fits into the continuity between the original series and the movie- therefore they need YOUNGER actors!

I just hope that they learn something else from New Voyages and we get Newtonian-physics-accurate battle scenes in normal space.

If you liked the doomsday machine episode, check out "In Harm's Way" at http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/ It's a little cheesy, but I respect their effort...

Why not spend Matt Damon's salary on giving James Cawley (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/) acting lessons? It could only benefit the Trek universe as a whole... :-)

Everyone who steals ideas

At this point, it was hard to keep reading. I don't consider it "stealing the idea" when it's an obvious homage, and everyone knows what the source material is.

Especially in the mod scene; you've all heard the stories about the DBZ/StarWars/Trekkie mods which got stopped.

This bit is actually completely uninformed. Trek in particular has, at least recently, allowed a blatant fan series to go on unhindered. There isn't a good legal reason for it, but there is a tacit agreement.

They knew the risks, took the risk, and now they're whining.

Actually, they're not whining at all. RTFA.

They should develop their own IP.

Depends what the goal is. If the goal is just to make a good game, then sure, develop your own IP. But for whatever reason, a lot of people feel the need to do things like write fan fiction, shoot fan movies, and develop fan games, because the actual, canonical original didn't go as far as they wanted it to. Or maybe they just wanted to explore that universe in a new direction.

It's not that hard to develop your own IP, or even borrow from stuff whose copyright has long since expired. If they chose not to, I'd look for reasons other than laziness.

The Star Trek New Voyages folks are using this anniversary for the premiere of their latest episode "To Serve All My Days". It was written by DC Fontana and guest stars Walter Koeinig. Check out all of the episodes and shorts do far at: http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/

Cheers, Xleeko

New Voyages, the fan-film continuation of TOS that's running with the tacit approval of Paramount and which has Roddenberry's son as a consultant, has done some neat things with CGI in the original Trek universe.

That said, though, I really hope they won't try to replace the originals like when Red Dwarf tried to. It's an interesting novelty, but it's not worth trashing the original for.

The "Rand as Tasha Yar" was the idea of director Jack Marshall, who has left New Voyages to pursue his own visions. With him gone, they're going to tone her back down some and have "hired" a new actress: Katrina Kernodle.

John Lim (Hikaru Sulu in New Voyages) playing the character formally played by actor George Takei, was reportedly pissed. "It's obviously an anti-Chinese thing," he noted. Takei maintained that Sulu was indeed Japanese and not Chinese and that Mr. Lim was just miscast from the beginning.

Lim suggested he was still open to reprise his role as Sulu in an upcoming New Voyages episode in which a future Sulu (Played by Takei) would meet his younger self in a time warp created by a worm hole.

http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/images/cast/lim. jpg