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First Trek Film Footage Unveiled
Ostracus writes "Lost creator JJ Abrams has unveiled footage from his Star Trek prequel at a press event in London.
The clips featured US actor Chris Pine as the young Captain Kirk, Heroes star Zachary Quinto as Mr Spock and Simon Pegg as Enterprise engineer Scotty.
The audience also saw Leonard Nimoy reprise his role as the older Mr Spock in one of four excerpts from the film.
In his introduction, Abrams said he wanted the film to be released in May 2009, to feel 'legitimate and real.'
Speaking at London's Vue West End cinema on Tuesday morning, the film-maker admitted he had 'never really been a huge Star Trek fan.'" Note that the article doesn't actually contain the footage, just brief descriptions of it. The video clip included is just the old trailer that we saw many moons ago. But that won't stop me from lusting.
Good. The series has become a tired ass glorified fan flick from insiders.
Fresh blood and a new outlook sounds good to me.
Or at least give useful information [...]
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Zachary Quinto is probably the most perfect person to play Spock in the prequel.
If they do this right, there could be three, four, five, or six more movies to be made.
If they do this right.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
You do know the average age of people in the US military, right?
Our aircraft carriers and subs are all run by kids.
McCoy isn't the original ship's surgeon on the Enterprise. I guess nobody who worked on the film ever saw The Cage.
And as others have mentioned in comments to previous stories here, Chekov wasn't on the Enterprise until later on well after Kirk took command. He really doesn't fit into this movie.
And why have a Korean play a Japanese character (Sulu)? WTF? I guess they are depending on the old cracker saying "what's the difference?"
My question is why the hell did they make Scotty but not Mr. Sulu a gay? I'm being serious since all die-hard trek fans know that George Takei is openly gay.
And the space shuttles?
Not really relevant -- the astronaut system in the US is a very specialized thing these days. There's a minimum of people getting to do it and a huge pool of people wanting to. That'll always skew towards older people.
Starfleet would be much more like the military in that regard. Its reasonable to assume that like any military force, ages will skew downwards.
The real news at the moment is that a photo of the new Enterprise was released yesterday. I was expecting changes, but this awkward kitbash makes me very unhappy.
From TFA:
"If you're going to do Star Trek, there are many things you cannot change. The Enterprise is a visual touchstone for so many people."
And so, naturally, they changed it. :D
Bow-ties are cool.
Sure, and Kirk was also well into his 30s, as was just about everyone else on the ship except maybe Chekov, in the original series.
I think the GP makes a good point in that you would expect a starship to be commanded by people at least in their 30s. Sure, the grunts on board can be kids, but the people on the bridge ought to look as if they've been in Starfleet for more than 5 minutes.
The constant push of limits on the supposed speed of the craft, capabilities of the ships, and expanded population of the available area took away too many plot devices.
In the original series, they were kind of out there on their own without help available. By the time the big war with the Borg came around in TNG, they got to the point where anything that was a threat could wipe them out entirely, and anything else was easily dealt with.
Both DS9 and Voyager were attempts to revive the sense of frontier self reliance. DS9 was more of a city, and a sort of 'futuristic cop show' was the original goal. Voyager was to be an attempt to get back to the spirit of the original series.
Going forward you have a more urban setting with the known region pretty much all settled and all the borders drawn.
Going backward just gives you more room to work in.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
You do know the average age of people in the US military, right?
Our aircraft carriers and subs are all run by kids.
The ratings and junior officers may all look like kids but the senior officers, certainly the captain and CAG, they're going to be older.
And as far as setting goes, it all depends on the type of setting they're trying to convey. If the Enterprise is a brand new ship going out into the unknown and is a seriously important mission, they're going to ask for a captain whose been around the block. If they're in the middle of a war and are running short on experienced officers and the enterprise is portrayed as the equivalent of a destroyer, it's believable to have a very junior-grade officer as skipper. And if the Enterprise is a cushy flagship in peacetime, it would be just as believable to have a politically-connected captain in charge, a good old boy who might know very little about spacefaring and is relying heavily on his XO to keep the ship from running into the first asteroid they come across.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
If I remember the tech manual correctly, though, most of that time was in research and design of the new engines and systems. The Enterprise D was a big departure from previous ships in its engineering, and internal structure... even if the exterior did look a lot alike.
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
How about:
- Whether Data is alive and entitled to human rights and dignity, or just a machine
- Duty over personal relationships (Picard's girlfriend)
- The meaning in a life well-lived (Picard's mind implanted with the memories of a man who lived on a long-dead planet)
- The morality of war ("Best of Both Worlds")
- The loss of self (the Borg in general)
- The Prime Directive invoked about 80 times
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Original Series bridge looked like something strait out of the 70's, not sci-fi at all. It was just a bunch of shiny buttons that you have no clue what the purpose was.
In the Next Generation the computers actually looked like computers that could function with the user knowing what they were doing. There is actually a LCARS Standards Development Board (however the site Wikipedia links to is off line). Heck, there is a trending and monitoring program we use at my work that has a LCARS style interface.
Personally, the bridge and ship should be updated for every series because our view of what is futuristic changes every 5 years or less. Thats why you go from having monitors in large cases on Voyager and DS9 to having flat screen monitors everywhere in Enterprise, because when DS9 and Voyager were in production LCD monitors were some fancy new toy that were very expensive but when Enterprise came out everyone had LCD monitors. It is just natural for the bridge design look more high-tech no matter where it falls in cannon.
Good entertainment has always been about the story, but I believe Star Trek also has to be futuristic in a high-minded sort of way.
As a lifetime fan (been watching since NBC carried ToS), I am interested in seeing some of the intrigue pan out.
Specifically:
What about the Crystalline Entity? Other members of this species. Where is it now?
Speaking of species, how about Species 8472?
What ever happened to Wesley and the traveller? Where are they now?
Data/Lore? Dare I mention the Borg?
Q? I sure have missed John de Lancie.
What about Warp 10 and Tom Paris' ground-breaking work there?
What about the time-traveling Federation that gave 'The Doctor' his portable holo-emitter? I sure would like to see THAT Federation!!
The point is that there is so much fodder for a good story - something that could easily by filled in for newcomers, that I don't understand why all this is being ignored (example: Nemesis and this new one which I don't think I even want to see).
What I've seen since 'First Contact' has been just plain depressing.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
It was my understanding early on when ST:XI was announced that Kirk and Spock were in the Academy. Couldn't the "bridge" scenes that we see primarily be simulators? All of the screens I've seen strike me as something you'd see akin to the episode of ST:Voy where all the young crewmen and women were the focus. I could most definitely be wrong, but it seems to me as if it's all just Starfleet Academy mockup simulators.