Vic
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The Beam Me Up Star Trek Augmented Reality App is up for a Webby Award and fans can help it win.
Last fall, fans at London’s Destination Star Trek convention were able to use a Star Trek Augmented Reality app to “beam up” from a mock-up of the Enterprise’s transporter room, and to see the results on their smartphones.
The app proved to be very popular, with over six thousand Star Trek fans “beaming up” over the course of the three-day convention, and four thousand downloading the app. Star Trek: Enterprise‘s Anthony Montgomery, seen in the video below, said that the app was the “next best thing to actually being on set.”
Now the Beam Me Up Augmented Reality App is up for a Webby Award; nominated for the Interactive Advertising & Media/Individual/Augmented Reality Webby Award. The Webby Awards honor “the best of the web.”
Voting for the Webby Awards is open to the public and voting for this year’s awards will continue from now until 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Thursday, April 25. The Beam Me Up Augmented Reality App is currently in second place, and the help of Star Trek fans is needed to win the award. To vote, head to the link located here.
Beam me up from Realise Digital on Vimeo.
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A new toy will bring out the kid in any Star Trek fan.
Running Press has just introduced the Star Trek: Phaser kit.
The kit, which sells for only $9.95, includes a light-up phaser, and Phasers, a short booklet by Chip Carter on the history of the phaser.
The Star Trek: Phaser kit is available in stores and online.
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Several more interviews with Star Trek into Darkness actors have emerged from CinemaCon 2013.
The latest batch of interviews comes from Alice Eve, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and John Cho.
Eve spoke about playing a younger version of an established character. “I want [Carol Marcus] to be true,” she said. “You build a person from the ground up, which is the best thing in the world.”
Even though he played an established character, John Cho didn’t want to imitate George Takei. “I was unable to [do so],” he said. “His vocal register is unique in the human spectrum. It’s so low!”
Star Trek into Darkness “has maybe more action than the first [film],” said Cho. Since the introductions to the characters were already made in the first film, “…the script seemed thicker and the story seemed to move along a lot faster.”
Pine spoke about recreating Kirk, and how both the actor and the character were “getting older and maturing.” Kirk’s growing up process is a bit of a bumpy road. “It’s really, really, really hard for a guy like Kirk who is a stubborn prick,” said Pine.
Quinto spoke about his expectations about playing Spock and how he had to find his own version of the character, with help from J.J. Abrams and Leonard Nimoy.
The videos can be seen here, down the page a bit.
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Several of the Star Trek into Darkness cast members took part in a Q&A that was part of a special eighteen minute preview for theater owners.
Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, and Alice Eve took part in the Q&A, which took place on Monday and was moderated by Damon Lindelof.
Pine, whose character is said to be undergoing growth in the second film, elaborated on what will happen to the brash Kirk. “I think in the first film, I guess really Kirk got the chair a bit too prematurely,” he said. “He was still a kid. He was a brash, headstrong, at times arrogant kid, a punk. I think in this installment, we see Kirk earn the chair, and I think a lot of maturing happens in this film for Kirk, for a man who thinks he knows everything and leads with his gut and leads with his heart, and is all kind of passion and heart.
“He’s a man that has to learn to censor himself sometimes, and our bad guy, John Harrison, basically levels this mirror in front of Kirk in which he sees all of his vulnerabilities and his fallibility and everything that is wrong with how he leads his men and women into battle. And it brings him to his knees.
“I think you can expect a lot more vulnerability from this young man who is trying to find his way and trying to learn how to captain this incredible vessel full of these incredible people who are becoming his friends and family.”
Quinto spoke about how he had to restrain himself emotionally while playing the unemotional Spock. “It can be incredibly challenging or frustrating,” he explained. “I feel like as an actor, the goal tends to be to explore, especially in film and television with as much variety as possible and the limitations [of the character] are pretty strong for me as an actor when I’m playing this role, but it gives me an opportunity to cultivate an interior life that I think is ultimately the true heart of this character.
“I just saw Leonard [Nimoy] a few days ago actually and we were talking about, were giving an interview about the character and it was one of the things we both really connected to about Spock, is that it is an erroneous notion that he doesn’t have an emotional life. It’s just a matter of his inability to express it, so this movie gives me an opportunity to explore that in a lot of ways and also to be much more physical than I was in the first movie.
“And I think whereas Kirk’s journey in this film is learning about being a leader, and truly being a leader, not just being a captain, not just being assigned a position; I think Spock’s journey in this film is really learning how to honor that emotional life and learning how to be accountable to the people that he cares about and loves ultimately.”
In the rest of the short video, Alice Eve shared her experiences in working with the established Star Trek cast and how nervous she was initially, while Lindelof explained that viewing Star Trek into Darkness in 3D makes for a superior movie viewing experience.
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A new Star Trek-themed lottery game has debuted today in North Carolina.
Prizes for the new $2 scratch-off game include cash and a very special trip for two.
Cash prizes for the Star Trek lottery range from $2.00 to $20,000. Five of the $20,000 prizes will available.
Those with losing tickets can go online and enter a “second-chance” drawing, with the prize being a trip for two to the 2013 Star Trek convention to be held in Las Vegas. The trip includes airfare, five nights in a hotel, $1000 cash and two tickets to the convention.
North Carolina isn’t the only state offering Star Trek-themed lotteries. A Texas scratch-off game was introduced by William Shatner several weeks ago, and approximately ten states are offering or will offer Trek-themed lotteries.
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Move over, Romulus, there is a new ale competing for market share in the world of Star Trek.
Vulcan Ale, a new bottled brew, will be hitting stores in Canada beginning May 1.
Vulcan Ale, a “logical choice for a palate pleasing libation,” has been created in celebration of the Vulcan, Alberta 2013 Centennial celebrations. Vulcan Ale is claimed to be “mind-melding good!”
“Vulcan Ale will be a high-quality handcrafted Irish Red Ale that promises to explore a new universe of taste,” said Vern Raincock, founder and CEO of Delancey Direct.
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The final Star Trek into Darkness movie trailer has debuted and it contains plenty of new material.
The trailer is two minutes-and-thirty-seconds in length.
The trailer which contains both previously-seen and new material begins with a shot of the London skyline, and Admiral Pike warning Kirk that he is not perfect and mistakes have consequences.
Some of the new material includes: Kirk requesting permission to go after Harrison, who is seen on surveillance video of the attack on London; Spock trying to stop Kirk from taking an action (probably going after Harrison); McCoy asking Kirk if he was going to pursue Harrison; Kirk taking the Enterprise and crew out to “get this son-of-a-bitch;” Harrison in a larger starship facing off against Kirk and the Enterprise; Kirk apologizing to his crew; battle scenes on Qo’noS; Scotty telling Kirk that the ship is “dead, sir!” with Kirk replying “No, she’s not;” and Harrison telling Kirk that “no ship should go down without its Captain.”
Star Trek into Darkness releases May 17.
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Star Trek: The Newspaper Comics, Volume 2 is in production and fans are being asked for their assistance in tracking down some of the old comics.
Star Trek: The Newspaper Comics, Volume 1: 1979-1981 featured the first ten L.A. Times Syndicate comic strips by Thomas Warkentin, Sharman DiVono, and Ron Harris.
The second book will feature the next ten stories, published between 1982 and 1983 and fan help is solicited in obtaining high-quality images of the comic strips.
“In creating that first volume, we worked hard to find the highest-quality strips available,” said Editor Rich Handley. “Now we’re preparing Volume 2, and we’re on the lookout once more. We’ve already located all of the strips from the second batch of ten stories, but are reaching out to the fan community in the hope of finding higher-quality versions of some of them. If you have any of the actual dailies (the original strips, rather than photocopied versions) published between February 1982 and January 1983, and would be willing to lend them for scanning purposes (or provide high-resolution scans), please contact editor Dean Mullaney at info@loacomics.com. Thank you for your assistance. With your help, we can continue presenting these lost gems in the best light possible.”
A description of the first book can be seen here.
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Two popular Star Trek authors have been nominated for Scribe Awards.
The Scribe Awards, which recognize excellence in the field of writing for media tie-in franchises, are presented by The International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (IAMTW).
The authors nominated are Greg Cox and David Mack.
Cox was nominated in the Original Novel category for Star Trek: The Rings of Time; an original series story about a dilithium mining colony on Skagway, a moon of Klondike-6, which is threatened by the disintegration of Klondike-6′s rings.
Mack was nominated for Star Trek: The Next Generation – Cold Equations, Book 1: The Persistence of Memory. In The Persistence of Memory, Data’s android brother B-4 has been stolen and Captain Picard and his crew need to find out the reason why and by whom B-4 was stolen.
The Scribe Awards winners will be announced in July at the San Diego Comic-Con.
Congratulations to both Cox and Mack for their nominations.
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For fans waiting for the release of Star Trek: The Video Game to be released later this month, a preview can be seen now.
In Star Trek The Video Game, Kirk and crew are sent to investigate a space station under duress. The station has been tasked with research on the New Vulcan colony project, developing a new home world for Spock’s species, whose home planet was destroyed in the last film.
“But as Kirk and Spock explore the station, they learn something has gone very wrong. The Starfleet commander in charge of the station has attempted to exploit a risky new technology that has ripped open a wormhole in space, which serves as a doorway for the invading Gorn, a violent and imperial species first seen in the 1967 episode Arena from the original Trek TV series.”
The three videos cover thirty minutes of gameplay. In the first video, the first mission of the game can be seen, and some of the key locations of the game, including the Bridge of the Enterprise, are shown.
The second video shows New Vulcan, the new homeworld of the Vulcans. In this video, Kirk meets up with the Gorn.
The third video features “set-pieces” such as “space jumps…visiting the Gorn homeworld,” and “taking control of the USS Enterprise.”
Star Trek The Video game releases on April 23. To see the videos, head to the link located here.
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Over the weekend, several new Star Trek into Darkness movie posters were released.
The posters featured Kirk, Uhura, Spock and John Harrison.
The Kirk poster shows Kirk running through a field of red vegetation to escape some angry natives; Uhura’s poster features her in an action scene holding a weapon; Spock’s poster features the half-Vulcan in the depths of a fiery volcano, and Harrison’s poster features Harrison with a wound on his face.
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photos.
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When several crewmembers are trapped inside Bashir’s malfunctioning spy holonovel, he must find a way to keep their characters alive long enough for a rescue.
Plot Summary: While Sisko, Kira, Worf, Dax and O’Brien return from a conference to the station, Garak interrupts Bashir in a holosuite, embarrassing the doctor who is playing a British agent in a sexy old Earth spy fantasy. Abruptly O’Brien realizes that the runabout has been sabotaged. Eddington and Odo are able to beam the crew to safety, but the runabout’s explosion disrupts the transporter, so the computer stores their large patterns in the only available place: the program running in the holosuite. When Kira takes the place of Bashir’s Russian counterpart and lover Ana, alerting the doctor to the crisis, Eddington tells him that he must keep the program running; otherwise, the patterns of the crewmembers could be lost. Kira explains that the mastermind Dr. Noah may be behind a series of dangerous earthquakes as well as the disappearance of Professor Honey Bare, a seismologist whose photo reveals that Dax has now taken on her role in the story. But when O’Brien turns up as the villainous Falcon and starts a brawl, Garak realizes that the holosuite safeties have been disabled, so their lives could be in real danger. Bashir takes Kira and Garak to find Noah, which first requires that he defeat Noah’s assistant Duchamps aka Worf in a high-stakes card game. Meanwhile, Rom goes to work trying to rewire the holosuite to recover the crewmembers’ patterns and reintegrate them with the neural patterns held in the station’s main computer. Duchamps abducts Bashir, Garak, and Kira to Noah’s lair on an upper face of Mount Everest, chosen because Noah – that is, Sisko – intends to flood the planet using artificial earthquakes, leaving his hideaway the only spot above water. Dax aka Honey Bare is working for him willingly, but Bashir persuades her to help rescue himself and Garak by telling her that Noah can’t appreciate her true beauty. Afraid of being killed, Garak tries to escape the holosuite, which might kill the crewmembers trapped there, but Bashir shoots him to demonstrate his resolve and persuades Garak to help complete the program. They return to Noah’s control room, where Bashir stalls by pressing the button that will trigger the quakes. Noah plans to kill him anyway, but Eddington beams Sisko out just in time along with Kira, Dax, and O’Brien. Impressed that Bashir saved his friends by destroying the world, Garak asks to see more of Bashir’s holo-fantasies.
Analysis: Taken on its own merits, “Our Man Bashir” is an entertaining piece of fluff that shows off the acting abilities of several crewmembers and lets the set designers and hairstylists have a lot of fun. Taken as an installment of fourth season Deep Space Nine, however, this is the episode where I really start to wonder if the writers don’t like the series they’re writing. Coming on the heels of “Little Green Men” – arguably a more creative send-up of a movie genre, since 50s pulp gets done far less often than James Bond parodies – and smelling quite a bit like GoldenEye marketing, since that film had just opened when “Our Man Bashir” aired (though MGM apparently was not amused), one gets the sense that the show’s writers were becoming more fond of alternate universe scenarios like “Through the Looking Glass,” “Fascination,” “Prophet Motive,” and “Facets” than they were of the universe they were creating on Deep Space Nine, which was always intended to be a different sort of Star Trek – more world-building, more focused on a particular region and its people. I have enjoyed “Our Man Bashir” more in reruns than I did when it first aired, since the deliberately-adorable factor has become less grating and it’s nice to see such goofiness from actors who have to carry some very dark storylines in the final two seasons. I may not find Bashir charming or suave enough to be a James Bond clone, but there’s no question that Avery Brooks would be a phenomenal Bond villain and Andy Robinson a delightful Bond sidekick. I can’t really say which one made me emit more gleeful giggles, Sisko relishing the thought of destroying both the world and Bashir or Garak wishing he could spy for a fantasy British government and repeatedly saying he’s learning much too much about Bashir’s fantasy life.
The latter, I’m afraid, is true for me as well. I understand that to do a proper rip-off of James Bond during the Connery-Moore era, the women must be reduced to seductive playthings, but I really loathe seeing that done yet again this season to Kira and Dax. Yes, Nana Visitor is convincing as a Russian spy with a not-quite-believable accent whose main purpose is to serve as arm candy, and sure, Terry Farrell is quite adorable as a nerdy scientist even if she’d rather be loved for her beautiful blue eyes than for her ability to control the Earth’s magma, but seriously — wouldn’t it have been so much more twisted to make Sisko the shy nerd and Dax the would-be ruler of a post-apocalyptic Earth? What makes the stereotypes worse is that this isn’t an evil alien’s plot or Betazoid hormones affecting how we see the characters, but Bashir’s fantasies, meaning that despite all those heart-to-hearts with Dax about how they’re just friends and with Kira about how much he admires her, deep down he’s still the same womanizing boy who first arrived on the station. He’s just switched to fictional women in his living daydreams, and he doesn’t even seem to know that Bond’s world was never real life, but the movies. No wonder Garak is practically gagging when in two minutes Bashir convinces Dax that she just wants to be loved. She seems like a riff on the scientist from Moonraker, but that scientist was self-possessed and witty; women in actual Bond movies get more to do than Kira and Dax here. But it isn’t just in terms of gender that I find this reductive and uninteresting. What if the writers had let O’Brien be the leader for a change and Worf the brilliant nerd who just wants to be loved? All opportunity for surprise through humor gets lost by making the obvious retro choices.
I’ll let some of this slide while I’m watching because the Bashir-Garak interaction is so delightful, particularly when Garak turns coward and only wants to save his own butt, then when Bashir recites what Garak told him about spying to stall Sisko. I just wish their bonding opportunity involved a few more cutting comments about Bashir’s puerile heroics before the giant love-fest at the end. The technobabble is pretty effective in the progression of the story – I love the logic by which the computer puts the crew’s patterns on the holodeck and neural patterns in the rest of the station’s systems, even though it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that they could just beam everything back together with no one missing a beat. The directing is extremely stylized and the costume design is great. But the most interesting question of the episode, that of who sabotaged the runabout, is never answered in any satisfactory way. A Cardassian terrorist group no one’s ever heard of before, who don’t bother to do anything with Starfleet afterwards and Starfleet apparently offers no follow-up? Come on, they almost knocked out five command-level officers, leaving Eddington in charge of the station! How much more fun if the saboteur turned out to have been Garak, who might perfectly well have a real spy agenda we don’t know about, or Eddington, whom we will learn long after the fact has his own agenda and may need to present himself as a hero to Sisko et al. Even Quark could have done it, since apparently he has technical expertise that even Rom lacks – and that’s the second time this season, since he can also defuse bombs. The best thing to do with “Our Man Bashir” is probably to watch it out of order, in the middle of the Dominion War when some levity is much needed; when and where it airs, it feels like yet another crossover-type episode with yet more alternate versions of beloved characters who don’t get enough to do.
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Several new pieces of Star Trek jewelry have been released.
The jewelry, released in celebration of the forthcoming Star Trek into Darkness movie, was created by Udi Behr.
Five pieces, each stamped with a May 2013 date, include a Starfleet symbol bracelet, two pins (Vertical Starfleet, Starfleet), and two pendants (Starfleet symbol, Starfleet symbol Trekkie).
The pins are made of stainless steel and iron phosphate, and the other pieces are made of stainless steel. Each piece of jewelry will sell for $38.00 and can be purchased here.
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A new Star Trek into Darkness poster has debuted, featuring the USS Enterprise.
The poster shows a severely damaged Enterprise plunging down from space, and entering Earth’s atmosphere en route to the surface of the planet.
Paramount also announced that a new trailer for Star Trek into Darkness will debut on Tuesday.
Click on the thumbnail for a larger image of the poster.
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Two new offerings from Diamond Select Toys are sure to delight fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The new merchandise includes a Jean-Luc Picard action figure, and an Enterprise-E model.
The Enterprise E-model (First Contact) is almost twenty inches long by eight-and-a-half inches wide, and features both sound and electric lights.
The suggested retail price for the Enterprise-E, which will begin shipping later this month, will be $60.00.
A new Captain Picard action figure will show Picard in an attack pose standing on a Borg battle scene display base.
Seven inches tall, the Star Trek Select Captain Picard Action Figure will sell for $24.99 and will be available this fall.
Both the ship and the action figure can be pre-ordered through comic book and online toy stores beginning this Friday.
Click on thumbnails for larger images.
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Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Denise Crosby has been named Celebrity Marshal for 2013′s Boston Pride Parade.
The parade recognizes three types of Marshals; Grand Marshal, Celebrity Marshal, and Honorary Marshal (to be given posthumously). The public votes on Grand and Honorary Marshals.
The Boston Pride Parade & Festival will take place on Saturday, June 8 at noon and follows a route which can be seen here.
For local residents who cannot attend the 2012 Pride Parade, it will be broadcast on the Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN, cable TV channel 9).
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In honor of its sixtieth anniversary, TV Guide has released a collectible set of six covers; one for each of six of the most influential television shows of the past several decades.
One of the six most influential shows is Star Trek (original series).
The covers include (by decade): I Love Lucy, Star Trek, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Cosby Show, The Simpsons, and Lost.
Each cover is in the form of a mosaic, made up of every TV Guide cover released during the decade of the show.
The collectible issues were released this week.
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George Takei was one of the recipients of a Shorty Award, handed out Monday at the 5th Annual Shorty Awards Ceremony.
The Shorty Awards “honor the best in social media; recognizing the people and organizations producing real-time short content across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Foursquare and the rest of the social web.”
Takei received his award for Distinguished Achievement in Internet Culture. He beat out the popular Internet Grumpy Cat for the honor.
Takei’s acceptance speech can be seen below. Other winners can be seen at this link.
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Tickets for the IMAX showing of Star Trek into Darkness went on sale yesterday in the UK, and fan demand was so high that it crashed the IMAX website.
The same high demand also caused difficulties for the ODEON online ticket sales site.
“Due to overwhelming demand for Star Trek @BFI IMAX online booking is currently down,” said The British Film Institute (BFI) via Twitter yesterday. “We’re doing all we can to rectify. Do bear with us.”
“We know you are really eager to book for #StarTrekIntoDarkness,” said ODEON via their Twitter account. “We’re currently experiencing some technical difficulties for BFI IMAX.”
The website is back up and running today.
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A new poster for Star Trek into Darkness is a bit different from the ordinary movie poster.
The new poster features Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Cumberbatch.
None of the images featured on this poster are new, but what makes this poster different from other movie posters is that it is composed of nine different boxes which each feature several changing images.
Some of the images also combine to make one scene of two or three panels wide.
The “cinemosaic” poster can be seen here.
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Kor convinces Worf and Dax to accompany him on a search for the mythical weapon of the great Klingon leader, which he believes can unite the Empire.
Plot Summary: Dahar Master Kor visits Deep Space Nine en route to recover the Sword of Kahless, the ancient weapon of the legendary Klingon warrior whose clone is now Emperor. Because of Worf’s family’s disgrace, he is hesitant to greet Kor, but Kor says that any enemy of Gowron’s is a friend of his and invites Worf to accompany him and Dax on the treasure hunt. Before they leave, Kor is attacked by a Lethean who reads his mind and learns the artifact’s whereabouts. When Dax, Worf and Kor depart on a runabout loaned by Sisko, who believes that finding the Sword may improve Starfleet’s relationship with the Klingons, they trace the ancient weapon to a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. But no sooner have they recovered the Sword when they are confronted by Toral of the House of Duras, who has brought the Lethean and several soldiers. Kor and the Starfleet officers escape into a cave, but they can’t reach their runabout from below the surface. As they head through a maze of underground tunnels, Kor tells Worf that the choice to spare Toral’s life means that Worf is too human. For his part, Worf thinks that Kor has become old, weak and possibly insane, for Kor does not intend to give the Sword to the Emperor but wants to use it to lead the Klingons himself. In one of the tunnels, Kor slips into a crevasse from which Worf is reluctant to rescue him. Dax tries to intervene, but Worf now believes it is his own destiny to take the Sword and unite the Klingons. Furious, Dax grabs the Sword from both Klingons and insists on sleeping with it, but she is woken by an attack from Toral and his men. The Starfleet officers and Kor are able to defeat them, but Kor turns on Worf with the Sword and the two are on the point of killing each other when Dax stuns them both with her phaser, taking them back to the runabout. The group realizes that, just as the Sword turned them against each other, so it may cause a rift in the Klingon Empire. They decide to transport the Sword until space so that no one will find it until the Klingons are ready for it.
Analysis: One Sword to rule them all, one Sword to find them…oops. While “The Sword of Kahless” has very few of the elements I love on Deep Space Nine, it has the feeling of one of the sillier original series stories where spores or daggers of the mind make a crewmember act like an idiot for most of the episode, and Worf even mentions Kirk by name, so all is forgiven. In this episode and “Blood Oath” both, I kept expecting some big revelation about Kor from Dax, some explanation of why he changed from the cunning warrior and equal of Kirk’s into this drunken Klingon who thinks he needs one more great accomplishment to guarantee his admission to Sto-vo-kor, the Klingon version of heaven. I include that information because there’s a lot in this episode that requires knowledge of both Worf’s history and the history of the Klingon people, including how Kahless was cloned and made Emperor and why Worf is in disgrace both with Gowron and with the Duras family. It might have thrown off the pacing of the episode, which is admirable for a drama that takes place mostly walking through uninteresting cave sets, but even I was longing for a bit of a refresher and I’ve watched Star Trek all my life. I love stories that link the continuity of the franchise, and there are few reminders of the rich complexity of Klingon culture as it developed and changed of the course of the two previous series. If I sometimes get confused how the Worf who didn’t even know how Klingons mourned one another early on in The Next Generation has become the Worf who’s more a Klingon traditionalist than many of the Klingons he meets, it doesn’t make the character any less interesting.
Star Trek has often presented to us relics with powers that seem more magical than scientific, and I have no real complaints with that. Whether the Sword has an actual biological effect on Kor and Worf that puts them at each other’s throats – something the writers deny, but it’s really hard to believe that Worf loses it so completely based on psychology alone – or whether it simply inspires elements deep in their subconscious to become aggressive and power-hungry, we don’t need to know the details of how it works. Still, I have a very hard time believing that Dax wouldn’t want to investigate it, both in her current role as a science officer and because she carries the memories of Curzon, who was pretty much an honorary Klingon himself, which is why Kor came looking for her in the first place. I gnash my teeth when Worf has to tell HER to modify the field harmonics as if she’s some kid they brought along and not the scientific expert. If Dax suspects that there’s no special power involved but that Worf simply goes crazy for the idea of leading the Empire, she really needs to report that to Sisko. Near the end of the episode, things are getting a little mumbo-jumbo-mystical, and although I’ll buy that that’s in perfect keeping with the Klingons who have as emperor a mystical warrior cloned in a secret lab, it’s pretty annoying for a Starfleet officer not to want to inquire into the causes, particularly since the Sword can and probably will be found again someday. Kor is right that Worf is caught between two worlds, but Worf chooses the Klingon way every time it won’t conflict with his personal sense of honor. I just wish he was allowed to have a bit of a sense of humor about it; he may not be a merry man, but Kor ends up being much more fun to watch than Worf, who just becomes an angrier, meaner version of his usual personality while under the influence of the Sword (can anyone tell me why it isn’t called the Bat’leth of Kahless? I have such a hard time believing that the Klingons would permit it to be called a non-Klingon word even by a universal translator, which usually leaves bat’leth alone).
I’m always glad when there’s a Dax episode, but yet again I’m frustrated that it’s another story where her past as Curzon rather than her current expertise is what enables her to be effective, both in persuading Sisko to loan them a runabout (“maybe the Klingons will be friendlier if we help them recover the Sword” is a pretty pathetic excuse for sending a tiny craft into a Dominion-dominated Gamma Quadrant) and in getting Kor to listen to her when he starts to go off the deep end. I’d have been fine with the little Duras creep snatching the Sword and the episode ending on that note, with the Starfleet officers gaping at how badly they’d underestimated him, uncertain what if anything this will mean for the Empire and Gowron’s ascendancy. Although Klingons sometimes bore me with their repeated cliches about honor, their history has depth and reasonable consistency – more so than a lot of individual characters. Like “Way of the Warrior,” “The Sword of Kahless” offers both a glimpse of sweeping Klingon beliefs and an intimate look at what drives Worf, the Klingon with whom we are by far the most familiar. With Kang and Koloth gone, Kor is all that ties us to the Klingons of Kirk’s era, whose humor and lack of patriarchal fanaticism I often miss. The rebellious Duras at least had powerful women and were ready all along to admit their craving for personal glory; are we really to believe that Worf represses similar instincts, only to have them brought out by an ancient relic? I’m glad to know in advance that he and Dax will become lovers and eventually spouses, because he is in desperate need of someone in his life who will judge him by the standards of neither Klingons nor humans.
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The latest t-shirts featuring original series art by Juan Ortiz are now available for purchase.
The t-shirts are based on the orginal series episodes: The Doomsday Machine, Elaan of Troyius, Patterns of Force, and The Paradise Syndrome.
Made of one hundred percent cotton, the shirts come in men’s sizes ranging from small to XXXLG, and sell for $25.00 each. The Doomsday Machine shirt comes in three colors; navy, black, and coffee. Patterns of Force comes in navy, coffee, and olive. The Elaan of Troyius shirt is available in black, charcoal, or silver. The Paradise Syndrome shirt comes in black, navy, or olive.
To order the shirts, head to the link located here.
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Star Trek into Darkness guest star Benedict Cumberbatch has signed on for a role in a “haunted house thriller.”
Cumberbatch would join fellow actors Emma Stone and Charlie Hunnam in Crimson Peak.
Crimson Peak is “set at the turn of the century and it is a Gothic romance with ghosts,” according to Director Guillermo del Toros. “When I use the [Gothic romance] term, I use it not in the Barbara Cartland model but rather in a Bronte fashion. Dark and stormy and wind-swept.”
Penned by Del Toro, Matthew Robbins and Lucinda Coxon, Crimson Peak is expected to begin shooting next February.
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For fans who still haven’t picked up the first six Star Trek movies, Amazon is offering a boxed set of all six for a bargain price.
Both the DVD and the Blu-ray versions of the seven-disc sets are on sale.
The movies included are: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
The DVD set, normally retailing for $49.98, is on sale for $22.49. The Blu-ray set, normally selling for $84.99, is on sale for $34.99, a savings of $50.
To order either set, head to the link located here.
New Trek Ship Poster
in Trek News
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A new Star Trek poster, courtesy of Bye Bye, Robot, has just been released.
The poster, with artwork by Mark Brayer, features the U.S.S. Enterprise.
U.S.S. Enterprise is the second poster in Brayer’s ship series. The poster, 16″x24″, is printed on high-quality heavyweight 100lb acid-free paper.
“We’re thrilled to have Mark’s second poster in his vintage ships series,” said Charity Wood, Co-Founder of Bye Bye, Robot. “His roster of ships is shaping up into a formidable armada. With this current U.S.S. Enterprise, his last S.S. Botany Bay, and the ships I know he’s working on for his future prints, there will be enough space faring might to begin an intergalactic hall of fame.”
The poster, which will sell for $25.00, can be ordered here.
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