Vic
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A new teaser for Star Trek into Darkness was recently released, featuring plenty of new scenes.
Obviously, if avoiding spoilers, it would be wise to avoid watching it, but for everyone else, the teaser is behind the cut.
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New Star Trek into Darkness trailer to debut; Stewart to marry; Star Trek into Darkness comic preview.
TrekMovie reports that a new international trailer for Star Trek into Darkness will debut at midnight and can be seen at iTunes. The trailer should be around two minutes and twenty seconds in length.
ABC News is reporting that Sir Patrick Stewart is to marry for the third time. Stewart will marry jazz singer Sunny Ozell, with the ceremony being officiated by X-Men co-star Ian McKellen.
Cult Cross has posted several images on their Facebook page from the Countdown to Darkness #4 comic. The images feature Klingons and a familiar Federation name.
More news bits will be posted tomorrow. Regular TrekToday news will resume on Monday.
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According to Star Trek into Darkness Producer Bryan Burk, both he and J.J. Abrams are looking to expand the Star Trek fan base.
Burk commented on their hopes for Star Trek into Darkness at one of the forty-minute preview screenings of the movie taking place at various locations world-wise; this one in Sydney, Australia.
“I think with the first one we got a lot of people who had dipped in and out of the Star Trek universe over the last forty years and got a lot of new people along the way but that allows us now to go a lot further and open it up to everyone else,” said Burk. “People went to see the last film who weren’t expecting to like it and I feel for this film that if people have adamantly avoided Star Trek and thought it wasn’t for them, they will be pleasantly surprised. It was really important to make a film where if you hadn’t seen the last one, you could just jump in.”
Burk, who will be joining Abrams in rebooting another science fiction franchise, Star Wars, also spoke about the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. “The worlds couldn’t be more different,” he said. “The only thing they have in common is the word ‘star’ and they take place in outer space. Star Trek doesn’t take place in a galaxy far, far away it’s not science fiction, it’s science fact, it’s one hundred per cent our future. The guy who invented the cellphone said he was inspired by watching Star Trek.”
Star Trek into Darkness opens in Australia on May 9.
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Although he knows much more about Star Trek into Darkness than the fans know, Benedict Cumberbatch is as eager as the fans to see the finished version of the film.
Cumberbatch also had high praise for J.J. Abrams, saying that the director was a “lovely human being and just super talented, ridiculously talented.”
“He’s not a dilettante,” said Cumberbatch. “He’s sort of a polymath. Anything he turns his hand to, he seems to conquer and master. And he’s ridiculously charming, smart and a really good person as well.”
The actor is “really excited about seeing the film. I haven’t seen the whole film yet,” he said, “so I’m in the same situation as a lot of fans. Anticipation is where I’m at with that one.”
Cumberbatch promises that fans will enjoy Star Trek into Darkness. “It’s a rollicking summer film which has heart and soul, and a depth to detail that will keep you glued to your seat and caring about the thrills and spills on the Imax 3D experience,” he promised.
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While taking Nog to Starfleet Academy, Quark’s contraband causes a temporal rift that puts him, his brother and nephew on Earth in the twentieth century at Roswell.
Plot Summary: As Nog prepares to leave for Starfleet Academy, Quark’s cousin Gaila gives Quark the ship he owes him. Quark volunteers to take Rom and Nog to Earth to test the ship, bringing a shipment of illegal kemacite to deliver on the way back to the station. But Gaila has had the ship rigged to malfunction, and when Rom uses the kemacite to stop it from breaking up at warp speed on the approach to Earth, the ship is flung several hundred years in the past. The Ferengi awaken in a compound in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. General Denning orders Professor Carlson and his girlfriend, Nurse Garland, to observe the Ferengi and try to communicate with them. Rom manages to convince Garland to loan him her hairpin to fix their universal translators, which Quark then uses to offer Denning a business proposition, threatening to take his technology to the Russians if the Americans won’t pay. While Denning consults with his superiors, a guard dog morphs into Odo, who suspected that Quark planned to use the trip to Earth as an excuse for smuggling and hid aboard the Ferengi ship. Quark wants to stay in the past and create a Ferengi empire using technology from the future, but Rom believes he can use the kemacite to return to their own time and Odo promises to repair the ship. Since truth serum doesn’t work on Ferengi and the needles are painful, Nog tells the inquisitive humans that they are part of an invasion fleet, but Carlson and Garland suspect he’s only trying to stop their interrogation and help the Ferengi escape. Rom says that they can create another temporal incident by bringing the remaining kemacite into contact with radiation from an atomic bomb blast, so they fly it over the test site during an explosion and arrive in their own century. Quark leaves Nog at Starfleet Academy, though once they arrive back at the station, Odo arrests him for smuggling.
Analysis: “Little Green Men” takes everything that’s good in “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (even the line that becomes the title) and improves upon it. As in that original series episode, the core of the story is a family drama – then, Kirk and crew had to return a human inadvertently abducted from 20th century Earth so that he could father a son to lead a mission to Saturn, while now, a young Ferengi must save his doltish father and scheming uncle from themselves on 20th century Earth, but the gimmick is the same, a chance to laugh at human limitations and prejudices in an era familiar to Star Trek’s viewers. It’s the kind of episode each series can get away with doing only once, and it needs to come at the right moment; this one, after several dramatic character episodes and before the Dominion arc gets going for the season, is the perfect time for such a comedy. What works so well here is the way “Little Green Men” not only has fun at the expense of greedy Ferengi, paranoid humans, and the entertainment genre that grew up around legends of Roswell and similar alien sightings, but nods to the way Star Trek changed such stories, developing extraterrestrial allies instead of fleets of invaders, championing those who believe in exploring new worlds instead of building armies to defend against them. It’s amusing that an episode pointing out Ferengi differences also humanizes them; the fact that Rom tells Quark he discovered the kemacite while Quark was in waste extraction, possibly the first acknowledgment on Star Trek that anyone still uses a toilet. And the writers even laugh at themselves, having Nog discover in a guidebook to Earth that the leader of the Bell Riots looks exactly like Captain Sisko, something Sisko himself feared would come back to haunt him at the end of “Past Tense” (though in this case, Quark replies that all Humans look the same).
There are plenty of great lines to make up for any possible anachronisms or breaks with Star Trek’s version of history, and some nice character moments despite all the silliness. Since the episode starts with Nog selling off his childhood treasures to start his adulthood, we see such lovely moments as Dax buying Bashir a naughty holoprogram and Worf – initially scornful of the idea of a Ferengi at Starfleet Academy, despite having had the experience of being the first distrusted Klingon – deciding he likes Ferengi tooth sharpeners. There’s even something sweet about watching Quark’s family bond over his illegal activities, and a total surprise later when Odo turns up, seeming more bemused than horrified to be trapped on old Earth with them. As over-the-top as it is to hear the humans guess that Quark must be the female of the family because he’s such a shrew, it’s utterly hilarious to listen to Rom sobbing for his Moogie when the humans torment him with injections of truth serum. As is to be expected, Quark gets most of the best lines, such as discovering that humans pay money for tobacco even though it’s a poison and realizing there’s huge profit to be made at human expense. The Ferengi reply to being told that humans built nuclear weapons, calling humans savages for irradiating their own planet, is delightful too, though Quark’s funniest moment is a silent reaction shot while Rom is trying to explain how to use the kemacite to save them all from certain death, speaking technobabble that’s too complicated for Nog and utter nonsense to Quark.
As entertaining as the script may be, stealing cliches and characters from many bad movies of the late ’40s and early ’50s, the directing pulls everything together, looking less like a bad old thriller than like a bad ’70s science fiction rip-off of bad old thriller. Kudos to all the Ferengi actors for making their nonsense dialogue sound believable and convey a certain amount of meaning in the pre-universal translator scenes. I love that when Rom explains that all women on Ferenginar are naked, the professor looks curious while the nurse announces that she won’t be visiting that planet any time soon and neither will he; I love that when Quark threatens to kill the woman with his death ray, the general deadpans, “Looks a lot like a finger to me.” This isn’t supposed to be Earth as it was, but Earth as it looked in the movies, with the perky, sweet nurse engaged to the idealistic professor, the trigger-happy captain giving full rein to his xenophobia, and Quark in the role of the sleazy used car salesman, a comparison made explicit by the frustrated general hedging his bets until he can figure out whether this is a dangerous alien invasion or a chance to get tech the Soviets don’t have. Hence we get such moments as the professor romantically lighting a cigarette for the nurse, the spaceship bursting through a warehouse roof, and Nog fusing the plot of many it-came-from-outer-space stories with a speech about the fictional planned Ferengi takeover of the world. In the end victory goes not to the military but to the nerds, as the nurse exclaims to the professor, “We could travel the galaxy and explore new worlds and new civilizations!”
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Two new IDW Publishing Star Trek comics will debut this June.
The Trek comics are Star Trek #22, and Star Trek/Legion of Super Heroes.
In Star Trek #22, “the fallout from this summer’s blockbuster movie Star Trek into Darkness continues here, in the fan-favorite ongoing series overseen by Trek writer/producer Roberto Orci! Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise face a dire new threat rising in the wake of the movie’s momentous events!”
Written by Mike Johnson, with art by Erfan Fajar, and covers by Tim Bradstreet, Star Trek #22 is thirty-two pages long and will sell for $3.99.
Star Trek/Legion of Super Heroes, produced by IDW Publishing and DC Comics, “present the greatest tale of the 23rd century! Or is that the 31st century? Eisner-nominated writer Chris Roberson and Star Trek and Legionnaires veteran artist Jeffrey Moy collaborate to bring you the most bizarre partnership of any century! The crew of the Starship: Enterprise and the Legion of Super-Heroes come face to face as they deal with a changed history and timeline that neither knows the cause of. Traveling to the past and the future to find answers, both teams must work together to set things right.”
One hundred-and-fifty-eight pages in length, Star Trek/Legion of Super Heroes will sell for $19.99. Cover art for the issue will be done by Phil Jimenez.
Both comics will appear in stores on June 12.
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Malachi Throne, known to Star Trek fans for his five appearances on the original series and on Star Trek: The Next Generation, has died at the age of 84.
The actor died peacefully in his sleep after a long battle with cancer.
Throne appeared on the original series as Commodore Jose I Mendez in The Menagerie two-part episode, and as the voice of the Keeper in The Cage.
In The Next Generation, Throne portrayed Romulan Senator Pardek in Unification I and II.
The actor could have been cast as Dr. McCoy, but he turned it down, preferring the part of Spock. “[Roddenberry] already had Leonard Nimoy for that,” said Throne in a 2009 interview. “…he offered me the part of Dr. McCoy. I was tempted, but I turned it down. There’s an old saying among actors: ‘Never be the third man through the door,’ and I felt I would always be the third man in that role.”
In addition to his Star Trek appearances, Throne appeared in ninety different television shows dating back to 1959, including an appearance as “False Face” on Batman. “Everyone wanted to know who played False Face,” said Throne. “It was a two-part episode, so after the first week the papers were abuzz. Eventually, I cooled down [Throne had refused to let his name be put into the credits because a "young starlet" was being paid $25,000 to be in the same episode and he was not] and let them put my name at the end of the second episode. It was the best press I ever got in my life.”
Throne is survived by his wife Marjorie and two sons, Zachary and Joshua.
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Star Trek into Darkness actor John Cho will be guest-starring in Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci‘s Sleepy Hollow pilot.
Sleepy Hollow will be a modern-day supernatural drama, in which Ichabod Crane finds himself transported to present-day Sleepy Hollow, where troubles await him.
Cho will play Officer Andy Dunn, a “likeable police officer in Sleepy Hollow, who has Detective Abbie Archer’s back and is seemingly compassionate and helpful.” But there is more to Dunn than is readily apparent.
Others signed for the FOX project include Katia Winter as Ichabod Crane’s wife, Orlando Jones as Lt. Frank Williams, and Nicole Beharie as Detective Abbie Archer.
Sleepy Hollow will be executive produced by Kurtzman, Orci, Len Wiseman and Heather Kadin. Co-writer Phillip Iscove, who came up with the idea for the series, will be a supervising producer.
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Star Trek into Darkness actor Chris Pine will be receiving the CinemaCon Male Star of the Year Award at this year’s CinemaCon.
CinemaCon attracts five thousand industry members to its yearly convention, which will be held this year April 15-18 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Pine will receive his award on Thursday evening, April 18, in the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace.
“With this summer’s Star Trek into Darkness, the eagerly anticipated follow-up to 2009′s Star Trek, and then at year-end, the release of Jack Ryan, without a doubt, 2013 is going to be Chris Pine’s year,” said Mitch Neuhauser, the managing director of CinemaCon. “Chris Pine has emerged as one of Hollywood’s hottest and most accomplished young actors and CinemaCon is thrilled to honor him as its 2013 ‘Male Star of the Year.’”
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Going through the papers of Star Trek Writer/Director Nicholas Meyer, college professors John and Maria Jose Tenuto uncovered plenty of behind-the-scenes information from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan that has not been released to the public.
A further search through UCLA archival materials uncovered information about lost scenes, both filmed and unfilmed, for the original series’ Space Seed episode.
The duo, Star Trek fans themselves, sometimes includes Star Trek-related material in their sociology classes, and found the material when they decided to expand their search beyond the Meyers papers.
“Space Seed may be the most important episode of the original show,” said John Tenuto. “If there was no Space Seed, there would be no Wrath of Khan and if it weren’t for Wrath of Khan being successful, there would be no more Star Trek. Because while the first Star Trek movie was commercially successful, it was very expensive and a lot of fans weren’t happy with it.”
The lost scenes discovered included a scene that was intended for Space Seed, but would ultimately end up in The Wrath of Khan. In the scene, Dr. McCoy “teaches Captain Kirk how to use a pair of old-fashioned eyeglasses.”
Another scene that was cut from the script before filming showed Spock getting “busted after programming the ship’s computer to let him win at chess.”
“In the very, very early story treatments, Spock acts differently from the Spock we know,” said Tenuto. “We have to give the writer a break though, because this script was written only two weeks after Star Trek went on the air and the characters weren’t firmly established yet.”
The Tenutos will present their finds at an event at the Aspen Drive Library, in Vernon Hills, Illinois on March 21 at 7 PM.
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A new Star Trek book, How to Speak Klingon – Essential Phrases for the Intergalactic Traveler, will be released this spring.
Written by Ben Grossblatt with illustrations by Alex Fine, the twenty-four page board book features a built-in sound module with ten unique sounds.
“Avoid dishonor and intergalactic incident” by studying How to Speak Klingon, an audio phrasebook that will teach “crucial compliments” toasts, insults and more to those new to the guttural language.
In How to Speak Klingon, learn how to compliment a Klingon (“You bludgeon divinely!”) or how to insult him (“Your mother has a smooth forehead”). Phrases for how to deal with annoying customs officials (“Passport? My FIST is my passport!”) or how to buy tickets for the latest Klingon play (“Two for Romulan and Juliet”) are also provided.
Author Grossblatt has several degrees in linguistics, but more importantly, he “eats gagh with his bare hands.” Illustrator Fine, on the other hand, identifies more with the Vulcans than the Klingons and was nicknamed Spock as a child due to his bowl haircut and his pointy ears.
To pre-order How to Speak Klingon, head to the link located here.
Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge.
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Next month, Star Trek The Video Game will be released, and two new characters will make their debut in the game.
One of the characters turns out to be a childhood friend of Spock’s, and the other is a “great Vulcan leader.”
In Star Trek The Video Game, Kirk and Spock are called to assist in the “rescue of a mysterious space station that is heading towards catastrophe. Upon their arrival, they meet T’Mar, a female Vulcan scientist who it the captain of the space station, and who was a childhood friend of Spock’s.
As the game progresses, they travel to New Vulcan, the new homeworld of the Vulcans after the destruction of Vulcan in Star Trek.
On New Vulcan, Kirk, Spock and T’Mar find “a great Vulcan leader, Surok.”
“When we crafted this story we wanted to make sure the player realizes that the usually logical, Spock can have very emotional connections to the ones he cares about,” said Paramount Senior Vice President and Executive Producer Brian Miller. “Surok was one of Spock’s childhood mentors and is also T’Mar’s father. Together, they are helping to lead the colonization of New Vulcan.”
Surok was one of the only survivors of a Gorn attack on New Vulcan. Players will find out why the Gorn attacked New Vulcan and what they want.
According to Miller, Star Trek The Video Game is “canon to the new Star Trek universe,” and so the developers of the game “had a great responsibility to get these new characters right, and to make them exciting and meaningful to players.”
“For players who want to simply enjoy the experience of playing as Kirk and Spock, Star Trek is going to be a great game experience,” said Miller. “But for those eager to dig deeper into a robust story, we hope it’s an adventure that will excite both longtime fans and game enthusiasts alike.”
Star Trek The Video Game will be released on April 23.
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Star Trek into Darkness Co-writer Damon Lindelof explained that there is a logical reason for keeping quiet about the villain of the movie.
After the success of Star Trek, the pressure is on to produce a good movie. “If anything, we’ve become more terrified [this time],” said Lindelof. “We kind of got it right the first time; ‘Let’s really not screw it up this time.’ You really have to honor the forty-plus years of canon and legacy that this amazing franchise had before we put pen to paper.”
Lindelof explained why information on John Harrison is so scarce, and it’s not just because Abrams is secretive about his projects. “The audience needs to have the same experience that the crew is having,” he said. “You’re Kirk; you’re Spock; you’re McCoy; so if they don’t know who the bad guy is going to be in the movie, then you shouldn’t know. It’s not just keeping the secret for secrecy’s sake. It’s not giving the audience information that the characters don’t have.”
“I’m working on a bunch of different projects, and I even have to keep secrets about one project from the people I’m working with on the other project,” said Lindelof. “They’ll say, ‘So, seriously, who’s Benedict playing?’ I’ll say, ‘Do you really want to know?’ Then they go, ‘No, no, no, I don’t.’
“They know that if I said it to them, they would have a five-second rush of exhilaration followed by four months of being completely and totally bummed out that they can’t tell anybody else and that when it gets revealed in the movie, it will have been spoiled for them. That’s why they’re called ‘spoilers,’ they’re not called ‘awesomes.’”
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Karl Urban will again be working with J.J. Abrams, this time in Abrams’s new cop drama pilot.
Urban will be starring in Human, a futuristic cop thriller.
In Human, LAPD officers are “partnered with highly evolved, human-like androids.” Urban will be playing John Kennex, an officer who has “shut down emotionally after a tragic mission left him critically injured.” Kennex’s android partner is Dorian (Michael Ealy), who “has a better grasp of humanity than Kennex does.”
Others in the cast joining Urban and Ealy are Minka Kelly (Common Law) as police officer Valerie Stahl, Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under), Michael Irby (The Unit) and Mackenzie Crook (Pirates of the Caribbean).
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Star Trek: Vol. 4 goes on sale tomorrow, but readers can see a preview of the issue now.
The countdown to Star Trek into Darkness continues in the one-hundred-and-four page issue, written by Mike Johnson, with art by Stephen Molnar and cover by Tim Bradstreet.
The stories in Star Trek: Vol. 4 include The Redshirt’s Tale, which chronicles life on the USS Enterprise through the eyes of a redshirt; a story on how Scotty and Keenser met; and an “all-new re-imagining” of the original series episode Mirror, Mirror.
Star Trek: Vol. 4 will be available in stores tomorrow, and will cost $17.99.
Click on thumbnails for larger images. More preview pages can be found at the referring site.
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Star Trek into Darkness isn’t quite finished yet, but there is already talk about the movie to follow it.
Producer Bryan Burk introduced a screening of the first half-hour of the movie to reporters this weekend and gave an update on the progress of the movie, as well as looking ahead into the future of the franchise.
The London screening featured the first twenty-eight minutes of the movie, plus two later scenes, but the footage was raw footage without final special effects, sound effects or 3D. Burk explained why additional footage of the movie has been released. “The thing we are perpetually going through every time we release a movie is the studio saying, ‘You’ve gotta get material out!’ We’re like, ‘No, hold it back!’ We like the idea of keeping secrets not for any other reason than to keep the experience of going to the movies and not having seen anything before it.
“In this case, we figured that people had already seen the first nine minutes and we could show the conclusion of that sequence. We figured if we go longer it’ll give people the time to get emotionally into the story and characters. You want this to be a movie that anybody can get into. It’s not really a sequel; it’s its own thing.”
Expect goodies for Star Trek fans. “one of the things is that the movie will always be for Star Trek fans,” said Burk. “In the process of all us five producers working together, Roberto Orci and Damon Lindelof, to a slightly lesser extent, are crazy-hardcore Trekkies. They understand the world so we had long conversations where they put things in and would be laughing hysterically. I had no clue why they were! There are tons of references and nods.”
Director J.J. Abrams was unable to attend the London screening, but appeared in a video introduction to the preview. “My hair is a disaster,” he joked, “and that’s why I couldn’t be there today because I’m having my hair fixed in an emergency procedure.”
Abrams is so busy with Star Trek into Darkness, said Burk, that he hasn’t been able to turn his attention to the new Star War film.
Although Star Trek into Darkness hasn’t released yet, the third movie of the rebooted series is under discussion. With 2016 being the fiftieth anniversary of Star Trek, could the next movie be released that year? “We’re definitely talking about the next one, but we haven’t talked about a release date” said Burk. “We don’t want to wait four years, the same amount of time between the last one and this one, but it’s going to be a big year to celebrate, hopefully.”
Star Trek into Darkness opens in the UK on May 9 and in the US on May 17.
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For fans unable to get tickets for the May 15 Star Trek into Darkness IMAX showing, another show time has been added due to the strong demand to see the movie.
The 8 PM IMAX Star Trek into Darkness shows have been sold out, especially in larger cities such as Los Angeles and New York, so in response, Paramount has added an 11 PM showing of the movie.
Tickets for the additional screening can be purchased through the Star Trek app, Google Play, and at IMAX box offices.
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A new poster for Star Trek into Darkness has appeared just one day after the latest trailer was released.
The new trailer features the USS Enterprise.
The new poster shows the Enterprise rising out of the water, in which it had been hidden.
Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
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A new teaser for Star Trek into Darkness has appeared, featuring several new scenes.
The short teaser, which runs 1:17, is below the cut.
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When Jadzia falls in love with the current host of the symbiont once joined to a previous Dax host’s wife, she is willing to violate a Trill law forbidding such reassociation.
Plot Summary: While Dax is demonstrating magic tricks for Bashir and Quark, she receives a summons to Sisko’s office. The captain informs her that a group of Trill scientists are coming to the station to experiment with wormhole technology and that since one of the scientists is Lenara Kahn, Dax may wish to go on leave for a few days. Bashir later explains to Kira that Kahn was Dax wife when Torias was host to the Dax symbiont and Nilani hosted the Kahn symbiont. Trill society strictly forbids relationships between the current hosts of symbionts whose previous hosts were lovers, so both Sisko and Kahn’s brother Bejal are concerned about the two women working in close proximity; the penalty for violating the taboo is exile, which will mean the death of both symbionts when their current hosts die. Though Dax believes she can keep their relationship professional, she and Kahn develop an immediate rapport, which Bashir can’t help but notice when Dax brings him along as a chaperone of sorts when the three of them dine together. Bejal warns his sister to be careful, but Kahn and Dax both feel that they have unfinished business between the two of them since Torias died suddenly while he was married to Nilani. As they explore the emotions of their symbionts, Jadzia and Lenara confess that they still long to be together and share a kiss before Lenara forces herself to leave Dax’s quarters. When Dax asks Sisko for advice, he reminds her of her obligations as a Trill to protect the symbiont, but an accident aboard the Defiant that nearly kills Kahn makes Dax realize that she would risk anything – even exile and death – to be with her onetime love again. As Kahn recovers, however, she realizes that she isn’t willing to give up both her scientific work on Trill and the future lives she and Dax might have in new hosts. She tells Dax that perhaps one day she’ll return, but Dax knows that they are saying goodbye for another lifetime.
Analysis: When rumors about this episode first started circling back in the 1990s, I remember being terrified that it would have all of Star Trek’s frequent, puerile attitudes toward sexuality with a big dollop of exhibitionism on top – an opportunity to give the coveted young male viewership demographic an image of two hot women kissing in a context that wouldn’t actually challenge the deeply ingrained homophobia and heterosexism of a franchise that presumed binary sexual orientation in nearly every species it presents and never so much as hinted at the idea that there might be gay humans in the 24th century. Instead “Rejoined” was a delightful surprise – tender and romantic without being erotically exploitative, though I’m not going to pretend that Terry Farrell kissing Susanna Thompson isn’t hot, and taking shots at the human prejudices that not even Star Trek at its most progressive had the guts to tackle head-on. I know there are some viewers who still feel it was a cop-out to show same sex love between members of a species we already knew to be inherently bisexual due to the fact that symbionts share bodies with hosts of both sexes – ironically, the episode that showed us that fact, Next Gen‘s “The Host,” in which Beverly Crusher was loved by Odan in three would appear to contradict the Trill taboo on becoming intimate with previous hosts’ lovers, though maybe it doesn’t apply if the lover isn’t a Trill – but considering that “Rejoined” aired just a few years after the first lesbian kiss on network television, it’s still progress, and the parallel between the unfair Trill taboo on reassociation and the unfair human bigotry against same-sex love is quite clear. Kira makes it so with her indignation directed at the Trill authorities: “Unnatural? How can it be unnatural…I don’t understand how two people who’ve fallen in love, and made a life together, can be forced to just walk away from each other because of a taboo.” That line makes up for all of the faces Kira made at Dax in previous seasons for dating someone with a transparent skull.
On first glance, the Trill restriction mostly seems inane, since hosts aren’t forbidden to keep the same best friends or drinking buddies or Klingon sparring partners that they had in previous lives, who could get someone into a rut just as serious as a lover, though producer Michael Piller thought the taboo had mainly to do with preventing a joined Trill aristocracy. As frustrating as I find it that the actors and most of the writers rejected the idea of a direct connection between Trill and human restrictions on sexuality (Ron Moore is an exception – he always accepted the sociopolitical implications of an episode about a same-sex couple), I really appreciate the fact that it’s love, not sex, that’s the main focus of Dax and Kahn’s relationship. True love in this case transcends both gender and sexual orientation. The passionate contact between the two women is far more romantic than sexy, which is very unusual for a television culture where romantic interest is often expressed by two people having an argument or experiencing a very physical incident before jumping into bed together. Given that this is Star Trek, which for most of its existence was too skittish to give any of its major characters a long-term relationship, I figured the kissing scene would either be preposterously chaste, like Kirk not-quite-kissing Uhura to avoid infuriating censors who didn’t want to watch an interracial couple, or filmed like a softcore porn scene showing off two beautiful women for the voyeuristic pleasure of the men watching them. Yet the scene manages to seem realistic and romantic, as do the various hugs and touches that precede it – these are, after all, two characters who know they shouldn’t be kissing, who need to seem like they’re resisting it a bit. Avery Brooks, who directed the episode, offers a wonderful subtle look at the building passion and both Farrell and Thompson give beautiful, nuanced performances – I have long felt that Farrell is the most underappreciated performer on the series, she may not have Rene Auberjonois’ range or Louise Fletcher’s bite but she can convey calm and focus while at the same time spitting out technobabble with great conviction. I love watching her.
I wish there had been more interaction between Dax and Kira or even Dax and Leeta, because Jadzia, like Curzon, seems so oriented toward friendships and connections with men. There’s a refreshing lack of gender expectations between Jadzia and Lenara – they both flirt, they both pursue, they both argue with their friends and family about their relationship, there’s no sense that Lenara looks to Jadzia in any sort of “husband” role even when Jadzia gets a bit overprotective – yet Dax seems to assume that her old friend Sisko will do a better job relating to her dilemma than her female friends, even though Sisko’s more a stickler for rules for their own sake while Kira has a history of disregarding the letter of the law to do what’s morally and socially right. Considering what Dax knows about the Symbiosis Commission’s lies about the compatibility of Trill for joining, I’d think she might want to challenge not only her own expectations but the social norms and the people who define them. It’s awfully convenient for the writers to create a taboo that guarantees there won’t be any controversial same-sex lovemaking to scandalize the TV audience but compared to Next Gen‘s “The Outcast,” which merely flips expectations to make heterosexuality rather than homosexuality taboo and reinforces the idea of gender and sexuality as absolute, “Rejoined” suggests that such prejudices are cultural quirks that a sensible person like Kira or Bashir can pick apart in minutes. Kira seems to take for granted that any reasonable society should accept love – romantic love, erotic love – as both inevitable and wonderful, maybe even between a Cardassian and a Bajoran, maybe even between a solid and a shapeshifter. I can’t think of a more hopeful message than that.
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A new Star Trek poster has been released by Bye Bye Robot, featuring Khan.
The poster, the fourth in a series, was inspired by mid-twentieth century communist propaganda posters.
In the poster, people are urged to “unify alongside Khan,” who is “offering the world ‘order.’”
Khan’s positive features are listed; those being “power, leadership, and superior intellect.”
The Unify Humanity poster is 16″x24″ and printed on high-quality heavy weight 100lb acid-free paper. Unify Humanity will sell for $25.00 and can be ordered here.
Other posters in the series illustrated by Steve Thomas include: Escape to Risa, Red Shirt Recruitment, and Enterprise Shuttle Service.
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New information about Star Trek into Darkness has been revealed courtesy of a recent media event in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
In addition to some plot points, a character played by an actor new to the franchise has been confirmed. Spoilers below the cut.
- Peter Weller is playing Admiral Marcus (probably the father of Carol Marcus)
- The father of the sick child cured by Harrison has to go on a suicide mission, with a Starfleet ring bomb.
- Kirk breaks the prime direction to save Spock.
- A lie gets Kirk busted down from Captain, but he eventually returns as the first officer under Pike.
- Spock is assigned to another ship.
- Kirk ends up in bed with two “cat-women.”
- Harrison attacks a summit where captains are present, injuring (perhaps killing) Pike.
- During the Spock/Harrison fight; Harrison and Spock go through several buildings and end up fighting on top of ships flying around the city.
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The latest shirts featuring original series art by Juan Ortiz are now available.
The episodes depicted on the shirts include: A Piece of the Action, Bread and Circuses, The Omega Glory, and For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.
Some shirts come in more than one color. The shirt based on A Piece of the Action comes in either olive or silver; Bread and Circuses comes in charcoal or black; The Omega Glory comes in grey heather, and For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky comes in coffee or black.
The crew tee shirts, made of 100% cotton, sell for $25.00 each and can be ordered at Welovefine.com.
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More information had emerged regarding George Takei’s guest appearance on ABC’s The Neighbors.
In addition to Takei, another well-known sci-fi actor will be appearing in the episode, titled It Has Begun…
In The Neighbors, new residents Marty (Lenny Venito) and Debbie Weaver (Jami Gertz) move into Hidden Hills, a gated neighborhood where their neighbors are rather different, in fact they are aliens, straight from the planet Zabvron.
Takei will be seen in the season finale, playing the role of Grandpa, who is residing on Zabvron. In this episode, Grandpa and Commandant Bill, played by Star Wars‘ Marc Hamill, send a distress call to the aliens residing on Earth.
The episode airs on March 27 at 8:30 PM on ABC.
Retro Review: Starship Down
in Trek News
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A battle with the Jem’Hadar strands the Defiant in the atmosphere of a planet, leaving several crewmembers near death.
Plot Summary: While en route to a Gamma Quadrant system to discuss trade with the Karemma, whose representative Hanok is already skeptical because Quark tried to rip him off, the crew of the Defiant is attacked by Jem’Hadar warships. The Karemma ship hides in the atmosphere of a volatile gas giant, and when the Defiant tries to follow, the ship is damaged both by atmospheric turbulence and a second Jem’Hadar attack. Dax goes to engineering to work on repairs, but a force field protecting the deck collapses, leaving Sisko no choice but to seal it off before the deadly atmosphere floods the ship. Bashir manages to evacuate sickbay before the lockdown but remains behind to pull the wounded Dax into a turbolift. Though the ship has limited mobility, it is attacked once more, leaving Sisko nearly comatose and cutting off the bridge from the rest of the ship. Worf manages to crawl through tubes to the engine room, where he attempts to help O’Brien restore power while Kira tries to keep Sisko conscious and Bashir tries to keep Dax warm. Meanwhile, Quark and Hanok discover an undetonated torpedo embedded in the mess hall bulkhead and realize they must defuse it themselves. Unable to contact sickbay, Kira decides to risk giving Sisko a stimulant, while Hanok admits that his people may have sold the Dominion a faulty torpedo and helps Quark disarm it. O’Brien and the engineers rig the deflector array so that they can use it to fire phasers, which Worf uses to destroy the the Jem’Hadar ship after luring it in with a reprogrammed missile. The Defiant crew rescues the Karemma from their ship, frees Dax and Bashir, and takes the ship back to Deep Space Nine, where Sisko makes a full recovery.
Analysis: If you’ve ever seen Gray Lady Down, Das Boot, or any of a half-dozen other submarine disaster movies, you already know what to expect from “Starship Down” the moment it enters the gas giant’s atmosphere. That, in and of itself, does not make it a bad episode – the previous week’s installment, “Little Green Men,” takes a similar approach to borrowing from old-fashioned spy thrillers and succeeds very well. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of the two episodes that makes me find “Starship Down” so annoying, like the show’s writers couldn’t come up with any original ways to tell stories or were afraid that the audience was getting bored with good old Trek and decided to toss a bunch of other genres at us instead. It’s not a bad idea to tell a Dominion action story within the context of a claustrophobic drama, and there are lots of great visuals – atmospheric effects, explosions, a torpedo being disarmed by two capitalists debating the relative virtues of greed and the free market. There also isn’t anything I can point to and say, “Now THAT was outrageously out of character and in violation of continuity!” — at least not precisely. Still, I keep feeling like everything in the episode from the Jem’Hadar to the characters to Karemma have been constructed not to further the development of Deep Space Nine, but to make viewers nod at the cleverness of mapping the show onto a submarine crisis tale, and by the end it feels extremely forced and irritating to me, considering how many gimmick episodes we’ve already had.
Having the crew split into four distinct storylines aboard the downed ship should have provided an opportunity for little character gems, yet except for Quark’s comic bit saving the day while yet again describing the excesses of Ferengi finance law, they all end up feeling artificial. Sure, Kira’s been having some disconnect about the fact that the commanding officer she used to quarrel with quite regularly (not as much any more, though whether that’s because of a change in Starfleet and Bajoran interests or a change in how these two people relate to one another since Worf arrived and got to jump ahead of a Bajoran in the Defiant chain of command, it’s hard to say). But the Kira who sighs worshipfully over the Emissary and sobbing that he can’t die is not any Kira I know…and the Ben who invites her to baseball games in the absence of his usual squeeze Kasidy just seems odd, since I’d expect him either to have a serious conversation with her about the weirdness of trying to be her captain, her friend, and her religious icon all at once or to want a little distance after all the hand-holding and use of first names. I love Sisko and Kira together – apart from knowing Odo loved her, I’d have had no complaints if Sisko and Kira had become a couple – but this tentative, groveling Kira isn’t anything like the woman he usually looks at with such admiration, the one who made sparks fly with him in “The Circle.” This obsessed fangirl Kira would make any superior uncomfortable, and I am really resenting the implication that Kira must have some strong male figure around to adore, a father figure if not a lover – Tahna Los, Li Nalas, Mullibok, Bareil, Shakaar, now Sisko. It’s only knowing that this phase doesn’t last that is keeping me from a full-fledged rant on the subject.
I never wanted Dax and Bashir to be a couple, so I suppose I should be happy that the bulk of their storyline is about how they are never, ever, ever getting back together. But the trapped-in-a-turbolift setup that looks like a hundred pieces of hurt/comfort fan fiction ends up being neither convincing nor engaging. Even though I don’t like them as a couple, having them snuggle like old friends and discuss the fact that there’s no spark between them is extremely boring to watch. Bashir’s fantasy of getting trapped somewhere with Jadzia and needing body contact with her for warmth is far more interesting. Then there’s Dax’s future husband Worf, who apparently learned nothing about command after seven years on Picard’s bridge. I have trouble buying that Worf would scoff at the engineering nerds in the first place, but I have just as much trouble believing that during a ship-wide disaster, Starfleet engineers would have to be coddled and defended by O’Brien (who like them didn’t go to the Academy). This condescension probably has more to do with how the writers feel about techie nerds than how Worf and O’Brien do, but it feels like a manufactured problem to give the Klingon and the human something to spar about, not a problem with them or their staff. It’s not like it comes up regularly. Maybe the problem is with compartmentalizing the crew, giving everyone something to do that’s not their usual thing: Worf in command, Kira trying to be a medic, Quark using his technical skills (apparently Dax and Sisko have to be injured because that’s the only way to keep them from being their usual competent selves). Anyone can have an off day in a crisis, but when everyone has an off day at once, it feels more like a lesson about it, not an entertaining shakeup of the status quo.
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