Vic
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In an interview with MTV, J.J. Abrams spoke about Klingons in Star Trek into Darkness, and about the role of Carol Marcus in the movie.
Even though long-time fans know all about Klingons, Abrams explained that those new to the franchise coming to see Star Trek into Darkness didn’t “need to know any preexisting stories to watch this film.”
When it comes to the Klingons, “Their role in this is definitely that of adversary,” said Abrams, “and you’ll see how they play out.”
Abrams then turned to Carol Marcus and the rumors of a “romantic interlude” with James T. Kirk. “[Kirk] meets her fairly early on,” said Abrams, “and again, she plays a science officer, she’s someone who is part of the adventure…it’s very much an action-adventure movie so once that gets going it’s a difficult thing to park the story and say ‘lets do a romantic interlude.’ But her role is important; she wouldn’t be in the movie otherwise.”
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This week, two new IDW Publishing Star Trek comics will debut, and fans can have a peek at the issues now.
The comics are Star Trek #18 and Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness #2.
In Star Trek #18, “The countdown to next summer’s Star Trek movie series continues. This issue puts the brave and beautiful Uhura in the spotlight as we learn new secrets about her past and witness her first meeting with Spock!”
Written by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrott, overseen by Roberto Orci, with art by Claudia Balboni and covers by Tim Bradstreet, the thirty-two page issue will sell for $3.99.
Star Trek: Countdown to Darkness #2 is “the next chapter in this exclusive comics prequel to next summer’s blockbuster Star Trek movie! New characters and new conflicts threaten Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise in this all-new story.”
Written by Mike Johnson, overseen by Roberto Orci, with art and covers by David Messina, the thirty-two page issue will sell for $3.99.
Both issues will go on sale February 20.
Click on the images for the full-sized pages. More pages can be found at the referring site.
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A short featurette has been released promoting Star Trek into Darkness, with comments by J.J. Abrams, Zachary Quinto, Chris Pine and Zoë Saldana.
Abrams explained what he wanted to accomplish with the sequel to 2009′s Star Trek. “The goal for this movie was definitely to up the ante as much as we could,” he said. “There are a lot of characters that people are anticipating seeing. Kirk and Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov, and Sulu.”
“I am more excited than I can tell you,” said Abrams. “The action in this movie, the scale of the movie is light years beyond what we did in the first movie.”
“It was pretty magical to see what they were able to create this time,” said Quinto. “I think it’s stunningly beautiful.
“The word I keep coming back to is just ‘relentless,” said Pine. “It’s one thing after another, after another, after another.”
“This is the kind of film that 3D was made for,” said Saldana. Abrams concurred, saying that “Without question, the IMAX and the 3D I think will give viewers yet another level of excitement.”
“This movie was the most fun and challenging experience that I’ve had,” said Abrams. “This is like everything I’ve ever done wrapped in one movie.
Star Trek into Darkness releases at select IMAX theaters on May 15 and in theaters May 17.
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Zachary Quinto is at ease as he waits for Star Trek into Darkness to release.
Trek fans may be nervous though, as Quinto promises that the sequel will be “darker, bigger,” with “more at stake for everyone.” Expect “more action, more peril and there’s more at stake.”
Quinto has “never felt any pressure” from being part of the Star Trek franchise. “I only felt supported,’ he said, “…and I have only felt like my job is to get to work and be a part of something that people want to watch and want to see. That certainly was the case the first time around and I think it will be more the case this time.”
Star Trek into Darkness is a “bigger experience,” said Quinto. “We shot this movie in 3D and IMAX and I think the story just lends itself to much more of an explosion onto the summer movie schedule scene. I am just really excited to get it out there and share it with people and I don’t feel any particular individual pressure to doing anything other than my job and my job is already done. I shot it in the first half of 2012, so I’ve been done for awhile and now the responsibility is in everybody else’s hands to bring it all to life. J.J. [Abrams] is just a genius and everybody who works around him is incredibly talented at what they do, so I feel like people won’t be disappointed; that is certainly my hope.”
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A new motion poster for Star Trek into Darkness has been released.
The poster features John Harrison looking out over a city, with a voice-over by Benedict Cumberbatch as Harrison.
“You think your world is safe,” says Harrison. “It is an illusion, a comforting lie told to protect you. Enjoy these final moments of peace. For I have returned to have my vengeance.
So shall we begin?”
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An engineering accident throws Benjamin Sisko out of phase with the universe, yet he appears through the years to Jake, who becomes obsessed with retrieving him.
Plot Summary: On a stormy night in New Orleans, the elderly writer Jake Sisko is visited by a young writer named Melanie who wants to know why he gave up his career many years earlier. Jake tells her a story that began when he was a teenager, when an accident on the starship Defiant during a rare inversion of the Bajoran wormhole caused a bolt of energy to discharge from the warp core. The energy dematerialized his father, Captain Benjamin Sisko, whose crew eventually concluded that he must have died. On two later occasions, Sisko appeared to Jake, who was able to summon the scientists of Deep Space Nine. Realizing that Sisko was trapped in subspace, they tried to stabilize his temporal signature but were unable to do so. Though Jake knew that his father might reappear, hostilities with the Klingons forced Starfleet to abandon the station, and Jake went to live on Earth. Though devastated by his father’s loss, he married and became a successful author. When his father appeared once more, making Jake realize that the bond between them kept the father’s life tied to the son’s, Jake gave up writing fiction to study subspace mechanics. Though his wife left him, Jake remained in touch with Dax and Bashir, persuading Captain Nog to take them to the wormhole during another rare inversion to try to retrieve his father. Instead Jake found himself in subspace with Sisko, who told Jake to go live his own life. When Melanie asks whether Jake has returned to writing, Jake gives her a collection of stories he wrote, then explains that he finally knows how to save his father by breaking the connection between the two of them. Melanie realizes that Jake intends to die to accomplish this. At Jake’s request, she leaves before Sisko appears. A devastated Sisko watches as his son commits suicide, though Jake insists that they will share the years they were meant to have together as long as Sisko avoids the energy bolt from the warp core on the Defiant. At the moment the elderly Jake dies, Sisko finds himself in the ship’s engineering section. He pushes himself and the young Jake away from the warp core, saving both himself and his son. Though Jake remembers nothing, Sisko remembers it all.
Analysis: “The Visitor” is a conundrum, a superbly acted, strikingly memorable story that offers emotional character development yet doesn’t hold up very well as science fiction. Apart from the fact that there are too many coincidences – the bond between father and son that’s left as mystical rather than grounded in science, the fact that the girl arrives on the night Jake has planned for years to retrieve his father – it ducks one of the central tenets of Star Trek, which is that no one messes with an established timeline for his or her own benefit. I can excuse the magic that ties Sisko to Jake because it fits in with an ongoing theme of Star Trek, the idea that every life produces reverberations in the lives of others. But that makes it even more troubling that Jake chooses to demolish a universe, to disintegrate a timeline in which he becomes a wonderful writer in part because of the very tragedy he decides to circumvent. The elderly Jake ends up giving advice to a young writer whose life he takes as surely as he takes his own. Perhaps she’ll still be born, but will she become the same person once her mentor has destroyed the version of himself and his writing that she admires? Will Jake’s wife produce the same kind of artwork if she never meets him? The consequences aren’t at the same level as, say, Kirk deciding to save Edith Keeler despite the Nazis in “The City on the Edge of Forever” or Picard deciding to rewrite his youth so he never gets an artificial heart in “Tapestry,” but this is time-tampering nonetheless. There’s no indication that Sisko’s accident wasn’t supposed to happen, that elderly Jake has realized he’s in the “wrong” timeline like Worf in “Parallels.” A few months from now, when I’m expressing my horror that Odo could commit genocide to save the woman he loves in “Children of Time,” I’m going to be thinking about how Jake may have done a similar thing here, for how does he know that his father won’t be the captain who triggers all-out war with the Klingons or the Emissary who keeps Bajor from finding its own path?
These are the sorts of questions that run through my mind now, after having seen the episode many times, when I’m fighting the manipulative tug of the tear-jerking story that’s extremely effective without that broader context. Avery Brooks, Cirroc Lofton, and Tony Todd (who plays adult Jake) all give Emmy-level performances in “The Visitor” though it’s particularly the younger and older Jake who stand out; the scene in sickbay when the boy panics as his father vanishes and there’s nothing he can do, followed by the scene in New Orleans where the man cries in grief and guilt that he didn’t continue to look for his father, both make me end up in tears. Still, the real tragedy of this episode befalls Benjamin Sisko, not Jake, who won’t remember any of what happened. After having lost and learned to let go of his wife, he must watch his son throw his life away, and there’s no way he can help him, no time to offer the sort of advice Jake needs. I wonder whether this glimpse of what happens to someone who can’t let go plays a role in Sisko’s relationship with Kasidy Yates – his willingness to put Jennifer in the past and move on, his acceptance of all that Kasidy is and does even when some of those things horrify him. Jake may be the one who has a way with words, but Benjamin is the Sisko whom I wish would write a book. How does he manage to function as such a steady, predictable presence so much of the time in Starfleet when there’s so much depth of character there – more of an inner life than we ever saw in Kirk or Picard? I’m so sorry that we don’t get to see more of his funeral, particularly that we don’t get to hear Kira’s tribute. Though she’s only in the episode for a few minutes, this is a wonderful outing for Kira, not only because we see her in command – and I say with the same guilt that I feel during “What You Leave Behind” that I just can’t keep myself from loving that idea – but because we get the phenomenal moment in which she agrees to let Jake stay on the station while war is brewing, a scene so dark that we can barely see the actors’ faces, so that all the concern and passion must be conveyed through their voices.
Though Dax is only in the episode for a few minutes as well, this is one of her finest outings. Terry Farrell is often underrated, I think because Dax is so serene and unruffled compared to personalities like Kira’s or Odo’s, yet she’s entirely convincing panicking in sickbay as her old friend vanishes into subspace and she’s quite effective as an aged version of herself, joking with Bashir about his children, offering us a recognizable yet crotchety version of Jadzia. Yet particularly on a rewatch rather than a first viewing of the episode, here’s another example of what troubles me about it. Evidently, in the universe where Sisko disappears, the Dominion War never happens and Dukat never strikes down Jadzia in her prime; she lives to be at least as old as Curzon. I like Ezri and I enjoy the way she shakes up so many characters when she arrives with the symbiont, but it’s impossible for me to think of Jadzia’s survival as a bad thing. When Star Trek creates an alternate timeline, I like to see consequences, not just for a few moments on a personal level, but in terms of the series’ universe. Otherwise, it’s just one more reset button, no matter how moving the storyline. If there had been any moment when Sisko came back to what he discovered here – if it influenced his thinking about disappearing into the Gamma Quadrant in “Children of Time,” if it affected the things he said in “What You Leave Behind” when he spoke to Kasidy knowing that he might never see Jake or the child with whom Kasidy was pregnant – that would make “The Visitor” truly great for me. As it is, despite the excellent performances and the taut, perfectly paced storytelling, it seems like just a little bit of a cheat, an excuse for powerful emotion and empathy for characters who aren’t really there.
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For fans of the TNG episode The Best of Both Worlds, the two-part episode will be appearing in theaters this spring.
NCM Fathom Events and CBS Home Entertainment have teamed up to present the remastered double episode as a feature length presentation.
The event, to be held in select theaters on April 25 at 7 PM, is in honor of the April 30 Blu-ray release of Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Best of Both Worlds.
In addition to the movie, those in attendance will get a peek behind the scenes of The Best of Both Worlds and the Blu-ray.
The expected run time for The Best of Both Worlds is two hours. To buy tickets, head to the link located here.
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Two Star Trek comics will hit stores this May; one featuring the crew from Star Trek into Darkness, and the other featuring Captain Picard and the crew from The Next Generation.
The issues are: Star Trek #21, and Star Trek Classics, Vol. 4: Beginnings.
In Star Trek #21, the action continues right after the events of Star Trek into Darkness, as the crew heads off into new adventures.
Overseen by Roberto Orci, Star Trek #21 was written by Mike Johnson and Ryan Parrot, with art by Erfan Fajar, and a cover by Tim Bradstreet. The issue will be thirty-two pages long and will sell for $3.99.
Next up is Star Trek Classics, Vol. 4: Beginnings. This issue is a reprint of the DC Comics series The Next Generation issues 1-6. In Star Trek Classics, Vol. 4: Beginnings, the earliest voyages of Picard and The Next Generation crew are chronicled. A powerless Q makes an appearance, seeking refuge on the Enterprise; the crew encounters a world where warriors see battle as a child’s game, and another world has “dark secrets that threaten both the ship and crew.”
Written by Mike Carlin, with art by Pablo Marcos, and a cover by Bill Sienkiewicz, Star Trek Classics, Vol. 4: Beginnings will be one-hundred-and-fifty-two pages long and will sell for $19.99.
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Fort Lauderdale resident Johnnie Blade decided to play the Klingon in the middle of a residential intersection, wielding a Klingon Bat’leth.
The man was “wildly swinging” the four-foot long sword and “proudly displaying” it to passing motorists.
“This sword…is known to loyal Star Trek fans as traditional Klingon ‘Bat’leth’ or ‘Sword of Honor,’ said the Broward Sheriff’s Office report on the matter.
Blade was charged with improper exhibition of a dangerous weapon, disorderly intoxication in a public place that caused a disturbance, resisting an officer without violence and drug possession.
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For those in the Los Angeles area, a Star Trek tribute art show will open this Saturday, and a Star Trek actor will be in attendance.
The Q Pop Shop “Beam Me Up: Star Trek Art Show” will feature art from every Trek series and movie.
Over eighty artists will participate in the art show and “share their unique takes on the iconic characters.” The free show will take place at the QPop Gallery, located at 128 Astronaut E S Onizuka Street in Los Angeles.
The opening reception will take place from 7 to 10 PM on Saturday, February 16. Rene Auberjonois will be at the event, and attendees are encouraged to attend in costume, as there will be a costume contest with prizes. Star Trek tunes will be provided by Tune in Tokyo and for those who will arrive hungry, a Grilled Cheese Truck will be selling sandwiches.
The Star Trek Art Show will run from February 16 through March 3 at the QPop Gallery.
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Zoë Saldana is to be one of the presenters at this month’s 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
The Spirit Awards “celebrates artist-driven filmmaking and recognizes the finest achievements of today’s independent filmmakers.”
The 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards will be hosted by Andy Samberg. Saldana will join Matthew McConaughey, Jeremy Renner, Bryan Cranston, Dermot Mulroney, Kerry Washington, Channing Tatum, Kyle MacLachlan, Zachary Booth, Rashida Jones and others who will present the awards at the ceremony.
The 28th annual awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, February 23 in Santa Monica, California and will air on the Independent Film Channel at 10 PM that evening.
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A day after Internet users were asked to help name the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto, one of William Shatner‘s two suggestions has been added to the list of twelve put forth by the discoverers of those two moons.
The two tiny moons, only fifteen to twenty miles across each, were discovered in 2011 and 2012 and carry the labels P4 and P5.
Originally, twelve potential names were offered to the public, and the names suggested were those of Greek or Roman mythological figures “with a connection to the underground.” The names are: Acheron, Alecto, Cerberus, Erebus, Eurydice, Heracles, Hypnos, Lethe, Obol, Orpheus, Persephone and Styx.
But Shatner had an idea. “So what do you think of the idea of naming the two moons of Pluto ‘Vulcan’ and “Romulus?’” he asked his Twitter readers. “You have mythology, pos and neg.”
The leader of one of the discovery teams, Mark Showalter, loved the idea, although one of the suggestions had to be ruled out. “We have made our first addition to the ballot,” he said. “Vulcan is the Roman god of lava and smoke, and the nephew of Pluto. (Any connection to the Star Trek TV series is purely coincidental, although we can be sure that Gene Roddenberry read the classics.) Thanks to William Shatner for the suggestion!
“Mr. Shatner’s second suggestion, Romulus, has a bit of a problem because it is already the name of a moon. Romulus, along with his brother Remus, are the names of the moons of the asteroid 87 Silvia. They were discovered by a team led by my good colleague Franck Marchis, now a senior scientist at the SETI Institute.”
To vote for the new names of P4 and P5, head to the link located here.
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A new line of Star Trek collectibles will be released during the second quarter of 2013.
The collectibles, introduced by QMx, will include plushes, PVC figures, and other novelties.
The PVC figures will include a Kirk, Spock and a Uhura figure.
Four-and-a-half inches tall, each figure is made of high-quality PVC and includes a word bubble and a marker so that quotes or “sound effects” can be added.
The Trek Q-Pop figures will sell for $19.95 each. Those interested in ordering any of the Q-pops, can sign up for a waiting list, with those on the list getting the first chance to preorder the figures in the second quarter of 2013.
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William Shatner recently gave his tongue-in-cheek opinion regarding the news that J.J. Abrams will be directing Star Wars.
“I was just curious what you thought about J.J. Abrams taking Star Trek and Star Wars and if there’s a homogenization of sci-fi or if you think there’s enough for everyone,” the actor was asked.
“No, he’s being a pig,” said Shatner. “I mean he’s collecting the two franchises and holding them close to his vest. And he’s probably the most talented director of that ilk we have. But, he’s gone too far this time.
“I think of him as a buddy of mine; I’ve taken him out for sushi; I think it’s time for J.J. and I to have another sushi and let me put him straight about two of the largest franchises, and not employing me in either one of them. I think he’s just foolhardy.”
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Star Trek‘s John Cho and wife Kerri Higuchi welcomed their second child recently, a little girl.
Cho and Higuchi were married in 2006, and had a son, Kage, in 2008.
No word yet on the name for the new baby.
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Star Trek author Peter David has finally returned home after suffering a stroke at the end of last year.
David, who was on vacation when the stroke happened, had been undergoing rehab in Jacksonville, Florida.
The stroke affected David’s right side, and caused double vision. David and his wife have been updating friends, family and fans through the ordeal.
Due to return home to Long Island later this week, David’s progress was so good that he was released early from the Jacksonville rehab facility, and in spite of the flight cancellations due to the recent New England Nor’easter, made it back home.
“God knows it wasn’t easy,” said David. “We had to deal with a plethora of canceled flights due to the storm. Fortunately enough we had the luck and resources to make it home yesterday afternoon a mere one hour behind our scheduled flight.
“It is truly remarkable to be back home again. I will never forget the people like Ali and Sarah who helped rebuild my body in Florida so that I can at least walk somewhat. Now it’s up to me to continue that work over the next months in order to fully recapture what my body could do before.”
TrekToday wishes the David family all the best. For those wishing to help the family financially by purchasing David’s books, details on how to do so can be found here.
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At the annual Toy Fair in New York City, Hasbro showed some new Star Trek into Darkness KRE-O toy sets.
The toy sets include the USS Enterprise, A Klingon Bird-of-Prey, The Spock Volcano Mission set, a “transporter trouble” set, “micro builds” ships, and Star Trek character figure packs.
The USS Enterprise opens up and figures can fit into the ship on the bridge. One photo features Kirk, Spock, McCoy and two villains. The ship has nacelles that light up and photon torpedoes.
The ships set includes four ships (each sold separately); a Klingon battlecruiser, the Jellyfish from Star Trek (2009), the USS Kelvin and the USS Enterprise.
Figures in the character figure packs (sold separately) include: Nero, a Gorn, Keenser, a Klingon and two aliens.
The KRE-O sets will debut at the end of April and prices will range from $2.99 for the figure packs, to $69.99 for the USS Enterprise.
More photos can be found at the two referring sites.
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As Worf arrives on temporary assignment to Deep Space Nine, the Klingons and the Federation come into conflict over the Dominion menace.
Plot Summary: General Martok arrives with a fleet of Klingon ships, causing chaos for Starfleet and for DS9 as the Klingons cause trouble on the Promenade, particularly Martok’s son Drex, who violently attacks Garak. The Klingons stop Kasidy Yates’ freighter from leaving the station, insisting that it must be inspected for hidden Founders. Sisko takes the Defiant to defend Bajoran space from Klingon intrusion, but Martok executes the Klingon who lets Yates through. Sisko summons Worf, who has been at a monastery and is considering leaving Starfleet following the destruction of the Enterprise. Worf fights with Drex to get Martok’s attention, but since Martok will not explain why the Klingons are there, Worf instead gets an old friend drunk and learns that the Klingons are planning to invade Cardassia, whose recent coup they believe to have been engineered by changelings. Sisko passes this information on to his senior staff, making sure Garak is there to measure him for a suit at the time. The Federation refuses to intervene in the preemptive strike because of the peace treaty with the Klingons, but Worf believes that this is only the beginning of Gowron’s plans to expand the Klingon Empire, using the Dominion as an excuse. While Garak alerts Dukat to the coming invasion, Wprf meets with Gowron, who invites Worf to prove his friendship by joining the invasion force. When both Worf and the Federation condemn the attack, the Klingons expel the Federation ambassador and break the Khitomer Accords, ending decades of peace. Shamed by his own people, Worf tries to resign from Starfleet and leave the region, but Sisko insists that he remain for the duration of the crisis.
Unfazed by rumors of changelings on Cardassia, Sisko contacts Dukat and offers to escort Cardassia’s new civilian government to safety if Dukat can get them off the planet. Leaving Kira in command of the station, Sisko then takes the Defiant to rendezvous with Dukat, encountering hostile Klingon vessels on the way. Both Sisko and Worf are distressed to have to engage the Klingons in a battle that damages the Defiant’s cloaking device. After they successfully rescue the Cardassians, they return to the station with Klingon ships in pursuit while Bashir tests the Cardassians to determine whether they are, in fact, Founders. The tests are negative, but Martok demands the surrender of the Cardassians nonetheless, since Gowron believes the Alpha Quadrant will be safer if Klingons control Cardassian space. The Klingons threaten to attack the station, but are unprepared for the fortifications installed to defend against a possible Dominion attack. Klingons manage to board the station, but Odo’s security forces are able to contain them, and as Starfleet reinforcements arrive, Sisko is able to persuade Martok that a war among the Federation, Klingons and Cardassians will leave the Alpha Quadrant far more vulnerable to a Dominion attack. Gowron agrees to turn his ships around, but warns Sisko that the Klingons will never forgive this betrayal. Worf still intends to leave Starfleet, but Sisko persuades him to stay, since the only way to recover from past griefs is to face them. The crew welcomes Worf warmly, but their relief is tempered by the news that the Klingons are refusing to give up the Cardassian colonies they have taken over, meaning that the conflict is far from over.
Analysis: I remember that when “The Way of the Warrior” first aired, I had grave concerns about Worf as a permanent character on Deep Space Nine. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Worf on The Next Generation, but I was afraid that his presence would take time away from DS9 regulars whom I adored, further cut into Odo’s role on the station since Eddington and Worf are both Starfleet-trained to do similar jobs, and amp up the macho factor of a series where that had never been a priority. As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about; having Worf around freed up Odo and Eddington for different roles entirely, and the approach to gender roles and relationships on DS9 remains the most sophisticated of any of the Star Treks, far more so than Voyager‘s with its woman captain. I was annoyed at the time that Kira and Dax met Worf in the most stereotypically girly of ways, coming off the holodeck in Renfaire fantasy outfits, but there’s almost nothing that’s stereotypical beyond the very superficial trappings played up by the producers for what they’ve always believed is Star Trek’s core audience, namely young white men, despite the fact that many of the loudest voices in the fandom are neither white nor male and the demographics have been all over the place since the geezers demanded that Star Trek be brought back years after it was canceled. When it aired, DS9 was the only show on television that had two black men and two military-trained women, not just as the main characters, but in positions of power over everyone else on the show. It was the first time we really saw Roddenberry’s vision of a universe where race and gender were irrelevant not just in what the characters said but in who the characters were. If I was annoyed at one time by pandering to the dream demographics by having Dax and Kira in tight outfits and Worf and Sisko kicking butt with bat’leths, I’ve long ago realized that what made this show great was so much bigger than such petty things.
As a season opener, this is one of the finest Star Trek has ever offered, better paced and more dramatic than either the Bajoran arc that opened the second season or the Dominion story that opened the third. The character work isn’t as deep, but in retrospect I guess Worf and his angst has to be introduced all over again in case there’s a DS9 audience that didn’t stick with TNG, particularly Generations and the fate of Picard’s ship. It’s obvious in that film that Worf and Troi are no longer a couple, and, at the end of the final season, that Worf is once again questioning his loyalty to Starfleet versus his human and Klingon families. I was a little (okay, a lot) tired of all the Klingon stuff by the end of that series, but they do offer sustained conflict that doesn’t revolve around spatial anomalies or technobabble, which is a good thing for the franchise as a whole, and they offer potential new sources of stories involving the Bajorans, Cardassians, and Dominion as well, though I’m mystified how the Klingons think they’re going to keep any of their enemies down primarily with bat’leths and daggers. Sisko and Worf make entertaining doppelgangers – they have wonderful gravelly voices, they scowl better than anyone else in the universe, they’ve both suffered painful, alienating personal losses, yet their approaches to dealing with Starfleet members and aliens alike is quite different and although Worf jumps high into the command structure – I think he’s behind only Kira and Dax on the station and behind only Sisko on the Defiant – command is never his priority or his strength. Sisko is clearly still reveling in his promotion and it’s lovely to see his relationship with Kasidy Yates progressing, though there’s something creepy about their interactions here (all season I kept expecting her to turn out to be a shapeshifter, since she doesn’t manage to have that dinner with Sisko; her real secret turned out to be even more interesting).
Unfortunately Kira and Odo don’t get a lot to do even in such a long episode, not being experts on Klingons. Apart from the line about how strange she feels saving Cardassia, Kira has few memorable moments; while I like that idea of her and O’Brien in charge of the station while the kids are away, we don’t get to see them interact much, and although I keep complaining about the whole crew flying off all the time, for once I wished she was on the Defiant so we could be reminded that she’s as good a strategist as Worf. Strategy may be what Worf’s supposed to be for, but we must hear the word “honor” twenty times, and it reminds me how very bored I was of what had become the Klingon cliches by the end of The Next Generation, how relieved I was when Worf and Troi got together because it gave him something else to talk about. Since Dax is an expert on Klingon culture, it’s only too predictable that they’ll be discussing Klingon battles and singing battle songs before too long (and that she’ll be his dream girl). Worf coming in as an outsider serves as a reminder that the disparate personalities of DS9 now work as close friends, even family, sharing dinner parties as well as work problems, and it’s hard to see how Worf is going to fit in with someone like Quark, who’s at his best explaining to Odo that everyone on his Ferengi ship thought he was a good critic, then getting hysterical listening to Odo read the note about how Rom had “borrowed” his disruptor parts. Bashir and Odo have a nice moment too, reflecting on whether Odo’s death at the hands of a warrior would be a good subject for a Klingon opera. And the station’s other perpetual outsider, Garak – who claims he learned Klingon doing alterations – gets invited to serve as the ultimate insider, then to make contact with his old enemy Dukat, whose mocking comments about how Garak will be stuck making women’s dresses without an Obsidian Order fail to dampen Garak’s exultation at knowing something Dukat doesn’t.
Deep Space Nine always ran the risk of stagnation, since it’s set on a space station and doesn’t have a new world to explore each week. “The Way of the Warrior” demonstrates that the producers intend to keep things lively, right from the new opening credits crowded with new ships, new names, and new jazzed-up music and improved hairdos (or lack thereof) for much of the cast. It’s also becoming apparent that the large guest cast is here to stay, which is great for story arcs – since it’s apparent that Bajor isn’t going to be the only one, it’s all to the good that there’s a wider view of the quadrant and the universe – but larger casts mean juggling the main characters so that they don’t always get as much to do, meaning less of an emphasis on character development. Then again, sustained conflict with more than one enemy means that paranoia and tension will be better sustained, particularly with the possibility that anyone, anywhere may be a Founder instead of who he or she seems. And if I’m ambivalent about the station turning into the Death Star at battle stations, I also know that we will never see it happen all that often.
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George Takei will be part of the Supah Ninjas team, beginning this season.
Supah Ninjahs is the story of a boy who discovers that he comes from a long line of ninjas, and with his best friend enters the world of crime-fighting.
Takei will be playing two roles on the show; a dead-ninja-turned-hologram, and his own evil twin. “…I get to be the good me — and I have to search hard, but I manage to find the evil in George Takei,” said Takei. “In an upcoming episode, the evil me and the good me confront each other in a terrific swordfight.”
Playing the role is tiring for the seventy-five-year old Takei, and a swordfight scene wore him out. “George Takei can be very exhausting,” said Takei. “When I finished that scene, I was completely spent. I couldn’t do anything but take a shower and eat a room service meal and go to bed.”
But Takei enjoys working on Supah Ninjas. “Well,’ it’s a ‘supah’ show,” he said, “and I’m having a good time working on it.”
The second season of Supah Ninjas will air on Nickelodeon beginning tomorrow at 8:30 PM.
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Fans have been speculating as to the identity of the villain played by Benedict Cumberbatch in Star Trek into Darkness, and a recent Entertainment Weekly photo description will surely start tongues wagging again.
The magazine recently posted several set photos as well as two magazine covers featuring Chris Pine, Cumberbatch and Zachary Quinto, and the original cover description for one gave the name of the villain.
“VOYAGE INTO THE NEW STAR TREK KIRK & KHAN,” said the caption for the cover featuring Pine and Cumberbatch.
The description was quickly removed, but not before eagle-eyed fans saw it (and saved it) and then the speculation began yet again.
The description may well be a mistake, possibly the result of looking up Cumberbatch on IMDB which has the actor playing Khan, but many fans are wondering if “John Harrison” will be revealed to be Khan, and so this caption will just pour gasoline on those speculative fires. Of course, given that it’s an alternate Trek world, perhaps Harrison is the leader of the genetic supermen, not Khan.
Fans will know for sure in May when Star Trek into Darkness debuts.
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T-shirts featuring the original series art of Juan Ortiz are now available.
The shirts include art based on Day of the Dove, Is There in Truth No Beauty?, Amok Time, and Operation: Annihilate.
The 100% cotton shirts come in men’s sizes ranging in size from small to XXXL. Each shirt will sell for $25.00.
Other shirts available include: Dagger of the Mind, The City on the Edge of Forever, The Ultimate Computer, The Way to Eden, Charlie X, The Balance of Terror, And the Children Shall Lead, Wink of an Eye, The Alternative Factor, Catspaw, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, The Trouble With Tribbles, The Naked Time, A Taste of Armageddon, Spectre of the Gun, and Arena.
To order the shirts, head to the link located here.
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Following the recent original series soundtrack release, La-La Land Records has turned its attention to another Trek series.
Next week, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Collection will be released.
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Collection features five hours of music from all seven seasons of Deep Space Nine. The music was composed by Dennis McCarthy, Jay Chattaway, John Debney, Richard Bell, Gregory Smith and Paul Baillargeon.
The four discs will contain:
- Disc 1: Music by McCarthy including the main title score
- Disc 2: Music by Chattaway
- Disc 3: Music by Debney, Bell, Smith and Baillargeon
- Disc 4 The Lost Album. Material prepared for a never-released soundtrack.
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Collection, produced by Ford A. Thaxton, Mark Banning, and Lukas Kendall, and mastered by James Nelson, includes a thirty-six page booklet of liner notes written by Jeff Bond.
Only three thousand of the limited-edition 4-CD soundtrack set will be sold and the set will sell for $49.98. To order, beginning today at 4 PM EST, head to the link located here.
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Star Trek‘s J.J. Abrams and Valve Corp President and Co-Founder Gabe Newell hope to adapt the Half-Life and Portal games into movies.
The duo announced their plans at the D.I.C.E. conference recently held in Las Vegas.
“In many cases, games are better at telling stories than movies,” said Abrams, “with gamers involved in steering the action, rather than acting as a passive viewer.”
For example, explained Abrams, Portal‘s “slow reveal of its characters and plot” is an innovative way to “build a mystery.” “You start Portal with no idea why you’re there. The whole game is about figuring out the mystery and what’s going on. The more you play, the more you learn, the more you felt.”
The Half-Life and Portal projects are in early development through Abrams’ Bad Robot and Newell’s Valve.
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Star Trek‘s William Shatner shared a fifteen-minute phone conversation with astronaut Chris Hadfield, who is currently aboard the International Space Station.
The conversation between the pair focused on the future of the American space program.
“You’re in the International Space Station,” said Shatner, “but you had to get there in a Russian vehicle. Are we, as America, fallen behind or is this just a pause in our space program?”
“It went from Mercury, to Gemini, to Apollo, to shuttle, with many, many lulls in-between,” said Hadfield. “…We’re just right now in between vehicles, much as we were after Mercury, after Gemini, after Apollo, we’re just in the after shuttle era now. But fortunately, because of international cooperation, we’re not grounded.”
Other topics included the risks of going to space, and Hadfield admitted that risk is a necessary part of life. “To accomplish anything worthwhile in life, it’s going to take risk. Even if you stay at home and sit at your kitchen table, eventually the ceiling will fall. There’ll be a hurricane or tornado. You can’t live a worthwhile life without risk.”
Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD Release
in Trek News
Posted
For those who never got around to purchasing the original Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD release, the series is being offered again, with new packaging.
The first two seasons of TNG will go on sale exclusively at Amazon beginning March 12, with the rest of the seasons becoming available on April 16.
The new release features the exact same content, including bonus material, as the previous full-season releases.
Seasons One and Two will sell for $35.00, and subsequent seasons will sell for $47.00 each.
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