Star Trek: It's out there.

There's a certain threshold of reality that has been passed now the people have actually SEEN Star Trek. And I CAN'T STAAAAAND IT!

In case you missed it: Here.

Yes. ALL of the spoilers are out now. Hide!

Old guys... IN SPACE

Not that I post here anymore, but I missed Shatner's birthday on Sunday. And Nimoy's was yesterday! Kirk and Spock are SEVENTY-EIGHT! Wow. So... They were younger than I am when they started making Star Trek. Eeesh.

Alexander Courage 1919-2008

Very sad news.

One of my favorite "Sandy" Courage stories (also a good Jerry Goldsmith story) was when Goldsmith wrote Star Trek: The Motion Picture he was told that he didn't have to use the original theme at all (and he didn't want to). As the release date got close the Powers (whether this was Robert Wise or not, I don't know) decided that it ought to be in there SOMEWHERE. As it happened the orchestrator for TMP was... Alexander Courage! So Goldsmith threw it over to him and he used as the music for the Captain's logs. (One of the most charming decisions in that film. Long on gorgeous, a little short on charm.) As Goldsmith tells it, he learned his lesson. He opened every Trek film he composed afterwards with Courage's theme.

Jeff Bond (author of the Music of Star Trek) has more to say: http://trekmovie.com/2008/05/28/star-trek-composer-alexander-courage-dead-at-88/

Check out the documentary on Courage hosted by John Williams!

Excuse me, I need to go listen to The Cage and Superman IV.

Godspeed, Mr. Courage.

God speed, Mr. Spock

Well, however the movie turns out, this just gets the blood pumping.

It's certainly not what I was expecting to see. But it looks cool. And it still feels like we'll boldly go. I've decided I don't give a hang what they do, so long as it feels as fun as old-school Trek. Go, J.J., go!

Star Trek: Of Gods and Men

Ahhhh, no Firefly to write today. I know, I have Trash, The Message, and Heart of Gold (the REAL last episode of Firefly) to finish. To say nothing of Serenity. Next week maybe. I don't even have those episodes on my iPod and I don't have them near as committed to memory.

ANYway, tomorrow is the BIG DAY. Since I was a small child I have been working as Digital Effects Supervisor on the fan-film Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. (Which I talked about HERE.) Well, ok, since summer of 2006. It SEEMS like since I was a small child. Our director insists it isn't a fan film, and who am I to argue? He's Tuvok. And he was in Die Hard 4.

We premier tomorrow with Act 1 of 3. Go look! We've got the big names, Walter Koenig (when's HE going to be on Heroes?), Nichelle Nichols, Alan (CAMERON!) Ruck, and a host of others.

An unflattering shot of both me AND Walter Koenig!

Suffice it to say, for the effects work we've been doing we're a little on the underfunded side. Which is to say, working for THE LOVE of it. (So very very true!) So our team is a bit rag-tag when it comes to tool sets. I like to think of us as a "multi-disciplined organization". We're working in Lightwave, 3ds Max, Particle Illusion, After Effects, and of course Blender. And we've managed to get it all to work together. AND have jobs, loved ones, and lives. It's been a hoot working with these folks. (Still is. We're not quite done yet.)

I've gotten to visit a movie set with "real" Trek actors, argue faith vs. works with Janice Rand, make faithful recreations of famous Trek ships as well as come up with my own new designs, create full FX sequences from start to finish, and work on scenes that had many hands all working together. I'll have stories and pictures up over the next couple of months. But I'd like to take a moment to gush about my fellow OGAM FX wizards.

Peter Christian, Chris Dawson, Tim Russ, ME!

Peter Christian: Husband, father, really big nerd. Our Associate Producer, Art Director, Producer Handler (I SO kid!), man of many hats. A man who makes Star Trek costumes so good he has had to turn business away. The assembler of this lunatic crew. And he occasionally does FX. (I'll rant about some of his Act III stuff when we get there.)

Chris Dawson: Our Yoda. Heck, MY Yoda. He's our full-time professional on the team. His credits include Titanic, Apollo 13, The Guardian, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Armageddon. Never let him forget that last one. Actually has worked with CAMERAS and MODELS. To say that he keeps us honest is an understatement. I know my own work on this film has been a hundred times better because I had Chris looking over my shoulder.

Roland Baron: Model maker and texturing lunatic. One of the great blessings of this project coming to a close is that I'm getting to see some of his other work show up on the message boards again. Responsible for my very favorite-est shot of our hero ship in the whole production.

Wil Jaspers: Creator of our hero ship. Also our great BLOWER UP OF STUFF. He was given the task of learning how to run rings around Particle Illusion for all of the rather ambitious destruction that we had planned. It seems he doubles his ability every day. I'd be interested to see what would have happened if we had been on this film for another year. (Most likely divorce and group suicide pacts, but that's another story.)

Henry Gibbens: Sadly left us before his time. (He's fine, he just had to get back to real life.) The guy who knew how to do all of the stuff that WASN'T in outer space. AND the stuff that was IN outer space. Lightwave fellow. Soundtrack collector (his library way outstrips mine). For the first big chunk of our production, the guy who figured out how to make all of my animation actually transfer to somewhere it could get rendered. We miss you, Henry.

Scott Nakada: Maker of props, drawer of storyboards, lover of Okudagrams. The only person on our team who actually knew what an Omega Particle is.



Scott making things look cool.

Matt Boardman: The new kid. In more ways than one. The only person on our team who wasn't alive for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He IS The Next Generation. I think we blew up every ship he ever animated. Nothing personal.

So assuming we don't have our servers crash tomorrow, go check us out. And if we do, be patient, they'll be back up soon!

Set Course for Talos IV

Yowza! I know what I'm doing THIS night. It's Remastered, so I won't get to see the REAL Enterprise on the big screen, but this will still be a hoot.

And those "out the window" shots at the Starbase are outstanding.

For a little more conservatism in your Trek...

National Review has FINALLY done their Star Trek weekend. Oh my, that's a lot to read... Guess I'll start with Lileks. (You know, I'm supposed to be MAKING Star Trek tonight, not reading about it.)

Everthing New is Old

Yikes!

20 years....



Unlike Firefly, THIS I watched on opening night. Until I was in college without a TV I never missed an episode. I own all seven seasons on DVD as well as all four movies.

Good job, guys.

Gorey Trek!

I love it when my favorite things come together. You know, bright copper kettles mixed with warm woolen mittens, like that?

Well here's a well meaning lunatic doing Star Trek Edward Gorey style!

"...altercation with some Klingons" might be my favorite.

Spock!

Well, it's official. (It was a day or two ago, I think.) The Heroes guy is Mr. Spock in the new trek movie. Annnnnd they have a new poster. They're calling the movie Star Trek. Catchy name.

The new poster is cool. But not as cool as last year's teaser. And not nearly as cool as the iCorder.

(BTW, the San Diego Comicon is this weekend, so there will be News for Nerds coming out of our ears. There's a picture of Ms. Ravenwood in Indiana Jones and the Unreasonable Expectaions, fer instance. Go to the Indy site.)

Ee Pleb Nista!

Happy Fourth of July everyone! (July 4th, 1776 just in case anyone wasn't paying attention. I'll refer you back to December 7th for the "You HAVE to know this date" dates.") What we don't usually hear about is that the whole blamed country just about fell apart over the next ten years. Then they put it all back together again.

And then we invented Star Trek! (That's the short version.)

OLD!

You know, it's bad enough that Star Wars is turning 30 this year (last week was the 10th anniversary of the SPECIAL EDITIONS, aka The Madness Begins), but Star Trek: The Next Generation turns TWENTY this year. You know? The NEW guys? Hand me my walker, Dr. McCoy. Oh, right, he's dead, Jim.

"There IS no third planet!"

Duel of the Nerds

This weekend will see not ONE re-do of Star Trek's The Doomsday Machine (aka The Cornucopia of DOOM) but TWO. Somewhere on your local dial (Sunday at 3pm here) will be the official CBS/Paramount Star Trek: Remastered. This will have startling new FX and be missing 10-15 unnecessary minutes (*cough*). (The full version will be on DVD in 2008.)

Trailer.
Pictures.

In the competing corner will be FX genius Darren Dochterman. Darren, in many people's minds, kind of got the ball rolling on the whole "remastered" idea by pitching the idea of updated FX with a demo reel of The Doomsday Machine. Then CBS went with another team. Well now Darren is doing the "put up or shut up" routine by getting his complete version posted before the CBS one airs. (A much more concise and accurate version of these events is on his page.)

Here's Darren's trailer.

It'll be a good weekend.

(CBS' "Journey to Babel" was pretty darn good last week. Butchered for time, but that's not the FX team's fault.)

Where Snow Man Has Gone Before

You've done this. Admit it.

Surak - More Modeling

Looking good, if I do say. Juuuuust about ready for texturing. Thanks to the Rhino for reference.

TMP Shuttle Progress

Some further work on the Surak (or the T'Mas as I'll most likely name it). Shuttle is done (I may go back and redo some of the underside before texturing) so I'm now finishing the sled itself. All textures are temporary.

Finding a Needle in a Haystack Would Be Child's Play

Gadzooks! I just found out that the shuttlecraft Galileo is at CAK (Canton / Akron airport) being restored (again)! The poor girl has had a rough life.

- The shuttle was purchased for $3,000 by a Lynne Miller and she had a special trailer built to haul it. It was brought to the Akron airdock at first and later housed in a hangar in the Akron Canton airport.

- Extensive work needed to be done on the shuttecraft, it is not clear if it was ever finished. It was expensive and time consuming. Time was spent fundraising and restoring.

- The current owner of the Galileo has asked to remain private for the time being.

- As of December 2005, Galileo is 'docked' in Ohio, in safe hands, and almost fully restored.

New Voyages: To Serve All of My Days - Review

No BSG this week, and I can't get my Bond review to make sense, so here we are. I watched the newest episode of New Voyages last night. For those of you that haven't followed, New Voyages is a fan production of Star Trek. They say that they are making Trek's "fourth season". This is their third episode. And they are swinging for the back fence with this one. Having D.C. Fontana as a writer doesn't hurt.

The first two eps were not good. The first I couldn't even get through, the second was cobbled together fanboy junk. "So, DUDE! What if the DOOMSDAY MACHINE could TIME TRAVEL, and it goes back and BLOWS UP the ENTERPRISE when PIKE was captain, so they have to back the GUARDIAN OF FOREVER, and they met MATT DECKER in the TWENTIETH CENTURY and then you have Kirk AND Pike and then the MOVIE ENTERPRISE shows up?! Whooooooaaaaah!" I didn't make any of that up.

So this past week they put out their latest. Guest starring Walter "Chekov" Koenig. I gotta say, I enjoyed it tremendously. I may watch it again. I think Exeter (another, and until now, better fan production) probably re-captures the overall look of the original show a little more faithfully, but this really feels like where Phase II (the proposed second TV series they were going to make in 1976 that turned into Star Trek: The Motion Picture) might have gone (given an unlimited FX budget at the time).

There were some details to the models I wasn't crazy about (gridlines), but I thought the choreography was terrific. The flippy-dippy space fights of the past episodes are gone. (It was like Wiley Coyote on crack.) The nacelle caps looked awesome. (This is a big deal to Original Series nerds. There are entire web pages devoted to this effect. This has been a huge sticking point on the new "remastered" Trek that CBS is doing. We're nerds. It's what we do.) They're mostly TOS, but also kind of their own look. Some of it looks a little video-gamey, but it's really nice video-gamey. And that stupid little shuttlepod (curse you, Next Generation!) isn't going to look good anywhere.

I felt the cinematography was a great improvement over past episodes. Some might not like the hand held look, but it's been a TV staple for over ten years now. They certainly didn't go for Firefly / BSG. It didn't feel like big screen, but it didn't feel quite like video either. The widescreen format serves them well.

This Chekov guy was outstanding (the young one). He's not only got his impression down pat, he's actually got charm and wit and warmth. As for Walter Koenig, I gain new respect for him every time I see him get to do something with some teeth. I'm a little sad that they seem to be backpedaling from the ending (must... not... spoil!). The original interviews I read said that NV was the fourth season of Trek and they were writing as if the movies and TNG hadn't necesarily happened. But they've backed off of this a bit.

Cawley (Kirk) is starting to get it. He's almost there. But not quite. (I've since found out that not only is he an Elvis impersonator in his day job, he's one of the leading Elvii in the world! He's one of three guys that they actually let perform at Graceland.) He needs to stop replicating Shatner's tics and start looking at what he actually DID. Shatner was both happier and more serious. He didn't always have his "FIRE!" face on. Cawley is almost to the point of being able to do the quiet stuff. The last scene with Chekov was actually touching. It would be great to see him improve more.

Spock needs to figure out that he's Spock. Not Data. Spock was cranky. He scowled a lot. Nobody ever sems to get the weight that Spock had. I don't know the history of this actor and I hate to throw stones, but you get the idea he's there because he knows someone (or contributed money). Ok, that's pretty heartless, but there it is.

McCoy - Speaking of "who does this guy know"... Wow. This guy is just taking up space. Sorry.

Scotty - Might almost have a character if he can figure out if he wants to do his own thing or be Doohan. Not so good this time out though.

One of the most interesting things about this story is that they suggest that the Federation has an ECONOMY. And it might be harmful to some and benneficial to others! Gene must be spinning in his grave- er, orbit.

I'm still not NV's biggest fan, but this was pretty darn good. The two marks of highest praise I can give this ep: I meant to watch one act last night and watched the whole thing, and it made me excited about watching Star Trek again. That's saying something. I think NV is finally in the same league as Exeter. Now both of them need to get even better. (Boy, I say that like THAT'S easy.)

Oh, speaking of which, the trailer for the fan film I'M working on is up. It rambles, but it actually has some (unfinished) stuff that I did. The Enterprise stuff was filmed on the New Voyages sets and the NV actors that play Kirk and Spock make cameos.

So say we all. (Oh, that's the other one, isn't it?)

Doug Drexler

TrekPlace has a cool interview with Doug Drexler. (No, Trek and Cool are not polar opposites.) He's an old-timer fanboy from the 70's that made it to the big. He worked on most (all?) modern Trek, and now he's on BSG. A couple of highlights:

Tyler: How did you become involved with the Star Trek Giant Poster Book?

Drexler: Ron Barlow and I ran a strange little store, on the corner of 53rd and Third, in Manhattan. It was called "The Federation Trading Post." It was a Star Trek store at a time when there was no Star Trek, and precious little science fiction.

So it's very possible that we met him. The whole fam drove up to New York from Connecticut one day for probably about $2.00 and bucket of peanut butter sandwiches. My aunt wanted to see the U.N. and I (all of seven years old) wanted to see the World Trade Center. I tell her I can still go see the U.N. Anyway, we bought my first Enterprise model kit there.

Drexler: After that I sketched Star Trek, wrote Star Trek and built Star Trek. The most infamous thing my father ever said to me was, "If you spent half the time on your school work, that you spend on that TV show, you'd be ok!" I tease him about that now -- he loves it.

Heh. That sounds familiar. Well, the first part does...

The Often Discovered Country

"Death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns" unless you're on Star Trek, then we can't get rid of you!

This has been making the rounds for a few weeks now, but I just watched it. It's not exactly X-Men 3 (where we got to see a much younger Patirck Stewart and Ian McKellen), but then again remember when Forrest Gump was cutting edge? And then two years later Deep Space Nine did them one better on a TV bugdet? I keep saying, we'll see all of these people again in the 21 century. There aren't any movie stars that can replace Harrison Ford (including Harrison Ford). So let's make new movies with Ford '81 (2.0). (What we REALLY need is a Lucas '77. But I may have mentioned this before... Heh - Celebrity Death Match: THX-1139 Lucas vs. Attack of the Clones Lucas. Huzzah!)