Star Trek

[Valka]

Fake Trek as in nuTrek?

Actually, some of the elements of this building remind me of some of the cutesy gadgets you can buy on ThinkGeek. In other words, I was thinking about the Star Trek pizza cutter, the Star Trek bottle opener, and so on.

Junky, knickknacky stuff, in other words.

[Buster's Uncle]

I was using "Fake Star Track" to refer to NextGen, ect., for twenty years before JarJar came  along and relieved himself all over my childhood.

That's The Abomination in my personal terminology.


It's given me a new appreciation for Brannon Braga and his little fans.  Seriously, it has.

I actually think they should do that Titan show people talk about as a cartoon.  I look at interviews on Youtube that Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis have given together and think "They should play Riker and Troi as themselves.  Riker has gotten to being a laid-back, charming ex-prettyboy in his middle age, and Troi turned into her mother."  IRL, completely unlike Riker and Troi on the screen thus far, they have a lot of chemistry.  And both being terrible actors, they might do a lot better playing people more like their real selves.  In both cases, if you assume that Riker was always concealing a massive lack of self-confidence (and that would explain a great deal about him, played badly all those years by a man who freely says "I'm not even the best actor in my own house") it's a reasonable extrapolation of who they might have become over the years.  Sirtis is a pill IRL, and playing Riker as Frakes, privately feeling like a fraud not up to the legacy of the Great Master he studied under -Picard/Stewart- would give the character some dramatic dept.

Do it as a cartoon because it's cheaper, and they haven't aged all that well.  Wil Wheaton is available, I betcha.

[Valka]

Gah.

I've watched a few of Wil Wheaton's gaming shows and a video where both he and Neil deGrasse Tyson were on a panel with some other people. I don't actually mind him; he's much more articulate as himself and nowhere near as annoying as Wesley.

I'd still watch Patrick Stewart read the phone book. I wouldn't pay money, mind, but I'd watch him do it.

The rest of the TNG cast can just fade into obscurity.

There's a thread over at TrekBBS asking if people miss Data. There are actually people there who want an Abrams-style TNG reboot.

Thank goodness it's going to take me YEARS to catch up with all my Star Trek reading that I've got now, never mind future stuff.

That said, I'm like the rest of the Star Trek Continues fans, counting down the days until the new episode is posted...

[Buster's Uncle]

Total agreement on that last.

[Buster's Uncle]

The fundamental failure of NextGen, etc., was the writing.  It's hard to untangle what's bad writing and what's bad performance of the script, but everything could have been fixed with good writing.

They had something with Data, but they didn't know when they'd played it out, and stop featuring him so heavily while they were ahead.  The android Pinocchio thing got old a couple of years in, but they beat that horse's corpse for another four years anyway.  If I'd had any say, the first time Data had emotions would have also been the last time - Bret Spiner, a man not without talent, has a really smarmy smile.  I was incredibly sick of Data for over half of the run.

-This is a long topic, running through the regulars; both performance and writing, and the intersection of the two as on ongoing process in a serial fiction.  Let me percolate my thoughts and come back as I get them organized.  I should have led with Stewart and worked down.

[Buster's Uncle]

'Star Trek: Captain Pike' Fan Film to Boldly Go to Pre-Kirk Enterprise
SPACE.com
By Elizabeth Howell  May 21, 2015 7:08 AM



A group of dedicated "Star Trek" fans want to make a new movie, featuring a character from "The "Original Series" who was captain of the Enterprise before James T. Kirk. And they plan to have experienced "Star Trek" actors taking part.

Christopher Pike was featured in the first pilot episode of the original "Star Trek" TV show. That episode, called "The Cage," concerns a mission in the year 2254, when Captain Pike and his crew are leaving the planet Rigel VII, where several team members were killed.

"The incident filled Pike with so much guilt that he is considering resigning his commission. But that's all we know about Captain Pike, and we want to know so much more. Don't you?" the group's Kickstarter page reads.

"This is the story of Captain Pike when he first takes command of the Enterprise and his first mission aboard her," it adds. "And with your help, it will lead into a 90-minute Captain Pike film or Web Series."

The group — which calls itself Rigel 7 Productions — aims to first make a 45-minute feature called "Star Trek: Captain Pike," then produce the 90-minute movie "Star Trek: Encounter at Rigel."

So far Rigel 7 Productions' Kickstarter campaign has raised almost $24,000 of its $112,000 goal. The campaign will close on June 3.

Rigel 7 Productions says "Encounter at Rigel" would answer three questions raised by "The Cage" pilot episode: What happened to Pike's first officer and science officer (Mr. Spock) on the first mission; if Pike ever went into battle; and what alien race he encountered.

Pike will be played by Todd Shawn Tei, the producer of the show. The cast also includes Robert Picardo, who played The Doctor on "Star Trek: Voyager."

Other headliners include Bruce Davison ("Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise"), Dwight Schultz ("Star Trek: TNG"), Linda Park ("Star Trek: Enterprise") and Chase Masterson ("Star Trek: Deep Space 9").

The funds will go toward payments for items such as set construction, filming, actors and make-up, with a small portion going to charity, project representatives said.

Paramount Pictures, which is working on a third film in the rebooted "Star Trek" series in Hollywood, allows "Star Trek" fan productions to go forward as long as those projects do not make a profit. Last year, another project called "Star Trek: Axanar" warped well past its crowdfunding goal on Kickstarter.

http://news.yahoo.com/star-trek-captain-pike-fan-film-boldly-pre-110802234.html

---

I have always thought that more could be done with young Pike, but my suck-sense is tingling.  Let us hope that I am wrong.

[Valka]

The newest episode from Star Trek Continues is up now. It's called "The White Iris" and is available here: http://startrekcontinues.com/episodes.html

I haven't seen it yet, so can't comment.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's up on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUg8-Tz69_I

And Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/128304406

[Buster's Uncle]

I've mentioned on occasion that when I was a print reporter, I was the paper's theater critic and had a rule of thumb that any show that managed to make me cry got a good review.

Well, I thought the opening on the Planet of the Fat Fanboys in Robes sucked, because that was what it looked like and that took me out of the story.  I thought the pacing of the whole episode dragged, I was very reminded of the TNG episode where Riker's injury required him to undergo a Clip Show Procedure - though this was infinitely better than that waste of an hour I'll never get back.  -And any holodeck use at all gives me a rash, as it surely does anyone who suffered through Fake ST.  I also can't see Kirk involved with Wendy Williams.  And if I'd had an actress with such a good likeness of Rayna, I would have done more with her.

But the payoff with the shortest of the visions --- this gets my recommendation.

Kirk is a very lonely man - not my fan interpretation, mind you, but something Trek made explicit many times over.  Any talk of him being a space womanizer w/ green skank in every port is simply ignorant of Star Trek.  He wasn't above using charm to keep himself and his crew alive -and sleeping with the slave girl on the Roman planet was pretty sleezy/rapey, IMAO- but the guy got his heart broken a lot.  He's a big mushpot, always looking for The One, and lamenting that his addiction to a fast ship and a star to fly by gets in the way.

Give it a look - and stick with it to the end.

[Valka]

I just finished watching it... and yeah, I cried as well.

I don't like inserting the Holodeck into TOS. 

[Buster's Uncle]

The little girl --- if there's anything in the universe that's going to really get to Kirk, instantly and completely, she's it.  My eyes totally teared up for him, though I suspected that was who she was.

[Valka]

This brings to mind this question: If David hadn't been killed, would Kirk ever have told him that he had a half-brother or sister who died unborn?

[Buster's Uncle]

Dunno - do you always tell your kids stuff like that when you don't have to?

Remember, too, that David was in a continuity where Kirk never regained that memory...

[Valka]

It wasn't Miramanee Kirk forgot, it was Rayna. He always knew he'd married Miramanee and that she was pregnant with his child.

At least that's the impression I got at the end of "The Paradise Syndrome" when Kirk's first question on seeing Miramanee wasn't "Who is this woman and why did she just call me 'Kirok'?".

It would have been a natural thing for David to wonder if he had siblings, given how many years had passed.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'd have sworn the old memories crowded out the Kirok ones...

And that is the sort of thing you avoid telling your kids - "Yep yep yep; dad boinked a lot of babes besides yer maw."