Star Trek

[Buster's Uncle]

STAR TREK by 70's Kids

Someone redubbed a film they'd made as a kid in the late 70s.

Impressing fight choreography, considering.

[Buster's Uncle]

'Star Trek's' Shuttlecraft Galileo to Be Unveiled at Houston Museum Wednesday
SPACE.com
by Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer  2 hours ago
 

After close to 50 years in disarray, an iconic piece of restored "Star Trek" memorabilia is about to boldly go on display in its new home.

On Wednesday (July 31), Space Center Houston — the visitor's center for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas — will unveil the new permanent display for the Shuttlecraft Galileo, a life-size spaceship prop from the original 1960s "Star Trek" TV series.

The Galileo's restorer, "Star Trek" superfan Adam Schneider, thinks that the space center — which is next to NASA's home base for Mission Control and the astronaut corps. — is the ideal place for the shuttlecraft.

"If somebody told me when I was a little kid that I'd be donating a spaceship to NASA, I would have said that they were kidding," Schneider, whose restoration took about nine months, told SPACE.com. "How does it feel? It feels amazing. It almost feels like it's all downhill from here because this is such a high. It feels truly like a success."

The Galileo shuttlecraft from TV's "Star Trek" is shown fully restored after a yearlong project led by Star Trek superfan  Adam Schneider of New Jersy.

The Galileo's road to Houston has been a long one. Before Schneider won it at auction in June 2012, the shuttlecraft was in shambles. Schneider and his wife Leslie employed the help of craftsman Hans Mikaitis and his team of ship restorers at Master Shipwrights in Atlantic Highlands, N.J. to help return the shuttlecraft to its former glory.

The finished 23 foot (7 meter) long Galileo was revealed for the first time in late June before a crowd of more than 350 "Star Trek" fans and friends of the restorers before being shipped via truck to Texas for tomorrow's opening.

"The life-size spaceship will be on permanent display inside the Zero-G Diner and will be one of the few exhibitions in the world where visitors can see iconic sci-fi history that influenced generations of innovators," officials from Space Center Houston wrote on the center's website.

Space Center Houston will host a public event in honor of the arrival of Galileo on Wednesday. A celebrity panel will discuss the influence of science fiction on space exploration and an astronaut will make a presentation.

"Like any good project, when it ends you're a little regretful because the experience was positive," Schneider said. "We had fabulous people to work with. We had a fabulous experience in the 'Star Trek' community, so I think we're a little sad and regretful that it's over at one level. On another level, this is a permanent addition to the fan base, so to speak, and we're really very proud that it actually is going where it's going."

http://news.yahoo.com/star-treks-shuttlecraft-galileo-unveiled-houston-museum-wednesday-151314104.html

[sisko]

  inspyring.. yes. but c'mon, it's just a tin box sitting next to the humanity's best efforts! 

[Buster's Uncle]

Star Trek inspired a lot of NASA people...

[JarlWolf]

Not to mention they indirectly inspired many of the greatest technological advances in general: The concept for cellular phones and personal, portable computers can be attributed to Star Trek.

[sisko]

you may be right, but to me, it is like a fake painting in an art museum.

[JarlWolf]

But then there is the question: What defines fake and real?

Then we got a philosophical conundrum. I get your point though.

[Unorthodox]

Not to mention they indirectly inspired many of the greatest technological advances in general: The concept for cellular phones and personal, portable computers can be attributed to Star Trek.

Rockin' my flip phone communicator.  I need the sound effect...I'm too tech unsavvy to find/install it. 

[Doc Nebula]

I'm aware of a few subtle hints that our leader likes Star Trek, at least fake Star Trek, and I know I LOVE the REAL Star Trek, so let's talk about it...

All STAR TREK post STAR TREK II, that posits a resurrected Spock, is false.  All records of the actual Star Trek timeline that bear any historical accuracy ended there.  The rest is just wish fulfillment fan fic written by driveling Spock fans in the 23rd Century. 

[Buster's Uncle]

 

I concluded the same thing shortly after seeing In Search of Spock in the theater back in the day.

For a nickel, in fact, I'd throw out Wrath of Khan too.  Despite being the only Trek film that was actually good, it wasn't really Trek.  Things have continued to degenerate since, and without being good, for the most part.

[Sigma]

I concluded the same thing shortly after seeing In Search of Spock in the theater back in the day.

For a nickel, in fact, I'd throw out Wrath of Khan too.  Despite being the only Trek film that was actually good, it wasn't really Trek.  Things have continued to degenerate since, and without being good, for the most part.

How exactly is Wrath of Khan bad Star Trek?

The only bad thing about Wrath of Khan is the fact that practically ever Star Trek movie since then has been so overshadowed by its reception that it feels the need to imitate it. Including not just one but both reboot films.

[Buster's Uncle]

It's really military, it's a story about a fight with a bad guy instead of exploring or the Big Space Thing, and the thematic spine of the narrative is about getting old.  Not a bad theme, mind you, but not a terribly Star Trek one.

ST was about a lot of things week-to-week, sure, so that's not a major knock on the flick.  It's the uniforms and all the "Permission to come aboard?" stuff that really puts me off.


And you're totally correct about the size of the shadow it cast - subsequent movies had the look and feel I didn't love, without the quality...

[Doc Nebula]

You can't throw out WRATH OF KHAN.  It's uberpulp.  It's Classic TREK... one of the ultimate pulp franchises... given a timeline that actually works. 

Beyond that, it's moral fiction.  Instead of saying "Hey, our heroes never get old", it says "Hey, people do get old, they move on, they take on other roles that are just as important... and they pass the torch to others who will walk in their footsteps, following the trails that they have blazed".

It takes pulp fiction and makes it REAL.

That the plot is full of holes doesn't matter.  It's all about the characterization.

And it's the best goddam heroic sacrifice in fiction.

I'm all about WRATH OF KHAN.  It's the best that Trek will ever be, and something for all pulp fiction to aspire to. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I agree, but my point still stands.

Star Trek is an example of being careful what you wish for - my first love is the series, being a fan from before even the cartoon.  TMP disappointed everyone - Steven Collins mother, even.  Wrath --- well, it's possible to see it for how truly good it is, and still feel that 'this part right here is still off-model'.

[Doc Nebula]

From my blog:

"The Wrath of Doc

I used to game with a bunch of guys in Syracuse, and sometimes some of us would get together to go out and see movies, too. They very quickly learned (right around the time STAR TREK III first hit the theaters) not to ask me how I felt about the movie we'd just seen. The last time they did it was, in fact, after we all watched STAR TREK III for the first time. We were all walking out and they were gibbering like idiots about how wonderful it had been, the best Star Trek yet, and quoting "Don't call me TINY!" over and over again... and one of them, I think it was Gary, said "Hey, you're kind of quiet, what did YOU think?"

So I said "Well, for starters, when the best line in a movie is 'Don't call me TINY' and it's supposed to be funny because it's a little Asian guy saying it... that ain't good. Also, next time one of you repeats that idiotic piece of drivel, I'm going to throw up on your shoes. No lie."

After which, I proceeded to dissect the moronically plot free morass that was STAR TREK III: "There was a moment," I began, low, my voice almost reverent, my tone deliberately pitched to inspire confidence, "a shining moment of wisdom and truth in the Star Trek franchise... a moment when Hollywood itself opened its corporate eyes and said 'Hey, you know what? People get older. They mature and move on. They get promoted, they grow, they change, they take on new roles, new responsibilities. They age, and others come along the trail that they've blazed, walking in the footprints they've left, bringing their own skills, their own strengths, their own peculiar ways of doing things, to the tasks that will always be there, the roles that will always need to be played.' There was a time when a great and classic franchise accepted that entropy happens and we all get older, but it ain't all bad; there was a time when yesterday's titans and heroes gracefully passed the torch, after one last grand adventure, to the sons and daughters of their bodies and spirits, when they handed over the baton of frontline duty and entrusted the guardianship of the universe to newer, younger, fresher hands. There was a moment when that happened, and it was wondrous and moving and for that one brief shining instant, the two dimensional, almost cartoonish near caricatures that were Kirk and Spock and Scottie and McCoy and Sulu and Uhura became truly human and three dimensional and far more than the sum of their parts."

And I paused, for a great crowd had gathered 'round to hear my mighty rolling words. And I let my voice come back up, and I continued:

"And then Paramount sobered up the next day, said 'What the [fuddle-duddle] were we THINKING?' and greenlighted a movie that completely destroyed that moment, that went back and pissed and [poop] and vomited all over that wondrous shimmering transcendent moment, that did its best to kill that unique and glorious moment so dead that no one would ever remember it had happened, by rooting out every last new, innovative element of that franchise which that moment had introduced and murdering them, butchering them, blowing them straight to hell and oblivion with retarded [nonsense] plot devices like 'protomatter', completely trashing the greatest heroic sacrifice in the history of heroic fiction with what had to be the most ridiculously contrived and hopelessly dumbass resurrection stunt since the Jackal cloned Gwen Stacy, and proving once and for all that the good of the many never ever EVER outweighs the good of the few or the one, if the few are stockholders in Paramount Pictures, and the one is a Leonard Nimoy terrified he'll never ever have another part. And that glorious moment when James T. Kirk was an Admiral and Spock was his Captain and the Enterprise merely a training craft and that was *okay*, it was *all right*, because the galaxy was still vast and the frontier was still final and other heroes and heroines were standing ready to boldly go where no one had gone before... that moment was gone forever, beaten down, broken, burned to ashes and trampled underfoot into the muck of mediocrity. And once again, then and forever, galloping around the cosmos was a game for the old, the tested, the true, the guaranteed box office."

And my voice became a naked flame as I spat: "Star Trek III sucked so hard I thought the movie theater had suffered a hull breech. The characterizations didn't exist, the dialogue was drivel, the plot was so utterly vacuous as to make the admittedly nonsensical plot of STAR TREK II look like Shakespeare, and if William Shatner had chewed the scenery any harder he'd have gone into toxic shock from an overdose of paper mache and spraypaint. That movie was sheer [poop] from back to front, start to finish, top to bottom, and now I feel like I need to take my brain out and have it dry cleaned."

Okay, I may not have said all that quite that eloquently, but I said a lot of it, as we drove in Gary's car back from the movie theater.

And they never asked me for my opinion of a movie again.