It has been a busy week for Star Trek. Everywhere you look people are talking Trek. On TV we see Trek at the Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, and even The Food Network. Plus Trek is showing up in video games, comics, an a cappella group, and even a political convention?…so check it all out below.
Robot Chicken visits Star Trek: The Experience
The stop-motion action figure Cartoon Network show Robot Chicken often drops in on the Star Trek franchise and in the latest episode ("Boo Cocky") they take an extended trip to Star Trek The Experience in Vegas.
Perils of a Trek Marathon
Brian Biggs of the parody site BBSpot decided to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of Star Trek with a 18.5 hour Star Trek movie marathon, inspiring him to come up with 11 reasons a Trek Marathon is a bad idea. He posted his thoughts on the films here, and his reason are below.
11. After sitting in front of the TV for 19 hours, your butt will look like a Klingon forehead.
10. Good luck explaining to kids that "This was for work; you can’t have a movie marathon."
9. Hard to not dream up new titles for each movie that better reflect the movie itself. "Star Trek 5 AKA Fat Scotty Bumps his head."
8. You can receive a near lethal dose of Shatner.
7. You start to truly believe that Klingons bastards killed your son.
6. Flashbacks caused by seeing Seventh Heaven stars in #1 and #4 just too painful to bear.
5. Dangerous amounts of caffeine needed to stay awake for Enterprise flyby in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
4. Confirms your suspicion that bolting an eyepatch to your skull would look totally cool.
3. Overwhelming urge to purchase the complete works of Shakespeare in the original Klingon from eBay.
2. Assimilating your family much more difficult and painful than it looks on TV.
1. Start believing that time travel is an easy process that doesn’t harm the fragile threads of history.
Spore Treks
EA has finally released its highly anticipated creature and civilization creation game, Spore. The game allows you to create and customize a life form and bring it from a single cell all the way to a space fairing civilization. Lots of players have been uploading their designs from the ‘space phase’ of the game, where they have made their very own Enterprises and some Borg Cubes too.
Cindy McCain…Starfleet Officer?
Last week was the Republican National Convention, and Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert saw a little Trek in the party nominee’s wife. Check it out.
Reminder: The Trek Cake Cometh
Remember that Star Trek cake TrekMovie reported was being made by the Food Network show Ace of Cakes. You know, the one that caused that fake Internet uproar about the ‘THIS IS A DISASTER’ joke. Well the episode "Gone to the Dogs" airs for the first time tonight (Sept. 11th) at 10 PM and 1AM. It repeats on September 16th and 21st.
THIS IS NOT A DISASTER
Trek art of the week
UK artist Jim Ross has come up with a Trek-themed series of caricatures.
Spock and Geordi, from a certain point of view
Comic of the week
For the third week in a row we have a web comic with a Trek reference, this time The Argyle Sweater series from Scott Hilburn. [thanks Mark]
Star Trek, always good for a pun
Superman greater hero than Kirk & Spock (& Skywalker…and everyone? ever?)
Since the recent announcement that Warner Bros. is planning on another reboot of their franchise, Superman fans have been doing some soul searching. In a new article at Superman Homepage (the TrekMovie of the Superman franchise), they have posted their first ‘Saving Superman‘ essays with some thoughtful analysis on the state of the man of steel. However one line caught the interest of The Links
Leaving the ‘comic book mindset’ back in the 20th Century – Superman is the greatest hero in all of literature. Get over it, literary lights and SF&F fanboys. No Star Fleet Captain or Jedi Knight or boy wizard or elf is even close. Every hero everywhere, real or imagined, one way or another, is compared to Superman.
…um…hyperbole much?
Video of the week: A Cappella Trek
The award-winning a cappella quartet, Hi Fidelity, appeared at the August ‘A Capellastock’ in Ogden Utah, and thrilled the fans with their Trek renditions.
QuickLinks
- FilmThreat seems worried about the new Star Trek movie. First they suggest Paramount move the Abrams movie back to Holiday 2008 Season, but then in another article they question if the movie will ever make a profit.
- TVSquad suggests that Star Trek’s theme will make it into the Emmy Award shows TV Show Musical Medley.
- io9 lists the game from the TNG episode "The Game" amongst the 10 Suckiest Games people play in science fiction
This game sucks
I have seen better caricatures done in theme parks for twenty bucks.
The Enterprise in the Argyle Sweater cartoon is completely wrong. I mean, it’s obviously the Original Series E and they depict movie era Klingons on the nacelles. And they are completely out of scale.
Don’t even get me started with how totally wrong the ships detail is. You know what this is?
IT’S A DISASTER!!!!
(And the joke is so old it farts dust)
Those caricatures are a bit extreme, aren’t they? Good caricatures capture the essence of a person (or character) is a funny and unique way. Those are just grotesque. They remind me of the puppets from that old “Spitting Image” TV show from the 1980’s.
“Robot Chicken,” on the other hand, gives us yet another spot-on-the-target Trek sketch. One of the funniest shows on TV right now, hands down.
Wow, a great week for great links, I think! Oh, and thanks for the reminder about the Star Trek cake. I had my TiVo record that, I think I’ll go watch it :-)
#1:
I. Sooo. Agree.
Way to use that ‘Liquify’ feature in Photoshop, Jim.
lol, Robot Chicken is great!
A Borg with a ummm… “device” attached to its hand, freakin’ funny as hell.
…on the other hand, the Elton John and Sir Michael Caine caricatures are spot on. Nice work!
Colbert Effin’ Rocks!! Plus the kid in that stop motion vid Got what he deserved.
They’re right about Superman to be fair.
Robot chicken seems to only get better with time, and makes us nerds seem cooler. But Cindy McCain on the Enterprise, well if that had happened after the first bit with Khan I think Kirk and co. would have learned their lesson about picking up people from the late 20’th/early 21’st century that made a good effort to mess up the world. I say drop her off on Ceti Alpha V with the rest of the others.
Raisin McCain :)
Robot Chicken has got it dead on again!!
BTW, It’s always seems fine and dandy to bash one political party, but God forbid anyone ever says anything about the other, lest one gets chastised or banned. (And I thought politics was forbidden around here.)
We have become a nation of hypocrites.
Shatner should have been a guest star on seventh heaven.
Spock and Geordi from a certain point of view, huh? Which is that… the hallucinogenic LCD trip point of view??
Cindy’s “ChromaKey” Dress – Hilarious
“Oh, my kneecaps…”
Was that Welshy in the “A Cappella Trek” video!?
I liked the ‘a capella trek”, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Andy Bernard and his group “Here Comes Treble” could have done a better job.
I hate to say it, but that guy in the blog is right in some respects…this movie should have been out this year when there was no competition.
There needs to be ONE HELL of a marketing drive to get this movie hitting the $300 million box office level!
I must find those four singers and marry them. Yes, all of them. There must be a planet SOMEWHERE in the Federation where that’s legal.
“Those caricatures are a bit extreme, aren’t they? Good caricatures capture the essence of a person (or character) is a funny and unique way.”
I liked Joel Hodgson’s definition. “A caricature is when you draw someone and make them look like Jack Soo.”
And Spocko, I think that was definitely Welshy. Or maybe even his cousin Orkney.
“We have become a nation of hypocrites.”
Jeez. There’s a pretty broad distinction between “bashing” something and poking a little fun. Lighten-up.
#19: ****** I liked Joel Hodgson’s definition. “A caricature is when you draw someone and make them look like Jack Soo.” ********
This is one of the few times that I can honestly say LOL (because I did lol when I read that)
Dr Image
it is not ‘fine and dandy’ to bash anyone here for any reason.
Ah, Jack Soo. I loved “Barney Miller.” One of the most underrated shows in TV history. The episode with they guy who thought he was a werewolf was sheer brilliance from start to finish. Great characters. Great show.
The Static Klingons joke is actually a complete rip off! It was either Far Side or Speed Bump comic strips in the paper that did that same thing over a decade ago. The fact that it is a similar type one box strip makes me think that this isn’t nearly coincidence.
WHERE IS SCIENCE FRIDAY?!!!! THIS WEEK HAS BEEN SUCH A SCIENTIFIC WEEK ASWELL!!!!!
I liked the Robot Chicken Gag but the timing isnt great….That comes on a week after the real Star Trek the Experience closes…Sigh….Also when I was there I never saw any teen aged looking star trek nerds with pot bellys and nerdy lisping type talk..Most of the ones I saw were like me, in their 40s and 50s bald with pot bellies wearing a star trek shirt and able to speak quite clearly!!! AHAHAHAH….IOh and the gorgeous sexy woman Star Trek Experience actress…that had to be APRIL! hahahahah
You’re still dorks
Just wondering, I asked this in another thread, but I’m asking again since the article mentions the report by Filmthreat.
Are we sure that the opening hasn’t been brought back to Christmas this year? I went to my local cinema last week, they were showing the Trek trailer and it said Boxing day (26th Dec) 2008. Is this a mistake???
Back in the early nineties I went to an erotic costume party as a “BiBorg”, with a similar “appendage” on the end of my arm. As a bonus a hidden switch caused it to squirm, rotate, and vibrate.
That Star Trek Marathon sounds like an interesting idea. Since I have nothing to do on 26th December 2008 (the day Star Trek was meant to open in Australia) I might as well watch all 10 movies back to back!!! I was planning on spending the day cursing Paramount however I think this would be a much more effective use of my time!!
BTW why does Superman need another reboot? I thought Superman Returns (2006) was an awesome movie and a great way to reboot the franchise. They even had a sequal (The Man Of Steele) planned! Granted it wasnt as successful as Batman Begins (2005) but it did the job it needed to do. Superman has always been my favourite Super Hero! Followed closely by Batman!
And does anyone know where else I can see that Robot Chicken clip? Apparently you can’t view the above clip if you are outside of the United States. Judging by some of the above comments its sounds hilarious and I would love to check it out!
#31—“Superman has always been my favourite Super Hero! Followed closely by Batman!”
I might be a total geek for pointing this out…but Batman is a very human vigilante with really cool gadgets…not a “Super Hero”.
IMO, “super heroes” have “super powers”.
Superman is a “super hero”. And he is my favorite one as well. Batman is in another category, IMO.
Batman=vigilante with cool gadgets
Bond=spy with cool gadgets
Indiana Jones=average guy with “superhuman luck”
Captain Kirk=prototypical alpha-male hero in science fiction setting
Superman=alien being whose exposure to the Sun affords him “superpowers” within our solar system
They are all fantastic heroes, but in very incomparable categories/genres.