Great Links: Trekkies Out And Proud Edition

Is it time for the Trekkies to come out of the closet? The Links explores. We also have Trek showing up in a sitcom (again), in a car commercial (again) and on a game show (again). All that plus Kirk and Picard fused into some sort of supercaptain, some great fan made video mashups, how Trek has influenced a new baseball stadium and more, all below.

 

 

Is Star Trek becoming cool again? (and sexy?)
Last week in our article ‘Star Trek Trailer Gets Notice Of Mainstream Media‘ we noted that many in the media, from big newspapers to small ones, were all taking notice of the new Star Trek movie, and some writers were clearly showing off their inner Trekkies. Apparently there are lots and lots of Trekkies out there, and they even look like regular people and everything. In a new article at PinkRayGun titled ‘What’s So Wrong With Being a Trekkie‘ blogger Adam Hanault notes that he often finds after admitting he is a Trekkie that people often "shake their head" but ten minutes later they are telling him about their favorite episode. He notes there are many ‘closeted Trekkies’ out there, but concludes Paramount’s mega-budget Star Trek film aimed at the mainstream will change all that:

I mean, for God’s sake, Trekkies, look at who’s President! The world has changed. There’s so much hope in the air that people are dancing in the streets, hugging complete strangers! This May, a major movie studio is spending $150 million to take you out on a really, really fancy date and praying to God they’re good enough to impress you. Behave like you’re worth every penny of that money and a whole lot more. It’s high time. You’ve arrived, my friends. Act like it!

In my work as Editor of TrekMovie.com I see this kind of thing every day. I often speak to or get emails from people from all walks of life (outside the usual geek media) who want to talk my ear off about Trek. A prime example came just Monday when I got an email from Ron Motta, an editor for Playboy magazine (yes that Playboy Magazine), apparently he is a regular reader of TrekMovie.com and wanted me to see his blog on the NY screening of Paramount Star Trek footage, titled ‘Not Your Daddy’s Star Trek‘ (where he gives it a big thumbs up). In that post Ron (possibly risking his next invite to the Hef’s mansion) outs himself as a Trekkie, noting:

I’ve watched the show since I was four. I had the Mego action figures and bridge set, played the role-playing game (always got stuck with Chekov!) and read the novels.

Say it brother, we reach! Could it be that this big push for the new movie can have the side effect of wiping away all those mainstream stereotypes of pocket protectors and parent’s basements. And being that Mira Sorvino, Megan Fox and Rosario Dawson are Trekkies, maybe it is sexy too!


Sorvino: worth getting out of any closet for

Lizard Spock
Not sure if this proves or disproves the above point, but the CBS nerd comedy Big Bang Theory again referenced Trek (see previous times here and here). In fact last week’s episode was titled "The Lizard-Spock Expansion." This clip explains what that is all about

A different kind of Space Lincoln 
Star Trek is no stranger to recent car commercials (see recent ads for VW and Hummer). And now note the Trek nods in the new Lincoln MKS commercial.

Judge Joe and Trek
Trek is no stranger to game shows (see last year’s article on Trek and Jeopardy), last week the gameshow ‘Trivial Pursuit America,’ (in an episode featuring Judge Joe and other Celebrity Judges) had a Trek question.

Star Trek in Obama’s Cabinet
We thought the Star Trek political references would end with the end of the US Election season, but apparently they have just moved into the transition. AOL’s Political Machine Blog has not one but two whole Star Trek transition posts:


AOL envisions a new kind of Oval Office…make it so

Morphing Kirk and Picard
The website CelebrityMorphing.com, which creates bizarre celebrity hybrid creatures, uploaded the following somewhat disturbing video onto youtube to promote their site. (they also have a still at their site).

Quote of the week: Yankees headed to the final frontier
The New York Yankees are building themselves a new baseball stadium and it is going to have over $15 million in high tech communications installed by Cisco Systems. In an article at the New York Times titled ‘Boldly Going Where No Stadium Has Gone Before‘ Cisco Chairman John T. Chambers stated:

Take the dream of ‘Star Trek’ or other movies. That concept is where we’re going to go. It’s going to change all of sports. I don’t think I’m too bold in saying that.


Buck Bokai would approve of the new Yankee Stadium

Video of the week 1: Kal Kirk?
Last week we linked to a bunch of video mashups of the new Trek trailer. Two of the best were Kelvington’s recut of the trailer with the Smallville theme, and GeneralGrin’s recutting Star Wars Episode I-III footage with the Trek trailer audio. Now GeneralGrin has taken both of those ideas and put them together with a new kind of Smallville mashup.

Video of the week 2: Who Trek Preview
Speaking of our pal Kelvington, he and Spockboy have been working on their own special Star Trek & Doctor Who mashup movie, which looks to be another genius effort. The final product will be ready by Christmas, but this week they have put together a clever special preview for the TrekMovie community. 

QuickLinks


Click to see who is watching the trailer

 

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If this movie is a hit, I think there are a lot of people that are going to come out and say they have been star trek fans their whole lives even though they never have liked star trek. It’s just to jump on the bandwagon.

And if this movie bombs, those same people are going to say they have never liked star trek.

There are so many fake people out there, trust me it’s gonna happen.

And another thing about the comic coming out what people are saying about Data and B4 and whether it’s pre or post Nemesis….

Does it really matter if it’s Data or B4? Canon is messed up in this movie does it really matter? It’s funny how everyone is talking about canon now. I guess it’s KINDA important huh?

That morph was scary

YAY! Star Trek and Doctor Who, that was AMAZING!! Nice work guys, can’t wait to see the full thing! Should help to tie me over till May 09…

lol

Dinner plate with flashlights

“RockpaperscissorsLizardSpock! ”

Ha!

Star Trek + Doctor Who = it just doesn’t get any cooler than that.

And here I thought Mira was just another pretty face….

She has good tastes too. Nice.

Ladies and gentleman, behold the wonder of internet:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=star+trek

LOOK AT THAT SPIKE!!!

oh and i almost forgot

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/

STAR TREK 2009 IMDB SITE VIEWS UP
“^ 1,166% since last week “

Anthony,
You missed one:
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/category/white-house/

Look down at the Obama girl one

Last night’s Chuck had a quick and funny Trek reference as Morgan and Lester mimicked the Kirk/Spock moment with the hands on the glass from the Wrath of Khan.

….and the adventure continues….

It’s never once occurred to me to be shy about my Trek fandom, until seeing that new trailer … now I’m suddenly rehearsing disclaimers, just in case. “Oh, I don’t mean THAT Star Trek … just, you know, the other one.”

Still hoping I don’t have to use ’em. Make us proud, JJ ;)

Oh I see, I thought this was another George Takei topic…. :)

Those ‘mash-ups’ are great though.

….and yes, that morph is disturbing

Yes – Kirk/Picard is just – creepy.

Is there a vid coming where we morph JJ Abrams into Nicholas Meyer?

The Lincoln ad just contributes to the “You can and must drive fast to have any fun driving” mindset that permeates America which causes death and destruction. People are in too much of a hurry and for what? Shave off one second here, two seconds there, putting themselves and others in jeopardy to be King of the Road. Slow Down!!

What morph? There is a morph here? I don’t think I got past the picture of Mira Sorvino….mmmmm…..

In (almost) every article I read about this new film, I am told that ‘your Daddy’s Trek’ is unimaginative, dull, corny, and geeky. We also keep hearing from Abrams who repeats these claims and says ‘his’ film is aimed at the mainstream audience—having the support of the Trekkies is only a bonus. As a Trekkie, I’m beginning to wonder whether I should even watch this film, whether they even care about people like me. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as excited as anyone about the idea of going back to TOS. And I welcome modernizing the franchise and updating it; but it sounds as if Star Trek is going to be radically altered (maybe even to the base-level of its essence). And it sounds as if this film creates a new time-line to the one in which Star Trek has existed for 40 years, 10 films, and 6 TV shows. I pray this doesn’t happen: it would, for me, disrespect and disvalue the entire franchise. I don’t want Spock to sacrifice himself to thwart Khan in an alternative time-line. It wouldn’t seem to matter as much. Sure, we had time-travelling, alternative reality, and mirror universe episodes, such as Yesterday’s Enterprise; but they all ended in the established time-line.

I hope that I’m wrong (I could well be: I refuse to read spoiler articles; so I don’t know as much as some about this film. I’d like to keep it that way until I see the film with my own eyes). I hope that the film ends in the established time-line. And there are plenty of stories to be told between the first and the five-year mission…

I must say that it looks like the Lincoln ad ows most of its production design to Star WARS, but then, judging by the trailer, so does the new ‘TREK movie…

;-)

Edit: I know the film creates a new time-line. My concern is that the film may end in it and not in the established time-line.

I’ve always maintained that fans didn’t leave Trek, Trek left the fans. Even when Enterprise first premeired it had great ratings but they quickly fell off once viewers saw it was just a redressed Voyager and TNG.

If this film works, I really believe it will be the rebirth of the franchise.

Mira is really working that tank top…

If we as fans do not allow the story of Kirk & Crew to be re-told, or re-invisioned by others, then we will be as responsible for its demise as surely as if we had personally green-lit Voyager ourselves.

Anthony, if you are reading comments, the game show shown above is actually Trivial Pursuit, not Hot Pursuit. Hot Pursuit is just one of the parts of the game.

There really isn’t a lot of morph there. I never realized how similar Stewart and Shatner’s facial structures were. Hmmm, another hero archetype!

It’s strange how being a Trekkie seems to be kind of stigmatized in the US. I don’t know if this impression is shared by my fellow German readers of trekmovie.com but I have never felt the need to hide my interest in Star Trek. Maybe this is a little different in Germany? I’ve always openly talked about Star Trek and my interest in it. I told my biology teacher I already knew some things about the nervous system and neurotransmitters because I had learned those things by watching Star Trek. I told my English teacher, I knew some words (I remember “aficionado” was one of them) because I had heard them on Star Trek. In German lessons, we talked about the capitalistic nature of the Ferengi (my German teacher was a Trekkie too) and compared it to capitalism in a novel we read. In uni, I gave a presentation about Klingon phonetics and another one about evolution and creationism in Star Trek and nobody raised a brow – on the contrary, people were happy for a welcome change from the normal monotonous university routine and saw my enthusiasm when being allowed to use Star Trek to bring a point across. Now I’m a teacher and I also use Star Trek in my lessons whenever possible.
A few years ago, I studied in Australia for a year. I remember how a friend (native Australian) told me, that I could never admit being a Trekkie in Australia or I would have no friends and be “the nerd”. So when I came to Australia, I was quiet about everything Trek – at the beginning. After two months, I had enough of that and I think it was my birthday when I decided to protest and wore my “Trekkie inside” T-Shirt to uni. That way, I later met some more Trekkies and we watched Enterprise Season 3 together for the rest of my stay in Oz. This was really weird in retrospect, because I would never have to “hide” that in Germany. So, Star Trek might have another status here in Germany, what do the other German that frequent this site think?

@23

I happen to be a big Voyager fan (There are a few of us heathens in existence), so I’m going to defend it by taking a counter-swipe at TOS.
Wait, no i wont ;)

Speking of Trek getting into the mainstream, a few months back I sent an email to this website about a really cool Star Trek reference on the first season of the fantastic TV show Dexter and I never received an answer from you guys… To whom and where am I supposed to send this to?

WOW Megan Fox is a Star Trek fan! That’s a surprise. A male celeb that I was shocked to find out was a Star Trek fan is Laurence Fishburne. Now this was before he did The Matrix movies. He was doing an interview with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show when Event Horizon was coming out in theaters. I remember Leno asking him if he was a Sci-Fi fan. And he said that he was and was a Star Trek fan. He even said the words “Dr. Daystrom,” during the interview. I was so happy when he made a reference like that.

Star Trek never stopped being cool.

Sheesh, amateurs. ;)

Star Trek Renewal – A Tour of the Enterprise
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=qPn0LeVc1C0

I never been ashamed of my trek fandom! I wore t-shirts in high school and college that had trek stuff on it. If people had a problem I just shrugged my shoulders and moved on. I’ve never been disappointed with any incarnation of Trek yet.

The Kirk/Picard hybrid looks a bit like Laurence Olivier.

My God, Bones… we’re going to have a nation of Trekkie wannabes. And, nuveau-Trekkie snobs.

Don’t even get me started on the “Trekker vs. Trekkie” wars of the 1970s.

Been Trekkin’ for a long time. Have a model of the Starship Enterprise on my desk at work with my ships of the line calendar. I’m a career military officer. You think don’t ask don’t tell is tough in the Army- try Don’t Beam Don’t Warp…

You know, I can’t ever really remember being ashamed to be a Star Trek fan. In fact, it’s always been fun to throw out useless facts and have people shake their heads. (I’ll never forget the look on a female friend’s face when she was watching a first season episode of Desperate Housewives one night and I happily informed her that Terri Hatcher had been in Star Trek – The Outrageous Okona to be exact.) To state that I am cool would be very egotistical, but to say that Star Trek is cool would be an understatement.

The honest truth is, without Star Trek, many people would not be as cool as they think they are. That fancy cell phone that just happens to flip open – hmm, that’s “cool”. Wonder where they got that idea? That “cool” 50″ plasma your buddy just hung on his wall. Kinda looks like something on the front end of Enterprise bridge. The very “cool” idea of developing medical instruments that are non-invasive. I wonder how “cool” Dr. McCoy would think that all seems in comparison to his salt shaker.

What it all comes down to is that the world is a “cooler” place because of Star Trek – not in spite of it. Regardless of whether people acknowledge Star Trek’s place in pop culture, history, or technology, they are affected by it every day. And, to me, if it takes a brand spankin’ new movie that just happens to be “cool” to inspire a new generation of people to shoot for the stars (and I do mean that literally), then so be it.

But, in the meantime, I think I’ll have a little fun and point out to my friends how that Denny Crane guy happened to be in Star Trek too. Yeah, and he’s pretty “cool” too…

It’s as if Bill and Patrick had a love child.

trivia: Mira Sorvino actually has her own phaser prop. She was on one of teh late night talk shows (Letterman?) dressed in a TOS female skant complete with phaser prop.

I have been a fan since I was about 2 years old, and I can thank my Mum for that.

She sat with me and watched the Original Series, and I made the Woosh sound as the Enterprise passed the camera during the main credits.

I am in IT, in part, because of Spock, and the way he worked the ship’s computer’s to solve problems.

I was always intrigued, and rather than play games like my schoolmates, at about 11 or 12 I started reading a book on programming in BASIC for the BBC Micro, and I was hooked.

Until 3 years ago, when I moved into Tech Support for a change of pace, I was developing software since leaving school.

I owe my career to that 60s TV show with cardboard sets, colorful lighting, shoestring budget and a Human/Vulcan hybrid who found his place in a universe he struggled to fit into neatly.

I owe my love of Film Music to hearing and loving the scores to the Star Trek movies, and finding out what other music Jerry Goldmsith and James Horner had created.

I owe my love of Science Fiction to the Star Trek TV show and Movies, having them be there since before I could talk.

Same for Visual Effects, and how movies are made.

And for my mild interest in Space.

I have never hidden my love and enjoyment of Star Trek, nor do I take it “too seriously”.

I love it for what it is, Camp, Canon foibles, mistakes and plot holes included.

Thinking about it, Star Trek has had a big effect on my life, and likely on countless others.

And it is always fun.

Love the Big Bang Theory. There are Star Trek references almost evey week. They even had an episode where they argued which was the worse Star Trek movie. III or V. Sounded a lot like the arguements in here :-)

#18—“…there are plenty of stories to be told between the first and the five-year mission.”

…without the element of ‘dramatic jeopardy’, since we already know the fates of the characters well beyond that point.

That Lincoln ad is a lot more hyperspace than warp speed. Don’t they remember that Millenium Falcon was always breaking down?

#1 – Canon is messed up in every Trek movie and almost every Trek episode so it doesn’t matter.

One thing to keep in mind for those who are upset with all of the changes to the ship, sets, etc. is that TMP and TWOK did the exact same thing. The only thing that remained the same in both of those movies were the actors. The ship changed (but stayed the same in TWOK) the uniforms and sets changed, etc. Fans still embraced those movies and moved on until those uniforms, the refit ship, etc. became a part of the legend and we all ended up loving that era of Trek.

We need to be more open minded about this movie as fans were with all of the changes in TMP and then again with all of the changes in TWOK. Fans even embraced the fact that Scotty got fat! LOL

“If we as fans do not allow the story of Kirk & Crew to be re-told, or re-invisioned by others, then we will be as responsible for its demise as surely as if we had personally green-lit Voyager ourselves.”

I don’t know what you are talking about; this is a new Trek, the old Trek is just as dead with or without it.
The only way to keep the old Trek alive is to make- OLD Trek (and yes- it could have been done).

#43 – Aren’t those more cosmetic changes than changes in canon? I mean, clothing and equipment DOES change over the years. If Sherlock Holmes appeared wearing one style of coat in 1880 and a different one in 1903, it’s not a continuity violation.

Hmmm. All the messages about the AICN trailer have been purged.

“Trekkies Out And Proud Edition”

Gee, does this mean that we can now assemble in the Streets of San Francisco?

Obama Girl makes an awesome Orion chick!

Like Obama or not, you’ve gotta love Obama Girl!

48-

Obimbo Girl, you mean.

He won, despite her help, thank God.

This Captain will want to build a kindergarden next to the torpedo bay and then nail the cute blond schoolteacher