Today the Star Trek Roadshow arrived in Berlin, Germany. The gala premiere with a blue carpet was held at the Sony Center at the Potsdamer Platz. TrekMovie was there and has a report and pictures from the event. Plus a ‘mini-review’ of the German dub of Star Trek.
Star Trek comes to Germany
Earlier today Paramount held a press conference (a full report on that tomorrow). J.J. Abrams brought John Cho, Zoe Zaldana. Zach Quinto, Bryan Burke, Chris Pine, Eric Bana, Karl Urban and this time even Simon Pegg along. The crew was relaxed and in a very good mood, and there was no trace of fatigue nine days after Sydney, and with trips in open Apache helicopters over the desert in Kuwait.
After the press conference it was off to the premiere. This image gives you a panorama of the Berlin Star Trek gala premiere.
Panorama of Berlin Gala Star Trek Premiere (click to enlarge)
‘Blue Carpet’ Photos
Once they hit the premiere with the giant Star Trek logo and blue carpet, the crew signed posters and magazine spreads for the fans and talked to assorted media teams. Karl Urban has German roots and speaks pretty well (enough to make fun of John Cho). A group of German fans appeared in Uniform, two of the in TWOK style and one in TNG era outfit. J.J. signed that one.
Click images to enlarge
Chris Pine
Chris Pine
John Cho
JJ Abrams signs a fan’s TNG shirt
JJ Abrams talks to the press
JJ signs for Nacelles Monthly!
I had a very nice moment on the ‘blue carpet’ with JJ Abrams. As the German media handlers were whisking him by I yelled out "hey JJ it is Thorsten from Nacelles Monthly"…that stopped him in his tracks and he came right over laughing. I gave him a Playmates Phaser toy, which was handed out during the press conference, and he signed it. What more could I ask for!
Abrams signed Phaser
Mini-review of German version of Star Trek [no spoilers]
Also JJ Abrams presented the movie itself, already in it’s German dubbed version. I loved it. Pure Trek, living up to it’s promise. Great character moments, awesome action sequences, funny and tragic moments in the right mix. Two Thumbs up! By the way, Bones is still called "Pill" in Germany, just like in TOS 1972.
More to come from Germany
Tomorrow TrekMovie will have a full report on the Berlin press conference. Until then, there is a brief summary and some video at 3news.co.nz.
All images by Thorsten Wulff
First? Nah, that AICN crap.
Looking forward to reading another perspective on this movie.
Wow, awsome stuff.
AWESOME!
Still kicking myself that this is Star Trek being given the red (and blue) carpet treatment!
I studied as a student in Berlin. In all my days there, I never thought I’d see Potsdamer Platz go Trek!
Spraken De Star Trek!
thank you so much thorsten and look forward to your second report. City by City, Trekmovie is following JJ Abrams and his team around the globe.
Look forward to reports from Spain, London and of course Los Angeles! (why am I last?)
^How many of us are there ?
Wish I could have been there.
J.J. stopped when he heard “Nacelles Monthly.” I love it!
AWESOME!
JJ is a big fan of Nacelles Monthly…he was quite impressed with Thorstens work on that (and Tobias’)…those Germans are very talented
Ich habe ‘Raumschiff Enterprise’ gern!
Look at the size of the deltas… I want one :p
Just wanted to say thanks to Thorsten for the coverage of this stop of the tour, and WOW, those are awesome, artistic photos from the event. :)
“By the way, Bones is still called “Pill” in Germany, just like in TOS 1972.”
That was a good decision. Pille sounds much better than Knochen.
Phasers for free?! Did someone take two and can send me one? :D
Great report Thorsten and both your and TrekMovie’s review of the new film have reassured me that this will be a great STAR TREK film as well as a great action film, so thanks for that. I’m really, really excited to see this film and I’ll be dragging my whole family along to see it too. May 8th can’t get here soon enough.
#15 (Mel): Right. It does sound better. But I’ve read that the film contains a specific explanation why McCoy is called “Bones”. So the translators have to invent an alternative for “Pille”. Wonder what that will be. ?)
PS: Why didn’t they call him “Rippe”? ;D Or “Elle”… ;)
@ 18
They will come up with something. I mean they managed to explain the fight in Amok Time away as a fever hallucination caused by a normal space illness and changed thanksgiving to Easter in Charlie X. To explain why McCoy’s nickname is Pille, will be a piece of cake. ;-)
And I guess they chose Pille instead of a body part because it sounds less “barbaric” and everyone associate pills with doctors. :-)
Auf Deutsch, Star Trek ist bekannt als Raumschiff Enterprise, ja? Wann ich in Deutschland war, habe ich es in die “TV guide” gesucht, aber ich konnte es nie sehen. Schade.
LOL, man, my German has gotten rusty.
Danke Thorsten! Great report.
Great report! Thanks Thorsten!
And Latin America????????????????????
And Latin America????????????????????
And Latin America????????????????????
dang it, I speak german! Required learning in a totally Mennonite community. Not german, though. Not that I know, anyway.
Fantastic report. The reach of TrekMovie.com knows no bounds. Thanks, Thorsten.
Nacelles Monthly strikes again!
That is awesome, Thorsten. Great article, and congratulations on the autograph!
Thanks for the report Thorsten, love that you stopped JJ in his tracks with mention of ‘Nacelles Monthly’ haha.
Thorsten:
Please come over and spill the beans to us in CHAT. I’ll bring the beer.
Lucky You!
@20
Dein Deutsch ist aber sehr gut!
#18, 19
Yes, the Germans are great at messing up dubbing and subtitles. Grew up watching TOS in German – it still amazes me that I became a fan at all…;-)
I´d like to know more about the dubbing, please. How good are the voice actors they chose? What´s the computer voice like? Does it sound similar to the one we´re used to from TOS/TNG/VOY (I think the DS9 one was different somehow).
I also wonder about the translation…I hope its not in any way near the quality of the TOS translation (apparently back then the translators thought TOS was a show for kids and wrote dialogs in a flippant style that´s just NOT there in that extreme in the english version)
Danke Thorsten!
The German dubbing of Star Trek isn’t the only dubbing that turns the original product into a bit of a joke. English dubbed Japanese shows are also crappy. Thank god for subs. They are the only way to go.
Solid pics!!
Voice casting was excellent on classic Trek in german. Translation was not. But I grew up with the german voices and I was very disapointed when they changed Shatner’s voice in Star Trek II. With Trek IV it was changed back thanks to intervention by german fans (Legend has it that they wrote a letter to Leonard Nimoy after getting a very unkind reply from Paramount Germany for complaining about the bad quality of the translation of Trek III). .
#30
Well that was in the 60s. They wanted to make TOS to some kind of comedy/children’s serie so that they could show it for kids as well.
The dubbing from the movies forward is quite good, sometimes maybe a little too word by word,.
@34: Yeah…the voice casting was excellent for TOS….but I´m worried about the movie. And the translation…I hope they at least get the terminology right. I´ve once read a Star Trek novel where the warp core was called the “Wandlerkern” (transformation core). And please NO “Faehnrich” for Ensign…
OT:
Picard´s dub voice repeatedly changes in the dub version of Encounter at Farpoint on the DVD…apperantly some scenes where left out in the TV-dub and had to be dubbed for the DVD. The voice actor used in those scenes sounds totally different….it´s almost unwatchable that way.
Good morning from Berlin, everybody, thank you for the nice words.
I will write up a story about the press conference today and will talk about dubbing details later on.
Damn, I have only 300 kms from Berlin (I’m from Poznan, Poland), too bad they were showing the movie in German dub, otherwise I would really go.
Hey Guys,
I was there yesterday and I got my “Star Trek: Countdown” Comic signed by Eric Bana, John Cho, Zach Quinto and Simon Pegg. The others had no time anymore ’cause they had to go to the screening. I took some pictures but they are not so great due to my camera. In the end it was a nice evening. They all were very nice and polite.
I thought there would have been more hardcore fans with uniforms. I saw only three and in my opinion execpt of the press and media there were not so much people.
I am glad that the new Trek is getting Star Trek the attention it deserves.
It has always deserved this and glad it has finally gotten it.
Despite my disagreements over many changes from the Trek I love, this is what Star Trek needs and I hope new fans watch the original Star Trek and it;s spin offs to see what we get from show.
Although this is a new canon, at least it sounds like it has honoured Trek. I will never ever fully accept all the changes but it is still Trek.
Russel T Davies does things in Doctor Who which do not agree with how I see Doctor Who, but I still watch the show. Obviously JJ Abrams has done a few things I disagree with but I am sure this will still be a great film.
Sacrifices always seem to be made for the mainstream audience.
I use to have 400+ ST-Enterprise images from Germany (West Deuchland was the un updated location it site claimed. The PAL images looked better than the American NSTC ones. It seemed they were into image quality. I can understand some but high school classes were 35 years ago.
But they do love their Trek. Many were into Sci-Fi fantasy stuff but but Gene was able to add good enough realizm to make you believe it will come true one day. And they loved that aspect best.
I’m going to the Denver StarFeast (Star trek Convention) this week end, I wonder how good the German one was. I’m taking as gifts 10 CD’s with 404 Star Trek the Movie Images. All Rescaled to 5443x1316x24bit. Most images from here and rescaled with a Fractal Scaling Program. Then I’ll create a web site to display them on-line hopefully before the movie starts. When I get it going I’ll post the web-dress here.
Wohoo! Giant Deltas in Berlin next to a Kabel1 orange collumn :D
And it’s always funny watching my TOS DVDs and switching constantly between german and english, I so hope there will be an extra DVD sometimes, made by the original synchro crew ;)
#41: The original german “synchro crew” from the 70th is dead, with the exception of Elmar Wepper (Chekov), who turned 65 yesterday.
Sorry, I meant # 42, not #41.
Those B&W photos are eerily dramatic. They look as if they could have been taken back in the 60s. Beautiful.
Maaan, I can’t wait to see the movie xD
Unfortunately I don’t live near Berlin :(
Hey, cool, dass Bones in der deutschen Synchro wieder “Pille” genannt wird. “Knochen” klingt dann doch etwas komisch :-P
Irgendwie hab ich mir davor keine Gedanken darüber gemacht, aber jetzt wo du das in deinem Artikel erwähnst….^^
Ich kanns’ kaum erwarten in den Film zu gehen…noch ca. 1 Monat….. :O
Naja, morgen wird erstmal wieder ne Folge TOS reingezogen, d.h. es wird früh aufgestanden xD xD xD
@43 Ah crap… where’s Starfleet Medical when you need them?
Please don’t misunderstood me. In general I like the dubbed German version. I don’t think the “flippant style” of some dialogs were bad. It add to the humor in the series and was a good thing.
That they change thanksgiving to Easter in Charlie X make also perfectly sense because a lot of German viewers, especially in the 70s, wouldn’t have understand the turkeys remark, because thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Germany.
The translation from Amok Time is an exception. This was really bad but it wasn’t the fault of those who dubbed it. Then the German television considered Star Trek primary as a series for children and they thought the theme of Amok Time inappropriate for them. In general people were more prude in Germany at that time. Today that is luckily not the case anymore. I mean no one understood for example the Janet Jackson nipple “scandal” in the USA.
So all in all I am sure the dubbed version will be good. It would have been nice if the original dubbed voices could have been used but sadly most of them are dead or at least already retired.
@ 36
I surely hope that Chekov is still a Fähnrich. How would the general German viewer know if Ensign is a high rank or not. It is just not common in Germany. At least people will know that Fähnrich is a low rank, it even sounds like it couldn’t be a high rank for all non military experts AND even more important it is the original way to translate Chekov’s rank. Everyone who has watched the classic series in Germany is used to it and expect it. It is really the same thing with Pille instead of Bones.
@49
well, but in Enterprise travis and hoshi were called Ensign and not Fähnrich. In TOS,TNG,DS9 and VOY it was always Fähnrich… I never understood why they changed it.
anyway, as soon as the movie is out on DVD, I will watch it in it´s original version. In the cinema (in Germany), unfortunately, I will have no choice but to see it in the dubbed version. I hope they come up with something good for the explanation of “Pille”.