Nimoy & de Lancie Talk Trek & Promote Weekend’s TrekExpo in Oklahoma

This weekend is the 20th annual TrekExpo in Tulsa Oklahoma. Oh hand will be Leonard Nimoy, Avery Brooks, Marina Sirtis, John de Lancie, Denise Crosby and more veterans of Star Trek. Nimoy and DeLanci have new interviews from Oklahoma promoting the event, excerpts of those below.

 

Nimoy Gratified by ‘Star Trek’
Excerpts from interview with NewsOK interview

NewsOK. In the new film, when you appear on screen, especially when we see your face for the first time, a noise goes up from the audience. Have you sat with an audience to watch the movie; if so, how gratifying was that experience and how do you interpret it?

Leonard Nimoy: Extremely gratifying. It’s an accumulation of emotion from a 44-year relationship with the audience. Especially pleasing since Spock was marginalized by the makers of the movies and series that followed the first six.

NewsOK: Have you and "Star Trek” reached a new generation of fans? Or is it a case of old fans returning to the fold?

Leonard Nimoy: Many new fans. We are now spanning several generations. At first I heard, "My kids are crazy about you.” Then it became, "My parents are crazy about you.” We’re back to the young people now, so we have three generations of followers.

More Nimoy at NewsOK.com.

de Lancie teaching in Oklahoma – headed to Tulsa TrekExpo
Also appearing at TrekExpo this week is Star Trek’s Q, John de Lancie, who is also an instructor at the Oklahoma Arts Institute for the Summer.

de Lancie has an interview with BAMBlog promoting both OAI and TrekExpo, where he talks about how good Trek has been to him:

The world of ‘Star Trek’ has been really kind to me. And the people that I’ve met there have been great,” he said. “They’re not as weird as sports fans, who when their team loses the game, they go and burn cars and torch the downtown and when their team wins the game, they also burn cars and torch the downtown.

He also spoke to NewsOK.

More information about OAI at oaiquartz.org

More info on TrekExpo at trekexpo.net

 

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I think I’d break down if I ever got to meet Mr. Nimoy.

I love de Lancie, What a great Actor!

Interesting that Nimoy felt Spock was marginalized by the Berman-verse. I wonder what he’s referring to, specifically.

nscates, I believe he was talking about “Generations,” where he said that you could substitute any crew member in his role for that movie. And thats what they did. They basically gave all of his lines to Scotty. He wanted Spock to have more of an important role in the movie. He believed that half of the movie should be the original crew and the other half the next generation.

#4
Sadly I think “Generations” was probably better without Spock in it since if they wrote the character properly, Spock would have figured out where Kirk went (Like in “The Tholian Web”) and tried to rescue him so there wouldn’t have been a Kirk in the Nexus to help Picard. Just my opinion.

I wonder why Nimoy and DeLancie stopped doing the Alien Voices productions. Those were really good.

Dammit, I can’t get up to Tulsa this weekend :-( :-( :-(

Spock wasn’t marginalized by TNG. “Unification I & II” did tremendous homage to the character.

@ #4—-

Thanks, Brian, I hadn’t heard about that. I knew he passed on Generations, but I didn’t know he thought the movie should have been split down the middle in that way. Probably would have made for a more interesting picture…

“nscates, I believe he was talking about “Generations,” where he said that you could substitute any crew member in his role for that movie. And thats what they did. They basically gave all of his lines to Scotty. He wanted Spock to have more of an important role in the movie. He believed that half of the movie should be the original crew and the other half the next generation.”

Isn’t that the typical arrogance that people always hate about Shatner? “Oh, my part isn’t big enough, I won’t do it.”

“Spock wasn’t marginalized by TNG. “Unification I & II” did tremendous homage to the character.”

Exactly.

No problem, nscates. Yeah it would have definitely would have changed the film.

Generations should have been a Q movie and not a Nexus movie. =(

Yes Nimoy says how B&B treated Spock. I knew B&B didn’t care about TOS & couldn’t wait to erase it. They must be dissappointed the new movie is doing so well.

There could have been many cameos in TNG. I wonder why there weren’t . B&B!

There weren’t many cameos in TNG because the people in charge (and not Berman and Braga…for most of TNG, Braga was no more than a junior staff writer– Michael Piller was the other member of the duo then) wanted to establish a unique identity for TNG, because they wanted the show to have integrity and stand on its own merits, and not solely on the popularity of TOS. And once they were well established enough, they didn’t hesitate to bring back Sarek, Scotty, and Spock–but still sparingly, with an eye towards’s maintaining TNG’s unique identity compared to the old show. And when they did bring back these characters, for the most part they did an excellent job…

In the name of Colney Hatch, does this TNG bashing get old!

To 13:

Yes….should have been a Q movie. Man that guy rocked in every TNG episode. A bad guy you love to hate and hate to love.

Could have been Nemesis too. He was a very smart adversary. I will always feel TNG was incomplete.

“I knew B&B didn’t care about TOS & couldn’t wait to erase it. They must be dissappointed the new movie is doing so well.”

Yeah, which is why we got those excellent episodes where TOS met TNG/DS9/VOY, and even ENT. B&B did honor TOS far more than JJ Abrams. Seriously, you guys are idiots.

Nathan is absolutely right.

Bring back John de Lancie as Q in the new film.

He’ll be much better than any rehash of Khan, and his presence can explain every minute difference in the timelines, because it’s honestly a bit iffy saying Nero’s presence caused every change.

They should do the following: let nuKirk, nuSpock, nuEnterprise meet the original Kirk, Spock, Enterprise from the original universe. Both played by Pine and Quinto, but this time absolutely true to the original series characters/actors. Take the original Enterprise with its original shape and give her hull the TMP details, take the original bridge in its original size and shape and replace the cardboard by metal and the buttons by proper displays like they did in Star Trek 5 and 6.

TNG‘S treatment of tos was a travesty.

Maybe for TOS fanboys who hate every second of the last 30 years of Star Trek because it wasn’t TOS.

Yet JJ Abrams treatment of TOS is not a travesty? Explain!

People: you sound ridiculous. Nimoy is on record saying TNG was a fine show and stood well on it’s own. His issue was with the movie Generations, I’m sure of it. That is when he said it wasn’t for him. Additionally, attacking TNG because he disliked Generations is sad. Worse yet are the people who now attack the new movie as a travesty against TOS. What a sad reaaction! Visiting comments like this remind me of the old days when it was “my dad can beat up your dad!” Pathetic!!!!

Downloaded “FANBOYS” last night, if anyone here hasn’t seen it, then SEE IT! If you think their TNG bashing here, then watch this movie and die laughing.

JimJ I totally agree with you!

TNG rocks and so does Q.

Folks, at first I thought that Nimoy felt that post-TOS trek marginalized Spock in some sort of insulting way.

But think about it. The Spock character was marginalized (diminished) by all the series that followed TOS simply because Spock wasn’t in them

When you do hundreds of episodes of Trek that have nothing to do with Spock, Spock becomes a proportionally smaller part of the new, larger tapestry.

So of COURSE TOS characters are put on the margins. And the new movie brought them back into relevancy.

Nimoy’s comment didn’t indicate an implicit insult against him…. but rather, a reality.

# 8

GB, be real. TNG Unification paid homage to Spock, but that character didn’t factor much into the series, otherwise.

Nor could he have. It was a new generation, and Nimoy was going into retirement.

Not using Delancey in a TNG movie was disastrous.

He was a phenomenal character, played by a terrific actor. Q introduced incredible story possibilities.

As far as I’m concerned, the script for the series finale should have been saved for the first TNG movie.

I know I’m not the first to say that.

#10—“… you could substitute any crew member in his role for that movie. And thats what they did. They basically gave all of his lines to Scotty. He wanted Spock to have more of an important role in the movie. He believed that half of the movie should be the original crew and the other half the next generation.”

If it had been, I probably would have actually paid to see it.

#18—“…which is why we got those excellent episodes where TOS met TNG/DS9/VOY, and even ENT.”

IMO, only one of them qualifies as “excellent” (DS9’s “Trials And Tribblations”).

The others were a mixed bag, ranging from horrible to okay.

“Seriously, you guys are idiots. ”

Having an opinion which differs from yours does not make one an ‘idiot’. Please try to be civil. There are many ways to voice disagreement. Namecalling is perhaps the most juvenile and unbecoming.

#22—“Maybe for TOS fanboys who hate every second of the last 30 years of Star Trek because it wasn’t TOS.”

Many of us do not hate the Berman era, but rather feel that it never lived up to what preceded it (TOS and the original film series). I’m sorry, but that is a valid opinion.

TNG and the other spinoffs were completely different from the spirit behind the more colorful characters, action, adventure, sexuality, and romanticism of the original series—and that’s okay—but preferring TOS should not be such a damning offense as you seem to want to make it out to be.

As for your repeated references to Abrams’ Trek—some of us were around when Star Trek fandom was more than just as “geeks-only” club, a time when it crossed over at the box office in the form of mainstream-friendly features like TWOK and TVH. There was a time when Star Trek wasn’t afraid of sexuality, good old-fashioned fistfights, humor, and most importantly, featuring lovably iconic characters. Many of us are grateful that Abrams has helped to return it to that point.

I think we’re owed a Q movie. I doubt it will ever happen.

But with de Lancie and Nimoy’s past work together, how can this not be considered?

Mr. Orci and Kurtzman, please consider it. As others have thought, it could allow for great dialogue and philosophical discussions. It could also be a plot device for discussing the modified timelines, etc. You could even throw a bit of Riker in there with Q and Spock Prime.

I loved Star Trek ’09. The only aspects that I felt were missing were a few more moments of philosophical deliberation.

I don’t think B and B really marginalized TOS during TNG.
They waited until Enterprise to do that.

Crap. Here I am 90 miles from Tulsa, and I didn’t even know that it was time for Trek expo. They must not have advertised very well this year.

I’d love a Q movie.

I got to go to Tulsa yesterday and meet both Leonard Nimoy and John De Lancie. They were great. Nimoy is such a nice guy, and De Lancie came on stage and you could tell they were good friends. Marina Sirtis was hillarious, and Denise Crosby was nice, she was freezing cold due to the AC, but she was still nice. Marina is such a dog person too. The people in front of me when I met her had a service dog that she just swooned over, which is easy to understand, it was a black lab. She also complemented my wifes hair. Nimoy was very cordial to everyone, and was very flattering to the new movie cast, but he did say jokingly that they were terrified of him. He also made fun of Bill Shatner because he couldn’t do the hand salute.

Of all the people associated with Star Trek, I respect Leonard Nimoy’s opinion the most. The reason that the original series resonates still to this day is because the stories are, for the most part, timeless. The characters are all archetypes and representations of us at our best.

I enjoyed the later series, but there is simply no timeless quality to them. They were, sorry to say it, soap opera’s. The stories from TNG’s 5th season to Enterprise’s last were always wrought with secondary plotlines that had nothing to do with the actual story.

I mean, can you imagine if the Doomsday Machine had been done in any of the later Star Trek (colon) series? We would have had a 10 minute briefing room scene from (insert later series techno-babble spewing character here) explaining how the machine is using a theta-matrix compositor to bend subspace to do whatever. We also would have had a 10 minute scene of (insert character here) dealing with a personal matter that has nothing to do with the actual plot.

The later series, sorry to say it, simply have no timeless quality to them.

I went to this and got to meet him. It was fantastic

#23 “Yet JJ Abrams treatment of TOS is not a travesty? Explain!”

Sure. JJ’s Star Trek was created and successfully implemented in the spirit and style of Star Trek (TOS) TNG was not.
JJ’s Star Trek constatnly felt like Star Trek (TOS). TNG did not.
Perhaps I should rephrase my statement. Rather than say, the way TNG treated TOS was a travesty, I should have said, I feel TNG was a travesty.

You can love TNG all you want, nothing I ever say will change that. But personaly, I can’t stand the show, never could.

What 6. Big Bill c said. I’ve just recently listened to both Spock vs. Q audiobooks, and they were hilarious! I certainly wish there were more of them.

As Q is one of my favourite TNG characters, I’d be glad to see him in a ST movie, and the prime and new Enterprise crews meeting each other is a fascinating idea too, but that won’t probably happen, not in the next few ST movies anyway:). But this would be just the kind of a novel that I’d really like to read.

Hmm….I would surely like to go deeper into the nuances of “marginalized” as he (Leonard Nimoy) perceives it. He was focal in TMP, he was martyred in TWoK, and he was the title character in TSFS….he was arguably drawn more in cariacature in TVH, and, well….let’s just forget TFF…..and he was integral in the diplomatic mission that led to Khitomer (sp). Nimoy has always struck me as a deliberate person, and wouldn’t make that comment if he didn’t feel it pretty strongly and specifically.

Perhaps Nimoy felt that he had an opportunity to be used more robustly (and frequently) in the TNG era than B&B were willing to contemplate, and threw him a “bone” in the Romulan/Ambassadorial storyline….

I think he felt that the Spock character and TOS were marginalized by all the series that followed. He is pretty much right in that regard.