Roddenberry’s Mission Log Podcast Now Available on TrekMovie.com [UPDATE: Never Before Seen Photos & Documents from TMP]

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TrekMovie.com is happy to announce a new partnership with our favorite Star Trek Podcast: The Mission Log, A Roddenberry Entertainment podcast. Join hosts John Champion and Ken Ray as they explore Star Trek one episode at a time and in chronological order. And do it from the comfort of our home page! Having finished off all three seasons of The Original Series and both of The Animated Series, the Mission Log boys are now ready to tackle the Original Series movies, starting today. You can find the latest episode of The Mission Log in our sidebar.

UPDATE: Mission Log has released never before seen photos and a memo explaining the backstory of Spock for The Motion Picture. Check them out below!

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This week’s Mission Log episode, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

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Ten years after the original series and five years after the animated series, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the crew of the Enterprise head to the cinema – and just in time, too! Something is headed to Earth, killing everything in its path. Big screen! Big…


Star Trek The Motion Picture on this week’s Mission Log Podcast

From start to finish, Mission Log will watch ALL of Star Trek
Starting with The Original Series’ initial pilot as the first episode (August 9, 2012. Episode 001: The Cage), the Mission Log crew have worked their way in chronological order through all three TOS seasons plus both seasons of The Animated Series. This week John and Ken start in on the Original Series movies. Don’t know where to start? Why not at the beginning? And check out the Mission Log archives for more episodes.

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Check out the Mission Log Podcast archives for all of the episodes you’ve missed

UPDATE: Mission Log Releases Never Before Seen Documents and Photos from Star Trek: The Motion Picture
To go along with today’s episode on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the guys over at Mission Log Podcast have released some supposedly never before seen photos and documents pertaining to the 1979 film. The first is a set of photos, mostly candid behind-the-scenes type shots, of cast and crew from the shooting. The second item is a memo, perhaps written by Leonard Nimoy, detailing the character of Spock in preparation for the film. It builds character background by telling the story of what Spock was doing on Vulcan for all those years, and it sounds like it was a pretty intense time for our pointy-eared friend.

“The first year of the process consisted of absolute silence in the absence of other beings. No sound was to be uttered or heard.”

Check out all of the photos and the memo on the Mission Log Discovered Documents Page.

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“The Final Plain” – Introduction of Mr. Spock in Star Trek II (Phase II) for Leonard Nimoy

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Star Trek #5

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See all the photos at Mission Log

 


 

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COOL! =D

thanks for picking up the ball, and running with it Kayla! <3

Kayla, you da best!

Look at the Kay-la. Takin’ charge!

Many thanks to Kayla for setting this up!

Thanks, Kayla!! Super happy that things are ramping up again on Trekmovie. By the way, has anyone been able to contact Tony Pascale??

I heartily agree. From the ashes of the dead, the site rises. Mongo approves as well.

…even more excellence! =) (thanks Kayla!) <3

…and Mongo's here?!? =D

“It’s alive again Jim!”

Great stiff Kayla, thanks for the great posts along with Matt & others for reviving & breathing new life again to this site (Genesis effect without protomatter :)

BTW:
LeVar Burton’s ‘Reading Rainbow Live!’ Guests Will Include Patrick Stewart And William Shatner

http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/06/levar-burtons-reading-rainbow-live-guests-will-include-patrick-stewart-and-william-shatner/

LLAP

That was ‘Great stuff’

“I must be going senile” – JTK

Been following these for quite awhile. they’re great fun…nice to have them available here.

Thank you for this.

This is great news!

The final plain concept seems like a variation on the forge from TAS Yesteryear (and later, ENT The Forge). Which came first—the TAS episode or the pages up there on the final plain?

The TAS episode “Yesteryear” definitely came first, Cygnus. We guess that Nimoy’s memo was written sometime around summer of 1977.

#7

If I’m here then Mongo is certainly lurking about.

Great stuff. Looking forward to The Wrath of Khan podcast next week!

Good to have another resources about the history of Trek.

Great show. I’ve become a regular listener.

Blast from Starlog’s past:

“When ‘In Thy Image’ became a feature, we were given a budget of about $8 million. Somewhere around that time, we were talking about special effects. Close Encounters was about to open, and the word around town was that it was spectacular. So, Roddenberry and I went down to the Pacific Theater and sat down for what I think was a noon performance. We came out, both pretty blown away by Close Encounters. I turned to him and said, ‘Well, there goes
our low budget special effects.’ After Star Wars and Close Encounters, you couldn’t do low budget special effects anymore. That meant a whole new way of thinking and a whole reorganization of the production and concepts. They needed a great deal more money and time, and there were only a few people who could do it.

We were preparing to make this picture, but the writing was on the wall. I was a television director who hadn’t done a feature film at that time. It was evident that they were going to hire somebody who had done a feature and was used to working with big budget special effects. Paramount wasn’t brave about such things, so I called up Jeff Katzenberg and said, ‘You’re going to replace me, right?’ He said, ‘No, Bob, never. Take my word for it, Bob. Trust me.’ Then, my agent, who at that time handled Robert Wise, called up and said, ‘Look, we’ve got an offer for Robert Wise to replace you on the picture.’ Apparently, Paramount couldn’t remember that we both had the same agent, so I called up Jeff again and said, ‘Look, are you going to replace me?’ He said, ‘Absolutely not! Never! You’re absolutely staying with the project.’ I pointed out that Robert Wise and I had the same agent, so he said, ‘If Robert Wise doesn’t do it, then you are absolutely going to do it.’ I laughed about that for a while. I knew it would happen sooner or later, but I was more angry about the way it happened. I could understand them wanting someone else when the budget escalated, but I wish they would have been nicer about it and said, ‘Look, these are the facts of the situation.’ Gene would often say about the script, ‘This isn’t Star Trek.’ One could argue that it may not be Star Trek, but it’s good and at the same time you had to realize that on a personal level, he was wrapped up in it. His whole way of defining himself was involved with the series and with this project. I don’t think any of us ever felt very angry at him. We wanted to help him realize his ambition, and we wanted to make a good picture, too. Paramount was holding a gun to his head, saying that they were going to do it, and then they weren’t going to do it. That tension, I think, flowed through all of us. But, I liked Roddenberry and I always felt sympathetic towards him and the project.” — Paramount’s Phase II director, Bob Collins

“When they went with Robert Wise as director, Gene and I were never really informed of what the steps of the deal were. It turns out that Robert Wise is used to producing and directing, so I was asked by Gene and the studio if I would stay on as associate producer. I didn’t want to spend a minute of my life doing that. I was an associate producer 10 years earlier, and it was like taking a step backwards, especially facing two years of production. So, I left.” — Robert Goodwin, Paramount’s Phase II producer

“David Gautreaux was next to depart, explaining that Wise was instrumental in getting Nimoy to return as Mr. Spock. Reportedly, the director wanted to know what ingredient was missing from the mix, and when informed, he demanded that the situation be rectified. At the time, Nimoy had reportedly been involved in a lawsuit with Paramount concerning Star Trek merchandise. It was quickly settled.

When Nimoy was signed to the project, Gautreaux requested that his character, Xon, be dropped from the film.” — EDWARD CROSS, ‘Star Trek:The Lost Generation’, STARLOG MAGAZINE, Issue 136, Nov. 1988

Wow, I just came across this STARLOG Issue 117 from April of 1987 in which Carey Wilbur discusses how he first dreamed up Khan, who as it turns out has an origin surprisingly drawn from unexpected elements of previous television science-fiction [SF?], mythological magic and fairy tales:

“Hell, the plot for ‘Space Seed’ came from an old CAPTAIN VIDEO I did some 30 odd years ago. Of course, we did some very far out things on that show, including the popular idea of people being transported in space while in suspended animation.

I was just thinking of an adventure story, although there was some of that out-of-place element. I had this idea, which I revived from Captain Video because I thought it was time to do it again. It was a crazy story where we did the legend of men being turned into beasts, and our villainess had been transported from the days of Greek mythology into the future. In doing ‘Space Seed,’ we took away the mythological powers and replaced them with a genetically altered human being.

To be honest, I don’t remember very much about Khan. He was a criminal who had been deported in a seed ship, who tried to take over the Enterprise after he was more or less accidentally revived.

I had no qualms about Gene [Coon] rewriting me. He was an excellent writer, and certainly knew the show better than just about anyone. I’m sure he rewrote the script to conform to the series, but I’ve never seen it. I’ve only seen three or four things I’ve written, for the simple reason that I know what’s in them. The only exception has been LOST IN SPACE, for which I wrote numerous scripts. We were doing fairy tales, and I used to watch them all the time. Hell, I used to watch other people’s episodes as well. LOST IN SPACE was such a fun show.

Just before United Artists undertook Michael Cimino’s abortion on film, HEAVEN’S GATE, I was talking to the producers of Rocky who couldn’t understand why their picture was making so much money. The reason was simple. It was an old-fashioned fairy tale, a Cinderella story. And what many filmmakers don’t realize is that that’s what people really want. They’re up to ROCKY IV because it’s the kind of story that people like to believe could happen, which also explains STAR TREK’s popularity. People want to believe that there’s going to be that glorious period of space flight. We want to believe that there’s something out there.

STAR TREK offered the human race a future, and God knows we need the promise of the future.” — Carey Wilbur, scriptwriter

It seems Khan and his ship along with his popularity and STAR TREK too because of him, have much more in common with LOST IN SPACE than any “serious” Trek admirer [Recently read in a current article from elsewhere that “Trek fan” now carries the onus of being a pejorative. I blame nuParamount.] in the 60s would ever admit.