Great Links: TNG Classic, TOS Political, VOY Secrets + Capt. Elvis & more

In this week’s Great Links we have TNG being declared a modern classic with a little help from a star from The Office, but is it classic enough? Plus we have TOS invading US politics, Elvis on the bridge, secret Voyager images, a ‘living’ Enterprise and more.

 

TNG a classic + Rainn does Picard
The current issue of Entertainment Weekly celebrates the 1000 ‘new classics of the last 25 years.’ In the TV category Star Trek The Next Generation ranks 24th out of 100, right between The West Wing and Miami Vice. VOY, DS9 and ENT didn’t make the TV list and none of eight Trek films from the last 25 years made the movie list (Hey EW, where is the love for Voyage Home and First Contact?).

TNG’s rank seems a little low, even inspiring TV Squad to ask the Question "Was Sex and the City really better than Star Trek: TNG." However, TNG did get some special recognition. EW brought in The Office’s Rainn Wilson for a photo shoot depicting four of the new classic TV shows…one of which was TNG.


Wilson as MacGyver, Picard, Pauile Walnuts, and Xena (click to enlarge)

Below is a behind-the-scenes video of Wilson as Picard (more vids HERE)

Obama is Spock? McCain is Kirk?
Over 40 years old and Star Trek The Original Series is still relevant, and showing up in the 2008 US Presidential election. First up io9 points us to Juilliard philosophy and liberal arts professor Mitchell Aboulafia seeing a bit of a Vulcan in Democratic nominee Barack Obama. In a blog posting titled "Obama, Spock and the New Star Trek Nation" Aboulafia writes:

… there was something more familiar about Obama, and about how his campaign has managed to galvanize so many young people. Well, maybe it was simply a flash from the past, the political organizing that many of us engaged in to stop the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights. He is leading a movement in which people of color and whites are linked once again. Perhaps this was the source of the deep familiarity.

Yes, certainly, his campaign has brought back memories. But it somehow didn’t get to another level of familiarity. And then it hit me. Obama is Mr. Spock and his campaign the Star Ship Enterprise, that is, if you allow for the vicarious presence of millions of fans aboard the ship. Consider Spock and Obama: cool, logical, trustworthy, a great deal of presence of mind, etc.


The Audacity of Spock?

But it isn’t just the Democrat, the Republican nominee is also get Trekified this week. Recently Stephen Colbert issued the  ‘Green Screen Challenge: Make McCain Interesting.’ As you can imagine there have been many entries, including one inspired by Pulp Fiction and a few with a Star Wars theme. But Star Trek is also representing, via this ‘McCain as Kirk’ entry by ‘jellycow2’

Mojo’s secret Voyager shots
Our friend Mojo has a new blog post titled "sci-ficandy: voyager strikes back" where he shows off some ‘never before seen’ high res images from his work on Star Trek Voyager.


Nice shot of a bad day on Voyager

Picture of the week: A hunka hunka burnin Trek
Getting married on the TNG bridge at the Las Vegas Star Trek Experience is very popular and nothing new, even doing so in uniform. What makes Jenn and David special is the inspiration of adding "The King" into the mix as the one to marry the couple. See Jenn and David’s full set of Trek & Elvis wedding photos at flickr.


Make it so, thank you very much

Video of the week: Enterprise lives
The USS Enterprise is often though of as a character…and this week YouTuber Valandar2 decided to take that idea into the new EA Creature Creation game Spore.

QuickLinks

  • Daily Herald: Star Trek V is ‘honored’ as one of  5 worst TV show inspired movies
  • SyFy Portal: Neither of the 2 Trek films that qualify made it onto their Top 10 Sci-Fi films of the last decade, but Trek is kind of represented by Galaxy Quest
  • SciFitv.com.au: In an interview, Stargate’s Chris Judge (Teal’c)  says the Gate franchise is no long the ‘red-headed step child’ of the Trek
  • Photographer Jack Scoresby has another bonus shot from last week’s ‘picture of the week’ girl Katie West’s Trek photo shoot. 


Eyes on your tricorder, Mister!

 

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Politics? No thanks.
(1st)

cool hi res images

mmm, voyager sure looks purty in those pics, hmm always dissapointed me that they never smacked the voyager around a bit, but actually kept the scars !! Would have made sense to save resources on more important things..

Okay, I LOVE _The Office_ and think Rainn Wilson is fantastic in it, but I got my Entertainment Weekly yesterday and ALL of the Rainn Wilson pics totally creep me out.

“Daily Herald: Star Trek V is ‘honored’ as one of 5 worst TV show inspired movies”

I’m on board with that. Such an honor. I think I’ll toast a marshmelon!

So…after a quick run through of EW’s list of TV shows….i found that Cheers didnt make their list.

what gives? I’m not saying anyone should be made to like it nor am i saying that it was my favorite show….but it was Cheers. It’s what started NBC dominance on Thursday nights. even freaking Frasier made the list and its a silly spin off of Cheers.

And GTA 4 is the only GTA title to make the cut for video game classics. They should ditch GTA 4…and go back to GTA 3. That’s the one “that started it all.” It revolutionalized so much of what we expect from games now-a-days.

goldeneye…guitar hero…gta 3 and sim city should be in the top 5.

IMO

I’d bump Sex And The City, Survivor, and Buffy right the heck out of the top 10…but hey, that’s just me. I’m okay with the rest of it (although I haven’t watched more than a handful of episodes of The Simpsons, it is probably deserving). Sopranos…absolutely. Seinfeld, Friends, X-Files, you bet.

The NCC 1701-DUCK totally creeps me out — more so even than Rainn Wilson.

Anthony, you must be right. I hadnt considered that they might just be going by the START of a show…rather than it’s full run.

XENA! Oh my god, that is the best !

I loved the Voyager “Year in Hell” episodes. Should have been more eps like that.

Not too political but I don’t know if I see McCain as Kirk. McCain is very old and Kirk will always be that young good looking space captain who seduced women. For that matter Obama is always smiling! Need I say more?

Star Trek wedding? Taking dorkism to the final frontier.

Sorry, but I always throw up in my mouth a little bit when someone tries to politicize Star Trek or Star Trek-ize politicians.

#6 Well, I don’t think it should’ve made the Worst 5 (hello Beverly Hillbillies, Dukes of Hazzard, Car 54 Where Are You, Bewitched, The Honeymooners, etc).

But if this guy was going to place it on that list, he should’ve at least been fair and included TWOK in the Best 5! TWOK was better than that lame Brady Bunch movie, to be sure.

I think his 5 worst list is the 5 worst TV-inspired movies that people still remember.

As for the worst of the worst, you forgot: SWAT, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, and (drumroll for the new guy) Speed Racer.

THIS IS A DISASTER THAT UNIFORM LOOKS NOTHING LIKE CAPTAIN PICARDS UNIFORM FROM STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION FIRST OF ALL THE COMMBADGE IS SHINY WHEN IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE MATTE AND THE BOTTOM OF THE UNIFORM DOESNT EVEN HAVE THE BLACK SLASH AND THAT TRANSPORTER IS WAY TOO SMALL CLEARLY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY HAS NO UNDERSTANDING OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF TREK THIS IS A DISASTER

You want a disaster, try watching that crazy Enterprise/Howard the Duck abomination – that thing is going to give me Trek nightmares!

Haha, disaster!

oh nice! i almost forgot about our “This is a disaster” tradition.

Thanks for reminding me to keep working that in!

Those rooms on the Voyager “Year of Hell” model are *crazy* big given the known dimensions of the ship. What is this “Darth Mojo” (an avowed Star Wars fan) going to foist upon an unsuspecting fandom next? HUGE NACELLES?!

THIS is the TRUE disaster.

does anyone kow where i can find some great high res art like those Voyager images….but for the Enterprise. Any Enterprise…the original E through 1701E?

The images are great..but i’d like to see some Enterprise action.

For those that don’t watch the Colbert Report, this was part of a “green screen challenge” (the original McCain clip was from a speech in front of a very green backdrop). The challenge was to put McCain in a more intesteing environment. Some of them are pretty clever (even one of McCain in a Star Wars scene).

None of these are meant as endorsements, just having fun with speech made in front of a horrible backdrop.

#20 Jack. YOU ROCK!!! HAAAAHAAAHH!!!

I dunno, whenever I think Trek and Politics in the same thought I always come back to the Ferengi!

Rainn as Paulie had me in stitches when I saw the pic in the magazine… so dead on….

#1 Agreed. The candidates get enough press coverage everyday. Trekmovie.com DOES NOT need to add to it.

Amen, #31. Besides, any comparisons between any political candidate & their campaigns with Star Trek is ridiculous!

Great article, as usual.

Speaking of Senator Obama, I think that his policies on space exploration are a cause for some alarm. Although I do prefer him as a candidate, his proposal to place Project Constellation on hold for five years in order to fund social programs is rather bizarre, since the funds from that program wouldn’t make much of a difference from a social point of view and yet would be absolutely devastating to our ability to visit space independently of other countries. I am not persuaded by Obama’s statement, that he was brought up on Star Trek, that he really knows the value of space exploration to our common destiny.

Separately, those hi-res pictures are amazing.

Anthony, for what its worth, i dont see the harm in you having posted the “political” stories that you did. I understand the context in which you have included them.

Guys..it’s a column called GREAT LINKS…that means its a collection from all over the web….anytime our beloved Trek gets props, parodied or other wise mentioned by other media or in unexpected places….you should expect to read about it here. I for one am grateful that its not up to me to scour the web in search of trek related fun and articles.

Thanks for doing it for me Trekmovie.com!

That last shot of the Gorn with the McCain sign made coffee come out my nose.

I hope Obama is more like Edith Keeler and less like Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson in his views of funding the poor and funding the space program.

Thought the McCain vid had a not so nice undertone about his age. Older folks are our roots. They should be prized as in many Asian cultures. Their knowledge is being lost at a fabulous rate.

Hey! Where are some pics from the new movie!!!????!!!
Thats what we want!!!!!! Just something to tide us over.
Come on JJ!!!!

that ray-gun tha’ greenie girl have looks very familiar ta’ me….

Oh, sorry- didda not mean ta’ get political and bring up tha’ name o’ ex-President Ray-Gun!

Arrrr…

nice work BND
lol

hat rick…are u high? how retarded must u be to think the only way to do space travel is by ourselves when ONE OF THE BASIC TREK PRINCIPLES IS A ———-UNITED EARTH———FORM OF SPACE EXPLORATION?

@#36 Craig:

Hear, hear! I absolutely agree with this. American culture seems obsessed with youth to such an extent as to fear the very idea of getting older. Y’know, like Kirk in Star Trek II. :o)

Man, am I sick of lists of the “top whatever.”

That Trek wedding with Elvis on the bridge has got to be one of the tackiest things I have ever seen….

#36 & 40 – I’m in my fifties, but when I got out of college it was difficult to get a job because employers wanted experience. Now it seems like employers have a real disdain for experience & want nothing but new college grads, the younger the better.