Star Trek Producers Talk Trek Gadgets

In another promotional interview for Fringe, members of Star Trek’s ‘Supreme Court’ talked to MTV about that other little project they have going on. They wouldn’t talk plot details, unless you count JJ joking the film takes place "in the fu-ture." But the did talk about gadgets in the new Star Trek feature film.

 

All the TOS gadgets – and no replicators
Star Trek exec producer Bryan Burk talks gadgets

…there’s all the gadgets you could want. No replicators,” since they originated in “Next Generation,” “but there’s warp speed and transporter beams and tricorders and communicators and everything you could want. All the gadgets.

Star Trek producer/director Abrams went on to say that there were “endless discussions” on gadgets including their “style” and “aesthetics,” He also noted:

If you do the bridge of the Enterprise, what does it look like? Does Uhura has the piece in her, or does she not? And if she does, what does it look like? If they have tricorders, what do they look like? Phasers, how do you go from stun to kill, and does anything happen? What does the whole fleet look like? I’m telling you, every day, we were figuring this out, how do we take what we know and love and ‘Star Trek’ and apply it to a modern audience.

Star Trek writer/exec producer Roberto Orci added that they went out of their way towards getting the details right, including some ‘easter eggs’ is for the hard core fans, noting "we have family members who would disown us if we got any of those wrong," probably referring to his uncle who introduced him to Star Trek decades ago. But Orci also made it clear the film will also work for new fans, saying "It’s finally, truly Star Trek Zero in a way. You don’t have to know anything."

From more from Abrams, Orci, and Burk, goto MTV Movies blog.

 

 


 

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It’ll be interesting to see how they pull off the style. Looking forward to what they came up with.

Will there be Marshmellons?

No replicators? I guess that’s true. The food coming out of the dispensers was unrecognizable in most cases. I always considered them pre-replicators. However I seem to recall that on occasion something recognizable would come out.

Wait.

No replicators?

So…there was a really fast cook that used to put food behind those little sliding doors in TOS?

I seem to recall a security officer in 1968 getting a nice bowl of soup (chicken noodle) way back when?

That magic Dwarf cook was amazing!

Now I’m really curious….
First!!!!

Replicators!?

Why in my day we had ‘The Lunch Ladies’ and weeee liked it!

Hope they have hand-held, flip-open communicators like in TOS and not the TNG, etc. Star Fleet insignia ones, or the TWOK “Dick Tracy” wristmounts.

@ 4.

I think those were considered the ultimate vending machines. Pre-set meals were available for selection. I remember Kirk (or McCoy or Scott) sorting through those data cards until they found the dish they wanted. Then he placed it in the slot and the meal appeared.

Am I not remembering it correctly?

I remember when ST: TMP came out, and in the scene where they first attempt to go to warp speed and Sulu is manually increasing the speed, thinking, “Wow, the Enterprise is a stick and not an automatic.” While it serves a dramatic purpose, it isn’t realistic.

On the other hand, if McCoy’s scanners aren’t salt & pepper shakers, there will be blood!

Love the classic Trek Tek. WIll be hard to improve on the sheer coolness of TOS tek and I don’t expect to see huge changes espcially considering all reports of the “movie” phaser at the toy show resembling the classic Matt Jefferies design. And as far as replicators go…I think TOS had them they never went overboard with them…just used them here and there to whip up some chicken soup or a Nazi Uniform.

And should Uhura have the earpiece? Are you kidding? That says Star Trek as much as Spock’s face being washed in blue light as he gazes into his “viewer” and Kirk leaning on one armrest in the captain’s chair. I hope the earpieces made the cut.

Deploy the CANON CANNON!!!!

LOL

#10 – And in “Catspaw” Kirk turns down Koreb’s temptation of gems and other baubles, saying that they could easily be manufactured on the Enterprise.

#10 – Oh, and not to mention flintlocks and other Eden serpents from “A Private Little War.”

I’ll bet ya two bottles o’ scotch that one of the ‘Easter eggs’ is a tribble or ten.

Looking foward to seeing the new Trek Tech….and hopefuly it does have some resemblance to the Orginal…

#4

Well we know there were food slots in TOS. However in “Charlie X” the galley calls Kirk and tells him the food in the ovens has been replaced with real turkeys. And of course there’s the galley in Star Trek VI with a full fledged cooking staff and waiters, who promptly scatter when Valeris phasers a big kettle (don’t get me started on that scene.)

I always thought of the food slots as a primitive, limited form of the TNG replicators. If the new movie doesn’t have ’em, that’s fine with me. Those replicators made things a little too easy.

# 11 Blowback – “Deploy the CANON CANNON!!!!”

that’s great… every time someone spells it CANNON (and almost always in caps, i might add) i have to resist the urge to ask if it’s a Quinn Martin production.
RIP William Conrad.

Seriously though, if it was a replicator rather than a food dispenser, what were the tribbles doing in there with Kirk’s coffee and chicken sandwich?

Kirk had a replicator in his quarters in Trek VI.

I’m shocked that no new photos have leaked.
I want phasers, NOW.

“Does Uhura has [sic] the piece in her, or does she not?”

They really did think of all kinds of details. I believe that matter is Uhura’s private business as long as it doesn’t interfere with her (official) performance on the bridge. :-)

im still waiting for some one confirm that we will see a ‘landing party’ and not an ‘away team’. Please!!!

It must be a landing party.

Greg
UK

I just enjoy the fact that we’ll be seeing a “fleet” of ships in this movie which is rare for a Trek movie.

That’s it; I’m chucking my 9-5 job and signing on as a Space Cook aboaurd the USS Hashslinger.

I guess the food in the TOS foodslots could be like the ultimate vending machine or something – the food is already in there in some form, and pressing the button just heats and dispenses it. And then a pretty grl in gogo boots and a wiglet puts it in Dayglo Tupperware and brings it to you.

I want pics! Can’t we at least see a communicator? We’ve seen little else… the film’s almost in the can and I’d love it if they’d reward our patience a bit more along the way… I did appreciate the cast posters, but I’m ready for a steady trickle of new images leading up to a trailer :)

Please?

Do you think they might have a transmogrifier?

Virtual cookie for the first to identify the source of that.

Re: “Does Uhura has the piece in her?”
I’m sure that meant “the peace”, as in retro 60’s venacular. She’s got the peace in her, baby. Hand me that joint.

#10

I didn’t know the movie toys were at the toy show. As far as I know, they haven’t been unveiled or even leaked yet.

#24 Calvin and Hobbes.

#4,
In TOS, food was either prepared by non-coms in a galley, or for simplistic dishes, they would be whipped up in an automated process, and then sent along a distribution network to the intended location.

Are they going to have the colorful cube dinners we saw on TOS?

“This is my chicken sandwich and coffee!” – Captain James T. Kirk in “The Trouble With Tribbles” as he pulls a tribble-covered tray out of something that I think we’re supposed to consider a replicator!

All I have to say is
“Good luck, phasers on stun, Kirk out.”

#25

Scientific progress goes ‘Boink’?

(Of course the virtual cookie goes to AdamTrek, who correctly identified the source, but not the source.)

There was never any direct suggestion that food on Kirk’s ship was created by a “replicator.”

There were food slots from which one could order and receive food, often by plugging one of those colored “data chips” into it.

However, the mechanism by which food was created and moved into the food slot was never explained, and the only *hints* we ever got as to that were references to ship’s cooks.

In “The Making Of Star Trek,” Roddenberry tells the author that the details of how food is stored and prepared aboard the Enterprise are kept deliberately vauge.

So no, replicators were not established either in TOS or in the TOS-based movies. They are an invention of TNG.

they could keep the whole design… just add that the moiré on the communicator is a screensaver and the 3D buttons on the bridge have to be 3D because you can not only push the top of them, but also the sides… how would that be ;)

^ uh, “vague” – not “vauge.”

#31

If that was a replicator, those were some FAST Tribbles, glkomming onto that tray between replication and opening.

In fact, that scene is probably the best indicator we have that those were NOT replicators, but some sort of delivery system.

“Aye, they’re into the food processors.”

There were endless discussions about what things looked like? Watch the freaking show, you’ll see what it looked like.

What he should have said is “What are we going to make this look like to make profit off of the people who think Star Trek is lame… so we called Apple and said “Design the iBridge for us”.”

I hope they use the TOS Phaser II unchanged (or nearly unchanged). It is a truly timeless SF design.

Well, if I remember right, in “The Trouble With Tribbles,” Scotty says something like “Aye, and they’re probably in all the food processors too.” Since this was pre-quizanart (sp?), I can only assume this was something along the lines of, as others have suggested, a 23rd-century vending machine of sorts, a definite precursor to replicators but not quite there yet. As to the “Cat’spaw” comment, maybe they could manufacture hundreds of gems on the Enterprise, but maybe it wasn’t as simple as just calling them into existence like one would do in TNG using a replicator. Of course, this is all rationalization on my part. :-)

As a fan of the TOS designs this worries me. The design blueprint for all the gadgets is right there on film. Wah Chang’s designs were fantastic.

What does a tricorder look like? There it is, now be respectful and update it for today’s sensibilities. What does a communicator look like? There it is, now be respectful and update it for today’s sensibilities. What does the fleet look like? Here are all of the major ship designs from the series along with Matt Jeffries design drawings. Get working.

These should not have been tough decisions.

Ok. in tos they called it the food synthesiers. they could synthesise all the food and have them made into anything. But they do have a galley. We even heard Gene Roddenberrys voice in Charly X He was the cook who said that there were real turkeys in the ovens. So with Gene Himself saying that then thats true cannon.

I hope theres no smoke monsters…

44. Ok i give up. Whats a smoke monster.

Ok. What about the Phaser rifle we seen in Where no mans gone before. What would that look like.It could you a update. I do like Phaser 1 and 2 though. So i hope they did not change those.

In Areana, McCoy is looking forward to a “non-reconstituted” meal. So I agree with the the previous post that these meals were made out of some kind og bulk protein mass into something the crew woudl recognize.

This is more proof that some of you humans will attack anything this new team says. Imagine if he listed replicators in with the other TOS gadgets, there would be calls for his head on a pitchfork, but even after correctly noting that replicators are TNG, he is still attacked.

45 – I assume the smoke monster is a Lost reference.

We won’t see any smoke monsters in this film. Besides, Trek already did that in “obsession”!.

No replicators? Fine with me…

One of the things that turned me off about the 24th Century spinoffs was too much reliance upon technology. The holodecks alone were enough to drive me nuts.

I like their descriptions of Starfleet technology thus far.
Preserving the general look, yet making everything more “functional” seems just what the doctor ordered…