Last week, Hewlett Packard announced they have teamed up with Paramount to bring futuristic new tech to Star Trek Beyond, and this past weekend, we got a closer look at some of the designs and their onscreen implementation. At HP’s annual HP Discover conference held June 7-9 in Las Vegas, conference goers got some face time with a major prop from the film: what HP is calling a “Kelvin Pod”.
[BEWARE OF SPOILERS!]
HP has been working closely with Paramount to create realistic futuristic technologies to feature in the upcoming film Star Trek Beyond. This weekend, attendees of HP Discover at the Venetian Palazzo in Las Vegas got to get up close and personal with a pretty sweet prop from the film.
The “Kelvin Pod” as its labeled here is probably one of the escape pods we’ve been seeing so much of in the first two trailers and TV spots that the Enterprise crew use to abandon ship when the Big E is destroyed early on in the film. Kelvin Pods are likely named for the USS Kelvin (the vessel Kirk’s father served on in Star Trek 2009), which was in turn named for JJ Abrams’s maternal grandfather, Henry Kelvin.
Here’s a shot from the Trailer #2, where Sulu uses a Kelvin Pod to escape the Enterprise:
H/t to Scott Grizzle for the tip!
That’s a good looking prop, a bit like a workbee.
My father-in-law was there and sent me a pic of this! He also sent me a pic of himself sitting in the captains chair. I think he said he broke wind in the captains chair. Figures, he’s a Star Wars fan!!
After 2 1/2 years of sitting there, you think Kirk never pulled a ‘one-cheek sneak’? You can bet only Spock heard. :-D
Very Nice. So, how’s that review of Trek Continues E06 coming along?
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Very similar to the Lifeboats used in Next Gen (never seen on screen but were in the Technical Manual and the hatches were all over the model) later used in the plot of First Contact.
I thought they were called “Escape Pods”. . .
Agreed. I truly doubt The Kelvin was the first starship lost in the line of duty. Therefore, it’s odd to honor her memory this way. Actually, Spock tosses Kirk overboard in a pod in ST09. My other thought is this: there can’t be much life support in one of these pods. Seems like it has bery limited value in saving your life for a day or so, unless rescue is well on the way. Odd to think there’d be room for hundreds of them on a starship. I guess they’re kept right next to the atmospheric thrusters and the underwater impellers.
The alternate universe just can’t figure it out. They evacuated the Kelvin exclusively in shuttles. And Pike’s Enterprise had tiny one man pods (used to dump Kirk on Delta Vega). I guess it’ll be alternate Picard’s time before Starfleet works out a practical escape pod.
Shane,
It was shown onscreen, which makes it canon, that JJ’s Enterprise as a shuttlebay loaded with shuttles, in addition to the escape pods. It will be interesting to see IF BEYOND employs them both in the abandon ship scenes.
I imagine the ship still has Escape Pods. Kelvin pods are specifically one maned pods that launch from the bridge itself. George Kirk couldn’t escape the Kelvin because he needed to stay on the bridge until the last moment and couldn’t get down to shuttle bay.
I imagine Starfleet then made all future starships have a design where the bridge walls can slide back to reveal escape pods or “kelvin pods” for the name sake of their inspiration.
Daniel Broadway,
Re: George Kirk couldn’t escape the Kelvin because he needed to stay on the bridge until the last moment…
I never bought the flimsy writers’ excuse of a damaged autopilot which was redundant because he had a perfectly reasonable on screen excuse to stay with the ship even if the autopilot damage never occurred.
If the laws of inertia were still in effect, why would he need to “pilot” the Kelvin after the on board navigation declared the collision course locked long after the autopilot was damaged? The only reason for Kirk to stay on there that made sense was the actual function he was serving onscreen, i.e. laying down cover fire using the Kelvin’s weapons to protect the fleeing shuttles.
But, of course, all of that would have been tossed out the window too if the Kelvin had the remote control bridge that movie Trek had long ago established. And I would find it hard to brook those that would try to hand wave that away by declaring that a canon anachronism as almost everything about the JJverse ships’, including its Kelvin, technologies were canon anachronisms.
Well, not everybody felt comfy enough in the pods – evidently Scotty used khan-pedoe to jump the ship…
These are cool pods and I love that they use the Kelvin name. Keeps it connected to the past, specifically Kirk’s past. Well done STB crew.
I find the genesis of the name Kelvin to be rather stupid, to be honest. But hey, JJ’s grandpa got mentioned and thats what matters most….
I would’ve preferred a different name, something familiar to ST but it was Kelvin so I like the connection with the pod. Had the Kelvin been Intrepid or something then name the pods that. The connection is what I like not necessarily the name.
Well actually, the name Kelvin could in fact be construed as another one of those pandering token fan recognition things like Delta Vega, and the Yorktown. The Kelvans were in fact an invading race from the Andromeda galaxy. But we have this story about JJ’s grandpa, so I guess not …
TUP & Curious Cadet,
It wasn’t JJ’s granpa but named after Orci’s tio.
TUP & Curious Cadet,
My bad the Kelvin captain named after was Orci’s tio.
Yep, it was Richard Robau that was Orci’s tio.
Are we certain all the pods are called Kelvin? Could it be that only one is dubbed Kelvin, i.e. they all have different names like only one shuttle was named Galileo?
Maybe they’re called Kelvin pods because they’re cool… like absolute zero cool.