There has been a lot of big Star Trek news and discussion in the last couple of weeks, but things are calming down a bit, so on this Memorial Day holiday TrekMovie catches up on some recent ‘great links’, with stories about how Star Trek has been impacting the world.
Texas Teacher Wins Award By Using Star Trek In The Classroom
Waco, TX teacher Teresa Kelm has been using Star Trek to teach her fifth-grade class science, and this unique teaching style earned her the 2017 Ernest and Sarah Butler Award for Excellence in Science Teaching. In Kelm’s classes she designates her students as cadets and she takes on the rank of captain. Here is a snippet from the Waco Tribune-Herald (and also picked up by the AP):
“Well, they’re cadets, the Connally Cadets, and I love ‘Star Trek,’ so I said ‘Let’s do ‘Star Trek,’?” Kelm said. “That’s what made me start it.”
Capt. Kelm is in big bold letters on the outside of the door frame. Inside, each of her four walls serves as a station to her space shuttle, with the labels “Operation Center” to the right for classroom notices, “Navigation Center” to the left for anchor charts to study, “Communications” in the back for vocabulary words and “Main Viewing Screen” at the front with a projector serving as if it were a starship’s windshield.
And as if she were portraying William Shatner’s Capt. James T. Kirk, Kelm often stands in the center of the classroom giving commands on how to tackle hands-on lessons.
“Captain Kelm” using Star Trek to teach her students (Photo: AP)
Will Ferrell sings Star Trek theme
Earlier this month, actor and comedian Will Ferrell was giving the commencement address at his alma mater, the University of Southern California, and recounted his early days of doing comedy while at the school. He said his first act was mostly him talking about Star Trek, including ‘singing’ the original theme, which he demonstrated. Check it out below .
Quote of the week
“Whoa, it got small fast. It’s almost like when you used to watch ‘Star Trek’ when it came on and the Enterprise would just fly by the screen and get really small. It kind of had that Enterprise-esque look to it. It was there – and then it was gone.”
– Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon describing a Kyle Schwarber home run in their winning game against the San Francisco Giants on May 23rd.
Video of the week: The Enterprise’s first refit
While the U.S.S. Enterprise seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture is usually referred to as the ‘refit,’ the ship actually got a bit of a facelift before James Kirk’s historic five year mission. Robert McConnell (aka Robbzilla) has a YouTube channel where he posts 3D animations of mostly Star Trek stuff. This week he posted “Birth of a Legend“, which re-imagines a scene from The Motion Picture but for that earlier Enterprise.
Bonus Video of the week: Daft Punk’s Motion Picture
Patrick Collins is another fan with The Motion Picture on his mind. He recently recut the entire film to fit within 22 minutes of Daft Punk’s score for Tron: Legacy. This video has picked up over 80,000 views in the last couple of weeks.
More Links!
Cult of Whatever argues that it was a good thing the 1970s Star Trek Phase II TV project was nixed.
Tor.com takes a look at some of of the goofier moments in the franchise or as they put it: moments when Star Trek goes off the rails.
For some reason CNET decided to dig into New York City’s database of dog names to break the news that Star Wars-themed names like Vader, Skywalker and Kylo are more popular than Star Trek-themed names like Kirk, Spock and Picard.
Star Trek isn’t the only thing making a comeback this year. Twin Peaks has returned (on Showtime) and so ScreenRant took a look at 15 Actors who crossed-over from Star Trek to Twin Peaks.
The Log Lady worked on Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Mind blown.
That’s it for this week in Trek links. Keep up with all the Great Links here at TrekMovie.
What the hell is the ‘log lady’ trying to measure in that picture? The diagonal distance from Montalban’s left shoulder to his right ear? It’s no wonder he’s looking… shall we say… less than happy in this snap!
That being said though — it’s always great seeing pictures from the set. Ricardo really made one of the best villains ever. I liked the subtle appearances of Khan in South Park’s Imagination land arc…. that is pretty much the definition of ‘making it’ as a villain!
Measuring distance from the camera lens to determine the correct focus settings.
Correction: Waco Tribunee-Herald
Tribune
I was hoping that Will Ferrell would sing Roddenberry’s actual lyrics to the theme song. It was still funny though,
Star Trak.
A well timed link for Will’s ST song. But then I did go on to watch the rest of his “speech.” And it was pretty good.
Great article today, TM! Nice links.
Although Star Trek Legacy reminds me of my site.
Minus the litter. ; )
I”d like to go visit Capt. Kelm’s class. She sounds great. I take it she’s more of a TOS fan.
Just a few hours down the road from me
oddly enough, the most jarring thing about that re-edit of TMP is the lack of Goldsmith’s iconic score. you can re-cut a better movie, but the music is just about the best thing in TMP, removing it diminishes the film
The 26-minute edit was pretty darn good though …! The music complemented it nicely.