Last week’s Roddenberry Archive release of the short film “Unification” has had Star Trek fans buzzing as it brought together William Shatner’s Kirk with Leonard Nimoy’s Spock for an emotional goodbye. The film was developed by OTOY, who have been technology partners for the Roddenberry Archive since it was first announced as a sort of digital museum back in 2018. The film has accumulated almost 1 million views on the Roddenberry Archive on the web (and via the Apple Vision Pro app) in just over a week.
CEO Jules Urbach describes OTOY as “a company that creates tools to empower artists.” This includes their OctaneRender and LightStage scanning, and “digital doubles” technologies. Their work has helped fuel Oscar-winning feature film visual effects, and is used in Marvel movies and more. Urbach also has a long connection to the Roddenberry family as a childhood friend of Rod Roddenberry, who is also one of the early investors in OTOY.
For “Unification,” they mixed new live-action footage along with computer-generated enhancements that brought Shatner’s Kirk back to life, with actor Sam Witwer playing all the various aged Kirks. It’s OTOY’s “digital makeup” that captured the performance while transforming him to look like the original character, which they also did with Spock, played by Lawrence Selleck. All of this was under the watchful eyes of William Shatner and Susan Nimoy, who served as executive producers.
While it has been widely applauded by the fan and technology communities, the film is presented entirely without dialogue (with the exception of only one brief moment of voice-over), so fans are asking a lot of questions. TrekMovie had spoke with Urbach, who served as executive producer and also wrote the story for “Unification,” to fill in the details as we went step-by-step through the entire short film.
Picking up the story from Generations… and Beyond
In addition to their work “preserving Star Trek sets digitally” for the Roddenberry Archive, OTOY also worked on The Roddenberry Vault Blu-ray set released for the 50th anniversary. As they were developing the documentary features for “The Cage,” they began exploring the idea of what Urbach calls “concept videos,” which resulted in the “765874” short film series. “Unification” is actually the fourth of the series, and by far the most ambitious. The new short film was designed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Trek Generations.
Picard looks over Kirk’s grave from Generations (Paramount Pictures)
Urbach also noted that many fans were frustrated with how Kirk died in Generations, and although he thought the scene in Star Trek Beyond when Zachary Quinto’s Spock was notified of Spock Prime’s passing was “beautiful,” the death of the character happened offscreen. How these deaths were handled was a key motivation for the creation of “Unification,” Urbach explains:
“The point of this, emotionally, is we give them a proper sendoff. It was horrible that they died in separate universes… So, we thought: do we dare do this? And everyone was okay with this, from Shatner to the Nimoys to Paramount. Then it felt like something we should get as fans, as people that love these characters, as closure… And it makes sense from the characters’ perspective that they would connect, and we have given at least two ways for that to be possible.”
Kelvin Spock learns of Spock Prime’s death in Beyond (Paramount Pictures)
It started with Colt
Before diving into “Unification,” it’s worth exploring a bit about the previous three films in this series, each of which also features the character of Yeoman Colt from “The Cage,” played by Urbach’s wife Mahé Thaissa. They noticed she has a striking resemblance to the original actress Laurel Goodwin, which Urbach says was “serendipitous.” The conceit of the OTOY film series is a deep cut tied into a story from the 1998 Marvel comic Star Trek: Early Voyages featuring Colt. Urbach explains:
“What’s interesting in that Marvel comic book is not her adventure into the future. It’s on the way back she sees all of Star Trek’s timeline. It’s this ‘awakening’ and seeing everything and having that experience.”
Colt’s “awakening” in OTOY’s second short film “Memory Wall”
So for the OTOY Star Trek short films, Urbach has built off that comic and set Colt up as an “observer” who sees different moments throughout Trek history, allowing them to dive into those moments to tell these short stories. Some of the first three short films also feature Spock, and Urbach explains how they have picked up on the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which describes Spock’s mind-meld with V’Ger, giving the Vulcan an “awakening” and ability to be another one of the “observers” for their short films. Spock and Colt actually have a mind-meld in one of the previous films as well.
“Between them, they have had these experiences where they’ve seen sort of outside of the margins, right? And I think the vision of Star Trek is pretty much exploring of the unknown, and you want to see the universe as it is, and our place in it. Not everything is necessarily a new alien. Some of it is like opening your mind.”
Spock at Kirk’s grave in OTOY’s “Regeneration”
Keep your mind open
Keeping your mind open is key for “Unification,” according to Urbach. He emphasized how they wanted the film to be open to interpretation:
“We filmed this in a very specific way so that there’s nothing that locks you into this being one interpretation. Is this the afterlife, or not? You could read it both ways. You could see it as Kirk being resurrected from his bones you see in Picard season 3, or it could be totally in Spock’s mind on his deathbed. Or it could be the equivalent of the Star Trek afterlife. We were very careful in how we shot every scene so you have that ambiguity. I have my own interpretation of it, but we all agreed that we should let viewers decide what they are seeing.”
He also explained how this approach is a big reason behind the lack of dialogue:
“Obviously there is no dialogue. That was a choice. Everybody wanted no dialogue so that there’s no locking you into a specific interpretation.”
Colt in OTOY’s first short film “765874”
Gary Mitchell gets the word out… to (Kelvin) Colt
Urbach did say that while the film is open to interpretation, “there are certain anchors” that he can clarify and explain the story. So without further ado, let’s get started with the breakdown of “Unification,” beginning with the beginning.
Once again, OTOY picks up on Trek’s “beta canon” where Gary Mitchell lived on after the original Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” They are particularly leaning into the “A Perfect System” story in IDW’s “Star Trek #400” issue featuring Mitchell. The team created a “cinematic” version of the look from that comic with original actor Gary Lockwood reprising the role, using OTOY’s technology to transform him to appear as he did in that second pilot for Star Trek from the 1960s. Urbach explains:
“In this scene, he has come full circle. He is sort of playing god and learning about humanity’s future… He is looking at all of Star Trek’s future and all of time… And he is very much responsible for everything you see later [in ‘Unification’]. Gary Mitchell has also seen our reality of the world that all these characters live in, just like Colt and Spock. His contribution is he has seen enough to pass along information. So it’s not doing something like Q and snapping his finger to resurrect Kirk, but passing on information that allows the rest of this to unfold. And again, we filmed this in a certain way so there is nothing specific that locks you into this being the afterlife or something literal, so, again, you can read it both ways.”
The next 30 seconds or so of the film features a series of flashes where you see Colt and Spock on Veridian III mind-melding, Spock in San Francisco in 2272, and more quick beats. These are all elements from the first three “765874” short films and Urbach notes this was “to give people a sort of recap of what has been happening” prior to “Unification.” Think of this as a sort of “previously on…” segment.
The montage of flashes ends with new footage of data readouts for Kirk’s remains retrieved from Veridian III, as seen in Picard season 3. This brings us back to Gary Mitchell, as Urbach explains the godlike entity gets things started by sending information “to the group holding Kirk’s body at Daystrom.”
This section of the video also features Colt again looking at the information, but she is in a different uniform and here is where your mind could start getting blown, as he explains:
“Colt is in a Kelvin uniform because this is in the Kelvin timeline, even though you have the readouts [of Prime Kirk] from the Daystrom Station from 2401… This is not the same Colt. She didn’t walk over from Prime to Kelvin, she is from Kelvin. Just like there is Zachary Quinto Kelvin Spock, this is Kelvin Colt. And she is not in the Daystrom Institute, but that data, that information is what she is looking at.”
So now the intro section comes full circle, as he explains:
“What Gary Mitchell kicks off is how that scene ends up. So there’s the beginning and end to that prologue. Colt in the Kelvin timeline seeing that is started from what Gary Mitchell did.”
According to Urbach, this scene in the Kelvin Universe takes place before Prime Spock dies in the Kelvin Universe, and Spock and Kelvin Colt (off screen) “definitely had an interaction and that explains possibly more than anything.”
Kirk’s walk in the park
And now we find ourselves in a beautiful park with our first hints of an officer in TOS movie-era uniform walking through a garden, seen from oblique angles.
Soon enough, it is revealed to be James T. Kirk (played by actor Sam Witwer along with OTOY digital makeup), as seen last in Star Trek Generations. Urbach confirms this is Prime Kirk, “definitely himself and conscious, after Generations,” but again he also wanted to be sure that what we are seeing here is “open to interpretation.” However, he was definitive the park and the garden are not the extra-dimensional Nexus, where Kirk was trapped for a century in Generations.
Kirk comes upon a group of people, none of whom are immediately recognizable. One white-haired man stands a bit ahead of the crowd wearing a late 24th-century Starfleet dress uniform. This character (played by John Daltorio) is credited as “Crusher.” Urbach didn’t offer any details except to say he is “a descendant of Beverly Crusher.”
As Kirk moves through the crowd he comes upon Saavik, with Robin Curtis reprising the role she played in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In this case, Saavik is older, so Curtis presented without any digital makeup. Urbach talks about how we can interpret seeing the older Saavik here:
“There are at least two interpretations. One is this is heaven, or Gene Roddenberry’s atheistic version of some sort of afterlife. Another is the body that was in the Daystrom Institute has been resurrected as a literal, physical Kirk. And this is in the future, which is why you see an older Saavik and aren’t seeing people from his past like Bones. At least both are plausible and we were careful making sure of that as we were shooting this. So Saavik is older, this could be in the future, we don’t know exactly, all we know is as of 2401 [in Picard] no one had taken Kirk’s body out of Daystrom.”
But before you get too specific about dates and Picard and Saavik, again Urbach hedges his bets:
“I could play devil’s advocate for why this could be some sort of afterlife. Like if you look at Richard Matheson—who wrote TOS “The Enemy Within”—he had a huge influence on this… In his version of the afterlife from his book What Deams May Come, people can appear any age, so there are always these two interpretations. We were very careful for nothing to contradict either.”
Saavik is accompanied by another Vulcan, who she sort of introduces (again without dialogue) to Kirk, who appears to understand who this is: Spock and Saavik’s son (named Sorak, played by Mark Cinnery). Once again, Urbach is drawing on Star Trek extended universe:
“Spock’s child with Saavik was in an early script for Star Trek IV and I talked to the Nimoys and they are sure that Leonard’s intent for Star Trek III and Star Trek IV is that this is what happened. And given that that’s there and Saavik and Spock do get married in the novel Vulcan’s Heart. And in the TNG episode ‘Sarek,’ Picard mentions that he was supposed to be at his son’s wedding.”
As for the name Sorak, Urbach says, “I literally just picked that out of thin air, something that would make sense you could imagine as Spock’s son.”
But for Urbach, including Saavik was particularly important:
“I always wanted Robin to be there, because if you are taking this literally and you are going to send just one person to be with Spock, Spock’s family was always meant to be in there in that crowd. And to me that was Saavik and their son. That’s why they are both there… And obviously it’s a beautiful piece of acting on Robin’s and Sam’s part.”
Kirk now looks past the crowd to the lone figure of Yor, established in Discovery as the only known traveler who has moved from the Kelvin Universe to the Prime Universe.
Urbach confirmed Kirk doesn’t know who Yor is, and he also gave his view on what exactly is going on with Kirk here (using a bit of Greek mythology to explain):
“The notes that I gave Sam [Witwer], whatever has happened, whatever Kirk’s awareness… His presence in this space has not been for very long. And that’s why he looks a bit perplexed, as he is adjusting to this thing. And he starts to get more and more comfortable with what’s going on. It’s almost like Orpheus going down to rescue Persephone in Hades, and Yor is like Charon. It’s a lot like that where he hasn’t had a lot of time to adjust to where he is.”
Yor’s ability to travel between universes is the critical component here. As Kirk reaches Yor, he is handed his old badge, which had been left on his grave in Generations. Spock had retrieved this badge in the previous OTOY film “Regeneration” (see above). So the implication here is that Spock picked up that badge, and later he gave it to Yor. Urbach explained:
“Our interpretation is that Spock kept that badge and brought it to the Kelvin timeline. And Yor—as established in Discovery—can travel through time and through universes. And Yor presents the badge to Kirk—whether it is metaphorical/spiritual explanation, or literally—but it comes from Spock holding onto it all the way to the end. The implication is clear, Spock wants to see Kirk. And maybe Spock has set this whole thing up because he is Spock and he thinks seven-dimensionally.”
But once again, this is one of those moments when Urbach was careful to say it could be seen different ways:
The literal way is just one interpretation. In the spiritual interpretation, using the Richard Matheson view of the afterlife, you can create matter and create things. If you think about all the pieces, then some of those elements become a little more clear. More importantly, we wanted people to experience the emotionality of it. So this is not meant to be like, ‘Oh it’s this or that.’
World between worlds
Now is when things start to get a bit trippy as Kirk finds himself in some kind of otherworldly tunnel with water reflecting on the floor. This scene clearly draws upon the classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as explained by Urbach:
“A lot of this was from Carlos Baena, the director. He and I love 2001. If you look at the three-minute piece we did for 2001 [“Odysseys“], you can see the love we have for that film. And it is a big part of how we approach this and Star Trek.”
In this tunnel, Kirk sees different versions of himself, including one from the Star Trek: The Original Series era and then an admiral circa Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Urbach confirms all three are played by Sam Witwer in various costumes (and hair), again using OTOY technology to recreate the original look for their faces, but keeping his performance. Urbach talks about how this meeting of the Kirks was drawn from the 2001:
“Initially there were not going to be three Kirks. We wanted to show him looking at himself, maybe the TOS Kirk, and then if we are going to do this like 2001, he is going to see himself in different ages, so we extended it to three.”
Urbach describes this entire segment of the short film as Kirk in a “world between worlds,” and soon we see the other two Kirks fade away, leaving the Kirk who entered this realm:
“It’s very much in a realm where your katra, your spirit is feeling these things. In Star Trek there are different instances where they use the transporter to reintegrate characters, there is a bit of that. So when you see the other two Kirks disappear it’s because Kirk has figured out who he is. He is Generations Kirk. These other shadows or echoes of him are real, in the sense that they existed and they’re part of who he is. But it is something like, ‘No, I’m not living in these different times. I’m living in the now, this now.’ So obviously it’s abstract, but there’s a part of that that calls out to the idea of, even in a physical, literal way, Star Trek requiring you to be de-integrated in order to move on when you’re split across different pieces of time or your very personhood is in just one place and one time.”
And here the Generations Kirk who came into this realm puts on the badge that Yor gave him, sort of completing his journey to this “reintegration.”
It is now that we hear some dialogue for the first (and only) time in the form of a voice-over, with Kirk saying “‘There are always possibilities,’ Spock said. And if Genesis is indeed life from death, I must return to this place again,” taken from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. According to Urbach, this was a late addition to “Unification”:
“As we were doing this, we felt we needed something here, because a lot of the connection between the death of Spock and Kirk and Star Trek II is such a huge instrumental, influential part of the emotion of this scene. It’s in Kirk’s mind. He’s playing back that line as he is reconnecting where Spock is.”
Urbach revealed they initially had Sam Witwer record the line as all three different Kirks, and he noted with their technology, “we can do speaking, there is no problem having them talk like all the other stuff we are doing.” But William Shatner gave them permission to use his voice and Paramount provided the original audio from Star Trek II, which Urbach thought was fitting, adding “therefore Bill is in the piece, literally, from that perspective.”
Spock’s final rest
We now come to the final segment of the short film. Kirk is now in the Kelvin Universe (in between the events of Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond) on New Vulcan, where Spock Prime and other Vulcans lived after the destruction of Vulcan in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Here again Urbach drew from the extended universe, in this case IDW’s Legacy of Spock comic released shortly before Beyond. The writer of that comic, Mike Johnson, was also a consultant for “Unification.” That comic was the only time that New Vulcan was depicted and it also has a story that is tied into Spock’s death.
For Spock’s final resting place, they brought in Picard production designer Dave Blass.
“Dave built us the most beautiful Spock bed and room,” says Urbach. Blass, along with Mike and Denise Okuda, helped appoint the room befitting Spock, along with placing some Easter eggs, such as the box that young Spock (Zachary Quinto) was presented with when informed of Spock Prime’s death in Beyond (see above). But these elements are more than just Easter eggs, as Urbach explains:
“You have to put the box in there, otherwise people won’t know it’s right before Spock dies or that it is in the Kelvin timeline. That box was the first thing I had the production team build because, because if that’s not in there we aren’t necessarily going to know we are in the Kelvin Universe.”
However, Kirk doesn’t need to know all this stuff, according to Urbach:
“He doesn’t even really care, he just knows that Spock is there and dying. He could feel it. That was always the intent.”
Kirk approaches Spock and they grasp hands, just as they did in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This is more than just an homage, explains Urbach:
“There is that scene from The Motion Picture, that simple feeling. There has to be that index or key to people looking at this. I didn’t know if they would, but people immediately picked up on all of this. It’s that sense of their friendship. For me, that scene in The Motion Picture is where Spock becomes human and he humanizes their bond. It’s from that experience of mind-melding with V’Ger and Spock comes back and becomes his brother… That was a huge moment for both of them. So here, they were messaging to each other that they were going back to that, without a word being spoken.”
And again, Urbach says they were careful to ensure that these moments can be seen in different ways:
“The idea is that Spock was not necessarily expecting this, but was hoping for this… Again, there are two interpretations. One is that he is dying it and there’s a literal Mission: Impossible plan that’s been going on for a long time and it led to this very moment physically happening. And there are other possible interpretations. He could just be on his deathbed and having hallucinations. All of this could be in his mind as he is dying, even Kirk in the park.”
Kirk and Spock share a look as they are reunited. And this is what it’s all about, according to Urbach:
“Spock is about to die and whether Kirk is physically there or not, he doesn’t go out alone. They are there together. And for Kirk, it’s all about being there for his brother and his friend.”
Together, the pair look out at a sunset on New Vulcan, sharing this final moment together. So while we can (and have) analyzed the piece and all the connections, it is about the emotional resonance of this moment. As Urbach notes:
“For me, and I think for a lot of fans, it was important to see them together and see them together in a meaningful way. And that is where the piece really ends. And from what we have been seeing from people commenting, it worked. They are together and that is a beautiful thing.”
Urbach says they may do more films for the series, but this moment with Kirk and Spock is the “ending scene,” adding “this is the culmination of everything that would have possibly happened with these characters, and we are not saying what would happen after.” He does say “there is absolutely more we want to tell,” so he is hoping they do follow up with more for “the middle part of this piece that connect the beginning and end that we have shown so far is something we would want to explore.”
More “Unification”
So there you have it. A beautiful short film full of deep connections to Star Trek characters and lore that can be enjoyed on many levels and through many different interpretations. TrekMovie will have more coverage of “Unification” coming up, looking into behind-the-scenes details on the performances and technology and artistry that went into creating the short film.
For the full experience, visit the Roddenberry Archive web portal, or download the app on Apple Vision Pro.
Read more articles about The Roddenberry Archive at TrekMovie.com
Does Paramount consider this canon?
Who cares what they think, it’s what you think.
Although, personally I don’t see why they would not wanted to release this as a Short Trek.
Because if it is canon not only will they not contradict it in the future maybe they will even build upon it.
I don’t really see how it could be considered canon since much of it is left open to personal interpretation. Is Kirk resurrected? Is he in an afterlife? Is Spock dreaming all of this?
I think it is just a really cool technology demonstration that also touched a lot of people in different ways.
This is more canon to me than anything from the franchise in almost 20 years.
Rod Roddenberry is an exec producer for the current Paramount iterations of Trek and also is involved in with the Archive and what OTOY is doing. I don’t see them as being in opposition to each other.
I’m still kind of lost. It’s a beautiful film short, but wasn’t Spock alive at the time of Kirk’s apparent death? Now they’re both “gone” in Kirk’s reality. I guess trying to reconcile all the shows as separate realities makes this unification confusing. Still think that Spock, acknowledging the Nexus, would have moved across any barrier to save his friend.
Spock was alive when Kirk met his end on Veridian III in 2371. They said that Spock at some point visited Kirk’s grave.
Remember, Spock was all the way on Romulus during this time, working on the Unification movement. It’s possible Spock was made aware of what was to come after mindmelding with Prime Colt, and in Spock fashion, kept it to himself as to not alter this course of history in any fashion.
It’s 100% up to interpretation on what is going on like the creators of the short wanted. It’s also doing what they wanted to set out to do which was to get people talking about it, whether good or bad talk.
Although Spock was reborn on Genesis and went on to star in three more movies, plus one of the Kelvin movies, I think they might be referring to the scenes from TWOK which IMHO were rather poorly acted and written – sincere apologies to those who really liked those scenes, because I know many disagree with my opinion of both Spock’s death in engineering and the subsequent memorial.
This short gave us a much better farewell between Kirk and Spock, even though I am not a fan of the whole idea of revisionist AI history – even a fictitious history.
I gotta say, honestly… this is such a gross film on soooo many levels. I think bringing Nimoy’s image back to just show him bed ridden and dying is horrendously disrespectful. I don’t know what his family was thinking.
Second, I don’t get this obsession some fans have with Saavik having Spock’s kid. Them having pon farr in TSFS was awful to begin with. He’s her mentor. He found her as a child. In some fan circles it’s imagined Kirk and Spock raised her as a daughter. Accepting that happened, why would she keep the baby? Why would she even get pregnant? Like, where is birth control and abortion in the 23rd C? Where is Norplant? Where are IUDs? And why would they get married?! (as seen in unused footage)
Last, NONE of the Colt stuff makes any sense. Zero. I read it three times, and I still have no idea what is happening at all.
You’re the first person I’ve seen that had such a hot take that this is disrespectful for Spock’s character. Everyone else felt it was a touching moment.
Protesting Saavik having Spock’s baby is an equally weird take. Abortion DOES exist in Star Trek as well as birth control shots. However, given that it was her body & her choice, she made the decision to keep it, knowing she went through with relieving Spock’s regenerated body of the effects of Pon Farr.
Its just kind of creepy for her to keep the baby. The whole encounter was weird. Spock is her mentor and is old enough to be her father. At the time, Spock was missing his katra and wasn’t capable of consent.
He would of died then if she didn’t help him through Pon Farr.
Spock had his first pon Farr in his thirties. There was no reason to write that into the TSFS script. It was gross to even consider.
I’m not saying she shouldn’t have “helped” him. I’m just saying it was super weird and creepy.
It is never “creepy” for a woman to keep a baby GESTATING IN HER OWN BODY. Ever heard of reproductive freedom?
People love to champion “reproductive freedom” when it’s the woman keeping the baby. Sorry, it is creepy for someone to keep the kid they are having with their father figure. It’s creepy that they even had it. It’s creepy that she would pick it over her career. Like, people who are defending this, what are you thinking?
This is where Azetbur would chime in “Inalien?. Human morals, Why, the very term is racist…” I don’t think Vulcans give a crap whether something is morally weird or creepy. If in the moment an action is logical…
I guess this forum is a a Homo sapiens only club!
“Everyone else felt it was a touching moment.”
No, definitely not everyone.
Not everyone else. I know plenty of people – personally even – who found Spock being resurrected just to kill him icky.
Saavik shouldn’t have been put in a position of having to save Spock with seggs. It was poor writing that ignores that Spock didn’t even get his first pon farr until he was in his thirties. It makes the Trek universe look regressive for having yet another woman (Carol Marcus just a movie earlier) not taking what should be easy and readily available precautions. And having her just give up her commission to have a baby Spock never acknowledges in shame and secret is some 1950s nonsense. Why would anyone want that as part of canon? I’m glad it was excised from the THV script.
You are of course entitled to your opinions. but…
1) My Nimoy is gone and I will respect the family’s opinion over yours any day of the week.
2) the idea of Saavik and Spock having a child was respected by Nimoy himself and again I will respect his opinion over yours any day of the week.
3) No one know’s Spock’s biological age when he and Saavik had Pon Farr in ST III.
This is just so weird. Trying to find any reason why it would be ok for a woman who met a man when she was child to have seggs with him. Why do you like that enough to defend it? Guess what? That was “teenage Spock” as listed in the credits who made it with Saavik. So ignoring that he was basically her foster dad, he was also half her age and a child himself when they did it. So there is no way to slice that up right. Nimoy did not, in fact, like the idea of Saavik having Spock’s kid. Thats why it didn’t make it into the movie.
An 18 or 19 yr old Spock would be a teenage SPock. Yeah it would be weird but at the same time it was also to save his live. And getting rid of the life of a child that you are inpregnated with is enough of a contraversial subject that IRL we have no solved that issue.
If I have even the vaguest idea of Vulcan biology, and at the risk of creating another ‘vulcan hello,’ let’s just say that there are ways Saavik could have given BeverlyHills9021Spock0 relief from Pon Farr without any risk of pregnancy, and she wouldn’t have even had to catch cold from taking off her jacket. There’s a song on the GREASE soundtrack (not Re-Pro-Duc-Tion, that is GREASE 2) called BORN TO HAND JIVE that perhaps conveys what I am suggesting.
Perhaps? I really don’t know anything about that
That probably wouldn’t do it for a Vulcan in Pon Farr. At one point in Roddenberry’s novelization of TMP (which in a number of ways I preferred to the film itself), Spock seeks some privacy to mediate in a small unoccupied room near Engineering, where his sensitive hearing picks up the sound of two humans going At It. He reflects with some bemusement that humans often mix such activity even with casual conversation, which struck him as being pretty far from real passion by Vulcan standards.
Oh man, there we go. You’re anti-choice. That’s why you need to legitimize this.
You seem fun.
I don’t think he rèally needs to justify all these possibilities, but its nice to know things got thought through. This does support the Idea that post tmp spock really does have a sense of his coming death in twok, those Meyer queequeg nods.
So a lot of notions getting unified, that’s cool.
Speaking for myself, I frankly would have much preferred a technical explanation of how this was accomplished to an explication of a non-story. Were traditional CGI software and techniques used, or was some new kind of AI tech involved?
Too bad Cinefex isn’t around anymore; they could’ve really done a deep dive on this.
BEFORES AND AFTERS (terrible title, I know) is the heir apparent to CINEFEX, if there is such a thing. There’s even a print version in addition to the website! I’ve corresponded with the guy a lot, he has been covering VFX for quite awhile now and even had a book of interviews out about a decade back that I reviewed for HD VIDEO PRO. Ian probably already knows about this OTOY stuff, I remember mentioning it to him a year or so back, but I’ll drop him another line, just to make sure.
Holy moly; yes, that’s a terrible name!
I just checked and he already has a link up to this, plus a couple of other otoy projects, including a 2001 doc that looks kinda interesting (at least it seems to feature people who really know their stuff … the guy who wrote the really definitive account of making 2001 a few years back is featured in it, and he actually got access to and used a ton of stuff that Cinefex didn’t bother including in their less-than-epic coverage of the film. I know, because all that great new stuff was in my 46,000 word cut (my final work for them, before Cinefex and I parted company, 24 years ago tomorrow), which was discarded.
But yeah, that title sounds more like a ‘prestige’ TV series from NBC, circa 1990. But what would be a good title? VisEffects sounds like eye drops. SPFX was already used (briefly), as was CineMagic. You could call it Practical Optical Digital and call it POD for short, but that still seems a little goofy, though accurate.
I looked — and wow, what a great resource, in spite of the awful name. Thanks for the tip!
If I hadn’t mentioned previously, there’s also NZPETE, who is the most impressive film effects historian (especially with respect to matte painting) outside the industry that I’ve ever come across. His site is an incredible treasure trove of imagery (some of it from films you’d never even heard of) and information, and if you dig, you can come across some bits about the Trek films (mainly TMP, but also some of the ILM work on the sequels.)
He’s also very opinionated, which might put some folks off (his trashing of DEFENDING YOUR LIFE seemed very mean-spirited in a kick-the-cripple kind of way, if you recall the Ellison remark about Mark Hamil), but I’d say the site is well worth the time of anyone interested in the how and why as well as the what of traditional effects work.
My late mother was a huge fan of DEFENDING YOUR LIFE and I’m somewhat fond of it myself — but, hey, he’s entitled to his opinion. One of the nicer things about getting older is my increasing indifference as to whether others share my tastes or not, which compared to the probable consequences of 11/05/24 seems positively trivial.
I honestly think DEFENDING YOUR LIFE would make a better TV series than feature film, but that doesn’t take away from how much I love seeing Meryl suck up that endless strand of spaghetti. Also, I tear up at the end — rare, since I’m usually crying at the end of bang-bang flicks, like the 1960 MAGNIFICENT 7. (I still have no idea what Buck Henry is doing in the film, unless Rip Torn went on a bender and they had to just keep to the schedule in spite of his absence.)
If they’d take the Streissand music out, I’d probably have no real complaints at all, outside of treklike nitpicking about unexplained particulars of Judgement City, of which I have legion.
I like RMBs interpretation of this piece. It is a crossover between 2001 and Star Trek.
I’m glad they left it open to interpretation. It’s makes a great discussion. It gives a proper sendoff of these characters.
I totally agree! I actually think it must have made it that much harder to film as a result. It would have been way easier to tell people what was going on and how they should interpret it all. Love this interview though. I missed a few pieces so it was nice to have those explained.
I like it being open too. It does make for a great discussion and for a continuance that can go in any direction. But I still hope Paramount will consider this canon.
Oh I haven’t seen that yet. I’m going to check it out. While I don’t agree with all of RMB’s views on modern Trek I do love listening to his views on the franchise and science fiction in general.
I like watching RMBs videos now and then, when I first came upon his utube I remembered him from back in the 90s Free Enterprise/SciFi Universe days ,back then I never thought id be chatting to him in the future lol (on utube/twitter, he even read a letter I wrote to him ) then again I didn’t think i would with Shatner, yet I have a couple times on twitter (and back on his forum/message board days in 00s).. Of course the absolute goal would be to see him doing that Trek set tour he does (lottery win time)
The most important thing this short clip conveys is how much nearly everyone ( vfx artists, composers, set decorators, actors, fans, etc.) other than Alex Kurtzman understand what Star Trek is
I think they each honor Trek in their own way. No need to be tribalistic.
Yes, they honor The TOS era, the Berman era, the Kelvin era, and the Discovery era all in one. But IMHO this is a love letter to the TOS era.
This would make a great addition to any future releases of Beyond on blu/4k, like a post end credits scene or just additional scene included on the bluray , finally giving the audience the resurrection of Kirk Prime (after missing out on Orci’s ST3) , or even included in the next kelvin movie somehow (if it ever happens) or if there’s a Legacy movie.. It deserves to be made ‘official’ canon
Was thinking the same thing. Paramount may see the reactions to this and somehow incorporate this into the Star Trek 4 Kelvin movie if it ever happens. This could have been a little test in some ways to see if it would work.
That could be expensive though if there are extended scenes with Shatner where they needed to de-age him. Still though if there was a Star Trek 4 it would be nice to somehow have him in it.
They could dust off the unused Hurley Star Trek 7 script (or at least borrow from it) where an Enterprise is caught in a rift and the captain calls up Kirk on a holodeck for help. That would skirt any uncanny valley issues if he was a hologram.
IMHO this is a much better addition to the Kelvin universe than the one Orki wrote for Shatner in Star Trek 2009.
It is, but no way would this have ever made it to a theater lol. It’s waaaaay too cerebral obviously. Paramount didn’t want anyone to think too hard about the meaning of life and what it all means. They just wanted a really evil bad guy looking for vengance to show up and give the crew hell. In other words even if they came up with something similar, I don’t think it would’ve made it pass the initial draft.
And I’m not saying you expected something like this in the movie obviously. Because we all know the Kelvin movies are not designed for this kind of type of story telling.
I agree for a few reasons. I don’t see JJ agreeing with this. It’s way too short to be a theatrical release, even if it was the opening for a movie. Shatner does not do cameos, but for a short film it’s a little different. This so much goes against the direction of the kurtzman idea of Trek in so many ways. SO yeah, I agree.
I think the Kelvin movies if ever made again could use a little bit of this type of storytelling.
I think the Orci scene would have fit nicely in the 2009 movie. This definitely is better. I totally agree with flaming photon. If we see the Kelvinverse again or Legacy they should include kirk prime with something like this.
I dunno, I think the happy birthday sory scene was just too cheesy and Kirk would have known better than to sing that to Spock who would have found that to be illogical. It felt like trying to pull on emotional strings and failing on every level where this video succeeds.
Yes maybe the singing was not needed. If I recall some of the dialogue was pretty good.
This reminds me of the line, that if you have to explain the joke, it probably isn’t funny. It’s a nice piece of animation, no doubt, but it’s still chewing gum for the eyes. Not a lot different than those fan made shorts where a couple of starships spend ten minutes lobbing torpedoes at each other.
All of the back story with Colt needed to be explained, especially that weird montage at the start, but the actual Kirk and Spock part seem to work without needing any backstory. This is a very-high end fan film, but with enough official credentials to maybe be considered “real” Star Trek if you want to take it that way also.
Exactly this. It’s much ado about nothing.
This is one of the most expensive fannish connect-the-dots productions ever made.
Not to mention one of the most star-studded. Sam Witmer has been in a lot of stuff and you can’t even see him in this which TBH surprises me that he took this on
He’s a fan iirc, and they undoubtedly paid him; so why not? What surprises me is the participation of Gary Lockwood, who looks nothing like his younger self; and the character doesn’t move or speak anyway!
Y’know, head canon is made by fans because the shows contradict each other or don’t make things clear or make no sense. Which is the fault of the shows and their writers, not the fans. It’s actually okay to make things make sense, to have a recognizable and clear storyline, to say ‘this is what’s happening, this is what X means.’ This was supposed to be a proper ending, but leaving it open with things that make no sense (or require you to remember this or that moment from hundreds of hours of series), well, makes no sense. You have the opportunity to explain and reconcile things and instead you leave with as many questions as answers.
I love 2001. I’ve seen it more times than I can remember. I have read the novelization. And I am aware that it had a big influence on TMP. But this is Star Trek, not the 2001-iverse. Trek lends itself to specific endings and it looks like the writers just punted when they leave things open.
Besides, the ending of 2001 really isn’t very vague if you pay attention. It actually makes sense, and there really isn’t room for much interpretation. The book says what happened (if they can use comic books or other sources not written by people who wrote the episodes or movies to explain things, I can use the novelization of 2001 by the man who wrote the story with Kubrick as a source). No matter how interpreted, the facts are: Bowman was changed in this universe. There wasn’t a question of ‘is this happening in a different universe than the one Bowman was in before encountering the monolith over Jupiter’ or ‘is this just a dream’ etc. So using 2001 as a reason to make Unification vague or open to interpretation doesn’t really hold water.
I also believe that most fans won’t remember details from Discovery as well as TOS as there seem to be very few fans that remember fine details from both series as the fans of one don’t seem to overlap the fans of the other very much. Heck, I HAVE watched all of Discovery and I didn’t remember Yor. :D
I agree the author must know what story they are telling. I went into this with specificity, but the ambiguity is a specific choice, at least as it relates to the events we present to the viewer. 30 years later, do I know what happened to Sito? Did she die (offscreen) or might she be on a Cardassian prison colony with Tom Riker – I wanted to know back in 1994, and no answer ever came. As for things I don’t want to know – I think showing what Decker and Ilia became would be a mistake, it is beyond the realm of our literal experience, and that is what I think Kubrick, not ACC, was after in 2001. My experience with 2001 was that the book finally explained everything I didn’t understand in the film, and I thought I was done – until Kubrick deconstructed it vehemently (see interviews he gave counter to ACC), and forced me to see the movie again a third way, and that was when I actually loved it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8gifGHQVSE
Not sure what you were going for with this link, where Kubrick pretty much just confirms what Clarke wrote in his novel (I won’t call it a novelization as it was written in tandem with the film’s production as opposed to following it). I was truthfully quite surprised when I first heard Kubrick give this interview, where he spells out what audiences had found mysterious for decades, and I’m convinced that his younger self would have been furious with him for doing it.
That’s as uncharacteristic as David Lynch giving an actor some context for playing a ‘red room’ scene in TWIN PEAKS!
Wow, the writer of the short responded, very cool. I try to keep my criticisms or observations polite so I hope you took them that way; I like to generate conversation, get some thoughts I haven’t considered, not bash. The video was enlightening. I’ll still prefer ACC’s explanations, perhaps my way of thinking is just more mundane. Full disclosure: Peter Hyams’ 2010 is also a favorite of mine, and Clarke’s interpretation of 2001 lays the groundwork for that novel and movie. I also want to note that Kubrik’s interview was some years after 2001 was made, and like what happened with Gene Roddenberry, time and reflection can alter perspectives (‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’; or perhaps preserving the image the individual has cultivated – or been labeled as by the public and believing one’s own press).
I agree about not wanting to know some things, like the Decker/Ilia question: not everything needs an answer, some mystery and room to ponder and consider needs to stay in any universe or it makes the universe less interesting. Or sometimes less is more: I didn’t need to know that Ilia has ‘hard tipped breasts’ as Roddenberry described in the novelization of TMP :D … My opinion is just mine, and I wanted to point out that just as not everything needs an answer, its also okay to explain some things too. I was seeing a bit of commentary enamored of the nebulousness, and I personally don’t think that there’s anything wrong or less worthy or artistic about a story having a specific ending, too.
However, the more that becomes concrete, the more canon future writers have to overlook or agree with – and of course the more criticism that the concrete answer is wrong by some, which on reflection makes me realize your presentation with lots to interpret does seem a smart decision! :D
No matter what, Jules, since I didn’t make it at all clear, congrats on the short; regardless of reception to the story, they’re technically impressive and it must be awesome to see your story given life.
While I happen to agree that Clarke’s “explanation” of the events that conclude 2001 makes sense and pretty much applies to my reading of the film, the ambiguity in how Kubrick presents those events nevertheless is part of what elevates the film’s status as a masterpiece. In a similar vein I thought it was a huge mistake for BLADE RUNNER 2049 to confirm Deckard’s status as a replicant, as it was much more interesting and fun not to know for sure (especially given the disagreement of Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford on the issue).
2049 is one of those films that I know I saw it, but few years on I can’t remember much of anything about it. Even how it ended. Same goes for ‘Return of Skywalker’. I’ve pondered whether I have memory issues or it was the films, I think it’s the latter. :D
Was it confirmed deckard was a replicant in 2049? I don’t remember it was. Just the talk he had with Jared Leto’s Wallace where it was ambiguous. I think remember the director saying he didn’t want to confirm it either way , (the PKD paranoia aspect)
It’s what happens when you have technicians trying to add depth to what is essentially a tech demo. They aren’t writers and it shows.
I wrote it.
And you are a tech guy. You made something that is very pretty, but it lacks a soul. It relies more on people recognizing trek plot points and minutia than telling a coherent story. And, as I said in a thread elsewhere in this section, it’s disrespectful to the image of Nimoy (I don’t care who in his family authorized it) and it pedals in the bizarre sexualization of the father/mentor relationship between Spock and Saavik.
Completely disagree with you – i actually think this is one of the best pieces of Trek i’ve seen in a long time. There is soul and depth in this through the connection between Spock and Kirk and, to me, this is clear from the video. Would definitely like to see what else Jules has created and more of this type of work as a Short Trek. Also your comment to Jules was exceptionally rude and demeaning – no need to be this way!
It doesn’t rely on people recognising plot points, anyone, even casual fans, can pick this up and enjoy it.
By the way, why are you trying to articulate what an artist can and cannot do?
Gary Mitchell sends brain vibes to Yeoman Colt in an alt universe who something something a colt who lives 100 years later in a section 31 base we saw Kirk’s body in for 2 second in Picard who resurrects it and sends it to meet Saavik and the kid she maybe had in TSFS who sends him to a time agent from discovery who gives him a something that makes him see himself in a dark room and then goes to see Spock die. That is the plot ties plot point connect the dots fan cruft ever made. Lower decks had less references in a season.
i am not saying what an artist can’t do. I’m saying what is tasteless which is the purview of a viewer.
That’s the Daystrom station, not section 31. Jules said in the article that this Yeoman Colt is NOT at that station, and is viewing that information on a screen. Agreed it could all be made more clear but the shorts are just that, short, and there is only so much they can do in that time. I’ve pieced most of it together. It’s not a main line TV show so having a little fun with it and requiring a bit of digging into deep trek is kind of fun.
To be honest until I read this article I thought she was at Daystrom Station as well. This now makes a lot more sense.
And yeah, it’s a short with no dialogue, so there is only so much you can interpret on your own.
And you wrote a beautiful short film Jules. I have watched it nearly a dozen times now. People will obviously have their opinions about everything under the sun. But I think it’s clear for the overwhelming majority out there, your film has touched them in ways many haven’t felt in a long time. Reading the comments section of the film and people discussing their own personal experiences of grief and loss shows just what a mark it has made for so many who watched it and probably many others for years to come.
You should be very proud of it. Thank you.
I’ve been a Star Trek fan since 1968 at age 4 and there are many scenes that made me feel this way. Picard saying to Q “ but not alone…” before Q dies in season 2. Having suffered my own childhood trauma, I enjoyed that thread of resolving childhood trauma in season 2 (even though it could have been better paced. Many shows suffered from remote writers rooms during covid)
Data and Geordi’s moment in season 3 of Picard. I about lost it… again.
The final scene in Star Trek Picard was perfect, I deeply missed the Goldsmith fanfare send off of the movies and yup upon hearing it in Picard final scene, I bawled like the wet sack I am.
Sisko reuniting with his son in the episode The Visitor. I was a wet sack.
Pike accepting his fate in order to save the galaxy and more importantly Spock. Btw, how Kirk and Spock first meet in season 2 of Discovery was perfectly written.
The final two episodes of Disco were outstanding. They stuck their landing. I loved the reveal that Kovich was Agent Daniels.
We won’t talk about the final episode of Enterprise…. EVER!
These are all great examples Jose Kuhn, some I have gotten emotional myself at times.
A few others:
When Sisko kept being brought back to Jennifer’s body in Emissary by the wormhole aliens for him to finally break down because he couldn’t move past her death. “It’s not linear.” “No, it’s not linear.” Gets me every time.
When Trip and T’Pol lose their baby and they sit on the bed grieving together.
When Voyager hears from Starfleet for the first time since they ended up in the Delta Quadrant and she says, ‘keep a docking bay open for us’. It’s one of the rare times you see her trying to keep her composure for her crew but you hear it in her voice. I just love this woman so much.
So many great emotional scenes in this show.
And also agree, I really liked the Discovery finale. It hit all the right spots for me. Not perfect, but I thought it was very good. And I did love where it left Burnham in the end.
But we disagree on the Enterprise finale. I thought it was amazing actually. The way the NX-01 crew exposed Paxton in Terra Prime and Demons and foreshadowed the Federation was a great way to end the series. And it gave us still one of the one of the most uplifting speeches in Star Trek when Archer says ‘The final frontier begins in this hall. Let’s explore it together.’
Sadly that was the final episode. Nothing came after that. Do you hear me, NOTHING came after that!
Great talk! :)
I loved this so much. Thank you SO much to the people who made it. I’d really love it if this was formally hosted on Paramount+. The entire set of Otoy shorts seserve a place next to the rest of the body of Trek.
*deserve, even 🙄
Completely agree. This deserves to be honored by Paramount and be considered canon.
The short films are nothing less than beautiful, IMHO. A continuation from the TOS cast films.
Well, since Yor died in the Prime timeline, that being the afterlife would work.
I don’t like the idea of Trek having an afterlife cause Trek has always been science based and not religion based. But in this case, I agree. When we saw an image of him in Discovery, he was wearing a season 1/2 uniform of TNG, ditto in this. Kirk died way after that. So it doesn’t make sense that this would be anything after that time period unless it was the after life or some kind of dream. But even if it was a dream how would kirk know of these uniforms.
Indeed.
In Star Trek one alien species’ afterlife is a Starfleet crew’s asteroid field rich with the 247th element known to the Federation…
The piece was fantastic, and to those who want to nitpick its every detail….
….as the good captain once exclaimed, “Get a life!!”
That was Shatner. Big difference.
Kirk would have said it, too!
It wasn’t even Shatner, it was SNL and Shatner just quoting their lines lol
If you need to write an entire article to explain the story, then you didn’t do a good job telling the story in the actual film. Leaving some things ambiguous is fine, but you need to have some exposition. This whole story was just an incoherent mess.
Actually many people got it reading all the comments on it when it was released including here. But yes it was purposely open to interpretation. That has happened in stories for literally centuries now. And the gist was always clear, it was Kirk meeting Spock in his last moments of life and had others like Colt and Yor to help him get there. Yes the details were a bit murky on how they did it, but it was supposed to be.
But I get if that bothered others. I had no issue with it personally. Some things don’t have to all be explained.
I don’t think it was an incoherent mess, but it wasn’t defined either. I personally did think this was the nexus but apparently I was wrong. Even canon trek is open to interpretation depending on which story you are watching. I mean data’s death and resurrection makes no sense whatsoever in Picard but it is still canon.
I enjoyed the short film but am still confused as to what relevance the display readout of Prime Kirk’s bones would have for Kelvin universe Colt. It makes zero sense to me.
Also, it seemed like Kirk was either in a dream like state or in an afterlife. If it was an afterlife, it makes me wonder what Gene Roddenberry would have that about that. Did he believe in an afterlife for our heroes? I thought he was an atheist.
These questions are why I’m not a big fan of ambiguous stories with Star Trek. I need things to make sense and to also have a general consensus with others about what was conveyed in the story.
Don’t get me wrong, it was still enjoyable for what it was and brought a tear to my eye. Okay, I cried like a baby. I’ll admit it. It was great to see Kirk and Spock together again. I just wish it was clearer about how they get to that point and what it all means at the end.
There is no indication that it is “just bones” at the Daystrom institute. Infact if you look at the display in Picard S3 it pretty much makes this thought redundant. Also there is some audio that “indicates” that there is scans and monitoring taking place.
“Bones”, “remains”, whatever, as it still has not been established if Daystrom Station is storing a dead or alive Kirk in stasis.
I am confused why it was of any significance for kelvin universe Colt to be monitoring a readout of prime universe Kirk’s storage vault in the future of another universe.
Agreed. They could just as easily be X-Rays.
Well in fairness, I never said “just bones” as was misquoted. Bones are on the display, so I said bones. LOL
lol fair enough
Many aliens in Star Trek believe in an after life, from Klingons to Bajorans. Vulcans have some form of an after life since obviously Katras are a thing. So why would it be any different for humans? And I say this as an atheist as well, but my beliefs makes no difference to what is presented in Star Trek which has always had a spiritual/metaphysical view of the universe. That’s why when I see fans constantly trying to suggest Star Trek is based on hard science is always a head scratcher to me. Star Trek lives in a very strange universe(s) where thoughts of existence and how its perceived are wide ranging on an infinite number of levels.
I’m not against it being the afterlife at all. But now that you bring up the aliens having an afterlife of some kind, did Star Trek ever really mention one for humans or was it only the aliens? The closest to a mention of one I remember was when Janeway was dying, and the alien lifeform was trying to convince her to go into an afterlife which turned out to be its dinner plate. I don’t really recall any other instance.
Maybe the producers of Trek didn’t ever mention a human afterlife because they didn’t want to play favorites with any Earth religion.
Oh, and the Bajoran prophets will always be ‘wormhole aliens’ to me. :)
All fair and agreed. I do think they have stepped around the idea for humans themselves in Star Trek because as you said they they have always stepped around the religion issue in general. But my feelings on it has always been if life all basically started the same way in the universe (or at least corporeal life) then it all ends the same way as well. There are so many religions on Earth today and most of them all have some form of an after life. But even if you do believe an after life exists on some level, I don’t think they all have one specially for whatever religious text they read, so it will all happen the same way IF there is one. There are many different versions of ‘heaven’ but it will probably all be the same place in the end.
I think that would be the same case for every life in the galaxy as well regardless what planet someone was born on and religions they follow on that planet. But yeah, I know, it’s open for debate…a lot of debate lol.
Roddenberry absolutely did not believe in an afterlife, to the extent that when he re-wrote the ending of “Return to Tomorrow” to exclude a reference to it, the outraged writer, who was Catholic, took his name off of the episode in protest.
I thought this short was so well done. I’m glad they didn’t use any dialog – aside from how unconvincing I think it would be (despite their claims to the contrary), it just isn’t necessary. Everything can be done exactly as it was, and it works.
Knowing the backstory of it all and all the layers the put into it was fascinating – I can tell you I certainly didn’t pick up on half of that. I took a pretty liberal afterlife interpretation of it, didn’t think of it as a physical thing, but maybe something that both Kirk and Spock experienced as they died. But it works on every level, so I’m even more impressed knowing the thought they put into it. It was like an early Christmas gift :) thank you OTOY, Roddenberry, Shatner, Nimoy, Curtis, Lockwood, Paramount. Also don’t forget, Michael Giacchino scored it just like he did the Kelvin movies – incredible! They assembled an all star team.
Thanks for this detailed interview! I wrote up my own interpretation of the events in Unification here:
https://avidandrew.com/unification.html
I think it fits really well with Kirk’s trip through the Nexus and enfuses his actions on Veridian III with additional meaning.
The Nexus is what I thought too but apparently I was wrong.
I mean yeah, this is basically a fan film with a good budget and creators son and professional people involved but maybe Paramount can find a way for it to become official somehow. In the story, I fully expected them to use either the genesis device or the genesis planet to resurrect Kirk as that was what was hinted with the voiceover. But I like the fact it can be interpreted in different ways. I interpret it as Spock imagining all these in his deathbed.
That is the beauty of this short, that you can interpret it however you want. But I have a problem with this theory because how Spock know who Yor is, which we know is a real person and wouldn’t be born until decades after Spock died in the Kelvin universe. If he had some run in with him somewhere then I can buy that theory more as well.
I’ve seen a few sources- nothing firsthand, I’ll admit- that Nimoy was definitely *not* OK with the idea that Saavik was carrying his child, and took it out of the script. Her helping him in ST III can be seen as something telepathic, not physical. (This led to people thinking she was pregnant with *David’s* child, and probably didn’t tell Kirk. Or, of course, not pregnant at all.) But if they say Nimoy was OK with it, well…
Of course, the son she’s seen with here could have been Spock’s, but from their later marriage. And mentor/mentee relationships aren’t unheard of, and can be quite respectable, especially of course as the mentee ages.
Forgive me for being a Trekkie: The movie-era badge had that small circle (which always reminded me of a copyright symbol) on the upper right, not the lower left. That mistake (or change) may go back to Generations, though, I’m not sure.
There are plenty of reports (even mention in a decade-plus-old trekmovie thread) that Bennett explained way way back how Nimoy was uncomfortable with the scripted Saavik pregnant storyline, hence it getting dropped during the making of TVH. Nimoy himself commented on the idea in a commentary, but only said something like they left it out so they had an option to go pick it up in a later film, which of course didn’t happen.
Given how protective Nimoy was during this period of his character, Vulcans and Trek — the story in CFQ of him ripping a photographer’s film out of the camera after catching Kim Cattrall in pointed ears but otherwise naked posing in the Captain’s chair on the TUC set shows an almost paranoid fear of bad press (if there is such a thing) for the franchise — I think he probably realized the pregnancy angle could come off weird-bad.
I think it is funny that the earlier RETURN TO GENESIS outline by Bennett has Saavik in love with — and presumably sleeping with — Kirk, not Spock. Wonder if that went away at Nimoy’s behest as well? Shatner hustling teeny-boppers or at least girls his daughters’ age was already a thing on TJ HOOKER — an early scene of him flirting at Lisa Hartman had everybody in our living room groaning with embarrassment — plus it could have been a sop to get Shatner on-board with doing the film, though I’m imagining a love scene with Shatner and Alley going down like something out of the Pinewood cafeteria in 1969, where Diana Rigg supposedly announced to the room that she’d just eaten garlic right before doing a love scene with George Lazenby for ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE.
Nimoy ripping up those negatives of Cattrall artfully draped over the helm console wearing only her ears was a crime against humanity, in my view.
Your story about Diana Rigg eating garlic before shooting her love scene reminded me of “Babylon 5”’s Claudia Christian complaining about Shatner kissing her on the set of “T.J. Hooker” after eating Thai food. Needless to say, she was not a fan.
“Nimoy ripping up those negatives of Cattrall artfully draped over the helm console wearing only her ears was a crime against humanity, in my view.”
Absolute criminal behavior at the very least. Well said!!!
I’d never heard that Shatner story, but it does speak volumes … or is that mouthfuls?
As for Cattrall and nudity, we’ll always have the wonderfully fun Rutger Hauer film SPLIT-SECOND (she even has the same haircut in it), ROSEBUD (if teenagers do it for you), some Faye Dunaway movie she was in during the 80s and probably every fourth SEX AND THE CITY I watched.
Sure, there are plenty of places to view KC au naturale, she not exactly being a shy wallflower in her career choices. But c’mon, man, Valeris in the buff? That would have been absolutely iconic for a prominent Trek guest star appearance. No one’s done it since Angelique Pettyjohn back in the Seventies, and it’s long overdue. Not to mention, contra Nimoy, I think it would’ve been great publicity for the film — and as a sometimes-photographer himself, Nimoy should have known better.
He may have had a child post-Unification and pre-Trek 2009.
Not every hero needs an epic, mind-blowing death scene where he saves the entire galaxy in the process.
Not every character relationship needs to be tied up with a perfect little bow like this.
Kirk died helping to save an entire planet’s civilisation. That’s good enough for me. I’ve always found the suggestion that his death was a cop-out weird.
This video is well done of course, but mostly just fan-servicy fluff.
I’d argue a hero doesn’t need a death scene at all.
I’m not sure what this means. If the story calls for a death scene, then the story calls for one.
It means I don’t necessarily need to see a long running character die. It’s not important to me. They are a character. They can live forever as far as I’m concerned.
I had no problem with Kirk dying in the first Generations movie, I just thought the way they did it just didn’t work. It was a bad script. Nimoy thought so, Moore and Braga admitted they blew it, and the majority of the critics and fans thought so too.
Pairing Kirk and Picard up for GEN was a great idea. Killing Kirk in the film would’ve really resonated and been great if they actually had a better script.
Generations just squandered Kirk’s death completely, thanks to Rick Berman and possibly the Paramount execs, whoever the ones were that gave Moore and Braga the stupid requirements for the script. Berman definitely made a huge mistake by not enlisting Nimoy onboard as director early on. That was a complete fail.
oh my…
Now this, THIS is Star Trek!
Paramount+/CBS, for the love of Q, please drop Kurtzman/Secret Hideout and instead do a deal with OTOY.
They get it and if the deserved hype over what is a dialogue free 10 minute piece of art, with no OTT explosions or hammy, parody-like overtones doesn’t show you how much this has hit the fandom, I do not know what will! There is more buzz and universal praise for this piece of media than ANYTHING (well, maybe Picard S3, which wasn’t perfect) since 2005.
You want to make money? Get these people involved with the franchise full time ASAP! It is not only the logical thing to do, but the RIGHT thing to do.
There’s more buzz about this piece of media for that simple reason that it’s a deepfake video bringing back two legacy characters. Strip them away and put in two new characters people don’t have decades of attachment to and watch the YouTube like ratio plummet.
With nuTrek? We’d not got ANYTHING like that, new characters or not.
Anything like what? Objectively, what was there besides the images of the characters you have a deep connection with, and some pretty music?
Pretty hard to be objective about Trek period, at least for most fans, myself included.
It brought something new, or at least fresh, to the table, by virtue of not being much like nearly everything else of Trek we’ve seen this century. I’d say CALYPSO came closest, but even that is a stretch.
For myself, Kirk seeing his younger self in the reflecting pool gave me the burning desire to watch UNDER THE SKIN again. That was just a knee-jerk reaction, but it suggests that the imagery had something going on to compel me to think of a brilliant arty movie (that feels like it was directed by an extraterrestrial!)
BTW, Michael, I was trying to find my book review of RETURN TO TOMORROW online (failed completely), but did come across some trekmovie threads from a decade back, and fell down a rabbit hole for a spell. Man, we have had some interesting conversations together and with other folks down through the years! (I’ve still never read a Cushman book.)
Honestly, I don’t think there’s been much brought to the table that’s been really fresh since the heyday of DS9. And in all fairness, pulling that off after decades’ worth of storytelling in a fictional universe that can’t change *too* much by design lest it lose its appeal is probably harder than it looks. (The current “Dune” series airing on Max is a textbook example of this problem.)
I’ve enjoyed our conversations too, pal, thanks. The world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but nerd-dom lives on!
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s been much brought to the table that’s been really fresh since the heyday of DS9. And in all fairness, pulling that off after decades’ worth of storytelling in a fictional universe that can’t change *too* much by design lest it lose its appeal is probably harder than it looks. (The current “Dune” series airing on Max is a textbook example of this problem.)”
This in a nutshell. There are now over 900 installments of Star Trek. After awhile you can only do so much at this point without basically just doing another variation that was done 30 years ago already. Sure you can put stories outside of a starship, 900 years into the future or even in a parallel universe, but it will still be similar stories we gotten again and again.
And the other problem if you try to do something a little too different or out of the box, then people yell ‘that’s not Star Trek’ as we saw with DS9 at the beginning of its run and later Discovery. So you can’t rock the boat that much without it falling out of what makes Star Trek Star Trek to many fans out there.
And then we get SNW, which is the most derivative show currently on air and most fans seen to love it. There isn’t an original bone in its body repeating every old theme or stories out there; which basically sends the message more of the same please.
Anything like *what*? It’s literally just images of characters you know and love.
I liked the short personally, though mostly as a well-done technical exercise. But the idea that a non-narrative piece that’s a fathoms-deep dive into franchise mythology represents some kind of a potential step towards renewed mainstream popularity is, well, quite a reach.
Who said that? Just renewed popularity WITH ACTUAL TREK FANS would be a good start. But hey, if you’re happy with the dross being churned out by Kurtzman and co, good for you, I guess.
“Renewed popularity” with Trek fans, maybe — though the fan opinions on this board appear to be as mixed as usual — at the expense of general audiences who would take in the pretty yeoman and the glowy-eyed dude and wonder what the hell was going on before switching the channel. You never know, but my guess is that the Paramount executives will say No, thanks.
The producers of this short have demonstrated that they can appeal to nostalgia by generating convincing, lifelike re-creations of your favorite Trek characters. That’s a laudable technical accomplishment that says nothing about their ability to craft stories for those characters (or any others) that you would like better than those being put out by the current regime. Sorry, that’s just a fact.
But it seems like most Trek fans are invested in these new shows and movies. I have argued, yes, there are probably many who aren’t watching any of it, but sadly because it’s behind a pay wall today just as much as others may not like the new direction its taken.
We will obviously never know the true extent of who is watching and who isn’t but I don’t think an 8 minute short is going to suddenly change that perception either even if most likes it. Most will say ‘that’s nice’ and not think about it beyond that.
This is appalling.
How so?
Wow didn’t expect this reaction from you Bryant. What are your issues with it?
This and Picard season 3 get more fans going than anything else. And most, not all of the fans have positive reactions.
Look at all the negativity with DSC, SNW etc…
Just make Star Trek that’s like Star Trek and Trek could be popular and viable again. Instead it’s kind of split the fandom and withered, whilst Star Wars shows like The Mandalorian and Andor prosper. Because they are Star Wars.
You’re just saying you want rehashes and references of old stuff and nothing new. I love old trek, but I don’t want to see nothing but old plot points connected together to make a remarkably small universe. Why not just watch the old stuff?
Didn’t state what I want. Just what seems in my view to be popular.
What I want is an optimistic Star Trek series set on a starship exploring the galaxy. New cast, new stories, new worlds to explore in a humanist, logical scientific fashion.
Disco was plenty optimistic, s03 and onward.
It was too late at that point, the characters were already established and they still hadn’t realized how silly the ship looked and gotten rid of that roulette wheel saucer section.
If all you can complain about is the way the ship looked, then Disco must have been an amazing show.
Did you miss the first part of what I wrote? Like “it was too late” and the stuff about the characters being a loss. If you need a further breakdown, search back a few years on this site to the exhaustive urinalysis (pun intended) of the last ep of s2, the final dsc show I will ever watch to completion, I detail a litany of writing failures.
Though I’m not a huge STAR WARS fan I have seen most of the movies and everything I’ve heard about “Andor” suggests it’s well worth a watch. The first season was, however, no great success in terms of ratings, however fans and critics felt about it.
I will give you DIS and how divided that show still is. No matter how people may feel about it personally, it’s perceived as the least popular show of the modern era. But SNW is probably the most popular of all the new shows outside of Picard season 3, so not sure where that is coming from? And it’s not my favorite personally either. But consensus wise, it seems to be very popular. Yes, not everyone loved the second season but every poll online shows it’s not even that far behind season one in terms of critical views.
And Star Wars is more split these days than Star Trek is lol. It’s funny you mentioned the two shows that most fans seem to like, but ignored how divisive Book of Boboa Fett, Ashoka, Obi Wan and the Acolyte are today. The last one was so bad, it was immediately cancelled after the first season although it was clearly designed for more. Even Mandalorian season 3 is considered a huge step down from the first two.
It just kind of proves how biased people are or just see what they want to see when there are Star Wars fans saying how bad Disney Star Wars are and begging for Kathleen Kennedy to be fired just as much as there are Star Trek fans begging for Kurtzman to be fired.
Yep. STAR WARS fans make Trek fandom look positively sedate by comparison.
Definitely true. Star Wars fans have become beyond cynical at this point. I do like how they are basically ‘over it’ every time they announce another movie since they have cancelled more SW movies than Paramount has of Star Trek ones and like us have no faith another one will get made lol. But at least one finally got to production with the Madalorian movie. And we’re still waiting…
Think back to how you felt the first time you saw the Millennium Falcon jump to light speed, and ask yourself if that could ever be recaptured by any sequel no matter how good it was. There’s reasons the fans are cynical, and not all of them are about quality.
Yes true. And that was at a time there was so little SW made. Now they have made both more movies and shows in its modern era than Star Trek has in its modern era.
The Acolyte was pretty darn good once it got going. I don’t know what show you watched. Or maybe you just heard it was woke and didn’t bother watching it at all.
I will never understand why people have to throw in a snarky attack just because we don’t agree about a show or a film. No it has nothing to do with it being too ‘woke’ I just thought the show was badly plotted out with some ridiculous moments interspersed throughout it. For the record, I did stopped watching it after episode 5…until a few weeks ago I decided to finish the rest of the season and regretted I decided to finish it. The ending was even more ridiculous to me.
But glad you enjoyed it.
I knew you hadn’t actually seen it. And I think you still haven’t.
I watched it literally the first hour it aired as I have done every previous Star Wars and Star Trek show; and talked about it multiple times here and other places. I was genuinely excited about the show but it only got worse after each episode and in the end I just thought it sucked although episode 5 was genuinely good IMO. But still a bad show overall. Dude I WISH I didn’t watch the silly witch chant episode, but unfortunately I did.
You liked it, fine. But If it only got ‘better’ then why did the ratings keep falling that led to its immediate cancelation then?
Can you explain that without using a Jedi mind trick?
Not to jump in on a show I’ve never seen — I was only able to skim AHSOOKA and got through BOBA FETT only so I would have full continuity with Mando — but from what little I’ve read about ACOLYTE, TPTB might not have wanted to continue with that creative force, owing to maybe being a little too creative and not such a slave to pseudo-history (in that regard, Favreau & co on Mando seemed to strike a nice balance at first, creating a show that felt as much like HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL as it did STAR WARS.)
We’ve seen plenty of Trek shows that ran for years even though the ratings weren’t ideal — in fact in the Berman era it became common to think that each new show needed to get to s4 to get its spacelegs, which is ridiculous in the real world of most television shows — but then again Disney may be more enslaved by numbers than most, given the streaming era has got its own algorithms and measurements that are presumably a lot more complex than Nielsen ratings.
For me, the real Jedi mind trick would be explaining the budgets on all these genre shows from the last decade, which seem utterly preposterous to me.
Acolyte had more viewing hours logged than Andor. The latter got a second season. What Jedi mind trick made that happen? Screenrant determined 29 out of 30 negative reviews of the show were AI written. Critics mostly liked it. Look, man, no one rants this long about a show just because it’s number were bad. That’s a smoke screen for your real feelings.
What a great interview. Again I’ll say, I’m pretty floored by the ‘love’ granted the franchise by the Archive with Unification. It really warmed me up in these times which to me, are not currently so warm. Truly a gift. So Thankful, and a happy holiday to all. 🦃
This was a great read. Thank you so much for this interview TM!
And while I loved the short so much, and watched it around five times the first day, I was still lost on some of it; especially the beginning of the roles Gary Mitchell and Colt played. Now it all makes sense…or I should say better sense lol.
I don’t think we are meant to understand every second of the story. As Trek fans, we usually want the science/technobbble explanation of how every part comes together by the end of an episode or film. But this piece to me is meant to be an emotional and spiritual journey about two old friends who find each other at the end of their lives across both universes and time going into the next phase beyond death together. That’s very much the beauty of Star Trek or as Q once put it, the unknown possibilities of existence!
That line has always stuck with me because it explains how Star Trek sees both humanity and the universe. And this short exemplifies it in abundance. Well done.
All of this just to have William Shatner in Star Trek IV (Kelvin)
Yes just do it
Lets hope so.(that there is a kelvin ST4, and that its with Shatner – even if its just AI)
In a perfect world, they’d totally have Kirk Prime in the fourth Abrams ST movie. If this is considered canonical, and I’m assuming that there was an actual story leading to Kirk’s regeneration, then Kirk entered the Kelvin timeline right before Spock’s death, that is, before Star Trek Beyond. Incorporating the Kirk Prime character into ST 4 will put people in seats. It will be a great sendoff for the Abrams ST characters and the original Kirk, that is, if the script is right. I think it has a lot of potential. Abrams Kirk and Spock and Bones meeting Kirk Prime? How amazing would that be?
I appreciate that it’s licensed and involved actual actors and people who’d worked on the show etc. etc., but man, I just hated it. It’s just another Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling with a Dirt Devil. Just because it has buy-in from all the relevant rightsholders that doesn’t mean it’s good.
OK, Kurtzman.