In the latest ‘ShatnerVision’, the original Captain Kirk again talks about the dilemma of the how to make Star Trek XI work with two captains Kirk. He also reiterates the point that he and Leonard Nimoy should be in the film to ensure its success. Shatner Talks Star Trek XI
As reported last week, Daren Dochterman is ‘finishing’ his Trek Enhanced Doomsday Machine project. TrekMovie.com is now proud to show this exclusive premiere of the ‘eye candy’ preview. click image to play QT movie [or click for WMV]
CBS have released some images for this weekend’s "Journey To Babel". Get a closer look at the shuttlebay (and Gailileo and Columbus) as well as that Orion Ship. UPDATE: CBS have sent over some larger versions of the images put up earlier…plus an exclusive image for TrekMovie.com of the Galileo with Planet Vulcan in the background
TV Star, Movie Star, Singer, Pitchman, and now inspiration for Ballet…William Shatner does it all. The Milwaukee Ballet has announced it will premiere "Common People" a ballet choreographed to the Shatner’s recent album ‘Has Been’. The dance will be one of three parts of “Premieres of Passionate Dance" being performed this Valentines Day weekend (February 15–18). In a WKTI radio interview Shatner was quite enthusiastic about the event, saying "I have a life long devotion – more than an interest, less than an obsession, with the ballet and to have this happen to me is so exciting." Shatner said that he would try to make it to Milwaukee to see the ballet if he can fit it between shootings of his show Boston Legal.
George Takei seems to be getting more and more work lately; tonight he will be guest starring in NBC Heroes. This bit of stunt casting is getting the show and Takei a lot of publicity. In a TV Guide Interview Takei talked about what it was like to be in demand again Oooooh, and it’s sooooo wonderful! Who knew this would be happening 40 years after Star Trek? It’s good to feel hot. In another interview with the Philadelphia Daily News Takei was asked about Star Trek XI, and he responded in classic fashion:
The Enterprise finds a giant asteroid generation ship headed towards a planet…and McCoy finds a girlfriend. Preview | Ep. Info | Show times This McCoy centric 3rd Season episode is probably not Trek’s best effort, but it does have the longest title. For the Remastered team there isn’t a lot to work with, but you can look forward to… New missiles A big new Yonada Asteroid Various shots of the Enterprise, including one firing phasers Possibly some new effects for the Oracle Zap
TrekMovie.com has finally got a copy of the offiical release for TOS-R coming to HD DVD, announced recently at CES. It states that season one of the ‘Remastered’ Star Trek: The Original Series will be released on combo DVD/HD-DVD disks by the fourth quarter of 2007 in the USA and Japan. Note that this is the actual 29 episodes of the first season of TOS and not the first season of Trek Remastered in syndication which is airing out of order. This release is sooner than originally planned and TrekMovie.com has been told that CBS are ‘accelerating’ their production schedule to ensure they have completed all of season 1 this year. However even though they will be producing these extra season one shows this year, the 2007 syndicated airing schedule will remain unchanged. In the official release Ken Ross, EVP of CBS Home Entertainment states "as we take this initial step into the high definition DVD market, it is only fitting that Star Trek is the first property that we chose to release.”
While the brain trust behind Trek XI remain mum, William Shatner keeps on talking. This week The Shat talks to Time magazine, where he reveals a tiny bit more about his thoughts on Star Trek XI. Time: Lost producer J.J. Abrams is working on a Star Trek movie for 2008 about a young Kirk and Spock, and there are rumors you will make an appearance. Shatner: I did have a talk with J.J., and he outlined what he wanted to do. Getting a character who is supposed to be dead to talk to his younger self is a storytelling problem. But if you want to guarantee the audience will come in droves, one of the things you might do is include some members of the old cast.
Daren Dochterman, the Visual Effects Supervisor on the Directors’ Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, has been working on a CGI-enhanced version of "The Doomsday Machine" for many years. He even presented a version of his work to Paramount TV over 2 years before they decided to give Star Trek Remastered the go ahead. That version has been available at his site (TrekEnhanced.com) and on YouTube for over a year, but Dochterman has been quietly working on a ‘final version’ which he announced at his site today.
StarTrek.com have put up a preview for next weekend’s "Journey To Babel" Remastered. Check out the Enterprise’s new shuttle bay. click image to play in WMP or Click Here for QT Remember, this episode airs next weekend. This weekend is "For The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
Here is a high res shot of the Yonada asteroid ship bearing down on the Big E The Remastered "For The World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" airs this weekend. StarTrek.com has also have a new desktop with this image as well. Click here for showtimes & locations. Click Here for video preview
Greg Grunberg (the only semi-confirmed cast member for Star Trek XI) has decided what kind of alien he would like to play in his best friend’s new Trek feature. "I’d love to be a Vulcan, it’d be great. That would be incredible," Grunberg tells Rotten Tomatoes. This may be due to his repeated concerns about sitting in a make-up chair for too long, assuming ears are easy to do. More interestingly Grunberg reveals that the script for Trek XI is almost complete, saying: He [JJ Abrams] is finalizing the script right now so I just talked to him today and he said, ‘I’ll send it to you as soon as it’s done’ so hopefully it’ll be very soon.
One of the interweb’s most popular viral videos is of William Shatner singing Elton John’s classic ‘Rocket Man’ at an awards show from the 70s. Now in a new video, Bill talks about (and shows) this legendary performance
JJ Abrams best friend Greg Grunberg was on Jimmy Kimmel Live last Friday, and Jimmy asked him about being in Trek XI. Grunberg said that he may not want to sit for eight hours of make-up for just a line, but Abrams may not give him a choice.
Here is yet another recasting rumor for you to mull over, this time for Scotty. The Scottish tabloid The Sunday Mail is reporting that Last King Of Scotland star James McAvoy is the leading candidate to play the iconic engineer in Star Trek XI. The paper cites a ‘studio insider’ saying that "the producers are keen to have a Scot play Scotty." It is hard to judge the validity of this report, but it isn’t a good sign that the paper takes it as a given that Matt Damon has been signed on to play Kirk, quoting their source as saying "they (the producers) think he could form a brilliant double act with Matt (Damon)". For the record, Matt Damon has previously stated that he has yet to be approached by the studio. In addition, negotiations for any roles will not happen until after Trek XI gets an approved budget (with the possible exception of the leads and possibly Shatner and Nimoy).
Well it is almost a year late, but Perpatual have finally launched the official site for their MMORPG Star Trek Online. StarTrekOnline.com does not have a lot of content (in fact it has less content then the subsite that was previously hosted a Perpetual.com), but it is sporting a whole new Starfleet emblem. Although games may not count as ‘canon’, the game is set a couple decades after Star Trek Nemesis so changes in uniforms and the emblem are to be expected. Although there isnt much to look at on the site, Executive Producer Daron Stinnett talked to WarCry Network this week and answered some questions about STO.
The Enterprise is endangered by Captain Kirk’s best friend when he is turned into a powerful being…and you know what they say about power corrupting. PreviewLocal Station & ShowtimesMore at Memory Alpha This is Star Trek’s second pilot (after the Cage) and the one that convinced NBC to pick up the show. This is the reason there are some differences between this episode and the rest of the series (both visually and with the cast). There are a number of effect shots for CBS to update with CGI…
In the latest issue of Star Trek Magazine, Brent Spiner (Data) talks about the last Trek movie, Star Trek Nemesis. Not only did Spiner star in Nemesis, but he co-wrote the story (along with screenwriter John Logan). Spiner on why the film failed We worked on the story with the intention of making it for the fans. With every Star Trek movie prior to that we tried to find a way to bridge the gap between the fans and the general public. Even reading the latest quotes from J.J. Abrams about the next movie, it makes sense for the movie to be as inclusive as possible. With Nemesis we said, ‘Forget that! Lets make a movie for the fans, because that’s the people who actually go to see the films.’ And what happened? They didn’t go! Usually the films opened big, even if they had a lot of competition, but Nemesis didn’t even do that. This was a message from the fans that they were done with us.
StarTrek.com have put up a preview for next weekend’s "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" Remastered. The preview features the new Yonada asteroid. click image to play in WMP or Click Here for QT Remember, this episode airs next weekend. This weekend is "Where No Man Has Gone Before"
Well we weren’t the only people to notice a US Congressman talking about Vulcans and Klingons, Comedy Central’s Daily Show picked up on it too. They had the added bonus of call-ins from (Senior Star Trek Analogy Analyst) Leonard Nimoy and George Takei…
On Monday we ran a story from iF Magazine seemingly quoting Trek XI producer Damon Lindelof revealing an ‘official’ release date of July 2, 2008 for Star Trek XI. This was surprising as our Paramount sources have been telling us (off the record) that the date had moved from the summer to a winter release. We have reconfirmed that it still appears to be winter, but that officially Paramount are still not being more specific than ‘2008’. We contacted iF Magazine and apparently the release date in their article was not actually from Lindelof; they have now removed the date. So it was a false alarm, not the first related to Trek XI (remember the Tom Cruise thing) and we do not expect it to be the last.
CBS has just sent over these amazing images of the Galactic Barrier and Delta Vega station. Enjoy. Although everyone is waiting for the big event of Doomsday coming up next month, this weekend’s episode looks to have a few tricks up its sleeve.
Damon Lindelof (pictured with Abrams winning Emmys for Lost) is Star Trek XI’s ‘other producer’. We don’t hear much from Damon who is still busy working on Lost day to day, but iF magazine caught up with him and got him to talk a little Trek XI. Although Lindelof gave the usual company line, he did repeat Abrams comments about a wide audience and a focus on character…and he may have inadvertently announced a release date. "We’re not giving out any information about Trek at all,…J.J. and I are producing it and Alex Kurtzman and Bob Orci are writing it.Paramount has announced a release date of [July 2] 2008. That’s all that’s official."
This week the long arm of Star Trek has stretched into the US political Arena. First up is U.S. Representitive David Wu (D-OR). Whether or not you agree with his politics, you got to admit he knows his Trek. The Oregonian has more on the controversey and suggests Wu may have a second career speaking at Trek conventions. But Wu wasn’t the only Trek fan making news in politics this week…
The Enterprise is hijacked by scantily clad hyper-accelarated aliens who need the crew to populate their planet. PreviewLocal Station & ShowtimesMore at Memory Alpha This is the first remastered episode from Star Trek’s third season. There isn’t a whole lot for the CBS team to work with here, but expect to see: New planet Scalos with various shots of Ent in orbit New matte painting of Scalosian city new effects for phaser ‘area sweep’ and slowmo phaser A redone opening title sequence with blue text and new Enterprise model Expect TrekMovie.com’s screenshots and videos later So what did you think of the remastered wink?
Fanboys is a film about a group of hardcore Star Wars fans who travel across the country to steal a pre-release copy of Episode I: The Phantom Menace so their terminally ill friend can see it before he dies. Although the film is about Star Wars fans, Star Trek makes an appearance in the form of original Captain Kirk himself William Shatner. Actor Jay Baruchel describes the Shatner cameo to MTV Movie News: Captain Kirk? Chalk that one up to the great ‘Star Trek’ wars…there’s a big-ass battle between all the Trekkies and all the fanboys. We fight with lirpa, which is the Vulcan weapon with the sickle on the top and mound on the bottom.
StarTrek.com have put up a preview for "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Remastered. This shows off the incredible new galactic barrier CGI. click image to play in WMP or Click Here for QT Remember, this episode airs next weekend. This weekend is "Wink of An Eye"
In a new article, IESB is reporting that they have ‘new’ rumors about Star Trek XI. Apparently they are hearing the some of the same things that TrekMovie.com is hearing (and published over a week ago in our latest Trek XI Update). Specifically that a draft is complete, Abrams has held auditions, the film includes Scotty & Pike, and the story jumps around in time. Hopefully IESB’s ‘close source to the film’ wasn’t just reporting what he read on TrekMovie.com, but is actually confirming our report. If you missed it, make sure to read our latest Trek XI Update for even more details on Star Trek XI.
During his Keynote speech at CES this week, CBS Chairman Les Moonves talked up how CBS is getting hipper to the whole interweb thing. Moonves announced a series of initiatives and partnerships in the digital world, including making clips of its shows available for ‘video mashups’. Moonves told crowd: "there’s no such thing anymore as old or new media — there’s just media." Star Trek is part of this vision with the announcement of a partnership to build a ‘Star Trek Environment’ within the Second Life online community. Moonves brought out the Founder of Linden Labs, the makers of Second Life, to demonstrate the possiblities. (mov)
Although JJ Abrams and Paramount aren’t confirming that Star Trek XI takes place before the Original Series and features a young James Kirk, William Shatner has no problem talking about it. In a brief interview with SciFi Wire, William Shatner repeated previous comments that he and producer JJ Abrams have met and that Abrams wants him in Star Trek XI. The Shat also told SciFi Wire "Yes, we know the story is based on young Kirk." The original Captain Kirk still seems fixated on how this will all work, but in this case he implies that he expects to be interacting with the young Kirk: They need to figure out how to put the dead captain in with the young captain…It’s a very complex, technical problem of how to write the character in, and I’m not sure how they will solve it.