The celebrity stars of Star Trek, past and present, are just the gifts that keep on giving. As we continue our year end retrospective today we take a look at the top Star Trek celebrity moments and stories from 2009.
The news leaked out a couple of weeks ago, but today it became official as Patrick Stewart, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Captain Picard, was awarded a knighthood for his work in drama. Stewart, along with others, was named on the New Year’s Honours List.
Another viral video link around the web this week is a hypnotic video of a submarine USS Enterprise. It comes from a Japanese modeling club that TrekMovie featured last year, but now there are more Star Trek ships turned sub videos to show off. Check them out below.
While much of the buzz in 2009 was about the new Star Trek movie, the world of Star Trek continued in earnest on the printed page in novels and comics and non-fiction books. Today we continue our year end look back with our selections of the best in Star Trek books and comics for 2009.
In the 24th century depicted by Star Trek: The Next Generation (and DS9 & VOY), alcohol has been superseded by ‘synthehol’, which removes the effects of intoxication and addiction. However, it seems this is another bit of Treknology that will become a reality long before we Trek to the stars. Details below
Star Trek’s original Sulu, George Takei was a guest today on the National Public Radio game show Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Before playing, the actor had a light-hearted chat with the hosts talking about his time on and after Trek. You can listen to the segment below.
Star Trek Enterprise went off the air in 2005 after four seasons. The story of the crew of the NX01 has lived on in books, but in 2008 a German fan production made with action figures also picked up the story with "Star Trek: Enterprise – The New Generation – Der Zeitspiegel”. And now "Der Zeitspiegel" has been dubbed into English as "Crossroads". Watch it below
Today is Christmas a time to come together as a family. The team at TrekMovie.com want to thank all the visitors for coming here to our home on the web today and all year, and we wish you a very Merry Trekmas (and Christmas). Below we have collected some Christmas videos from each of the Star Trek TV families.
Today TrekMovie begins its annual look back at the Star Trek year that was. We are going to start off by doing our own version of the NY Times tradition of the ‘buzzwords‘ of the year. These are the words and phrases that became part of the lexicon here and with the fans when talking about Star Trek in 2009.
If you can’t wait for Star Trek Online to be released or even the open beta which starts in a month, we have a bunch of beta test keys to give away, courtesy of Atari and Cryptic. Find out how to get one below, plus get the latest on STO.
Two years ago a Star Trek fan sued Christie’s auction house and CBS claiming that a visor that he purchased at auction was falsely attributed as one worn by Brent Spiner on Star Trek The Next Generation. Even though the fan said Spiner was a witness to the false claim by Christies, he lost his final appeal yesterday. Details below.
An interesting feature of the Star Trek movie home video release is the ‘augmented reality experience’ where you can explore the Enterprise using a webcam and the box cover. Check out a new video that demos how it all works below.
Zoe Saldana is getting a lot of attention these days as the star of the blockbuster hit Avatar. The actress is on the cover of Complex Magazine, which has includes an interesting and personal interview. See below for excerpts and a behind the scenes video on her photoshoot, and more.
Since the 60s, fan fiction has been a big part of Star Trek fan culture. A popular subset of fanfic is ‘slash’ fiction, or romantic stories pairing two characters. Now a creative fan has taken this to a new level with an audio edit of the Star Trek 2009 audio book narrated by Zachary Quinto, which now tells a wholly different story. If you are into that kind of thing, you can listen below. NOTE this is not for everyone and is not safe for work.
In the upcoming MMORPG "Star Trek Online" players don’t go on missions or quests, they partake in ‘episodes’, each of which is designed to feel like an episode from a Trek TV show. Today Atari has released a new video preview, which shows what this episodic gameplay will feel like. Catch that below, plus some more details on Klingon gameplay in STO.
On Wednesday IDW finishes up 2009 with one more Star Trek comic (see preview), but has much more planned in 2010. Today IDW released their solicitations for comics for March 2010, which includes three Star Trek comic issues, continuing their ongoing TNG, DS9 and ST09 series. We have synopses and cover art below.
One of the most celebrated parts of JJ Abrams new Star Trek movie is the sound. The Blu-ray for the movie has a great feature about the work of Academy Award winner Ben Burtt, but that covered just part of the sound of Star Trek. Now the sound obsessed site Soundworks has a great video profile on the sound of Star Trek including interviews with more of the sound team. See it below.
This week our regular science writer Kayla is attending an important science conference and learning important sciencey stuff, so instead of our regular science article, we bring you a new show airing this month on PBS, exploring the science of Star Trek, hosted by LeVar Burton on the set of the Enterprise D.
Back in July we first reported that the geek-tastic Discovery Channel show Mythbusters was going to take on Star Trek Cannon (not canon). Today they released a preview of their research into Gorn Cannon from the original Star Trek episode "Arena". See it below.
The MMORPG Star Trek Online, which is to be released on February 2nd, will allow players to play characters in one of two factions, The Federation or the Klingon Empire. Most of the information released to date has focused on the Federation gameplay, but today Atari released the first details on the Klingon experience. Atari also released a number of new Klingon images from the game.
Last night was the American premiere for James Cameron’s epic sci-fi movie Avatar. (see TrekMovie review). The film stars Zoe Saldana as the blue-skinned Na’vi Neytiri. We have photos from the LA premiere below, plus the latest interviews and videos of the actress (including some Trek talk).
The January issue of GQ Magazine has an extensive feature and interview with the original Kirk, William Shatner. The article explores Shatner’s multi-faceted nature from actor, spokesman, and self-aware pop culture figure. We have a first look at some excerpts, plus links to Shat-tastic cutting room floor audio from his interview.
On Monday we reported that Zachary Quinto will be voicing an Emergency Medical Hologram who will guide you in the tutorial for Star Trek Online. Now Atari has released video showing Quinto at work, along with the first look at the EMH 6.0 he will be playing. There are also new details on the various retail exclusives for STO.
2009 can be said to be the year Star Trek went high definition. The new Star Trek movie, the past ten feature films and the final two seasons of the original series were all released on Blu-ray. And today all eleven feature films are now available via On Demand on cable systems in America.
Just one day after news of Zachary Quinto’s role in Atari’s MMORPG Star Trek Online, we have a big update with two new video trailers, 28 new screenshots, details on the Digital Deluxe Edition and more. .
2009 has been a good year for Paramount Pictures. Thanks to winners like Star Trek, Transformers 2, Paranormal Activity and GI Joe the studio is ranked #2 with $1.5 B for the year, but with fewer films than any of its rivals. Today the New York Times takes a closer look at the studio and its chief Brad Grey, who gives an update on plans for JJ Abrams’ and Star Trek’s future.
Veteran Star Trek writer/producer Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica wrapped up its fourth and final season earlier this year, but the story of the Colonies is not over. In January SyFy begins airing the new BSG prequel series Caprica (also co-created by Moore). And today SyFy put the entire pilot episode online. You can watch it below.
Back in the 70s NASA’s Space Shuttle program began with the Star Trek inspired naming of the first shuttle as Enterprise. Now the Shuttle program is winding down and Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is teaming up with Paramount to help give it a Star Trek goodbye with a contest to win a VIP trip to view one of the final launches. See below for details on how to enter the contest.
There hasn’t been a Deep Space Nine series comics for over nine years, but this week IDW changes all that with the first issue of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Fool’s Gold". And today TrekMovie has an exclusive five page preview.
On Saturday night, during the Video Game Awards on Spike, Star Trek’s new Spock Zachary Quinto announced he will be the "voice’ of the upcoming massive multiplayer game Star Trek Online. Details and photos below.