So little has been written about Gene Roddenberry’s work outside of Star Trek, and yet the guy produced a movie and four television pilots in the ten short years between the original Star Trek and The Motion Picture. On this, the fiftieth anniversary of his most renowned creation, it’s time to reconnect with Roddenberry’s lost productions and see how they laid down the blueprint for Star Trek’s Next Generation.
Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann have been involved with Star Trek from its earliest days, so it was only fitting the married pair would be tabbed to produce Five Decades of Fashion from the Final Frontier. Read on for our interview with the couple.
Star Trek turns 50 years old this week, in the USA the first episode, “The Man Trap” aired today, September 8, at 8:30PM in 1966. Our friends to north in Canada got to see “The Man Trap” two days earlier on September 6. “The Man Trap” was part of the first batch of finished episodes which also included: “Where No Man Has Gone Before”, “The Corbomite Maneuver”, “Charlie X”, “The Naked Time”, and “Mudd’s Women”. Read on for some trivia about the first ever Star Trek episode to air.
At this point, we’ve all been lured at one or another by the clickbait headline that says something like: “10 things you never knew about Star Trek!” If you’re a Star Trek fan or have just spent any time on the Internet, you’ve pretty much heard every story there is to hear and seen every meme. But with almost 1,000 hours of canonical material, there is probably something about the phenomenon’s storied history you haven’t heard, or at least haven’t realized. Here are 50 of them, one for each year of the franchise, to help celebrate its birthday today.
The Smithsonian Channel special focuses on the refurbishment of the Original Series Enterprise model on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. and looks forward to how today’s scientist are bringing us into the 23rd century. The documentary airs Sunday September 4th at 8 pm EDT. Check out the trailer and clips from the special below.
This Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET (7:00 p.m CT), The History Channel is premiering a brand new documentary called 50 Years of Star Trek, which will include the last ever interview conducted with Leonard Nimoy. Since there have already been countless documentaries already made about the franchise, we got on a call with executive producer Brian Volk-Weiss to get the inside scoop on what makes this one different.
Millions of people every year will now be able to see the original model of the USS Enterprise at the Smithsonian – unfortunately for them, just like as Picard tells Data in First Contact, they won’t be able to touch it.
The Twilight Zone and Star Trek both occupy a special place in science fiction history. But, perhaps more interesting is the surprising amount of crossover between the two shows (and I’m not just talking about the more well-known instances a la Captain Kirk screaming on an airplane). Hit the jump to read my top 10 Twilight Zone episodes that every Trekkie should see.
The first trailer for For The Love of Spock, the Leonard Nimoy documentary that raised over $660,000 on kickstarter, released its first trailer, warming hearts and watering eyes everywhere.
In honor of our beloved holiday, First Contact Day, listen to music from all five live action series and 12 movies of Star Trek on AccuRadio’s newest channel created especially for the occasion, Spock On: The Music of Star Trek.
Tonight, the 42nd annual People’s Choice Awards airs on CBS. While no Star Trek productions are up for a win this year, we can take a look back to 1980 when William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy presented at the 6th annual award ceremony. Take a gander, and marvel at Leonard’s epic mustache.
Some 200 5.25-inch floppy disks from late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s estate have been unlocked revealing about 3 MB of decades old words typed by the Great Bird himself.
Webcomic creator, cat-lover, and drawer of funny things, Matthew Inman (a.k.a. ‘The Oatmeal’), took to the interwebs today to tell the story of a young Gene Roddenberry in glorious webcomic form.
Longtime Trek author Larry Nemecek (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, Stellar Cartography: The Starfleet Reference Library) is releasing the fourth volume in his “On Speaker” audio series in celebration of Voyager‘s 20th anniversary.
“Each of us, at some time in our lives, turns to someone – a father, a brother, a god – and asks: Why am I here? What was I meant to be?” This scene from the Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is meant to convey the existential crisis that V’Ger(and to a lesser extent Spock, Kirk, and Decker) is experiencing. The same can be said about the film itself, which was pulled in many different directions from the beginning and, due to numerous outside forces, struggled to find itself. That struggle is brought together in vivid detail in Return to Tomorrow, an oral history of the film from author Preston Neal Jones and publisher Creature Features.
Trekkies, hide your pocketbooks if you don’t want to be tempted by Propworx’s Star Trek auction, which boasts an impressive haul of original screen-used props from throughout the Star Trek Franchise: from props, to artwork, to costumes, to scripts. The most unique (read: priciest) item up for bid is one of only two screen-used fiberglass TOS phaser props known to exist. The prop, which was featured in the hands of a security officer in the episode “Assignment: Earth”, is expected to fetch upwards of $60,000.
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum is overseeing the 4th and latest restoration of the original Enterprise model used to film The Original Series. For one day only they let the public in on the process, and TrekMovie’s Jared Whitley has the scoop and photos below.
Two fearless climbers have captured the eyes of the world this week with their amazing ascent up Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan. After climbing for 18 days and nights, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson today became the first climbers ever to use only their hands and feet to summit a 3,000-foot sheer path called the Dawn Wall. The climb has garnered incredible amounts of media attention. El Capitan is of course known to Trek fans, who saw Captain Kirk free climb it in Star Trek V.
Just in time for the film’s 35th Anniversary, the long-awaited oral history of Star Trek: The Motion Picture will be released this week from author Preston Neal Jones and Creature Features Publishing. More info after the jump.
Author Marc Cushman would like to release the third volume of These Are The Voyages this fall, and he’s turned to Kickstarter to make it happen. More after the jump.
Over the weekend TrekMovie reported on the Star Trek: TNG reunion event at NYCC, which included a comment from Marina Sirtis about how Gene Roddenberry would have felt about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Today DS9 co-creator Rick Berman responded to Sirtis’ assertion. More details below.
Gary Kurtz was the producer of the original Star Wars movie and the first sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and in a new interview he talks about how George Lucas was influenced by Star Trek.
Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on September 28, 1987, returning the franchise to its television roots. The success of the show spawned three additional series which ran through 2005. Today celebrate TNG’s 27th birthday by watching some of the original pre-air interviews with Gene Roddenberry and the TNG cast and crew, plus a rare pre-launch campaign video for syndicated stations.
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is still considered by most to be the best film in the franchise, but that doesn’t mean making the movie was easy. In a new interview writer/director Nicholas Meyer talks about how William Shatner had problems with the script and how he fought with the studio over the treatment of Spock’s death. Details below.
The studio model for the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek series is on the move. Earlier this week the ship was removed from its latest display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, in preparation for move to a new location within the museum. The model will also be undergoing evaluation and conservation treatment. More details and photos below.
Today TrekMovie finishes up our exclusive interview with writer David Gerrold – this time Gerrold talks frankly about his troubled time working on Star Trek: The Next Generation and coming into conflict with Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman, being ‘blackballed’ in Hollywood and he even gives his thoughts on JJ Abrams Star Trek.
A few days ago we had Douglas Trumbull talking about "saving" Star Trek: The Motion Picture and now in a new interview George Takei is talking about how that first Trek feature was "in trouble from the start." Listen to Takei talk about TMP, failed Paramount salary negotiations and more below.
As part of our celebration of Star Trek’s birthday we have TrekMovie video from the weekend’s Salt Lake City Comic Con where Leonard Nimoy beamed in via Skype and talked about how he got cast in Star Trek following his appearance on Gene Roddenberry’s previous show The Lieutenant. We also have clip of that episode. Watch it all below.
On September 8, 1966 the first episode of of an ambitious sci-fi show created by Gene Roddenberry aired on NBC – in color! 48 years later, Star Trek is still going strong after hundreds of episodes over five series and twelve feature films (with another on the way). Watch the first commercials and interviews for Star Trek below, plus get info on TrekMovie’s ‘livetweet’ celebration and giveaway set for tonight.