Star Trek

TNG Capt. Jean-Luc Picard  (“Essential Duty” Edition) Manufacturer: EXO-6Price: $190Grade: A+ A new captain for a new generation It’s hard to exaggerate the impact the casting of Patrick Stewart had on the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and even harder to imagine the series without him. Gene Roddenberry had been keen on casting a more traditionally masculine, non-bald actor for the part before producer Robert Justman saw Stewart doing a dramatic reading at UCLA and became convinced that the British stage actor was perfect for Jean Luc Picard, the French commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D. TNG producer Rick Berman was equally impressed but Roddenberry rejected the idea out of hand and Justman began a protracted battle to wear the Great Bird of the Galaxy down on the ma...

The Star Trek film franchise has thirteen releases spanning 1979 to 2016, but there is one film often held up as the one of the best of the genre, 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. And today the film picked up another major accolade, being named as one of the movies added to the National Film Registry for Preservation by the Library of Congress. Khan preserved for the ages Today, the Library of Congress announced the 25 films being added to the National Film Registry for Preservation for 2024. Films added to the registry are chosen “due to their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage.” Submissions for consideration can be made by members of the public and this year there were over 6,700 entries, one of which was Star Trek II: The Wrath of...

Star Trek: Lower Decks wrapped up last week, but even though she doesn’t have any more work voicing Mariner, Tawny Newsome is still part of the family. She is a writer for the new Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series currently in production, and she is developing a live-action Star Trek comedy with Justin Simien. She is now talking a bit more about that latter project as well as her hopes for more Lower Decks. Comedy show is evolving… but won’t mess with Trek The surprise announcement of the live-action Star Trek comedy was made during the Star Trek Universe panel in July at San Diego Comic-Con. We have only had a few tidbits since, including Newsome and Simien saying the show (which has yet to get a greenlight) was in part inspired by one-off comedy episodes of Deep Space Nine. The show...

Star Trek Explorer Presents: ‘A Year to the Day that I Saw Myself Die’ And Other StoriesPublisher: TitanFormat: Hardcover  The impending demise of Star Trek Explorer Magazine is sad for a number of reasons, one of which is the closing of a forum for regular publication of Star Trek short stories. Fortunately, Titan Magazines has been dutiful in collecting these short stories and presenting them in an attractive, lavishly-illustrated format for Trek fans to enjoy. “A Year to the Day that I Saw Myself Die” and Other Stories is the latest collection, and is available now for purchase. Featuring short stories starring characters from Star Trek: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Discovery, and Picard, this collection spans almost the ent...

A lot of work goes into making an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks and the guy overseeing much of that is supervising producer/supervising director Barry J. Kelly. TrekMovie had a chance to talk to Kelly about some of the challenges putting together season 5 including a special effort for latest episode “Fully Dilated,” and he also teased some of what we can expect for the “super-sized” season (and series) finale. [SPOILERS] The latest episode is quite a big one, bringing in Brent Spiner. When you have such a major legacy star is it just another week or are there special things you guys do for such an event? Usually at the script phase, there’s always something where I’m like, “Oh, wow, this episode’s super fun, but oh crap, how am I going to make it?” There’s always a challenge in eve...