IDW December Star Trek Comics

IDW Publishing has released their publishing plans for December. The month will bring a single Star Trek comic book and only 1 trade. Starting to wonder if the sales are sufficient to keep the Trek books coming. If you are interested in the book, just let your local comic book store know. For the full details of IDW's TF and other books including GI Joe, Transformers, Angel and more click here.

Star Trek: Khan: Ruling in Hell #3 (of 4)
Scott Tipton, David Tipton (w) • Fabio Mantovani (A) • Michael Stribling (c)
As the situation on Ceti Alpha V rapidly deteriorates, Khan struggles to find a way to keep his people alive in the face of planetary waste and devastation. Meanwhile, forces conspire against Khan to remove him from power, mercilessly capitalizing on Khan’s sole weakness: his beloved wife Marla...
FC • 32 pages • $3.99

Star Trek: Burden of Knowledge
Scott & David Tipton (w) • Federica Manfredi (a & c)
The newest adventure of the classic Enterprise crew begins here! When a routine Federation diplomatic visit turns suddenly and unexpectedly violent, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy find themselves kidnapped and halfway across the galaxy. A new Original Series-era miniseries from the creative team behind Spock: Reflections!
TPB • FC • $17.99 • 104 Pages • ISBN: 978-1-60010-803-7

Star Trek Warp Evolution

All is quiet on the movie front as scripting continues so for your amusement, below is a video of the various way the starships in Star Trek has entered into warp over the years from the first movie to the most current. You have the rainbow effect, the stretch, the point of light and more. I think I like the rainbow effect the most.

Writers Drop More Sequel Hints

In the latest issue of SFX Magazine (article currently not online), Star Trek writers Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman spoke a little bit about their train of thought on developing the story of the sequel. The suggestions seem to be that they plan on striking out in their own direction with Trek rather than retread over the same ground from previous movies. For fans this likely means the Star Trek 2.0 Khan Noonien Singh is unlikely to make an appearance. Below is some of what they said from IGN and TrekMovie.

"Starting at a premise of what you want to see and then working a story around it is not how we do it," claims Kurtzman. "You have to start with what is the right story. And [then] if you can say, 'That's a story that Khan fits into,' that's how you get to that. Not deciding on a menu list of items and then seeing if you can't string them all together."

Orci adds that it's "tempting" to introduce a new villain in the next film. "We now have this incredible new sandbox to play in," says the scribe. "On the other hand, some fans really want to see Klingons and it's hard not to listen to that. The trick is not to do something that's been seen before just because you think it will be a short cut to likeability."

Personally I don't see Khan or any other previous "named" villain showing up anytime soon. I think other than using the various races - Klingons, Romulans, etc - in their traditionally established ways, any villain in the movie will be unique to the 2.0 universe as a driving force behind the film will be for Abrams, the writers, etc to strike out in their own direction as much as possible. Thanks to Brian for the link.

Giacchino on Star Trek Music, Sequel

Michael Giacchino, Oscar winner composer who scored Star Trek (2009), was a guest speaker for a screening of the movie in West Los Angeles. During the moderated Q&A, he spoke about working on the film, hopes for the sequel and more. The details and full video can be found at TrekMovie.com.

Few highlights:

- Michael’s first approach was to create "space music" and "something you would expect", but JJ Abrams told him "it certainly sounds like space music, but it doesn’t sound like our movie" and it was Damon Lindelof’s advice saying "we are just making a movie about two guys who meet and become friends, there is nothing else you need to know…space is irrelevant…one guy has had a really tough life and the other guy has had a little better go at it, and it is just about how they became friends"

- Says it was not his idea to include the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage" and his first reaction was "when i first heard about it I was ‘what!?’, but when you see it in the film I was ‘he is right, it works’"

- On choosing where and how to use music from past Star Trek’s "That was a tough thing. In the very beginning we had a lot of conversations. Is there any music from the other movies we should use and any time you tried it it didn’t work because this film is so different stylistically. To me if you are going to strip away all the music from Star Trek the one thing you would hold is that original Alexander Courage theme, to me that is Star Trek. I knew at some point we would have to hint at it, in the body of the film maybe once or twice…and JJ and I always talk about that giving maybe one or two hints at it and at the very end just smashing with it and take it really big…because to us it wasn’t really Star Trek until they are all on the bridge at the end of the film."

- Giacchino wrote music for the deleted Klingon scenes, but "would not want anyone to hear it" as it didn’t think the scenes worked and didn’t think the music worked, and his "happy to have it gone"

- Would not use the Klingon music in sequel, noting "when and if they do bring Klingons back, I know it will be for the right reasons and will be part of the story and it will be easier for me to write music because I will have something to react to"