esurance Star Trek Video

Oddly enough esurance (the one with the goofy cartoon commercials) has teamed with Star Trek to promote themselves and the movie. Click here to see a video where the actors, director, and producers talk about how great the movie will be with non interview footage comprised of the trailer and previously released pictures. In addition, there is a video contest to win a trip for 2 to the Hollywood premiere of Star Trek. Trekkies and video equipment...not sure if that is a combination that should be encouraged.

Wrath of Khan Opera

For your amusement, from Robot Chicken here is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan The Opera.

The Roddenberrys' Bound for Space

TMZ.com is reporting that Celestis will be sending Gene and recently passed Majel Roddenberry's ashes to space together and are providing an opportunity for fans to send their well-wishes with them.

The late Gene Roddenberry -- who created "Star Trek" -- and wife Majel (who passed away last year) are about to explore the final frontier together. Their remains are going to be shot into space.

Majel "The First Lady of Star Trek" Roddenberry's dream before she died last December was for a portion of her and Gene's ashes to be sent into space together -- and a company called Celetis is granting that wish.

Celestis -- which has its own rocket -- just announced the Roddenberrys' ashes will be launched into deep space on a mission aptly name Voyager.

Trekkies are invited to go to the Celestis website, where they can post tributes to the Roddenberrys, which will all be digitized and sent into space with them.

Celestis is the same company that shot a lipstick-sized container of Gene's ashes into space back in '97.

First Look at Star Trek Toys

USA Today posted an article, with pictures (below), of the upcoming plans for tie-in toys for Star Trek that doesn't just including Barbie. The toys including 3 3/4 inch line for $7, 6 inch for $10, and a 12-inch line for $30. There are also plans for play sets including the Enterprise Bridge and Transporter Room and of course an Enterprise toy.


Update: More pictures of the toys and few more additions can be found here.

Orci and Kurtzman On Trek Origin

In an interview with FirstShowing.net, Star Trek writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman talked Star Trek and specifically the origin of the project. Below are snippets, the full interview can be found here.

...let's start with Star Trek — how did you guys first get attached to that?
Orci: I think Alex first got a call from one of the Paramount executives who happened to be a friend of yours, right?
Kurtzman: Yep.
Orci: He mentioned "Hey, Star Trek might be something that Paramount's interested in doing? Do you guys have any interest?" And that was the first we heard of it, about three years ago maybe.
Kurtzman: I think, maybe, we were in the middle of writing Transformers or something. It came to us and I knew– when I first met Bob, he had an Enterprise phone. He was a die-hard. So I knew the minute it was brought up, I couldn't not talk to Bob about it so I said "Bob, is this something you could imagine us doing?" We resisted it for a long time not because we didn't want to do it but because it really felt like enormous responsibility to take on. That's not something you go into lightly. You have to really have a reason to do it. We didn't want to just do Star Trek 11.
Orci: In discussing it, when we found out that we actually really did have an idea of what we wanted to do, that's when we started to get serious about it, sort of "Yes, we'd be interested."

In relation to Star Trek, whose idea was it for the story to take place as a prequel?
Orci: We came to that independently. Certainly that was Alex and my instinct. The first time we ever heard what Paramount wanted it was the same. I'm not sure if they got it from us or we all arrived at that conclusion simultaneously.
Kurtzman: The other thing was that in looking at Trek in its glorious history, it just shocked us that the story of how the bridge crew came together was never told. It was referenced in bits and pieces but it was never told and it's only kind of the most epic big bang story that you could possibly tell in Star Trek. So it felt to us like if we were going to bring something new to the table, that that was the place to start. It just always started with Kirk and Spock for us. It was always about Kirk and Spock.
Orci: And even though I loved "The Next Generation," one of the reasons we felt that Star Trek possibly had passed us by is we never imagined that anyone would want to go back and take on the original Star Trek again. We thought no one would ever go for that and we were not interested in doing sort of the next- next- next- next- next generation. The idea of doing a new crew had already become an old idea and the new idea really was going back to the original crew.

How has it been working with J.J. Abrams? Is he the best guy to work with in terms of making sure the script gets translated to the screen the way you guys wrote it? How much actual interaction did you have with him?
Orci: Absolutely. We were so lucky to get him to direct this movie. I'm sure you've been doing your own research about him and know that he only thought he was going to produce it. But it was always our secret goal, me, Alex and Damon Lindelof, to really persuade him to do this and persuade someone of his talent and of his caliber to give Star Trek the attention it deserves from a director like him. So we definitely tried to keep him involved but also tried to surprise him a little bit so that he'd have a reaction to it as well. We pitched him the story and as we'd go through writing it, we'd check in every 30 pages, we'd come in and tell him what we're going to write next and let him get kind of excited about it and just kind of kept him in the process throughout, hoping that he would fall in love with what we were all doing. God bless it, it worked.
Kurtzman: I think as a writer all you can hope for is that you will end up working with a director who will translate with the highest possible fidelity whatever you've written on the page to the screen. And having done 20 trillion episodes of "Alias" and then having just finished Mission: Impossible 3, which we all wrote together, there's a shorthand we have with each other. And I think JJ felt appropriately that Trek, if we were going to take the approach, needed a new set of eyes and a new perspective directorially, that it needed to be a little bit more rock 'n roll than previously figured and just bigger. We knew that at all costs, we needed to get him to do it. It was a long and slow process but ultimately, I think when the script was finished, he settled down quickly and we were thrilled.

...was the decision to move the release from Christmas to May made after the first teaser had been put out? Was it based on interest in the film and confidence that it could be a strong May release? Or was that decision made for other reasons?
Orci: It was after the first teaser, otherwise we wouldn't have released it that early. Yes, it was because they actually felt it could actually be a summer movie as opposed to, I guess, a Christmas movie.
Kurtzman: It was also just the reality of the massive, massive amounts of special effects in the movie. We're still in the process of going through them. So the idea that we would've actually released the movie three weeks ago, given what we're still in the middle of right now, seems impossible.

Various Star Trek Tidbits

In various interviews with the media, Star Trek stars spoke a little bit here and there about the upcoming Star Trek movie. As usual, they where careful not to reveal anything major.

Chris Pine spoke with E! Online about sex scenes in the movie, "It is a different Star Trek, but there's no crazy sex scene. There may be some bare midriffs, but you know it's been a long time since the bikini was invented, so I don't think we're going to ruffle any feathers."

Pine also spoke with the Associated Press, talking about the relationship between Kirk and Spock, "For Kirk and Spock, it's charting their lives to a small extent from boyhood and their first encounter, which is a bit contentious, to kind of the beginning of the relationship we all know."

Last, Director JJ Abrams spoke with Sci-Fi Wire and talked about the ships, Shatner and honoring Trek past:

They're big ships, so I'd say that there is a little bit of that, but there's a little bit more flash and fun and action than you've seen before . There are some pretty spectacular visual effects. ILM outdid themselves. It's amazing.

I would say that the fans of Star Trek will be very happy with the movie. It honors what's come before, but I didn't really make the movie just for the people who are already inside, because I like Star Trek but I was never a massive fan. So I think the movie's going to not satisfy everyone, of course. It can't. But it'll satisfy most of both.

I think what Mr. Shatner was responding to was a misunderstanding. I was quoted as saying we tried to get him in the movie. What I meant was we were trying internally to find a way to take a dead character and resurrect him without it seeming lame. We couldn't figure out a way to do it. I think that when I said we tried to get him into the movie, he read it as if we were trying to call him. I would not have wasted his time with a bad idea.

Ricardo Montalban Dead at 88

Legendary actor Ricardo Montalban has passed away at the age of 88 after experience declining health over the last several days. He died at 6:30am in his home. The exact cause of dead was not released.

While most people may know him as Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island, Star Trek fans know the actor best for his role as one of the more famous sci-fi villains of Khan Noonien Singh introduced in The Original Series "Space Seed" and reprising the role for fan favorite Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

My condolences to his family, Star Trek and Hollywood has lost one of its best.

Star Trek Countdown #1 Sneak Peak

TrekMovie.com has posted a five-page preview from IDW of the Star Trek Countdown #1 which will be out this Wednesday, January 14. The four issue mini-series acts a prequel to the upcoming movie bridging the gap between the post Star Trek X Nemesis universe and the events that lead to the Star Trek 2.0 universe that is created when Nero and Spock go back in time. To view the preview pages, click here.

Superbowl Star Trek Trailer

Variety is reporting that Paramount has purchased advertising spots for several of its upcoming movies include Star Trek. The article doesn't indicate if the Star Trek trailer will be brand new or not but with the 30 seconds spots costing $3 million I find it hard to believe they will not pony up a little money to get a new trailer prepped for the game. The Super Bowl airs on NBC on February 1, 2009.

Three Star Trek Movie Props on Display

Via TrekMovie is news that Paramount provided three props from the upcoming movie for display at CES at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. The props are Kirk's communicator, Uhura's ear communication unit and Bones' Medical Tricorder. It's a good indication of the design esthetic that is going into the movie as they used the Original Series for inspiration and just tweaked them a bit rather then using modern technology as I would have expected.

WSJ Talk to Pine, Quinto

The Wall Street Journal spoke briefly with the stars of Star Trek, Chris Pine (Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock) about Trek and their iconic roles. No new revelations or information to speak of.

Chris Pine

J.J. Abrams has said he's making the movie for future fans, not necessarily veterans. What's he doing to freshen the story that might rattle Trek fans?
I'm not well-versed in the Trek canon, but we're venturing into territory that's only been covered in these paperback novels they sell. It's definitely not going to please everyone. There's a scene where my character is in a bar and he's definitely inebriated and under the influence of his own arrogance. It's him becoming the Kirk everyone knows. In my book that makes the journey a little more interesting. If he's a clear-cut leader from the beginning, you don't have anywhere to go.

Why has this character become so mythic?
Kirk is still a little elusive to me. But what I think is so unique about this story is that, unlike other genre movies, "Star Trek" has always represented an incredible amount of optimism. In the late '60s, in a time of unrest, it represented this utopian world. As opposed to "The Dark Knight," which I enjoyed, but was so bleak and didn't speak kindly of humanity. Kirk is so iconic because he's the head of this fantastical utopian team. They aren't superheroes, they're men and women trying to achieve something good.

A lot has been made of the differences you bring to the Kirk character, but what aspects of the original did you keep?
There's a lot of humor, arrogance and decisiveness. I tried to bring in these qualities, but with this new element of a young man coming into his own -- he's a leader who doesn't know he's a leader yet. But the speech pattern? Absolutely not. In that territory it becomes an impersonation. I can only do my version of it.

Zachary Quinto

With Spock there's very little outward physicality to the role. How do you make him seem placid without just looking blank?
It's an interesting challenge. The life of this character exists deeply within. For me it was about containment. But it was a matter of finding that baseline and exploring how far you can go away from that.

Does that mean you injected more edge or emotion into Spock than he's shown in the past?
As Leonard portrayed the character he was much more grounded, but my experience with him is a bit different; he's younger and hasn't mastered the acceptance of these dualities in himself as much as he does later.
Are you talking about the tension of being half human, half Vulcan? I hesitate to give anything away. It's completely rooted in how he feels alienated from himself and those around him. He's not one thing or another.

What kind of things did Leonard Nimoy tell you about Spock to help you understand him?
It's been such an indelible mark on his life and he's metabolized it so gracefully. We spent some time watching episodes but it was an all encompassing experience. We'd go to his house. We'd meet sometimes at Paramount. I'm seeing him before the holidays. He's an advanced mind and heart and I want to hang out with him as much as possible.

A lot has been made of the differences you bring to the Spock character, but what aspects of the original did you keep?
Especially with Spock, more so than Kirk, there are characteristic movements. It's established in the mythology, this stillness and economy of movement. There are ways one holds oneself, such as the hands behind the back.

Why has this character become so mythic?
In this archetypal way, people respond to someone who's able to contain himself. He operates from a place of logic, but always with the betterment of others in mind. He's able to endure things and experience things from a place of balance.

How did you wear the Spock haircut off the set?
Begrudgingly. I made do. I was very rarely seen last year without my giant black glasses. My hair I could usually muss it up. I underestimated the impact of that haircut. It engendered a sense of alienation in me personally, which probably influenced the part.

You felt like an alien?
I just felt like a nerd. I felt like I was 12 again. You look back at those pictures and you see the bowl cut. There's no question I was born to play the Spock role. I was sporting that look for a good four or five years.

Doctor Who vs. Star Trek

From Kelvinton.com is the below mash up of Doctor Who vs Star Trek using an episode or two from the Original Series and last season's Doctor Who. Unlike most mash ups where its just scenes cut together, this one takes it a step further by integrating elements of each into the other such as having the Tardis appear on the Enterprise's teleporter pad. Sure not movie related but something to look at until news comes out.