Details from Star Trek Beyond Fan Event, On Set Articles, Simon Pegg Interview

The release of the second trailer for Star Trek Beyond means various media focused websites received the clearances to print articles from their Vancouver set visits while the movie was in production last year. In most cases the information is light since the whole point of the set visits is to literally sell the movie with a lot of cheerleading talk so what is said is rarely much different then what is said in interviews and the promotional talk show circuit. Below are the highlights and links to the full articles.

The full articles on io9.com and Collider. In addition Simon Pegg talked about working on the film with Collider. At last week's reveal of the trailer, Paramount also showed off a few scenes set early in the movie. If ok with spoilers you can find a description at TrekMovie.com. Last but not least, here is another poster for the movie whose look is designed to invoke the Star Trek: The Motion Picture poster.

Highlights
- The all white like city seen in the trailers is actually a Federation space station called the Yorktown (but shot in Abu Dhabi) that is location on the edge of explored space. The Enterprise is stopping there for some R&R after two or so years into their five year mission of exploration.

- The female white skin alien that is helping the crew is played by Sophia Boutella (Ex Machina) and called Jaylah.

- 50 new alien races were created, mostly for Yorktown, as a 50th Anniversary nod to Star Trek. This includes Jaylah and film's big bad Krall (Idris Elba).

- At least based by one set reports, the Star Trek trinity of Kirk, Bones and Spock is getting more emphasis.

- The ship the crew is seen getting on that looks old and worn down is called The Franklin. It is likely the same one as seen shooting off from the planet surface at the end of the second trailer.

- The Enterprise was comprised of five sets built on rotator rigs so the sets could move to match the action. In previous movies and TV episodes it was "poor's man process" of just having the cast and cameraman fake the shaking and jerking.

- Pegg: " We liked the idea of, also, on the 50th anniversary, looking at Roddenberry’s vision and questioning it — you know, the whole notion of the Federation and whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, or how productive is inclusivity. What is the true cost of expansion, that kind of stuff. So we went in with some big, philosophical questions to ask."

- Pegg: "People often confuse Star Wars and Star Trek — and they’re not the same thing at all. ... I think what you have to maintain with Star Trek is that it’s rooted somewhere in our reality and our universe and in humanity. Star Wars is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The thing that makes that Star Trek kind of more science fantasy is that it does get — you know, there’s a lot of special effects and fighting. Star Trek could never really afford that in a way, which is why it had to concentrate on other aspects of production. We can do both now. So I think it’s kind of finding a way of having that really fun, spectacular event cinema but grounding it in kind of a — because explosions don’t mean a damn thing if you don’t care about who’s involved in the explosions."