For two years, a group of die-hard Star Trek fans labored to create Stage 9, a totally noncommercial virtual replica of the USS Enterprise built with Unreal Engine; they assumed that when CBS Vice President for Product Development John Van Citters was serious in 2016, when he publicly acknowledged the debt that Star Trek owes to its fans and assured people creating fan media that "They’re not going to hear from us. They’re not going to get a phone call, they’re not going to get an email. They’re not going to get anything that’s going to ruin their day one way or another and make them feel bad, like they’ve done something wrong."
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William Shatner is unleashing a Christmas album next month. Titled "Shatner Claus," it features guest performances by Henry Rollins (Black Flag), Iggy Pop, Rick Wakeman (Yes), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull), Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), and many more. Released by Cleopatra Records, "Shatner Claus" is just the latest in ol' Bill's lengthy recording career that includes "Ponder the Mystery" (2013), "Seeking Major Tom" (2011), "Has Been" (2004), "William Shatner Live" (1977), and, of course, "The Transformed Man" (1968).
Below, Shatner and Rollins "sing" Jingle Bells:
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Dinner with pals! Read the rest
Captain Jean-Luc Picard is back. This afternoon in Las Vegas, Patrick Stewart announced he was returning to the iconic role in a new Star Trek series for CBS All Access.
"I will always be very proud to have been a part of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when we wrapped that final movie in the spring of 2002, I truly felt my time with Star Trek had run its natural course," said Stewart, who will also exec produce the new series. "It is, therefore, an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him.
The yet untitled series will be a new entry into the Star Trek universe and is not an extension of The Next Generation. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon is one of the writers and executive producers alongside Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, James Duff, Kirsten Beyer, and Rod Roddenberry.
Patrick Stewart to Reprise 'Star Trek' Role in New CBS All Access Series [Variety/Leslie Goldberg] [Photo: Wikimedia Commons] Read the rest
Is it me or is there something off about these t-shirts?
Haha, just kidding. That's the point of the slightlywrong tees, that they aren't quite right. For example, in their brilliant misquoted t-shirt world, Spock's motto "Live long and prosper" becomes "Live long and proper."
Their tagline? "T-shirts with slightly wrong quotes on them to annoy the pedants in your life."
And their pro-tip: "Insist the quote is 100% accurate."
Shut up and take my money.
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Bill McGovern worked as a second assistant camera on a lot of shows, which is why he seems pretty unfazed to have handled the clapper and slating duties on some iconic Star Trek episodes. Read the rest
Booze, the final frontier. This is the marketing death of a childhood memory you prize.
Yeah, there's Star Trek-themed vodka to be had. According to io9, CBS and the Silver Screen Bottling Company, have plopped out a Star Trek: The Next Generation-themed line of hooch to help you drink away the fact that the future, despite what Star Trek might have had to say about it, is twelve kinds of terrible.
From io9:
Aside from featuring an LCARS-influenced bottle design (that’s the Enterprise’s computer operating system from TNG onwards), the vodka’s Star Trek-iness is enhanced by the fact that... it’s been to space? No, really: the company is planning to send a batch of the spirit into space, which will be blended with the larger stock to guarantee that at least every bottle contains a tiny bit of space-bound booze. I’m sure the discerning Star Trek fan will absolutely be able to notice this cosmic addition while they down shot after shot during their next Trek marathon.
Ten Forward Vodka. It's clever, I'll admit. But I dunno. I love Star Trek and I applaud healthy fandom. But outside of the novelty of drinking space hooch, or perhaps buying this for a Trekkie pal's birthday, I don't see how this product could be any more niche. What do you guys think?
Now, if someone were to figure out Chief O'Brien's scotch-flavored chewing gum from Deep Space Nine? I'd be all over that.
Image via Silver Screen Bottling Company Read the rest
Andy W writes, "An artist/illustrator friend of mine just put an illustration of hers up on RedBubble — two iconic science-fiction television characters sharing a tender moment on the couch."
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In 1973, the National Association Of Progressive Radio Announcers released "Get Off," a 1973 vinyl record featuring dozens of musicians delivering anti-hard drug warnings. Along with personal warnings from Grateful Dead, Alice Cooper, the Doobie Bros., BB King, Ravi Shankar, the Staple Singers, and Frank Zappa, the crew of the starship Enterprise visits a planet ravaged by hard drugs. Just say know.
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Let's hope if Tarantino actually gets a piece of the action, his Star Trek film is this fun.
(Nerdist)
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Critics hate The Orville, Seth McFarlane's uncanny love letter to Star Trek and The Next Generation, but they love the gloomy, ultra-2017 Star Trek: Discovery. Viewers love The Orville, though, while remaining divided on and indifferent to the new official series.
The critics are mistaken; the viewers are right. I was surprised at how intimately Seth McFarlane -- Seth McFarlane! -- is tuned into Gene Roddenberry's sense of humanity's future potential and why it's OK to have a shipful of lovers. It's TNG with dick jokes! And, let's face it, the time is right for some happy technocommie utopian SF. Read the rest
I am serious about sleepwear, and will not pass on a chance to change into jammies (I travel with them, wear them on long-haul flights, etc), and there's a universe of difference between slopping around in sweats and a tee and wearing actual jim-jams.
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The Roddenberry Shop sells the Galaxy Class keyset, designed to look just like the user interfaces from Star Trek: The Next Generation and its spinoffs. If anything, it's a radical improvement on the shifting, zero-travel Okudagrams from the show, as its for mechanical keyboards only. Make it click, number one! Read the rest
Star Trek has many spinoffs, but they all happen within a fairly shallow focal plane: consider how controversial it was to set DS9 on a space station instead of a starship, or how radical it seemed for Discovery to not star the ship's commanding officer. Tiffany Kelly got eight SF writers to cook up more intriguing adventures in America's favorite future.
I like the ideas from Rob Boffard, Annalee Newitz andd Charles Yu, who each want a look at invisible levels of Klingon and Federation society. Newitz wants to see Klingon scientists and workers navigating the military elite's endless honor games; Yu wants to make a hero of a green-visored Ferenghi number-crunching his way through the Federation finances, a moneyless socialist energy economy that must yet do business with a universe that runs on gold-pressed Latinum.
(Together, the eight proposals seem almost like a critique of Star Trek's practical limitations as television SF.) Read the rest
A variety of events from 1966, including Ken Kesey's Acid Test at The Filmore, Charles Whitman's attack at The University of Texas at Austin, and John Lennon's statement about the Beatles popularity over Jesus.
This is supposedly a cheap fluffy clutch bag you an buy at Amazon, but it's clearly a native of Iota Geminorum IV who has found success in life. Read the rest
