The Star Trek Thread!

[iHeart]

brace yourselves, spock is coming

https://tvline.com/2018/08/14/star-trek-discovery-spock-ethan-peck-cast-season-2-cbs-all-access/

[The Unknown Poster]

3 minutes ago, iHeart said:

brace yourselves, spock is coming

https://tvline.com/2018/08/14/star-trek-discovery-spock-ethan-peck-cast-season-2-cbs-all-access/

Holy smokes, he looks the part in all the ways that Quinto doesnt.

[iHeart]

yeah almost down to the ears

[The Unknown Poster]

28 minutes ago, iHeart said:

yeah almost down to the ears

And I heard video of him speaking.  He SOUNDS like Spock, unlike Quinto.  (Well not exactly but he has a richer deeper voice than Quinto).

Between Spock, Pike and #1 I find it hard to believe this excellent casting, new sets, new CGI is all for a guest stint on Discovery.  They must be spinning off into their own series.

[SpeedFlex27]

On ‎2018‎-‎08‎-‎14 at 1:28 PM, The Unknown Poster said:

And I heard video of him speaking.  He SOUNDS like Spock, unlike Quinto.  (Well not exactly but he has a richer deeper voice than Quinto).

Between Spock, Pike and #1 I find it hard to believe this excellent casting, new sets, new CGI is all for a guest stint on Discovery.  They must be spinning off into their own series.

Quinto's Spock sure looks like Leonard Nimoy's Spock. 

[SpeedFlex27]

Is there a photo of Peck as Spock?

[iHeart]

no first look yet

[The Unknown Poster]

2 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Is there a photo of Peck as Spock?

Some fan renderings.  

I actually don’t think Quinto looks like Nimoy that much.  A slight resemblance but in some key areas like the ears it just doesn’t work.  

I didn’t mind Quinto but the writing and directing of Spock was awful. 

[SpeedFlex27]

16 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Some fan renderings.  

I actually don’t think Quinto looks like Nimoy that much.  A slight resemblance but in some key areas like the ears it just doesn’t work.  

I didn’t mind Quinto but the writing and directing of Spock was awful. 

You mean like making Ohura his gf? yeah. They can't destroy the alternate universe & JJ Abrams vision of ST fast enough. Then after Abrams shits all over the ST Universe he leaves after 2 movies, hands the franchise over to Justin Lynn & ST becomes F & F : Galaxy Version

[FrostyWinnipeg]

36 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

You mean like making Ohura his gf? yeah. They can't destroy the alternate universe & JJ Abrams vision of ST fast enough. Then after Abrams shits all over the ST Universe he leaves after 2 movies, hands the franchise over to Justin Lynn & ST becomes F & F : Galaxy Version

I liked Beyond 2x more then Into Darkness.

[The Unknown Poster]

8 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

You mean like making Ohura his gf? yeah. They can't destroy the alternate universe & JJ Abrams vision of ST fast enough. Then after Abrams shits all over the ST Universe he leaves after 2 movies, hands the franchise over to Justin Lynn & ST becomes F & F : Galaxy Version

I was open minded.  I didnt mind the relationship per se.  There were hints of Uhura liking Spock in TOS.  But the writing was so bad.  Like they were doing a low budget teen love story or something.  They portrayed Uhura as very unprofessional (and Spock for that matter), very emotional (and Spock for that matter).  It just didnt work for me in the long term.  As soon as I saw Uhura making out with Spock on the transporter pad in front of everyone before a critical mission...its like, nope, they dont get it.

8 hours ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

I liked Beyond 2x more then Into Darkness.

Beyond was truer to the characters but it had tons of problems too.  Lots of big logic holes.  I see Beyond as the smaller story and STID as the epic story.  Bob Orci's original script for Trek 3 involved Shatner and Nimoy as Kirk/Spock and sounded like an epic adventure to celebrate the 50th anniversary.  He was fired.

[SpeedFlex27]

8 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

I was open minded.  I didnt mind the relationship per se.  There were hints of Uhura liking Spock in TOS.  But the writing was so bad.  Like they were doing a low budget teen love story or something.  They portrayed Uhura as very unprofessional (and Spock for that matter), very emotional (and Spock for that matter).  It just didnt work for me in the long term.  As soon as I saw Uhura making out with Spock on the transporter pad in front of everyone before a critical mission...its like, nope, they dont get it.

Beyond was truer to the characters but it had tons of problems too.  Lots of big logic holes.  I see Beyond as the smaller story and STID as the epic story.  Bob Orci's original script for Trek 3 involved Shatner and Nimoy as Kirk/Spock and sounded like an epic adventure to celebrate the 50th anniversary.  He was fired.

They sure did not get it & I'm sure they didn't care.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

CBS & Netflix Sued For Discovery Storyline & Characters

http://trekzone.org/1701/201808232505

[The Unknown Poster]

9 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

CBS & Netflix Sued For Discovery Storyline & Characters

http://trekzone.org/1701/201808232505

I remember reading about this and there were some clear similarities.  

[The Unknown Poster]

Thought I'd put this here

https://ds9documentary.com/

DS9 Documentary by the original creative people behind it.  The doc has actually expanded greatly as the support from fans has exceeded expectations.  They are remastering a bunch of the old SD footage for inclusion.  Many fans hope this will show CBS that there is interest in a remastered DS9.  Apparently, from Season 3 on, the camera operators filmed in "action safe" mode, meaning while they filmed in 4:3, they over-filmed safely for future use in widescreen.  If they ever do remaster it, it would be up to CBS (who isnt working on this doc) whether they'd present it in HD but 4:3 (like TNG remaster) or convert to widescreen.

It came out that, while CBS considers much of the SFX lost, one of the SFX houses kept their models and CGI.  Basically, to remaster, all the SFX have to be re-done from scratch, but if they can get the original models and CGI (or at least much of it), it makes it easier.  Supposedly, the effects houses created vastly over-detailed modelling so original models and cgi can be used in HD.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

1 hour ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Thought I'd put this here

https://ds9documentary.com/

DS9 Documentary by the original creative people behind it.  The doc has actually expanded greatly as the support from fans has exceeded expectations.  They are remastering a bunch of the old SD footage for inclusion.  Many fans hope this will show CBS that there is interest in a remastered DS9.  Apparently, from Season 3 on, the camera operators filmed in "action safe" mode, meaning while they filmed in 4:3, they over-filmed safely for future use in widescreen.  If they ever do remaster it, it would be up to CBS (who isnt working on this doc) whether they'd present it in HD but 4:3 (like TNG remaster) or convert to widescreen.

It came out that, while CBS considers much of the SFX lost, one of the SFX houses kept their models and CGI.  Basically, to remaster, all the SFX have to be re-done from scratch, but if they can get the original models and CGI (or at least much of it), it makes it easier.  Supposedly, the effects houses created vastly over-detailed modelling so original models and cgi can be used in HD.

Yeah, thats what i heard as well. the shows were shot on film which normally can be scanned up to 4K but the sfx are a prob. Oh wells. Just finished Voyager on Netflix.

[The Unknown Poster]

2 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Yeah, thats what i heard as well. the shows were shot on film which normally can be scanned up to 4K but the sfx are a prob. Oh wells. Just finished Voyager on Netflix.

CBS did great work on TOS and TNG remasters.  The team clearly respected the material.  But TNG under-performed in Blu Ray sales.  Many fans feel they over-charged which hurt interest.  I always felt like CBS would have to do DS9 & Voyager to maintain their library for HD syndication but they dont seem to care.  At least not right now.

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

Watched this and thought some people would be interested in the controversies behind the scenes:

 

 

[The Unknown Poster]

33 minutes ago, wanna-b-fanboy said:

Watched this and thought some people would be interested in the controversies behind the scenes:

 

 

Fake news.

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

1 minute ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Fake news.

Is it really?

So there is no issue between CBS and Paramount? 

[The Unknown Poster]

Just now, wanna-b-fanboy said:

Is it really?

So there is no issue between CBS and Paramount? 

The group that does those videos is called Midnight Edge, they do it for the clicks.  They do summarize some of the news and rumors but always with a super negative slant.  

According to the, Discovery sucks, CBS is mad and the Picard series is meant to replace it.  But when we apply common sense to this, we see that networks never have a show they hate and keep funding it while also funding a second expensive show just in case they want to replace the original.

Viacom (Paramount's parent company) does have issues with CBS insofar as they are suing each other.  Its complicated but the simple version is a company called National Amusements, owned by the Redstone's (Patriarch Sumner Redstone, but now controlled by his daughter Shari Redstone) owns controlling interest in both Viacom and CBS but they are two separate companies.

It was Sumner Redstone that split the two up years ago.  Now, Shari wants to merge the two back together feeling that it provides leverage in an eventual sale to another tech giant (like Disney buying Fox).  Viacom is weak, especially Paramount and Shari wants to combine Viacom and CBS to create more value.  

How this impacts Star Trek is that when CBS and Viacom were split, Paramount maintained ownership over the film libraries while CBS maintained ownership over the core trademarks and TV rights.  It was an awful decision which has hamstrung Star Trek ever since.

Redstone gave Paramount a drop dead date to produce a new Trek film or lose the rights.  Thats why Paramount hired JJ Abrams and Bad Robot to produce a new Trek movie.  But Paramount had to license the underlying trademarks to Star Trek from CBS.  Part of that deal was CBS would not develop any new Trek on TV for a given time, which was fine with CBS because they saw Star Trek on TV as a dead issue.

The reason Bad Robot created the Kelvin time line is because they wanted to own their own version of Star Trek.  Whereas all merchandise etc that flows from CBS' original Star Trek license is controlled by CBS, merchandise flowing from new original content created under the new limited license flowing from Bad Robot/Paramount's "new" Star Trek universe is theirs.

Bad Robot desperately wanted to create all new merch, comics, animated TV etc and create a Star Trek Universe that they would control.  But CBS refused to play ball and kept Bad Robot operating within the narrow allowances they had.  One famous squabble was that Bad Robot wanted CBS to stop selling toys featuring the TOS likenesses.  Those TOS toys out-sold the Kelvin toys and Bad Robot claimed market confuses and wanted CBS to stop so they could have complete control of the toy market.  CBS refused, of course, as merchandise sales for their Star Trek brand still generated millions of dollars in profits even though it was completely unsupported by new Trek tv.

Bad Robot got annoyed and JJ began losing interest which is partially why he went to Star Wars.

When CBS decided to bring Star Trek back it was because they were approached by other networks, most notably Netflix, who wanted to license Star Trek and create new programming.  Netflix has all the Trek shows on their service and has intricate data on what fans want to see.  This made CBS realize that there was stronger interest in Star Trek than they thought.  And they realized they could leverage Star Trek to support All Access.

But due to their agreement with Paramount, they had to wait until X amount of time (I think it was six months) after Beyond was released, before they could do Discovery.  Now it's full steam ahead.

Discovery had a bit of a troubled history but not lack of support from CBS.  They hired Bryan Fuller and he began developing the series.  He was a former Star Trek writer so people thought he'd be good.  His original pitch was to start the series ten years before TOS and every season would feature a time jump, working its way through every era up to and beyond TNG.  CBS liked the concept but would only agree to one season to test it out (doing an anthology would be very expensive).

Most of the things fans disliked were Fuller ideas (re-designed Klingons, design of the USS Discovery, era it takes place in, uniforms, look of the environment and tech etc).  Reportedly Les Moonves, head of CBS became disenchanted with Fuller because he kept missing deadlines, the budget was ballooning and Les hated the quality of the SFX.  Fuller was fired, a new SFX and creative team was brought in.

But they had to work mostly with what Fuller had created because there wasnt time to go back to the drawing board.  If you notice, in later episodes of Discovery, legacy aliens (such as Tellerites and Andorians) look much more like they did traditionally than the radical departure of the look of the Klingons under Fuller.  

One change that might not have been good, was Nick Meyer being moved away from Discovery.  Fuller had brought him in but when Fuller was canned, Meyer was seemingly moved down as well.  But it came out that Meyer was moved to a new project, supposedly based on Khan and focused on Khan and his people stranded on Ceti Alpha (before being accidentally discovered in Wrath of Khan).

That project was most directly impacted by the Viacom/CBS lawsuit because even though CBS owns the rights to Khan (from the TOS episode Space Seed), they can't feature anything related to the films without licensing that from Paramount.  In a world where CBS and Paramount gladly made licensing deals that was no problem.  But with a lawsuit, not as easy.

Another area it could be a problem is the Picard series.  CBS owns the rights to Picard and the TNG universe, but everything that happened in Star Trek 2009 with Spock trying to save Romulus unsuccessfully etc, they cant use or reference without licensing from Paramount.

Midnight Edge takes this truth and adds a conspiracy slant to it.  They say Discovery is actually being run under Paramount's Limited License and thats why Discovery looks more like the films than the TV shows.  But this makes no sense because why would CBS, who completely owns the license to make Trek on TV, choose to develop programming that requires paying Paramount and then not even creatively expressing on the show that its the Paramount Universe (Kelvin)?

They make this connection due to the updated SFX and the fact Alex Kurtzman worked for Bad Robot and wrote the first two JJ films and is the head of Star Trek for CBS.  They further push the idea that Discovery is a disappointment to CBS and Netflix and they are developing Picard series to replace it.  They said the same thing about Meyer's Khan series.

The big take away is, Star Trek would benefit from Viacom being owned by CBS because they could then have complete creative synergy across the brand.

[SpeedFlex27]

Bravo, Unknown Poster. Bravo. Very well written & informative. You should start a Sci Fi blog.

Edited August 28, 2018 by SpeedFlex27

[The Unknown Poster]

26 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Bravo, Unknown Poster. Bravo. Very well written & informative. You should start a Sci Fi blog.

Thanks buddy!  Im not really a sci fi fan per se.  Just a big Star Trek fan (and sometimes Star Wars critic). 

A couple of other notes, as it pertains to the Picard series, everything that happened in the films is within the hands of Paramount.  So Im not sure what CBS is allowed to do.  Can they even show us an Enterprise E?  They may not be able to.  Can they reference B-4?  Who knows.

There has been talk that Paramount grew weary of Bad Robot and felt they inflated their fees, even as Star Trek under-performed expectations.  Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote the first two films.  But for Trek 3, Orci was tapped to direct and submitted 2 (possible 3) stories that Paramount rejected (one included Shatner & Nimoy). 
 

Orci was criticized for some of his remarks towards fans.  I've seen him (and exchanged messages with him) on Star Trek boards and when everyone was heaping praise upon him for 2009, he was super nice.  When people were critical of STID, he was a real prick.  And  there was some heat on him for how he acted.  When Beyond came out, the writers said they were not allowed to read Orci's rejected scripts but Orci made public comments insinuating that they used some of his ideas.  

The writers for Trek 4 were the two guys that wrote the rejected Trek 3 scripts.  So clearly Paramount (and JJ) liked them, they just didnt want Orci anymore.  

Orci was fired and rumor has it, walked off the lot by security.  He split up with Kurtzman, his longtime writing partner.  And it's probably not meaningless that when Kurtzman got the Star Trek gig with CBS, Orci was left out in the cold even after saying he'd love to be involved.   

Also remember that Discovery Season 2 is not without it's issues as the Show Runners were fried mid-production for negative treatment of the writing staff.  Production went on hiatus ( I believe it was after Episode 5 was in the can).  

Edited August 28, 2018 by The Unknown Poster

[SpeedFlex27]

I understand the Klingons on Discovery will be changed again. Into the Klingons we are familiar with. 

[Logan007]

14 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

I understand the Klingons on Discovery will be changed again. Into the Klingons we are familiar with. 

Yeah, I heard something about them adding hair and adjusting the face a bit.  They had way too much prosthetic makeup on their faces in the last season.  Sounded like most of them had a hard time talking.