Star Trek: The Next Thread (All Things Trek Be Here! )

[PhoenixRising]

A `Star Trek' is born: J.J. Abrams gives a glimpse
Thu Oct 16, 11:01 AM ET

LOS ANGELES - J.J. Abrams is no Trekkie.
The director and producer of the new "Star Trek" film, due in 2009, said he was always more of a "Star Wars" guy.

"All my smart friends liked 'Star Trek.' I preferred a more visceral experience," he tells Entertainment Weekly in its latest issue, on newsstands Friday. Abrams took on the "Star Trek" project in hopes of creating a film "that grabbed me the way 'Star Wars' did," he says.

He was also drawn to the franchise's idealism, he says.

"I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now," he says. "In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as 'The Dark Knight' is raking in gazillions of dollars, 'Star Trek' stands in stark contrast. It was important to me that optimism be cool again."

"My only regret is that the movie can't come out sooner," says Leonard Nimoy, who will don his pointy ears to play an elder Spock. "I think the world could use it."

The younger Spock, played by Zachary Quinto, says "Star Trek" is a franchise "that offers hope for unity."

But don't expect any unity with William Shatner. The actor won't make a cameo as Capt. Kirk, Abrams says.

"I was such a huge fan of his, but we wrote a scene for him in the movie and it didn't feel right," Abrams says. "And he said to us — he said publicly — that doing a cameo didn't interest him. Which I totally appreciate. But we did try."

[PhoenixRising]

[scarabY2k]

Wow!! I'm all jacked...AGAIN!! I wish it premiered this weekend.

[Reenie Of the Dead]

Amazing, Simon Pegg is Scottie! And Harold ( of Harold and Kumar) is Sulu?

You know you never see any cleaners or maintenance people( other than engineering) on Star Trek? At least on Red Dwarf Rimmer and Lister were the chicken soup dispenser technicians.
I mean, who changes the toilet paper and cleans up when someone gets space sick at beyond warp speed? Discuss.

[Lmhansen]

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

OMG, it's Sylar!

[mrchaotica]

Originally Posted by Beetlescott

Now that we are in a new thread, I would like to take this time to ask the question again. What is your favorite Star Trek movie? Second, what is your favorite Star Trek series?

IV > VI > First Contact > II > III > Insurrection > Generations > V > Nemesis > The Motion Picture

DS9 > TNG > ENT > TOS = TAS = VOY

[PhoenixRising]

What is your favorite Star Trek movie?

Star Trek: Generations, tied with Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country

Second, what is your favorite Star Trek series?

Deep Space Nine. Without a doubt.

[Reenie Of the Dead]

favorite Star Trek Movie? Star Trek IV,

Favorite series: Star Trek, Classic, not diet, not lite

[Lmhansen]

Favorite Movie: First Contact
Favorite Show: Probably Voyager slightly ahead of TNG

Oddly, I own the first season of DS9 on DVD, but no other shows. Probably because I missed most of DS9 by not living in the US when it started.

[scarabY2k]

Favorite movie= Trek: The Motion Picture.
Favorite Show= TOS, followed by VOY, TNG, ENT, DS9

[scarabY2k]

Originally Posted by Beetlescott

Al, I think you and I are some of the only Trekkies who really love the first Trek movie. I will never forget when it first came out, I was one of the first in line! All the special effects were dazzliling. It also had the reunion feel to it. I think it has held up well. Have you seen the Directors Cut? If not, you really need to treat yourself to it. The first movie was literally shipped straight to the theaters to make it in time for the opening. Robert Wise had a lot of regret that he didn't get the time to edit it properly. The stars that make "steps" for Kirk and Co to go see V'ger. You gotta see it.

Mr. Scott, i'm proud to say that I own the Director's Cut. The wife-unit bought it for me some time back.

And I so agree with you on the reunion factor. That in itself makes it the better of all the Treks. The Motion Picture filled the longing us Trekkies had for what seemed like forever; to have the adventures of the Enterprise continue. TMP accomplished that, thus being the catalyst for what we now enjoy in this post-TOS generation. Still I can watch TOS and the nostalga of me and my sibs in front of the TV come rushing back.

I think another great thing about TOS was the era in which is was aired, even in the reruns that came along shortly after the original run. It was a time when there was no cable TV, no SciFi networks and no video store on every corner where a season DVD is readily available. I think the enjoyment factor was more cherished than it is today.

[Otto the egg]

I also remember when Star Trek the Motion Picture first came out. I was in grade school at the time, but I was so enthralled with it, that I actually saved magazine and newspaper articles from it. That being said, I like Star Trek II the Wrath of Kahn the best (generally, I like the original cast in the movies, better than the tng movies)

TV series, I liked TNG the best. Although a fan of the TOS, everything looked so outdated by the time the motion picture came out... it was no longer believable.

[PhoenixRising]

What article did you read?

'Cause I am not sure I got that from the article.

'Star Trek': New Movie, New Vision
Director J.J. Abrams has set a course to make the Enterprise cool again; here's the inside scoop on his surprising, idealistic odyssey, which may end up with Kirk and Co. driving next summer's box office juggernaut


By Jeff Jensen

Aboard a monstrous and gloomy interstellar cruiser — part Death Star, part Mordor — the man who would be the next captain of the starship Enterprise finds himself under fire from bald, blue-tatted alien brawlers. At the moment, James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), the hotheaded, horndog hero of Star Trek, is still a fresh-faced space cadet. At his side is his young half-human, half-Vulcan BFF, Spock (Zachary Quinto), looking quintessentially Spocky with his black bowl cut, slanting eyebrows, and blue smock. Here on the set of director J.J. Abrams' $150 million bid to bring Gene Roddenberry's beloved sci-fi world back to the big screen, the two geek pop icons have infiltrated a Romulan warcraft only to see their mission explode into a raging phaser fight. No longer are their signature Trek weapons boxy plastic toys, but sleek silver gizmos with spring-triggered barrels that revolve and glow in the transition from ''stun'' to ''kill.'' Problem is, every time Kirk raises his newfangled ray gun, the barrel revolves too early. Or too late. Or not at all. Giggles and unprintable curses fly. Someone lightens the mood with a quip: ''Most illogical, captain.''

For cast and crew, it's a fleeting and fixable frustration. But a busted phaser is the least of the challenges Abrams faces as he attempts to reenergize a franchise that has clearly lost its zap. As embodied by the short-lived late-'60s TV series starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek inspired rabid fandom (they're called Trekkers, please, not Trekkies), and was once the definition of smart sci-fi. The series subverted America's cynical Cold War culture with its rich vision of a peaceful future and a weird, wonderful universe worthy of joint exploration. But since the box office peak of the original film series in 1986 (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), the Trek brand has devolved into a near-irrelevant cultural joke, likely to inspire giggles and unprintable curses from even its most ardent supporters. After a succession of contrived TV spin-offs (the last, UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise, mustered only a feeble 2 million viewers in its final season) and mediocre features based on the best of the bunch (Star Trek: The Next Generation), even people who'd built their entire careers around Trek could see the writing on the wall. ''Star Trek,'' says Leonard Nimoy, ''had run its course.''

[PhoenixRising]

Transforming a defunct old property into a cool 21st-century event flick may seem like business as usual for Hollywood (e.g., Superman Returns, Batman Begins), but Trek presented Paramount and Abrams with a much heftier challenge: how to make this hunk of retro sci-fi cheese meaningful as mainstream entertainment, as relevant pop, as big business. ''Every studio in town is searching for these kinds of franchises, so it was important for us to reboot,'' says Brad Weston, Paramount's president of production. ''But we needed a clean, fresh take on this thing.''

Enter Abrams, 42, whose knack for mainstream genre fare (see: Alias, Lost, and Mission: Impossible III) has elevated him to visionary status in Hollywood. His Trekker credentials? Nonexistent. ''I don't think people even understand what Star Trek means anymore,'' he says, sitting outside his editing suites at Paramount, sporting a T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon question mark. Abrams saw the first Star Trek film in 1979 with his father, veteran TV-movie producer Gerald Abrams, at a theater on the Paramount lot. But he feels no warm-fuzzy nostalgia about it. In fact, Abrams can sum up his regard for Trek in two words: Galaxy Quest, the 1999 hit starring Tim Allen that satirized Trek with painful precision. ''It's so ridiculous, so accurate, so sophisticated, it spoils the Star Trek universe,'' he says.

Plus, at heart, Abrams is still more of a Star Wars guy. ''All my smart friends liked Star Trek,'' he says. ''I preferred a more visceral experience.'' Which is exactly why he accepted Paramount's offer in 2005 to develop a new Trek flick; creatively, he was engaged by the possibility of a Star Trek movie ''that grabbed me the way Star Wars did.'' That meant a bigger budget and better special effects than any previous Trek film, plus freedom to reinvent the mythos as needed. ''We have worldwide aspirations and we need to broaden [Trek's] appeal,'' says Weston. ''Doing the half-assed version of this thing wasn't going to work.''

[PhoenixRising]

Abrams says he was also drawn to the project because he believed in — and wanted to evangelize — Trek's unabashed idealism. ''I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now,'' says Abrams, whose infectiously upbeat energy and disdain for cynicism are among his most marked attributes. (Not for nothing did Abrams give Randy Pausch, the now-late author of The Last Lecture and avowed Trekker, a cameo in the film.) That ethos may seem cornball to an America darkened by a decade's worth of catastrophe, but after an election season that has seen both presidential nominees run on ''hope'' and ''change,'' Star Trek just may find itself on the leading wave of a zeitgeist shift — away from bleak, brooding blockbusters and toward the light. ''In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as The Dark Knight is raking in gazillions of dollars, Star Trek stands in stark contrast,'' Abrams says. ''It was important to me that optimism be cool again.''

The news that Abrams had been tapped to be Trek's new chief creative officer was greeted with no small worry by those in geekdom. Several years ago, Abrams wrote a Superman script that radically revised the entire Man of Steel 
 mythology. ''It was not well received by the Internet community,'' Abrams says, laughing. But the director shored up faith with the faithful when he announced his Star Trek revamp brain trust, all friends and close collaborators: Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof (Trekker); M:I-3 and Transformers screenwriters Bob Orci (hardcore Trekker) and Alex Kurtzman (mild Trekker); and producer Bryan Burk (total non-Trekker). ''I provided the idiot test for all plot points,'' Burk says.

[PhoenixRising]

Abrams made his perspective clear: ''We weren't making a movie for fans of Star Trek,'' he said. ''We were making a movie for fans of movies.'' From there, the team hashed out the specifics. Exact plot details are top secret, but there are a few things EW can tell you.

(SPOILER ALERT! If you want to know nothing, avoid the next post)

[PhoenixRising]

Star Trek's time-travel plot is set in motion when a Federation starship, the USS Kelvin, is attacked by a vicious Romulan (Eric Bana) desperately seeking one of the film's heroes. From there, the film then brings Kirk and Spock center stage and tracks the origins of their friendship and how they became officers aboard the Enterprise. In fact, the movie shows how the whole original series crew came together: McCoy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoë Saldana), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho), and Chekov (Anton Yelchin). The adventure stretches from Earth to Vulcan, and yes, it does find a way to have Nimoy appearing in scenes with at least one of the actors on our cover — and maybe both. The storytelling is newbie-friendly, but it slyly assimilates a wide range of Trek arcana, from doomed Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to Sulu's swordsmanship to classic lines like, ''I have been, and always shall be, your friend.'' More ambitiously, the movie subversively plays with Trek lore — and those who know it. The opening sequence, for example, is an emotionally wrenching passage that culminates with a mythic climax sure to leave zealots howling ''Heresy!'' But revisionism anxiety is the point. ''The movie,'' Lindelof says, ''is about the act of changing what you know.''

[PhoenixRising]

History may be mutable in the new Star Trek, but the old characterizations remain the same: Spock is still logical and Scotty is still bitterly complaining about the ship's overworked engines. But Abrams did feel Trek's design aesthetic — which for him is largely defined by the lo-fi original series — needed a dramatic upgrade if the drama was going to be taken seriously. Case in point: The Enterprise still has a saucer front section and pronged rear engines, but now comes tricked out with credibility-enhancing details. During turbulence, the crew can now grab handrails to keep from falling. And Abrams has given the blah cardboard bridge a makeover. It still has the oval shape, the captain's chair, the giant view screen — but it's now blazingly white and glistening with light and glass. Apple Store, anyone? ''People would joke, 'Where's the Genius Bar?''' says Abrams, somewhat defensively. ''To me, the bridge is so cool, it makes the Apple Store look uncool.''

One other essential element in Team Abrams' conception of the new Trek: getting the old Spock. Abrams felt Nimoy's Obi-Wan-ish presence was so crucial, he told the studio he wouldn't move forward without him. ''I thought Spock was behind me. I had no unfulfilled wishes,'' Nimoy says. But Abrams was persuasive. ''I felt J.J. and his writers had a very strong sense of who the characters were and how they should work. To find a team that was interested in putting it all back together was very exciting.'' Trekkers will be excited too. Nimoy's first scene in the film, screened for EW, is goose-bumpingly cool. (Negotiations with Shatner did not go as well.)

The new Spock came next, though Zachary Quinto had been all but knocking on the door for months. During the first season of Heroes, Quinto, 31, campaigned for the part by repeatedly expressing interest in it while doing press for his show. ''I saw it as a career opportunity, but I also saw it as a creative opportunity, too,'' he says. ''I have a real interest in where this character lives. I really relate to the duality of a logical mind and an emotional sensibility.'' Quinto prepped intensely for his tryout, even binding his fingers with rubber bands to train his hand for the live-long-and-prosper salute. He secured the role soon after Nimoy viewed his audition tape. ''I could see Zach had an internal life as an actor, which is important to the Spock character, because there's so little to show physically,'' Nimoy says. ''I called J.J. and immediately told him he was going to work.''

[PhoenixRising]

Meanwhile, Chris Pine (Smokin' Aces) nearly sabotaged his big break. His Kirk audition, he recalls, required him to bark ''Trek jargon'' as he led the Enterprise through a space skirmish. ''It was very hard to take myself seriously,'' says Pine, 28, with a laugh. ''I'm six-foot, I weigh about a buck sixty-five, went to private school, and grew up in the [San Fernando] Valley — I wouldn't follow me into battle.'' But Abrams was impressed by Pine's charisma and invited him back, along with two other Kirk candidates, to test with Quinto. The duo's chemistry was undeniably bromantic, and Pine was offered the role. Still, Pine had a caveat for Abrams. ''I said to him, 'There's going to be a lot of people on your ass about all kinds of things. I just need to know, if I have a question, you will be there for me,' '' Pine recalls. Abrams remembers that conversation more like this: ''He asked, 'You're not going to put me in a leotard, are you?'''

Nope. Kirk spends much of Star Trek dressed in respectable black — space-cadet colors in Abrams' Trekverse — as he undertakes a perilous, destiny-seeking journey. The actor says he got over his Kirk-comparison insecurities, but that didn't mean mimicking Shatner's much-mocked halting cadences. For his part, Quinto shaved his eyebrows and grew and dyed his hair, and found that the makeover helped him connect with Spock's angst. ''I never anticipated how alienated I would feel because of the physical alteration,'' he says. ''That's appropriate, because Spock is really alienated from himself when we meet him. He's constantly questioning his place in the world.'' The ears? ''I'm endeared to the ears,'' he says, smiling.

[PhoenixRising]

Watching Pine and Quinto work on set — and seeing some of their work on screen — suggests both may deliver star-making performances. ''I think Zach had the toughest job, but he gave a performance that totally captured the character without resorting to impersonation,'' says Simon Pegg (Scotty). ''And Chris had that steely arrogance and wry humor you want in Kirk. He's also sickeningly good-looking and really funny. Talk about nature giving a guy too much.''

For Abrams, who shot for five months on the Paramount lot and around Los Angeles, the defining struggle was fighting through his non-Trekker prejudice. He succeeded, but that still didn't alleviate all of his anxiety. ''There were days when I would look around the set, with all these tattooed faces and pointy ears, bizarre weaponry and Romulan linguists, with dialogue about 'Neutral Zones' and 'Starfleet' — and I would start sweating,'' he says. ''But I knew this would work, because the script Alex and Bob wrote was so emotional and so relatable. I didn't love Kirk and Spock when I began this journey — but I love them now.''

Based on footage screened for EW by Abrams — the awe-inspiring introduction of the Enterprise; thrilling action sequences on a harsh ice planet and in the skies of Vulcan — the director has transformed Star Trek into state-of-the-art pop. Moviegoers will get a sneak peek when the first full trailer is released with the new James Bond flick on Nov. 14.