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...to those of you with scanners and/or disposable income.
The hardcover novelization of Broken Bow is now out, apparently with a colour-plate-insert-"making of"-etc-etc bit in it. While I doubt there'll be anything of huge substance in it, keep in mind it was the lowly behind-the-scenes insert into the First Contact novelization that gave us "Akira, Norway, Steamrunner and Sabre" oh so long ago.
Secondly, the next issue of the Star Trek Communicator has loads of NX-01 eye candy. Should be out within days, too, I think.
Scooby snacks for the brave soul who gets scans of either online first.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
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I managed to find a partial transcription of the making-of featurette. The following should be of interest:
Braga: "I had just gotten back from the LA car show, and I had seen the new 2002 [Ford] Thunderbird. What I realy liked about it was that it was the classic Thunderbird design, but modernized. So it was kind of the best of both worlds. It was at once tantalizingly modern and yet very, very familiar at the same time. So we discussed it and we thought, Well, let's take Kirk's ship, the original Enterprise, and let's soup it up and make it more futuristic and bring it into the twenty-first century. And we worked on that for a while, but it ultimately looked just too much like the other ships. It was too familiar. It wasn't new enough. So we ended up completely abandoning that approach and started from scratch."
Zimmerman: "We found a ship that was in our archives - a minor vessel that had been used in a battle in one of the features that had been created by ILM. We did not use that ship, but we took ideas from it and from those ideas eventually - and this process took about four months, all week and weekend CGI work by a very talented Lightwave artist, Doug Drexler - we finally came up with a shape that everybody loves. I trust the fans will love it as well as the producers and the cast do."
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
"...make it more futuristic and bring it into the twenty-first century."
Since we're talking about altering a twenty-third century ship, these concepts are mutually exclusive.
Not to mention that the show is set in the twenty-second century. I'm beginning to wonder if Braga's display of intelligence in that recently-discussed interview was just a fluke...
quote:So we discussed it and we thought, Well, let's take Kirk's ship, the original Enterprise, and let's soup it up and make it more futuristic and bring it into the twenty-first century.
Yes, I believe he meant that he wanted to take a ship that was designed in the '60's and give it a more realistic 21st century look. Sounds OK to me so far...
quote:And we worked on that for a while, but it ultimately looked just too much like the other ships. It was too familiar. It wasn't new enough. So we ended up completely abandoning that approach and started from scratch."
I'm not even going to comment on the utter ridiculousness of that statement.
As for Zimmerman's quote, all I have to say is...it took four months to design that ship? It looks like it should have taken four minutes...
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
quote:We found a ship that was in our archives - a minor vessel that had been used in a battle in one of the features that had been created by ILM
Oh yeah, SURE. No-one knows what that little ship is and what it looks like, so why not use it again? Another one of those examples of TPTB thinking 'The Audience' has no brains.
Mind you, I'm not saying that I don't like the NX-01.
quote:Originally posted by Harry: Oh yeah, SURE. No-one knows what that little ship is and what it looks like, so why not use it again? Another one of those examples of TPTB thinking 'The Audience' has no brains.
Honestly, if you didn't participate in Star Trek discussions online, view starship Web sites, and/or own the Encyclopedia, would you recognize the Akira from First Contact, a handful of DS9 episodes, and one Voyager episode? We sometimes forget that most fans don't pay attention to ships other than the "star," and in many cases, not even then. We're in a small, but high-profile, minority.
quote:Honestly, if you didn't participate in Star Trek discussions online, view starship Web sites, and/or own the Encyclopedia, would you recognize the Akira from First Contact, a handful of DS9 episodes, and one Voyager episode?
Probably not. But then if I didn't do any of that, then why would I be watching this new show anyway?
I think you contradicted yourself. You say that most fans don't pay attention to the ships, but then you also talk about the multitude of Star Trek ship websites and whatnot. I think that the reason these sites, books, & other info exist is because the fans do pay attention to the ships. After all, who is making those websites, reading those Encyclopedias, & watching those movies & shows? THE FANS.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
quote:After all, who is making those websites, reading those Encyclopedias, & watching those movies & shows? THE FANS.
Yes, but many of the fans who watch movies and shows just want a good story and a solid hour of "Star Trek", not to find out if the ship in the dark corner of the starbase is another Constitution-Class.
I think the majority of "Trek" fans are rather casual: they watch some variations of the shows ... they might not like all of them ... they may go to a convention for a day or so ... they may even post on a BBS every now and then ... but they don't spend every waking hour of every waking day analyzing the distance from Earth to Kronos to Bajor to Cardassia or writing fan-fic (hey, that was me ...) or what "message" Star Trek sends -- !
quote:But then if I didn't do any of that, then why would I be watching this new show anyway?
Because not every fan of Star Trek needs to or even wants to know the name of every starship seen in every episode. Not every Star Trek fan needs to or wants to own the Encyclopedia, the Chronology, the TNG Technical Manual, etc. There are Star Trek fans who simply do not care to know about all of the intricacies of Treknology. These are the people who watch the show for the character interplay and the stories. Yes, these people do exist.
I don't think at all that Ryan has contradicted himself. He summed up the situation fairly well. The existence of all of these Trek websites is not necessarily an indicator of massive interest in Treknology. There is a good portion of the Trek audience that do go to these sites very often and support them, but not every fan does. There's only a handful of Treknology websites that I visit on a regular basis. I have some real-life friends who visit only StarTrek.com (and only then to get episode synopses).
The Akira-class starship is a minor starship. The Akira has been featured prominently only twice in the hundreds of hours of Star Trek movies and episodes. That was in Star Trek: First Contact and Voyager's "Message in a Bottle." She made a couple split-second appearances in the war arcs of Deep Space Nine, but the only appearance that readily comes to mind is one spinning around with her saucer disintegrating. The Excelsior class has been seen much more often in much more important roles throughout the years.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
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