More on Star Trek Discovery

This past Wednesday (10 August 2016), Bryan Fuller revealed a few spoilers in Los Angeles at the Television Critics Association conference about Star Trek Discovery. Here are some of what was discussed:

Characters:

A woman/female will take the center seat and be the main lead for the series. Although not a captain, but a “Lieutenant Commander — with caveats.”

Seven characters are penned to be the leads for the series (hard to say if it will be just the Discovery crew, returning support characters, villains, etc). 

There will be a gay character, not known if they will be male or female.

There will be robots and more aliens than previously seen on a Star Trek series/movie.

An "original" alien will be named Saru.

A source and additional reading here: http://www.polygon.com/tv/2016/8/11/12433320/bryan-fuller-star-trek-tcas

Timeline:

The events in Discovery will take place around 10 years before the first adventures of Kirk and company (it should be worth noting, the Discovery, as depicted in the current trailer is not the finalized ship, more of a "proof of concept", or so they claim).

A clue offered with this, "an incident in the history of Starfleet that had been talked about but never fully explored." Strong rumors surround the recent "Axanar Incident" (read more here http://www.axanarproductions.com/category/cbsparamount-lawsuit/ ) that might have more than coincided with the story plans for Discovery.

More good stuff here: http://tvline.com/2016/08/10/star-trek-discovery-amanda-grayson-spoilers-cast/

They are calling it....Discovery

In May 2005, the last Star Trek show, an episode for Enterprise called "These are the Voyages" aired and it's been reruns ever since. Twelve years of no new shows on TV (except for the odd special, here and there) and only three movies, at the time of this posting.

However, if plans come to fruition, January 2017 will bring a new chapter to the Star Trek saga back to the small screen. Titled Discovery, very little is known what the show will be about, the time frame for which the stories will take place or even who will be cast in whatever roles are being scripted. Sounds promising for a show about to air in less than six months.

This past July at Comic-Con in San Diego, a teaser trailer for the new series was shown. The footage contained what some could consider "dark" music and a unusual ship being launched from a hollowed out asteroid. However, it was later reported the ship, as depicted, was a "proof of concept" and the design might not even make the final cut before airing.

All of this is very cryptic and confusing to me. Okay, they settled on a title, very good. Then, show a ship they may/may not use? Okay....no clue. No news (at the time of this posting) of any of the actors, hints at the time frame this will all take place (rumors have it somewhere between 2161 and 2293, not officially confirmed)....just a lot of nothing.

Well, that last part isn't totally honest. Here is what is known for sure, a guy named Bryan Fuller is one of the show's creators, Alex Kurtzman is the other. Star Trek veteran Nicholas Meyer has signed on as a writer/consulting producer and Rod Roddenberry as a producer.  It will take place in the "Prime Universe", so it will have a different look and feel than Abrams' reboot movies.

No doubt more will be revealed as time goes on, including something on or around August 10th (as the rumor goes).

The virtual adventures continue....

Thanks in part to seeing Star Trek: Beyond, my son has decided to revisit Star Trek Online on PC. By proxy, I put aside some of my previous bitter feelings from the game and downloaded the latest client. Much to my surprise, they have added some gameplay action from my favorite era, The Original Series.

Although the starter ship isn't cannon (meaning, not seen on a TV series or Movies), it will make a nice period piece to work from and up through the storyline of the game. Pretty tough little ship.

Meanwhile on my main account, I have progressed to Commander. My son has taken more of a liking to the mainstream timeline (which happens after the events in the Next Generation films), so I have jumped in to give him a helping hand. Already, he has progressed to Captain's rank. Seems the game and it's mechanics have struck a chord with him.

The Silverscreen pulls me back here

After many months of not writing anything Star Trek related, the month of July has brought about some excitement and spurred me back into Gene Roddenberry's universe. First, it was the new movie: Star Trek Beyond.

Even before me and the family sat in the theater to watch the movie, my son and I got a promotional cup full of pop to go with the experience, good or bad.

In my opinion, the movie was pretty good, albeit scripted off a lot of borrowed stuff from the other films. The destruction of the Enterprise was seen in both Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Star Trek: Generations, but they put their own unique and believable twist on their version of events.

The main antagonist, Krall, who is really a starship Captain named Balthazar Edison, is a good blending of villains seen before. Take a little of Ahdar Ru'afo (mostly his "immortality cheating") from Insurrection, mix in a bit of Khan (for being abandoned) from both Space Seed and Wrath of Khan and add a dash of a few others along the way (those two really stick out for me). With that, you get a nasty adversary that you almost feel sorry for, in the end.

I get the impression the actors who played the crew of the intrepid starship Enterprise had fun playing their roles again. There was an obvious chemistry that came through in their performances and the interactions between each other felt like....family.

Another thing I noticed was the amount of screentime each of them got, except for the now late Anton Yelchin (for whom the movie was partially dedicated to, Leonard Nimoy was the other). Although his scenes made a pretty good impact on the story, just not the same balance as the others, from my perspective.

However, one of the standout moments was McCoy's first aid technique on Spock, injured on the planet Altamid.

For me, the star of the show was the U.S.S. Franklin. I was a fan of Enterprise when it first aired and watch the odd rerun when I could (now, it's on Netflicks) and seeing a ship from this era on the big screen is a huge nod to a show I think was cut too short in it's run. Although the back story given onscreen seems solid, there are big holes on how it fits into the Kelvin (the name adopted for Abrams' reboot series) timeline. Minor continuity issues that could be resolved at a later date, I suppose.

Overall, a good movie and scripted as a standalone episode, so people who haven't seen Star Trek before could jump right into the middle of things, with only a few explanations needed to fill in the gaps. But, it could have also been a standalone movie, with no connections to Star Trek and delivered a good time as well.

So, about that giveaway I mentioned....

No sooner do I make this posting http://startrekquesnel.blogspot.ca/2016/01/hurry-i-just-found-out-giveaway-from-sto.html  that I jump into the game and try to collect my prizes. However, I run into a slight roadblock to that goal. It seems it wasn't available to me, despite following the directions given.

So, I opened up the Star Trek Online forums and made my first posts there http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1211143/seems-i-am-not-worthy-to-claim-a-giveaway in hopes of getting a response from the community. I had suspicions of this possible scenario, since I tried claiming other prizes that wouldn't go into my account, but from promotional codes.

The first answer back was what I was expecting. I had held out hope, since this was a special occasion, I could still be able to claim these ships, even to be unlocked by my characters at a later date. However, this just wasn't meant to be.

Too bad, doesn't give me much incentive to keep playing now, does it?

Hurry, I just found out, a giveaway from STO!

Since I have been spending most of my gaming time on Star Trek Timelines, I haven't kept any of my eyes on Star Trek Online. So, with very little time left to cash in on a giveaway, I will post this here, just in case you happen to be playing too and didn't know about it either https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9739823

Starship Sunday V

Starship Sunday is a showcase feature of cannon spacecraft seen in Star Trek television episodes and movies.

This week; USS Bozeman, NCC-1941, Soyuz Class. Seen on Star Trek The Next Generation, Episode 5x18 Cause and Effect. First aired 23 March 1992.

In 2278, Starship Bozeman entered an area of space known as the Typhon Expanse and was reported lost when it entered a temporal distortion. Later, in 2368, the Bozeman was able to escape the distortion and encountered the Enterprise D, but both ships collided, causing the Enterprise to be destroyed. Being within a close proximity to the unstable temporal distortion, a temporal causality loop was formed where Bozeman continually and repeatedly encounter, collide and destroy the Enterprise over and over.

Eventually, the Enterprise crew would change this pre-determined series and outcomes of events and both ships were freed of the loop. The crew of the Bozeman would learn there were almost one hundred years in the future, from when they started their last voyage.

The Bozeman, still in active service, would be forced to make a course correction when the Amargosa star was destroyed in 2371. Two years later, the Bozeman was back in action when a Borg cube invaded Sector 001, a part of the defending Earth fleet.