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.

Make time for the lines

In Star Trek related gaming, I have been spending a little more time on my Android app, Star Trek Timelines than my PC game. Slowly leveling up....

....discovering some interesting bugs, some which are amusing....

....another gave me a temporary advantage to the game.

I finally collected a doctor, a character with a very elusive trait it seems, to finish off some previously uncompleted missions, due to being locked to not having one.

Although I have unlocked a lot of the universe so far, I find myself going back to finish off episode and playing them over and over, in an attempt to collect rare rewards and level my characters up.

There's no hurry really, I have all the time in....

What ever happen to....

....the Vulcan Shuttle Surak? Only ever seen for a brief moment, during Start Trek The Motion Picture, delivering Spock to the disabled Starship Enterprise. I thought how it docked was pretty cool too!

However, after this short scene, it was just gone. And, when I mean gone, poof, never to be seen again onscreen. This has always struck me as odd, since Star Trek, from the shows through the movies, has recycled many ship models in either their original form or modified to stand-in for something else/new. But, not this one?

Even out in the real world, only one model was produced. Although the box art has been updated over the years....

....finding one in a local store can be a daunting task. The internet has opened up the possibilities of acquiring one with better success, these days.

Still, I wonder if this forgotten ship will ever make another appearance onscreen, someday....

What if?

With the third Star Trek movie, set in the J.J. Abrams' re-visioned but alternate universe, set for release soon, I thought I would have a look back and consider something. With a new cast and other big changes, what if one thing wasn't changed from the Star Trek most of us have known all our lives?

If you have seen the first two films or not, you might be familiar with the above picture anyways. Right before the first movie rolled into theaters, there was a mass media blitz of commercials on just about every electronic device that could broadcast them.

This simple scene from those commercials, showing the Enterprise under construction in an Iowa field (yeah, but don't go there) set in motion a mixed bags of emotions on how this icon was....changed....improved....altered....pick your own wording.

However, what if the ship remained as it always was, as many wished it would have stayed as, how it could have been....