QAPLA': General Star Trek thread... for all your Trekin' needs

:thinking: oops. like i said. no more time travel episodes

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That’s a forgivable mistake considering how much The Motion Picture resembles 2001 compared to Star Wars, although the success of the latter was absolutely the reason they pushed the new Star Trek to the big screen as opposed to the TV series they were producing. Although by some accounts there was some work on the script while Star Wars was in production, so it just sounds like a confusing time period where they weren’t sure exactly what they were going to do with Trek until money came pouring out of Wars and Close Encounters.

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Happy 87th Birthday, Walter.

I may like your Bester better.

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The pre-production of what eventually became TMP is fascinating. It was going to be a movie, then a TV show and a movie again but attempts to read where the cultural zeitgeist were going, internal politics, the needs of Paramount as a company (IIRC, the movie Planet of the Titans was cancelled and replaced with Phase II because Paramount intended to start a TV network and wanted to use Trek to anchor it, and Phase II was cancelled in favour of TMP when that fell through). Even after all that, Roddenberry played around in attempts to keep as much control over the production as possible it massively delayed the movie’s filming and further pushed it past the release of Star Wars. To say nothing of the massive issues behind the camera when the movie was actually being made.

Memory Alpha’s page on TMP has a lot of detail and is a good place to start reading.

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“Live Long and Be Fabulous”!!!

Also, Wil narrated Jon Scalzi’s latest book…

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Here’s another great site discussing TMP, the aborted Phase II and designs used in other Trek series

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My brother sent this link to a fan-made episode of Star Trek, I think. I was impressed with how they managed to emulate 1960s production.

ETA

It is a fan made show, indeed.

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Kind of surprising, given the representation of Scottish and Irish characters, that their weren’t Federation uniform kilts.

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I see those pop up on my feed now and again, and wondered if they were any good.

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The production values are high. But the cast…

ETA

Yet a funny show to watch. Go for It.

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Ok, here’s a thought for a ST: Engineers series. The basic theme should be to focus on how civilizations with asteroid-deflecting tech, planetary defenses, and weather control systems got the job done. Since TOS inspired a lot of inventors, it seems like a good idea to get a show like that started soon…because we might need an obelisk. :thinking: Based on past episodes (and sci-fi in general), we need to make sure those teams figure out more universal documentation standards, explore a variety of musical choices for codes, or make those systems more accident-proof. :grimacing:

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They could have some people wearing sarongs.

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Make It So Star Trek GIF

Sounds great…

We also need a Star Trek: Humanities (or whatever you would call it when it’s not just earth’s cultures?). Science and engineering have always gotten a big boost in interest from ST, so why not the study of history, culture, peoples, languages, etc? More often than not, those sorts of fields seem like a tacked on thing - like the people doing archaeology are always doing it as a hobby (Picard) or are independent contractors… It seems like each ship would have a historian, but the last time one was mentioned (I think) was Space Seed, and the historian left with Khan!

One vector could be incorporating new members into the federation… How does a planet become a federation planet, and how does it’s society, culture, and history become integrated into the federation? Certainly, that’s just not up to some random freelancers, but would be a systemic program offered by the federation with professionals from the federation yeah?

And a show like that should illustrate the importance of supporting a humanities education as much as a STEM education to the viewing public!

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This would be awesome! If someone is looking for inspiration and a quiet place to write the script, I recently saw an old Vulcan temple is up for sale:

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“Humanities” works for me.

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I’ve been here for most of my life and never knew there was a Vulcan, MI. I’ve always been within a couple of hours of Romulus, so I should have realized they wouldn’t be too far apart.

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It’s just a short, 490 mile drive from Romulus to Vulcan! Michigan is definitely a big state, and Vulcan is a tiny town. Plenty of people in the UP probably don’t even realize it exists.

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