JJ Abrams recently wrapped principal photography on the new Star Trek movie and spent a little time with the Associated Press, claiming that he's made a movie that will surprise a lot of people. This either strikes you as great news or sends a chill up your spine, depending upon your love affair with all things Trek.
“I feel like this is so unlike what you expect, so unlike the Star Trek you’ve seen," he said. "At the same time, it’s being true to what’s come before, honouring it. I can say the effects for Star Trek have never, ever been done like this. … I can only tell you the idea of the universe of Star Trek has never been given this kind of treatment.”
“One of the writers who’s a devout Trekker. And we’re serving the people who are completely enamored with Star Trek. But we are not making the movie for that contingent alone. It was an opportunity to take what I think has been a maligned world — to sound crass, a franchise — and treat it in a way that made it something that I wanted to see. To take the characters, the thoughtfulness, the personalities, the sense of adventure, the idea of humanity working together, the sense of social commentary and innovation, all that stuff. To take it and apply it in a way that felt genuinely thrilling.”
The poor old 'red shirts' of Star Trek have become a cliche over the years, a term used for throw-away cast members who lurked in the background of Star Trek episodes, usually meeting an untimely end by one means or another. Well, does the cliche have any truth too it? Were members of the Enterprise crew wearing red shirts more likely to die than, say, yellow shirts? It's the question of the ages, but thanks to the hard and brilliant work of Matt Bailey, founder of SiteLogic, we now have answers.
For instance, Matt has proved our suspicions that red-shirts accounted for a whopping 73% of crew member deaths, followed by the yellow-shirts at 10%, blue-shirts at 8%.
What was a red-shirted crewman likely to die from, an on-board accident or beaming down to the planet? If you answered beaming down then ding-ding, you win.
The article is quite fascinating for its detail and obvious dedication, offering all kinds of great minutia for hardcore Trekkies, like:
Here are the statistics:
Red Shirt Death episodes = 18
Episodes with fights = 55
Probability of a fight breaking out = 70%
Kirk "conquest" episodes = 24
Kirk "conquest" + fights = 16
Kirk "conquest" + red shirt casualty= 4
Red shirt death + fight + Kirk "conquest" = 3
Head on over to ClickTracks for the full, mind-blowing analysis.
Yesterday I made a post about Patrick Stewart nearing suing Paramount over pain he suffered from wearing his Trek uniform, wherein I made the comment that La Forge's visor looked strikingly similar to an air filter. Well, IA reader Jordan sent me an email saying the visor was actually a hair barrette! Jordan even sent me a picture (above) that made it seem extremely likely.
Being the paranoid type, I didn't want to add a follow-up post without digging a little deeper and what do ya know, Jordan is absolutely right.
According to the Star Trek Encyclopedia:
"Geordi's VISOR was modeled on a hair clip donated to the show by UCLA researcher Kinu Annon. Kiku's barrette was sprayed with metallic gold paint and used as a prototype for the prop."
Patrick Stewart may have looked mean-and-lean in that tight-fitting Star Trek uniform but the appearance came at high-cost, according to a recent interview.
"I came to loathe the costume. We actually got rid of it after the second season thanks to my chiropractor, who said, 'If they don't take you out of that costume we are going to slap a lawsuit on Paramount for the lasting damage done to your spine. The producers wanted to have a smooth, unwrinkled look. It put a terrible amount of strain on the shoulders, neck and back."
I'm still awaiting word if LeVar Burton suffered any undue pain from those lame glasses he had to wear as Geordi La Forge. I still claim those glasses look like an air-filter.
Talk about a treasure trove! CBSis finally getting hip to this whole Internet thing, as evidenced by the sudden appearance of every original episode of Star Trek and the first two seasons of Twilight Zone.
Quality is actually pretty damn nice and the layout is easy to navigate. I'm not much of a Trekkie, but having quick access to classic Twilight Zone episodes makes me all giddy inside. As an added bonus, CBShas also made season 1 of MacGyver and, thank goodness, Hawaii Five-0 available for your viewing pleasure.
A word of warning: if you've never seen Hawaii Five-0, then please proceed carefully, as you will not be able to get the theme song out of your head.
