D.C. Fontana's Favorite 'Star Trek'
Like many Star Trek fans, D.C. Fontana shares similar tastes when it comes to which original series episodes she enjoys the most.
As reported by Sci Fi.com, Fontana's favorite episode, Amok Time, takes place on Vulcan. "This is the first real introduction into the Vulcan world, its ceremonies, cultural history and rituals," said Fontana. "[Writer] Ted Sturgeon came up with a rich and complex tradition for Vulcans, played out largely in a ceremonial site on Vulcan. The fact that it deeply involves Spock [Leonard Nimoy], who is behaving in a vastly un-Spockian way, propels the story throughout."
Another favorite for Fontana is The City on the Edge of Forever. "The story has such wonderful elements in it," explained Fontana. "The Guardian of Forever on a planet in a time vortex; the time travel to Los Angeles in the 1930s; McCoy [DeForest Kelley] out of control and under the accidental influence of a drug, leaping through the Guardian into that very alien past time; Kirk and Spock forced to go after McCoy to save him; a very real (and doomed) love story for Kirk. His relationship with Edith Keeler (beautifully played by Joan Collins) is quite possibly the only genuine love story ever felt by our captain."
One of Fontana's own stories made her top five list. Journey to Babel was "The favorite of all the ones I wrote on 'Star Trek', said Fontana. 'Amok Time' and 'The Naked Time' paved the way to tell stories about Spock and Vulcan. I recalled John D.F. Black's words in "The Naked Time" about Spock's parents: His father was a Vulcan ambassador, his mother was a human teacher. In the second season, I went to Gene Roddenberry and told him I wanted to do a story about Spock's parents, who they were, how they related to Spock, because all of that made Spock who he was. I threw in an adventure and a murder mystery, but it all came down to the relationships between three people of a family unit. In addition to Leonard Nimoy's terrific performance as Spock, I couldn't have been more blessed with the casting of the beautiful Jane Wyatt as Amanda and Mark Lenard as Sarek."
To read more and see Fontana's other choices, head to the article located here.
Houston's Johnson Space Center, known around the world as the home of Mission Control and the astronauts, faces falling employment and other uncertainties as NASA prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary later this week.
The approaching transition from the space shuttle — which, according to current plans, will be retired in 2010 — to a new moonship means that between 600 and 2,400 of the 16,500 people who work at Johnson will lose their jobs, according to NASA's latest estimates.
The space agency, which began operating Oct. 1, 1958, 50 years ago Wednesday, also expects to curtail activities aboard the international space station by 2016. Even the astronaut corps, which once numbered 120 men and women, is likely to fall through attrition to fewer than 90 flyers.
Over the long term, however, the prospects for Johnson seem brighter than the falling numbers suggest. Much depends on how the new president and Congress respond to the Constellation program, a 4-year-old project designed to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and establish a base for training crews for missions to Mars and other planets.
Congressional auditors estimate the cost of the project, NASA's response to President Bush's lunar strategy, at $230 billion over the next two decades.
"The Johnson Space Center has always been about developing and operating human spacecraft, planning missions, training flight crews and flight control. That's not going to change," said NASA's Wayne Hale, a 30-year agency veteran. "If anything, there is more work to do than the workforce in the area is capable of doing."
Earlier this year, Hale left his job as shuttle program manager to help the space agency ease the transition to the moon project as one of NASA's top strategic planners.
In the first 15 years of its 50-year history, NASA sprinted through the development of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules and the Skylab space station and initiated work on the space shuttle. After President Nixon in 1972 ordered the agency to pursue the shuttle, the development pace slowed. The most recent project, the space station, got under way in 1984 at the direction of President Reagan.
With the exception of Mercury, Johnson led the work on all of them.
Without Constellation, which began in the aftermath of the 2003 Columbia accident, there would be nothing new in the pipeline. Yet new projects seem unlikely with the $17.3 billion in annual funding NASA has received. The total is not enough to operate the shuttle and space station while pursuing the agency's unmanned science projects and developing the moonship.
"The challenges are always number one, the budget," said NASA's David Leestma, who directs advanced planning at Johnson. "So, there is a lot of angst."
Angst over the transition aside, the changes that await Johnson as NASA embraces Constellation hold the potential to restore an Apollo-era sense of vigor to the space center, with a new spacecraft moving through design, development and test cycles. That means workers who spent their entire careers sustaining shuttle and space station operations must either acquire new skills or leave.
Soon after Bush ordered the shuttle's retirement, NASA selected Johnson to manage all of the Constellation work.
Constellation's budget, $2.5 billion this year, is projected to reach $7 billion in five years. Over the same period, NASA's spending on the shuttle and space station is expected to fall from $5.5 billion to $2.8 billion.
In addition to managing Constellation, Johnson is responsible for developing the Orion capsule that will fly astronauts to the moon, designing new spacesuits, building flight simulators and other training aids and upgrading Mission Control.
In October, NASA assigned Johnson to lead even more work in areas that have not been funded and so were not factored into the agency's employment estimates.
The future development projects assigned to Johnson include a lunar lander, moon shelters and rovers. Engineers at Johnson will also lead the development of equipment to mine the moon for oxygen, hydrogen and other resources to produce water, breathable air and, perhaps, rocket fuel.
If NASA's tradition of assigning Johnson work on manned spaceships continues, the Houston center will supervise projects to develop a Mars ship, too.
By any measure, NASA has been an enviable economic engine.
NASA spends well over $2 billion annually through Johnson. That's enough to provide more than 39,000 people in the Houston area with paychecks when jobs in retail, health care, construction, travel and entertainment are added to those directly employed by Johnson, according to economic impact studies conducted by the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
"I think you will see this industry grow at a steady pace," said Robert Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, the organization that nurtures the growth of the region's aerospace corridor.
"The space center is the heart and soul of this region," he said. "That's just open and shut."
Pegg On Scotty and Secrecy
Simon Pegg was so concerned with maintaining the secrecy of Star Trek XI, he wouldn't give fans a preview of Scotty's accent.
As reported by Sci Fi Pulse, worries about getting in trouble with Paramount kept Pegg from giving fans a sample of the Scottish accent used to portray Scotty in Star Trek XI. "I can’t do that," he said, when asked to do the accent. "Because I’ll be sued in the face. That means Paramount will sue my ass off, where my head should be."
Explaining the security concerning Star Trek XI, Pegg said, "We're so gagged by Paramount, willingly so. We're not supposed to talk about it. J.J. Abrams is the director. He doesn't want to spoil anything about it."
The secrecy meant being literally hidden when traveling. "So when we were filming it, we used to go from set to the studio in covered-like cloaks in golf buggies covered in cloth so people couldn’t see you."
In spite of the secrecy, Pegg spoke a little about how he approached the role of Scotty. "I am Scottish," he said. "I tried to approach it like James Doohan did when he got the part, which is say 'Ok the guy is Scottish. He works in space.' I didn’t try and do an impression of James Doohan."
Having Montgomery Scott be Scottish was a good call in Pegg's opinion. "...its right that he's Scottish as well," said Pegg. "Because the Scottish came up with all those amazing engineering inventions. So he’s the 'uber Scott.'"
To read more, head to the article located here.
Bryan Fuller is ready to work on another Star Trek series and would like to see the franchise back on television.
As reported by MTV, Fuller, who wrote for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, feels that the time is right for the return of a Star Trek series to television. "I would love to do another 'Star Trek' series," said Fuller. "One where you could go back to the spirit and color of the original 'Star Trek,' because somehow, it got cold over the years. I love 'Next Generation,' but it's a little cooler and calmer than the ones from the '60s, which were so dynamic and passionate."
Currently working on Pushing Daisies, Fuller is impressed with J.J. Abram's version of Star Trek, especially the costumes. But he feels that Kirk, Spock and McCoy should remain in the movies. "You wouldn't have to be on the same ship or have the same characters as the original 'Star Trek,'" explained Fuller, "but you could be in the same timeline and universe. 'Star Trek' has to recreate itself. Otherwise, all the characters start to feel the same. You always have a captain, a doctor, a security officer, and you have the same arguments based on those perspectives. It starts to feel too familiar. So all those paradigms where it takes place on a starship have to be shaken up."
Fuller, a Star Trek fan himself, prefers Deep Space Nine of all the Star Trek incarnations. "'Deep Space Nine' was the best of the modern ones," he said, "because it was so emotionally complicated." Fuller was disappointed with Star Trek: Enterprise, saying, "'Enterprise' was the most sterile of all of them, when it should have been the most fun."
To read more, head to the article located here.
While plot details from Star Trek XI are zealously guarded, J.J. Abrams and company will freely discuss the Star Trek XI technology.
As reported by MTV, Abrams and company are still keeping mum about plot or character details. When asked about moments with the mothers of Kirk and Spock, Abrams said, "The what? What flashbacks? I never said flashbacks. Writer/Producer Alex Kurtzman echoed Abrams comments. "We didn't say there were flashbacks."
They were willing to discuss gadgets though. "We intentionally don't talk too much about the story," said Producer Bryan Burk, "but there's all the gadgets you could want. No replicators," (replicators originated in Star Trek: The Next Generation), "but there’s warp speed and transporter beams and tricorders and communicators and everything you could want. All the gadgets."
While the futuristic technology is interesting to fans, to the characters in the show, it's just something ordinary and usual. "It's one thing in 'Star Trek' to get all excited and freak out about communicators, but to them, it's like it's the new iPhone," said Abrams. "These are just the tool they're using."
The film is made for the fans who are interested in futuristic technology however, so proper attention is paid to creating the gadgets and getting it right. "We have family members who would disown us if we got any of those wrong," said Writer/Producer Roberto Orci. According to Abrams, "The writer’s team had 'endless discussions' about how to portray the gadgets, as well as all the other details of 'style' and 'aesthetics.' If you do the bridge of the Enterprise, what does it look like? Does Uhura has the piece in her, or does she not? And if she does, what does it look like? If they have tricorders, what do they look like? Phasers, how do you go from stun to kill, and does anything happen? What does the whole fleet look like? I’m telling you, every day, we were figuring this out, how do we take what we know and love and 'Star Trek' and apply it to a modern audience."
Some of the technology will be hidden as "Easter eggs." "There will be appearances of things," said Burk.
To read more, head to the article located here.
LAS VEGAS — After a decade at the final frontier, Star Trek: The Experience is going where no Las Vegas Strip attraction wants to go.
With a decommissioning ceremony — as befits any great vessel — the exhibit and its replica of the starship Enterprise from the television shows and movies are closing Monday.
Thousands of Trekkers are beaming up from across the United Federation of Planets, er, the United States and around the world, one last time, according to exhibit spokesman Chad Boutte.
Some seek a final encounter with the Borg, a race of organic robot aliens who tell everyone "resistance is futile."
Others just want to share a farewell drink — likely a stiff Warp Core Breach, with 10 ounces of rum — with fellow fans at the attraction's restaurant.
Employees dressed as aliens discuss the minutiae of their worlds' mythologies with visitors who learn, in typically circular Trekker logic, that the exhibit is a "time station" for transporting researchers and equipment between the 21st and 24th centuries.
For $49.99, fans can enjoy two virtual rides and the Museum of the Future, with costumes, phasers and Mr. Spock's coffin. More than 3 million people have come through since the Experience opened in 1998.
In the end, the frontier the USS Enterprise couldn't breach was earthly: The attraction's owner, Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., and the Las Vegas Hilton, its landlord, couldn't agree on a new lease. They worked as a typical landlord and retail tenant, with Cedar Fair keeping all revenue from the attraction, hotel spokesman Ira David Sternberg said.
Trekkers are incensed. They've scrawled reminiscences about the exhibit on the walls inside, and they're calling Cedar Fair and the hotel to complain.
But their online rumor that the space the exhibit occupies will become a theater for pop star Michael Jackson is unfounded, Sternberg said. He said nothing's decided.
Karen and Eric Klein, from Easton, Pa., had planned to renew their wedding vows at the Experience on their 10th anniversary but came this week instead, four years early.
A Federation captain told them during the ceremony on the bridge of the Enterprise that the energy between them created their love.
"He had his own schtick, and it was very beautiful, and it actually made the moment even that much better," said Eric Klein, 39, still holding his wife's hand outside the gift shop. "It wasn't simply being on the bridge, it really felt very emotional."