#star trek show about the excelsior when

[daftmooncretin]

just found out janice rand was communications officer on sulu’s ship the excelsior. they will not escape the bestie allegations <3

#star trek tos #hikaru sulu #in my mind chekov was his first officer but i don’t know if that worked out #star trek show about the excelsior when #i miss sulu #janice rand #chekov #tos #star trek #star trek tms

[stra-tek]

Lots and lots of random spoilerific things about Star Trek comics

Gold Key's old run was written by people who had never actually seen the show. Later they involved fans like Doug Drexler to make things a bit more authentic

This however made them, IMHO, amazing

Blond scotty. Wearing green.

Voodoo planet, with papier mache versions of Earth landmarks which, when blasted with a death ray, cause the real ones to collapse

Spock learns voodoo to combat this threat

The Enterprise completely razes a planet of hostile plant spore things. Like full on extermination of all life

There's a locked room on deck 7 full of evil Vulcan spirits. A yeoman blunders in and all hell breaks loose

Kirk doesn't know what a god damn black hole is

Spock is kidnapped by aliens, has their entire knowledge downloaded into his brain which makes him into a bobblehead for awhile

The Enterprise is briefly taken from Kirk and given to Captain Zarlo, who is a total bellend

Spock forgets to have pointed ears sometimes

The old UK newspaper comic strips were even worse. The first few issues feature "Captain Kurt" and he wears a red shirt. Bailey is also a lead character, giving away which one episode they had knowledge of

Depictions of the Enterprise in their very first strip will shock and horrify you, but after that the art becomes amazing and maintains a very high standard

Marvel did a series following The Motion Picture, and it was a vast improvement, although they technically had rights to the movie and not the series, which led to a little weirdness. Tons of references still were snuck in, though

There's a series of Book and Records, which you can listen to on YouTube and are goofy fun. The Enterprise desperately needs a meal in the art, though.

They draw Romulans as green wizards

They didn't have the rights to Nichelle Nichols or George Takei's likenesses, so get ready for White Uhura and Black Sulu!

They didn't have the rights to The Animated Series either, so M'Ress is a human with weird face paint and Arex is substituted for just some guy

There's an unlicensed Chinese adaptation of The Motion Picture's novelisation (made with zero prior knowledge of Star Trek), which features an all-star cast like O.J. Simpson as Decker and James Brolin as Kirk. It's called The Star Trek, which is a better name than The Motion Picture, IMHO.

DC comics' first run is considered some of the best Trek ever. They're made with love and a deep knowledge of the source material

You know how Star Trek III takes place right after II? WRONG. It was several months later and the crew (with Saavik taking over from Spock) had tons of adventures in the interim. It just seemed like it was right after😂

Before Worf and long long before Ash Tyler, Kirk had a Klingon on his crew

He was a cowardly Klingon named Konom who fled the Empire

He fell in love with a human woman named Bryce

They adopted an albino Klingon/human child with dwarfism which they named Bernie

Kirk has an unhinged, insubordinate crewman on board named Bearclaw and they hate each other

Tension escalates and eventually there's a stabbing

Sulu/M'Ress happens and I don't think people knew what furrys were in the 80's

You know how Spock comes back at the end of III but isn't his old self until the end of Star Trek IV? WRONG AGAIN. He came back just fine, and lost his marbles following an incident months later that just happened to line everything up to make it all seem like it was right after.

After STIII, Kirk becomes captain of the U.S.S. Excelsior NX-2000 and Spock becomes captain of the U.S.S. Surak. We get a few issues exclusively focusing on Spock's ship and his band of merry weirdos.

The U.S.S. Surak keeps changing design, starting off as a sort of Oberth-class ship, then randomly becoming an Excelsior-class ship and finally ending as the warp sled shuttlecraft from The Motion Picture

The Surak's crew include a giant chicken man, a Vulcan hating racist lady and a balding man with a bicycle

They all die horribly and a massive reset button is pressed so everyone is exactly where they were at the end of Star Trek III

In order to make that work they had to bs that the Klingon Bird of Prey was hidden in Excelsior's shuttlebay all this time despite it being way, way too big for that

There's a full on mirror universe invasion

Kirk becomes a celebrity from saving the galaxy all the time

Mr. Arex comes back and becomes chief of security but doesn't really do much

HORTA CREWMEMBER. It's as amazing as it sounds

The first Next Generation comic miniseries was made with knowledge of the first 2 or 3 TNG episodes and nothing else

Everyone is hench as fuck. Picard has washboard abs and bulging muscles

Data is emotional and Troi feels the emotions she senses a la "Encounter at Farpoint"

Wesley is drawn as if he's 10

The B-shift con and ops team are a husband and wife who wear caped superhero versions of Starfleet uniforms with bare legs.

They argue. A lot.

The crew meet an alien Santa Claus and Q loses his powers years before "Deja Q"

The whole Q Continuum visits the Enterprise and they're all John De Lancie but in Starfleet uniforms of every colour under the sun.

After that initial miniseries, the Next Gen crew lose a lot of their muscle mass and start resembling their on screen counterparts a lot better

Picard had a brother who fell down a hole and died as a child. Q offers to rewrite history so he doesn't die. Claude Picard grew up to be Space Superhitler and turns Starfleet and the Federation fascist.

Before all this Q turned Jean-Luc into a goat for the lolz

Marvel's The Early Voyages was very literally Strange New Worlds before Strange New Worlds.

They have a pyrokinetic security officer named Nano and he's awesome

Marvel lost the Trek license quite suddenly, and so the series ends on a cliffhanger where Admiral April is up to something iffy.

Marvel did a Starfleet Academy series featuring Nog and its utterly fantastic

A female Andorian cadet tries to make Nog feel at ease by greeting him in the nude, but Nog fails to take it as an innocent gesture and she immediately sends him flying across the room

Romulan agents with split personalities in Starfleet Academy!

They visit Talos IV and get help from Captain Pike, who's still alive

IDW comics did a prequel to the 2009 reboot where Picard is an ambassador, Data is captain of the Enterprise-E and Nero has hair. It was co-written by the movie writers and was considered sort of vaguely semi canon ish for a time

They originally wanted the Romulan supernova to destroy a lot more, including Earth and have Nero kill the TNG crew. It was the Star Trek Online devs that got them to scale things back because they'd have no universe left to set their game in.

Nero's ship looks like it does because after Romulus was destroyed he took it to a secret Romulan base and had it equipped with reverse-engineered Borg technology

You thought DC struggled to keep ship designs correct? IDW's comics keep using traced fan art from Google Images, and fan art (sometimes with unique ship designs) has shown up on multiple occasions as the Kelvinverse U.S.S. Enterprise

In one IDW TOS comic, the bridge is totally covered with TNG LCARS graphics.

In another, an Orion ship is a gigantic Stargate sticking out of the middle part of Battlestar Galactica.

Wanna see Kelvinverse versions of TOS episodes? That was their first comics run, picking up after the 2009 reboot movie. They start off very faithful and as the series goes on things diverge more and more

To the extent some stories have very different backstories and outcomes

We visit 2 Kelvin mirror universes and a genderswapped universe too. No, Kirk doesn't do what you're thinking.

Q visits the Kelvin Universe and brings the crew forward in time to their version of Deep Space Nine

Nero's time in Klingon prison (from the Star Trek 2009 deleted scenes) and escape is fleshed out

Nero meets V'ger.

Nero mind melds with V'ger.

V'ger turns away due to the sheer force of Nero's hatred.

I wish I was making that up.

Klingons get their hands on Narada's technology and go to war

We get a Khan backstory where the Eugenics Wars are a full on nuclear conflict and "Khan" is the title that little Noon Sing adopts when he takes power

After being revived in the 23rd century, Admiral Marcus has Khan surgically altered to look like Benedict Cumberbatch as part of his John Harrison cover identity

They did a series of shorts called Waypoint, and in the first one Geordi is captain of a future Enterprise and his crew is made up of holographic versions of Data and it's a really sweet concept (this was several years before before ST: Picard brought Data back twice)

There's a prequel series centred around Number One where nobody manages to say her name before being interrupted. If you put the bits together it seems her name was Eureka Robbins. Of course, this is long before novels and SNW made her Una Chin-Riley.

#star trek #star trek comics #star trek the original series #star trek the next generation #star trek aos #star trek kelvin timeline #tng #star trek the animated series #dc comics #gold key comics #idw comics #marvel comics #deep dive

[katealpha]

Art by RandomGirl1265

Another comm about my favorite pony! This time with a little crossover twist. I’ve never really said this on here before, but I LOVE Star Trek. TNG and DS9 especially are in my top 10 favorite TV shows of all time. I created (to the best of my ability) Rarity for Star Trek Online, and the amazing body customization allows you to make your character appear pregnant.

All that lead to this! Captain Rarity of the USS Stallion. Rarity was born on the planet Equestria, a planet at the fringes of the Beta Quadrant. She worked as a tailor until she and her friends were present for the first contact with the Federation. Absolutely fascinated by the extraterrestrial organization, she decided to leave home and sign up with them. After several years, Rarity rose through the ranks, her class and generosity making her well liked by her piers. By the time she reached the rank of Captain, she received her own ship. One of the last Excelsior Classes to be constructed, the USS Stallion. Just afterwards, she agreed to become a surrogate for a close Lukari friend. Inspired by the story of Major Kira Nerys of Deep Space 9 carrying the baby of Keiko O’Brien thanks to it being transported into her womb, Rarity decided to do the same.

Now close to bring due, she finds herself in a comfortable post, aiding the Romulan Republic settle on their new homeworld and helping at the staging ground. Mainly with scientific and social matters. Of course, her tailor kit is always ready when needed as well.

#rarity #my little pony #star trek #mlp fim #pregnant #pregnancy

[staringdownabarrel]

One of the things that really annoys me about the Star Trek community on Reddit is that so many people there are adamant about treating Starfleet as if it's the Federation's military and nothing else. What really annoys me about it is that it leads to a lot of conversations about why this or that character isn't being subjected to an up-or-out policy the same way military personnel might in the real world.

This is the kind of view that's absurd on the face of it. Starfleet is the Federation's military, but it's also more than that. A lot of the work it does is stuff that would be done by other government departments or by private entities in the real world. This includes stuff like science and exploration (what they're explicitly focused on), disaster relief, transporting colonists to new colonies, providing transport to ambassadors, and so on. Even in cases where some of this is being done by organisations outside of Starfleet, the shows portray Starfleet being involved in some capacity.

There also isn't a clear delineation between ships and personnel who are mostly working on the military side of things and those that are mostly doing the science, exploration, and civil service work. The same hero ship whose mission in one episode is to deal with some military confrontation or another can often be dealing with a non-military issue in the next.

Yes, there are some ships and some officers that are implied to mostly be focused on that (e.g., Captain Jellico on the Cairo, or basically anything Admiral Nechayev is up to), but it can't be taken as a given that this has been their entire career. It's often just the assignment they have right now. It's been shown that someone can go from a generalist ship to being on a specialist mission. Barclay, for example, was on the Enterprise-D and -E for years, but his next assignment was on the Pathfinder project looking for Voyager.

Coming from that perspective, having an up-or-out policy doesn't make a lot of sense. A lot of people do go get a job and just stay in that position for decades. This isn't really as common with Millennials or Gen Z, but it was common enough with Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, who largely wrote and produced the older Trek shows. Plus, a lot of the people in Starfleet are people doing very specialised jobs that there wouldn't be too many other people capable of doing, so they can't just go, "Oh, you're like 40 and still a lieutenant? You're being drummed out."

Another thing here is that some of these ships are on very long-term assignments. The Excelsior had been on a three-year cataloguing mission prior to the destruction of Praxis for example, and the Enterprise had been on a five-year mission in deep space around the time of the Klingon war in Discovery. This is something that'd only get more pronounced as time went on. One of the big reasons why ships in the TNG era were designed to have families onboard is because a lot of these ships, the Galaxy-class particularly, are designed for ten or twenty year deep space assignments.

In cases like that, it doesn't really make sense to have an up-or-out policy. These ships are hundreds of light years away from Federation space for years at a time, so once someone is promoted to a point where they should be a department head or a first officer on a different ship, they'd have no other ship to go to. Even for someone who really wanted to go up the chain of command on those ships, it'd make more sense to have them as a lieutenant for five or ten years and then bump them up to lieutenant commander when they're actually able to be transferred to a different ship.

I think it also ignores the actual practical reason why up-or-out policies exist in real world militaries. In real life, there's only a limited number of postings available, even in very large militaries. It's not like in other industries where you can just bide your time for an opening at another company; if you're in the military and want to continue working in that field, there's only one employer. If someone stays in one position for too long, they're clogging up space that would otherwise be taken by someone who actually wants that position and eventually the one above it.

This is less of a concern in Starfleet. A fleet of around 40 ships is considered to be a huge deal in The Best of Both Worlds, set in 2366-7, but a decade later, Starfleet's fielding these huge fleets with hundreds of ships in them during the Dominion War. Between the huge size of those fleets compared to the size of the fleet five or ten years earlier and due to the wartime losses, they struggle to find enough warm bodies to actually crew them.

Even outside of that, the Federation is constantly expanding during the early centuries of its existence. In 2161, the Federation was founded with four members, and by First Contact in 2373, it had 150 members. That's 146 members in about 110 years. On average, once one new member joins, it'll be less than two years before another does. This is before considering the huge amounts of colonisation of planets that the Federation apparently does.

Just due to that, there'd always be a need for more and more Starfleet ships just to protect that amount of space. While in real life, the up-or-out policy is there to benefit the career oriented, Starfleet doesn't need it as much. For people who are dead set on going up the chain, there's always going to be another ship available pretty soon.

So overall, I don't think Starfleet is hurt by not having an up-or-out policy. I think if anything, it has the opposite problem. It's not really attracting enough people to crew all the ships it actually needs to do its job.

All of this is one of the reasons why I feel like a lot of Reddit Star Trek fans are fans of the franchise in the same way World War II wonks are history buffs. Yeah, the World War II wonk can tell you all the major battles, can describe to you in great detail every weapon used in the war, and can give opinions on how the T-34 compared to the Panzer or whatever, but they struggle when it comes to describing the political situation and how it's affected world politics ever since. Similarly, a lot of Reddit Trekkies can give you a broad overview of the canon and can describe to you in great detail what any given class of ship is shown to be capable of, but they often struggle in dealing with the actual thematics of the show.

#star trek #reddit #rant

[lenievi]

I’m browsing through the Star Trek DC comics written in the 80s (before TVH) and it’s interesting how much what I dislike about the characterization (especially McCoy’s but also Kirk’s) is already present there...

like Kirk disobeying orders and being a legend ( = people tend to say this happened after TVH, but these comics were written before it even started filming)

McCoy name calling Spock in every other sentence (I’m exaggerating, but pretty much every time he talks to him, he’s using “hobgoblin”* (also stuff like insufferable alien.......) and like whyyyy, the series did not do that). He also hates the service (and I still want to know where in the show you could tell that McCoy hated the service and wanted to retire. I also kind of dislike that people believe that spored McCoy in This Side of Paradise is like the “real” McCoy - hence why I will never use a mint julep in my fic because I dislike the overuse of “I wanna retire and drink mint juleps” like come on; also that McCoy would want to buy a farm to retire to, it’s like who is this McCoy, I don’t know him. I mostly didn’t like how McCoy was written but that’s not really a surprise since I don’t like how he’s written in most of the novels either)

but yeah, anyway... I wonder how much these 80s comics influenced pretty much everything because very little didn’t fit with what’s common in the current fandom (I assume the books in the 80s would also use similar characterization) and that’s not actually that typical for TVH or later films 

(before watching the films, I read people saying that they were what changed the image of Kirk, but when I watched them I was like... hmmm, they didn’t, so i thought it was just a case of the fandom exaggerating little things - like Kirk got the Enterprise back = he always gets what he wants and he can break rules and get rewarded etc., but maybe... the people had that impression thanks to comics/books - and then some parts of the fandom via fanfics - rather than the films themselves... idk. But like even McCoy in the films - maybe except for his initial appearance in TMP - is never dissatisfied with the service, and sure, in TUC, he’s like ‘retirement’ but that’s because all of them were due at that time... so that part of fanon McCoy was always like where did you get it from? that mccoy just wants to move to a remote place and drink mint juleps.) Also in the issues written after TVH, McCoy is also always unnecessarily rude to Spock in a way that just isn’t true to the series - I kind of feel, though, that that’s the way the people who hate McCoy see him and his relationship with Spock, and if they do, well, I wouldn’t like the relationships either lol Some novels treat their relationship that way too and it’s honestly so frustrating (because then it gets into fanfics too)

[I haven’t seen TAS, just fyi]

I know that some people were influenced by the novelization of the show because back in the days not everyone could record the episodes, so they only have books to reread them, so it’s not like comics wouldn’t leave an impression, especially on novel writers - who then get read by fans and then the fans talk about it and write fanfics etc etc 

there is some good stuff too: because it was written between TSFS and TVH there’s a lot of “what if” and Kirk got to be the captain of the Excelsior and Spock got to be the captain of USS Surak, a science vessel studying the after effects of Genesis, and Saavik served as the science officer on Excelsior. I’ve always wanted spones to go to their own ship after 5ym, so I’m happy that back in the days, official material was like Spock gets his own ship (when Kirk’s still alive, since there is also a book where Spock gets a ship after Kirk’s death)

Also there was one scene where Kirk was like “hit it” when ordering Sulu to take the ship out, and it amused me since it became a Pike thing

also there was a mirror mirror Xover and Spocks met and called each other “Mr. Spock” LOL need to use this one day

and I didn’t dislike all McCoy’s stuff, it’s just that the negatives always outweigh the positives lol 

* if your fic’s using hobgoblin or elf, i’m immediately closing the window no matter who you are

[sshbpodcast]

Shark Week: Imagining Starfleet Ships as Sharks!

By Ames

It’s Shark Week and I’m in a sharky mood, so here’s a special blogpost that has surfaced from the deep. I’m a big fan of the Discovery (no, not that one) Channel’s annual celebration of sharks because they’re really fascinating, respectable creatures who get a pretty bad rap sometimes. And ever since we saw the Excelsior in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, I’ve been comparing that thing to a sleek, zippy shark, so I’ve decided to combine these two passions and determine which Starfleet ship would be which kind of shark. That’s right: I’m going really niche with this one. Enjoy!

This comes just in time for A Star to Steer Her By’s next Blogtivity series taking a hard look at different starships across the franchise, which you can look forward to over the coming weeks. So stay out of the water and check out all the fishy choices I’ve made below and maybe learn some fun shark facts! You’re bound to make a splash!

USS Enterprise (Constitution class)

Oceanic Whitetip Shark These are sharks that boldly go! Jacques Cousteau dubbed Whitetip Sharks as the most dangerous of all sharks because of their aggression when feeding. They’ve got rounded, paddlelike fins that I can see reflected in the rounded, paddlelike nacelles of the OG Enterprise. They love to explore strange new worlds and their persistence would make them admirable captains!

USS Enterprise-A (Constitution class refit)

Blacktip Shark When the Enterprise gets a refit, she’s still the same old ship under that coat of paint and shiny new fins. Er, nacelles. Whatever. Generally considered dangerous because they frequently find themselves close to shore, Blacktip Sharks are the jackals of the sea and are as at home in coastal waters as they are in estuaries and rivers mouths and even the Mutara Nebula!

USS Excelsior (Excelsior class)

Thresher Shark These sharks are the main reason I started this blogpost, because whenever I see the long, graceful nacelles and sleek underbelly of the Excelsior, I do nothing but compare it to the absurdly long tail of the Thresher Shark. Let’s hear it for the biggest show offs of all sharks and Starfleet ships alike.

USS Enterprise-B (Excelsior class refit)

Bigeye Thresher Shark So the Enterprise-B is still a Thresher Shark like the Excelsior, but the derpier kind because of that bulge in the engineering section that was added for Generations. So to honor that addition, here’s some silly, bulgy eyes ruining a perfectly serviceable Thresher Shark.

USS Enterprise-D (Galaxy class)

Whale Shark Just. Big. That’s all you need to know about this gentle giant of the deep. It’s a huge, bloated fish that seems impractical most of the time. Want your incongruous starship to house hundreds of families yet also need to fly into a war? Here’s the Galaxy class. Want a massive shark that somehow feeds on plankton? Here’s the Whale Shark. Go figure.

USS Enterprise-C (Ambassador class)

Bull Shark This fish is thicc AF. The Bull Shark is built for eating like the Ambassador class starship is built for war. They’re responsible for lots of near-shore shark attacks, have the greatest bite force, and make more of a mess of their prey than Great Whites. I picture both the Enterprise-C and the Bull Shark as a flexed bicep: just a show of muscle.

USS Enterprise-E (Sovereign class)

Great White Shark We all love and fear the Great White: the largest and deadliest predatory shark in the world. Behind all that muscle and teeth, they’re still the third fastest shark on the planet. These are truly the decathletes of fishes, just like the Enterprise-E is the biggest kid on the block who single-handedly chomps up a Borg Cube like it’s nothing. Om nom.

USS Defiant (Defiant class)

Cookiecutter Shark Don’t be deceived by this little beasty. The Cookiecutter Shark has the largest teeth in proportion to its body size of any shark, and they sure use them! They fire up their little food processor mouths to rip bites out of critters much larger than themselves like a Tough Little Ship™ flying around Dominion space. They also have their own cloaking device, with the strongest bioluminescence seen in a shark.

USS Voyager (Intrepid class)

Blue Shark  These sleek, attractive sharks with their big eyes, beautiful color, and pointy snouts reminded me of the cute, flappy Voyager, but there’s more! Blue Sharks stay far from shore, following currents in the deep ocean and migrating vast distances over their lives. Hopefully, they stay out of the Delta Quadrant, although something tells me a good captain could migrate them home again.

Enterprise NX-01 (NX class)

Mako Shark Okay, I couldn’t help the pun that Enterprise’s MACO organization already made canon, but these sharks are also pretty kickass. Hang on tight because these are the fastest sharks in the world, careening around at upwards of 50 miles per hour, and can jump the highest at about 30 feet above the water. What better way to honor the fastest starship of its day?

USS Enterprise (Kelvinverse) (Enterprise type)

Sand Tiger Shark These sharks are all bark and – well – I guess some bite too (they are sharks after all), but not as much as you’d think by looking at these generally passive aquarium denizens. Those ragged, snaggly teeth are as much for show as the Kelvin universe’s unnecessarily flashy redesign of the Enterprise. Is it eye-catching? You’d better believe it. Is it necessary? Not really.

USS Discovery (Crossfield class)

Epaulette Shark Like the Discovery, the Epaulette Shark has a nifty locomotion trick up its well adorned sleeves! When the tide goes out, they can crawl around using their fins to effectively walk over corals to get back in the water where they can breathe! It’s the spore drive of the shark world! This is a shark that can go to Black Alert.

La Sirena (Kaplan F17 class)

Wobbegong Shark These beautifully patterned bottom-dwellers have quite magnificent beards, like a certain La Sirena captain I could mention. But don’t let their diminutive size and cuddly appearance fool you! These camouflaged sharks pack a punch and are known to attack “with incredible ferocity if harassed.”

USS Protostar (Protostar type)

Silky Shark This is just a really pretty shark! Look how streamlined and sleek it is. All I’m really here to tell you is that this fish is a supermodel. It’s active, fast, and aggressive and almost too perfect to be true, like a certain really lovely CGI-rendered starship that we’ve been drooling over since Prodigy came out.

USS Cerritos (California class)

Lemon Shark Perhaps the Lower Decks writing team can make a better joke, but the Cerritos is notoriously a lemon. It’s always getting the short end of the stick, it’s not kitted out with all the latest accessories, it’s just a stubbed toe away from being entirely adrift in space. Just a lemon of a ship. Nothing against the Lemon Shark, which is lovely.

SS Botany Bay (DY-100 class)

Greenland Shark Wanna go into cryosleep? The Greenland Shark has some tips that even a genetically augmented crew could use. They are notoriously long-lived sharks (the oldest is estimated at about 400 years young!) who like it really chilly! We know revenge is a dish best served cold, and it’s very cold… in space.

USS Grissom (Oberth class)

Brown Shyshark When I read that these little cutiepies curl up with their tails over their eyes when they’re frightened, I thought of the Oberth class right away. These critters are just adorable little muffins who surf around being a nuisance to fishers yet have next to no defenses. You get ‘em, Shyshark. Or don’t, because it’s scary and you’re just a tiny thing.

USS Reliant (Miranda class)

Scalloped Hammerhead Shark Instantly recognizable, you’ll see the Hammerhead Shark pretty much all over the place because they’re so versatile. Like a good Miranda class ship, they come equipped with the most advanced senses of any shark thanks to their distinct heads. Scalloped Hammerheads have even been seen living in an active volcano, kind of like certain Genesis Devices I am forbidden to share information about.

USS Sutherland (Nebula class)

Great Hammerhead Shark Speaking of excellent sensory capabilities, the Great Hammerhead is known for detecting rays and fish who’ve buried themselves in the sand on the seafloor and pinning them to the surface with their big hammery heads. Reminds me of the Sutherland detecting cloaked Romulan ships using their tachyon signatures.

USS Pasteur (Olympic class)

Nurse Shark A little obvious for a medical starship, but the Nurse Shark is also fitting because it’s typically sluggish and docile. If you’re going to see any big sharks in captivity in an aquarium, it’s probably going to be some Nurse Sharks looking like they probably have Dr. Crusher’s chill bedside manner. Paging Dr. Shark.

USS Rio Grande (Danube class)

Ganges Shark This critically endangered shark can only be found in rivers in India, making it a true freshwater shark unlike other sharks that need to retreat to salty waters. What better shark for the runabouts, which are all named after Earth rivers and can travel into places that larger ships can’t go?

Phoenix

Frilled Shark These eel-lookin’ sharks are absolutely ancient. Evolutionarily, they remain mostly unchanged since the Jurassic Period and their morphology is primitive at best but they do the trick. Just like Zephram Cochrane and the Phoenix did. Whether in the early seas or past the warp barrier, don’t fix what’s not broken.

USS Equinox (Nova class)

Horn Shark The Horn Shark is just too cute for words! Look how little and floppy and happy it is, with its little bell-shaped head and funny sucker mouth. It’s like the teeny tiny Nova class starship in that it’s just so wee with such a distinct notchy face that’s simply endearing to look at.

USS Prometheus (Prometheus class)

Spinner Shark While the Prometheus can come apart into sections as its trick, Spinner Sharks have moves of their own! They’re known for leaping clear out of the water while spinning around through schools of fish to nab some prey. Talk about an impressive saucer separation!

USS Relativity (Wells class)

Zebra Shark A very mysterious shark, adult Zebra Sharks don’t actually have stripes but lots of flashy polka dots all over! Their name comes from the zebra-like stripes they have as baby sharks (doot doot…) that fade in time. Speaking of flashily designed things with a harness on time, check out the pearlescent Relativity while you’re in the right century!

USS Kelvin (Kelvin type)

Blacktip Reef Shark I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the Blacktip Reef Shark somewhere in this list because it’s one of my favorite sharks! They’re very skittish but inquisitive, like a certain curious starship that just had to go investigate a black[tip] hole. The sharks also specifically prefer very shallow waters so you’ll see their distinct dorsal fins zipping over the surface, which struck me as akin to that funny top nacelle of the Kelvin.

USS Enterprise-J (Universe class)

Angel Shark Flat. Just a weird pancake fish for a weird pancake ship. Who designed this thing? Angel Sharks are in a class all by themselves and they should stay there where they can pretend to be rays but not actually be rays. Like the Enterprise-J can pretend to be a starship while actually being a pizza cutter.

USS Vengeance (Dreadnought class)

Megalodon If you thought the Enterprise-D was unnecessarily huge, get a load of this thing. For just the sheer size and terror of it all, this shark is the perfect embodiment of an evil ship born straight out of hell. And sure, we can only guess based on teeth fossils that Megalodon was probably an absolutely immense 60 feet long, but have you seen these things? Yikes!

USS Shenzhou (Walker class)

Leopard Shark Leopard Sharks are pretty chill sharks with very striking patterns that make them quickly recognizable, much like the patterning on the saucer of the Shenzhou. Sure, neither of them get to do very much, but they’re really nice to look at!

USS Nightingale (Wallenberg class)

Sawshark A toolbox of a fish, the Sawshark is the carpenter of the seas and actually uses its buzzsaw head for cutting and slicing. We see a similar shape in the little tug boats in season 1 of Picard that are used to transport Romulan refugees. Just a very utilitarian little ship like a multitool in space!

USS Zheng He (Inquiry class)

Salmon Shark Riker calls the Inquiry class “the toughest, fastest, most powerful ship Starfleet ever put into service” and we spend most of Picard waiting for him to put his money where his mouth is. Definitely don’t put anything where the Salmon Shark’s mouth is. It’s the second fastest shark after the Mako and it hunts in packs like wolves. Or like the fleet we see in “Et in Arcadia Ego.” Definitely a top-of-the-line ship, I mean fish. (I mean ship.)

USS Titan (Luna class)

Tiger Shark Luna class is one of the finest in the fleet and one of the most popular postings we see in Lower Decks. Clearly a Tiger Shark, one of the most popular sharks. This very epitomic shark has the widest range of prey, is second only to Great White in fatal attacks to humans, and “may nonchalantly take a bite while remaining cool and casual.” Sounds pretty Riker-like to me!

USS Curry (Curry class)

Goblin Shark  We don’t know much about the deep sea–dwelling Goblin Shark except that it is sluggish, flabby, and strange-looking. That deep in the ocean, you don’t need looks because no one can see you anyway, so this ugly fish with its extendo-face just looks like the off-balance underbite of the Curry. No one here’s winning a beauty contest, that’s for sure.

USS Thunderchild (Akira class)

Megamouth Shark We never get really good looks at the Akira class ship, and I’m not missing it. The huge, downsloping saucer section just looks like the massive maw of the Megamouth Shark, a filter feeder that survives by shoving its huge face into pockets of plankton like a derpy ship barreling mouth-first around through space.

USS Firebrand (Freedom class)

Basking Shark I needed to include the most ridiculous starship in the fleet and assign it the most ridiculous, bulbous-headed, top-heavy, filter-feeding shark on the planet. The Freedom class is just too ludicrous for words, scooting around on just one nacelle with an enormous saucer, so here’s an enormous, gaping mouth to go with it. Tada!

—

Keep following along here for more starship discussion in the coming weeks as we plunge into season four of Voyager on the podcast! You can catch up on those episodes over on SoundCloud or wherever you're picking up podcasts through sensory vibrations. A group of sharks is called a shiver, and you can join our shiver over on Facebook and Twitter. Pretty soon, we’re gonna need a bigger boat, er, starship!

—

[Learn more about the sharks at https://www.sharks.org/species, where I pulled all the above illustrations by Marc Dando (except the Thresher Shark which is from Fisheries.NOAA.GOV, and the Ganges Shark, Megalodon, and most other shark images which are all from Wikimedia Commons. Ship images are mostly from Ex Astris Scientia.]

#shark week #sharks #star trek #star trek podcast #podcast #starfleet ships #the original series #the next generation #deep space nine #voyager #enterprise #kelvin movies #discovery #picard #lower decks #prodigy #great white shark #jaws

[trekwithigor]

I Loved Lego as a Child

I Loved Lego as a Child growing up. I think the first time that I received a Lego set as a gift was when I was 5 years old, and my grandfather came back from a business trip in Poland.

BTW I probably did not mention that I was born in Ukraine

СЛАВА УКРАЇНІ

So my grandfather was able to travel to Poland, or maybe he went to Germany and he stopped in Poland. Doesn't matter because I was able to get my first Lego at that time. The next time I got to buy lego was when I was moving to Canada, and we stopped in Amsterdam. At the airport duty free, my mom bought me a set of Lego as well. When my dad joined us in Canada, he also brought me a Lego Set when he was flying through Amsterdam.

I remember by the time that I was 12, I had a tub of Lego and I could make as many designs as I wanted. I remember sitting in my room alot and playing with the Lego cause I didn't have that many friends. I wasn't social until High School, and I really watched alot of Star Trek. I would imagine trying to build some of the ships and the sets that I saw on the show. I am greatful that in my 30's, I can finally make those dreams come true.

The fact that I have already built the NX-01 is awesome. The fact that I have also been gifted the Constitution Class Cruiser is also awesome! That was hands down the best B-Day gift from my SO ever! And now that the parts for the Constitution Class Refit are in the mail, I can officially say that my shipyard is expanding.

I was also able to reduce the cost of the parts for the Excelsior Class by modifying some of the colours on the parts, and I think all parts will come to about $80 vs $140 as originally thought.

#СЛАВА УКРАЇНІ #Trek With Igor #LGBTQ Star Trek #Modelling #hobby #gay star trek #lgtbq star trek #lego design #lego star trek #star trek #lego #star trek lego #lego model

[themovieblogonline]

X-Men '97 Showrunner Beau DeMayo Fired

Attention, fellow mutants and curious onlookers! We’ve got some intriguing news hotter than a Phoenix Force tantrum. Brace yourselves, because the mastermind behind Disney+'s animated series “X-Men '97,” Beau DeMayo, has been let go. Yes, you heard it right: DeMayo’s exit is more mysterious than Mystique’s true form. But why? Was it a mutant feud? A cosmic alignment? Or did he accidentally spill coffee on Professor X’s Cerebro? Let’s dive into this drama like Nightcrawler into a teleportation frenzy. He’d just wrapped up Seasons 1 and 2 of “X-Men '97,” high-fiving Cyclops and sharing secret mutant handshakes. But then *poof!* he vanished like a stealthy Shadowcat. No Hollywood premiere for him. His Instagram? Deleted. It’s like he stepped into a time portal (or maybe just took a vacation to the Savage Land). Why the sudden exit? Did he accidentally turn Beast’s fur pink during a script meeting? Or maybe he tried to replace Wolverine’s claws with baguette slices (because every mutant needs a snack). The truth is shrouded in more mystery than Jean Grey’s Phoenix saga. Some say he challenged Gambit to a card-throwing contest. Others claim he accidentally summoned Mojo from another dimension. Either way, it’s a mutant-sized enigma. Beyond “X-Men '97,” DeMayo’s been weaving spells across the Marvel universe. Remember “Moon Knight”? Yep, that’s his handiwork, starring Oscar Isaac as the moon’s brooding BFF. And hold onto your vibranium shields: DeMayo’s scripting “Blade,” with Mahershala Ali as the vampire-slaying daywalker. But wait, there’s more! He’s dipped his quill into “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” Netflix’s “The Witcher” (Henry Cavill in leather armor: hubba hubba), and even animated “League of Legends” shorts. The guy’s busier than Deadpool at a chimichanga buffet. Now, let’s talk about “X-Men '97.” The OG mutants are back, folks! Professor Charles Xavier is allegedly pushing up daisies. But guess who’s got his last will and testament? Magneto, the master of metal manipulation. What’s in there? A recipe for mutant enchiladas? A playlist titled “Telepathic Grooves”? Nah, it’s probably just a note: “Dear Magneto, water my bonsai tree and keep your helmet out of my fridge.” Who’s suiting up for this nostalgia trip? Wolverine’s sharpening his claws, Cyclops is recalibrating his optic blasts, and Jean Grey’s practicing her telekinesis (no broken vases this time). Storm’s checking the weather forecast (spoiler: thunderstorms), and Jubilee’s perfecting her fireworks show. Beast is reading Shakespeare to the Danger Room, Gambit’s dealing cards like a mutant croupier, and Morph…well, Morph’s just being Morph. Bishop’s flexing his biceps, and Professor X? He’s either sipping cosmic tea or playing chess with Death herself. So, whether DeMayo’s exit was a cosmic hiccup or a mutant conspiracy, “X-Men '97” promises more drama than Magneto’s helmet collection. Tune in, grab your mutant snacks, and remember: When life gives you adamantium, make metaphorical pancakes. And when life fires your showrunner, just blame it on Mojo. He’s used to taking the fall. Stay mutant, stay marvelous, and may your mutant powers never glitch during a crucial battle. Excelsior!

[tsaomengde]

Star Trek: Infinite review

I love Stellaris, and I love Star Trek. I do not love mods, by and large, because I like playing the game the developers envisioned, with a minimum of bugs. So when I heard there was a Star Trek grand strategy game based on the bones of Stellaris coming out, I was excited.

Here's the thing, though: this doesn't feel like Star Trek. In Stellaris, it makes sense to have the entire game take place over a 300-year span of time. In Star Trek? You could do that if you were going from the ENT era in the 22nd century all the way up through current-day Trek TV like Picard, which goes into the 25th. That would have been something worthwhile.

But the entire game is set in the TNG era, the best-known and most-popular era. And as a result, a lot of the Stuff That Happens is stuffed into the first 70 years. The Borg? They show up and you deal with them before you even have battleships. They're far from an existential threat, too. There is a system full of Nausicaan pirates with twenty times the fleet power the Borg ever possess. The Romulan sun exploding, something that happens toward the very end of the 24th century? For some reason it gets moved up so you have to deal with it at the same time as the Borg.

Things Just Happen because they happened in canon, whether it makes sense for your game or not. The Federation mission tree wants me to free Bajor from the Cardassians, but they integrated Bajor decades ago. And I can't declare an offensive war, so, well, fuck me I guess.

The adherence to the Stellaris formula of "science ships, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battleships, dreadnoughts" means that you have a bunch of Oberth-class ships running around doing all your exploring, and then everything else sits at home doing nothing until there's a war. The Enterprise is an exception, it can absolutely go and investigate anomalies and explore the galaxy, but you also can't stick it in a fleet, and you can't customize it despite customization being a big part of the shipbuilding in Stellaris games...

This is nitpicky, but speaking of shipbuilding, for the Federation, your frigate is the Miranda (okay), your destroyer is the Intrepid (what? it's a long-range science ship!), your cruiser is the Excelsior (a design canonically almost a hundred years old at this point in TNG, and yet you research it *after the Intrepid*), your battleship the Galaxy, and your dreadnought the Sovereign. If you complete the Enterprise's mission tree you also get the Defiant, which is *kind* of like a heavy destroyer-frigate-thing in this game (but the Defiant has never been properly represented in basically any Trek game ever). There's no hide nor hair of the much-beloved Akira class, which would make a much better cruiser given the setting.

Your ships also just don't feel like Star Trek ships. The correct answer to any problem is to throw as many ships as you can at it. In Stellaris, that means fleets of dozens of battleships and dreadnoughts. In some of the newer Trek media, and in certain war scenes in DS9, you see fleets of this size, but by and large, Trek is at its most interesting when the number of ships is lower, comprehensible. When the ships feel *important.* These don't.

The weaponry you're obliged to research also doesn't feel like the iconic Star Trek weaponry. It doesn't make the right noises. This is *very* nitpicky but Trekkies are a nitpicky breed. If you sell me a Star Trek game, I want it to be Star Trek. The sound design is iconic, and a vital part of the experience.

Speaking of iconic, the characters from TNG are voiceless portraits. No gorgeous Pat Stew baritones to be found heyah. Oh, and they die of old age. Including Data! That might be a bug, but still. If you are anything like me, you do not buy a Star Trek game set in the TNG era to watch Picard die of old age. Yes, mods exist. See my very first paragraph about not wanting to use them.

I am probably going to boot up Sins of a Solar Empire with the Star Trek: Armada 3 total conversion mod rather than play this again. There could be DLC. There could be bug-fixes. At its core, though, I don't think this game *works.* You can't stretch the TNG era, an era of about 40-60 years (the Khitomer Massacre, the starting point for this game, is 2346, the Big D launches in 2362 or so, and the end of PIcard season 3 is in 2402), into a game of 300 years. It just doesn't feel right. It doesn't work.

At least it was only $30. I used two GameStop $5 monthly discounts on steam gift cards to get the Cerritos for essentialy free.

#star trek #star trek infinite #review #such promise #alas

[schrodingers-egg]

!Special Interest Infodump Post!

Idk if I’m gonna do this much but I’m thinking of going through the models I have and talking a bit about their design and stuff, and today I’ll be taking you through the hero ship of Enterprise, the… uh… Enterprise…

Okay so this isn’t really the Enterprise, it’s the Enterprise as it appeared in the Mirror Universe two-parter so it has some extra livery to make it distinct from its prime universe counterpart. The design of the ship is unchanged outside of that and I don’t have the prime universe model so I’ll be using this model to talk about both.

With Enterprise (the show, which I’ll be calling ENT from now on) being a prequel, there was a lot of pre-existing design to draw from when designing the ship, and it was heavily influenced by the design of the Akira-class, which I believe was first seen in Star Trek: First Contact in the battle of Sector 001.

The top-down view especially shows the common traits: the usual Starfleet saucer, with twin booms starting ahead of the bridge area and extending back to connect the hull to the nacelle pylons, with a pod-like element in the middle of the pylons. There’s also the cutout in the forend of the saucer (though the Akira doesn’t have the main deflector there) and a small “step” just behind the name and registry number, the same location of (and different colour around) the saucer’s impulse engines, and the use of impulse engines in the end of the twin booms.

The Enterprise opted to go for a more classic layout with the warp nacelles raised above the saucer, which fits better with the older designs (TOS Enterprise, Excelsior) and allowed for a planned refit later in the show which would add the secondary hull that had been common for the majority of Star Trek and remove the pod while retaining the booms.

The nacelles would also have been redesigned to more closely resemble the style of the pilot episode Enterprise, with spines protruding from the centre of the bussard collectors, which is a small touch I really appreciate. I think this would also be the first “Federation” ship to have a secondary deflector dish as well?

Sadly the show was cancelled before the refit came to the screen, I think the cancellation happened partway through production of season 4, which would explain why the ending felt so rushed and underwhelming.

I do quite like the design of the NX-01 Enterprise, I think it works really well as a precursor to the NCC-1701 Enterprise though I am a bit disappointed that it incorporates elements of the (almost entirely unrelated) Akira-class so heavily, and seems to lean more towards TNG era aesthetics than what we expect from TOS/TMP era. The circular windows resembling the portholes of our naval vessels is a nice touch and goes well with the interior design feeling more like a modern-day military ship/submarine (though submarines don’t have windows).

However, the Enterprise design does raise an interesting point. It’s a pre-Federation ship, made by United Earth under supervision from the Vulcans, and yet later Federation designs which you’d think would have input from dozens of species still retain these “human” design elements. We know that Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite designs are vastly different (as seen in ENT) yet their design elements seem to be completely erased once the Federation is established in favour of human design language. It raises questions about the prevalence, even domination, of humans and human preferences in Starfleet, but that’s getting too far off-track.

That’s the post ig, feel free to ask questions and stuff, and lmk if you want to see more of this kind of thing

#Star Trek #ENT #Enterprise #NX-01

[ichayalovesyou]

The Undiscovered Country (Live Reaction)

CAPTAIN SULU OF THE EXCELSIOR CAPTAIN SULU OF THE EXCELSIOR CAPTAIN SULU OF THE EXCELSIOR EVERYONE STFU HE DESERVED HIS OWM GODDAMN SHOWWWWW!!!! “Should we report this?” “Are you kidding??” I love him so muchhh

Oh this one is gonna be about racism isn’t it? Yup. I know people judge Kirk for his prejudice against the Klingons in this movie, and I wanna clarify that it’s still not okay, but I just... look back on all of his experiences with Klingons, and he became less and less chill with them as they kept doing stuff to him and his crew, torturing Spock, Sherman’s planet, torturing Chekov, the ugly decisions in A Private Little War then on top of that they killed a son he never got the chance to connect with because his ex never allowed him custody. They almost cost him the chance to bring Spock back on top of that too. I’m not saying it’s not right, and whether it’s justified is subjective, but I also know he learns his lesson in this film. It makes me think of Katara’s arc in S3 of ATLA, how much she hated (understandably) Zuko and the Fire Nation, how she almost killed the man who killed her mother, but then didn’t. If we can love her still with that character growth, I see no reason to suddenly hate Jim.

“Logic is the beginning of wisdom Valeris” god I love Spock, he’s grown so much ☺️ also maaaaan everyone is old now lol, wait?! Where’s Bones?! Oh there he is! Oh wow I can smell the traitor on Valeris she is acting extremely shady! Oh hey it’s General Chang!! I’ve heard of this guy!! Apoliticality hall of fame up in here huh ST? Damn. Klingons love them some Shakespeare lol. Nice Scotty! Ohhhh Chang that was a loaded question, oof thanks for saving your grumpy husband. Ooooh man I love dinner scenes like these, the tension, the delicate conversation, the unspoken words ugh hell yeah. Oof!

Chancellor made a DAMN good point there! Calling Kirk out on his shit before they left! Yessssssss!! Lol everyone is hung FUCK WHAT JUST HAPPENED??? OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK!!! That Zero G effect is cool as fuck! Oh no oh no oh no oh no the war is being staged oh god oh no oh shit oh shit ohhhhhh no!! Ohhhhhhhhhh shittttt this is B A D. Ok so Klingon blood is pink? Huh.

Even with Jim’s prejudice he still values this peace than he does his feelings and that is a Captain Kirk ass thing to do. Bones being fucking AWESOME! Ohhhh nooooo, I liked Gorkon 😔 “Don’t let it end this way Captain.” Wowwww that was cool ass last words. “I sympathize Mr. Scott” growth 🌿 oh hey Sarek is back! Federation has an alien president now? Neat! Also I freaking LOVE Gorkon’s daughter, I am also growing progressively more confused by their kinda over exaggerated behavior in future TV shows? (I imagine they probably had a fanatical ideological takeover, kinda like the Vulcans and Surak but... violent.)

The defense attorney sounds like Michael Dorn??? I know it’s not him but still? OH MY GOD IT IS???? Cool! His name is also Worf? Weird. Awww Bones he’s GOTTA stop making me cry like this I can’t even do this oh man he’s breaking my hearrrrrt. Oh wow they really just listing everything “bad” Jim has ever done huh? Damn. CAPTAIN SULU IS BACK oh and he’s gone again damn. Ooooof penal colony punishment yiiiiikes, seems the Klingons have as outdated a prison system as we do now 😬 oh so Spock is distantly related to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Neat. Oh Spock don’t trust Valeris, I know you don’t know better yet but still 😬😬😬

Ooof this whole person thing is super interesting?? Who is this WOMAN whose informing them McCoy & Jim, I love her! I love this political intrigue murder mystery stuff!! Those Wargs look AMAZING wow, loving seeing TOS crew with a budget love it! “Not everyone keeps their genitals in the same place Captain.” OH MY GOD 😂😂😂 oh it’s McKirk hours boys, and awww even in a Klingon prison Jim’s prejudice is decaying. McCoy is DUDE WHAT IS WITH YOU?? And I agree, even as an old man Jim is a lil’ bit it a slut. WAIT CHRISTIAN SLATER???? That was a weird cameo. Even after he made out with that lady he was like “damn, what is wrong with me??” Lol

WAIT IS MATIRA A CHANGELING?? That transformation was VERY gooey?? I mean I know there are a bunch of shapeshifter races but still???? Hey watch McCoy is gonna give out from the cold first cuz he’s a southern damsel just you wait. Aaaaaand it took 5 minutes! 😂 he’s immune to dinosaurs but vulnerable to cold. Bullshit Uhura doesn’t know Klingon??? What was that?!?! Oh she’s not a Changeling. TWO KIRKS AGAIN???? How many times is this now, four? 😂😂

Now they’re close enough to kiss lmfao KISS DAMNIT! Aw. Uh oh. I have never, NEVER seen Spock this posed off ohhhh my god. OH MY GOD HE JUST SMACKED THAT SHIT OUT OF HER HAND. Ooof I need to sit down (I say sitting down) way to frickin kick Jim right in his soul with his own words damn Valeris... wow this is so GOOD, fuck. Oh man, the amount of personal strength, feelings of hatred and betrayal, and circumstance it takes for Spock to FORCIBLY meld with someone when we all know how he feels about consent 😨 this is like, the only ONLY situation I can imagine him, in character, EVER doing this to anyone. Wow... wow. Oh my god. OH MY GOD. Ohhhhhh wow, that’s gonna haunt Spock for the rest of his life... fuck.

SULU IS HERE TO SAVE THE DAYYYYYYY WE LOVE HIM!!! Awwww look at these too poor idiots regretting their moral transgressions :( they’re so married. Over here examining prejudices and stuff, I need to study this screenplay oh my goddddd. This is so GOOD oh my god. Kittomer Accord hours!! Here we go! Oh MAN Chang is a cool ass villain!! Here we gooooooooo!!! EXCELSIOR IS HERE TO HELP!! Aw Spones out here flirting before they go save peace in their time, love that! This battle tastes like a beautiful marriage between Balance of Terror and Conscience of A King 😍 YEAH SCOTTY!!! And thus, Kirk completes his character growth. Lol and then everyone claaaaaaped.

Man, Sulu and the Excelsior really deserved their own his Star Trek show, something I hope they will someday remedy! Awwww that little love letter to TNG and all future Treks at the end heck yeh ☺️

#star trek #star trek vi: the undiscovered country #the undiscovered country #Star Trek tos #star trek tos movies #tos liveblog #liveblogging

[the-goofball]

(I usually don’t post prank stuff. But that’s kinda cute)

Source

We’ve done the studies. We’ve checked the math. And we at Cryptic Studios have finally discovered what every Star Trek fan really wants. What else? You want to date your starships. Who wouldn’t? Look at the ample nacelles on that Excelsior class.* That’s why we’re announcing a brand new expansion to Star Trek Online this morning.** Star Trek Online: Date Your Starship will bring never before seen gameplay8** to you, the very deserving Star Trek fans. In what we’re calling a “dating simulation,”**** you’ll be able to choose one of five unique paths, with more to come!***** Your favorite starships******, like you’ve never seen them before. Each ship will use a combination of augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and holographic technology to finally project their personality into the world, and confess their true feelings for you. Five paths, endless******* possibilities for stories, where you are the Captain. Read on to learn more about each of these fabulous story paths!

MAIN STORY

At Starbase 40, secret experiments have been going on for three decades under the watchful eye of Fleet Admiral Barclay********. These controversial, but necessary experiments allow for a new type of interface between a starship and their Captain, unlocking the starship’s true personality. As one of the galaxy’s premiere commanders, you’ve been selected to pilot this new program, with one of five starships already outfitted with the technology. In order to best accustom these newborn AI to the world, it’s been decided that they’ll all be programmed to believe they are attending “Fleet School,” with you as their sole human classmate. Captain, we’ll need you to interact with these ships and teach them how to be sentient beings, and of course, select the ship that you will command out into the Final Frontier.

Living starships with AI programmed to be hormonal teenagers. What could go wrong?

AKIRA

Akira is known for her curiosity and her commitment to science. She’s a little too excited to explore the Galaxy, chafing at being stuck in the Fleet School. There’s just so many wonders out there to discover! If only she had a true partner who could show her all of the sights among the stars.

VASTAM

Immediately upon being activated, Vastam ran for Class President. When informed that there was no student government, she declared herself the President in a landslide victory, and immediately set about enforcing the rules. She has no time for troublemakers and rebels, but she may have time for you. Can you get her to let her hair down, or will you join her in ruling the classroom with an iron fist?

BORTASQU’

In his few short weeks of life, Bortasqu’ has already won gold medals in track and field, basketball, and American football. We don’t actually know how, he’s literally a 5,000 ton starship. His other interests include chest bumping, sneaking soda into class, butting heads with Vastam, and you. Choose Bortasqu’ if you just want to have a lot of fun, and do way too much running.

VANGUARD CARRIER

The shy wallflower, Vanguard Carrier, or “V.C.,” as Bortasqu’ dubbed him, is a Vorta with no Founder. He is absolutely terrified, and hides behind his faith in the Founders to protect him at all times. What appears to be a demeaning sneer may just hide a heart of gold, but it will take you some digging to get there.

KHITOMER

The youngest AI, and newest to awaken, Khitomer is all about friendship. They believe that everyone in the fleet can get along, if they just try. You’ll often find them breaking up the arguments between Vastam and Bortasqu’, helping Akira with a science experiment, or listening to V.C. go on about the Founders. But with all of the time they spend helping others, they never spend any time on themselves. Can you teach them to love themselves, in a world of conflict?

These five ships form the main storyline of Star Trek Online: Date Your Starship. If you're excited to try this new game, make sure to share your thoughts and fan art with the hashtag #DateYourStarship! We can’t wait for you to enroll in Fleet School and meet them all for yourself, Captains. It’s going to be an adventure you’ll never forget. Coming later in 2021! *********

*Gross.

**No we’re not.

***There’s literally thousands of these games.

****You didn’t come up with that!

*****There are no more to come.

******You mean the starships you picked arbitrarily.

*******Five. Just five.

********WHAT

*********It REALLY isn’t.

#star trek #star trek online #date your starship #april fools #long post

[spockvarietyhour]

Star Trek II Novelization

Novelizations are a tricky thing, especially if you're working from an earlier version of the script. There's minute changes (Regulus vs Regula, Alpha Ceti V vs Ceti Alpha V for example), expanded scenes (a *lot* more Peter Preston, Joachim has serious reservations about Khan), things that existed in the novels only later conceded as Canon (Sulu was already a Captain transferring to Excelsior at the end of the month (yes, the ship was already named) Saavik's half-Romulan heritage (which might as well be canon by this point), and things that only exist here (Sulu again, nearly killed on the bridge when Reliant attacks in the nebula, resuscitated by David Marcus and out of the action for the remainder of the scene, and Spock not knowing Jim's Birthday until *now*, Peter's crush on Saavik and her tutoring him). Then there's also tweaks, I don't know how much of it is author's liberty and how much is script vs screen, but after 37 years of knowing this movie the words don't flow nearly as well here. The words are sometimes substituted or flipped around. It detracts a bit from the overall product. Kirk is also a lot closer to despair and closer to the breaking point than the movie shows us, theatrically so. Despite all this though, it remains a fun read and there's a bit little more to discover.

Gonna admit I did remember Kirk avoiding the urge to scream Dive! Dive! Dive!. that's the ONLY thing I remembered for sure from the last time (aside from again Peter Preston and Saavik expanded backstory)

Here's some (a lot of) notes and highlights:

“She was aesthetically elegant in the spare, understated, esoterically powerful manner of a Japanese brush-painting” describing Saavik. The words “exotic beauty” are used later.

“Spock reached out as Kirk started to go in. He stopped before his hand touched Jim Kirk's shoulder, but the gesture was enough. Kirk glanced back. “Something oppresses you,” Spock said. Kirk felt moved by Spock's concern. “Something....” he said. He waned to talk to Spock, to someone. But he did not know how to begin.”

Chekov really believes his inwented in Russia schtick.

Jim Kirk has erotic alien drawings on his wall and the one he's looking at in particular also used to hang on his cabin wall on the Enterprise. He's also very fond of England's Victorian era, apparently, hence Dickens.

Inside Botany Bay they meet one of the Khan-babies.

One of the Khan-centric novels from the 2000s-2010s had established that Chekov knew about the system they were in but, bc of the exacting demands of the Genesis project he didn't see the need to bring Terrel into the secret bc the system would likely be rejected anyway. Only if they had settled on Ceti Alpha VI would Chekov then have debriefed Terrel about Khan. Here tho, he just...plum forgot. Kirk didn't want any official records so Chekov just didn't remember, but had been uneasy since they'd entered the system.

Chekov had a crush on Marla McGiver.

Sulu was already a Captain in rank for this final training cruise, and was waiting on Excelsior.

“The new Galaxy-class ships were smaller than the Enterprise, but much faster. They were most efficient around warp twelve. Only three as yet existed: Andromeda, M-31, and Magellanic Clouds. Their purpose was very-long-range exploration...”

Peter Preston is fucking fourteen years old, we're sending actual kids into space (Janice Rand was 15 in TOS)

Saavik's Romulan heritage, one of those open secrets from the movies. Her raw Romulan emotions are a lot closer to the surface. She's also decidedly not a vegetarian (she wants a steak tartare but out of consideration for Spock who’s  eating with her she chooses an egg dish as a compromise)

Both this novel and the Khan one confirm that Reliant's engineering crew was kept on board, controlled by eels.

How big is computer memory anyway? We're talking games at 50 megs that are impressive and can be scanned into new computers from paper printouts......

The scenes where Jim seeks out Spock's in his cabin to take command of the Enterprise to take it to Regulus/Regula and then the bridge scene where he informs the cadet crew of the change of orders are flipped. He first changes the Enterprise's course and then seeks out Spock....

There's a whole subplot of Saavik tutoring Peter, who has a big ole crush on Saavik, Scotty having none of that, and her talking to Spock about it during lunch in the cafeteria and nearly causes a scene.

We get to know every one of the Regulus/Regula scientists that are with Carol.

Joachim is a lot more uncertain about their course of action and doesn’t want anyone to die, but he’s fine using the eels.

After watching the Genesis proposal we don't immediately run into Reliant, but go into Dinner with Kirk, Spock and McCoy where they debate the subject some more.

Spock gives a task to Saavik as an excuse for her to go to Sickbay to see Peter before he dies. She arrives too late and has a breakdown in private.

McCoy had previously served with Clark Terrell, Reliant's Captain. He known him rather well, for years.

Kirk tries to shoot the Genesis torpedo as it's being beamed out.

Kirk also didn't know David was his son, Carol vowed she'd never tell him, but blurted it to both so they'd stop fighting. The last time they'd met she'd also been surprised he didn't ask who's child he was given his age.

Saavik tells David almost right off the bat about her background

Janice Rand is still aboard as transporter chief (whereas in TSFS she's in spacedock giving a disapproving look as the wounded Enterprise returns)

Jim and Carol have Genesis-cave flowers on them when they return, he a flower over his ear, she has a floral wreath

Enterprise was using Regula I's scanners to find out Reliant's position and keep them out of sight of her.

After the Enterprise is hit by Reliant inside the nebula, Sulu's panel overloads, he's electrocuted and loses consciousness. Saavik take over while David starts mouth to mouth and chest compressions, until the medics arrive and stab Sulu with an epi pen. Sulu is off the bridge for the rest of the action. David helps him down to sickbay

As Joachim's dying he clearly tells Khan he wants no revenge, but Khan isn't listening and repeats that he will avenge him.

David helps a barely functioning Chekov up to the bridge.

After his ship his crippled and his body ruined, Khan crawls down from the bridge to the storage bay to activate the Genesis torpedo manually, then crawls back to the bridge...

After the nerve pinch but before the meld, Spock tells an unconscious McCoy “You have been a worthy opponent and friend.”

Saavik had noticed Spock's departure from the bridge, she knew, logically, what the only course of action he could take and almost went after him, but the control he had taught her her kept her in place. She also interrupts Kirk and Spock's last scene to tell Spock (via bridge intercom) about Genesis:

“Saavik's voice broke in over the intercom. “Captain, the Genesis world is forming. Mr. Spock, it's so beautiful–“ Infuriated, Kirk slammed the channel closed, cutting off Saavik's voice. But Spock nodded, his eyes closed, and perhaps, just a little, he smiled.”

Saavik sits in a vigil over the bodies of Peter and Spock.

Spock's will stated that he was not to be taken to Vulcan.

Saavik could feel Spock's consciousness retained its integrity and grew stronger but she had no knowledge anything surrounding katras (not explicitly mentioned but that she was ignorant of those ways).

Kirk has been a lot closer to//has reached the breaking point several times in this book than he ever does in the movie

#Star Trek #Star Trek II #TWOK #The Wrath of Khan #Vonda N. McIntyre #Star Trek Novels #Currently Reading #Re-read #Star Trek Reading List

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: The Original Series Needs A Real Origin Story

https://ift.tt/32aQW2W

When Star Trek: Strange New Worlds eventually debuts on CBS All Access and gives us the further adventures of Captain Pike, Spock, and Number One aboard the USS Enterprise NCC-1701, another gap in the Star Trek timeline will be fully explored. And yet, this gap isn’t the weirdest missing piece of Trek history. Other than one episode of The Original Series, we have almost zero on-screen canonical record of adventures that may have occurred for some — or all — of the year 2265, the first year of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy’s five year mission on the Enterprise. In essence, Star Trek: Year One, does not exist. But, could it happen now?

Back when The Original Series first aired, the notion of exactly when it was set was kept somewhat vague. In fact, according to The Making of Star Trek (1968), in Roddenberry’s earliest pitches to networks, he specifically noted that the setting could have been in the 1990s or 22nd century. His original pitch read: “The time could be 1995 or even 2995 — close enough to our times for our continuing cast to be people like us, but far enough in the future for galaxy travel to be fully established.”

While it’s true that Roddenberry eventually settled on the 23rd Century as being the “real” setting for the series, some episodes (notably “Space Seed”) imply the series is only set two hundred years in the future, meaning the late 22nd century or the early 23rd (Khan says he has been sleeping for “two centuries” since the late 1990s). 

In 1980, a book called Star Trek: Spaceflight Chronology — published in connection with the first Star Trek roleplaying game — claimed the future history of Trek happened in the very early 23rd century, meaning the five-year-mission of the Enterprise, at that point, was from 2207 to 2212. But, two years later, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan changed all that when the words “In the 23rd century…” filled the screen, and it was later established that The Wrath of Khan took place in 2285 (the Romulan Ale Bones brings Kirk was vintage 2283). From that point on, the era of The Original Series began in the 2260s (TOS) and spanned to the 2290s (The Undiscovered Country).

So, why is the first year of TOS missing? Well, the actual start date of Kirk’s five-year mission has changed twice. First, the Spaceflight Chronology established it as 2207, but then in 1993, with the publication of The Star Trek Chronology re-established it as 2264. Authors Denise Okuda and Michael Okuda (who worked as designers on Trek throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s) picked 2264 because the idea was that The Next Generation began in 2364, exactly 100 years later, and that 2264 would be roughly exactly 300 years from the point Star Trek first began filming in 1964. 

However, dialogue in the Voyager episode “Q2” mentioned Kirk’s five-year mission ended in 2270, which means it (retroactively) began in 2265, not 2264. So, 2265 is when the “official” canon settled on the actual start of TOS (yes, Voyager saved TOS chronology!). 

This is where things get interesting. 

In terms of this official canon — and what Roddenberry intended — the only episode that happens in 2265 (or 2264 in old canon) is “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” In case you’ve forgotten, this episode was the second pilot of Star Trek (after “The Cage”) and the one where Spock wears a gold command uniform, Sulu is wearing blue, and everybody has uniforms that look more like husky sweaters than the slick ‘60s chic of the rest of the show. In The Making of Star Trek, Roddenberry makes it clear that the rest of the series is meant to occur well after this pilot episode, which explains why the crewmembers are all fairly familiar with each other in literally all the other episodes. 

When you watch “Where No Man Has Gone Before” – again, the only canonical story set in 2265 — it’s very clear the Enterprise we see here is very different from the Enterprise we see in the rest of the series. Not only are various crew members not in their familiar roles (Sulu isn’t the helmsman, he works in “astrosciences”) but also many of the most famous crew members are missing: Specifically, Uhura and Bones. In canon, we have no idea what it was like when Uhura, Bones, Scotty, Kirk, or Sulu first came on board the ship. In fact, until the 2019 Discovery episode “Q&A”, we also had no idea what this was like for Spock, either. 

Outside of “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” we’re not sure what happened during 2265, other than the fact that Kirk flirted with Dr. Helen Noel at a Christmas party because he and Helen talk about this a year later in 2266 during “Dagger of the Mind.” And, funnily enough, if Star Trek years work the way ours do, this means the only 2265 event referenced in TOS would have happened at the very end of that year. The rest of the year is a complete mystery.

At the end of “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Gary Mitchell has died after having transformed into a ESP-wielding space deity. Spock admits to Kirk that Mitchell��s death affected him. “I felt for him, too,” Spock says. And then, the series, basically, fast-forwards to an entire year later. “The Man Trap,” “The Corbomite Maneuver,” and the rest of the first season clearly happens after a lot of time has passed. But what was the Enterprise like when Mitchell was still alive and Spock didn’t “feel” for him? Did “Where No Man Has Gone Before” happen right at the start of 2265 or toward the middle? Near the end? It’s the oldest period of Star Trek and we still know almost nothing about it.

As far as the actual events of Kirk’s five year mission are concerned, not counting “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” all the episodes (and The Animated Series) happen between 2266-2270. Most fans and scholars place TOS from 2266-2268-ish and The Animated Series from 2269-2270 (though there is some overlap between TOS and TAS). 

The other gaps in the Kirk era have been explored outside of official canon. IDW comics have tackled the idea of the “fifth season” of Star Trek, most recently with the miniseries Star Trek: Year Five. Back in 1989, J.M. Dillard published the novel Star Trek: The Lost Years, which would have filled in the time between the end of TOS and the beginning of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. 

Read more

Movies

The Wrath of Khan Producer Hints at New Potential Star Trek Movie

By Don Kaye

However, there’s been far less attention paid to the first year, 2265. In 1985, DC Comics published a special issue about “The First Mission,” in which the absence of Bones in “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was hastily explained. However, this story took place in the form of a “flashback” during what was then the regular continuity of DC Comics’ Star Trek timeline: At that point in the “present,” Kirk was in command of the Excelsior, the Enterprise had not been rebuilt, and Spock had his own ship called the USS Surak. The point is, this Year 1 origin story was the flashback to what is now, at best, an alternate timeline. 

Somewhat more significantly, in 1986, Pocket Books published the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure, written by legendary SF author Vonda M. McIntyre. This book tackled a variety of tricky canon issues including Chekov’s status during the first season (he worked in a different part of the ship) Spock’s random emotionalism (including a Vulcan circus performer), and the fact that almost nobody liked Kirk at first. Back in the ‘80s, McIntyre’s Star Trek books were among the best, mostly because her writing tended to be cited as pseudo-canon even when it technically wasn’t. 

Case-in-point, her 1981 Trek novel, The Entropy Effect, gave Sulu and Uhura the first names Hikaru and Nyota, both of which stuck. This isn’t to say Enterprise: The First Adventure actually “counts” as part of canon, or that the first adventure of the Enterprise under Kirk involved housing a group of traveling entertainers, but McIntyre’s books had a way of sticking into the way fans talked about canon back in the day, especially when it came to missing things, like characters’ names.

Speaking of Uhura’s first name, the most famous “Year 1” Star Trek story of them all is the 2009 movie Star Trek. But, as most fans are probably aware, the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film creates, and takes place, in an alternate universe, in which the crew of the original Enterprise meets in an entirely different way, and the tech of the 23rd century is profoundly influenced by a time-traveling Romulan ship from the future (got all that?). 

Read more

TV

Exploring the Biggest Missing Gap in the Star Trek Timeline

By Ryan Britt

The so-called “Kelvin Timeline” actually bumped-up the earliest adventures of Captain Kirk by several years. In its own timeline, the bulk of Star Trek 2009 occurs in 2258. In the Prime Timeline, this is six years earlier than when Kirk originally took command of the Enterprise. 

In fairness, the Abramsverse accounts for this by having Kirk go from Cadet to Captain in like two hours, thanks to a series of bizarre circumstances, but still, if we were only concerned about the Kelvin timeline, then the “Year 1” moment of Star Trek would be very clearly established. 

The 2009 Star Trek can be debated from a variety of different angles, but the one thing it makes pretty plain is that it is not the “actual” origin story of the TOS crew coming together, but instead, that story “retold” in an alternate universe. This is pretty weird relative to other fandoms: Star Trek 2009 would be like if the Alien–prequel Prometheus went out of its way to turn to the camera and say “this is a prequel, but one that takes place in a different dimension, and also, the chronology doesn’t work. Oops.” 

So, the 2258 of Star Trek 2009 isn’t the “right” 2258, and none of what happens in the “present” of those films is connected to TOS, Discovery, or the upcoming Strange New Worlds. In fact, the year 2258 is likely the start of Strange New Worlds.The final scenes in Discovery Season 2 happen in 2258, in which the crew of the Enterprise (and Ash Tyler) are all debriefed at Starfleet Command. This means Strange New Worlds will likely happen between 2258 and 2263 because that would be another Five-Year-Mission for Pike. This brings us very close to 2265, the real first year of Kirk’s command of the Enterprise. 

2265 is missing. It’s arguably the most formative era in all of Star Trek, and the period which establishes the classic characters in the roles that define the rest of the franchise. If Strange New Worlds shows us the entire journey of Pike’s Enterprise, it could, in theory, have an entire season set after Pike hands the keys to Kirk. The first year of The Original Series could become the final season of Strange New Worlds. And that means everyone who has been waiting for a new Captain Kirk could finally get their wish. 

Strange New Worlds is expected to start airing some time in 2021 or 2022.

The post Star Trek: The Original Series Needs A Real Origin Story appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2DDxfXx

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[componentplanet]

Deep Space Nine Upscale Project Season Finale: What We’ve Brought Ahead

The Deep Space Nine Upscale Project is an unofficial fan effort and not affiliated with Paramount in any way. 

After three months of work, the Deep Space Nine Upscale Project (DS9UP) has hit some milestones that I feel comfortable showing off in greater detail. While there’s still more to do to bring Deep Space Nine into the modern era, I’m proud of what we’ve achieved in the past three months.

I’ve included a broader array of videos in this article. If you’ve wanted to see more head-to-head comparisons and examples of how different settings play against each other, you’ll like what we’ve got in store for you. Footage sources compared here are:

Original DVD: Not much point to the comparison if I don’t show you where we started from. There’s a lot I don’t like about Deep Space Nine on DVD, but I’d recommend anyone buy them compared to streaming the show. In-article designation: “DVD.”

Upscaled MKV: This is the toughest comparison for DS9UP. Topaz Video Enhance AI has a 30-day free trial and a $199 – $299 list price depending if it’s on sale. The DVD set costs ~$110. If I can’t demonstrate a better version of Deep Space Nine than you’d see from upscaling a DVD rip, there’s literally no point in what I’m doing. In-article designation: “MKV.” Original MKV from the DS9 rips I did ~15 years ago.

DS9UP Encode Process: My own work. Because this is an ongoing series of articles and I want to be able to refer to my own encode workflows without confusing people, I’ve decided to use codenames for the major “releases,” as it were. Fortunately, there’s a ready supply of thematically appropriate names near to hand. Say hello to Rubicon, a 23.976fps constant frame rate conversion of DS9’s original variable frame rate content. It’s currently created with Handbrake, StaxRip (AviSynth, not VapourSynth), and DaVinci Studio Resolve. Details on why I’m using Handbrake instead of MakeMKV will be forthcoming in an upcoming article.

Rubicon isn’t perfect — it’s got a ~100ms audio synchronization bug in a couple of clips that I still need to fix, but I’ll iron it out. Besides, it wouldn’t be Star Trek if Season 1 didn’t end with a few bugs to work out.

Previously, On Deep Space Nine The Deep Space 9 Upscale Project…

I was inspired to undertake this project by the work of CaptRobau, who published the first screenshots and video of what an upscaled Deep Space Nine could look like. I investigated the possibility of upscaling the show myself, but the performance figures were daunting and Gigapixel AI often crashes if you attempt to load too many images at once. The idea of manually converting each episode in batches of 2,500 to 5,000 frames was anything but appealing.

The release of Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI took this idea from pipe dream to possible. While the application is still very new and in need of some bug fixes, its long-term potential is demonstrably tremendous.

Deep Space Nine is, unfortunately, an ideal candidate for this kind of restoration. While Paramount created an absolutely beautiful Star Trek: The Next Generation remaster, the company has claimed the boxed set didn’t sell well enough to justify making an effort for the later shows like Deep Space Nine and Voyager. For reference, this sort of image quality is what major stream providers like Netflix believe is acceptable:

Defending the Alpha Quadrant with the power of moire!

DS9’s lousy streaming quality isn’t news to longtime fans of the show. It’s just that now, there’s something to be done about it. I decided that if Paramount wasn’t willing to treat DS9 with the respect it deserved, I’d take on the challenge myself, despite having no previous experience or education in video editing. Rubicon isn’t perfect, but I think it represents a significant uplift worth talking about.

Up until now, my clips have either lacked audio or had audio badly out of sync with the video feed. That’s no longer the case. So let’s get started:

Tips for Best Viewing, Notes on Quality Comparisons

Be advised that the audio on some of the Rubicon clips is off by a fixed ~100ms. This can be easily corrected for in a video player, but I haven’t had time to figure out why it happened in the first place.

Always set Netflix to play in 4K or the highest available quality, even if you do not have a 4K monitor. This will improve the quality of the stream regardless. The quality differences between Rubicon, an MKV, and the other versions of Deep Space Nine are less apparent at lower quality levels.

Be aware that the largest gap in quality, at least in my opinion, is between the streamed services and the DVDs. That’s not an absolute — there are some scenes where the DVDs are quite poor — but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb.

The gap between the upscaled MKV file we’ve included in this coverage and what Rubicon can achieve is much smaller than the leap from DVD to upscaled footage. When I wrote my first article on upscaling Deep Space Nine, I said that I felt as if running an MKV through Topaz VEAI got you 75 – 80 percent of the improvement that might be reasonably squeezed out of the DVD source, and that still seems like a pretty fair assessment.

Initial Fleet Flyby

DVD:

The DVD looks pretty good here, honestly. There’s not a lot of great detail on the distant ships, but the nearby Excelsior comes through quite nicely.

MKV:

The MKV looks really nice, here. I don’t expect to see the Rubicon encode recover much more detail than we have already.

Rubicon:

The hitch at the front of the video is because of where I cut the frame. Apart from that, Rubicon and the MKV tie here. Not much difference.

Defiant Conversation

Most of my comparisons have been battle comparisons to-date, but not much of Deep Space Nine actually involves combat. This short clip focuses on a range of characters — shows like DS9 have a lot of skin tones, and some AI upscalers handle them oddly.

DVD:

The DVD is dark — Deep Space Nine feels dark overall — but the detail is pretty solid. Dax’s face looks oddly low-detail, though.

MKV:

The GCG preset brings out some nice detail in the clip, but it also creates an odd aberation on the bulkhead over Sisko’s left shoulder at one point. This appears to be an error in the upscaler — the problem isn’t present on the regular version of the MKV — but it shows how important it is to keep every bit of detail, since it isn’t present in Rubicon, either.

Rubicon:

I don’t think there’s all that much difference between the MKV and the Rubicon upscale in this clip, either. That’s not to say I can’t see a difference — if you pause both videos on exactly the same frame, you can usually find a few details that favor Rubicon, and in a few spots, places that favor the MKV. Ultimately, though, I’m not sure how much of the detail is visible. Rubicon has a ~100ms audio delay in this clip that I didn’t notice until it was too late to fix for this article.

First Fleet Engagement

This sequence is one of the great battle shots of Deep Space Nine. The show had been showing us fleet engagements all throughout Season 6, but Sacrifice of Angels was teased hard as something that was going to be extra-special. This isn’t the first fleet skirmish — those have been going on for a while by this point in the episode — but this is the largest pure Federation fleet we’ve ever seen opening up on-screen.

DVD:

The DVD looks like it was recorded off someone’s old VCR tapes. The ships going by in the background look like vague little miniatures. The image is downright ugly and robbed of most of the impact.

MKV

The MKV file is a huge improvement over the DVD. The noise is gone and you can get a sense for just how large an engagement this was intended to look like. Tremendous improvement.

Rubicon:

This is another area where the improvements from Rubicon over MKV are small, but definite. Watch the leading edge on the saucer on the lead Galaxy-class vessel in the two clips and you’ll see that it’s blurrier. Rubicon is slightly sharper overall, and it’s easier to follow the Galaxy-class vessels as they move from the background to the foreground of the video. Until I upscaled this scene, I didn’t realize that the Galaxy-class ships moving through it near the end had even been visible in the back of the video. When I said you’ve never really seen this footage until you upscale it, I really wasn’t kidding.

Second Fleet Engagement:

The second, climactic battle of Sacrifice of Angels. I’ve showed short clips of this fight sequence before, but this is the first time I’ve shown the whole thing. This was one of the all-time high watermarks for DS9’s VFX team.

DVD:

The DVD is, once again, badly marred by noise. It’s difficult to read the hull letters on the Miranda-class ships and there’s a weird aliased grill on the bottom of the Miranda saucer. Several interlaced frames are prominently visible. It’s a dismal way to experience such a beautiful set of scenes.

MKV:

The MKVs, as expected, dramatically clean up the show. Again, I can’t argue with anybody who says this footage looks gorgeous in upscale. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

Rubicon:

Rubicon eliminates all but a trace of the aliased pattern on the underside of the Miranda-class hull, smooths out the motion overall, and cleans the noise out of the smoke billowing around on the Defiant’s bridge until it just looks like, well, smoke. Detail levels in the Rubicon clip are just a touch higher.

How About Some Footage From a Different Episode? Any Episode?

No matter how bored you are of looking at Sacrifice of Angels, I promise you, you are not as tired of it as I am. I’m literally better at lip-reading than I was before I started this project. With that said? Your wish is my command:

It was important to me to demonstrate that Rubicon could stand up to footage in other seasons without modification. I used exactly the same process to render “The Die is Cast” that I did for the rest of the show.

Looking Ahead to Season 2

I’m declaring this the end of “Season 1” of DS9UP for several reasons. First, I’ve got a move coming up, and need to turn my attention towards it. Second, I’m long past due to circle back and talk to some folks who have either wanted to help with this project or are already actively working on efforts of their own. Third, I want to pause long enough to hammer some remaining issues out of my workflow, understand some of the problems I’ve had over the past few months a bit better, and return to the idea of improving the color balance of Deep Space Nine through some judicious changes.

As things stand, I’ll be writing a follow-up article to this one over the next week or so, with some additional examples of alternate workflows and outcomes when using applications like AviSynth. In addition to 5Sharp, I’ve got a ~48 fps and ~60 fps version of Deep Space Nine that have their own strengths and weaknesses. We’ll also finally be taking a look at Gaia-HQ.

I couldn’t have completed the work I’ve accomplished to-date without help from a number of people, including Gary Huff, Mark Renoden, Steve Reeve for some deinterlacing solution ideas, and help from several members of the Doom9 forum. Shortstack, I still hope to chat with you about recoloring ideas. Anybody else who deserves to be on this list, I sweartogod I’ll update it as soon as I’ve slept.

What We Brought Ahead

Deep Space Nine is too good of a show to be left rotting on DVD-era source. For all Paramount’s talk about the high costs of remastering, I’d love to see the breakout of recutting all of DS9 and Voyager compared with the cost of a single episode of Discovery. Back in 2017, leaked data showed the budget for Discovery at $8M – $8.5M per episode. Supposedly TNG’s episodes cost $70K each to remaster, but let’s assume VOY and DS9 are more expensive, at $100K each. The $34.8M it would take to remaster 348 episodes of TV works out to… about 4.5 episodes of Discovery?

Paramount could build a better version of the show than I could even hope to create — but since they aren’t going to bother, I figure I’ll keep up my own efforts.

On the night the last episode of Deep Space Nine aired, I carried my IBM K6-233 tower out to the living room, ran a 3.5mm cable from the audio-out port on our VCR into the line-in port on my sound card, and made a recording of the following. It’s been one of my favorite moments of the show ever since it aired, and I can’t think of a better way to end what I feel has been a very successful “season” thus far, than with a little James Darren.

Rubicon’s credits. I’m actually a little more partial to the ones I released back on April 27, but the Defiant’s motion is better here.

To the actors, artists, creators, directors, set crew, sound crew, and anyone else I’ve forgotten: Thanks for creating a show so damn good, people still rally around it 25 years later to see it treated with the respect it deserves.

May the Prophets guide you.

Now Read:

Deep Space Nine Upscale Project Update: ‘Sacrifice of Angels’

Deep Space Nine Upscale Project Update: Variable Frame Rate DVDs Can Burn in Hell

How to Upscale Video to 4K, 8K, and Beyond

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/310176-deep-space-nine-upscale-project-season-finale-what-we-brought-ahead from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/05/deep-space-nine-upscale-project-season.html

#Deep Space Nine Upscale Project Season Finale: What We’ve Brought Ahead

[shepgeek]

To Boldly Go

When the great film trilogies are listed, the back-to-back run of Wrath of Khan, The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home are rarely mentioned.  For starters any franchise from the 1980s, where roman numerals were thrown about merrily, will bear suspicion of artistic scepticism. Indeed, it wasn’t until JJ Abrams’ reboot that the idea would even be considered that any film from this franchise might be taken seriously as a piece of cinema rather than a routine trip for Paramount to milk their cash cow. Star Trek was considered niche entertainment for nerds with occasional nostalgic crossover appeal; something to be acknowledged as popular to a degree but rarely held up as anything like the best of what the medium has to offer. In these three films, however, there can be found huge creativity, bold authorial choices, and a keen sense of storytelling momentum based around a compelling and hugely resonant central theme. Within the genre, the films could hardly be more different from each other: Wrath of Khan is a peerless adventure, blending themes of obsession and revenge with adventure and duty, heavily inspired by the swashbuckling tales of 18th century naval adventures. The Voyage Home, on the other hand, is a prime example of the 1980s fish-out-of-water comedy subgenre. Bridging them is the film considered the least of the three but, whilst it is perhaps the most conservative in terms of scale, the propensity for The Search for Spock to be dismissed as “an odd numbered one” masks the moments where it comprehensively masters what the entire franchise was all about. With its operatic brio and earnest embrace of famous science fiction tropes, director Leonard Nimoy’s The Search for Spock is an underrated film in an underrated trilogy and, 35 years on, hiding within it is a 20-minute sequence which, for this writer, remains the defining moment within the entire franchise.

Within the film it is quickly established that the crew have a chance to do right by their fallen comrade, but have been ordered in no uncertain terms to keep away from his resting place. For Kirk, permission is not a luxury he has ever particularly sought and, from the moment he growls “The word is no: I am therefore going anyway”, the film releases the melancholy of its mournful opening act. Sporting a magnificently implausible leather collar, not enough is made of just how good Shatner is in these films. His impudent charisma led us to genuine heartbreak in the previous chapter and he sustains Kirk’s unimpeachable authority with effortless ease. We can see our hero struggling, failing, learning but never yielding, but to see his plan through he needs his crew, leading to why the scene that follows soars: it is the definitive instance of the Enterprise crew working as one. The dramatic stakes are unusually low in this film: there is no universe to save this time, just one man. The gentle inversion of Spock’s “needs of the many” axiom is honest and maybe a little unsubtle but certainly compelling, and a theme throughout the film of what we do for those who matter the most to us is precisely what elevates this franchise above its peers. Those who dismiss Star Trek as frivolous miss this central pull: each crew is always based around this core camaraderie, an ensemble of characters whose loyalty inspires. The Search for Spock is dramatically least compelling of the trilogy but emotionally the most resonant.

The crew plot to steal back their battered starship in what becomes, atypically for the franchise, a set piece. This segment has the feel of a caper to it and eschews visual fireworks for a steady and patient escalation of the stakes and an intensifying focus on the faces of the actors to build the drama: we know what this crew is risking here and we become desperate for them to succeed. On paper what follows is simply some light levels of banter, a few sweaty brows and the Enterprise reversing out of a garage and yet it is imbued with such an epic scale for these characters that it swells the heart. The heist itself has a giddy sense of fun to it, of propulsive excitement: composer James Horner uses an eclectic percussive string instrument (a cimbalom) to set this feeling, but it builds slowly and steadily. The choice to gradually intensify the scope throughout a longer set piece was not out of character for the time and, one suspects, borne from budgetary restrictions, but certainly it would be unimaginable to find such patience in a modern blockbuster, and even the most recent and honest tribute Star Trek Beyond overflows with startling visuals during its own action beats.

The pace of the escape is determined in part by the choices made by previous directors Robert Wise and Nicholas Meyer, as Trek had already decided that, instead of the buzzing, kinetic spitfire battles of the Star Wars films, these ships of the line would be enormous stately galleons. Harder to manoeuvre, they add an epic scale to even the smallest of lines: “One quarter impulse power” is followed soon after by an “Aye Sir”: this is, after all, the finest crew in the fleet. There are other advantages as ILM’s gorgeous models have aged exceptionally well, bringing a physicality that later CGI struggles to recapture, whilst the elegant iconography of the famous ship is amplified by Nimoy’s of framing it from differing scales.

As the heist develops it allows the crew to quietly shine. Long reconciled to be left supporting the core leads from the side-lines, Nimoy recognised that the whole film would greatly benefit from using his castmates to add shading around the edges, and he spends snippets of time on the Enterprise crew, implying in his director commentary that he had to defend this choice, one assumes, to Shatner. Whilst Kirk remains his old gung-ho self (only a single punch of a security guard is needed) Nimoy gives Sulu, donning what appears to be a cape, a moment of nonchalant badassery, notably showing us Kirk’s reaction of impressed surprise. The message is simple- nobody messes with our heroes and McCoy repeats this to Uhura in a similarly authoritative beat moments later. The caper crackles with its own history and our heroes (and the script) are visibly enjoying themselves here: McCoy’s smile as his friends break him from his jail is magical, whilst the dialogue is peppered with jokes and callbacks to the Kobayashi Maru, or Spock’s revenge on McCoy “for all those arguments he lost”. The final flourish is the addition of an antagonist: the film sets up the USS Excelsior as a new and improved Federation prototype (an idea which is immediately offensive) and their priggish, pompous captain is instantly hissable. Nimoy knew better than anyone that TV sets were awash with talented actors who had more depth to be exploited, casting Taxi’s Christopher Lloyd as his villain and using Hillstreet Blues actor James Sikking here. Sikking does an incredible job with a small part, immediately making Captain Styles a startlingly slappable presence. After being bruisingly insensitive to Scotty (writer Harve Bennet’s lists Scotty’s reply as his favourite line in the film), when we see Styles aboard his titanic ship he is blithely filing his nails and taking a no-look grab of what appears to be a redundant space cane. Styles is not the only example of how the storytelling detail and colour in this section, with a janitor looking on agog as the Enterprise makes her exit, building a sense of scale, opportunistic adventure and disbelief that Kirk, the Federation’s greatest hero, was going rogue. Styles’ final decision, calling out Kirk (by name, not rank) gives the scene’s final punchline a pleasing rush of schadenfreude.

 The final ingredient to this section cannot be overestimated as James Horner’s score develops cues from his Wrath of Khan score (namely Battle in Mutara Nebula & Genesis Countdown- two of the finest cues in 20th century film composition) to lend colossal weight to the enormity of these actions for our heroes. A 91-piece orchestra escalates his two primary themes to a gloriously triumphant conclusion, as Horner deploys the French horns blasting at the limits of their range, a joyous trademark of that composer and an enormous final flourish as the Enterprise finally clears her docks.

Throughout this short set piece, we see Star Trek in a perfect microcosm. Everything that it remains most loved for is perfectly conveyed in this sequence by the script, the direction, the performances, the editing and the composition via an emotional core of considerable heft. When Kirk smiles to say “May the wind be at our backs” and Alexander Courage’s famous fanfare salutes them back, the loyalty and camaraderie of this family is cemented.

 It ends as Kirk takes his Captain’s chair; unwavering, resolute and with his crew at his back as the bridge lighting shifts, purposefully.

“Aye Sir.

Warp Speed.”

#startrek