Following in the footsteps of last year’s first-season release, Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 will be getting its own special Steelbook treatment for the upcoming Blu-ray release in November.
Did you buy the Season 1 Discovery Steelbook and are looking forward to adding Season 2’s special release to your collection? Let us know in the comments below!
Four months after Star Trek: Picard showrunner Michael Chabon let slip that filming had started on the upcoming series, this past week marked the end of active production on the first ten-episode season.
The news that filming wrapped on Picard Season 1 was shared by several members of the show’s cast and crew on social media, including Chabon himself this weekend, who included a selfie photo shot at the Trek-famous Vasquez Rocks in California — a location seen in July’s Picard trailer.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B111A_hgOBi/
Patrick Stewart on location at Vasquez Rocks for ‘Star Trek: Picard.’
Returning Trek actor Jonathan Del Arco (Hugh) also shared his congratulations to the cast and crew, posting a photo from the first pre-production table read session where he learned that Brent Spiner (Data) would also be coming back for Star Trek: Picard.
Meanwhile, several members of the Picard production team, who work often unseen behind the camera, also shared images from the end of the filming year — including a look at some crew gifts received from the show’s higher-ups.
Camera operator Leonidas Jaramillo:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B11TWD3hyt4/
VFX supervisor Ante Dekovic (scroll through gallery):
https://www.instagram.com/p/B115ZZ3FSom/
Picard costume designer Christine Bieselin Clark:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1zzUY1pEo8/
Prosthetic makeup supervisor James MacKinnon:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1rwXEtjFwK/
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1z7hcYDtlb/
Lead VFX artist Charles Collyer also shared this tantalizing video of a behind-the-scenes photography session, where he’s shooting images of an off-screen figure for use in the show’s visual effects work:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B11X72fANnB/
We’re still more than four months away from when Star Trek: Picard will debut on CBS All Access, so as things proceed on the show’s visual effects work, musical scoring, and other post-production work needed to polish the program, it may still be a while until we see any new visual content from the show.
New York Comic Con is the next big pop culture event of the year, coming up in mid-October, and CBS has been there for the last two years to promote Discovery — so hopefully we’ll get our next big look at Star Trek: Picard Season 1 then.
Meanwhile, work on Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 continues up in Toronto, where the series is already through filming at least three of the season’s planned 13 episodes.
Director Jonathan Frakes just wrapped up his time on Episode 303, his fourth contribution to the series, and we learned this week that he’ll be back again later in 2019 to direct the eighth episode of the year — thanks to the Destination: Star Trek convention social media account:
We are very sorry to announce that Jonathan Frakes will not be able to join us at DST.
The good news is that he will be directing episode 8 of season 3 Discovery at the time, so we at least have that to look forward to!
Any photo shoots will be automatically refunded next week
While there’s still very little known about what kind of story content we’ll be seeing when Discovery returns next year — aside from the introduction of new cast member David Ajala as a resident of the far future — the cast and crew have been sharing some tiny peeks into the Discovery world on social media for the past few weeks.
Co-showrunner Michelle Paradise:
Every time I’m on set, I’m blown away (all over again) by the talent on this show. The passion and care with which our cast and crew approach their work is inspiring. Television takes a village – and we have a great one. #StarTrekDiscovery
Yeoh, along with writers Erika Lippoldt and Bo Yeon Kim, celebrated Jonathan Frakes’ birthday in mid-August during production on Episode 303 (scroll through gallery below), where fellow Next Generation vet Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) — who happened to be in Toronto for her role on the USA Network series Suits — also joined the party.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1WcYBYnbsf/
Star Trek: Discovery won’t be back until well into 2020 — after all of Picard Season 1 concludes — so it’s still likely to be a while until we have any more news on what to expect from Season 3… but of course, we’ll bring you all the latest news when it breaks!
An epic new Star Trek saga by New York Times bestselling author Greg Cox set during the original Five-Year Mission!
The final frontier erupts into chaos as vast quantities of a rare energy source are discovered beneath the surface of Baldur III, a remote planet beyond the outer fringes of Federation space.
Now an old-fashioned “gold rush” is underway as a flood of would-be prospectors, from countless worlds and species, races toward the planet to stake their claim.
The galactic stampede threatens the stability of neighboring planets and space stations, as widespread strife and sabotage and all-around pandemonium result in a desperate need for Starfleet assistance.
Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise are dispatched to deal with the escalating crisis…which lies on the other side of a famously perilous region of space known as the Antares Maelstrom.
Greg Cox’s new classic Star Trek novel The Antares Maelstrom is a fun, light adventure. It is the perfect, easy late summer vacation reading – perhaps for your Labor Day weekend getaway.
Always enjoyable, but never demanding, The Antares Maelstrom is a frontier tale, aping the California gold rush if it were set in space, and if the USS Enterprise was assigned by Starfleet to respond.
Where May’s The Captain’s Oath was solidly a James T. Kirk story, The Antares Maelstrom is a book that gives every member of the USS Enterprise senior staff something to do. The book achieves this by dividing into three storylines – one focused on Sulu, a second on Spock and Chekov, and the main story following the rest of the senior staff aboard the Enterprise.
The main plot revolves around the Enterprise orbiting Baldur III, a frontier colony that has discovered large deposits of a rare mineral vital for energy production on Federation worlds, pergium(a compound first introduced in the classic episode “The Devil in the Dark”). This plot line, which includes many of the ideas and themes common to a western tale – and maybe some of the stereotypes – has nice stories for Uhura and Scotty particularly.
It is always a joy to see Scotty, a sometimes underutilized character, get an adventure of his own. And though it’s a bit predictable, the Scotty story was probably my favorite of the novel. Uhura also gets a good subplot on the surface of Balder III, as she initially works to take the temperature of the locals but quickly emerges as a key character as a crisis begins to unfold. It is enjoyable to see Uhura take on a leadership role in any situation, and she firmly steps up in this story without the supervision of superior officers like Kirk or Spock.
The second main storyline involves Sulu, who is left behind by Captain Kirk on the final space station before ships reach Balder III. His mission is to support the station’s overworked personnel, who are dealing with a large number of incoming ships and passengers bound for the newly prosperous Balder III to seek their fortune.
While there, Sulu meets an old flame who has uncertain intentions, and must unravel a mystery. It is always nice to see Sulu take on a command role, and the ultimate resolution of the station storyline has a nice tie in to an episode of the Original Series, but this is also a largely paint by numbers subplot.
The final subplot of the novel – and probably my least favorite – involves Spock and Chekov being dispatched by Kirk to investigate a suspected smuggling operation on a pre-warp planet not far from Baldur III. The two storylines are loosely connected, which is why this subplot does not feel entirely tacked on.
But ultimately, this plot line just did not work for me. In order to give each character a good story, each ultimately had to be relatively short in order to fit into the book’s page length. As a result, all the stories in the novel are rushed, and the Spock/Chekov story feels like the one that suffered the most.
Spock makes several, frankly, quite dumb choices in this book, which are passed off as “the logical thing to do,” but which smack much more of being what the plot demanded in order to push the story along. There is a sequence in which Spock and Chekov are captured, and while the book presents that as having been a logical choice by Spock, they ultimately find themselves in a very difficult position that they only get out of by sheer luck. While it might have felt true to the plot, this whole sequence did not feel true to the characters.
That’s ultimately a shame because Cox is probably the most accomplished Star Trek author in terms of capturing the characters and voices of the classic Trekcast. It feels like he was overly ambitious with this book – while it is certainly great that we get nice stories for pretty much the whole crew, they all suffer as a result because none are given quite the length that they need in order to be fully developed.
In addition, you might have noticed that my review does not really talk at all about the titular spatial region of the book – the Antares Maelstrom. Inspired by a line of dialogue from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Maelstrom is a large and dangerous nebula that sits between Federation space and Balder III. And the reason I am not talking much about it is because, well… it isn’t really in the book all that much.
There is a sequence at the end of the book where the Maelstrom plays an important role, but other than that it serves only as a device to demonstrate that Balder III is distant from fast help and it is a treacherous journey to get there. It’s a bit disappointing — the book is called The Antares Maelstrom, after all! — but ultimately, as depicted, it’s just another formidable nebula, so maybe it’s to the book’s credit that it does not spend much time there.
Don’t get me wrong, this book is a lot of fun and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. And while it’s probably not going to feature in anybody’s top ten list, it doesn’t need to. It’s a perfectly light, enjoyable western-style adventure that features some of your favorite characters being thoroughly good at their jobs.
If that’s the worst that you can say about any Star Trek novel, we’re in a pretty good place.
There’s nothing I like more than when a cloud passes overhead on a blazing hot day, bringing a such a cooling relief – the day slows down, everyone gets to take a breath and relax for a moment.
The pace on this book has been frantic. It was great for the first two issues; it was a new series and the energy level matched the sense of excitement over the new book. Plus, Jackson Lanzing and Colin Kelly are undisputed talents. But, as in long-distance running, one can’t keep up that pace without bringing a sense of discomfort or a state of unfocused attention.
Luckily, the issues that forced that pace have slowed down a bit, and that brings us to Issue #5. Written by the talented Jody Houser, this issue sees the Enterprise conducting an archaeological survey of the extinct civilization of the planet Hesperides I. In the meantime, Lieutenant Uhura is still making attempts to communicate with the refugee Tholian child, now colloquially known as “Bright-Eyes”. Artifacts have been brought aboard and the ship’s crew is experiencing issues of intense emotionality and miscommunication.
That’s it; that’s all we have to worry about in this book. It’s a simple premise and completely within the vein of classic Star Trek.
The best writing isn’t in what surprises you, it’s what makes you think. In order to do that, you have to understand what the writer is trying to portray. Houser’s style is crystal clear. We know what’s going on but now we also get to enjoy her excellent presentation of the characters from this series who we love. With the premise, Houser allows us the freedom to explore the story and think about the interrelationships among the crew.
For instance, in the senior officers’ briefing scene with Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scott, Houser slips in an excellent example of the miscommunication phenomenon that is occurring on the Enterprise. It’s a well-crafted sequence that evokes the memory of the ominous background music that would have played when any of the crew made a significant observation. Completely Trek, and the vibe was right on target.
Part of the enjoyment of reading Star Trek comics for me is to see how close the writer and artist can replicate that sense of watching an episode of Trek. Each iteration of the franchise has its own unique vibe; for instance, I see the Original Series as having a slower, emotional pace that sets it apart from its descendants. It’s a relief to me when a writer gets that sense because that’s what allows the reader the freedom to enjoy the characters in new situations, behaving as loyal fans will remember them.
Uhura’s work with Bright-Eyes is one of those moments. Uhura has always been presented as a person of kindness and deep empathy. Given her role as the communications officer, these traits are expected within her skill set. Being asked to establish some form of communication with a lost child is not only endearing to see but something that we would expect of this character. It’s an excellent opportunity to showcase this character and Houser certainly takes full advantage of it.
I’m also fully enjoying Silvia Califano’s art in this issue as well. Califano is gifted in likeness work, but I think what I’m really appreciating is the level of emotionality that’s present in her representation of these characters. In this issue, Kirk is usually presented with a very sensitive expression on his face which is very much in line with the reflective perspective Kirk has sported since the beginning of the series.
Again, another comfort to know that an artist is consciously aware of presenting a character to fit into the expectations of the comic’s audience. I think I need to add some of Califano’s work to my private collection!
The same goes for Stephen Thompson’s work. As I’ve already indicated, his work on the regular cover for this book is really striking. In my opinion, cover art sets the tone for this book, but I like how this cover actually prepares the reader for the whole story by depicting the Enterprise’s arrival to Hesperides I. Thompson has acquitted himself magnificently with this cover and is definitely my favourite out of the two options.
The retailer-incentive cover from J.J. Lendl is a glorious homage to those B-movie posters. It fits the emotionality issue of the issue with a wondrous flair and I’m quite enamoured of it! In fact, I’m reminded of those amazing moments in the cinema foyers when you got to see amazing art like this before you saw the film and that’s the vibe I got from this. So, to J.J. Lendl: it really worked! Love it.
The sense of relief that there are creators out there who not only pay attention to the canonical values of Trek but also get its emotional resonance is appreciated. You can care about their work because it is definitively clear that they care about the franchise as much as their audience does. That goes a long way with a Trek audience and out of all the licensed properties a comic company can adopt, I don’t think that there is an audience more charged up about this idea than a Trek audience.
Comic aficionados have nothing on Trek fans. But, if you’re both a comic lover as well as a Star Trek fan, then you’re in good company with IDW and the talented creators they bring to continuing the enjoyment of the franchise.
In the 45 years since the series went off the air, the second Star Trek television series has been often overlooked by fans — and the franchise itself — when thinking back on the decades of Federation storytelling.
Star Trek: The Animated Series was the last show to make it to DVD back in 2006, following all its live-action counterparts, it took almost 30 years of releases for Hallmark to bring any of its characters into the long-running holiday ornament line, and there’s never been much of a focus on the series in print, despite the dozens of other Star Trek reference works published over the years…
…until now, that is! Next week, publisher Weldon Owen will finally be releasing the first all-encompassing guide to the 22 episodes of hand-drawn tales with Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series, a new hardcover book from authors Aaron Harvey and Rich Schepis.
We had the opportunity to catch up with Harvey and Schepis a few weeks ago to preview the new Star Trek: The Animated Series guidebook ahead of next week’s official release.
TREKCORE: Aaron, you have something of a reputation as a big fan of The Animated Series. I can imagine that this has been quite a passion project for you?
AARON HARVEY: Yes. If we hadn’t been passionate about it at some point we probably would have just walked away, because it was a lot of work. It’s a lot of fun, but getting all of the interviews in the book was hard work.
Anything from the 1970s in Star Trek is really an interesting time to try and verify information. If you read the history of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it’s amazing that movie ever got made. And if you listen to five different people, they will tell you five completely different stories about the same events.
The 1970s is a really interesting time in Star Trek, with The Animated Series being a huge part of it, especially since I grew up in an age where you couldn’t just go to the internet and pull up information on it. You would tell somebody there was a Star Trek: The Animated Series and they might not believe you, which is how the tagline in my podcast Saturday Morning Trek came about: “Yes, there IS an animated series.”
I think we took a poll when we first launched the podcast, and there were a good number of people who didn’t even know it existed.
RICH SCHEPIS: Aaron touched on something that I think is really important. We mention it a little in the book, because there have been so many people and assets that have been lost over time; it was almost fifty years ago that The Animated Series premiered.
In the Deep Space Nine documentary “What We Left Behind” that premiered earlier this year, Andrew Robinson [Garak] has that line at the end of the movie talking about truth, and how everybody remembers things differently.
So, we’re talking to people like [layout artist] Bob Kline, [publicist and writer] Fred Bronson, [writer] Howard Weinstein, and [writer and script editor] David Wise, and we have to take these stories from what they remember.
Sometimes, though, people misremember things, or have one perception of how the conversation went and it didn’t really go there. So, we did our best in the book. Everything is fully attributed, and we did our best to make sure we could prove as much as we could.
The fun part of the book is going to be looking at it and saying “Oh, I didn’t know that happened.”
An illustrated guide to bringing ‘Star Trek’ animation to life. (Image: Weldon Owen)
TREKCORE: What can readers who pick up this book expect to learn about The Animated Series?
HARVEY: We were trying to definitely include something from behind the scenes of each episode. We have a section called “Fascinating,” which is just little facts that might not fit into any main narrative, so there’ll be something about why a specific voice actor was used or things like that.
We had a real boon when Fred Bronson found all of the press releases he had written for The Animated Series and gave them to us.
SCHEPIS: Because Fred was such a big fan of Star Trek when he was the publicist for NBC, his job was publicizing and writing press releases to send to newspapers and TV Guide. We came across some great interviews in those releases, including interviews from Gene [Roddenberry] and Matt Jefferies that, for the most part, never saw the light of day. And now we’ve got a goldmine of interviews from people that have probably never been seen in 50 years. We were really happy to get a hold of that.
HARVEY: And Fred Bronson, by the way, is the person who wrote “The Counter-Clock Incident” under the pseudonym John Culver, because at the time he was also the series publicist, and they didn’t want the impropriety of the publicist also writing an episode.
SCHEPIS: Yeah, we’ve got a great story about his writing that episode in the book. Another thing, as someone that liked The Animated Series but didn’t have the same background on it as Aaron, is that you do learn a lot about how it was produced.
I was so impressed when I was talking to [associate producer and story editor] Dorothy Fontana and [writer] David Gerrold, and just how much they stressed that “Hey, this is Star Trek. It’s a shorter episode, but this is Star Trek.” And you can see that on the screen.
By today’s sensibilities the production values are a little different, but if you watch the show and the stories some of them are just as strong as those classic episodes of the Original Series.
A guide to Episode 108, ‘The Magicks of Megas-Tu.’ (Image: Weldon Owen)
TREKCORE: Some discussion of The Animated Series has implied that there was some tension between production team members who came over from the Original Series, and some of the Filmation executives who saw TAS as ‘just another cartoon.’ Is that an accurate?
SCHEPIS: We never got that sense. [Filmation co-founder] Lou Scheimer came to Gene with a bunch of ideas and Gene said, “No, we’re doing Star Trek.” But when they were actually making the show, we got to talk to directors, storyboard artists, the writers, producers, and none of that stuff was even a factor. They were trying to make the best show possible.
HARVEY: And the people involved, like Bob Kline, were huge Star Trek fans. He knew specifically where this was the rule for how the nacelles works, this is how insignia badges are supposed to be. He was just as much of a quality assurance person as Dorothy Fontana was in terms of what is and isn’t Star Trek.
SCHEPIS: From a production standpoint, there was never a sense of that. I think a lot of that was just urban legend that’s built over the years. It’s actually Star Trek; it was produced by the people that made Star Trek. Gene oversaw the scripts. He made revisions.
There are urban legends out there from people that said “Well, Gene said this wasn’t canon” but Dorothy [Fontana] never had a conversation with him in which he said “This isn’t Star Trek.” And he treated it like that. She treated it like that.
Process artwork of the sickly Dramians from ‘Albatross.’ (Image: Weldon Owen / Amazon)
HARVEY: I think the main thing that we discovered is that they were working under a tight schedule, and they had to get the stuff out. Everyone wanted to take more time, but they just didn’t have the bandwidth for it.
SHCEPIS: And the Orignal Series was like that too; it’s just the nature of television production. Filmation had their way of making cartoons, which they brought over to the Star Trek show, which works really well. The likenesses look great, the bridge looks like the bridge, the Enterprise is the Enterprise.
Then there’s also a guy like Bob Kline, who was able to add new designs that fit the Star Trek aesthetic. There’s one ship, the USS Bonaventure, which was Bob’s design.
HARVEY: Or the cargo vessel in “More Tribbles, More Troubles.” That is actually Mike Okuda’s favorite ship, which then got ret-conned into the Original Series when they remastered the series.
SCHEPIS: And that was all because Bob was a big fan, and when he was designing the ship he had an eye on what would make a good Starfleet vessel.
TREKCORE: You each came to this project with different levels of knowledge about The Animated Series. What would you say was the most surprising thing you learned during your research process?
SCHEPIS: I think the most interesting thing was in regards to the episode “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth,” which won an Emmy, and how it came to be. We talked to episode writer David Wise about that episode, unfortunately his co-writer Russell Bates is no longer with us.
In the book we covered how the episode went through the pitch process and how Dorothy [Fontana] helped them get it right. And that, for me, was one of the coolest things. For me, it’s the interviews. Learning about the show from the people who made the show. I just ate that part up.
Inside the legendary episode ‘Yesteryear,’ where Spock meets his younger self. (Image: Weldon Owen / Amazon)
HARVEY: One interesting thing that we found — that we didn’t incorporate into the book, because it didn’t quite fit what we were doing — is that there is always a part of fandom that will find something and push back against it. There was actually, at some of the first conventions, people saying that The Animated Series wasn’t ‘real’ Star Trek.
It was so much like listening to people talk about Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was frightening.
I’m also going to tease something else we found out, which is that there is a specific character in the last episode of The Animated Series that was inspired by another Filmation character. I was scanning all these documents that Bob Kline had given us, and I found what appeared to be a slide that was misfiled, until I realized that the person on the slide looked really similar to somebody on the show. And when I talked to Bob, he told me the character in the slide must have inspired it and that’s why it was in there.
TREKCORE: For those who have never seen the show, how would you encourage a newcomer to check out The Animated Series for the first time?
SCHEPIS: If you are a fan of the original Trek characters and want to see more of those stories, The Animated Series is the fourth season of classic Trek, at least for me. You get to see more of those characters; you get to see Uhura in a different role, but you also get to see the familiar relationship between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and that’s one of the things that draw people to Star Trek.
If they love the Original Series, but never saw the show, this book is a no-brainer because it’s going to give you more information about behind the scenes of how The Animated Series was made largely by the same people who made the first series.
A guide to Episode 104, ‘The Lorelei Signal.’ (Image: Weldon Owen / Amazon)
HARVEY: I think of it as finding 22 lost episodes of the Original Series. Who wouldn’t want that? Sure, some of them are going to be on the level of “Spock’s Brain,” but some of them are up there with “The City on the Edge of Forever,” but either way it just adds to it.
There’s a lot of things that become a part of Star Trek canon because of The Animated Series – Kirk’s middle name for example — and there are so many original voices, both literal and creative, that put together the Original Series and later helped on The Animated Series.
You’re probably going to like them both if you like the original, and to me, it’s just historically interesting to see how an adult evening television show was translated into a show for all ages in the 1970s… and how sophisticated and grown up it was compared to similar shows of the era like The Brady Kids or Emergency +4.
TREKCORE: It’s pretty clear that the Star Trek: Discovery writing team are fans of The Animated Series, as they’ve included a few references calling back to that show already. Is there anything which originated in TAS that you’d like to see today’s live-action Trek shows bring to life?
HARVEY: I want to see an Edosian — that’s Lt. Arex’s species — now that we have the technology to do that! I think seeing that race would be really interesting.
There’s also the Vendorians, and it would be interesting if we’re going to use shapeshifters in some way to bring those back. Interaction with them is outlawed by the Federation at the time of The Animated Series, so it would be interesting to dive into that a little bit.
SCHEPIS: One of the things I would love to see is getting to see Uhura in the captain’s chair, like we saw when she took command of the Enterprise in [“The Lorelei Signal”]. Maybe they could translate that to Number One and have her in command. Obviously, the 1960s and 1970s were a different time, and we’re seeing how the transition of storytelling is more open, as it should be. I think that would be really cool, to have gotten to see that.
A look inside ‘The Practical Joker,’ including a discussion on the proto-Holodeck ‘rec room.’ (Image: Weldon Owen / Amazon)
TREKCORE: Any last comments about your love for The Animated Series?
SCHEPIS: This book is a celebration of Star Trek. We were both very honored to be able to add our names to the legacy of Star Trek. It’s very surreal, but everything we put in this book was to celebrate not just The Animated Series, but the whole legacy of Star Trek.
We’ve both been impacted personally by this mythology that Gene started and that people like Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold took those torches and carried them forward. We’re very honored, and everything in the book is designed to celebrate the awesomeness of what Star Trek is and what it means.
I think that’s the one big thing that got out of writing this book — having the ability to share those stories, to share those meanings, was joyous. I was really happy to be able to write some of these sections where we dive in a little deeper about what the point was for the episode or what came out of it from that analytical standpoint. And when you’re looking at other 1970s cartoons, which had no meaning to them.
The Animated Series wasn’t like that – this was animated Star Trek.
Following up on their 2018 line of Star Trek: The Original Series pure silver collectible ‘coin notes,’ the New Zealand Mint is expanding into The Next Generation with a series of character-themed releases featuring the crew of the Enterprise-D.
Launching the 2019 series is Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the first of six planned silver notes to carry the faces of the familiar TNG regular cast, each to be featured with a memorable moment from the television run on the face of each silver note — and in the case of Captain Picard, his somber flute solo from the end of Season 5’s “The Inner Light.”
New Zealand Mint -- 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' character silver notes
1 of 5
Captain Picard silver note
Captain Picard silver note (rear image)
Captain Picard silver note (in protective envelope)
Here’s what the company has to say about the new Next Generation releases:
With excitement building around the arrival of ‘Star Trek: Picard,’ we are thrilled to reveal the first silver coin note in a new ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation.’ Characters Silver Coin Note Collection from New Zealand Mint, which features the esteemed leader himself, Captain Jean-Luc Picard. This first release comes complete with a six-note collector’s album and shows Jean-Luc as he appeared in the original saga over 20 years ago.
Made from 5g pure silver, this coin note features a striking coloured image of Captain Picard along with an engraved scene showing him playing his Kataan flute. The unique number in the limited-edition mintage is also printed on each coin note and it is packaged inside a ‘Star Trek’ themed protective sleeve.
The obverse of the note features the ‘Star Trek’ insignia and the Ian Rank-Broadley effigy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to confirm it as a legal tender coin for Niue.
A free ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ Characters Collector’s Album allows you to easily display all six coin notes as they are released: Jean-Luc Picard, Worf, William T. Riker, Deanna Troi, Data and Geordi La Forge. Each page includes a short biography of the character featured on the note. If you’re an avid ‘The Next Generation’ fan, then this is for you!
With a worldwide supply of only 10,000 coin notes, don’t wait to “make it so” and order yours from New Zealand Mint today!
The team at the New Zealand Mint sent us an early release of the Jean-Luc Picard note and book set to check out ahead of this week’s release, which is the first time we’ve really had a chance to get a hands-on look at one of these more unique entries in the world of Star Trek licensed products right now.
Each member of the Enterprise-D crew — with one exception, which we’ll get to in a moment — is nicely represented in the familiar animated likenesses that CBS has been using for Next Generation products for some time now, and it’s nice to see Deanna Troi included wearing her standard blue Starfleet uniform (a nice modification to Marina Sirtis’ TNG Season 5 publicity photo).
New Zealand Mint -- 'Star Trek: TNG' silver notes display book
1 of 7
Unfortunately, however, there’s a notable lack of Beverly Crusher in this set, something that’s become somewhat of a recurring issue with Next Generation products in recent years.
We confirmed with the team at the New Zealand Mint that this set was, like last year’s Original Series set, planned to be a six-character product line — meaning one of the primary TNG characters was always going to be excluded — but it’s a bit disappointing to see Crusher once again being left on the chopping block.
(Hopefully there will be an opportunity for this character to be included in a future release.)
New Zealand Mint -- 'Star Trek: TNG' Captain Picard silver note
1 of 4
While the silver notes are technically legal tender in the tiny island nation of Niue, they’re purely collectors’ items here in the United States, where each silver note is being released at a price point of $39 (including the Picard note, which has the display book included in that price).
If you’re interested in adding the New Zealand Mint Star Trek: The Next Generation silver character note set to your collection, you can find the Captain Picard release available for purchase at their online shop now with other characters to follow throughout the remainder of 2019.
Measuring a full 12 inches in length, the Klingon Sarcophagus Ship — also known as the Ship of the Dead — is by far the largest, and one of the most impressive, models that Hero Collector has released to date — in any of its various Star Trek model lines, including the XL Starships series.
From the moment that it first arrived to challenge the USS Shenzhou in “The Vulcan Hello,” the Sarcophagus Ship was going to be a challenge for the Hero Collector team. The ship is big, dwarfing its Federation counterparts in “The Battle of the Binary Stars,” and it is intricately detailed with spindly pylons, ornate carving along the bow section, and actual coffins lining its hull.
The first ‘special edition’ ship from the Star Trek: Discovery Starships Collection, this model triumphantly succeeds and is an impressive, gorgeous achievement for the Hero Collector team. Regardless of how you feel about the ship’s design as a Klingon vessel – certainly one of Star Trek’s most interesting and ambitious – you cannot deny that this is a very pretty model.
Largely plastic, the only metal component of the Sarcophagus Ship is the central section just below the neck, which likely serves to provide the ship a good center of gravity as it is sitting on top of its stand (which grips the model from below.) The rest of the ship is injection-molded plastic that replicates many of the small details of the ship and evokes the same organic feel as the digital model.
A particular highlight of this model is the translucent plastic areas in the central section of the ship, as yet unidentified on the show but which looks like a large piece of carved crystal around which the rest of the ship has been constructed.
Light shines through the translucent blue plastic, casting shadows and shading over the rough-hewn surface, and the detailing really does make you feel like this ship and its component parts were carved rather than constructed.
The model also recreates fabulously all of the spindles along the aft section of the warp nacelles. Not a single inch of this model is devoid of some kind of detailing, which means there are interesting angles all over – none of your unfinished undersides as with some of the other models.
The Ship of the Dead even evokes the ship’s many sarcophagi attached to its surface through lots of tiny little paint marks over every smooth surface going. In order to render these features as anything more than tiny dots of paint the model would have to have been much larger, but including those small details certainly helps you understand the sense of scale associated with this model.
There is very little to criticize about this fabulous recreation of the digital model. Most of the debates about the Ship of the Dead, and any of the first-season Discovery Klingon ship designs, are much more likely to rest in the realm of “but are these Klingon?” or not. I cannot answer that for you, but if you enjoyed this ship’s appearance in Discovery it would be well worth adding to your collection.
It’s a very cool ship, if maybe even a tad too large. This was probably the smallest size that Eaglemoss could make without beginning to sacrifice significant detail on the model, but with such a large collection of starships from both the main subscription line and the Discovery line, not to mention the XL Starships releases, space is at a premium and this ship sure takes up a lot of it… but it is totally worth it. tlhIngan maH taHjaj!
Star Trek licensing has been branching out to new alcoholic ventures over the last two years, starting with the first steps into bourbon, vodka, and scotch through Silver Screen Bottling Company in 2018 — and now, the franchise is moving into the world of wines, thanks to the family heritage of one starship captain you may have heard of.
The company’s first public appearance for their Trek wines was at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas — the site of this month’s annual Star Trek convention — and we caught up with Wines That Rock’s Spencer Brewer to talk about these new wines.
Bottles of the Château Picard wine on display at the Las Vegas convention.
TREKCORE: So you are here debuting two new Star Trek wines – including one from the famous Château Picard, the vineyard owned by Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s family in the Star Trek universe. Can you tell me a little bit about this product?
SPENCER BREWER: When they created the Jean-Luc Picard character, they made it important to the character’s backstory that he and his brother came from a vineyard, and as you saw in the trailer the whole Star Trek: Picard series starts in the vineyard.
Little did they know [when they wrote “Family,” where the vineyard was introduced] that there is an actual Château Picard in Bordeaux, France that had been there for three generations making a cru Bordeaux.
For 20 years CBS has tried to negotiate and make a deal to sell the wines, but it never worked out for a lot of different reasons. We got involved, got the license to sell Star Trek- branded wines, and we started working with Château Picard — the estate in Bordeaux — and the [wine] authorities in France. Over a period of five to six months, we came to agreement as on what was going to be on the front of the label.
CBS sent us over the digital file of the actual label that’s on the front of the [prop wine bottles] Star Trek: Picard so that we could correct a few words on the front to make it compliant [with France’s bottling requirements], but aside from those very small changes, this is the same paper, the same font, the same color – everything – that’s on the show.
Prop bottles of Château Picard seen in May’s first STAR TREK: PICARD teaser.
TREKCORE: And is this something where you hear the show is happening and seek out the license, or was in the works prior to Star Trek: Picard and its vineyard-themed trailers?
BREWER: We got the license before Picard, and first we were going to start with creating a Cardassian kanar. We were asking ourselves: are we going to come out with a Klingon bloodwine? What are we going to do first? And then CBS told us that if there was any way for us to get the Château Picard — because that’s the holy grail — and they hadn’t been able to get it worked out with the vineyard up until that point.
That’s when we decided to change our focus and work on the Château Picard, to see if it was even possible… and it took a month and a half for us to even get the winery to agree to talk to us about the project. They weren’t interested, because it takes a long time to be designated acru Bordeaux in France and they didn’t want to put a starship on their bottle.
When they finally realized we were trying to be honorable, do the right thing, and work with them on the label, and that this is real – then they got it and became very excited to work on it.
Picard (Patrick Stewart) carries a bottle of Château Picard to greet Raffi Musiker.
TREKCORE: Do you think that’s because of your company’s history of working with wine?
BREWER: Our main company is called Wines That Rock, and we’ve created wines for the Rolling Stones, Sting, The Grateful Dead, Woodstock, Pink Floyd, 50 Shades of Greg, Cirque de Soleil, NPR Wine Club, Turner Classic Movie Wine Club, Virgin Wine Group, and KISS, among many others.
[Château Picard] saw that we really honor the brand, and because we come from intellectual property backgrounds, it was really important for us to show them that we’ll protect your brand and honor what they wanted it to be. We’re not here just to slap a label on a bottle.
We want it to be as authentic as they are. With a lot of the bands we work with, we’ll get the band members into the winery to make the wine with us. When we did the Downton Abbey series, for example, we ended up selling the wine in that the butler was actually serving at [Highclere Castle, where that series was filmed.]
TREKCORE: For those oenophiles who might be reading this, can you tell me a little about the wine itself?
BREWER: This is a cru Bordeaux. It’s slight in style, very elegant as a wine. It’s 85% cabernet and 15% merlot. It’s been aged in oak for 18 months before it even came online. This is a 2016 vintage, which we’ve now sold out of. We’re now going to run into the 2017.
This bottle is really good to drink now, but it’d be fantastic in ten years. A lot of people have been buying one to put on the shelf, and a couple to share with their friends. Right at the very top on the back label we quote Jean-Luc Picard [from a deleted scene in Star Trek: Nemesis], “They say a vintner’s history is in every glass. The soil he came from him. His past and hopes for the future. So, to the future…”
TREKCORE: The Chateau Picard is only one of the wines you announced…
BREWER: We’re going to come out with a lot of different products over time, but for now we also created a United Federation of Planets Special Reserve Old Vine Zinfandel. It’s in a very elegant bottle that looks very futuristic. There’s nothing else around here like this.
It took us a thousand different bottles over six countries to choose this bottle. We went to 80 different wineries, tasted 200-300 wines, grabbed about a dozen that worked, and then did a blind tasting panel. This particular wine is from three different old vine zinfandel vineyards in Dry Creek Valley and Russian River Valley in Sonoma County, California.
The hardest part about this project was finding someone to bottle this because it won’t fit on any bottling line. This is hand bottled, hand numbered, hand labeled, hand corked, and hand foiled. There are six processes involved with every single bottle of this wine.
The ‘United Federation of Planets Special Reserve’ wine, also on the way.
The wine inside is just exquisite, because if this is going to be served at Federation banquets and treaty signings, it has to look elegant and cool, but the wine has got to hold up to the vision of what it is.
On the back label, it says: United Federation of Planets, founded in 2161 by an alliance of humans, Vulcans, Andorians, and Tellarites, the United Federation of Planets has long recognized the core principles of mutual cooperation and the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
And that’s how we start this whole thing out – we’re honoring the Federation.
These two wines [Château Picard and United Federation of Planets Special Reserve] that we came out with when we first announced [were being sold as a two-pack] collector’s edition. We made 1,701 of them with hand numbered bottles on the back. Those sold out in nine hours. The whole amount we came out was 250 cases each – those sold out in 23 hours.
Now we’re coming out with the second release of both bottles. People can go online ourStar Trek Wines website, and both products will be coming back into the country in a couple of months. We’ll be shipping the second version in the fourth quarter of this year.
The only other thing that’s going to be coming out this year is we have this wooden etched box that holds six of the bottles from Château Picard that is made there in France. That will be a special collector’s edition package.
“With soft ripe raspberry and cracked white peppercorn aromas blended with an Andorian spice…”
TREKCORE: Will we see see the UFP Reserve wine in Star Trek: Picard as well?
BREWER: Well, we made up three bottles and CBS had them sent to the Picard prop master — we’ve been told it’s been on set in a few shoots already, but we don’t know if it’ll actually be seen on screen, or left on the cutting room floor.
You never know what’s going to happen. We all hope they’re going to be in the shots, and if it makes it [on screen], it legitimizes the effort and the provenance of the bottle.
TREKCORE: It sounds like the response to the first two wines you have put out has been extremely positive. What else do you have in the works?
BREWER: We know we’re probably going to do the Klingon bloodwine. There have been two or three that have come out in the past [from other companies], but the wine was not good in any of them, the labels were not great, and they were served in just normal bottles.
We would need to work really hard on finding an amazing bottle, because the original one was a silver oil can. We’re going to have to come up with a bottle that Klingons would really want. We’ve already picked the wine; we know where it’s from and what it’s going to be. All I can say is that it’s an amazing wine.
The second one is my dream, which would be to do the Cardassian kanar. We did research on this for six months so we know where the factories were [that made the bottles that appeared on Deep Space Nine], who made them, which variations were on each series because it was shown two or three times. There’s only one that is the real thing, and the last one of those came off the line in the early 1970s at a factory in Spain. They were also made at the time in Italy.
We’ve found three factories that will make them, but we have to make 20,000 bottles for them to start the process. That is extremely expensive, so we have to make sure it’s the real deal before we go further.
We don’t know yet what the second one is, we will probably do the Klingon bloodwine as one of the next ones. But we’re not exactly sure what the other one will be.
Klingon bloodwine, Cardassian kanar, and Bajoran spring wine.
BREWER: Yes! We found out that [the screen-used] bottle only holds 600 ml, which is illegal to sell in the United States. So we have to go down to 500 ml or up to 750 ml. That means we have to have the bottles made from scratch – another minimum order of 20,000. So again, it’s a high bar.
TREKCORE: Well, the response to the first round of releases seems to have gone over well with fans.
BREWER: I appreciate it. It’s been a lot of fun and a great process. I grew up watching Star Trek in the 1960s and we’ve all been fans, so when we did this we made wines that we wanted to drink and collect as fans, and that’s where it came from.
The new Star Trek wine offerings are available for online purchase now through StarTrekWines.com, with the Château Picard priced at $60 and the UFP Special Reserve priced at $50 per bottle — each are expected to ship before the end of the year.
You know, “A Piece of the Action” was never one that made my list of preferred Star Trek episodes.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I didn’t find it entertaining or funny — I love a funny story just as much as the next fan, and I think this episode always manages to make any responsibly curated list of humorous Trek episodes, but I think that was its only saving grace.
I just like a good slice of drama to go with my science fiction. Star Trek: Year Five began with a more dramatic overtone and Issue #4 in this comic series from Brandon Easton and Martin Coccolo sees a change in mood from the original one that we saw in Issues #1 and #2.
The story so far: a return to the planet Sigma Iotia II, the planet that saw a society contaminated by a book about 20th Century gangsters in Chicago… only to see further contamination from Dr. McCoy’s forgotten communicator in “A Piece of the Action.”
In Issue #3, we saw the highly-influenced Iotians with a developed, responsible system of government and on the verge of warp technology. However, not all is perfect in this society as the government has decided to abandon further space research forcing an old acquaintance of the Enterprise crew, the former mobster, Jojo Krako, to return as a terrorist pushing for more militant change.
By the end of the last issue, we saw Spock, captured by Krako, announcing his bid to run for the office of Planetary president. With that, we see a return to the humour that was present in the episode which throws the reader off balance; at least a reader who has been set up with that sort of expectation in mind at the start of the series.
I hate to be one of those un-funny killjoys, but let’s just completely forget about the Prime Directive. Again, I have a great appreciation for humour — but in this case, I think it’s misplaced. What’s admirable about Brandon Easton’s writing is that he manages to successfully replicate the same sort of mood in this comic as one would expect to find in the episode.
It’s very authentic and has the same bantering pace between McCoy and Spock, for instance, when McCoy challenges his decision to run for president with a typical McCoy “Are you out of your dang-blasted mind?” Easton is very faithful to the characters and that is very evident in his dialogue. That takes a degree of skill to replicate and provide that sense of Trek you want in a comic adaptation.
There are more serious issues at play in this issue. While Sigma Iotia II is irreparably contaminated, Engineer Scott still has to deal with repairing the Enterprise while simultaneously putting down a mutiny by a Starfleet officer who rejects the principles of the Federation. Uhura still has to learn to communicate with the Tholian refugee… and we still don’t know who Captain Kirk’s mysterious captor is that we were introduced to at phaser point in Issue #1.
To be honest, I really didn’t find it to be a bad story. But there are a number of serious incidents that are happening at the same time that run contrary to the mood that this comic series started with. I just don’t think that with the threat of mutiny and the presence of a refugee Tholian on board an Enterprise with mysterious power disruptions, the shift in plot to a funny one fits in — especially given that the reason for investigating the planet in the first place is a direct result of McCoy’s loss of his communicator in the first place.
Looking at the art in this book though, I found Martin Coccolo’s art to be spectacularly good. I really enjoyed the great amount of background detail in the panels that didn’t detract away from the major story. I especially noted his attention to character expression and action. When you see a page that is so richly described and makes such a responsible use of the space, you know that this is an artist who’s given us a great deal of his best work. I’d like to see more of it in the future.
There are only two covers for this book, however. The regular maintains the humorous tone with Kirk and McCoy staring up at one of Spock’s campaign posters with the slogan “IDIC Forever”. Drawn by Stephen Thompson and colored by Charlie Kirchoff, it’s an excellent example of the cover supplying the reader with part of the story.
The retailer-incentive cover is a stylized, propaganda-ish design by J.J. Lendl, encouraging travelers to visit Sigma Iotia II. With an Andorian mobster holding a 1920’s Tommy gun and a slogan extorting tourists to “discover their inner gangster,” we can see the comedy continue in this very entertaining and witty piece of art.
There’s a time for humour and I just don’t think that this story arc was a good fit, given that Jackson Lanzing and Colin Kelly set up so many things in the beginning of this series. Trying to recreate the same sort of humour that was present in “A Piece of the Action” in the series of events that preceded this story arc seemed out of place and better suited for its own individual story line.
But, then again, like I said: maybe I just need to lighten up.
Viacom’s holdings include Paramount Pictures — which holds the keys to Star Trek‘s film franchise, from the first ten “prime timeline” movies through three Chris Pine-led Kelvin timeline pictures — along with MTV, Showtime, and Nickelodeon, the kid-friendly cable network set to be the home of the second Secret Hideout-produced Star Trek animated series currently in development.
Combining with CBS’s longstanding ownership of Star Trek television and licensing rights — and the upstart CBS All Access streaming service — the two media companies each carry complementary offerings to one another, making the newly-titled “ViacomCBS” entity one that will benefit each… especially the Paramount Pictures film division, which has been facing significant difficulties in recent years.
ViacomCBS touts the combined strength of the merged companies’ content production and ownership.
One of the more public benefits of the merger will be the blending of the two companies’ content libraries, including of course the Star Trek franchise which had been touted as a potential impetus behind the merger plans, in the age of mega-forces like Disney’s Marvel Studios and Star Wars — the large film library owned by Paramount Pictures is expected to make its way to bolster the offerings of CBS All Access’ streaming service, for example.
The official announcement even included Star Trek‘s “reunification” — specifically — as one of the benefits to the corporate union, surely a sign that the Trek franchise is being looked upon as a keystone of ViacomCBS’s future plans.
All that being said, of course, it’s likely to be quite a while until the current Star Trek projects will start to see the benefit of this merger; the deal itself isn’t even complete yet and is expected to take several more months before the situation finally clears the usual regulatory approvals — so don’t expect to see any immediate changes to the Trek we know, but with today’s news, and the recently-formedStar Trek global franchise group that’s been built within CBS’s walls, the future is likely looking bright for Trek of the future.
The Star Trek: Discovery Blu-ray Steelbook release can already be preordered at Best Buy in the US, and we’ll let you know as other preorder options come online over the next few weeks.
Star Trek: DiscoverySeason 1 Blu-ray
Star Trek: DiscoverySeason 2 Blu-ray
Star Trek: DiscoverySeason 3 Blu-ray
'The Animated Series'
'The Animated Series'
'The Official Guide to
'Star Trek: TOS Sketchbook'
'TNG Movies Sketchbook'
'The Art of John Eaves'