We know you’ve enjoyed our Enterprise model renovation videos over the last two years, but we also know many of you want to go even further into the process that brought the classic starship back to life.
Filming the ‘experts visit’ last spring. (Photo: Gary Kerr)
Here’s the official press announcement:
SMITHSONIAN CHANNEL™ COMMEMORATES 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF LANDMARK SCI-FI TELEVISION SERIES ‘BUILDING STAR TREK’ SET TO PREMIERE SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4 AT 8 P.M. ET/PT
Two-Hour Special to Take In-Depth Look At Far Reaching Influence That Original Star Trek Series Has Had on Science And Technology
NEW YORK, JULY 6, 2016 – Smithsonian Channel will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek with a two-hour special that will take a look at the lasting influence the original Star Trek series has had on the world. BUILDING STAR TREK will premiere Sunday, September 4 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel.
When the series debuted on September 8, 1966, the world was introduced to a number of alien concepts, such as hand-held communication devices, desktop computers, space shuttles, touch screens, and more. Star Trek’s visionary creator was remarkably able to conceive of a world so different from his own that the series would go on to have a profound legacy in television history.
BUILDING STAR TREK will follow the conservation team from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum as they attempt to restore and conserve the original 11-foot, 250-pound model of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original series. The special also will track the effort to rebuild a model of the original U.S.S. Enterprise bridge by using authentic set pieces and props, which recently went on display at Seattle’s EMP Museum.
The two-hour special also profiles a new generation of engineers and scientists who are making Star Trek’s visionary technology real, pushing the boundaries of physics with inventions first conceived on the iconic series: warp drives, medical tricorders, cloaking devices and tractor beams.
Proving that one TV show has truly gone where no man has gone before, BUILDING STAR TREK will showcase clips from the original series that highlight each scientific innovation and the new technologies that have inspired generations.
Preview clips of the two-hour special will be featured on July 22 at San Diego Comic Con later this month, and will be available to stream online after the special airs in September.
We’re just two weeks again from the launch of 2016’s massive San Diego Comic Con event in southern California, and while we knew that STAR TREK BEYOND would make its big debut on July 20 with a giant outdoor IMAX screening, there’s now a lot more Trek content coming!
The biggest event after the BEYOND screening is Star Trek: Celebrating 50 Years, a roundtable discussion on the history and impact of Trek – and the future of the franchise’s journey – hosted by Trek 2017 showrunner Bryan Fuller. This panel is scheduled for July 23, and includes members from every Trek television series: William Shatner, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, Jeri Ryan, and Scott Bakula.
In addition, there are five other featured events scheduled for the SDCC week, including:
A new expansive interview with Peter Chiang – founder of effects house Double Negative, and VFX supervisor on BEYOND – spoke to HD Video Pro magazine’s Kevin H. Martin in their August issue, where the digital designer goes into great detail on not just the revised Enterprise, but also the breadth of CGI work that’s gone into this summer’s new film.
Krall’s Swarm ships collide with the Enterprise midsection.
While we noticed a few design updates to the Enterprisewhen comparing the December 2015 and May 2016 BEYOND trailers, it turns out that the digital model first created by Industrial Light & Magic has received more of an overhaul than we previously assumed.
All of the [previously-created] digital assets belong to Paramount, so we inherited the ILM model [of the Enterprise]. Even so, there was a lot of shader work needed to translate that into the ship we wanted to see onscreen, which is the Justin Lin version of the Enterprise.
It goes back in time a bit stylistically, looking closer to the original TV version, which always seemed a littler vulnerable with those slender segments linking the saucer, engineering, and the nacelles.
The Enterprise rockets away from Starbase Yorktown.
Our new changes included adding a ‘fastback’ aspect to the nacelles, which formed a bit of a ‘V’ shape [angling inward towards the rear]. We also stretched and thinned both the nacelles and the ship’s neck, making them more obvious targets for the [Swarm attack].
We also took the opportunity to give fans close looks at parts of the ship they’ve never previously seen from these angles, a way pay tribute to the fantastically-original design of the TV ship.
The new warp effect is based upon real scientific research on gravitational lensing.
The wild ‘warp bubble’ effects seen in last month’s trailer blew us away when we first saw them, and it turns out that a lot of work went into designing this new high-speed vortex, a significant change from the warp graphics seen in the prevous films.
In the past films, there was always kind of a light-driven way they had for showing the stream to warp speed. In reevaluating our options, this gave us a chance to take inspiration from real physics for our warp effect.
Right from the outset, I was presenting Justin with ideas on how this could look. We did studies on how light is bent by gravitational lensing, then looked at high-speed shooting of 3000-4000 [frames per second] to see how bullets create a wake as they travel through water.
We also scrutinized images of planes and their vapor trials as they go beyond the sound barrier. I imagined multiple shock waves building up and stacking on one another, forming this layer in front of the vessel. This tells us we’re traveling at high speed and gives a dimensional quality to it.
The USS Franklin approaches Starbase Yorktown.
Chiang also discussed his goal of expanding the look of space travel:
We looked at a lot of NASA footage to see how the whites blow out in genuine conditions of harsh direct sunlight [in space], and I wanted to introduce a lot more of a feel for 3D space this time, in terms of ship and camera movement.
That way, it wouldn’t all be so linear, and instead reinforce how there’s no up or down in this environment.
Swarm vessels fly through Yorktown’s interior cityscape.
The bbiggest digital creation for BEYOND is Starbase Yorktown, a spidery structure held within a great spherical forcefield – and the end result of last fall’s overseas visit to Dubai, where the practical footage was shot for this deep-space destination.
The base is out at the frontier of Federation space, constructed as a series of angled structures… within a 16-mile diameter sphere. Using a volume of space in the most efficient and economical manner would absolutely be the way to go with structures out there, and that meant maximizing the inner volume.
We played with the idea that the sphere surrounding the station was opaque during the day, but the inner hemisphere becomes more transparent at night, letting the inhabitants see stars outside; that would be a comfort for space travelers.
Starbase Yorktown’s city from above, based upon Dubai’s skyline.
The [background footage of Dubai] served as a basis for our final [designs], but we had to embellish very extensively for pretty much every view. Everything changed color-wise, since the Federation is principally blue, white, silver, and black, but Dubai feels very beige and yellow.
During shooting [in Dubai], we were very conscious of what was to be visible overhead. We had LIDAR scans done of about forty buildings there that worked for our purposes architecturally… to populate the background [of Yorktown].
The USS Franklin fights its way through the Swarm fleet.
Finally, Chiang also weighed in on how his colleagues in the various VFX teams working on the film used their own knowledge of Trek history to keep the digital designs in check.
We found that every [VFX] facility working on [Beyond] had what I call “Star Trek Yodas” working there; each of them was like a kind of brain trust you could question to find out if some design or maneuver went against what had been established on other Trek shows and films.
We had sequences with a vessel from an earlier century and the design process took a bit of a hit when the Yodas told us [the USS Franklin] should reflect what had been seen in the [time of Star Trek: Enterprise].
When a series of puzzling events begin to affect the holodeck – and spread to the rest of the ship – the Enterprise crew’s analysis leads to a surprising conclusion: the starship is creating its own offspring! To prevent their own destruction, the Starfleet crew must ensure the survival of the emerging lifeform!
We haven’t heard much from actor Idris Elba, who plays the villainous Krall in this month’s STAR TREK BEYOND, but overnight the Brit tweeted out a new cell phone photo of himself in full bad-guy costume from the movie’s set.
Idris Elba: “Krall. Bad man.”
Much of Krall’s motivations in the film, which has been described as a “well-earned hatred for the Federation” in several interviews, remains a mystery. A recent article in Empire references his desire for a “glowing green artifact” being kept aboard the Enterprise, but that’s not yet been noted elsewhere.
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Visual effects studio Double Negative has been hard at work crafting the digital designs for STAR TREK BEYOND, and as with most big-ticket films, they’re working up to the very last second to get every pixel perfect – as DNeg’s Seda Yilmaz can attest:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BHVv6SEhw51/
The crew at Double Negative will be kicking each crafted effect to completion up until the studio pulls the film from their servers for global distribution – and from the look of the previews we’ve seen so far, they’ve had a huge job.
We’re looking forward to the final look of STAR TREK BEYOND when it arrives in theaters later this month.
If you’ve been following our coverage of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum’s massive, two-year endeavor to bring the classic Enterprise model back to life – come on, of course you have! – the long wait is over, as the starship returned to public view on July 1.
We were invited to join the conservation team for the first time last January, while the Enterprise was still in its 1991-era state, at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, and got a great up-close-and-personal view of the eleven-foot starship.
The model in January 2015, before any work had begun. (Photo by Kelly M. Phillips for TrekCore.)
After a year of study and planning, the Enterprise was disassembled at the end of December and spread apart for more in-depth review and analysis of the paint, adhesives, and internal structure – and our team went back into the lab in January 2016, just before the real heavy-duty work began.
The model broken down to its component parts in January 2016. (Photo by Kelly M. Phillips for TrekCore.)
Finally, the Enterprise was completely overhauled this spring – rewired for new lighting and motor components, repaired to address structural issues, and repainted to bring back the 1967-era appearance – before being shipped back to Washington, D.C. for public unveiling.
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This Tuesday, our team joined some other press attendees at an early preview of the new Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, allowing us to get a special look at the fully-refit starship before yesterday’s big public debut.
Stay tuned for our final Enterprise interview videos in the coming days, where we discuss the new spacedock – err, display case – that holds the starship in public view, the revised paint job, and some newly-built secrets in the reconstructed model!
The Bad Robot production team has mastered a special version of the film that allows fans to experience an expanded picture, with select sequences of BEYOND footage created to dramatically expand the across three screens.
About twenty minutes of the film will have additional content to the left and right of the primary theatrical screening presentation.
Barco Escape theaters are currently only operating in a few markets, with about twenty-five locations worldwide; the company has stated their intention to expand into additional cities over the next few years.
To reserve tickets for STAR TREK BEYOND‘s Barco experience, you can locate theaters and showtimes at Ready2Escape.com.
This September, however, IDW will be traveling across the Trek multiverse with a new universe-spanning anthology series covering all eras of Star Trek adventure.
New “Star Trek” Anthology Series Will Kick Off In September A 6-Part Bi-Monthly Series “Waypoint” Will Span All Iterations of Star Trek
San Diego, CA (June 27, 2016) – To celebrate 50 years of “Star Trek,” IDW Publishing, under license by CBS Consumer Products, will boldly launch a new series in September which honors the legacy of the various Starfleet crews which have inhabited the “Star Trek” universe over the past five decades.
From Captain Kirk to Archer, and everyone in between, each issue of “Star Trek: Waypoint” will feature brand-new stories starring fan-favorite characters written and drawn by some of today’s top talents. The debut issue will feature contributions by Donny Cates (The Paybacks, Interceptor), Mack Chater (The Fuse), and Sandra Lanz (Prophet) with more exciting stories by all-star creators to be announced soon!
Cover art for the first “Waypoint” issue, arriving in September.
Cates and Chater will team on the lead story set during “Star Trek: The Next Generation” era which sees Geordi La Forge and Data put their scientific minds together to decipher a mysterious ship’s coded message. Their discovery may alter the course of scientific human history as we know it!
Lanz will write and illustrate the back up taking place during “Star Trek: The Original Series” and shines a spotlight on Uhura as she navigates a strange planet. Stranded, she attempts to make contact with a bizarre alien creature.
“Star Trek: Waypoint” will feature cover art by acclaimed artists Marc Laming (Planet Hulk) and Mark Buckingham (Fables) with future variant covers planned featuring “Star Trek” artists from the last 50 years of Trek comics. Set a course for your local comic shop and prepare to engage this September when issue one of this thrilling new series arrives!
The series is currently scheduled for a six-issue run, and is expected to included storylines from Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, as well as possible visits to movie-era events for both the Original Series and The Next Generation.
Uncolored artwork by Sandra Lanz from the first issue, via io9.
As always, keep coming back to TrekCore each month for our reviews as each issue arrives!
[His death is] absolutely senseless; [Anton was] a beautiful guy. I don’t even know how to talk about it. [I and the cast] already knew this was going to be a really bittersweet experience because of the loss of Leonard [Nimoy] last year, but this has just been absolutely devastating for all of us, you know.
I think our goal has to be just to celebrate his incredible life and honor him as much as we can. It was a terrible loss, not only to us, but to the industry and audiences. He was such a talent.
I think we take [the nine years the ‘Star Trek’ cast has spent together] for granted in a lot of ways, because we genuinely love each other so much…. we are truly intertwined, inextricably, and I think we always will be, in such a great way.
We laugh like nobody’s business, but we’re very lucky to have each other. There’s no question about it, and I think we are genuinely connected on a really true an authentic level as a cast and as friends, even when we’re not filming the movies.
Quinto also jokes about how he didn’t quite latch onto the Original Series as a child due to the relatively low production values (compared to the big-budget films he’s starred in as Spock), in a good-natured conversation with the late-night host.
Bok, a dangerous Ferengi from Picard’s past, returns with a threat against a young man the Starfleet officer has never met… who Bok claims to be the captain’s son! When the villain kidnaps Jason Vigo in order to kill him in revenge for his own son’s death, it’s up to Picard to rescue the innocent civilian!
