by Mariel Keeran
For the week of February 15-21, 2013
J.J. Abrams confirms Klingons will be in new movie
Source: MTV.com
Screencap by Mariel KeeranIf you’ve watched the deleted scenes of the 2009 Star Trek movie, you know that Klingons were set to appear in the film, but ended up on the cutting room floor instead. This will not be the case with Star Trek Into Darkness, as J.J. Abrams recently confirmed to MTV U.S. that Klingons will, indeed, be appearing this time around.
“Their role in this is definitely adversarial and you’ll see how that plays out,” he mentioned, while also reassuring that viewers won’t need knowledge of any preexisting story to be able to follow the film.
In the same interview, Abrams mentioned the importance of Alice Eve’s character, Carol Marcus, who was presented as the mother of Capt. Kirk’s son, David, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. While still keeping tight-lipped about whether or not this indicates that Benedict Cumberbatch’s character is that of Khan, Abrams did have this to say about Marcus: “[She’s] someone who is part of the adventure. Her role is important. She wouldn’t be in the movie otherwise.”
Gold shirts more deadly than red shirts
Source: CNET.com
Image from verydemotivational.comEveryone, including those who don’t consider themselves Trek fans, knows the red shirt joke. Anyone wearing a red shirt to an away mission is far more likely to meet an untimely demise, right? Well, if you look carefully at the data, wrong.
Matthew Barsalou looked at the number of deaths throughout TOS and then crunched the numbers. Strictly speaking, out of all deaths there were more red shirt deaths than any other color. However, when one considers total population of each color shirt, the actual percentage of red shirt deaths was, at 10% of the red shirt population, less than gold shirt deaths, which came in at 13.4% of the gold shirt population. Blue shirts only lost 5.1% of their population. Now, with this information in hand…who’s actually going to stop making red shirt jokes?
Watch a clip from Colm Meaney’s new movie
Source: StarTrek.com
Image from StarTrek.com
In his latest movie, Stand Off, Colm Meaney plays a cop brought in to handle a hostage situation inside a curio shop. The film is set to be released on February 22 and, with four other movies in post production, marks just one of many that Meaney has been working on lately. Of course, this is all while also appearing regularly on Hell on Wheels. A man that busy is certainly dedicated to his craft. Stand Off co-stars Brendan Fraser and Martin McCann.
TNG DVDs receive a makeover
Source: StarTrek.com
Image from StarTrek.comWhile seasons of The Next Generation are being metered out on Blu-ray, the whole series is being spruced up and re-released on DVD on April 16. The content will remain the same as the previous releases, but the packaging has been changed to show one silhouette of a different main character per season. If you want to get a jump on collecting this remarkable new packaging, head to Amazon on March 12 to purchase Seasons 1 & 2, which will sell for $35. The rest of the seasons will retail for $47. (Coincidence? Doubtful.)
Holodecks may be just around the corner
Source: The Register
“If we had one of those on board, I can only imagine what they’d be used for,” said Malcolm Reed on the subject of holodecks in the ENT episode Unexpected. According to the general manager of AMD’s global business units, Lisa Su, we might be as few as ten years away from finding out how we could pass time in such a room.
At the International Solid States Circuit Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Su invited LeVar Burton to join her onstage as she explained the route she believes computing needs to take in order to bring holodecks out of the realm of science fiction. According to Su, it’s all about heterogeneous system architecture (HSA), which basically boils down to an increase in efficiency across four computer architecture vectors: power, performance, programmability, and portability.
AMD is hard at work in their attempt to break from linear computing, which Su stated has gone as far as it can go. Then, it’s just a matter of time before we can start enjoying, say, a tropical paradise between afternoon meetings.
Trouble With Tribbles writer Gerrold offers to author Superman tales
Source: Queerty
The Trouble with Tribbles writer David Gerrold penned a letter to DC comics after hearing that well-known science fiction author Orson Scott Card was being tapped to write a new Superman title. In his letter, Gerrold, who is openly gay, offered to contribute his own stories in order to balance Card, who is quite vocal in his anti-gay sentiments. This comes after an online petition was started by fans to encourage DC to drop Card from their payroll. At the time of writing, the petition is less than 10,000 signatures away from its goal of 25,000.
La La Land Records wins award for TMP soundtrack
Source: Film Music Critics
The International Film Music Critics Association awarded La La Land Records two awards this year. The first was for Best Archival Release of an Existing Score for their release of Jerry Goldsmith’s 1979 score Star Trek: The Motion Picture. La La Land Records also won the category of Film Music Record Label of the Year for the third straight year. Congratulations, and please keep the Trek releases coming!
If the release of TNG season 3 on Blu-ray wasn’t enough for Trekkies today, fans in the US and the UK can now pre-order TNG season 4 on Blu-ray from Amazon. The scheduled release date for the US is July 30, with the UK release date coming a day earlier on July 29. Right now the US preorder price is $90.99, a 30% savings from the suggested $129.99. If the past is any indication, customers can expect that price to plunge even lower as the release date nears.
Charlynn Schmiedt | 