Skip to main content

Star Trek Continues Episode V Premier

I think it was back in the late 1960's or maybe the early 1970s that David Gerrold wrote a post mortem of the original Star Trek series. Gerrold, who wrote one of the original series most endearing episodes, "The Trouble with Tribbles" attributed the cancellation of Star Trek, at least in part to what he called a "hardening of the arteries" created by the need to have either a communicator or a transporter malfunction to prevent Scotty from beaming Kirk and the rest of the landing party back to Enterprise and prematurely ending the conflict that made an episode.

If the first five episodes of Star Trek Continues, a fan produced continuation of the original series with Vic Mignona as Kirk, Todd Haberkorn as Spock, Chuck Huber as Dr McCoy, and Christopher Doohan as Scotty, are any indication, Gerrold was wrong. In fact, he couldn't have been more wrong - There's no sign of hardening of the arteries at all. It may interest Mr. Gerrold to observe that neither the transporter nor the communicator could have changed the outcome of any of the first 5 episodes (no one actually leaves Enterprise in the first 4 episodes, and, well, they don't actually leave in episode 5 either...); yet the stories are pure Star Trek.

These new episodes are intended to continue the original series to its natural conclusion and bring the crew of Enterprise to where they appeared to be at the beginning of the first movie. The sets, costumes, and all other details of the new episodes are faithful to the original series - even down to having special fabrics made to duplicate uniforms and even the covers of the sickbay beds. The production values are higher than they were for the original. Yet amazingly, the production budget is only about half of what it cost to produce an episode in the sixties. (Of course it helps to keep costs down when the cast and crew do it for the love of their art and contribute to the show financially from their own pockets...)

I had the privilege of watching the world premier of episode V, "Divided We Stand" at the Salt Lake Comic Con this evening. True to Gene Roddenberry's vision of the series, the episode's central conflict centers around issues relevant to our world today, but set in a different time and space - a device that always provides edifying contrast which hopefully helps us to see where our true values lie.

I won't give any spoilers for those of you who may not have seen the premier tonight, but I will give you the link to the series website. The new episode should be online tomorrow (9/25/15). If you haven't seen the first four go give them a look.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Agregate Demand and the US Savings Rate

In my last post, I touched on the differences between the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig von Mises. Immediately aftward, I was directed to this story in the New York Times. It seems that americans are saving more instead of spending the their money on consumer goods. Up until this downturn, about 70% of the US Economy was consumer spending, and in 2005, the US Savings rate was negative 2.7%. The "stimulus" is supposed to stimulate spending to get money moving again. But it isn't happening as planned. Folks are saving for down payments because they don't expect to get zero down home mortgages; they're saving to replenish their decimated retirement and college funds. The austrians believe that the best way to "fix" the economy is to allow the "malinvestment" created by the false signals in the economy (from the open market ops and deficit spending) to be liquidated and the resources repurposed into better investments. It...

Conventional Wisdom Meets Reality:
There Ought Not to be a Law

The "before" picture of an intersection near Bristol, England: Maximum traffic of 1700 cars per hour and about 300 pedestrians. Commute time for some people using the intersection over 20 minutes in rush hour traffic. The "after" picture: Traffic flow increased to 2000 cars per hour, and still handles the 300 pedestrians. Commute time reduced to just 5 minutes. In the eight months since the change, there have only been two minor incidents, and not a single person (motorist or pedestrian) has been injured in an accident. How did they do it? What new technology did they use to effect this miraculous change? They took out the traffic conrol signals! Yes, you read that right, the traffic lights were removed. By removing all of the red, yellow and green lights, the motorists became more courteous, more cautious, and more sharing of the road way. In complete defiance of the conventional wisdom. This experiment raises a lot of very interesting questions. First, do our pre...

Haiti Adoption Story

Most of us have seen or read stories of adoptions of Haitian children following the earthquake last month. Some of the stories have had a positive slant (the charity has saved children...) other's have had a negative slant (the "missionaries" who kidnapped and tried to smuggle 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic). At a family gathering yesterday, my wife heard a story about a couple that was "finally" able to adopt a child they've been trying to adopt for about 4 years. As the story was related to me, this couple had originally been matched with this child about 4 years ago, but the adoption was cancelled when the parents of the child took her back and parented her themselves. After about three years of caring for the child, the natural parents returned her to the orphanage because both of them had been diagnosed with tuberculosis; a death sentence in Haiti. (Mortality for untreated TB is about 67%.) The adoption was finalized just befo...