Saturday 18 June 2016

New starship cross-sections, and other Star Trek Beyond updates

A bunch more Star Trek Beyond updates for you today, including more interviews, notes on the soundtrack, and another trailer variant. But first, a very exciting release for starship lovers!

Available now in the July/August edition of Popular Mechanics is a gorgeous spread of new cross-sectional artwork featuring the major starships of Star Trek Beyond: The USS Enterprise, USS Franklin, and one of the swarm ships.


The artwork was created by Kemp Remillard (who last year illustrated Star Wars: The Force Awakens Incredible Cross-Sections) and gives us the best (first) ever look at the internal arrangement of the nuEnterprise (with new swept back nacelle configuration), and also describes the Franklin as "an early prototype ship that was the first to reach warp 4", further enforcing the design's link to the NX class.

The spread, which isn't even hinted at on the cover of the magazine, is the major feature of a four-page Star Trek piece, so I'm going to resist posting at high res - UPDATE: Popular Mechanics have now released a medium resolution version on their website, so I've posted to that quality here too. You can get a digital copy of the magazine right now though, at Magzter, which lets you zoom in too a pretty decent resolution, and of course print copies (which I will certainly be hunting down) should be available too. Found via The Babel Conference.

Now can we please have a full cross section book for the nuTrek movies??

Star Trek Beyond also features in the latest issue of SFX magazine, and definitely does make the cover this time! It's not out for a few more days, but TrekMovie has some excerpts, including Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) pondering how overt Star Trek movies can be with their social commentary these days:
You can’t make a cerebral Star Trek in 2016. It just wouldn’t work in today’s marketplace. You can hide things in there – Star Trek Into Darkness has crazy, really demanding questions and themes, but you have to hide it under the guise of wham-bam explosions and planets blowing up. It’s very, very tricky. The question that our movie poses is “Does the Federation mean anything?” And in a world where everybody’s trying to kill one another all of the time, that’s an important thing. Is working together important? Should we all go our separate ways? Does being united against something mean anything?
Director Justin Lin also discusses exploration from a creative point of view:
What was so great about Star Trek in the last 50 years was not only the characters, the sense of exploration, and these themes that connect to us as human beings, it also had the ultimate mission statement — which is to try new things. I think sometimes that gets lost. Let’s sometimes go to places where we’re not that comfortable. If anything, this is the one franchise where you can do that.
And Sofia Boutella gives a summary of her character Jaylah:
Jaylah is a survivor, and she is someone who thinks outside of the box. She’s an alien warrior, but her look is relatable to humans; her alien appearance in the film is not extreme. She has more in common with Kirk than anyone else in the film; they’re both very independent, and they’re both very honest and direct in their approach. She makes her own weapons.
TrekMovie also has some preview pages, including this new shot:


Another interview was posted by StarTrek.com, features composer Michael Giacchino, who is particularly interesting in discussing how Star Trek Beyond has quite a different tone to the previous nuTrek movies, and the effect that has had on the soundtrack:



The interview was released to promote the latest screenings of the nuTrek movies with a live orchestra (something I experienced a couple of years ago and highly recommend if it comes near you).

Finally, here's another variation of the Star Trek Beyond trailer, this time featuring footage within the title itself. Posted by Universal, who are distributing the film in The Netherlands:

A video posted by Universal Pictures Nederland (@universal_nl) on


Star Trek Beyond will be arriving in cinemas around the world from the end of July. To keep track of all the latest information on the film, visit my Star Trek Beyond guide page, and see the relevant pages on Trek Collective Archives to find all the trailers, posters, and promotional stills too.



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The cross section is awesome but what did they do to the engines/pylons?!?!? It looks all spindly and weird. Looked much better before.

Fox said...

@Michael: They didn't do anything to the pylons. Unfortunately, unlike regular Trek, nuTrek really didn't do many passes on the ship designs, so they don't tend to hold up as well from various angles.

Anyway, it's a bit hard to tell with the resolution of the image being so low, but are they retconning the nu1701 back down to proper 1701 proportions? (IE saucer rim being 2 decks thick; shuttlebay being 2 decks tall, etc.)

VorpalK said...

Given that NX-01 Enterprise was the first ship to use the warp FIVE engine, that would make Franklin OLDER? that makes no sense at all.

Shadowknight1 said...

@Fox, the nacelle pylons are VERY different!! They have a swept back appearance, closer to the 1701 refit, rather than being "straight" like the original ship. This is actually noticeable in both the warp shot and barely noticeable when the Enterprise docks with Starbase Yorktown in the 2nd ST: Beyond trailer. They also increased the phaser bank count on the saucer from 6 twin banks to 12 twin banks. And sadly, they animated a really nice pass of the Enterprise for Star Trek Into Darkness that comes in from the side of the ship and eventually zooms into the bridge, but it was cut down for time.

@VorpalK Going by what we see of the Franklin here, I don't see how that doesn't make sense. The design is a bit more primitive than the NX-class, it's smaller, and it can only reach Warp 4. The ship has substantially smaller engines and lacks the subspace whatever doohickey that links the catamarans of the NX.

In any case, now I can see why Eaglemoss is doing a new version of the Enterprise. Might get it. Definitely getting the Franklin.

Unknown said...

Not the first cutaway of the NuTrek Enterprise I've seen. Check out http://www.michaelwileyart.com/portfolio/newenterprisecutaway.htm

Unknown said...

If you watch the new HP Enterprise commercial it has images of Star Trek computer graphics and pictures of the Enterprise with the new swept back nacelle pylons. You have to watch in slow motion but looks like they have made some changes... Also one image looks like a new Enterprise A maybe???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3sHh6CsN7c

Dwight Williams said...

Also, if the Franklin is pre-Federation, should the name not be UES Franklin? Easier to maintain the trademark on that one, I'd think!

Unknown said...

This entire design is a nightmare, there is no logical layout anywhere
The shuttle deck is too narrow, the support pylons are the wrong shape...
OMG, this is utter garbage...
They need to stop with these reboot movies, they are EPIC FAILS

Return to the original timeline , show Riker and the USS Titan , maybe the Gorn and the Tholians ... a trip to Andromeda

The so called reboot films ARE NOT STAR TREK !

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