Friday 30 September 2016

Mega Bloks Kubros Worf figure

Mega Bloks have released their second wave of Kubros brick build figurines, and among the diverse range of characters is their second Star Trek Kubros figure, and first TNG building set, Worf.

Worf is built using 157 pieces, which is enough to arm him with a bat'leth. I think they've done a rather impressive job for the scale! Continue below to have a closer look:


New RockLove Enterprise ring and gold necklaces

Rocklove have announced several new pieces in their Star Trek jewellery collection, including an impressive USS Enterprise ring.

The spindly silver ring features a detachable saucer, held in place on a magnetic track. It is accented by two faceted bezel set red ruby bussard collectors, and two faceted blue sapphires are set in the top and bottom of the saucer, The whole thing measure three quarters of an inch wide by one and a half inches long.


Tuesday 27 September 2016

New Enterprise soundtrack release

La La Land have followed up on their 2014 Star Trek: Enterprise soundtrack collection with a second volume featuring music from many more episodes. The four disc set features just over five hours of music, with two discs devoted to individual composers, Dennis McCarthy and Jay Chattaway respectively, and two more featuring several others: Paul Baillargeon, Velton Ray Bunch, Kevin Kiner, David Bell, Brian Tyler, and John Frizzell.

Here's the cover, and continue below for a full track listing.


Friday 23 September 2016

DST's Romulan Bird of Prey, Khan Select figure, and more

A round up of Diamond Select Toys latest Star Trek offerings today, starting with a new ship in their Starship Legends range of electronic starship models: Due out next month is the Romulan Bird of Prey, which is only the second non-Starfleet ship in the series so far (following the Klingon Bird of Prey). DST recently tweeted a new photo of the model, which revealed an exciting and attractive new feature, the ship will have window lighting!


Doesn't she look pretty lit-up! The Bird of Prey is also expected to have sound features, and DST have released a couple of new images of the model better lit too:


Strange New Worlds cover vote

After a nearly a decade break, the Strange New Worlds writing contest was relaunched last year, with a new anthology of winning fan written short stories due out as an ebook next month. To add the finishing touch to the release, Simon and Schuster have prepared two possible cover designs, and are allowing the final one to be picked in an online poll.

You can choose from either a TOS shuttlecraft, or the USS Enterprise. So far the Enterprise is leading by a wide margin, but not that many votes have been cast. The poll closes very soon; you've got until the end of today to add your vote, here.


Star Trek Encyclopedia preview pages

Due out next month is the newly revised and expanded edition of Mike and Denise Okuda's Star Trek Encyclopedia. Published by Harper Collins, the book now includes coverage of large swaths of Star Trek released since the previous edition was published in 1999, detailing everything from Voyager season 4-7, all of Enterprise, Nemesis, and the first two Kelvin timeline movies (alas Beyond was too recent a release).

To accommodate all this new content, the now 1056 page book is split into two hardcover volumes, and comes in a neat slipcase.

StarTrek.com have now released several preview pages from the book, demonstrating the comprehensive coverage of every generation of Star Trek rather pleasingly. Check them out after the jump:


Tuesday 20 September 2016

Star Trek sewing patterns from Simplicity

Simplicity have relaunched their long retired line of Star Trek sewing patterns, to help you get into uniform on a budget! Available are several different uniforms from TOS and TNG, and they all have rather glorious cosplaying promo photos to go with them. Check them out below!

For some wonderful reason Simplicity have decided to make patterns for early TNG uniforms, including the skant!


Star Trek Beyond merchandise in China

In addition to unique poster art and music in China, Star Trek Beyond has been the subject of a huge merchandise range unique to the Chinese market. CBS announced details of the licensing agreements with Alibaba, China Film, and Mtime, via Licensing.biz: A bewildering range of products are on offer, including toys and games, electronic accessories, clothing and accessories, and homewares of just about every form you can imagine! Continue below for a look at the highlights from the extensive offering:

While the rest of the world only has the option of Funko Pop! vinyl figures of Star Trek Beyond characters, Alibaba are offering several different ranges of action figures and figurines, from a company called Emen. The most detailed seem to be 1/6th scale sculptures of Jaylah and Krall, which are standing on based styled after the USS Kelvin's saucer.


Sunday 18 September 2016

Star Trek Discovery launch pushed back, and other updates

CBS have announced the new Star Trek TV series, Discovery, which was initially due to begin in January, is being given a few extra months for development and production, and will now launch in May instead. StarTrek.com posted a statement from executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller:
Bringing Star Trek back to television carries a responsibility and mission: to connect fans and newcomers alike to the series that has fed our imaginations since childhood. We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: Star Trek deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.
So we have about twice as long to wait for new Trek than we were expecting. But it should be even more fantastic and well made than we might otherwise have got. I can live with that.

Star Trek Beyond's Chinese posters and more

Paramount made a big push when they launched Star Trek Beyond in China, and it paid off, with significantly higher takings than Into Darkness. Among the promotional efforts China got its own posters, music, and more. Continue below to check out the highlights from Star Trek Beyond's visit to China.

The film got some unique new posters for it's Chinese release. Similar art was used in landscape and portrait formats, featuring images from the film forming the wake of the swarm-chased crashing USS Enterprise (via Star Trek China Twitter):


Friday 16 September 2016

Bye Bye Robot celebrates Star Trek's 50th Anniversary

Bye Bye Robot have joined the Star Trek 50th Anniversary celebrations with a new collection of four TOS artworks. Continue below to check them out.

My personal favourite of the bunch is something new for Bye Bye Robot, an interior painting. New artist David Owens has created The Bridge, a 12x24 inch print which, as Bye Bye Robot note in their description, being presented as the room only "allows the viewers’ imaginations to create the story of this piece".



Monday 5 September 2016

Loads of new ships announced and other Starships Collection news

At this weekend's Star Trek Mission: New York convention Eaglemoss ran a panel on Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, in which series manager Ben Robinson announced loads of new ships,and other news. Continue below for a round-up of what we learnt:

The big news is that once again the collection has been granted an extension, and will now run for at least 130 issues (plus specials and other additional issues), which is almost twice the originally planned 70 issue run!

Ben announced a whole load of new ships during the panel, but by far the most exciting to me was confirmation that the USS Titan issue will be coming, off the back of the petition to find support for it championed right here on The Trek Collective. And better yet, Ben also confirmed the USS Aventine will be released too! Both ships are due out in 2017.



Sunday 4 September 2016

The Roddenberry Vault details and previews

CBS Home Entertainment and Paramount Home Media Distribution have released the cover art and full details of the forthcoming bluray release of Star Trek: The Original Series - The Roddenberry Vault. The three disc set includes several new documentaries built around an amazing archive of lost footage from the production of TOS, promising never before seen deleted scenes, alternate takes, outtakes, and all sorts of other things rescued from the cutting room floor.

This amazing recovered footage, which has been secretly and painstakingly catalogued and analysed by Mike and Denise Okuda over most of the last decade is joined by new interviews by Star Trek creators and commenters. Additionally the set includes twelve episodes picked to compliment the recovered footage, presented in HD but with the original effects footage.

The main new footage is presented in a three part film, Inside The Roddenberry Vault Rod Roddenberry, split across the three discs of the set. Two further documentaries is a look at the origins of the series, in Star Trek: Revisiting A Classic, and a the visual effects, including original effects elements rediscovered in the vault, in Strange New Worlds: Visualizing the Fantastic. And there's more too, additional clips have been compiled into Swept Up: Snippets from the Cutting Room Floor.

Each disc also features a new audio commentary for one episode: This Side of Paradise with Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana and Gabrielle Stanton. The City on the Edge of Forever with Roger Lay Jr., Scott Mantz and Mark A. Altman. And The Trouble With Tribbles with David Gerrold and David A. Goodman.

The set is due for release in December. Full details of all the new features are described in the press release text after the jump. But first, here are some tantalising preview videos:

Saturday 3 September 2016

Star Trek Discovery comics and novels to launch beside TV series

Kirsten Beyer and a big Discovery banner (via Jordan Hoffman)
The Star Trek: Discovery panel at this weekend's Star Trek Mission: New York convention revealed some exciting news for us Star Trek tie-in fiction fans: As I'm sure many anticipated, the series will see Star Trek novels and comics published to tie-in, but in a new move for Star Trek, those stories are being developed in tandem with the production of the series, coordinated by Voyager novelist and Discovery writer Kirsten Beyer, and to be ready for release alongside the series early next year.

The first prose story, published by Simon and Schuster of course, will come from David Mack (of Destiny, Vanguard, and so much more renown), while IDW's new comic series will be written by Mike Johnson (switching timelines from his usual role as the writer of almost every Kelvin timeline comic).

While it's not clear exactly how much each medium might bounce off the other, it certainly sounds to me from the brief remarks that this will be a somewhat different approach to Star Trek tie-in fiction than usual - Having some degree of multimedia coordination, when normally the novels and comics trail behind some time later following wherever on-screen Trek leads.

It might even sound somewhat reminiscent of what Disney are doing with Star Wars tie-ins these days, with Kirsten Beyer existing in the role of Lucasfilm's "story group". Indeed this kind of cross platform vision for Star Trek is what Bad Robot were hoping to launch when they took over the movie arm of Trek - But they only got so far as having the many comics, and one video game (and of course several Kelvin timeline novels were sacrificed along the way).

And for anyone concerned, Kirsten Beyer apparently also confirmed she will be continuing with her wonderful Voyager novels alongside her Discovery writing. Yay.

Continue below for further remarks on Discovery from Beyer, and fellow Discovery writer and panel member Nicholas Meyer.

Friday 2 September 2016

You can soon 3D print your very own Star Trek Online armada

Cryptic Studios have announced the most excited expansion to Star Trek Online yet: The game will soon be entering the real world, in the form of 3D printed model starships from Eucl3D.

You will soon be able to order twelve inch models of any of your ships in the game - And with the game featuring several hundred starship designs from every corner of the Star Trek universe, and endless ways to customise them, that is one huge range of potential ships just waiting to be printed!


Details of pricing and how to order are yet to be announced (but based on what they quote for products from other games, I'd expect somewhere between $100-$200 for models this size). Cryptic and Eucl3D have released a load of pictures with sample models of several unique Star Trek Online ships. Continue below to check them out:

Version Five of the Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Order Flowchart

Can't figure out which book to read next in the tangled web of Star Trek novel continuity? Well fear not, Thrawn and I have once more updated The Almighty Star Trek Lit-verse Reading Order Flow Chart, with all the latest releases, and a few not even out yet.


If you've not found your way to it before, the flow chart lays out all the connections between the modern prose continuity which link the relaunch series books of TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, New Frontier, Titan, Vanguard, and more, detailing how they crossover and spin-off.

As always, you can find the full size version on its own dedicated page here on The Trek Collective, which you can find at any time via the "Reading Order" tab at the top of the page.

Find Star Trek comics, toys, statues, and collectibles at TFAW.com!