Into Darkness Catch-Up Part 1: Promotion

In the weeks since Into Darkness' release the film makers have been able to start to open up about the film, revealing insights into the design and production, and of course generally promoting it. This is the first of a four part catch up of Into Darkness info. Working backwards in the production cycle I'm starting with promotional stuff:

First up, something TrekMovie found hidden away on the Are You the 1701 website: A Starfleet report on John Harrison's activities prior to his seeking vengeance. There are lots of redacted bits, but it has a few nods to Countdown to Darkness, and gives us a curious incite into how Marcus was using Harrison; sending him to spy on the Klingons for some reason it seems (click to embiggen):

Harrison related, on the Conan show, J.J. Abrams released a short deleted scene with John Harrison showering the brig. I didn't notice this is added into the novelization; I wonder where it came in the film:



The final character profile video released was also based John Harrison:



If you were lucky enough to go to one the first IMAX screening sof the film you might have got yourself one of the special prints they were giving away. IMAX has posted a report by the artist, Mark Englert, in which he explains every detail of his design process for the poster; from the first sketch, to the decisions on the choice of colours for the red and blue versions. Here's a sketch of what the poster might have been, having the Enterprise facing off against Harrison in space:

And here's the glow effect on the poster. Englert highlighted a very cool feature, which I hadn't noticed on my own poster until he pointed it out in this article; if you look very closely there are two tiny figures space jumping from the Enterprise to the Vengeance:

See the full IMAX report for lots more progress and detail images.

Finally Paramount released a couple more clips from the film. If you've seen the film already these wont be anything new, but maybe you want to relive the moments... See them after the jump:

Pierre Drolet's amazing starship graveyard

Visual effects artist Pierre Drolet has started a website, Sci-Fi Museum, to display the models he has made for TV shows and movies, including Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, and of course Star Trek. He format is pretty unusual, and much fun - If you liked his Ships of the Line image of the crashed Columbia NX-02 (the image that inspired the Destiny trilogy), then you're in for a treat, as his starships are on displayed in one massive desert starship graveyard. Browse around and you'll find Voyager in ablative armor, and Friendship 1, the Romulan capital city, and loads of ships from Enterprise; a great opportunity to have a really good look at these sometimes only fleetingly seen designs. The NX-01 refit is there as well, as are a few real world designs, which give a nice sense of scale. I've picked out a few of my favourites below (more after the jump too). Check out Pierre Drolet's Sci-Fi Museum to see everything.

 

 

 

 

Into Darkness round-up

So much Into Darkness stuff popping up all over the place at the moment! Here's a round-up of the latest, starting with a a clip from the film released by AOL:

There's also a new TV trailer TrekMovie has posted, which has some new bits of footage:



Here's a new viral-style trailer as well, released by Yahoo, with Harrison describing Kirk's failures:



Here's what that Mr Harrison had to say:

James Tiberius Kirk. The heart of the Enterprise. The overly-confident leader, fuelled by bravado. Life for him is one big adventure. But he is alone. Born into battle, the heir to legend. What does a man do with such a curse? He fears making the mistake that will get his entire crew killed. And I, I will make sure of it.

Another bit of narration we shall soon be hearing is Alice Eve, reading Alan Dean Foster's novelization of the film. Amazon has now updated its listing for the audiobook version, with a cover. Not so surprisingly it it is a squareish version of the book cover, which uses the first poster image. I wonder if this is actually the final version, it doesn't seem quite squat enough for a CD case, and there's a black bar down one side:

Pre-order: Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es, Amazon.it, Amazon.co.jp.

Some other promotional things are starting to appear now: Acer has launched a website, which is cross promoting its Iconia tablets (with a gateway ap??) and Aspire laptops. The site includes wallpapers using promo photos, such as these:

There is also a series of adverts would quite amusingly inter-cuts footage from Into Darkness with laptops flying around dramatically. Here's a playlist of the three so far:



Mazda has also released an advert, which starts with a cool animation of the Enterprise forming out of lines, and then is all about a car... See that after the jump, along with more stills, behind the scenes images, uniforms and more!

Star Trek Into Darkness featurette

Continuing their association with Star Trek from the tie-in promotions from the 2009 film, Esurance are back, this time using a Facebook app rather than a website, to deliver some Star Trek Into Darkness promotional goodies. If you like them on Facebook you can enter a competition to win tickets to the US premier, turn yourself into a Vulcan with their "Vulcanizer", and download some walkpapers, icons, and the poster. They have also added a behind the scenes featurette - It's basically just the trailer with a few comments from J.J. Abrams, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana. But there's nothing unappealing about that, huh:

They're promising more content in the lead up to the film. Last time around that included an online mini-game, featuring their mascot, Erin Esurance, on a mission to rescue Keenser on Delta Vega.

Happy Birthday Star Trek Comics Checklist

I just spotted that Mark Martinez noted a few days ago that his Star Trek Comics Checklist has just reached its twentieth year! What I find remarkable is twenty years ago is only 1992, which feels far too recent for such a long time...

Anyway, if you're not familiar with it, the Star Trek Comics Checklist is a comprehensive list of Star Trek comics from the first Goldkey's right up to the latest from IDW, with every comic, big and small, in between. Mark currently makes that nearly seven hundred comics! So go have a looksie, maybe you'll find something you never even knew existed.

Meanwhile I'm just a couple of months away from running this place for five years! My how time flies.

More Infinite Space

GameForge has launched a website for its forthcoming browser game Star Trek: Infinite Space. There's not much there yet, but the information section reveals the game will feature two factions, either Federation and Klingon; and the game's story will be written by Lee Sheldon, a game designer, author and producer, who's credits including producing several TNG episodes and writing the episode Remember Me.

You can also sign up to test the game, starting this year, prior to release next summer.

The site also has a couple of new concept art images:

 

New Startrek.com

The promised new startrek.com has been launched. And it looks a bit like this:
Go check it out, with new features including integration of feeds from Trek fansites, and updates to the database to include info from the new movie.

STO: Season Two: Ancient Enemies

Cryptic have posted further details on the Season Two update to Star Trek Online. Highlights include: New ships for both factions. New Klingon missions featuring a Fek'ihri attempt to take Qo'noS. Federation Diplomatic Corps missions. New Undine missions, including visits to fluidic space. Minigames. And new weekly missions, and a new neutral mission giving race, the Deferi, plus their enemy you can aid them fighting. For full details read the original report. And also check out the new trailer for the season two update:

Cryptic have also launched a new browser game, the Star Trek Online Architect, which lets you (in a somewhat limited way) design your own starship. Linky.

Path to 2409 complete!

The Star Trek Online website has finally been updated to complete The Path to 2409! A version of the entire timeline has been available for a while now, in the back of The Needs of the Many, but his is the first time it has appear in whole in it's original format.

In other STO news, the latest update is now online, with features including an accolades system, squad support, and improvements and additions to the C-Store, including the new Luna class variant, the Comet class.

Star Trek Magazine goes digital.

Star Trek Magazine has launched a digital version of the magazine on the Zinio service for pc, mac and ipad. The digital magazine comes at a discount from the usual print price and can be bought via subscription.

The recent movie edition of the magazine (which is a rather good issue IMO) is the first issue to go digital. And can be sampled on Zinio, here.

StarTrek.com update on the way

CBS has released a press release announcing StarTrek.com will be relaunching in the coming months the redesigned site will "feature breaking news, rare interviews, a robust online community, online store and the official Star Trek database.

Designed to incorporate the very best of Star Trek content across the web, the site will showcase top fan sites and blogs including TrekMovie, TrekToday and TrekWeb. StarTrek.com is being designed by award-winning graphic design and content production web developer Funny Garbage."

The full press release can be found on TrekMovie, TrekWeb and TrekToday.

Online's Undine

Massively have posted a feature on Star Trek Online's Undine (aka Species 8472), the article has the usual intelligence reports from Starfleet and Klingon points of view. A bunch of pictures, like this:And a video:

Check out the whole thing, here.

Another gigaton of Online stuff!

Lets start with, the results of the naming competition, the three ships are now known as:

Emissary class

Dervish class

Destiny class

And then, some videos:

The Star Trek Online website has been updated with various bits. Including:

Subscription fees at last, with options for recurring billing every one, three or six months, plus special offers now for a year and lifetime memberships. (See them all here)

There's a new factions page, with Federation and Klingon reports on either empire. And perhapes notably currently inactive logos for the Cardassians and Romulans.

And updates to their starships listing. Most of the old pages are gone, there are only two starship profiles working now, the Discovery class, and the new Cerberus class (a sort fo small Prometheus without multi vector assault mode):

Name that ship, and that one, and that one too!

Star Trek Online has launched a competition to name three Federation ships from the game; a cruiser, an escort, and a science vessel. All you have to do is sign up their site and add your name suggestions, there's about a week left to do so, and you could win a poster! (and a copy of game). Here are the three ships:

The new animated series that never was

Zero Room Productions (the company behind the proposal for a new online animated Star Trek series a few years back) have but together a website detailing that animated series that never was, which was apparently to be titled "Final Frontier". The website goes into some detail on the production history, the in-universe background and designs for characters and ships: In a dark future following a major war, a rather less sleek than usual starship Enterprise patrols the borders of a Federation that has lost its way.

The series sounds fascinating, as is some of the design work, especially the new Enterprise, which works in a similar fashion to the idea of the original trilogy Star Wars designs being a step in a harder direction following the fall of a golden age.

I think the biggest loss here may not be so much the lack of a small animated series, but the loss of a quite interesting sounding future history for Star Trek, a little more involving that Star Trek Online's "EVRYONE IS AT WAR" set up... Anyway, you should check out the website for all sorts of interesting information on this Star Trek that never happened.

Star Trek Online: Vigilant class

The Star Trek Online website has been updated with its latest ship profile, the sleek new version of the Defiant, the Vigilant class.

See the specs, story, and orthographic views, here.

Star Trek Online: 2391

The Star Trek Online website has been updated with its latest Path to 2409 entry. 2391 sees lots of angry people it seems: Nausican pirates provoking the Federation Transport Union to demand Starfleet protection; the subsequent Starfleet withdrawal from the Romulan-Klingon boarder gives an opening for a Klingon attack, which is fought off by advanced Romulan ships. Admiral Taris subsequently falls into a favourable position with her people and ascends to be their new leader.

Elsewhere, Sela's band of Romulans start a colony and make some slaves. The Ferengi do some good business with the Cardassians. The artificial intelligence sentience debates continues. More aliens are encouraged into Starfleet. And Starfleet sets up a task force to investigate Species 8472 incursions.

Read the whole story, here.

An interview with Data

The Star Trek Online website has been updated with the latest "supplemental log" to it's Path to 2409 feature. This edition sees the intrepid Mr. Sisko interview Captain Data on the recent indications of Species 8472 activity. Read it, here.

And meanwhile in the Star Trek Online universe, the Borg are coming!:

Latest ship design from Star Trek Online

The Ships of the Line section of the Star Trek Online website has been updated with specs on a new Klingon super carrier, the Vo'Quv class.

This entry also seems to premier a new approach to ship pages; if you click on the main image you get a big angled view of the ship, and the article itself has several orthographic views.

2390 Online

The Star Trek Online website has been updated with the 2390 entry in The Path to 2409.

This year sees the Federation not having much effect trying to make the Klingons and Gorn stop warring. The over-stretched Klingons making less of an effort to attack vulnerable and not-very-threatening Romulan space. More arguing about holographic rights. And a hint of Species 8472 making incursions into local space.