Crew details from John Byrne

The MTV Splash blog has posted a guest article by John Byrne in which he discusses how he got talked into doing Trek comics for IDW and talks a little about the development and details of next year's Crew prequel miniseries.

The Crew ideal apparently started out as a proposal for a graphic novel, which would show the shakedown cruise of the Enterprise, crewed by cadets and captained by veteran, to work out the kinks before the proper crew came along.

IDW was keener to pursue miniseries, but they and CBS liked the idea so prompted Byrne to develop it, and include some familiar faces. This lead to crew evolving into a biographical series, following the character of Number One, from Cadet on that first shakedown, through her early Starfleet career and up until she started to serve on the Enterprise under Captain April and along side a young Christopher Pike.

The article also included this page of art from (presumably the first issue of) the series:

Read full article, here. And thanks to Dan Taylor (former IDW Star Trek editor) for pointing this out on IDW's message boards.

More cast posters for new movie

As reported by TrekMovie.com, a set of four new posters for the new movie have been distributed at Creation's VegasCon. The new ones follow the style of the previously released posters and together form a Starfleet delta. I've taken the liberty of tidying up TrekMovie's photos of the posters, matching their colours with those of the first four posters from the movie's website, and arranging them in the delta:

The posters give us first looks at the new Sulu, Scotty, McCoy and Chekov.

UPDATE: The offical website is now hosting nice clean digital copies of all of these.

Colour Manga, vote now!

Tokyopop have opened to poll for Star Trek manga fans to vote on which story we'd like to see published in colour in next march's "Ultimate Edition" hardcover omnibus of the first three Star Trek manga books. You need to register with Tokyopop's website to vote. The page detailing the poll also has this (not final) cover for the book, which gives a title of Kanzenban:

The book will apparently include other new and bonus material.

Thanks to The Laughing Vulcan on the TrekBBS for pointing this out.

Star Trek Online, starts again.

Cryptic Studios have put out some info ahead of tomorrow's grand unveiling of... more info... In the release they explain how they have started Star Trek Online all over, not taking anything developed by Perpetual Entertainment.

Some things are the same though; the game is set sometime after the familiar 24th century series, and will span space and planet-side exploration. However there have been developments beyond that: Players will now start the game as captain of a small ship, either Federation or Klingon, and can play as a number of familiar Trek races, such as Klingons and Gorn, or make up their own species. As players explore the online galaxy they will be able to earn larger ships and more crew.

The makes promise the potential for space battles "reminiscent of "The Wrath of Khan" and the Dominion War in "Deep Space Nine"." But note, other than familiar landmarks such as the planets Vulcan, Bajor, Andor and Qo'noS, the universe will be different from what we've known before, with characters such as Kirk and Picard figures of the past, and the only potential Enterprise flying around being one of the next next generation.

Read the full release, here.

The Last Generation cover

IDW editor Chris Ryall has released a cover for the first issue of the forthcoming Myriad Universes comic series TNG: The Last Generation:

The cover is by J.K. Woodward and is a homage to the John Byrne cover for the X-men story Days of Future Past (the alternate timeline from which has been visited in the Trekverse before in the X-men crossover issue Second Contact). See the original report for a comparison to the very similar original X-men cover.

Comic DVD omnibus cover

TrekMovie.com has released the cover for the forthcoming DVD collection of every pre-IDW Star Trek comic by Graphic Imaging Technology. It features new artwork by Mike Collins based on the original cover art for the third issue of Marvel's first run of Trek comics.

TrekMovie also report GIT have a third collection (after the second which will include only TOS comics) which will be centred around Star Trek movies, though exactly what will be included isn't known yet. In addition to that site's comics man, Alex Fletcher, mentioned in the report's comments section that GIT also have the various newspaper comic strips prepped with the hope of releasing at some point in the future once CBS can clear up all the legal stuff that has so far prevented them being released.

Ships of the Line 2009 images

TrekMovie.com recently released about half the images from next year's Ships of the Line calendar... here are the new ones:

January: "Never Been Done", by Aurore De Blois
July: "A Mission, A Way Home", by Michael Stetson
August: "Around the Quadrant in Eighty Days", by Mark Rademaker
September: "Exploring Solar Ice Floes", by Doug Drexler
October: "Kobayashi Maru", by Koji Kuramura
(Note those are 22nd century D4 class Klingon ships, nice.)
November: "The New Ship", by Andy Probert

New movie images

The website for the new Star Trek movie was recently updated with a downloads section featuring the first images of the cast in character, showing us, the bad-guy: Nero, Uhura, Spock, and Kirk, all looking rather TOS, bravo:

Massive Update Part 4: Remastered and DVDs

Well, the remastering project is finished, the last episode has aired and all three seasons are out, or coming out soon, on DVD (but not yet on bluray).

The third season DVD collection has been announced for release in November, it is as one might expect red, and the special features are not known yet.

The final packaging for the Alternate Realities Fan Collective set has also been released (revealing Spock's beard) and it has been announced TOS episodes in the set will be remastered versions.


And finally here is a pretty picture of Stratos, the flying city featured in "The Cloud Miners", one of the last episodes to be aired:

TrekMovie has another image from the episode, here.

Massive Update Part 3: Toys, Games, Collectables and all that jazz

Still a wee bit behind, but this (article which could also be called "look what TrekMovie said a while ago) should get me just about up to date and in place to start updating properly as news happens, woo!

There are a few new toy/collectible announcements lately, including new companies getting involved in Trek. One big change for all the licensors is that CBS have decided to apply a unified packaging design for TOS products (which are most Star Trek products at the moment), which includes a blue background with the classic "Star Trek" title and then depending on the size and shape of the packaging in question a pretty standard image of Enterprise and/or Kirk and Spock. As art asylum described on their Star Trek blog it will "While [it] makes layouts and approvals go smoother it kind of limits what [they] can do [at there] end" (looks and sounds awfully dull to me)

Anywho, first up for product news: Diamond Select Toys have announced a new action figure two-pack, featuring their first character releases from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the Klingons Kruge and Maltz. According to TrekMovie.com these figures are "‘one offs’ and not necessarily the beginning of a line from Star Trek III"

Picture c.o. Toy News International's announcement for the two-pack.

In the same article TrekMovie.com revealed a new product from another long running Trek licensor: Hallmark, who have already announced one of their keepsake Christmas decorations for 2009! It's Kirk, Spock and Pike from The Menagerie:

There will apparently be three other models next year, including one ship and one figurine.

TrekMovie (again) also report another company, Round 2, will be distributing several previously released starship model kits under the AMT and Polar Lights brands. Out later this year will be a re-issue of the AMT 1/650 scale model of the TOS USS Enterprise, featuring new more accurate moulds. It will be available in either a box, or metal tin!

The Polar Lights reissues this year will include the 1/1000 scale TOS Enterprise, Klingon D7 and Enterprise NX-01. These will also feature moulds with improved detailing apparently.

2009 will see a re-issue of AMT's Enterprise-E and Polar Lights' 1/350 scale Enterprise-A. The year will also see the start of new kits starting with a 1/100 scale Akira class USS Thunderchild and in 2010 there are plans for a 1/350 scale TOS Enterprise.

Meanwhile one of Trek's newest licensors, Mattel, has announced some pretty cool new products: A variety of different Star Trek "Tyco RC Flyer" - ie. remote controlled flying starship models! There will be several variations of the Enterprise - probably the movie-era design because it flys better - including a small entry level model which flys itself round in circles without any actual remote control; the same model but with remote control, a larger version with a remote control styles on a TOS communicator, a recharging unit based on a tricorder, and a really really big version with the same controls, but it’s really really big...

There will also be Klingon Bird-of-Prey versions of the two smaller models and Mattel also has plans for similar products for the new movie design Enterprise and ships from the rest of Trek franchise.

See TrekMovie's report for pictures and video!

Also coming from Mattel is a Star Trek version of their Scene it? board-game, with questions spanning the entire franchise (including the new film)

On the Star Trek Scene it? website there is a competition to add new questions to the game, so get your trivia hats on - Can anyone tell me who really likes Bularian canapes?

Elsewhere in the Star Trek toy store... the font of all Trek knowledge also reports two companies are producing Star Trek keychain... things. Underground Toys are (in September) releasing a yellow thing with some voice clips (can you sense my enthusiasm for this product...) and Basic Fun will be releasing some figural keychains later in the year.

Finally, in news on a different type of Star Trek game Cryptic Studios have announced they have taken over development of Star Trek Online, and will be announcing further details this Sunday. In the meantime here are some pretty pictures from there Star Trek Online website:

See the site, here, for more.