Discovery: Away Mission VR experience on the way from Sandbox VR

Sandbox VR have announced a new Star Trek: Discovery virtual reality experience, Away Mission, which they are taking great delight in promoting as a holodeck experience.

The game promises to make you, and a group of friends, part of the crew of the Discovery, exploring the ship, working with the crew, and playing with Disco tech. Here's how they describe it:

The Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission warps you and your crew aboard the U.S.S. Discovery where you'll be guided by Starfleet officer Sylvia Tilly. Your mission is to investigate a distress signal from a lost spaceship. Gear up on phasers and tricorders, explore an ice moon and locate the spaceship.

And here's a trailer, which riffs on the Discovery opening credits, while detailing what the experience will offer:

Eaglemoss Starship book previews: Voyager book coming, Disco cutaway and concept art, and more!

Lots of previews of forthcoming Eaglemoss starships books today. Continue below for the latest Designing Starships and Shipyards books. But first, let's get up to date on the Illustrated Handbook series.

The series began recently with a book focusing on the Enterprise-D, with content mostly previously published in the long out of print Star Trek Fact Files, including numerous gorgeous cutaway diagrams and other illustrations covering every aspect of the ship, equipment, and uniforms.

The second book discussed below is on the way soon, and now Eaglemoss have announced a third. Due out in April is the USS Voyager NCC-74656 Illustrated Handbook. Like other Eaglemoss releases, this will be offered on it's own, or packed with an Eaglemoss starship model, Voyager of course. There's no cover art yet, but here's the blurb:

Captain Kathryn Janeway's Starship Voyager! Lavishly illustrated with detailed technical information, this third volume in the Illustrated Handbook series features the U.S.S. Voyager from the hit Star Trek TV series.

This book is an in-depth, illustrated account of the Intrepid-class U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656. Showing Captain Janeway's 24th century ship in detail, it opens with the ship's operational history and features illustrations of all the key locations from the bridge to the shuttlebay; the deflector relay control room to the stasis chamber.

With illustrations and technical information from official sources, this book provides an extraordinary reference guide to this iconic ship.

Meanwhile coming in October is the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 and 1701-A Illustrated Handbook. Covering every prime timeline iteration of the original Enterprise, this book has some very exciting brand new content too, with coverage of the Discovery version of the Enterprise, nestled between the classic Pike era design, and the Kirk era version. Continue below to check out the Disco-Enterprise cutaway bridge, uniform and equipment diagrams, and more, as well as look at the classic content.

These new previews come via Amazon; see my previous report for even more preview pages, including the complete contents listing for the book.:

Star Trek Wines brings us real Chateau Picard

Wines that Rock have launched a new Star Trek Wines range, with two Star Trek themed wines at launch, including a pretty cool twist on Star Trek theming: A Chateau Picard wine bottled at the actual real Chateau Picard in Bordeaux, France. Continue below for the details.

Book bits: Kirk Fu cover, Enterprise War excerpt, and more

Got a few book bits today, including new covers and excerpts from several books. Continue below to check them out:

First up, we have the long awaited cover reveal for Insight Edition's forthcoming Kirk Fu Manual. This guide to "Starfleet's most feared martial art" is written by Dayton Ward (of course), with illustrations by Christian Cornia. It's been pushed back in the schedule from the original planned release, so you've got until March next year before you can start preparing yourself for self defense Kirk style:

The Motion Picture returning to cinemas and maybe a home video upgrade too

This year is the 40th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and there's already plenty in the planning to celebrate. We already knew about plans to reprint Gene Roddenberry's novelisation of the film, and an audiobook edition to match. And now there's news about the film itself coming back to screens big and small:

This September, on the 15th and 18th, Fathom Events will be bring the film back to (select) cinemas in the US - The first nationwide release since the original December 1979 showings. The film will be preceded by a behind the scenes featurette, The Longest Trek: Writing the Motion Picture, which comes from a previous bluray release. Tickets will be available from August 2nd on Fathom's website.

New Picard themed bluray collection to include brand new comic

CBS have announced a new bluray collection, Star Trek: Picard Movie and TV Collection. The set is due for release in October, ready to serve as a primer for the new Picard series of course.

The six-disc collection includes all four TNG movies (Generations, First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis) and two two-part episodes, each presented as a single movie-length edit, The Best of Both Worlds and Chain of Command.

However rather more tempting than any of that is that the set also includes an exclusive new comic! Continue below for all the details of that.

Star Trek Cats statues from Bradford Exchange

Not long ago Chronicle Collectables announced a new range of sculptures based on the Star Trek Cats series, but it turns out their not the only ones in the business for statuesque cats, as Bradford Exchange launched its own range back in March!

Like Chronicle, Bradford are mining TOS, with releases as part of their The Hamilton Collection range of collectable sculptures. Like many of Bradford's lines, the series comes as a subscription. So far four character have been revealed in the collection, called Space Cat Crusaders: Cat-tain Kirk, Mist-purr Spock, Lieutenant Uh-purr-a, and Doc-purr McCoy.

IDW's Star Trek comics for October

IDW have released their solicitations for October, which include three new Star Trek comics. Continue below for all the details of those, and other Star Trek comics updates:

Aftermath #3
Writtern by Kirsten Beyer and Mike Johnson, with art by Tony Shasteen.

You saw the stunning conclusion of the second season of Star Trek: Discovery—now prepare yourselves for the ending of the Aftermath! With the fragile peace between the Klingons and the Federation hanging by a thread, Spock, Captain Pike, and Chancellor L’Rell make a last stand against the forces threatening to ignite a new galactic war!

This will be offered in two covers, with the A cover coming from Angel Hernandez. A photo cover (not yet released) will be offered as a retail incentive:

First starship model reveal from Picard is... a PC!

Cherry Tree, makers of Borg Cube PCs have teased a forthcoming Picard tie-in release, the first model ship so far seen from the series. Due to be exhibited at the Star Trek Las Vegas convention is the Star Trek: Picard Borg Cube ATX Limited Collectors Edition - Which one assumes is a new version of their larger Borg Cube PC model.

They've shared a couple of pictures of the finishing touches being put to what is now a familiar Borg Cube variation seen in the Picard trailer, giving us a slightly closer look at the new variant design -Is it battle damaged? Is that a baby Borg Cube about to pop out the corner? Is it a Star Trek Armada II style Fusion Cube? (Ok probably not the last one) Who knows! But hopefully we'll at least get a better look from all sides when it arrives at the convention.

Round 2 Model's Discovery model kit updates, and many reissues

Round 2 Models are zipping through their promised collection of Discovery starship model kits, with two already out, and a third coming soon. Continue below to check them all out, as well as details of reissues of Round 2 and Revell ships from other series:

The third Discovery kit will be the USS Enterprise, which like the previous Disco kits will be a 1:2500 scale model. The new box art for this has just started showing up with retailers; Entertainment Earth are expecting it as soon as next month!