Star Trek Magazine January 2018 by Star Trek Discovery

R E D I S C O V E R S TA R T R E K : B A C K O N T V Â®

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS

MICHELLE YEOH JASON ISAACS ON-SET WITH SHOWRUNNER AARON HARBERTS

PLUS: LINDA PARK THE WRATH OF KHAN NEWS AND REVIEWS

No: 64 Jan 2018

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EDITORIAL Editor: Christopher Cooper Senior Editor: Martin Eden Designers: Amazing15 Contributors: Bryan Cairns, Michael Clark, Chris Dows, Chris Gardner, Pat Jankiewicz, Nick Jones, Rich Matthews, Larry Nemecek, Mark Phillips, Ian Spelling, and Bunny Summers. Special Thanks: Bill Burke Bad Robot: J.J. Abrams, Bryan Burk, Damon Lindelof, David Baronoff CBS Consumer Products: John Van Citters and Marian Cordry Copyright Promotions Ltd.: Anna Hatjoullis Paramount Home Entertainment: Kate Addy, Jiella Esmat, Liz Hadley, and John Robson Simon & Schuster US: Ed Schlesinger TITAN MAGAZINES Editorial Assistant: Tolly Maggs Senior Production Controller: Jackie Flook Production Supervisor: Maria Pearson Production Controller: Peter James Art Director: Oz Browne Senior Sales Manager: Steve Tothill Direct Sales & Marketing Manager: Ricky Claydon Subscriptions Executive: Tony Ho US Advertising Manager: Jeni Smith Brand Manager: Lucy Ripper Commercial Manager: Michelle Fairlamb Publishing Manager: Darryl Tothill Publishing Director: Chris Teather Operations Director: Leigh Baulch Executive Director: Vivian Cheung Publisher: Nick Landau DISTRIBUTION US Newsstand Distribution: Total Publisher Services, Inc. John Dziewiatkowski, 630-851-7683 US Distribution: Source Interlink, Curtis Circulation Company Canadian Distribution: Curtis Circulation Company

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ack when television aired new episodes of your favorite show at a set time every week, you knew you were pretty safe to gather around the water cooler the following morning to dissect the latest adventure, secure in the knowledge that everyone who was going to watch it had almost certainly watched it at the same time as you. These days, with on-demand media making TV schedules a thing of the past, you can’t be so sure. Even in the ofﬁces of Star Trek Magazine, I have to double check everyone is up to speed with the latest goings-on aboard the U.S.S. Discovery – a starship where there seems to be a surprise lurking behind every bulkhead – before I open my big mouth. It’s made for some awkward moments, when I’ve accidentally blurted out a cool plot development that’s sent the person I’ve been speaking to diving for cover, hands clamped over their ears. What I’m saying is, we talk about Discovery a lot in this magazine. A shocker, I know, but we do. So, if you haven’t dived into the new Star Trek yet, hurry up, because we’ve got so much to talk about! This issue alone we speak to captains Georgiou and Lorca, Michelle Yeoh and Jason Isaacs, and tour the sets with showrunner Aaron Harberts. But don’t worry, there will always be plenty of old-school Trek to enjoy here too, so grab a raktajino and buckle up. Engage!

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INTERVIEW MICHELLE YEOH

“It’s not about acting and saying your lines. You have to be Captain Georgiou. You have to own that character. You have to make her real.”

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CONTENTS

MAGAZINE P.14

Issue #64 January 2018

Newsstand Edition

NEWS & EVENTS TEN FORWARD

News from every corner of the Star Trek galaxy.

REAL SCIENCE TREKNOLOGY

INTERVIEW LINDA PARK

FEATURE STLV 2017

DISCOVERY SET TOUR

They’re the worst crew in Starﬂeet, in any universe.

INTERVIEW BJO TRIMBLE

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS BEAM ME UP

INTERVIEW NEVILLE PAGE The make-up mastermind who reimagined the Klingons’ craniums.

Part two of our interview with the savior of Star Trek.

The return of the RPG, new comics, and a trio of Spocks.

T H E CARTOON STARSHIP TREKKERS

MERCH & REVIEWS TRICORDER

INTERVIEW JASON ISAACS

Portraying the most complex captain in Star Trek’s history.

STM joins showrunner Aaron Harberts aboard the NCC-1031.

Star Trek: Enterprise’s communications ofﬁcer communes with STM.

Reliving the highlight of the 2017 convention season.

Deep Space Nine plays with ﬁre, in the “Armageddon Game.”

Exclusive Edition

ANALYSIS YESTERDAY’S ENTERPRISE What did The Wrath of Khan do for Star Trek?

Actress Julie Cobb on catching the redshirt curse.

TALENTED TREKKERS INSPIRED BY TREK Retired NASA scientist David Liskowsky talks Trek.

H O L O D E C K

LARRY NEMECEK’S A FISTFUL OF DATA Canon queries on Cher, gloves, and the universal translator.

FANS QUARK’S BAR Fez-wearing fans, and a trip into the future’s past.

BIG QUESTIONS IN THE NEUTRAL ZONE Odo and Quark: Did the Constable pick on Quark, or vice versa?

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TEN FORWARD STAR TREK NE W S FROM E V ERY QUA DR A N T

DISCOVERY PREMIERE Stars align to welcome the new Trek Words: Ian Spelling 02

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The Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, California was the place to be on September 20, 2017, when Star Trek stars past and present gathered for the blue-carpet world premiere of Star Trek: Discovery. It was a full-on affair, with the blue carpet and bright lights dazzling almost as much as the colorful costumes worn by Star Trek fans in attendance. No doubt the most dazzling moment of the event, however, was when Discovery star Sonequa Martin-Green shared a spot on the blue carpet with Trek legends William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols. Martin-Green, whose luminous face conveyed the sheer magnitude of the moment, spoke to Star Trek Magazine moments later. “Oh my gosh,

that was phenomenal!” she enthused. “William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols! To have them both look at us and say, ‘Congratulations,’ and ‘Enjoy it,’ and to hear Nichelle say, ‘It’s yours now!’ “This is the first time I’ve met Nichelle in person,” Martin-Green added. “She graciously reached out to me right after I got the job, although I was sworn to secrecy at the time. We’d only spoken online, and now we’ve finally met face to face.” A remarkable pop-culture event more than 50 years in the making, and a pairing of genuine social significance, MartinGreen and Nichols posed together for the massed cameras of the media, before Shatner and Nichols joined the Discovery cast for yet more photographs – the younger actors joyously soaking it all in.

TEN FORWARD

05 01 Sonequa Martin-Green with Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.

“To be part of the opening night,” Shatner told Star Trek Magazine, “to realize all the years that people have spent doing Star Trek, and watching the show, that whole careers are based on the success of this… It’s really exciting.” Among those on hand were Discovery cast members and guest stars, including Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Anthony Rapp, Mary Chieffo, Kenneth Mitchell, Shazad

Latif, James Frain, Wilson Cruz, Rainn Wilson, Sam Vartholomeos, and Clare McConnell. Among the behind-thescenes Discovery talent enjoying the event were showrunners Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg, co-executive producer Heather Kadin, writers Akiva Goldsman, Kirsten Beyer, Ted Sullivan, Nicholas Meyer, and Jeff Russo, and make-up artists Neville Page, Glenn Hetrick, and James MacKinnon.

02 (Left to right) Gretchen J. Berg, Aaron Harberts, Heather Kadin, and Alex Kurtzman. 03 Fans gather for the blue carpet. 04 Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz. 05 Mary Chieffo and Kenneth Mitchell.

MORE TO DISCOVER

SEASON 2 CONFIRMED CBS have officially confirmed that a second season of Star Trek: Discovery is on the way. Marc DeBevoise, President and Chief Operating Officer of CBS Interactive, said in a statement about the renewal, “This series has a remarkable creative team and cast who have demonstrated their ability to carry on the Star Trek legacy. We are extremely proud of what they’ve accomplished, and are thrilled to be bringing fans a second season of this tremendous series.” A launch date for the second season is yet to be revealed.

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DISCOVERY PREMIERE

FAN REACTION

Along with Hollywood glitterati, a number of specially invited Star Trek fans joined the lucky audience at the premiere of Discovery’s opening episodes, “The Vulcan Hello” and “The Battle at the Binary Stars.” Ahead of our in-depth review of Season 1 so far next issue, here are their first reactions to the new Star Trek: “I really enjoyed it. It felt like a movie, like a cinematic movie – and this was just the first episode! The special effects were amazing; the cast was more amazing. It’s the Golden Age of television, and this was prestige TV. So I‘m really impressed.” DOYLE, Shanghai, China “Visually stunning. Engrossing story. Characters are engaging, intriguing. I want to know more!” MIKKI GUNTER California “It’s darker, more somber, and edgier than anything we fans are accustomed to seeing. The effects and details are quite astonishing, more like a bigbudget theatrical movie. At the same time, it pays homage to the Trek canon.” DAVID CHENG California “I thought it was well done. Lots to digest. Lots of good character information. Special effects were perfection. It made me want to see what happens to these characters next.” PATRYK HALL California “This was the best first episode of any Trek series! I enjoyed the whole episode – the cinematic look, the attention to detail, the story, and especially the interaction of the characters. Discovery is at once more serious and more fun than what we’ve seen, especially when compared to other Trek pilots. Our beloved Star Trek universe just became richer, deeper, and wider.” YEZENIA HERNANDEZ California

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06 Doug Jones, Discovery’s first officer Saru, without his Kelpien make-up.

Representing Star Trek’s broad spectrum and enduring legacy were a number of special guests, including The Next Generation’s Jonathan Frakes and Gates McFadden, the newly engaged Terry Farrell and Adam Nimoy, and actors John Billingsley, Linda Park, Robert Picardo, Roxann Dawson, John de Lancie, Nana Visitor, Anthony Montgomery, and Nicole de Boer, among others. Also walking the blue carpet were Bjo and John Trimble, credited as the fans who saved the original Star Trek, and the couple were obviously enjoying themselves. Following the blue carpet, which ran for an awe-inspiring 90 minutes, everyone headed into the Cinerama Dome, where the Discovery cast and creatives were introduced to fans ahead of a screening of the first two episodes, “The Vulcan Hello” and “The Battle at the Binary Stars.” Next, it was on to the nearby Dream Hotel for the hot-ticket after party, where Mary Chieffo (L’Rell) told us “We are so excited to finally share Discovery with the world.”

LARRY NEMECEK DISCOVERY: A FIRST IMPRESSION Regular Star Trek Magazine columnist and lifelong Trek fan Larry Nemecek was at the premiere, and shared his ﬁrst impressions of Discovery: “My reaction that night? Must re-watch, to see how all the whispers I’ve been told will move the show ever closer towards the Kirk era in look, while keeping its own identify and message. Marveling at the cinematic magic, noting all the canon questions, and my own ‘eh?’ moments, ﬁling away things to check later – all the while knowing that, with the incredible talent behind it, this new Star Trek will make a big splash in the world, just when the world needs it.”

EVENT HORIZON THINGS TO DO ON SHORE LEAVE

KIRK TO ENTERPRISE ENTERPRISE!

Captain Kirk beams down to Ticonderoga

For the first time in nearly 25 years, William Shatner will take command of the U.S.S. Enterprise, in a special two-day event at Star Trek: The Original Series Set Tour. Last seen on the bridge of the Enterprise NCC-1701-B in 1994’s Star Trek Generations, on May 4 and 5, 2018, Shatner will be back on board the original series NCC-1701 as he participates in a number of appearances, signings, and photo ops at the Ticonderoga, New York base of the Set Tour. Highlights of the two days will undoubtedly be the two-hour “Journey to Babel” reception-style meet-and-greet on the Friday, featuring Shatner as the guest of honor, and a “Live on Stage” event and attendant fan question-and-answer session on the Saturday. But with the opportunity to wander the set and possibly even bump into the Captain whilst doing so, the occasion promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Star Trek fans. A range of ticket options have been made available for the two days. VIP Ambassador Platinum Ticket-holders will gain entry to both the meet-and-greet and the live on stage Q&A, along with a photo op, a guided tour, and an autograph; Captain’s Gold Ticket-holders will get to attend the meet-and-greet, have a guided tour, and get a William Shatner autograph; Shore Leave Ticket-holders will get to attend the Q&A, have a guided tour, and receive a Shatner autograph; and Red Shirt Ticket-holders will get a tour and an opportunity to see Mr. Shatner. In addition, there will be a la carte photo and autograph opportunities, as well as the regular set tours. For more information and ticket prices, head to www. startrektour.com/shatner.

BLACKPOOL PROPS! Star Trek: The Exhibition adds Discovery items Whereas Gabriel Lorca seldom settles for long in his captain’s chair on the U.S.S. Discovery, UK-based fans of the show will get the opportunity to do just that, as a selection of Star Trek: Discovery props arrive at Star Trek: The Exhibition in Blackpool.

Besides comparing their posteriors to Lorca’s in the Discovery captain’s chair, visitors to the exhibition can now gaze upon a veritable arsenal of weaponry from the show – notably a phaser and a Klingon mek’leth – as well as a Vulcan chime and pendant, a set of Starfleet badges, and gold

(command), silver (science), and copper (operations) Starfleet uniforms. Located on Blackpool’s famous Golden Mile, Star Trek: The Exhibition now boasts over 100 original screenused props, from each of Star Trek’s TV and movie incarnations. There are also costumes, scripts, photographs, and a remarkable recreation of the bridge of the original series Enterprise. Go to www.startrekblackpool.co.uk for more information, ticket prices, and booking details.

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IN PRINT

NEW BOOKS AND COMICS

TIC DISCOVERY

Past impacts future in second Discovery novel On February 6, 2018, Sttar Trek of the dark fans will get a glimpse o events that led to the original nscience of series episode “The Con d Star Trek: the King,” as the second es the actions Discovery y novel explore me to be of the man who will com xecutioner.” known as “Kodos the Ex Ward and Written by Dayton W published by Simon & Scchuster/Pocket ery: Drastic Books, Star Trek: Discove ode from 10 Measures details an episo years before the Battle att the Binary Stars. In 2246, Lieutenantt Commander Gabriel Lorca and Commander to the Philippa Georgiou bear witness w horrific solution of Governor Kodos flicting his to the starvation crisis affl V. Their rescue small colony on Tarsus IV mission transformed into a manhunt,

JEAN-LUC BACK IN WONDER The life and times of Captain Picard Following in the footsteps of 2015’s trailblazing The Autobiography of James T. Kirk, Titan Books have published the life story of Kirk’s 24th Century successor. As related by former Star Trek: Enterprise producer David A. Goodman, The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard traces the life of the eponymous captain, from his youthful indiscretions, to his time commanding the Enterprise-D, to his ascendancy to the position of admiral. Along the way, readers will gain fresh perspectives on key episodes from Picard’s extraordinary Starfleet career, such as his capture and torture by the Cardassians, and his assimilation by the Borg that saw JeanLuc transformed into Locutus. Offering revealing and surprising insights into Picard’s thoughts and feelings during his encounters with countless alien cultures and individuals – including his bête noire, Q – The Autobiography of JeanLuc Picard clocks in at 288 pages (with an eight-page color section), and is available now in hardcover. 10

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Lorca and Georgiou set out on the trail of Kodos. As original series aﬁcionados will doubtless know, Kodos’ crimes are revisited in “The Conscience of the King” when the governor comes face to face with one of the few survivors of the Tarsus IV incident: Captain James T. Kirk. Meanwhile, the ﬁrst Star Trek: Discovery novel, David Mack’s Desperate Hours, which was published in the US and UK in September 2017, has now been issued in Germany, too, by Cross Cult. Set a year before the events of the show, the novel sees Lieutenant Michael Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Shenzhou encountering an ancient and threatening unknown ship.

TEN FORWARD

COMIC BOOK KLINGONS IDW forge ahead with Discovery comic books IDW’s Star Trek: Discovery comic book miniseries delves deep into the way of the warrior as 2017 climaxes, zeroing in on the history of the show’s Klingons. Written by Mike Johnson and Kirsten Beyer, with art by Tony Shasteen, the four-part Star Trek: Discovery series hits warp speed in December, promising to reveal the secrets of T’Kuvma’s origin, delve into the Klingons’ perspective on the Federation, and show how legendary Klingon leader Kahless casts a long shadow over events. Elsewhere, the six-part alternate reality epic “I.D.I.C.” storyline continues to reverberate through IDW’s ongoing Star Trek: Boldly Go series, as told by writer Mike Johnson and artist Tana Ford. In part three in December’s issue #15, multiple Kirks and crews must unite in order to save their separate universes, as the mastermind behind the colliding realities is revealed. In addition, the second volume of Star Trek: Boldly Go beams down this month, collecting issues #7–12 of the Kelvin Timeline series – in which the precarious peace between the Federation and the Romulans is threatened by the murder of a diplomat – while John Byrne’s latest Star Trek: New Visions photonovel also lands. Titled The Hunger, it details the original series Enterprise’s encounter with a terrifying life-draining entity.

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S TA R T R E K G A M I N G PLAYING YOUR PART IN THE TREK UNIVERSE

TIMELINES EXPANDS Discovery characters in Star Trek Timelines

STAR TREK ONLINE Discovery dress code While Discovery makes waves on CBS All Access and Netflix, it’s also having an impact on MMORPG Star Trek Online. It seems that the U.S.S. Discovery’s unique propulsion system has opened up “a hole in time,” according to the game’s developers Cryptic Studios. That hole must be in the back of a wardrobe, because what it means for STO fans is that they can now kit their crews out in the snappy new uniforms sported by Michael Burnham and the crew of the titular starship. Made available to PC players of the MMORPG during October, the Discovery uniforms will soon be released for Xbox and PS4 console players via the C-Store. Meanwhile, Season 14: “Emergence” continues, and players can spend more time working with the Lukari and Kentari to further develop the Dranuur Colony, available as a new five-tier joint Lukari-Kentari-themed Fleet Holding, available to all Fleets in Star Trek Online. Crytpic Studios recently announced that the Dranuur Colony will feature new, unlockable projects to improve both its visual appearance, as well as adding many convenient features for captains at the colony. Fleets can also unlock inter-fleet shuttle capabilities that will allow for quick and easy access to Dranuur Colony. 12

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Immersive mobile strategy game Star Trek Timelines has expanded its Star Trek: Discovery content, spring-boarding it off the back of a four-week “mega-event.” Having already introduced First Officer Michael Burnham, Captain Philippa Georgiou, and Lt. Commander Saru to the game in September, across October Star Trek Timelines developer Disruptor Beams made more Discovery characters available, including Captain Lorca and Lt. Stamets. Comprising four parts – “Streak of Stardust,” “First Impressions,” “Orion Belt,” and “A Logical Reaction” – the mega-event saw a temporal anomaly-enveloped U.S.S. Shenzhou spiraling across the Alpha Quadrant, leaving a trail of disrupted chronitons and displaced people in its wake. It was up to players to hunt down the Shenzhou and stop the timeline from suffering further damage. For more on the immersive role-playing mobile game, head to www.disruptorbeam.com/games/ star-trek-timelines.

MERCH ROUNDUP THE LATE EST TREK TREATS IN STORE

RESS TO IMPRESS

ANOV VAS unveil Discovery uniforms

Anyone impressed by the cut of Captain Lorca or Michael Burnham’s jib shouldn’t have long to wait until they can emulate their Star Trek: Discovery heroes’ style… h-end replica uniform makers ANOVOS have given fans their first glimpse High Discovery costumes, set to debut in 2018. Prototypes were of their forthcoming f d at New York Comic Con in October, while preorders have opened on the unveiled company’s website (www.anovos.com/collections/star-trek-discovery). who fancy themselves leaders of men (and women… and other For those t based lifeforms) there will be male and female Captain’s Duty Uniforms, carbon-b while forr the bridge crew there will be male and female Officer’s Duty Uniforms mmand gold, science silver, or operations bronze inset panel details. with com de with 90 percent athletic spandex and 10 percent specialty contrast Mad h channel h l stitching, i hi h costumes boast custom-made rubberized spand dexx ffor the the b els, functional pockets on the Delta print for the tunic and nd pant inset detail pan pane pock thighss, and come with a Starfleet insignia badge dge ffor the appropriate e division.

NICE PINS Discovery collectible pins debut FanSets’ line of Star Trek pins has expanded, with a brand d new range of Star Trek: Discovery pins joining the company’s existing Trek offerings. Among the Discovery characters included in the latest range are Captain Lorca, Sarek, Stamets, Voq, and T’Kuvma, alongg with both gold and silver Saru pins, and First Officer and unrankeed Michael Burnham ones. Besides the Discovery characters, FanSets have also produ uced a handful of ship and logo pins. Both the U.S.S. Discovery an nd the U.S.S. Shenzhou feature on pins, along with a stylish treatmeent for the official show logo. Head to fansets.com for full details of the range.

CAPTAIN’S (CHRISTMAS) HOLIDAY Festive ornaments from Hallmark

Hallmark have elected to “Make it so” this Christmas with a fetching “sound feature” Next Generation ornament celebrating 30 years of the show, as well as a light-up ship from Star Trek Beyond. Measuring over ﬁve inches in height, the Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Lieutenant Commander Data ornament features Picard in his captain’s chair making his signature command signal, while Data stands steadfastly by his side. Sound features include such classic Next Gen lines as “Let’s see what’s out there. Engage” and “Let’s make sure that history never forgets the name… Enterprise.”

As seen in Star Trek Beyond, the U.S.S. Franklin ornament is the perfect decoration for any Trek fan’s Christmas tree, with light-up nacelles and bridge, and handcrafted detailing. Check out hallmarkstartrekornamentsdotcom.wordpress.com for more info. Meanwhile, Hallmark have been teasing details of their 2018 Keepsake Ornaments. From Star Trek: Discovery there’ll be a U.S.S. Discovery ornament, while from the original series there’ll be a tricorder ornament based on Wah Chang’s original design, and a recreation of the swashbuckling Sulu/Kirk scene from “The Naked Time.” En garde! STAR TREK

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INTERVIEW

M I C H E L L E

Y E O H

TAKING

COMMAND Michelle Yeoh has always been a force to be reckoned with. A veteran of numerous Hong Kong martial arts movies, an equal to James Bond in the movie Tomorrow Never Dies, and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme, the captain’s chair of a Starfleet vessel was surely a destiny written in her stars. Words: Bryan Cairns

ichelle Yeoh looks happy as can be. With a broad grin and a twinkle in her eye, the Malaysian native’s upbeat energy and enthusiasm for Star Trek: Discovery is written all over her face. Yeoh’s role in the new series, as Captain Philippa Georgiou, commander of the U.S.S. Shenzhou, is clearly a big deal. Although she meets the end of a Klingon blade in Episode 2, Georgiou joins Kate Mulgrew’s Captain Janeway (from Star Trek: Voyager) as only the second female lead character in Star Trek to have commanded her own starship – evidence of Discovery’s intention to depict a future of human equality. “In the future, there will be no distinction between race or sex,” Yeoh says about the prominence of women on the show. “Anyone who is up for the job, and good for the job, gets the job. Today, I am a UNDP Goodwill Ambassador. We have 17 sustainable development goals. One of the goals we are fighting very hard for is the equality and empowerment of women. We fight the fight now, but in 200 years, that will be a thing of the past.” Yeoh’s love for science fiction stems from an early age, and as a teenager she regularly tuned in to Lost in Space and the

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original Star Trek. However, when Yeoh landed the coveted part of Georgiou in Discovery, and decided to brush up on the source material by rewatching those old series, she soon realized she had no idea what she was getting herself into. “You suddenly think, ‘Oh my God, there are over 700 episodes! How am I going to learn all of that in time?’” laughs Yeoh. “So you watch them to remind you about the essence, and how they dealt with things. Fifty years ago, when it was Captain Kirk, the stories they were telling were so amazing. They didn’t have the special effects we do, they had guys running around in rubber suits, but the morals behind it, the social issues were revelant to things at that time, and this is something that will always stay. Because that is what Star Trek is all about, this embracing and acceptance of diversity.” Yeoh also recognizes that as a child she shared something with Star Trek that is integral to its appeal – the simple wonder of staring at the night sky, and the boundless possibilities of the imagination. “Growing up, I used to go fishing with my dad, and I always looked up at the stars at night,” she remembers. “When

you are sitting there, with nothing but stars, you think, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if…?’”

GETTING TO KNOW GEORGIOU Yeoh, who has decades of experience under her belt, shines brightest portraying tough, confident, and capable women. That’s certainly evident in projects such as Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, Marco Polo, and, of course, her latest endeavor, Star Trek: Discovery. Typically, writers, producers, and showrunners won’t divulge everything about the character or their story arc to their actors, but Yeoh required some details to understand Georgiou, and to shape her performance. “I had to know, where does Georgiou come from?” Yeoh reflects. “Who is she? It’s not about acting and saying your lines. You have to be Captain Georgiou. You have to own that character. You have to make her real. The only way you can make her real is if you give her background, if you give her history. That appeals to all of us. What we are, and who we will become, is how we evolve as a human being.

MICHELLE YEOH

INTERVIEW

“I sat down with [showrunners] Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg – who are amazing, because they’ve known it all for so long,” Yeoh continues. “They’ve been working on the characters, and all the different arcs, and I asked, ‘So, where is she from?’ You know where she comes from geographically, because by then Earth is just ‘humans,’ not ‘You are from the States, or from here…’ Georgiou was born in the part of the world where I was born. Culturally, you would learn about the history of that place. You would see wayang dolls [shadow puppets from southeast Asia], cut out from leather on my wall. They are very traditional where I come from. It fleshes things out, and it brings you to who I want Georgiou to be.” Yeoh identifies with the optimism woven into the Star Trek universe, seeing Georgiou as “the epitome of that.” “She believes in the goodness of humanity, and that there is always hope,” says Yeoh. “She is not cynical or jaded, even though she is a war veteran. She has seen the horrors of war, and she will do whatever it takes to never get back into that situation.” 18

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“Aaron [Harberts] came up to me and said, ‘I know you can own that chair.’ And that’s exactly what you have to do. It can’t overwhelm you.” CAPTAIN AND FRIEND Set a decade before the original Star Trek, Discovery finds the Federation at war with the Klingon Empire. An accomplished warhorse, Georgiou figures in the epic conflict, but to what degree remains a mystery. However, when the series kicks off, first officer Michael Burnham (played by Sonequa Martin-Green) stands by Georgiou’s side. The captain’s kindness and positive attitude serves as an important counter-balance to Burnham’s cold Vulcan upbringing, and Georgiou

plays an important part in Burnham’s development. It’s a relationship which Yeoh describes as “amazing.” “Burnham is the only human to attend the Vulcan School for Training. God forbid anybody does that, because it’s quite brutal,” explains Yeoh. “The way they are taught to be so singularly logical and emotionless, to know how to think, even in the worst situations. So, Burnham becomes more Vulcan than Vulcans themselves. Sarek understands that she needs to know who she is. She cannot deny who she is. “The one person he trusted was Captain Georgiou, because of her qualities and her principles,” Yeoh continues. “And when Michael Burnham arrived, she was like a solid piece of ice. Captain Georgiou and Sarek don’t want to break her spirit, as she’s worked so hard to be who she is. But they want her to understand that there is more than that, that it is okay to have these good emotions because they will help you, and guide you to make the right decisions. It’s not just a discovery of space and looking outwards; it’s also a

MICHELLE YEOH

journey of self-discovery, especially for Burnham, to understand that if you don’t know who you are, and you don’t know the emotions you are able to feel, then you don’t know yourself. Emotions like love, compassion, and empathy are very powerful, and help us – help the human race – overcome a lot of things. What you choose will define you as a person.”

THE STAR TREK FAMILY Over the decades, previous Star Trek series have enthralled audiences with exciting adventures, exotic alien races, intriguing planets, and a dash of romance. However, the heart and soul of every iteration has rested in the characters and their interactions with one another, forging strong bonds that go beyond merely being colleagues or comrades-in-arms. That hasn’t changed with Discovery. “They are family,” Yeoh says. “You’re in space for years on end. You have to watch each others’ backs. Georgiou is like the head of the family, the one that will guide them. If we have

problems, she will be the one that will keep a calm head and guide us out of whatever dangers we face. You don’t know what you might run into. I have a great relationship with them, because she is a character that has a sense of humor. She’s not just straight-laced, like a drill sergeant. ‘Do this. Do that. Get out of here.’ She’s not like that.” Hints at the classic trinity of Kirk, Spock, and Bones can be felt on Discovery as well. The clashing personalities of those three characters not only provided flashes of levity, but were the cornerstone of their loyalty and friendship. Yeoh confirms that there is something of that dynamic between Georgiou, Burnham, and Saru – and the captain delights in playing with it. “Saru is a new species. He’s a Kelpien,” Yeoh explains. “His race’s story is quite tragic – they were like cattle, they were bred to be eaten – and he finally stood up, and became one of the first of his species to join Starfleet and become a science officer. Saru is such an empowering figure for his species. But before Burnham joined the ship, he was already there, hoping, ‘I’m

PHILIPPA GEORGIOU CAPTAIN, U.S.S. SHENZHOU

01 Georgiou goes oneon-one with T’Kuvma, in “Battle at the Binary Stars.” 02 Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) takes Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) under her wing. 03 Captain and first officer (“The Vulcan Hello.”) 04 A date with destiny aboard the Klingon sarcophagus ship.

Michael Burnham’s commanding officer for seven years, Captain Philippa Georgiou of the U.S.S. Shenzhou was a mentor to Burnham, with whom she shared a strong working relationship and a deep personal bond. Georgiou is a strong believer in Starfleet’s peaceful mission to explore strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations, and would rather adhere to General Order Number 1 than engage with any potentially hostile force, at least until their intentions are made clear. That determination is put to the test when her ship encounters a mysterious Klingon object, floating in the depths of space.

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INTERVIEW

going to be the number one!’ Then, he’s like, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ “There’s allways that rivalry,” Yeoh smiles. “It’s obvious that Burnham has more of an edgge than Saru, because of the training that she’s had at the my and at Starfleet, so he’s Vulcan academ suddenly beingg relegated to, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to be number one... yet!’ Captain Georggiou is great. She sits back and lets them have h at it. ‘Okay, the two of you do it together.’ ‘No way. You are he two of us together in a going to put th he loves doing things like little room?’ Sh that to them. “When I sit on my chair, it’s very endearing,” she adds. “It’s charming. It’s like looking att your kids. And the way they look at yoou with great love and respect, it’s verry heartwarming.” On any giiven filming day, a Discoveryy scene might unfold on the bridge, in the sickbay, on a planet, or an enemy vessel. In order to pull off the wide variety of locations required, the show takes up multiple soundstages at Toronto’s masssive Pinewood Studios. Production design can make or break a d Yeoh can’t help but geekTV series, and out over some of her favorite Discovery sets when askeed which was her favorite. “I don’t want to say the bridge, biased,” Yeoh because that’s completely c laughs, before settling on the transporter she jokes. room. “It’s so psychedelic,” p

DRESSED TO IMPRESS Costume designer Gersha Phillips spent months of trial and error in developing the signature Starfleet uniforms for Star Trek: Discovery. She tried out numerous colors, fabrics, and styles before perfecting the distinctive blue gear worn by the crews of the Shenzhou and the Discovery. Yeoh was extremely pleased with the end results, especially Georgiou’s outfit. “When you put on that uniform, it puts you into the posture right away,” Yeoh reveals. “‘Forget that extra whatever I was thinking of eating.’ You can’t slouch. Gersha made sure. ‘You are not slouching in my Star Trek.’ We’re pristine. The costumes deserve to be seen, because the care and attention that’s gone into the details are amazing. The 3D printing from Switzerland, where it’s just the Starfleet emblem all across the sides… I’m like, ‘Can I have just one of them, so I can frame it and put it up in my room, because it’s so cool.’ When you start having to move around, though, I said, ‘Okay, Gersha. I think I’m going to need bigger pants.’”

“You feel like you’ve walked into a retro club. When Sonequa Martin-Green and I are there, we’re like, ‘Okay, let’s start the music, man.’ It’s amazing. “But, it has to be the Klingon ship,” she continues, obviously impressed. “There’s so much detail. The care and the creativity they put into it. It’s hell to film on, because there are steps everywhere, and it’s up and down. It’s like when you walk into a cathedral. Everyone goes, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s stunning.”

“Georgiou is like the head of the family, the one that will guide them.” Arguably the most iconic set piece of any Star Trek incarnation, however, remains the captain’s chair. Many fans have dreamt of easing themselves into that seat, tapping away at the armrest controls while barking orders at their imaginary crews. As for Yeoh, the actress admits “it was quite daunting” when it came time for Georgiou to assume her rightful place on the Shenzhou bridge. “The captain doesn’t really do anything. She just sits in the chair and goes, ‘You do this. You do that.’ You know most of the things that are going to occur from that chair,” she says, mindful of the responsibility that comes with having the best seat in the house. “But the first time you walk around it, you think, ‘That’s a big chair.’ Obviously, my little short legs would be dangling from it, so luckily they have steps up to it. “I loved it when Aaron [Harberts] came up to me and said, ‘I know you can own that chair,’” the actor recalls. “And that’s exactly what you have to do. It can’t overwhelm you. This is a big chair. Then, of course, you have Captain Kirk and the way he sits. And the way Jean-Luc Picard sits, as well as the way women sit. You have to say, ‘Alright, I don’t want to sit crosslegged. I want to be powerful,’ because you have to dominate the thing. So, I figured it out.” Dominating the chair didn’t stop others from taking a turn. “I found out something,” Yeoh says, conspiratorially. “Every time I turned my back to leave the room, somebody would be diving into the chair.”

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE

Star Trek Las Vegas 2017

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE It’s the biggest annual event in the Star Trek calendar, drawing fans from all over the world on a pilgrimage to Nevada’s epic sprawl of neon lights. For them, it’s a relaxing long weekend of Trek-themed entertainment, but for those working behind the scenes, and especially for those hosting panels, it’s more like a roller coaster. Regular Star Trek Magazine contributor Ian Spelling hosted numerous panels for the event, and took time out to document his experiences for this insider’s guide to Star Trek Las Vegas 2017. Words: Ian Spelling

01 Female cosplayers unite in celebration of Star Trek’s diversity. 02 Mary Chieffo (third from right) and Neville Page (far right) judge the STLV cosplay contest.

ow to put Star Trek Las Vegas 2017 (STLV 2017) into perspective? It was massive, thrilling, immersive, exhausting, revelatory, and both fresh and familiar. On a practical level, according to my Fitbit, over the course of its five days – August 2–6 at the Rio Suites Hotel – I took 60,000 steps, walked 30 miles and burned 15,000 calories as I frantically crisscrossed from room to room to room. Like so many fans, I caught up with old friends and made new ones, too. But before we move forward, let me provide some background. Chances are, if you read this magazine, you’ve seen my byline countless times over the past 20plus years, mostly attached to interviews with Trek talent from all the shows and movies. If you remember Starlog magazine, back in the day, I had the honor of being their go-to Trek guy for ages, and I also wrote for their licensed Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Trek movie magazines. I covered Trek for the New York Times Syndicate, penning the weekly Inside Trek column for 20-plus years, and have served as editor of startrek.com since 2010.

My covering STLV for the first time in 2010 truly merged my worlds, as I’d been attending Creation conventions in the New York area since my teens, and got to know Creation’s principals, Gary Berman and Adam Malin. We’re all Long Island boys, and I even recall running into them at a concert at Jones Beach decades ago. Covering the annual STLV event meant coordinating with Gary and Adam and their staff on various matters, including access and interviews. Early on, Adam invited me to host panels, but I demurred. Not my thing, I told him. I’ve interviewed big stars, but that’s one-onone; public speaking scared me. Adam pressed each year, and I finally said, “Let me do something on the smaller stage,” in the DeForest Kelley Theater, which holds 1,500 people. That was a few years ago, and it went well, so I agreed to do more the next year, still on the smaller stage. Adam implored me to host panels on the main stage in the Leonard Nimoy Theater, which holds 6,000 people, and I politely declined. Plus, Adam, Scott Mantz, Roger STAR TREK

S TA R T R E K L A S V E G A S

Lay Jr., and Jordan Hoffman already do such an awesome job hosting. Finally, in 2016, I relented… if we could keep my training wheels on by having me host an early morning, last-day panel with someone I knew well. Anthony Montgomery, one of my favorite Trek people, a vibrant and talkative guy, was that someone. Still, that room, it intimidated me. I stood in the back when it was empty, struggling to overcome my dread. I sat at the desk, again in the empty space, willing myself to feel comfortable. I slept terribly building up to it, even as all my smaller-stage panels went great. When the time came, Adam brought me out first to introduce me to the crowd of about 2,000 – not bad for a last-day, 9am session – and settle my nerves. I then introduced Anthony, and off we went for 45 minutes, laughing and having fun. Here’s a secret: the lights are so bright near the stage that 24

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you can’t see beyond the first 10 rows. Everyone thought it went well, and Adam immediately invited me to do more on the main stage next year.

Meet Me in Las Vegas

Cut to 2017. It’s going to be a massive year for Trek, what with Star Trek: Discovery set to debut a few weeks after STLV 2017 and The Next Generation celebrating its 30th anniversary. STLV 2017 must reflect that, plus embrace all other facets of the franchise. More than 100 guests are locked in. New activities and photo op stations are added, and there’s even a Discovery exhibit, with props, costumes, and art flown in from the Toronto set. CBS All Access takes over the space in Quark’s, and plans to host more than 60 intimate, fireside-style panels across the weekend, featuring stars (Robert Picardo, Rene Auberjonois, Chase Masterson), cosplayers (Joanie Brosas, Eric Allan Hall),

producers (Ira Steven Behr), scientists (Dr. Phil Plait, Dr. Jessie Christopher), and authors (Mike Johnson, Dayton Ward), as well as Michael Westmore, André Bormanis, and Joel Harlow, plus trivia contests, spelling bees, a Treklets kids session, and more. Months, weeks, and days in advance of STLV 2017, I’m either writing or editing stories touting what’s to come. And there’s plenty to tout, as guests and panels are added constantly, and as the schedule takes shape. Among the late additions: a four-hour block of Discovery panels, set for STLV’s usually mellow first day. It’ll be mellow no more. A week before leaving for Vegas, the startrek.com/CBS Consumer Products team meets in Manhattan to break down our coverage plans, and figure out who will be handling what, in terms of stories, social media, photography, etc., all also coordinated with our contingent from Los Angeles.

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE

Here’s what’s in store for me: I’m to host 14 panels on the CBS All Access stage, and three on the main stage – including, on day one, an important Discovery panel with creature designers Neville Page and Glenn Hetrick. Then, for startrek.com, I also need to cover the weekend’s other panels, plus work on our daily recaps. Additionally, I’ll try to bank interviews for Star Trek Magazine. Some I’ve had time in advance to prep for, while others occur because someone says they’ll make time to chat and I drop everything to ready questions. Let’s break it down day by day:

Wednesday

As STLV 2017’s first main-stage guest, Dr. Mae Jemison, wows the crowd, Nichelle Nichols arrives backstage and settles into a chair. She plans to surprise the doctor and the fans at the end of Jemison’s appearance. A woman approaches me and says, “Nichelle asked me to ask if you’re Ian Spelling. She’d love to say hello.” Now, I’ve known Nichelle since first interviewing her during my college days, but she’s met a million people before and since, so even as I tap out these words, I marvel at her remembering me and consider it a sweet blessing. And so, Nichelle and I joyfully catch up. From there, I host a CBS All Access stage panel with a popular cosplayer, Brooke Wilkins, then vanish into our startrek.com war room to prepare for the Discovery onslaught. Back-to-back, I interview Wilson Cruz, Kenneth Mitchell,

“A week before leaving for Vegas, the startrek. com /CBS Consumer Products team meets in Manhattan to break down our coverage plans.” Sam Vartholomeos, Kirsten Beyer, and Akiva Goldsman. I also, courtesy of Discovery writer Ted Sullivan, get the rare distinction of taking a selfie with Jason Gorn, the show’s official good-luck charm. The actor chats take place in the Discovery Exhibit, and I talk with Goldsman on the fly, as he hurries toward the Leonard Nimoy Theater for his panel. The Beyer tête-à-tête occurs in the green room by the main stage, where I also meet the author and Discovery writer’s husband and adorable eight-yearold daughter, who’s so excited to be here, but, at the moment, desperate to find some sewing material. I steer her and her dad to Garak’s Tailor Shop, being run by… Brooke Wilkins. And off they go. Most of the Discovery group is leaving immediately after their appearances to return to Toronto. Mary Chieffo, however, is free for the rest of the week, and staying in Vegas the entire time to soak it all in. She agrees to meet for a breakfast interview the next morning. “This is absolutely crazy,”

03 Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, Sir Patrick Stewart, and Michael Dorn enjoy the TNG panel. 04 Nichelle Nichols joins Doctor Mae Jemison on the main stage. 05 Ian Spelling hosts the Discovery make-up panel, with Neville Page and Glenn Hetrick. 06 Sam Vartholomeos and Mary Chieffo with fans at the Rio Suites hotel.

Wilson Cruz leans in to tell me. “You hear about conventions, but you have no idea until you actually experience it yourself.” Then, for the four hours, fans are treated to a Discovery deep dive. Jordan Hoffman welcomes the show’s writers/producers, while Scott Mantz converses with the actors. I am to host the Page-Hetrick panel, before handing the microphone back to Hoffman to close out the evening with a Discovery publishing panel. As I mentioned, the main stage freaks me out. It’s utterly massive, and, again, the room holds 6,000 people. Six thousand! Some fans fret over the Klingons. Why do they look so different from their predecessors? It’s up to Page and Hetrick to win over the doubters, and it’s my mission to steer the conversation in that direction, to draw out the duo’s enthusiasm and their passion for Trek. No pressure, right? Fortunately, I’m so busy chatting with the actors, and prepping with Page and Hetrick, that I have no window to stew or panic until it’s time to get on with the show. Our talk is entertaining, informal, and informative. Thanks to an impressive audiovisual display, fans get their first-ever glimpses of Discovery’s Klingons and several Klingon props, and they learn all about Lt. Saru. By the hour’s end, the fans seem won over, Page and Hetrick are all smiles, and I not only breathe a deep sigh of relief, but actually look forward to doing more main-stage hosting. STAR TREK

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Megan Gallagher, Alissa and Heidi Kramer, Anson Williams, Don Most, and Jeff Yagher. The audience “oohs” and “ahhhs” as I explain the supremely unlikely connections between the actors. Williams and Most played Potsie and Ralph Malph on Happy Days, while the Kramers are real-life twins, and Gallagher and Yagher are married. Oh, and Catherine Hicks, who played Dr. Gillian Taylor in Star Trek IV, is married to Yagher’s brother.

Thursday

Mary Chieffo, over breakfast at the Rio’s breakfast restaurant, proves herself to be the galaxy’s coolest lady. She’s incredibly into Trek, L’Rell, the Klingon culture and language, and so into the fans (see issue 63 of Star Trek Magazine for a full interview with Mary). From there, I spend much of the day hosting panels. On the CBS All Access stage, I host cosplayer extraordinaire Joanie Brosas, who speaks proudly of being a female entrepreneur; artist J.K. Woodward, who converses about his distinctive Trek work; and John Cooley, of high-end costume 26

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replica company ANOVOS, who geeks out about his love of all things Trek, and his good fortune at being able to help design high-end Trek uniform replicas. I also host two other main-stage panels, both devoted to guest stars, with the first featuring Natalia Nogulich, Dey Young, Camille Saviola, and Steve Rankin. Nogulich delights fans by wearing an Admiral Nechayev uniform, while Rankin pulls out the guitar he just happens to have with him, and previews a ditty he’ll be performing later in the weekend with the Enterprise Blues Band. The second panel includes

Friday

The Next Generation are in the house on Friday, with Sir Patrick Stewart heading up one panel, and the entire TNG cast (minus Jonathan Frakes, whose flight was canceled) gathering together to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Those are both host-less, but I host CBS All Access stage panels with cosplayer Michael Rough (in full Nibiran regalia), The Original Series Set Tour creator James Cawley, Robert Picardo, and Chase Masterson. Picardo’s session is devoted to his affiliation with the Planetary Society, while Masterson speaks ardently about her anti-bullying organization, the

AN INSIDER’S GUIDE

minutes, even giving them a personal tour of the Discovery exhibit. It’s an experience none of us will ever forget, and probably my personal favorite moment from STLV 2017.

Saturday

How many times do you get to host panels with two Oscar winners in one day? I have that distinct pleasure on Saturday afternoon, chatting first with Trek make-up legend Michael Westmore, and then with Joel Harlow, who worked on Enterprise, Star Trek (2009), and Star Trek Beyond. We talk in detail about Star Trek Beyond: The Makeup Artistry of Joel Harlow, a brand-new tome released by Titan Books. In the audience is Ashley Edner, who happens to be Joel’s stepdaughter and graces the book’s cover, as she played the exotic character Natalia in Beyond. I invite her to join us on stage, transforming an already intimate conversation into a genuine family affair. Later in the day, the tables are turned as Ira Steven Behr interviews me for his upcoming DS9 documentary, What We Left Behind. That evening, while dining at a Rio restaurant (OK, the buffet; when in Vegas, right?), I run into Mike Westmore and his family, who thank me profusely for our chat, which, of course, makes my day.

Pop Culture Hero Coalition. I finish up the daily recap for startrek.com and meet a friend atop the Rio in the Voodoo Lounge to enjoy a well-deserved drink, and music performed by the Enterprise Blues Band. But here’s what stands out most about Friday... Not long after I’d arrived in Vegas, I ran into my friends Scott Tolen and Rebeca Isabel Aguirre, a couple who don’t let cerebral palsy slow them down. I told them to call or text if they had any problems over the weekend. Sure enough, while Rebeca was out, a bolt on Scott’s electric wheelchair split. Could I find a wrench, come to his room and remove the broken wheelchair plate so that he could at least be mobile? I spring into action, racing to his room to assess the situation. We actually need two wrenches, one to hold the bolt in place, the other to steady the nut. I ask the Rio staff; no luck. But we actually have a wrench in our handy-dandy CBS Consumer Products toolkit, and one of the event’s lighting guys lends me another one. Up to Scott’s room I go, off comes the plate, and back in action is Scott.

07 A duo of Andorian cosplayers join the fun. 08 Discovery scriptwriter Kirsten Beyer with her husband. 09 Ian Spelling prepares to host another panel. 10 Karl Urban (Doctor McCoy) represents the Kelvin Timeline.

“I’m so busy chatting with the actors, and prepping with Page and Hetrick, that I have no window to stew or panic. It’s time to get on with the show.” So, now it’s Friday. I’ve arranged to meet Scott and Rebeca at the Discovery exhibit at 1pm, to help them skip the line. I’ve also got a 12:30 interview with Neville Page in the war room, not far from the exhibit. I tell Neville about Scott and Rebeca, and he shares a remarkable story. He used to design wheelchairs, and that skill helped him land a gig on Avatar, for which he created Jake Sully’s wheelchair. Neville and I take a break from our interview to meet Scott and Rebeca, and Neville hangs out with them for a good 20

Sunday

I sit in on Karl Urban’s 10am main-stage panel and, man, no one plays to a crowd like he can. He’s just so damn energetic and charming and, as the ladies will attest, handsome. Later, I host a smallstage session with Eric Allan Hall, who’s an icon in cosplay circles, and has won pretty much every award Creation has ever handed out. He’s joined by a couple of his young kids, and the audience clearly enjoys learning more about how he creates his cosplays on a budget. Speaking of children, another of my favorite STLV 2017 moments occurs on this day. I’m walking by the Rio restaurant to grab some coffee at the nearby Starbucks, and I see a little girl frantically waving at me. It’s Kirsten Beyer’s daughter, who’s dining with her mom, dad, Chieffo, and others from the Discovery crew. We make eye contact and I smile, wave back, and shout, “Hi, honey!” It’s a private moment, and then everyone else enthusiastically waves in my direction. And it occurs to me: her mom may work for Discovery, but she is truly Star Trek’s next generation. Summing it all up: STLV 2017 was a blast – bring on 2018. STAR TREK

INTERVIEW

STAR TREK

JASON ISAACS

J A S O n

I S a A C S

WAR CAPTAIN As Captain Gabriel Lorca, Jason Isaacs delivers a compelling performance as arguably the most complex commanding officer ever to grace a Star Trek series. The actor reveals what drives Lorca, and why he couldn’t say no to the part… W o r d s : Ta r a B e n n e t t Additional material: Bryan Cairns

f you’re wondering what kind of man is sitting in the captain’s chair for the voyages of Star Trek: Discovery, here’s a telling moment. At the Television Critics Association summer press day for the new series, Jason Isaacs is asked, “What would Gene Roddenberry think about the new series?” Without skipping a beat, the actor offers, “He would say, ‘It’s the best Star Trek series by far!’” After a round of laughter, he adds with definite cheek, “I just spoke to him recently.” There’s no question that Isaacs is coming to the venerable franchise with a supremely dry wit, and very strong ideas – and ideals – about how best he can contribute to the latest Trek television series. Quick as a whip, as all good Liverpudlians tend to be, the actor handles the press questions – including Star Trek Magazine’s – with grace, candor, and a fierce intelligence that absolutely befits the kind of personality needed to take the conn of the Crossfieldclass starship, U.S.S. Discovery. And even

with a C.V. brimming with almost 30 years of stage and film roles, Isaacs is clearly taken with how fate has cast him on a series that has great personal ties for him. “I come from a family of boys, and we used to fight, or still do fight all the time,” the actor shares with a laugh. “In England when I was eight, there were only three channels, and the thing we fought most about was which channel we were going to watch at night. But there was never an argument when Star Trek was on. The whole family crammed onto the couch watching Star Trek. So the notion that I would get to stand one day and say, ‘Energize,’ and point phasers, and run in exactly the same way they did 50 years ago – run to the left and run to the right – because there’s no CG way to look like you are being hit by a torpedo, other than an embarrassing way. It’s unimaginable that we are doing it, and that we get paid for messing around like children in the backyard.”

STAR TREK

INTERVIEW

ISAACS ON…

LORCA

Star Trek: Discovery’s Gabriel Lorca isn’t your run-of-the-mill captain. A brilliant military tactician with a no-nonsense attitude, Lorca harbors plenty of disturbing and dark secrets. He’s also not that warm and fuzzy with his crew, preferring to keep his distance. Could Lorca be up to no good? Some viewers automatically pegged him as a villain. Or, in the battle between the Federation and the ruthless Klingons, perhaps Lorca is merely willing to do anything required to win the war – regardless of the cost? Actor Jason Isaacs isn’t about to spill the beans about his enigmatic character, and instead notes that, “He’s not a simple man and he can’t be described simply.” Explaining further, Isaacs says, “I don’t believe that Lorca knows himself, and I don’t know if he’s consistent. I know that he’s a good wartime leader. I know that he’s been through some tough things. He’s tough on his crew, but that’s because you need people to be sharp during war. A mistake could be the end of you. He’s sometimes great at interacting with people, and sometimes not. Sometimes he makes good decisions and sometimes he makes bad ones. These are richly complicated characters who change over time, and are different with different people.”

DECISION TIME Throughout his three decades as a professional actor, Isaacs is most often known for portraying complicated villains with incredible bravado, and compelling inner turmoil. From Colonel William Tavington in The Patriot, to Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Isaacs frequently plays the man you love to hate. In Star Trek: Discovery, the actor even brings those ambiguous layers to Captain Gabriel Lorca of the U.S.S. Discovery NCC-1031. “I’m a captain of a ship in wartime,” Isaacs explains of his character. “I have people to lead, and difficult decisions to

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JASON ISAACS

All of the space visual effects and green screen and stuff is an added bonus, but the truth is it’s an acting job, like any other – just in an interesting, long-form miniseries. And if you don’t have secrets to play, you have nothing to play on camera,” he smiles. Continuing with that theme, Isaacs hints that there will be a lot of subtext with Lorca. “Nobody interesting on-camera ever says what they mean, and nobody ever fully understands themselves,” he asserts. “When I’ve played real life characters in the past, meeting them and talking to them is completely useless. Meeting their family, their friends, their enemies, and the people they work with is the way to build up a three-dimensional picture of someone. Lorca maybe doesn’t know himself, or thinks he knows himself, and is trying to do the job of a leader, which is sometimes manipulating, sometimes bullying, sometimes encouraging. And it’s in a time of war. If you look at the news around us, leaders are having a tough time leading their people, and I have a tough time too.”

“Our complicated story reflects some of the complicated decisions you face when you are asking yourself, ‘Do ends justify means, or the other way around?’” VILLAGE OF THE HAPPY PEOPLE

make. Our complicated story reflects some of the complicated decisions you face when you are asking yourself, ‘Do ends justify means, or the other way around?’” Diving into those moral dilemmas is what Isaacs says sold him on accepting the role, even more so than his long-time affection for Trek. “It was the script,” he says of the ultimate deciding factor. “I wouldn’t play anybody who can be summed up in a sentence. Nobody I know who is interesting in real life, or onscreen, can be summed up in a sentence. So I wasn’t sure whether to do it. There’s no question it’s enormously good fun to

dress in Lycra and fire phasers, but if I’m going to sign up to do something for as long as this, I want to know there will be something to act, because I don’t know how to play ‘starship captain.’ I know how to play human beings.” He continues, “So I had a couple of very long Skype conversations with [executive producers] Akiva [Goldsman] and Gretchen [Berg]. They walked me through some of the complicated, difficult things [Lorca] does. Also some of the secrets he’s got, some of the things that come to haunt him, and make him imperfect. It sounded like an acting job.

01 Lorca (Jason Isaacs) offers Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) a shot at redemption. 02 What is Lorca hiding in his menagerie? ("Context is for Kings")

Isaacs is also excited about the unique storytelling they’ll get to explore in a Star Trek where war is in the now, and the future peace that audiences have come to know can hardly be fathomed. “Nobody buys a ticket to watch the village of the happy people,” the actor cracks about the wartime setting of their series. “All story is conflict. Whether I am doing a tiny, low budget movie, or a free thing for a friend who is shooting on an iPhone, or there are three cranes and a million dollars a second spent on special effects, I’m just someone standing in front of someone else, trying to get them to do something. When people use the word ‘franchise,’ I don’t make the models or sell the bedspreads, I just tell the STAR TREK

INTERVIEW

ISAACS ON…

THE CAPTAINCY When he took on the role of Captain Lorca, Jason Isaacs immediately recognized that he had big shoes to fill, following in the footsteps of distinguished actors William Shatner, Sir Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, and Scott Bakula. Their characters were defined by a morality, nobility, integrity, charisma, and wit, and Isaacs maintains that if Lorca had emerged as a carbon copy of any of the previous captains, he “wouldn’t have taken the job.” “If I thought I was going to play it in any way as a shadow of any of these other actors, I would have run away, screaming,” Isaacs admits. He has nothing but admiration for the actors behind Star Trek’s previous captains. “I’ve been on screen all my professional life. This is just the next part for me,” says Isaacs. “Patrick had not really done any screen work before. He was a magnificent and renowned theater actor. So was William Shatner. He was a brilliant Shakespeare actor from Canada. “I remember looking at some of Bill Shatner’s stuff,” Isaacs adds. “They gave him some of the most banal dialogue, and Shatner had this gift for taking it and making it epic, making the stakes intergalactic, and being completely believable, while slightly camp. It was a genius thing that he did. I was worried about whether I could take any of this stuff and make it seem real. But, when the other actors are so good, and the sets are so real, it makes it easy.”

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stories, which are about people [who are] in difficulty.” With global unrest an unpleasant reality, Isaacs is also certain that this is the very best time to introduce a Star Trek that can be incredibly timely. “I think we live in troubling, dark times,” Isaacs says with intensity. “But we have this extraordinary prism of sci-fi and fantasy, and Gene Roddenberry’s vision, to examine the craziness that’s going on in the nightly news, how the world is getting more divisive, and groups are being pitted against each other. We are separating and isolating, and I don’t know how to explain it to my children. I don’t know how to tell them why there are people in power who say and do these awful things, and create this much division. So there’s no question

“We have this extraordinary prism of sci-fi and fantasy, and Gene Roddenberry’s vision, to examine the craziness that’s going on in the nightly news.”

03 Jason Isaacs. 04 "I glance my buttocks across it," says Isaacs of Lorca's chair. 05 Lorca encounters Harry Mudd (Rainn Wilson) in Episode 5, "Choose Your Pain."

that we are part of a story that shows not just how it can all be harmonious, but how you get there. We are complicated characters for complicated times, and our journey through the struggles that we have together, and where we fall out, or don’t fall out, whether we make poor or good decisions, are everything the show was always about – but for the 21st Century, and for the nuanced times we live in. “All great storytelling is ‘What would you do?’” Isaacs continues. “Well, we’ve got some fantastic situations to go, ‘What would you do? Who do you identify with?’ One of the things people are saying about long-form storytelling is, when the credits roll at the end of our show, it starts the conversation. One thing about self-contained episodes is it finishes the

conversation, and then you go, ‘What do we eat?’” he shrugs. “With ours, you can start the discussion with your family about who we are on the screen, but also what’s going on in your life. That’s the richness that you can get from a long-form story.”

THE CHAIR Isaacs is also particularly proud to be serving alongside Michelle Yeoh’s Captain Georgiou, and Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham in the new series, as well as a diverse group of actors and the characters they portray. “Just before this [series], I was in The OA, a show led by Brit Marling,” says Isaacs. “I’ve got two daughters, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be part of a great story, told by great people, where

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INTERVIEW

ISAACS ON…

ACCENTS Keen to avoid any comparisons being made between Lorca and Patrick Stewart’s Captain JeanLuc Picard – and to further differentiate Lorca from his other predecessors – Isaacs dropped his natural British accent in favor of a distinctly Southern States twang. “It’s a time of war,” Isaacs offers. “There’s something military about a Southern accent. I’ve trained with a bunch of American soldiers in the South. Even the soldiers from the North end up with a Southern hue to their accent. So, it has a military connotation to it, but it can be very harsh. Or it can be very charming, and seductive. And, it’s not something that we’ve heard before from a starship captain. It was entirely my decision.”

there is a woman in the lead – and see her ideas and her actions are not dictated by her relationship to men. I’ve been searching, ever since my girls were born, for things I can show them where I don’t have to be embarrassed and explain them away.” With so much to chew on, we have to bring it back to that young kid who sat quietly with his brothers for an hour watching Trek on the couch, asking what it’s like to actually sit in the captain’s chair as the Discovery captain? Isaacs smirks and says, “I don’t sit in the chair… as much as possible. I looked at that thing, and thought, ‘It’s a pit. I’m not going to sink down in it.’ So, I stay out of the chair. I glance my buttocks across it, and I jump out of the thing. I actually walk up to the screen as much as I can, and I conduct war like it’s an orchestra. I run around the deck, and the directors couldn’t be happier, since most of the exciting bridge scenes consist of five people standing still at their stations,” he deadpans. “Now, every director arrives and says, ‘I hear you move?’ with delight on their faces. And I go, ‘I move for the right price…’” As to his expectations for how Star Trek: Discovery will be received by the fans, Isaacs says, “I know the people in [our] writers’ room care enormously what the Trekkies think. I love the ones 34

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“These are stories we’re telling with fresh characters, and fresh dilemmas, for a fresh century.” I’ve met. They’re great! I know they are incredibly enthusiastic. And some are enthusiastic about being furious and outraged. Some are enthusiastic because they love it. They will, all of them, even the naysayers, be in the front of the queue to watch it. I hope we give them plenty of stuff to argue about at conventions. I can’t wait to get into it with them. It’s made with respect and love, but these are stories we’re telling with fresh characters, and fresh dilemmas, for a fresh century.” And if the series happens to change some worldviews, and maybe even some lives, so be it. “One of the things that really surprised me was meeting the people who felt that Harry Potter has contributed a lot to their lives, and saved their lives in some instances,” he shares. “I’ve met a few of the Trek fans, and they seem to be

06 Jason Isaacs as Captain Gabriel Lorca. 07 Lorca, captured by Klingons.

an incredibly passionate, fun community. They have a sense of irony about what they are doing, quite often. They don’t think it’s real. It reminds me of the community I met making The Patriot. All the people in my troop of the Dragoons were reenactors who suspended their jobs, and lived in the camp. While they absolutely lived it, and saluted me when they saw me at the supermarket, they also had a sense of fun about it. I think this is going to be a ride. Unlike everybody else, I’m thrilled there are people furious about our lens flares, or our costumes, because it just shows how much they love it all, and I can’t wait to talk about it with them.”

INTERVIEW

N E V I L L E

P A G E

Creature Crafter 36

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Neville Page has led a career as colorful, inventive, and unique as the creature designs and props he’s masterminded for everything from Minority Report, Avatar, Tron: Legacy, Super 8, and Prometheus, to Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond. His current project is the long-awaited return of Trek to television, namely Star Trek: Discovery, for which – and not for the first time – he’s been instrumental in reimagining the Klingons. Star Trek Magazine recently caught up with the enthusiastic Page, who filled us in on his experiences on the three Trek features, and how he beamed aboard Discovery. Wo r d s : I a n S p e l l i n g

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sculpture of Mr. Hyde. When I saw it as a 10-year-old, I thought, “Human hands squeezed clay to look like that? That’s unbelievable to me.” I was hooked. It’s so great to know Rick personally now, and talk about that moment.

Star Trek Magazine: What led you to become a creature designer, and who were your earliest influences? Neville Page: My parents were entertainers. My dad was in the circus as a drummer, and my mother was a dancer in the theater, in London. So, entertainment was always a part of the ambient noise in my life as a child. My grandfather was a musician; my mother’s father, he was a painter. Art and expression were always allowed. It wasn’t something that was stifled, but it was not something that my parents wanted me to do professionally, because at age five, when we moved from England to the States, it was a goal for the family to do better. It’s not as if my parents wanted me to become a musician or a dancer. And, oddly, I aspired to do both of those. I actually trained to do both of those. Then you discovered Rick Baker and Star Wars. 38

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“I presented my design to Justin Lin, the director, and he said, ‘That’s her. That’s Jaylah.’” Those two things, and also Frank Frazetta [the renowned American fantasy and science fiction artist]. I found his book at a garage sale. It’s The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta. I still have it. The price tag from the garage sale is still on it, but there’s no price you can put on it for sentimental value. Seeing The Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta, and then seeing Star Wars, and then seeing Rick Baker, whose work was starting to be showcased in Fangoria and Starlog magazines all the time, all made an impact on me. I remember this one picture I saw of Rick Baker with a clay

01 Discovery introduced a new look for the Klingons. 02 Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, in Star Trek Beyond. 03 Page’s Klingon make-up for Star Trek Into Darkness. 04 The palid look of the Nibirans was Page’s first challenge on Into Darkness. 05 T’Kuvma (Chris Obi).

So at that point in your life, Star Trek wasn’t on your radar? No. I had aspirations of being on the set of Star Wars. I wanted to wear Luke Skywalker’s costume and have a lightsaber. I thought, “How do I actually do that? Clearly Star Wars isn’t a real-life opportunity, so maybe I should get into film as actor. Then I can wear the costumes, and roleplay on film.” I moved to California to become an actor, and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which is a great, reputable school, and became, in quotes, an actor. That meant I worked at several restaurants in Los Angeles and auditioned a lot, and got… nothing. I started to realize, “I don’t get to exercise the craft. I truly like the craft of acting, but I’m not getting to do it.” If I was in a commercial, I was like, “Ah, it’s not really acting, and I’m certainly not holding a lightsaber.” So, I bailed. I thought, “Let me go the route of design.” I’d heard of this school called The ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. I wanted to go there because of my knowledge of the guys on Star Wars, like Joe Johnston, Ralph McQuarrie, and Nilo Rodis-Jamero. Those three guys were educated either as illustrators or industrial designers, so I went the industrial design route. That’s how I got into doing medical products. Thinking I was going to do film when I graduated, I fell in love with this whole idea of engineering and designing consumer goods. So, that’s what I did for many years, working for BMW, and also

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“Bryan Fuller loved the engineer from Prometheus... He thought, ‘That’d be perfect to have as an inspiration for our Klingons.’”

some cool automotive companies and high-end aerospace companies. I lived in Switzerland for a couple years, teaching. What was it that led you and your business partner at the time, Scott Robertson, to move back to the States? We had an opportunity to reimagine ourselves, so we said, “What do we want to do?” He started a publishing company, and I thought, “I’m going to somehow get into film.” I’d designed wheelchairs for so long that I was handed the project to do the vehicle for the Men in Black ride at Universal, Men in Black: Alien Attack. Phil Hettema was the man in charge of the ride. They needed it to be wheelchairaccessible. I thought, “But this is Men in Black. I’m a fan – is there any way you’d let me design a creature too?” They said, “Well, you don’t design creatures but go ahead and draw a couple.” I was successful enough to have them be interested in me managing almost all creatures for the ride. That’s where I met these incredible artists who became, unbeknownst to them, my mentors. Carlos Huante, Jordu Schell, Jose Fernandez, Jim Kagel. These guys were working in my shop. They were the top guys in Hollywood at the time, and still are. Those were my teachers, and they were my exposure to creature design. I thought, “That is what I aspire to do and become.” What was the stepping stone that set you to work with J.J. Abrams on the 2009 Star Trek film? Minority Report, the Spielberg film. Well, it started off with Men in Black: Alien Attack, because Steven was one of the movie’s producers, and he was involved with the ride. We had to present to him and have him approve stuff, so I met Steven. Then

one day there’s a knock at my studio door – a woman saying somebody had left their keys at my studio. She looks in our studio, and says, “You guys do helmets.” We did. We did a lot of bicycle helmets and hockey helmets, so I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Oh, I’m working on a movie called Minority Report, and we need some gear and some helmets. Would you mind being a part of it?” I said, “Not at all. What’s your name?” She said, “Colleen Atwood.” I said, “OK, I don’t know who you are, but we’ll give you a hand.” I didn’t realize that she was the Colleen Atwood, such an amazing, accomplished, Oscar-winning designer. And you found yourself on set again with Spielberg? Steven, who is a genius guy and who should not remember me, remembered me from the Men in Black project. It became more familiar. Why I’m sharing this is just how full-circle all of this can be. After doing Minority Report, there was an opportunity to do Planet of the Apes with Colleen, and facilitate some of the costume work on that film. So, I’m starting to get a couple of things on my résumé, but nothing of significance as a creature designer. I was still an industrial designer dabbling in film. Then along came Avatar… Exactly. I get the call from a buddy who’s working with James Cameron, who says, “Jim’s looking for artists to do creatures for his film called Project 880/Avatar.” I thought, “Well, you don’t ever win the lottery unless you buy a lottery ticket. I don’t have much creature design work, but let me try.” I was selected, with three other guys, to work at Jim’s house for a couple months to draw a few ideas. That turned into a three-year project. During the course of that, I got a call from J.J. Abrams saying, “Hey, I’m

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working on this interesting project called Cloverfield, which is going to be a very different approach.” Avatar was not out yet, and was not going to be out for several years. J.J. found me via the Gnomon School of Visual Effects. I’d made some DVDs on drawing and other techniques, and J.J. said, “I saw those DVDs, and I thought they were cool. Do you want to work on this film?” I’m thinking, “This is bizarre,” but that started the relationship with J.J. At the end of Cloverfield, it rolled into Star Trek (2009). That was a small gig that turned into a year-long project. And then, all with J.J., I did Super 8, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Star Trek Beyond. Which of the creatures that you designed for Star Trek (2009) were you most satisfied with? I was hired specifically to do the big red creature. Only, when I was hired, it was not a big red creature. The scene was set on a desert planet and, as described, it was a dragon-like, bat-like, multi-eyed turtle thing. I thought, “This is cool. I get an opportunity to work on a creature.” Then, the script changed and it was an ice planet, so that meant I was designing the wrong thing. One of the greatest things about working with J.J. is his propensity for collaboration. J.J. invites you to participate

then it gives Kirk the opportunity to get some distance.” If you’re being true to biology, morphology, and to the narrative, then you know what to do with a design, as opposed to, “Here’s a cool shape. Let’s see how we can shoehorn that into the process.” You make those decisions. The big red creature was so much fun to explore, and it was fun to play with and collaborate with J.J., and to arrive at something he felt was cool.

“One of the greatest things about working with J.J. is his propensity for collaboration.” in the process in the course of him trying to realize his vision. I said, “Would you mind if I proposed something about the ice planet creature?” He says, “Go ahead. What do you have?” I said, “OK, let me do some storyboards. I have an idea for something.” It involved pulling a red herring trick instead. You see something on surface, that we called a Polarilla, racing towards Kirk. You think that’s the scene, and then all of a sudden this thing comes through from underneath. The underneath part is critical, because the creature was never intended to be on land. It’s an underwater creature, much like a Humboldt squid meets a lobster. J.J. was specific – big, red, lots of eyes. It’s a massive predator. I thought, “Well, if he’s chasing Kirk, he’s going to be able to catch him easily, so if we literally make him a fish out of water,

06 Page designed the Polarilla, and the “big red creature” which pursues Kirk across the frozen wastes of Delta Vega, in Star Trek (2009). 07 Discovery offered Page his third opportunity to redesign the Klingons.

How different an experience was Star Trek Into Darkness versus Star Trek (2009)? It was very similar because it was the same writers, it was the same cast, for the most part, and J.J. was directing again. It was the same family. I remember when Jeffrey Chernov called me up, he said, “Hey, we’re getting the band back together.” I thought, “Oh, cool.” These productions are just like that. They become family. The make-up artist was different – Joel Harlow was busy with Johnny Depp, as he often is – so Dave Anderson was the make-up lead. He’s a sweet, charming guy, equally as talented, in different ways. That was maybe the only big difference. Dave Anderson’s partner is Heather Langenkamp, who played a funky alien STAR TREK

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THE TORCHBEARER Making a memorable if all-too-brief appearance in Star Trek: Discovery’s debut episode, “The Vulcan Hello,” the symbolic battle armor worn by the Torchbearer was conceived as a sophisticated EV space suit. Built in Los Angeles by Neville Page and Glenn Hetrick’s Alchemy Studios, cutting-edge 3D printing techniques were employed in the creation of the Torchbearer armor, and the ﬁnished piece was made up of 100 individual, digitally-designed components. “I really wanted to do something that you just can’t do normally,” Page told Star Trek Magazine of the techniques used to realize this striking design. “You can’t handsculpt those shapes, symmetrically, within the time and money. I thought, ‘This is a really great opportunity to do something that’s so visually complex.’”

in Star Trek Into Darkness. She’s famous for the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Exactly! It was so funny when we were meeting everyone at the beginning. [Heather] was Dave Anderson’s shop manager, so it was me, her, and Dave waiting for J.J. as we always do. Then J.J. comes in and geeks out over her. He’s all, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe I’m meeting you!” It’s funny how that is. We’re all fans of someone. But Into Darknesss was no different from the first one, other than the challenge of the Nibirans. That was a moving target. Day one, they were the first thing that I started to work on. It’s a privilege when you start on a project that early as a designer – it’s always a privilege – but the negative is that the script isn’t done. It’s being developed. So, you get excited

about a scene you’re designing and then the scene is written out. You think, “But that was such cool stuff!” It’s delusional to think everything you’re doing is about you. It’s not. u were In Star Trek Into Darkness, you How able to take on the Klingons. H was that? Trek, We’d had them in the first Star T mets, but they ended up being in helm and then those scenes got cut. J.J. said, “We’re going to do it this time, bbut one of the helmets is going to come off, maybe in a fight, maybe in a reveal.” ngons, for Which meant we got to see Klin the first time in a long time. ng to J.J. asked, “What are we goin do with them?” I thought, “Well,, can we make the Klingons – and no offense to previous Klingons – can we makee them sexy?” That was my personal ambbition. Let’s make them as tough, as warrior-like as possible, but like they’re beautiiful, powerful beings. I went into it with that goal. We explored some beautifull range with them. What was the standout design for you from Star Trek Beyond? d Jaylah. We didn’t know what that was w who going to be at all. We didn’t know the actress was. There was a lot off hunting for what that could be. In one quick moment, I did a Photoshop illustration of that graphic [of Jaylah’s distincttive face ught, markings], and that was it. I thou “That has the potential to work.” The reason I like that look so much is because it’s strong. It’s black and white. Yoou can’t get stronger graphics. I presented the design to Justin Lin, the director, and he said, “That’s her. That’s Jaylah.”

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You could destroy a design with the wrong casting – we’re not involved with casting, we’re only involved with, “Here’s a basic design” – but because it’s on Sofia Boutella, she has a face that is so perfect for it. It really was a perfect marriage. Given your Star Trek résumé, were you expecting the call to work on Discovery? Alex Kurtzman brought me on. He and I have a good relationship, so I wasn’t surprised at the onset. I believe it was because of a conversation that Alex and

08 The Klingon EV armor worn by the Torchbearer. 09 Mary Chieffo’s L’Rell set the template for Klingon’s new look. 10 Racks of Klingon armor in the Discovery costume department.

“I felt Discovery would be a great opportunity to utilize all these 3D modeling and 3D printing technologies.” Bryan Fuller were having about the Klingons, about what they were going to look like. Bryan was crystal clear that he loved the engineer from Prometheus, not only because of it being the engineer from Prometheus, but also, I think, because of the H.R. Giger influences. He thought, “That’d be perfect to have as an inspiration for our Klingons.” As I’d worked on Prometheus and did the engineer, it made sense. So this was a unique third opportunity to develop Klingon morphology? It started with the Klingons and the Sarcophagus Ship, and with Klingon world-building. Initially it was not the 24 houses. We spoke about the houses, but that’s further down the road. It was not initially that big a world. Once we got the

morphology of the Klingons figured out, manipulating that into the other houses would be developed as needed. It is a budgetary thing. Every house has a price tag in development. Because of my interest in costume design, and coming in from Tron, Oblivion, and a few other films, I felt Discovery would be a great opportunity to utilize all these 3D modeling and 3D printing technologies that we’ve used in a few films, but we haven’t used in this capacity on TV. So, I came in, guns a-blazing, to meet with Bryan Fuller, Aaron Harberts, and Gretchen Berg. I had literally a bag of 3D printed parts, and some images of Klingon armor with our new Klingon designs, and said, “If you don’t use me, you still have to use this technology, because it will yield stuff that we’ve not seen in very many major films, and we’ve never seen on a television budget.” Is it your hope to stick with Discovery for as long as it runs? The opportunity to continue designing creatures, to start to populate these worlds, I would absolutely love to do that. It’s a very rich world, with a lot of old and new stuff to play with.

TREKNOLOGY T O M O R R O W ’ S FA N TA S Y / T O D AY ’ S T E C H N O L O G Y

THE ARMAGEDDON GAME T H E B E S T R E S U LT I S N OT TO P L AY Deep Space Nine never shied away from tackling dark subjects that trouble contemporary society, especially those surrounding war. With nuclear weapons ﬁlling doom-laden headlines on a weekly basis, and international relations on a knife edge, is there a lesson to be learned from the episode “Armageddon Game”? Words: Chris Dows

THE ARMAGEDDON GAME 01 02

rom the beginning of its run, Deep Space Nine’s grim depiction of the future challenged the values of Star Trek. Seemingly gone was the optimism of Gene Roddenberry’s original vision, replaced instead by a relentless onslaught of military, political, and theological confrontation. The crew also seemed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and never more so than in the second season episode “Armageddon Game.” Tasked with neutralizing stockpiles of “Harvesters,” deadly biomechanical gene disruptors used by both sides in the T’Lani and Kellerun’s devastating, centuries-long war, Doctor Julian Bashir and Chief Miles O’Brien became victims of a cover-up that saw them “die” alongside a T’Lani weapons disposal team, after O’Brien accidentally tripped a security protocol. (The ruse was eventually uncovered, thanks to Keiko O’Brien’s mistaken insistence that her husband never drank coffee in the afternoon!) “Armageddon Game” is yet another example of Star Trek’s ability to ask difficult questions – in this case, how do you safely destroy weapons that should never have been created in the first place? This is a dilemma facing scientists and engineers hoping to rid our world of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) today. While it took 10 years for the Harvesters to be perfected during the conflict, it only took O’Brien and Bashir a week of combining different muon frequencies to neutralize the

01 Will we lose the armageddon game? 02 A Harvester is taken out of service.

nano-biogenic weapons, finally coming up with a solution on attempt 375. If only it was so easy for the many organizations faced with dismantling our planet’s estimated 15,000 nuclear weapons (admittedly down from 70,000 during the Cold War). The Starfleet duo had everything they needed in the well-equipped T’Lani disposal laboratory they were using; the United States’ National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) needs an entire factory to dismantle a nuke, plus several subsidiary facilities to deal with the lethal component parts. Unsurprisingly,

“Armageddon Game” Deep Space Nine, Season 2, Episode 13 The T’Lani and Kellerun, at peace after centuries of war, enlist the help of Chief O’Brien and Doctor Julian Bashir to rid their worlds of deadly biological weapons. But the two governments are determined to wipe out all knowledge of the technology – which includes killing O’Brien, Bashir, and anyone else involved in the decommissioning process.

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THE HARVESTERS THE LEGACY OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS Modern chemical warfare started on April 22, 1915 at Ypres, Belgium. On that terrible day, German soldiers opened a number of cylinders containing chlorine and let the wind carry the reactive gas over to the allied lines. So began a chemical arms race that led to the horrors of phosgene bombs and mustard gas shells, designed to choke, burn, and blind their victims. Even over a hundred years since World War I began, the legacy across the former battleﬁelds of Belgium still lingers. Unstable, corroding munitions are discovered constantly, peaking during busy farming periods – particularly the summer, when tractors regularly unearth explosive and chemical ordnance. The Belgian Army are tasked with removing and transporting these unstable weapons. Despite their huge experience, it is not without risk; 20 team members have died over the last 40 years. Once delivered back to base, all shells are X-rayed – a dangerous task in itself; if they are found to contain chemicals, the army use a recently developed technique of freezing the weapons before sending them for detonation in a reinforced vacuum chamber, or to be burned in high temperature furnaces. And the name given to the annual discovery of these weapons? The Iron Harvest.

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decommissioning the business end of an intercontinental ballistic missile is far more complicated than dropping a Harvester cylinder into a muon frequency generator, pressing a button, and turning it from red to green. The NNSA’s work at the Pantex Plant in Texas involves the separation of warheads into uranium, plutonium, tritium gas, and the neutron generator – as well as the irradiated metals that compose its exterior. From here, those components that cannot be safely incinerated are sent to different specialist facilities across the country. Plutonium is virtually impossible to make safe, so usually ends up being stored in very secure locations, such as the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Additionally, the possibility of radioactive contamination is what drives groups such as the Union of Concerned Scientists to develop new techniques that might minimize the chance of a disaster, with advances in technology constantly being made. A team working out of the UK’s Manchester University and the National Nuclear Laboratory recently unveiled their research into stored radioactively contaminated material. Their findings on the specific location of radioactive isotopes within samples taken from a former nuclear power station will lead to

better ways of decommissioning irradiated materials in the United Kingdom and beyond, but still won’t make the most hazardous of materials anything approaching harmless.

Biological Warfare

While nuclear weapons have been around since 1945, chemical and biological weapons date back to prehistory, and include a regular medieval siege tactic of hurling the bodies of plague victims over city walls with catapults. World War I, however, is recognized as the beginning of scientifically-driven industrial production of bio-weapons. When Chief O’Brien is exposed to a single drop of the Harvester fluid on his skin, he is running a fever within hours, and struggling to breathe within a day. With the entire population of T’Lani III decimated by the weapons, Doctor Bashir can only try to ease the Chief’s suffering as they hide from their would-be murderers on the deserted planet, their “accidental” death in the laboratory having been notified to a rather suspicious Commander Sisko. The physical effects on the Chief are unsettlingly similar to today’s disease-based arsenal, which includes such horrors as anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism. Also

THE ARMAGEDDON GAME

(Image: Shujaa_777, Shutterstock.com)

“As long as the knowledge exists, there’s a danger it may be used. That’s a risk we refuse to live with.”

Neutralizing the Threat

KELLERUN AMBASSADOR S H A R AT

familiar is the lack of damage to buildings and infrastructure. Even the rations found by Bashir in the bunker are safe to eat, once O’Brien has checked for booby traps. The chilling similarities to the real world shouldn’t be surprising; the writer of “Armageddon Game,” Morgan Gendel, is a screenwriter who knows how to bring

emotion and realism to even the most fantastic situations. After all, he received a Hugo award for the Next Generation episode “The Inner Light.” Clearly marked in their cylindrical tubes, Harvesters were relatively easy to collect and stockpile for destruction. This is in stark contrast to contemporary nerve agents, which are difficult to detect and problematic to dispose of. Formed in 1997, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) enforces the Chemical Weapons Convention to

DECOMMISSIONING WMDS ROBOTS MAKING THE WORLD SAFER Given the tremendous risks involved, it will come as no surprise that advances in robotics and mechanization are playing their part in minimizing the danger posed to personnel who decommission WMDs. Opened in 2016, Bechtel’s cutting edge Pueblo Chemical AgentDestruction Pilot Plant, in south-eastern Colorado, is spearheading the use of remotely operated systems across its huge ﬁeld of blast-proof “igloos,” which house 780,000 unused US viscous sulfur mustard projectiles from World War II. From a separate building, or behind a 24-inch-thick blast wall, operatives control robot arms and oversee automatic forklifts and conveyor belts via a ﬁber-optic video network, dismantling the munitions casings as they pass through a series of sealed areas. Once the explosive materials have been removed, the containment of the liquid sulfur is “burst,” with the toxic material drained away for chemical neutralization. Heavily protected workers are only occasionally called in to the operating area, and thanks to the speed with which the six-axis gripper robots can work, around 50 shells can be dismantled per hour. While this is fast compared to other methods of disposal, it will still be at least 2020 before the arsenal has been destroyed.

prohibit the development, production, and use of chemical weapons across the globe. It also monitors the destruction of existing stockpiles, usually employing one of three approaches: incineration, explosive, and neutralization. All have their disadvantages – while incineration is favored by the United States’ Department of Defense, some munitions are not suitable for burning at very high temperatures, and any that have an explosive component must be separated out and destroyed in a heavily armored furnace. The “wet chemistry” approach of neutralization involves the hazardous draining of the chemical before adding a neutralizing reagent. Even then, a series of furnaces are required to destroy the residual waste. Explosive destruction systems work well for the very oldest weapons, but are unsuitable for more modern ordnance.

03 The T’Lani and Kellerun conflict of “Armageddon Game.” 04 The ruins of St. Martin’s Church, Ypres, Belgium, 1918. 05 Bashir examines a Harvester canister. 06 A Topol-M missile on parade in Moscow, 2010.

There have been advances in combating nerve agents before an actual attack. Over the last couple of years, a team out of the University of Tennessee have been developing “bioscavengers” – engineered enzymes capable of neutralizing the effects of agents such as sarin, via an injection or aerosol spray. Unfortunately, the base enzyme is from a squid, and the human body attacks it as soon as it is introduced. Other research teams are working on producing a bioscavenger that will work with the victim to quickly counteract the exposure to biological attack. It is clear Starfleet Medical possessed effective counter-measures to the Harvesters, as Chief O’Brien made a full recovery once safely back in Deep Space 9’s sickbay, but individual treatment can never be as effective as destroying the weapons before they can be used. Because of these issues, “Armageddon Game” resonates even more strongly today than it did when first broadcast 23 years ago. The episode unequivocally does what Star Trek does best – tackle challenging themes head-on. While the Harvesters represent the threat posed by WMDs past, present, and possible future, perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the episode is the behavior of the T’Lani and Kellerun ambassadors. Their attempt to eradicate every trace of Harvester technology, data, and personnel is shocking, yet has an undeniable logic to it. If any knowledge of such dreadful weapons still exists, so too does the threat of them being created again. Sadly, whether in reality or fiction, the ultimate solution to making such dreadful weapons safe is simple – don’t create them in the first place. STAR TREK

DISCOVERY: ON SET

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AARON HARBERTS As the world waited for the launch of Star Trek: Discovery, showrunner Aaron Harberts took Star Trek Magazine on a tour of the eponymous starshipâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s awe-inspiring sets. Along the way, he shed a little light on the creation of the show, and the story that he and co-showrunner Gretchen Berg hope to tell over the course of the first season. Words: Bryan Cairns

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01 Journalists are beamed aboard the Discovery engine room.

he legacy of the show is intimidating, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t,” says Aaron Harberts, addressing the pressure he and co-showrunner Gretchen Berg felt in honoring Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision. “There are so many hours of programming, and so many iterations of the show, and the films as well. But we knew the touchstone was always optimism, hope, teamwork and family, and using science to achieve goals. When you distill it down to that, it gets a lot less terrifying. That’s got to be the touchstone, and then we built our own characters around it. We always knew that as long as we continued to hold true to a mission of hope, that we would be okay.” Star Trek: Discovery is filmed at stateof-the-art studios in Toronto, Canada, with its impressive standing sets taking up every inch of available space across several sound stages. As Harberts leads us through the U.S.S. Discovery’s wide, futuristic corridors, it’s obvious that, visually at least, this Star Trek caters for a savvy, contemporary audience. With Discovery being a prequel to the original Star Trek series, we ask why Bryan Fuller and his successors decided to follow that path with the new show. Harberts notes that former showrunner Fuller was fascinated with that period in Trek’s future history, 10 years prior to the adventures of Captain Kirk. Furthermore, Fuller wanted to craft a story delving into the tension between the Klingons and the Federation.

THE U.S.S. DISCOVERY “This is the latest ship off the line, so the architecture reﬂects that,” explains Harberts, as we enter the sparkling Discovery bridge. “It was a science vessel – a science vessel conscripted in a time of war. The bridge feels very hopeful. You stand on it and you think, ‘Yeah, this is for people who are explorers, who are scientists, who are inspiring forward movement in the future.’”

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DISCOVERY: ON SET

“The touchstone was always optimism, hope, teamwork and family, and using science to achieve goals.”

“That was something that was really important to him,” Harberts recalls, “so, he decided that would be the place to lodge the series, a decade before the original series. By the time Gretchen Berg and I came onboard, that decision had already been made, and we began working within that paradigm. I don’t know the exact reason, but we’ve come to enjoy being able to pull characters from the original series, and introduce them into our timeline in a way that still syncs up with how canon represents them by the time we get to the original Trek. “We never hear about Michael Burnham as she relates to Sarek and Spock,” continues Harberts. “So we have to close this chapter off. We have to find the way to make sure that it syncs up with all the other iterations, otherwise it’s a disaster. We already have the plan in motion.” With a second season yet to be officially confirmed, Harberts won’t be drawn on what that plan might be, but it’s clear that he and Berg have an eye on where the story could go. “As we move along into Seasons 2 and 3, we can then begin thinking of ways to move into another area, to kind of pivot around. There’s a huge dead end coming. We can’t bash into the original series and expect the audience to take all those things in and say, ‘But we’ve never heard about Michael Burnham.’ So, figuring out why that is, figuring out why Spock doesn’t mention her, are really interesting story engines for future seasons.”

A NEW PATH Harberts is keen to acknowledge the importance of the show forging its own path. Instead of chronicling 50

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a five-year mission like that of the original Enterprise, Discovery pits the Federation against the Klingon Empire in all-out war. The idea of Star Trek replacing exploration with conflict has raised some Vulcan-like eyebrows, but Harberts is emphatic in his assertion that Discovery sings very much from Gene Roddenberry’s original hymn book.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about whether our show is dystopian or not,” he admits. “I don’t think it is. In fact, I know that it is not. We think of Discovery as a novel, as chapter storytelling. We always want people to be able to turn the page and want to watch the next episode. Sometimes that requires a large event to happen, or a loss to happen. I find when I screen the show, by the end of the episode my heart feels fuller. People are trying their best, and working through issues, and they are putting their best foot forward. “What I truly believe, and anyone who is a fan of Star Trek I think would agree, is that Star Trek is bigger than anyone,” Harberts continues. “It’s bigger

LORCA’S READY ROOM When Lorca isn’t commanding his vessel, or ordering the crew to ﬁre on the enemy, he’s busy strategizing in his ready room, located in the back of the bridge. Screens on the wall display graphics and data that keep track of the Klingon-Federation War, and the battle maps are updated with every episode. In addition, there’s Lorca’s standing desk, which was designed to lend the captain even more presence. “When you walk in to greet him, he’s standing,” Harberts states. “He’s not sitting. Immediately it adds an extra weight to a character who has tons of secrets, and a lot of mystery surrounding him. “Jason [Isaacs] had wanted the desk to be elevated, and we thought we would put in a platform,” continues Harberts. “Unfortunately, the ceiling in the ready room slopes to such a degree that if we’d put a desk upon a platform, he would have been smashing his head.” 03

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than any one of us. We’re helping to guide the ship.” Like previous Star Treks, which tackled real-world issues including racial intolerance and gender inequality, Harberts confirms that Discovery will also incorporate social commentary into its story. “‘What rights do animals have? If an alien creature, who we don’t know is sentient, can help us win the war, is it fair to put that creature in pain?” Harberts offers, referring to a major plot through-line during the first half of Season 1. “How do we get around that? How do we look ourselves in the mirror? What’s the debate there? When it comes to the Klingons, we need look no further than what’s going on in the United States, right now. What is the logic of isolationism? What is the thing that motivates a desire for racial purity? What happens when someone is holding out their hand but the other person doesn’t want to take their hand? How do you solve that problem? Can you reach peace or understanding by learning more about your ‘enemy’? I think so. “In terms of the Klingon/Starfleet war, one of our Klingons, L’Rell

THE BRIDGE Early concepts imagined the bridge as a multi-leveled set, but that idea was shelved due to the projected costs involved. The bridge’s sleek, cutting-edge aesthetic is no less impressive despite this compromise. Hi-tech consoles, festooned with flashing lights, buttons, and controls adorn the various stations. And they look like they mean business. Harberts notes that the display monitors on the bridge are actually future televisions, destined for retail, but originally designed by a television manufacturer for the production. The graphics that play across them are pre-programmed, so Starfleet characters can interact with them in real time, with more specific graphics being added in post-production. Captain Lorca’s beast of a chair takes center stage, with the helm and navigation stations taking up their traditional positions, facing the large viewscreen. “Unlike other captains, Jason Isaacs made the choice to spend a lot of time up at the viewscreen,” Harberts reveals. “So, you’ll often see Lorca not in the chair as much as Picard or Kirk. He actually liked to play a lot of his stuff downstage.”

[portrayed by actor Mary Chieffo], is a gigantic character within our narrative,” Harberts adds. “What we want to do is tell a story about peace, but not a peace that comes from conquering the enemy. A peace that comes from both sides trying to figure it out. I don’t think it’s Star Trek to destroy to win. Winning isn’t about decimating your enemy. Winning is about finding a path to commonality.”

02 Touring the costume department with Aaron Harberts. 03 Captain Lorca's standing desk. 04 The impressive bridge of the U.S.S. Discovery.

MICHAEL BURNHAM The casting of Sonequa Martin-Green as Star Trek’s first African-American female lead garnered much press attention in early 2017. Harberts emphasizes that thinking and casting with a progressive worldview is “vital” in today’s landscape. “We had Janeway with Voyager,” Harberts offers. “Kate Mulgrew is a super-powerful presence, and really STAR TREK

DISCOVERY: ON SET

ENGINEER NG ENGINEERING With its raised gantry, consoles, and that big window onto the glowing, red warp core chamber at the far end, Discovery’s main engineering room conjures memories of the engineering sets from Enterprise and the original Star Trek. Canisters inserted into recesses on one wall hint at Lorca’s highlyclassiﬁed spore-drive project (revealed in Episodes 3 and 4), as does the fortiﬁed door close to Lieutenant Paul Stamets’ station. “There are things behind that door that are quite mysterious, in terms of the technology that Stamets is developing,” Harberts intimates.

THE TRANSPORTER ROOM

Harberts cites the transporter room as “another one of my favorites, because it is so iconic, and photographs so beautifully. We’re in here quite a bit.” Echoing previous transporter pads, the set features the signature platform, with a bright blue color scheme illuminating the room. Off to the sides as you enter, you’ll ﬁnd lockers for EV suits, phasers, pulse riﬂes, and other essential ephemera for away teams. “When you see our cast on the pads, you just can’t help but get a rush,” Harberts smiles. Interestingly, this Discovery set doubles as the transporter room aboard the Shenzhou, albeit extensively redressed. “We switch this room back and forth, between the Discovery transporter room and Shenzhou transporter room,” reveals Harberts. “It is a huge switch. The transporter technology on the Shenzhou is different, older. The ‘shower stalls,’ as we call them, echo more of the original series version.”

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broke a lot of barriers, so we owe it to Kate. She was large and in charge on that show. But now, with what’s going on in the world, and in the United States, it’s important to say anybody can be in that captain’s chair. Michelle Yeoh (as Captain Georgiou) is a fantastic captain of the Shenzhou. It’s important that we realize, too, that Michael Burnham starts out as a first officer. What was most exciting for us, aside from the fact that a woman is our lead, is the fact that this is a character who thinks she knows what she wants. There’s a scene in the very first episode, where Captain Georgiou says to Burnham, ‘I’m going to recommend you for the captain’s chair.’ That’s it, for Michael, who has always thought she knew how she was getting somewhere. It’s all about the plans you have in life. “By the end of the second episode, she makes choices that change her life completely,” Harberts continues. “She’s got to find another path. Male or female, whoever is in charge, it’s a story about finding out who you are, and learning that sometimes the path you thought you’d take isn’t the path you are on. I believe seeing Michael and Georgiou together sends a powerful message. It’s great to see – which is not to say the male characters are getting short shrift at all. We have journeys for some of the men of the show, whether it’s an alien like Saru, or characters like

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CREW QUARTERS

The crew quarters of Stamets and Dr. Culber give a small glimpse into their private lives. Sheets are tightly tucked into the bed. A furry throw blanket rests at the foot of the bed, and personal items and keepsakes give the room further life. “They’re just a couple like any other couple,” says Harberts. “And, for me, that meant showing a couple doing what couples do, which is why we had to do the bathroom. We do a lot of scenes of them brushing their teeth and downloading on the day, on the mission. Yes, we’re saying that we have toothbrushes in 2250. So, it’s like The Brady Bunch. There’s no toilet, but I think suggestion is big enough for Trek.”

“What we want to do is tell a story about peace, but not a peace that comes from conquering the enemy. A peace that comes from both sides trying to figure it out.” Lieutenant Tyler and Captain Lorca, that are just as provocative.” Discovery spends a great deal of time exploring the Klingon houses, and establishes compelling new members of that infamous species. Voq, played by newcomer Javid Iqbal, was a character shrouded in mystery prior to the launch of the series. His importance to the overarching plot is yet to be truly felt, but again there are real-world parallels to the character. “Voq represents a true believer,” Harberts reveals. “In his mind, he is the Klingon messiah. It is his goal to unite

the Klingon houses, who have been infighting and hurting each other. His attitude is, ‘For Klingons to be great, we need to come back together. We need to unite under the motto, Remain Klingon.’ That is something a lot of the Klingon houses don’t care about. Voq is a true believer in T’Kuvma, and someone who is possibly going to help take up the mantle of T’Kuvma’s beliefs. He represents that message, and what people will do when they believe in an ideology so strongly that they are willing to give up everything for it.”

05 Discovery's transporter pad. 06 The ship's Engineering room. 07 Executive producer Aaron Harberts. 08 Costume designer Gersha Phillips. 09 Burnham and Tilly's crew quarters.

DISCOVERING STAR TREK Star Trek’s fans are legion, and devoted to the show they love. And they are also very protective of it. For Discovery’s showrunners, a huge challenge has been how to please existing Star Trek aficionados, and to connect with a new generation of fans. “It’s hard,” acknowledges Harberts. “Who knows who connects with what anymore? Here’s what I hope: A lot of people are introduced to Star Trek by their father, or their mother, or their big brother or big sister. Anecdotally, it seems like the kind of show you are guided into. Then, it becomes a lifestyle

– for life. I guess the hope would be that Star Trek fans would turn to their kids, or their girlfriend, or whoever, and say, ‘Hey, this was a show that meant a lot to me. You’re my child. You’re my little brother. I want to show you this.’ Then it’s our job to tell the kind of stories that a younger audience can get into.” In a show that’s already asking deep questions of its audience, Harberts believes that the mature storytelling of Star Trek: Discovery has a broad, inclusive appeal. “I think it’s a very adult version of Star Trek,” he says. “I don’t mean that from the standpoint of language or nudity. We’re talking about human problems. We are talking about truly discovering who you are. I think young people can relate to that. They are trying to figure it out, even though they seem super-confident, and like they have it together. “We have some action,” Harberts adds. “We have great effects. But if you don’t have the emotional through-lines, and that family you are rooting for, I don’t think you have a show. That’s what I am most proud of. When Gretchen and I came onboard, we said, ‘This is Star Trek, but it has got to be a family drama, and a workplace drama. People who watch have to see their lives in it.’” STAR TREK

Photo: Â© U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. James R Pearson

BJO TRIMBLE

NEW ENTERPRISES BJO TRIMBLE PART T WO

Having already helped save the original Star Trek series from an early NBC decommission, Bjo and John Trimble’s involvement with the Enterprise continued into new frontiers. They even helped rename a NASA space shuttle... Wo r d s : C h r i s G a r d n e r

he tenacity and networking skills of Bjo and John Trimble found another outlet, nine years after they organized the famously successful Save Star Trek letter-writing campaign of 1967. It came as the United States of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) prepared to roll out its first space shuttle, Shuttle OV-101, originally to have been named Constitution. “The idea originated from two fans, but they didn’t know how to proceed with it,” Bjo Trimble says, explaining how she and her husband became involved. “They phoned us to ask for help. We felt that public support for the space program was very important, and accepted the challenge.” Phone calls, letters, and meetings were soon organized, and eventually President Gerald Ford announced that the name of the space shuttle would be Enterprise. “It wasn’t so much because we were Trek fans, as to get public attention for the space program,” says Trimble, who watched the shuttle Enterprise roll out of its Palmdale, California manufacturing facilities alongside actors

Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig, and Nichelle Nichols. Nichols went on to recruit minorities and women for the space program. “At the rollout of the Enterprise, I met many aerospace engineers who were closet Trekkies, secretly wearing Star Trek buttons under their lapels,” Trimble confides. Proving influential in the campaign were associates and friends of Gene Roddenberry who worked in the space industry. Roddenberry was fascinated with space exploration, seeing it as humanity’s best hope of survival. “Among Gene’s many friends were people who worked hard all their lives to get us off this planet,” Trimble says. “He agreed that humans are a very fragile basket of eggs to trust to only one planet. He felt that between humanity’s need to broaden our Earth-bound scope, and to consummate our need to see what was over the next hill, mankind needed to go into space. He did not think that his Enterprise would be a model for a star craft, but he hoped that it would be a shove in the right direction. “Gene could argue several sides of his vision of where we should go, and STAR TREK

INTERVIEW

BEYOND THE ORIGINAL SERIES Renowned as fans of the original Star Trek series, the Trimbles profess not to be purists, but Bjo and John don’t shy away from passing judgment on the subsequent iterations of Gene Roddenberry’s original concept. “We enjoy most of the other series,” Bjo Trimble says. “We enjoyed the professional writing of The Animated Series, but wished the animation had been far better.” The Next Generation remains “a series that we enjoy very much today,” while she says that Deep Space Nine “was the beginning of Trek taking a big step away from canon, and trying a totally new viewpoint.” She adds, “We enjoyed this series the most of all the latter series.” Trimble deems Voyager “a fairly good show, with great characters,” but suggests that “the scripts were not as good as they should have been.” Their least favorite show was Enterprise. “We found the concept of Vulcan holding Earth back (or even wanting to do so) too weird to accept. It was a very shaky premise on which to build a new series.” They have mixed reactions to the Star Trek movies. “Most of the films were enjoyable, if not great,” says Trimble. “A couple of films we’ll never watch again. That is about average for a long series of films.” As for the rebooted movie series, launched by J.J. Abrams in 2009, Trimble says she and her husband enjoyed the first of the films: “We both thought that it was a brilliant way to give Star Trek a new way to go from here. Slipping back and forth in timelines is a fine way to work out younger characters, and still have enough canon to satisfy most fans.”

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must go, from here. He could see us reaching even farther, progressing well beyond what we are today. He knew, in the face of our many human frailties, that we would eventually reach to the stars and beyond.” The Trimbles still take a keen interest in NASA’s missions, and hope “to still be on this plane of existence when that first human steps on to Mars.”

ANOTHER NEW ENTERPRISE Gene Roddenberry’s creative thinking extended beyond writing drama, and he was keen to establish a Star Trek souvenir business to capitalize on the popularity of his show. Following the success of the Save Star Trek campaign, Roddenberry asked Bjo Trimble to help him form Star Trek Enterprises, a mail order company that would sell scripts, film cells, and other memorabilia. “We were experienced in building and managing a mail-order business,” Trimble says. “Once Gene saw the wild fan reaction for film clips, he was convinced that setting up a Trek souvenir business was a good idea. David Gerrold [writer of The Trouble with Tribbles] had

already gotten permission to produce his own tribbles for sale, so it was easy for Gene to get permission to market Trek items.” Trimble remembers discussing business with Roddenberry in his office at Desilu. A good-sized room, with medium brown walls and lots of dark brown bookcases. “Captain Picard’s ready room was very much like it, in general atmosphere,” she recalls. “Gene’s desk was large, and on top of it there were usually several different scripts open, lots of notepads, some pictures, a desk calendar, and his treasured Selectric typewriter to one side. His bookshelves were crammed full of scripts, magazines, science fiction sculptures and space models, and books. It was a pleasant room, which was good, because he spent a lot of time in that office! His door was seldom closed.”

STARFLEET’S FINEST When Star Trek made the jump to the big screen with 1979’s The Motion Picture, Bjo Trimble was among a number of fans Roddenberry invited to crew the refitted Enterprise.

BJO TRIMBLE

“At the rollout of the Enterprise, I met many aerospace engineers who were closet Trekkies.”

“Gene wanted to thank fans for their hard work, so he asked the Screen Extras Guild for permission to ‘go on the street’ for people to be in only one scene,” Trimble says. “We had to get up very early, report to the set, get our uniforms and a bit of make-up, then go stand under hot lights all day,” she remembers. “Of course, the main actors had stand-ins to do that last job. We were ‘atmosphere,’ a fancy term for extras, and didn’t have stand-ins. When I got home around midnight, I was exhausted. But it was a great experience.” Bjo and John’s involvement with the Star Trek movies stretched into the sequels, for which “we became sort of unofficial outside assistants in finding fan-made prop replicas for the props and special effects departments to inspect,” Trimble reveals. “They were having a problem with the Genesis cave for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, so I loaned [conceptual and production illustrator] Mike Minor and [artist] Rick Sternbach a large slab of Brazilian agate which sparked their creativity.” Having killed off Spock in that movie, Star Trek film producer Harve

01 NASA’s Enterprise on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. 02 Fans were recruited to form the Enterprise crew, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. 03 The production designers on Star Trek II were inspired by a slab of agate loaned to them by Bjo Trimble. 04 The space shuttle Enterprise, with the cast of Star Trek. 05 Bjo Trimble.

Bennett turned to Bjo for her thoughts on bringing the Vulcan back in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. “I was sent an early script draft by Harve Bennett to critique,” says Trimble, who handed Bennett 18 pages of notes. “Now I know what Gene meant about you not being a yes-man,” Bennett is said to have remarked. “I expected you to tell me my script was superb, not pick it apart!” “I told him that if all he’d wanted was a pat on the head, he had a studio full of yes-people being paid to do that,” Trimble laughs. “Nobody has ever sent me anything else to critique!” She describes Bennett as: “A charming man, and quite wonderful in many ways, but he wasn’t going to let Roddenberry’s Trek prevent him from doing things the way he wanted. There was never any problem. The studio backed Leonard Nimoy as director with strong people who could do the directing if Nimoy proved to be really bad at it, but Nimoy surprised everyone by being a far better director than expected, not only doing it well and efficiently, but bringing the whole project in under deadline.”

INFINITE FRONTIERS The Trimbles have always thought of Gene Roddenberry as a genius, and that Star Trek was, and remains, the kind of science fiction that the world had been longing for. “Fans were tired of sci-fi movies and television shows that often bordered on the downright silly,” Trimble says. Paying tribute to the series’ creator, she continues: “Gene gave fandom a grown-up, intellectual concept that appealed to everyone, from our mentally handicapped daughter to Isaac Asimov. He was a real human being, with faults and foibles, just like anyone else. He had a brilliant mind, was a fascinating conversationalist, and had a great sense of humor. Also, he had an amazing ability to get people who didn’t like each other to work together. “Gene felt strongly that humans would find their greatest strengths within themselves, and by reaching out to each other to build on their strengths. The message is still clear: we can and will find a way to get out of our current, hazardous situation, and find a way to make life better.” STAR TREK

YESTERDAY’S ENTERPRISE R E V I S I T I N G S TA R T R E K’S PA ST

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T H E W R AT H O F K H A N

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN

TERRAFORMING A LEGEND If the hard sci-ﬁ aspirations of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, with its eye on becoming the next 2001: A Space Odyssey, left some wondering where the sequel would take us, then the follow-up surely confounded any and all expectations. Replacing chin-stroking seriousness with ballsy space battles, sensitive character building, and an epic villain, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan rewrote the Trek rulebook. Yesterday’s Enterprise examines the impact of the hugely popular second Star Trek movie, and how it altered Trek’s dramatic landscape for the better.

Words: Rich Matthews

he Wrath of Khan is a betrayal of Star Trek! Now hang on – before you dump your warp core, we’re just putting ourselves in the mind-set of a devoted 1981 fan here. Imagine the hurt at seeing Trek’s genius creator sidelined in favor of an anonymous TV producer, brought in to cut costs. And discovering that the helm had been given to a thirty-something director with only one credit to his name (replacing Robert Wise, the director of sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, no less), who had hardly any knowledge of the original series before he came onboard. To add insult to injury, Starfleet – its rituals, methods, and uniforms – was noticeably militarized, and there were rumors that they were gonna kill off Spock! Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, huh? What did we know! Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry already had his own script ready to go, with the crew thwarting a Klingon attempt to prevent the assassination of

JFK, so he can’t have been best pleased to find himself removed from creative control on the sequel, especially when it went on to become the most celebrated movie in the history of his franchise. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that, from the moment he was cast aside, the Great Bird of the Galaxy became hell-bent on bringing a new, even more utopian vision of Star Trek back to television? Ironically, it was the success of The Wrath of Khan that opened the door to Treks III to VI, and made his dream of The Next Generation possible. Swings and roundabouts. We shouldn’t forget that the first movie was a big hit. Admittedly an expensive, arguably ponderous and self-important hit, but it made a lot of money ($291m in adjusted US box office). The Wrath of Khan, however, is the best 1 hour and 53 minutes of Star Trek ever produced. You can try to argue against that, but you will lose, even with hundreds of hours of Trek to draw on. You might have a soft spot for an STAR TREK

Y E S T E R D AY ’ S E N T E R P R I S E

episode of Voyager, find a crisper slice of sci-fi speculation in the original series, or champion a rip-roaring space battle from Deep Space Nine, but nowhere else – nowhere – will you find a better balance of all the elements that make Star Trek great. Character rules; action swells; spirits soar. A “Big Idea” sci-fi concept – the Genesis torpedo; engineered life from barren death; cheating of the existential no-win scenario – is nested inside a suspenseful submarine war thriller, wrapped in a raw revenge tragedy. And Spock did die, which was ballsy, even if the producers chickened out at the last second and gave themselves a get-out clause. So what is it that makes The Wrath of Khan such a classic, despite its seemingly flagrant disavowal of Star Trek’s earlier tenets?

Your First, Best Destiny

The Wrath of Khan is about old age, friendship, and – drumroll please – death. Before the hive mind’s cry of “duh!” deafens the entire geek community, it’s worth stating this because being so “human” informed each of Kirk and crew’s following adventures on the big screen. It was intimate, personal, insightful, mature storytelling. And everything is laid out by director Nicholas Meyer beautifully in the very first scene – Saavik’s failed attempt to pass the Kobayashi Maru test. 60

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Like a blueprint for the story to come, the young cadets are out of their depth, the weary old hands can’t cope, bad decisions lead to bad results, the Enterprise is crippled, Spock dies (so does everyone else), the dialogue is littered with literary quotes, and Kirk is arrogant, tired, vulnerable, and in need of an emotional refit. It’s a great scene; funny, exciting, and… curious. Essentially it says “These are the themes and concepts we’re going to explore in this movie; we’re going to show you how to beat the no-win scenario.” It’s also a double bluff, designed to imply that the rumors of Spock’s death actually stemmed from the filming of this fake death, not an actual end to the character. The 1982 audience could relax and forget about it and get swept along with the drama, until the sucker punch that awaited them in the final reel. (That sound you hear is Nick Meyer laughing maniacally at how brilliantly his plan played out.) Even 35 years later, it’s remarkable that a film as high profile as this – and squarely aimed at a popcorn-guzzling audience – was allowed to say that its lead characters were getting on a bit, and to depict that in a very human way. How many films today headline a bunch of fifty-somethings, and if they do, how often do they directly address that age in real-world terms? William Shatner fully commits to showing Kirk’s advancing

“Khan becomes the embodiment of Kirk’s attitude towards aging.”

01 Khan (Ricardo Montalban) and his crew. 02 Spock’s death was a pivotal moment for Star Trek. 03 The raw charisma of Montalban in “Space Seed” inspired Harve Bennett. 04 Merritt Butrick played Kirk’s son, David Marcus. 05 Admiral Kirk (William Shatner).

years. The opening scenes, focusing on Kirk’s birthday, are an examination of a late mid-life crisis, worthy of a straight character drama. Just three years earlier, The Motion Picture had painted Kirk’s same desire to regain command of the Enterprise as love for his ship, and his youthful desire to flex his manhood in active duty once again (despite being 48, and wearing space pajamas!). In this context, Khan becomes the embodiment of Kirk’s attitude towards aging. If Kirk gives in to the idea that getting older makes him obsolete, then Khan wins. If, however, he embraces the aging process, and makes the most of the changes that it brings – experience, wisdom, appreciating what he has – then he will triumph over his nemesis, conquering the demons of his past to move on to the next phase of his life. The theme is further explored in The Search for Spock (Kirk values love and duty to his friend over his loyalty to Starfleet and, crucially, his ship), and in The Voyage Home (turning exile into strength when his

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TRUE GENESIS

The story beats in The Wrath of Khan are a tangled web of creative credit. Here’s our breakdown of who thought of what… The Genesis Project:

Writer Jack B. Soward’s original script, “The Omega System,” had Captain Terrell and first officer Chekov employed in testing an experimental weapon on Ceti Alpha V, where Khan was stranded. Art Director Michael Minor later responded to executive producer Harve Bennett’s worry that the Omega System, a weapon of mass destruction, wasn’t very Starfleet by proposing that it become the ultimate terraforming device, which would still be horrendous if used on a planet where there was already life.

Cadet Kirk cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test: Along with fan favorite Saavik (originally named Dr. Savik), Sowards’ second draft, entitled “The Genesis Project,” introduced the infamous no-win scenario test. Director Nicholas Meyer controversially added Kirk’s seemingly deceitful (and decidedly un-Roddenberry) cheat in his first pass on the script, “The New Frontier,” defending the idea as it resonated so much with the exploration of age and death in the final film.

The death of Spock:

Sowards’ draft didn’t make it to screen (despite his getting sole screenplay credit), but his work included many vital story elements. Not least of these was the death of Mr. Spock – devised as a carrot to entice Leonard Nimoy to don the pointy ears one last time. Sowards’ efforts also climaxed with the Enterprise going phaser-to-phaser with the Reliant.

Kirk and son:

Bennett teamed Kirk and his son against Khan, with Kirk Jr. joining the crew of the Enterprise at the end of the movie. He didn’t become Dr. David Marcus as we know him until director Meyer got his hands on the story. It was Meyer who crafted Bibi Besch’s Carol, scientist, former lover of Kirk, and mother to his son.

Moby Dick:

Nick Meyer was brought on board after an almost entirely discarded draft by “Where No Man Has Gone Before” writer Samuel A. Peeples threatened to derail the entire project. As director, he took the previous drafts, introduced more humor, formulated his idea of Star Trek as Horatio Hornblower in space, and added deeper resonance for the themes of age, death, vengeance,

and rebirth. He concocted Kirk’s preoccupation with antiques to reflect his living in the past, and, as such, a passion for ancient literature, which was neatly paralleled by Khan’s own love of Moby Dick, Shakespeare, and Milton.

Return of Khan:

Noting that The Motion Picture had lacked a “real villain,” Harve Bennett decided Star Trek II should be a sequel to the Season 1 episode “Space Seed” (originally called “War of the Generations”), after being struck by the raw charisma of Ricardo Montalban as Khan.

The Wrath of Khan:

The final title came from Paramount’s marketing team. Meyer loathed it. By the time he re-took the helm in 1991 for Star Trek VI, he was able to finally introduce his original title, The Undiscovered Country, to the franchise canon – partly by making sure it was mentioned a few times in the script!

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Y E S T E R D AY ’ S E N T E R P R I S E

TOP SCORE

JAMES HORNER, 1953–2015 With a far lower budget than its predecessor ruling out the return of composer Jerry Goldsmith to Star Trek, The Wrath of Khan found itself looking for new blood to craft its soundtrack. James Horner, a composer who had made his name helping less auspicious genre fare (including the Roger Cormanproduced Battle Beyond the Stars) punch above its emotional weight, stepped up to the plate. The producers didn’t want anything like the soaring, John Williams-style symphonic sweep that Goldsmith had employed on The Motion Picture, so Horner’s utilization of synthesizers and unusual instruments played to his advantage. The result is one of the key musical scores in all of Star Trek (especially when partnered with Horner’s work on The Search for Spock), with the relentless horns and brass of the ﬁnal reel propelling the story to its momentous conclusion. Horner deliberately used different styles to create a distinction between the good guys and the bad. Reserving the melodies for the Enterprise and its crew – speciﬁcally the main theme for Kirk; the secondary, romantic theme for the ship; and a special cue to underscore Spock’s human side and friendship with Kirk – he used insistent, alarming, percussive cues when scoring Khan and any elements of threat. This made it much easier for the audience to follow who was in the ascendency during the space battles. Horner was also responsible for bringing back Alexander Courage’s irresistible opening fanfare from the original TV series, investing it with more mystery and scope, to evoke the epic quality of space, and the adventure to come.

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“Spock’s death scene is truly the moment that Star Trek grew up.”

crew solve a problem that active Starfleet is powerless against), forming an informal and emotionally powerful trilogy inside the original crew’s six movie outings.

The Needs of the Many

Putting aside the well-documented whys and wherefores concerning the death of Spock, and Leonard Nimoy’s reasons for jumping ship, it is worth thinking about how Spock’s demise infused the whole film with both tragic and hopeful undertones, while simultaneously informing every moment of Star Trek that followed. The behind-the-scenes motivations have diminished, leaving us with the in-universe resonance and filmic value. In a film about coming to terms with mortality, Spock’s death scene is truly the moment that Star Trek grew up (even if it then rebelled against its newfound maturity by refusing to leave him dead). It paved the way for Tasha Yar, and eventually for Data to die, Dax’s exit, and Sisko’s sacrifice in Deep Space Nine. It most definitely motivated Shatner to take part in Generations, and especially to lobby for a more heroic exit when the initial ‘shot in the back’ ending wasn’t deemed dramatic enough – Shatner wanted Jim Kirk to get his Spock moment. We were no longer in the land where only redshirts bought the big one – now the whole crew

06 Lt. Saavik (Kirsty Alley) with her mentor, Spock (Leonard Nimoy). 07 Admiral on the bridge. 08 Scotty (James Doohan) gives a damage report. 09 The Enterprise strikes back against Khan’s Reliant.

were dressed in red, and all bets were apparently off. We tend to forget that for a large chunk of the film, it honestly looks like Chekov is about to cash in his chips too, especially after Captain Terrell turns his phaser on himself and we learn that no one has ever survived cerebral impregnation by a Ceti eel. Star Trek had entered a darker universe, which is why Khan was a necessary betrayal of Star Trek’s original, somewhat restrictive utopian edicts. It was a vital change, and a mini revolution that bought the franchise longer life. The same step change would happen again on The Next Generation, after the Great Bird stepped away from the series due to ill health, with the arrival of the Borg and the assimilation of Picard.

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and communicator conversations mesh so perfectly together. When asked to write about The Wrath of Khan, one’s first instinct is to ask “What is there left to say?” But just thinking about the film reminds you of how amazing it is. You find yourself playing it on the laptop, then switching over to the big TV and... suddenly you’re lost in its wonder all over again. You’re six years old, a teenager, a young adult, remembering why Star Trek is as good as it is, and how it shaped your view of movies, of entertainment, and life. Suddenly, you’re reminded why it’s the greatest single moment in Star Trek history, and if that isn’t worth writing about, what other aspect of Star Trek is? Yes, you could say The Wrath of Khan is a betrayal of Star Trek, but only in the same way that a teenager rebels against their parents, so that they can go on to do bigger, better things. By rebuffing the series’ original format and strictures, The Wrath of Khan is the story that revealed Star Trek’s true strength – its humanity.

SHIP’S MANIFEST STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN Directed by: Nicholas Meyer Written by: Jack B. Sowards Produced by: Robert Sallin

That in turn led to Deep Space Nine’s even darker version of Trek. All of that started with The Wrath of Khan, and specifically with the death of Spock. In effect, the movie made us the “many” of Spock’s famous Vulcan philosophy, the fans and Trek’s future creators whose needs outweigh those of the “one” – Roddenberry, the visionary creator who built this incredible future world for us to enjoy, but who needed to step aside for Star Trek to retain its relevance, and appeal to a changing demographic.

Remember.

On top of all this, The Wrath of Khan pioneered computer-generated visual effects (the Genesis wave demo reel),

and held the record for the highest frame-rate on a single shot (transforming a split-second mini-explosion into the long Genesis blast at the climax). It also cost less than a third of The Motion Picture’s budget to make (thanks to Paramount’s television division overseeing production). It’s regarded as a classic film outside of the franchise, and is consistently voted the greatest Star Trek film by die-hard Trekkers. The eponymous Khan remains the definitive Trek villain, with only the Borg (an entire race!) coming close – not bad considering that Montalban and Shatner never physically shared a scene together; a true testament to their respective talents that their viewscreen

When Starfleet loses contact with science station Regula One, they dispatch the nearest starship – the aged training vessel U.S.S. Enterprise, with Admiral James T. Kirk taking command. Upon arrival, Kirk is forced to confront an old and deadly enemy – the genetically engineered 21st Century superhuman despot Khan Noonien Singh. Theatrical release: June 4, 1982 US domestic box office gross (1982): $79m US box office adjusted for inflation (2017): $238m

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INTERVIEW

Linda Park HEAD AND HEART

Linda Park, and the character she played in all four seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise, Hoshi Sato, had a lot in common when the show first began. Both were taking their first steps into a larger universe, and both were rather terrified. Sixteen years later, Park looks back on those early days of her career, and the personal journey she has been on since Enterprise. Words: Ian Spelling

hen Star Trek Magazine spoke to Linda Park in the fall of 2017, she was enjoying one hell of a good year, both professionally and personally. Along with a recurring role on the acclaimed series Bosch, guest star appearances on Claws, The Night Shift, and Seal Team, a beneﬁt performance of In the Cosmos: Where We Come From, Where We Are, and Where We are Going, she also performed in the stage play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, realizing a lifelong dream of playing Maggie the Cat. What’s more, she appeared opposite her husband, Daniel Bess, in the play. “I feel a little bit overwhelmed right now,” Park admits, kicking off a candid interview that covers life, love, and her time on Star Trek: Enterprise. “But that’s always a gift. An interesting thing, no matter how great things are going. “It’s a real practice in being grateful for all the stuff that is coming in,” she continues. “You’re always looking to go to the next level, and I think with driven people that’s kind of the catch-22, that you’re constantly striving, so it’s a real effort just to

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be grateful amidst the business and the ambition of looking for the next thing. It’s very easy to release the ambition monster, because you can get really caught up in it.” It transpires that Park is mindful of the need to maintain a sense of perspective, especially when things are going well. “That can cause a lot of undue stress, if you’re not able to simply be grateful for the abundance that’s coming in,” the actor says. “That’s a real practice for myself right now. I booked another guest star role about a week ago, and it was in the middle of a lot of craziness happening. Once I got to set, I had to take a deep breath and say, ‘OK, can I just be present and be here, and do this job? More than anything, can I just have fun?’”

Soul to Soul Park acknowledges that same battle to enjoy the moment, to appreciate her good fortune, carries over to personal relationships. She notes that single friends of hers, men and women alike, are having a tough go

of it meeting their perfect partner. It’s not so easy out there, so Park is happy to have met and married her Soulmate. “You know how it is, when you are married to your best friend. I really feel like my husband is my Soulmate, more than I’ve ever felt that before,” Park says of husband Bess. The couple recently celebrated their third wedding anniversary. “Of course, I know you can have multiple soulmates, but I feel like he is the person closest to it that I’ve ever met. Again, you can get caught up in the daily ‘OK, we have to do these chores,’ so sometimes I remember to sit down and really look at him, and it’s like, ‘Wow, you love me and I love you, and how lucky are we?’ “I think that’s probably when life is at its richest and fullest,” Park continues. “Whatever our success is, great or small, our ability to enjoy it is our happiness. There are many people with great success who are not able to enjoy it, so somebody with very little who is able to ﬁnd great appreciation in a job well done and, more than that, a loving partner, is really, truly lucky.”

INTERVIEW

01 Park had fun playing an alternate Hoshi, in“In a Mirror, Darkly.” 02 Exo-linguist Hoshi Sato was convinced to join Starfleet by Jonathan Archer in “Broken Bow.” 03 Hoshi keeps fit aboard Enterprise. 04 “Fight or Flight” gave Park a chance to develop Hoshi.

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When asked where she’d like to see her career going in a perfect world, she chuckles. It’s an intriguing question to pose to a talented, ambitious actor in the middle of a hot streak, and there’s a glint in her eye when she answers that she wants to be part of the wave of AsianAmerican actors pushing the envelope of diversity casting in ﬁlms and television. “I have always played secondary roles, whether it be in my series regular jobs or in movies,” Park says. “And I believe that I’m able to carry a show, or

be a lead protagonist, and show the voice that I feel that I have as an Asian-American. In retrospect, looking back I see how important Joan Chen [Twin Peaks] and Sandra Oh [Grey’s Anatomy] are to me. I know how important it is for us to ﬁnally get AsianAmericans who are the number ones on shows. “Lucy Liu has done it with Elementary, even though Jonny Lee Miller might be considered number one on that show,” she adds. “There’s also Fresh Off the Boat, and they’re all AsianAmerican. I would love to get

into that mix, whether in ﬁlm or television, and television is so exciting right now. The television scripts that I’m reading are really competitive with the ﬁlm scripts I’m reading. I don’t have a preference. It’s a really exciting time for storytelling right now, in both mediums.”

Head and Heart Back at the turn of the millennium, Park had only a couple of credits to her name when she landed the game-changing role of Ensign Hoshi Sato on Star Trek:

LINDA PARK

Enterprise. Park, assessing the ratio of terror to excitement at winning the part, admits that terror held the upper hand by a 60/40 margin. However, she points out, sometimes when we’re scared it’s actually excitement in disguise. “I would oscillate very ﬂuidly between the two, between terror and excitement. Often in the same moment,” Park laughs. “Then, like anything else, it became natural. Enterprise became my home, and by the middle of the ﬁrst season, the terror had ebbed away. Then I could really start learning – and I learned a lot. It’s sometimes hard for me to go back and watch myself in season 1, because I see a person at a drama school, just learning how to be on set.” Yet in a very real sense, Park’s rawness was a blessing, as she was able to imbue Hoshi with those same traits – Park was Hoshi, and Hoshi was Park. The actor admits

“Hoshi and I had these similar, parallel experiences.” that, with such strong emotions, it would have been “silly” for her not to use what was already in her head and heart. “I realized early on, from the ﬁrst episode [“Broken Bow”], that I wanted to show the human perspective,” Park explains. “Especially since we were the ﬁrst crew out there, being a precursor to the original series, I wanted to show the reality of what it is like for someone who’s never been in space, to have to deal with it. Often, everyone is already used to space – the adventures, the aliens – and I wanted to show what it’d be like if you or I had to go out and meet a Xindi. I thought T’Pol, our Vulcan, was on the far end of the spectrum, and I wanted to be at the opposite end of it, so I showed a lot of fear, nervousness, and self-doubt. That led into the third episode, ‘Fight or Flight,’ which they wrote about Hoshi. I think that was a direct inspiration from what they saw me doing. “The character was originally written in her 30s, and I was not that,” Park notes. “So, they started to alter what they had originally planned. In the original conception, Hoshi was much more together, and it became more and more me. Hoshi and I had these similar, parallel experiences, and I

used every single emotional thing that was happening to me in that first season, and put it on to Hoshi: Hoshi had never been out into space; she’d been trained; she was an academic. I had been through many years of drama school. That was a very successful way to play the first season, because it gave a very clear arc of where this character was going as she found her sea legs.” However, Park agrees, it became hard for the writers to figure out where to take Hoshi after season 2. And that boiled down to the harsh reality that, despite featuring a large ensemble cast, Enterprise starred Scott Bakula, Jolene Blalock, and Connor Trinneer. Most ‘A’ storylines focused on their characters, while the supporting cast largely made do with ‘B’ storylines, or fleeting scenes, with only occasional, meatier storylines coming their way. “I think it kind of hit a stasis, which you got with Dom [Keating], myself, John [Billingsley], and Anthony [Montgomery],” Park says ruefully, “because [the show] became very much about developing T’Pol, Trip, and Archer. The rest of us really didn’t get the full development that I think we could have gotten.” Keating and Montgomery, it’s worth noting, would sit down with executive producer Brannon Braga at the beginning of each season, to discuss their respective characters and the possibilities for them. Park, however, never requested such meetings. She attributes that to her shyness at STAR TREK

INTERVIEW

the time, as well as to her desire to soak in everything she could, and learn about herself and her craft. “Also, I didn’t even quite know what it was that I wanted, so I couldn’t really express it,” Park admits. “It wasn’t until the ‘In a Mirror, Darkly’ two-parter that I realized, ‘Oh, this is really fun. I want to see Hoshi completely invert herself.’ I did that with many roles on different TV series after Enterprise, where I was able to play very opposite characteristics of Hoshi, and I got that out of my system. Actors are constantly doing that when we play a role. Often, after I’ve done something, I’ll look for the reverse of what I just played.”

Spontaneity Park remains grateful for every opportunity that Enterprise provided her. That includes an early career boost, a steady paycheck, a measure of pop culture fame, and the opportunity to revisit her Enterprise family and fans at the occasional conventions she attends. But, she stresses, the greatest lesson she took away from her four years on Enterprise was the realization that she must “keep my ego out of the set, and out of the production. To keep my inner self very safe.” Explaining in more detail, Park adds, “I mean to not take things too seriously, like wondering why a director complimented that person and not me, or if that person got more storylines than me. The idea is to create a protective space. It was not a lesson that I totally learned on Enterprise, because I was still struggling with it when I shot Raines, right after Enterprise ended. As an actor, you have to be

05 Linda Park as Ensign Hoshi Sato.

Linda Park CAREER NOTES

South Korean native Linda Park was born in 1978, and grew up in San Jose, California. While studying for a Fine Arts degree at Boston University, Park spent a semester at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and RADA, the renowned British drama school. Graduating in 2000, a year later she appeared in an episode of teenage comedy-drama Popular, and took a minor role in Jurassic Park III, before getting her big break as Ensign Hoshi Sato in Star Trek: Enterprise. More recently Park has had recurring roles in online comedy Adoptable, and in the hit Amazon crime series Bosch.

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very vulnerable, and I want to be very open and relaxed, and allow things to affect me. “And when I leave myself open to things like that, I can also leave myself open to something a really mean director says,” says Park. “I won’t name any names, but I had one incredibly misogynistic director very early on, not on Enterprise, where I had to be very vulnerable. He was very mean. I think I was very ‘Method School’ with everything early on, where I had to be going through whatever the character went through, and I had to be in as much angst. So, I would bring a lot of things home.” Park happily points out that she’s got “much better boundaries now.” As a result, she believes, her acting has improved, as she’s made the overall experience less about her and more about the work, more about the performance. “There’s a better sense of a plan, and more of a sense of freedom,” Park notes. “When you make it about yourself, there can be a sense of tightness in the performance.

When you don’t make it about yourself, when you make it about the work, and you don’t take things personally, things can move through you, even painful emotions or angry feelings, any of these things. My favorite actors have that, where I see the spontaneity in their performances, whether comedic or dramatic. That spontaneity comes from not holding things too tightly, of being open and elastic, and able to move in any direction. “That was something that I realized was a hindrance during Star Trek, and I have been working on changing that,” the actress concludes as our conversation comes to an end. “It probably didn’t come to fruition for me until the last two or three years. It’s a very hard thing to be simultaneously open and vulnerable, and to learn to protect yourself around what can be a lot of abrasive personalities sometimes. We all want to be liked. We all want to think we’re doing a good job. So, it’s a process, and it started on Enterprise.”

TRICORDER BOOKS / COMICS / COLLECTIBLES

“Star Trek is about people on a ship. It’s about their story, so we’ve gone for a personal approach.” Chris Birch, Modiphius Entertainment

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R O L E P L AY I N G G A M E S

BECOME THE GAMEMASTER

STAR TREK ADVENTURES R O L E P L AY I N G G A M E M O D I P H I U S E N T E RTA I N M E N T The human adventure may just be beginning, but it could all hinge on the roll of a dice. Star Trek Magazine caught up with Modiphius Entertainment’s Chris Birch to find out more about the all-new Star Trek roleplaying game. Wo r d s : C h r i s G a r d n e r

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grew up watching Bill Shatner run around alien planets,” admits gaming entrepreneur and publisher Chris Birch, co-founder of Modiphius Entertainment. “I remember dreaming of being a starship captain as a little kid, and that dream stayed with me all my life.” 2017 has been the year that Birch was finally able to realize his childhood fantasy, when the company he created published the Star Trek Adventures Roleplaying Game this August.

If you’re not familiar with roleplaying games, each player takes on the role of a character who interacts with others in an imaginary world, created and moderated by a gamemaster, with storylines and outcomes often decided on the roll of a dice. Star Trek Adventures enables players to create their own starship captain, or roleplay as an established character like Captains Kirk or Picard. In fact, they can play as any member of any starship crew, from the show or their own imaginations.

01 A range of 32mm figurines supplements the game. 02 Create your own dramatic Star Trek adventures.

Modiphius has been publishing RPGs since 2012, with hit games including Conan, Infinity, and Mutant Chronicles. Star Trek Adventures (the first such Star Trek RPG since 1989) uses a variation on the game system Modiphius originated, and adapting it took some thought. “Things like phasers don’t just do some damage, they either stun you or kill you,” explains Birch. “We were able to tweak our game system so that it feels like Star Trek.” STAR TREK

TRICORDER

Designer Decks In creating immersive environments for gameplayers, Modiphius called upon a designer with a Star Trek pedigree to ensure their environments were in keeping with the television series and movies. “We got Rick Sternbach involved with the interior design of the Narendra Station,” enthuses Birch. “He’s been helping us create the deck plans, which are geomorphic tiles that you can mix and match to make your scene. He’s overseen that to make sure that they are absolutely, technically correct.” Sternbach’s connection to Star Trek began as an illustrator on The Motion Picture in 1979. He went on to work on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, and on the movies The Final Frontier and Nemesis.

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Part of the game’s development process included a soft launch in December 2016, allowing a limited number of gamers to playtest a “living” Star Trek Adventures campaign to help develop the RPG. It proved to be a popular trial. “Twelve thousand people signed up,” Birch recalls, with a smile. “They fill in a survey that steers the plot, and the whole storyline is affected by the players’ responses.” The ongoing story for the campaign, set in and around Narendra Station in the largely unexplored Shackleton Expanse, was written by Star Trek authors Dayton Ward and Scott Pearson. “Narendra Station is a starbase inspired by the events of ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise,’” Birch explains, referencing the Season 3 Next Generation episode,

which saw the Enterprise-C destroyed at the planet Narendra III while protecting a Klingon colony from a Romulan attack. Her sacrifice became one of the foundations upon which the subsequent Federation and Klingon peace treaty was built. “We thought, what if it wasn’t just a peace treaty?” adds Birch. “What if they went further than that, and the Klingons and the Federation agreed to build this space station together? So they have a joint crew of Klingons on it, which provides all sorts of fun and games, and results in lots of drama.” It’s not too late to join the living campaign, and Birch envisages a threeyear story with a series of climactic moments along the way, plus a series of books based on the experience. If you’re interested, visit modiphius.com/star-trek to find out how to take part.

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03 The RPG’s ship-to-ship combat rules are easy to put into action. 04 Your player character could be an Andorian or a Tellarite. ll i 05 Uhura gets herr own mm 32m urine. figu

“It’s different from previous Star Trek roleplaying games.” The Personal Touch

Star Trek has always been about the human adventure, and Birch and his team have worked hard to make the game as much about the exploration of the “human condition” as possible. Major galactic events, from the launch of Jonathan Archer’s Enterprise NX-01 to the preamble to the Dominion War, are covered in a series of personal datapad entries, written by the characters who were either there or watching from the sidelines. “Star Trek is about people on a ship. It’s about their story, so we’ve gone for a personal approach,” Birch says. “Very

personal opinions on all these major events in the timeline. It immediately gives you ideas, and gives you different perspectives on the things that happened. Personal touches that I don’t think we’ve really seen before.” It’s clear that Birch and the Modiphius Entertainment team are keeping Star Trek fans who have never played a roleplaying game in mind, as much as they are those who are already familiar with the concept. “It’s different from previous Star Trek roleplaying games,” Birch explains. “If you’re a big fan then you’ve probably got a 05

shelf full of books already, so we thought ‘let’s not give people the same stuff.’” When compiling the game’s core rulebook, the developers set events in the year 2371 – a year in which a great deal happens in the Star Trek universe. The U.S.S. Enterprise-D is about to be lost at Veridian III, the crew of Deep Space 9 are set to go on the offensive against the Dominion, and the U.S.S. Voyager has a looming date with the Delta Quadrant. However, the scope of the rulebook means that games can be set at any point in Federation history following the launch of the Enterprise NX-01, in 2151. “We decided to set the game in one particular year so that everything you read in the book reads like ‘This is the state of play,’” says Birch. “You can imagine you’re a captain walking around this starbase, getting briefed by the heads of departments. Everything is about to kick off, and they’re all relying on you. We’ve started with Star Trek: The Next Generation, because it’s the most insanely popular part of the fandom, and then we are going to grow it out from there. But we’ve included sidebars about the gear that you would have access to if you want to play in the Kirk era.”

Playing by the Rules

All you need to play the game is the Star Trek Adventures – The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, available in both standard and collector’s editions; a set of dice; and your imagination. The collector’s edition includes three color-coded ribbons (in Starfleet gold, blue, and red), a foldout star chart of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, and an exclusive poster. “Anyone who has played a roleplaying game before is not going to find it complicated,” Birch promises, adding that Modiphius Entertainment’s STAR TREK

TRICORDER

writers have written a free download that will walk new players through the game. “It’s not a complicated system, it’s really easy to play. But the idea is to get it out there, and get people playing. We are developing a starter box for beginners, aimed at Star Trek fans who have never played anything like this before.” Ship-to-ship combat in some roleplaying games can be extremely

complicated, but Birch is confident that this isn’t the case with Star Trek Adventures. “The ship rules are very easy,” he says. “I wanted it to be so much fun that you want to do it. It’s never about the fact that we’ve got the latest upgraded phasers. The game is people-oriented. It’s always about Riker pulling off a great maneuver, Worf doing something clever, Geordi affecting the science side of it,

The Prime Directive Players can enjoy Star Trek Adventures as established characters, or create their own. Chris Birch explains how the Prime Directive is an important factor in the development of your in-game character. “When you create your character, you create values that are important to you,” explains Birch. “You get a value for your upbringing, your time at the academy, and the early part of your career. These values might be things your character believes in, like the Prime Directive is never wrong, that technology will always save us, or that all Romulans are evil. That immediately sows plot seeds for the gamemaster. “If you can challenge those beliefs and come through it in a changed way, that is a turning point for your character,” Birch adds. “That always happens in the show. It’s always about ﬁnding new friendship, becoming a better person, challenging beliefs. We get into the Prime Directive, the consequences of breaking it – the real damage that can be done. Examples of civilizations that have failed as result of accidentally doing stuff. Kirk just breaks it all the time, whereas Picard cleverly sidesteps around it. The game is about problem-solving, and exploring a range of possibilities. It’s not always about shooting stuff.”

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06 The Core Rulebook features stunning Star Trek artwork throughout. 07 Strange new worlds and new lifeforms are limited only by your imagination.

Data coming up with a cool plan, or Kirk tricking the enemy. You can play it any way you like,” Birch adds. “Some people are just going to get in their Enterprise, rock around, and shoot every Klingon they can set their sights on.” The only real limit is the imagination of the gamemaster and the players. A companion publication, These Are the Voyages: Volume 1, has been published alongside the core rulebook, to give gamemasters some story ideas and jumping-off points. “It is a collection of ‘missions of the week’ that you could drop into your storyline,” Birch says, and he hopes to attract some Star Trek alumni to contribute to Volume 2. There are also plans for further releases to enrich the Star Trek Adventures experience, with a trio of Command, Science, and Operations divisions books to open up those aspects of Starfleet in more detail. “The Command book will add more ships, give guidance on creating command

R O L E P L AY I N G G A M E S

“In Star Trek you don’t see the captain bossing everyone around. He or she listens to their department heads.” characters, and more events aimed around command characters’ abilities,” Birch reveals. “In Star Trek, you don’t see the captain bossing everyone around. He or she listens to their department heads. The captain is there to make the decision, and take the fall for it. “The Science book will have someone like Spock giving advice, and cover the weirder things, like Q and other strange entities, the super-science of V’Ger, and time travel. And the Operations book will focus on the engineering and security guys, and making sure that they have an amazing time.”

More playable races will follow in a series of Quadrant books, “because we can’t fit everything in the core books,” laughs Birch. “We are coming out with a Klingon book as well, so the Klingon fans are going to be able to rock around the galaxy fighting for honor, raiding, and doing all sorts of fun stuff. That book gives advice on playing in the original series era, and the earlier Star Trek: Enterprise era.”

Figurative Thinking

No roleplaying game would be complete without miniatures, which, although far from necessary to play the game, add to the fun and engagement of players. They’re also great fun to paint, too. “We’ve got a set of Borg drones, Cardassians – all the usual suspects,” Birch says enthusiastically. “We’ve even got an amazing pose of Khan, arms folded and with a very cheeky grin. Locutus, the Borg Queen, Lore holding Data’s head with a smirk on his face... It’s really good. We’re having a lot of fun

with all that. This type of figure hasn’t really been done before. It’s the first time we’ve done really big, quality, 32mm figures, so that’s exciting.” So why is now the right time to launch a new Star Trek roleplaying game? “It’s Star Trek’s time again,” says Birch. “The world is in such a weird place that people are looking to sci-fi that is about betterment, and about living in a better place, not necessarily about living in a war-torn future. It is about making a better you. People want things to be better, and I think it’s very, very apt. “In the original series you had this Russian guy and this Chinese guy, and a bunch of Americans on the same ship, and it broke new ground,” he concludes. “That’s what people need at the moment. It’s really cool. It was transformational back then. I would love to have watched Star Trek for the first time in that context, and been blown away in the same way people must have been at the time.” STAR TREK

TRICORDER: REVIEWS

STAR TREK BEYOND:

The Makeup Artistry of Joel Harlow

Titan Books Written by Joe Nazzaro With a target of 50 new aliens on their slate (to celebrate Star Trek’s 50th anniversary), Joel Harlow’s team on Star Trek Beyond definitely had their work cut out for them. In the event, they managed to conjure up even more. However, even if you were watching in IMAX or freezeframing the Blu-ray, the chances are you wouldn’t have spotted the vast majority of them. Director Justin Lin’s quickfire edits and sizzling action sequences are great fun, but beyond Krall, his cohorts, and the spectacular Jaylah, there wasn’t much breathing space to focus on team Harlow’s imaginative extraterrestrials. That’s where Joe Nazzaro’s comprehensive look at the alien makeups of Star Trek Beyond comes in. And comprehensive isn’t really a comprehensive enough word, because Beyond is an extreme example of the craft. Taking a 76

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deep dive into the art of movie makeup, Star Trek’s galactic diversity is fully represented (there’s even a non-biped on display – eat your heart out, Horta!), complete with anecdotes from Harlow and his fellow artists, providing great insight into the process of translating outlandish concepts to the big screen. The weighty book (206 pages long, and crammed with behind-the-scenes photos, concept art, and completed character shots) is split across five chapters, with chapter 4’s coverage of the aliens of Star Trek Beyond hogging the bulk of the page count. Covering the key characters, the Enterprise crew, and the aliens we meet on Altamid and Yorktown starbase, it is this section that will be of ongoing interest to readers with aspirations to enter the movie makeup business. In many ways, they are the target audience for the book, which has the potential to become something of an industry bible.

BOOK REVIEWS

STAR TREK ADVENTURES:

“Core Rulebook” and “These Are theVoyages: Volume 1” Modiphius Entertainment Roleplaying game rulebooks can sometimes be impenetrable tomes, enjoyed only by the most ardent gamer, but that’s far from the case with Modiphius Entertainment’s excellent Star Trek Adventures. The opening chapters of the Core Rulebook make for an absolute page-turner, telling the familiar Star Trek story in a brand-new way, from the perspective of a host of new characters never before seen on screen. It’s so comprehensive that my new-toTrek 11-year-old son reckoned it taught him everything he needed to know about the universe. Rules don’t appear until about a quarter of the way through this 374-page tome, by which point you’re dying to create your own character; with attributes, values, and talents befitting a Starfleet officer. Once the rules are clear, there’s plenty of additional information on the aliens, phenomena, technology, and worlds of the final frontier to take one giant leap into the great beyond. The Core Rulebook includes “The Rescue at Xerxes IV,” a mission that even novice gamemasters can throw at new players, but if that’s not enough to keep you going, the 164-page companion book, These Are the Voyages: Volume I, contains eight more missions from across Star Trek’s timeline. They’re ideal for new players, and each would have made a cracking TV episode. Prepare to lose hours to this game. Chris Gardner

Trek fans will find the forewords by Justin Lin and Simon Pegg, along with the first three chapters detailing Harlow’s Trek history, illuminating, and they provide a rewarding taste of the creative process behind Beyond. Whether you’re a fan of the Kelvin Timeline’s approach to Star Trek or not, it’s clear that Lin, Pegg, and Harlow hold the original TV series in high esteem, and were determined to honor it by expanding the on-screen alien contingent in a way that had never been attempted before. It’s also heartwarming to note that Harlow takes time to share the credit for the amazing work on show, in the section which wraps up the book, not only naming names but putting faces to them too. Making any movie is a hugely collaborative process, and the true value of The Makeup Artistry of Joel Harlow is to make that fact abundantly clear. Christopher Cooper

01 Joel Harlow at work, in one of many behindthe-scenes photos from the book. 02 Krall’s henchman, Manas, designed and sculpted by Harlow.

STAR TREK

COMIC REVIEW

STAR TREK:

Boldly Go Issue 13

“I.D.I.C.” Part 1 Writer: Mike Johnson, Artist: Josh Hood IDW Comics You know this, but for readers who don’t, I.D.I.C is the acronym for “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” a key tenet of Vulcan philosophy that was first coined in the third season Star Trek episode, “Is There in Truth No Beauty?” It’s a concept that seems tailor-made for the reality-hopping antics that crop up regularly in IDW’s Trek output, and Mike Johnson totally owns it in his latest Boldly Go tale. Part 1 opens innocently enough, with our Kelvin Timeline heroes catching up via intergalactic FaceTime, before the cozy rug of expectation is delightfully pulled from beneath our feet with the turn of every page. Commander Simon Grayson is an unruly half-Vulcan, whose dominant human half is more wayward Kirk than logical Spock; The Orphan is an eye-patch-sporting human and Klingon enforcer, who can hold his own against any warrior and exhaust a saucy threesome of lady Klingon underlings (a first for Kirk in any universe!); and Scotty is inexplicably Welsh! That’s infinite combinations right there. By the final page we’re inevitably in anomaly territory, and as another Johnson-created Enterprise crew shows up, you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat waiting for Part 2. This 6-part storyline is going to be fun. Christopher Cooper 78

STAR TREK

RETRO REVIEW

For the Love of

Spocks

As a child, I remember gazing up at the rack of Mego figures in my local toy store with awe. They really were amazing, especially the Star Trek figures, with their cool cloth costumes and pretty accurate accessories. So, which ones did I end up taking home? Kirk? The mean Klingon…? Um, nope. My meager Mego collection consisted of a Spider-man, and Commander Koenig from Gerry Anderson’s Space: 1999. I’ve made up for that youthful oversight over the years (and let’s not forget, Space: 1999’s heroic commander was played by almost-Spock Martin Landau, so he almost counts…). I own three Spocks, representing three eras: the pajama-wearing action figure from The Motion Picture; the multi-jointed monster maroon from The Wrath of Khan; and the blue-tunicked Vulcan that came

with Playmates’ “Classic Bridge Crew Playset.” Are any of them as wonderful as Mego’s earlier rendition? Well, they have their strengths and weakness – at least one of which is my fault. Let’s begin with Spock from Star Trek: The Motion Picture – my very first Spock, and my favorite, despite some imperfections. Those eyebrows, for example. I extended those (imprecisely) with a marker pen, and the ink has faded to a kind-of purple, where I made what figure-fans might call a “mod” (if they were feeling generous). I felt compelled to beef up the brows as they were barely perceptible on the original paint job, but the splatter of red around the Starfleet badge isn’t my doing. In other words, the paint detailing isn’t great, even if the sculpt isn’t half bad.

A lack of paint detailing isn’t a problem with Playmates’ effort. They went big with this set of figures, and Spock’s big ears, staring eyes, and garish blue eye shadow beg to be written into canon. And those big hands. Really big hands! Was there an action figure augment virus at play? He’s almost Mego scale, but it would be a stretch to claim this figure comes close to the toy of my dreams. Last but not least is the Khan-era Spock. Roughly the same scale as his Motion Picture predecessor, his springloaded limbs and dubious sense of balance do limit his poseability. And is it just me, or has Spock developed a bit of a stoop? I guess all those years bending over his science station scanner must have taken their toll… Christopher Cooper STAR TREK

BEAM ME UP

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH STAR TREK 01

JULIE COBB

YEOMAN THOMPSON, “BY ANY OTHER NAME” Where would Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy be without the redshirts? The anonymous crewmen who beam down to each planet of the week, only to ﬁnd the business end of a spear, a killer alien plant, or an exploding rock waiting for them. Enter Julie Cobb, the ﬁrst female redshirt to meet such a fate. Wo r d s : P a t J a n k i e w i c z

“

’m the first female redshirt to die in Star Trek history? I’m honored by that,” jokes Julie Cobb, when reminded of her groundbreaking place in the Star Trek canon. It turns out that the doomed Yeoman Thompson was Cobb’s very first guest shot on a network show. “I was 20 years old, and I remember that I was so nervous that I did not think I could walk and talk at the same time,” Cobb giggles. “Bill Shatner had done a film before that with my dad (The legendary character actor Lee J. Cobb, from The Exorcist and Coogan’s Bluff). They starred in The Brothers Karamazov together, and Bill was very, very kind and avuncular to me. He could tell I was really nervous. I was so young and scared, I just didn’t want to screw up.

STAR TREK

01 Julie Cobb played the first female redshirt to die in Star Trek. 02 Julie Cobb as Yeoman Thompson.

“I was excited to do it, and I already knew Leonard Nimoy when I did the show,” she continues. “Nimoy used to teach acting, and I was in his class when I was 16 years old. He was a nice guy. I was a baby when I did Star Trek, despite having parents in the business. Both my parents are actors.” The role of Yeoman Thompson wasn’t a particular stretch for Cobb, as the job was pretty straightforward. “I was a good guy, going to this planet with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. That’s all I knew. There were no surprises to Yeoman Thompson – just show up and be killed. Shatner was like a protective uncle, which I really appreciated. I just wanted to be good in the episode. Warren Stevens played the alien who killed me, and he was very sweet.

JULIE COBB

“The aliens turn me and another redshirt into cubes, and crumbles one of them up in front of Captain Kirk – and that one turns out to be me! After that, I’m gone!” Cobb laughs. “It’s such a famous episode. There was a reference to it on an episode of Saturday Night Live that William Shatner hosted, in a skit where he goes to a Star Trek convention. They actually mentioned me and the character Yeoman Thompson by name, which was an unexpected thrill. It’s so weird to be part of something that you don’t realize is going to go on and on like that.”

“There were no surprises to Yeoman Thompson – just show up and be killed.” Imminent on-screen death aside, Cobb had other things to preoccupy her mind while filming the episode. “I was wearing my little red dress and boots, that all the girls wore on the Starship Enterprise,” Cobb confides, “and here’s what honestly went through my mind: In those days, because of the type of film, and television lighting at that time, the make-up people painted us orange. Literally orange, because the make-up was so thick and unnatural. Nowadays, with High Definition cameras, you can actually go without make-up, but on shows of that era, we were literally painted bright orange. My whole preoccupation while filming the show was how awful I looked in the mirror, with that thick orange make-up, and how they teased and braided every hair on my head into this futuristic hairdo. But, when I watched the episode, I thought that I looked cute – just nervous.”

“By Any Other Name” Star Trek, Season 2, Episode 21 Beaming down to a planet in response to a distress call, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, with Lieutenant Shea and Yeoman Thompson, are captured by scouts from the Kelvan Empire. A long way from Andromeda, their home galaxy, the aliens plan to hijack the Enterprise to make the return trip. When Kirk and his landing party are captured after a failed escape attempt, Shea and Thompson are reduced to ashes as a demonstration of the aliens’ powers. While Shea is soon reconstituted, Thompson’s fate is to remain a pile of dust.

STAR TREK

BEAM ME UP

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH STAR TREK Cobb’s second job was Love American Style with Diane Keaton and Monte Markham, but a highlight of her career was working with her dad on an episode of Gunsmoke. “We played father and daughter. It was after he did The Exorcist, and it was one of the best performances he had ever given. It was a wonderful character study between the two of us. At the end he dies in my arms, and I cried for real. I cried and cried! He got a big kick out of that.” She ran into William Shatner again later in her career, this time on his cop show T.J. Hooker. “I was so glad I did. Of course, we had a different relationship in that show because I was trying to assassinate him. I barely remember that job, but I do remember Shatner was nice.” Coincidentally, Cobb’s daughter, Rosemary Morgan, made her acting debut on Star Trek, as a pint-sized alien terrorist named Piri, in the Star Trek: Voyager episode, “The Chute.” “The thing I remember most about my daughter making her debut on Star Trek, just like her mother did, is that she was only 11 or 12 years old, so I was her guardian on the set,” Cobb smiles. “Les Landau, the director, came up to Rosemary and said to her, ‘Clearly you’ve done this before.’ We laughed, and said ‘No.’ Les was a great guy.

‘Oh My Ford’ instead of ‘Oh My Lord,’ which was because Henry Ford created the assembly line. “I had the best part in it. I played the mother of the hero, the last natural birth of the future,” Cobb continues. “It was set in a future where everybody is perfect, so hair and make-up hid any flaw. If one actor had ears that stuck out, they would use putty to hold them in place, and they covered every wrinkle.” Cobb played Linda in the adaptation, a central character who forgets her birth control pills, gets pregnant, is exiled, and becomes more ragged as the drama unfolds. “They sent me away [to the makeup department] and aged me, put crap between my teeth and dark circles around my eyes. When the other characters find me in this primitive land, outside of the brave new world, I look like a witch, just a living wreck with gray in my hair and 03

“Star Trek has always been a part of my life.” “I guess Star Trek runs in my family,” Cobb adds. “My former husband [James Cromwell of Babe and L.A. Confidential ] played the first Earthman to meet with Vulcans [Zefram Cochrane, in Star Trek: First Contact ], so Star Trek has always been a part of my life.” Cobb has had an interesting and varied career, from Playboy Bunny (“I was a door bunny, wearing the ears and poofy tail!”), to guesting on numerous genre shows including The Incredible Hulk, and starring in TV’s very first Stephen King adaptation, Salem’s Lot. Most notably, she also starred in an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s science fiction classic, Brave New World. “It was a thrill to do Aldous Huxley. It was a great job, I really enjoyed it,” says Cobb. “That material was so hard to do, as it was borderline absurdity, which was the way Huxley intended it. I mean, whenever there’s a conflict in Brave New World, they drug themselves. They say 82

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03 “I was so young and scared, I just didn’t want to screw up,” says Cobb of her Star Trek role. 04 Lt. Shea (Carl Byrd) and Yeoman Thompson are captured by the Kelvans.

dirt under my fingernails. I made the cast laugh when I improvized my line, saying ‘I started a little theater company!’ That’s what a lot of retired actors do in Southern California. They all laughed – you had to be an actor to get it. “ Cobb also appeared in Albert Brooks’ fantasy film, Defending Your Life. “I did that because I grew up with Albert Brooks. I knew him when he was Albert Einstein, his real name. He and I would go to parties when I was 11 or 12, and there would be two groups – a bunch of kids would be making out with each other in one, and the other group was kids listening to Albert Einstein talking. He was trying out material. He was a brilliant stand-up comedian, even then.” Today, Julie Cobb works as a life coach, and still has a soft spot for the show that started her career. “I will always appreciate Star Trek for giving my daughter and I our acting debuts!”

THE OFFICIAL

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THE HOLODECK STAR TREK FA NS, F UN, & FACT S

Computer, start program... Welcome to the Holodeck, where fans make their voices heard. This issue we feature a duo who’ve swapped phasers for fezzes; enter The Neutral Zone to argue over who gave whom the hardest time – Quark or Odo; and talk Star Trek to an ex-NASA scientist. The Holodeck is an open forum for you, our readers, to get involved with your canon queries, artwork, letters, and thoughts on all things Trek – so get writing!

MEMORY ALPHA STAR TREK’S MOST MEMORABLE MOMENTS

Email: startrekmagazine@ titanemail.com Mail: (US readers) Star Trek Magazine, Titan Magazines, 2819 Rosehall Lane, Aurora, IL 60503; (UK readers) Star Trek Magazine, 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP.

contents 86 A FISTFUL OF DATA

Larry Nemecek canoncrunches the universal translator, evil gloves, and the rock star Cher!

94 TALENTED TREKKERS

Be inspired by the great and the good who’ve taken their love for Star Trek and applied it to their daily lives.

96 TREK TRIVIA

Think you know your warp coil from your warp core? Test your engineering knowledge in this issue’s Star Trek Quiz!

“My God, Bones. What have I done?”

S TA R T R E K I I I : T H E S E A R C H F O R S P O C K The U.S.S. Enterprise goes down in flames above the planet Genesis. Moment picked by Johan Prince, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

STAR TREK

STARSHIP TREKKERS THEYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;RE THE WORST CREW IN STARFLEET

LARRY NEMECEK’S

A FISTFUL OF DATA MAKING SENSE OF THE FUTURE

At last – Star Trek is back! Which means there’s going to be a whole new catalog of canon queries heading for my inbox. Fans were debating the details of Star Trek: Discovery before it even hit the screen, and I can’t wait to answer your burning questions as it motors along. A Fistful of Data looks set to have its figurative hands full, but not being Bajoran prophets, we’ll have to bide our time until you start writing in, and turn our attention towards the first 50-plus years of Trek – because you’re still asking plenty of questions about what’s already out there! Larry Nemecek

TRANSLATION TESTER

I’ve never understood how the universal translator worked in the Voyager episode “The 37’s.” How is it possible that the humans Voyager discovered on the Briori colony world could understand Janeway – who was speaking English – in their own languages, all at the same time? Can you explain why Janeway didn’t have to repeat herself several times so that the translator could have translated the various languages individually? Jon Brunette, Brooklyn Park, Mn As you’ll be aware, the Briori colony world was set up to accommodate humans whom the alien race had kidnapped and enslaved in the Earth year 1937. Even though the slaves overthrew the Briori at some point, wiping out not only their captors but the ship they could have escaped on, it’s likely these 1937-era humans didn’t completely destroy all of the advanced, star-hopping technology left in the caves that had become their home. Indeed, they grew to adapt much of it for survival, using technology at a level far in advance of what they had known on Earth – the use of energy weapons, for example. We’re also never given an onscreen reason why or when the “last” of the humans were put into cryo-stasis. Were they there for injury therapy, or as a reserve of DNA for the slave miners? While not aired, the script indicates that all eight “37’s” went directly from abduction to stasis, so their awakening by Janeway is their first real memory since being taken, only adding to their alarm. Either way, it’s obvious that the technology involved in the cryo-tubes is advanced, way beyond that of 1937 86

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“It’s obvious that the technology involved in the cryo-tubes is advanced, way beyond that of 1937 Earth.”

01 An early Starfleet universal translator, as used aboard the Enterprise NX-01.

Earth. So while the audio input is all Janeway’s, Voyager’s translator could well be piggybacking on some advanced Briori tech, distributing multiple translations in real time. But what makes you think Starfleet translators could not do the same anyway, just as quickly? In the time of Archer, each would-be Coalition of Planets delegate wears a small translator unit, so 200 years later one would think that such multiple translations would be easily achievable. Whether handling the whole load, or simply supplementing the Briori systems, Voyager’s simultaneous translation to all eight humans seems entirely possible, no matter who is hosting the process.

DATACORE LARRY NEMECEK Coming from a background in news and theater, Larry Nemecek now creates his Trekland blog and videos, alongside archives at larrynemecek.com, following his longtime career as Star Trek author, editor, studio consultant, interviewer, speaker, archivist, and even ﬁlm site tour leader. Producer of documentary The Con of Wrath, and his Trekland: On Speaker remastered interview archives, Nemecek’s Star Trek: Stellar Cartography book and maps set is available now from 47North/Amazon.

THE HOLODECK

EVIL GLOVES In the Voyager Season 4 episode “Year of Hell,” I noticed Annorax (Kurtwood Smith) was wearing black gloves. Again, in the Season 6 episode “Living Witness,” many of the regular cast were also wearing black gloves. Were these props a way of illustrating evil people, or was it something else? Michael Raper, Grover, CO Let’s not forget those distinctive black and chainmail gloves worn by Khan, part of his protective gear against the elements of Ceti Alpha V, in Star Trek II. Not to mention those worn by a fair few more villains... All this to say that, yes, black gloves (on one or both hands) are simply a staple of the movie

“Black is the traditional costume color-of-choice for the ‘bad guy.’” wardrobe, just like the black hats worn by many a ne’er-do-well in countless Hollywood Westerns. Black is the traditional costume color-of-choice for the “bad guy.”

02 Khan wears a black glove to handle a truculent Ceti eel. 03 Annorax, another black glove fan, in "Year of Hell." 04 The evil Janeway of Kyrian legend.

In the Kyrian simulations of Voyager in “Living Witness,” the “evil” Janeway wears some very, very black gloves. While the color is a movie and TV convention, it’s the gloves that send out far more complex signals. Not only do they help disguise someone’s identity (no telltale fingerprints!), they also act as a barrier to personal human contact – very much in keeping with Annorax’s twisted personality.

STAR TREK

A F I S T F U L O F D ATA

MAKING SENSE OF THE FUTURE 05

It was recently revealed that rock icon and actress Cher was the original choice to play the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact. Though I loved Alice Krige’s performance, I believe Cher would also have done a great job interpreting the character. What do you think of the producers’ choice to cast Cher in the role, and would she have been a good fit for the Trek franchise? Badar S. Atlanta, GA It turns out that this story traces back to a comment from make-up artist Barry Koper that was published by The Hollywood Reporter last fall, on the occasion of First Contact’s 20th anniversary. Koper recalls hearing that “they were talking about Cher playing that role.” These days, an off-the-cuff

comment like that is celebrity red meat for the internet to run with – and run with it the internet did! Now, my first hunch is that this may have been the blue-sky first hope of producers, as when famous trekkie Tom Hanks was asked to play Zefram Cochrane in the same film (he couldn’t free up his schedule), or when Sean Connery was initially approached to play Spock’s half-brother Sybok in Star Trek V. If only we could “Turn Back Time” to find out... So I asked co-writer Ronald D. Moore how close this rumor is to truth. “I don’t recall any specific discussion of Cher, but it’s perfectly possible,” Ron told me. “At the beginning of the process, there were a couple of long wish lists of ‘name’ actresses that were drawn up for consideration, and it’s easy

Photo: Mark Reinstein / Shutterstock.com

I GOT YOU BABE?

05 Alice Krige as the delightful Borg Queen. 06 An early First Contact costume design. 07 Was Cher really on the list to play the Borg Queen?

to believe that she was on one of them. It’s pretty standard procedure to put virtually every big-name actress on the initial wish list when casting a role like that, even in TV, so it’s easy to believe she was included.”

Send your canon conundrums to A Fistful of Data at:

startrekmagazine@titanemail.com, via larrynemecek.com, or @larrynemecek on twitter. 88

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THE HOLODECK

CANON FODDER PUTTING CONTINUITY IN THE FIRING LINE I can’t resist it: I’m going to use this edition of Canon Fodder to jump right into the ongoing maelstrom that has surrounded Discovery’s Klingons since... well, pretty much since we rst set eyes on them! “Those are cool aliens – but they sure aren’t Klingons!” is a phrase we’ve heard from some fans over the past months, but hold your horses there, fellow fans. They may be the most thought-out version of our favorite aliens yet. Information nuggets from some great convention appearances by Klingon actors Mary Chieffo and Ken Marshall, and further comments from alien make-up designers Neville Page and Glenn Hetrick (backed up in a detailed line of CBS videos), show that the “radical” Klingon redesign has already been eased into canon – or at least seeded as backstory, ready to be canonized: we’re talking organs, and organic, telepathic/empathic sensors around the ridges, and the explanation has much going for it. GAME OF BONES But if you think Discovery brought on this big redesign of the Kahless kids, you’re forgetting one thing – the truly radical reimagination of the Klingons came way back in 1979, with Gene Roddenberry and Fred Phillips’ work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Now that was a reboot, if ever there was one. Check out Phillips’ and costumer Bob Fletcher’s notes on their new-look Klingons, as reprinted on page 133 of The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: “The spine continues up over the head and into the forehead.” That’s it. The familial patterns in the forehead ridges are an exposed, exoskeletal spine, not just a goofy design doo-dad. Fans would debate for years whether the smooth-to-bumpy Klingon change was worthy of a mini-canon explanation, or just ignored as a reality of the movie’s bigger production budget. Acknowledged but unresolved in DS9 ’s “Trials and Tribble-ations,” it

took a second attempt by writers Manny Coto and Mike Sussman, some 25 years later, to retcon an explanation into an Enterprise storyline. They came up with a plot involving a deadly Klingon Augment viral infection, following a failed genetic manipulation experiment left over from Earth’s Eugenics War. Klingon bumps (and, presumably, their spines) were ﬂattened in time for the original series, and the cure took a while to kick in.

08 The radically reimagined Klingons of The Motion Picture. 09 Add a long wig and fake beard to this guy, and he wouldn't look so different.

KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY We’ve always heard about family houses in Klingon politics, so presumably the hairy-heads and other varieties are still lurking about on their own homeworlds and starships during Discovery’s time, far from Qo’noS. Now we learn in Discovery that there are 24 houses of varying power and clout, and many of our characters are leading

lights in a few of them. We’ve come a long way since a couple of faceless Klingon extras, standing around in the shadows of the Great Hall, constituted the “other houses.” I’ve said for years, since the rise of Westeros’ popularity over on HBO, that the rich tapestry of Star Trek could yield up an equally compelling series – and you’d only have to call it Game of Houses to get where I’m coming from. In other words, the life-and-death internal politics of the brutish Klingon Empire could be every bit as gripping and gory as that other fantasy empire. Looks like somebody agrees with me! Just think about how much of the Empire we really haven’t seen – how vast it is, and how overdue the Klingons are for a huge dose of species diversity! With what the producers and creators have already made public, that looks to be what we have now. And the ridges and other details ﬁt the expanded spectrum just ﬁne. So, do any of the house families have hair? Do they all have enhanced or organic sensory organs around their exposed spinal ridges? These questions and more may be answered by Season 1’s conclusion, but at the very least we should remember just how big a galactic swath these guys take up, and what that means for the variety of looks we’re already familiar with, bumpy heads and all. STAR TREK

QUARK’S BAR WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NET WORTH

Share your Trek tales, photo memories, art, and creativity with fans far and wide. Email startrekmagazine@titanemail.com, and we’ll find a corner of Quark’s Bar to showcase them. 01

FEZZES ON STUN Tony Quirk and Daniel Fernandez wore their love for Star Trek on their sleeves – and heads! – during San Diego Comic-Con 2017. Wearing an eye-catching cosplay combo of distinctive fez hats with matching smoking jackets, laid-back Starfleet officers Quirk and Fernandez impressed fellow fans with “what we call our ‘Shore Leave’ outfits.” Says Quirk, “We both had a lot of fun wearing them, and they proved quite popular with fellow Trekkies.” The duo also enjoyed their visit to the Star Trek: Discovery exhibition at SDCC, and are both looking forward to watching the new show. “If the props and costumes are any indication of the upcoming series,” Quirk says, “then the legacy of Star Trek will be well served.”

STAR TREK

01 Admirals Quirk and Fernandezs chose smoking jackets over Monster Maroons for SDCC 2017. 02 The fezwearing duo take charge of the U.S.S. Discovery.

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TICONDEROGA, THE FINAL FRONTIER Greetings, Quark’s Bar, In your recent article on James Cawley’s Star Trek: The Original Series Set Tour, in Ticonderoga, New York, James mentioned how struck he was with the number of grown men who would cry upon setting foot in the corridors of his Starship Enterprise. I’m writing because I admit I was one of those who wept, openly and unashamedly. Fifty years ago, Star Trek had fans like John and Bjo Trimble, who truly made meaningful contributions to this show we loved, saving it from extinction, and connecting thousands upon thousands of fans with each other. Years later, that passion continues with Mr. Cawley, whose labor of love is inspiring, and thrilling a growing number of us Trekkies. My partner Mike and I had acquired some command and science velour duty tunics, and we giddily and geekily donned them for our visit. There are just no words for the short circuiting of

the brain that occurred when we walked through a set of plywood doors and realized that they were, in fact, a time portal into the past: to Desilu Studios, Hollywood, California, 1968. Stage 9... the Star Trek sets. Just the way they were back then. Walking through the corridors and hallways, everything is connected, so that the illusion of being on a fully realized ship is maintained. Long before we got to the bridge, we realized that our time traveling was not over yet. We found ourselves hurtling hundreds of years into the future and, as we walked the decks, felt we truly were aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. Like the Talosians of “The Cage,” our illusion had become our reality. It was an adventure we will never forget, and one that we cannot recommend highly enough. Gene Roddenberry would have loved this. Jason Saville and Mike Mosher Central New York, USA

03 Mike Mosher explores the Enterprise. 04 Jason Saville reports to sickbay.

05 "Beam me up, Saville." 06 Captain Saville and Commander Mosher.

STAR TREK

THE NEUTRAL ZONE

WHERE OPINIONS COLLIDE

ODO QUARK VERSUS

Welcome to The Neutral Zone, where our expert team of Star Trek fans is given an aspect of Trek lore to debate... and then pick sides!

This issue, we asked our dedicated duo of Trek fans the following question: “If one thing was certain during the tumultuous times depicted in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, it was that Odo and Quark would always rub each other up the wrong way. What was the reason for their fractious relationship? Was Odo an authoritarian, and Quark a victimized entrepreneur?” On behalf of Odo: Michael Clark Fighting for the Ferengi: Bunny Summers

STAR TREK

Michael Clark: Odo believed in justice and wasn’t afraid to break a few rules to achieve it. He was a dogged investigator who would leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of the truth, but over the years he was known as an impartial who wouldn’t allow his personal feelings to get in the way of his investigations. To suggest that he was an authoritarian clearly misrepresents his character. Bunny Summers: But does it, though? MC: Yes – Odo was determined, but he wasn’t oppressive. Over the years, he developed various relationships with people who could provide information, and at times he would call in old debts, but he didn’t use force, he didn’t take away freedoms. Odo would go where the clues would lead him and, no matter how uncomfortable it was for him or those

around him: he would do what had to be done. His people, the Founders, were dictators who ruled the Dominion with an iron fist, but that was down to their fears of the solids. While Odo had bad experiences with the solids in his early years, he did not allow this to define him. BS: I don’t agree. An authoritarian is defined as: “favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom” – which, to me, is totally Odo. He doesn’t have a life like the other characters on DS9 have; his life is enforcing station rules or regenerating. So to me, he does definitely have some authoritarian traits. Nothing makes Odo happier (except Kira) than when he’s enforcing the station laws, and pulling crew and visitors up about infractions. I do agree that Odo and the Founders were

THE HOLODECK

very different. The Founders were clearly dictators. They put themselves in power, and conquered other races through sheer force. But this doesn’t change the fact that Odo clearly has authoritarian traits.

“Odo didn’t stop Quark from being an entrepreneur. In many ways he allowed him to flourish.” MC: Let’s look at Odo’s relationship with Quark. Quark was a businessman who used the Rules of Acquisition to help guide him on his quest for riches, and on more than one occasion his business dealings

would skirt the lines of the law. If there was anything happening on the station, you could bet that Quark would have an interest in it. Odo kept Quark in check. He was always vigilant, and would often be one step ahead – and on more than one occasion he ended up saving Quark from a bad deal, or even saving his life. BS: In some ways they need each other to exist, and they enjoy this cat and mouse game that they seem to play with one another – the entrepreneur that often skirts the boundaries in search of profit; and the constable, always on the lookout for a wrong turn so he can pounce upon the wrongdoer, and hold power over him. That’s something which Odo did often. MC: Odo could’ve put Quark behind bars so many times, but he didn’t. Odo understood that Quark’s way of life was

01 René Auberjonois as Odo.

business, and many of his “transactions” would be legal under the Ferengi system, so he allowed him to operate so long as no one got hurt. Odo didn’t stop Quark from being an entrepreneur. In many ways he allowed him to flourish. The only things that would often get in Quark’s way were his own actions, and the types of transaction or people he dealt with. BS: I did love that about Odo, especially in The Sound of Her Voice, in which we see Odo seemingly let Quark win. However, as you say, Odo understood Quark and his way of life. In fact, Odo saw many species come and go on the station, so it seems reasonable that he would enforce station rules while trying to allow other species to follow their own rules. It was a difficult balancing act, but whichever way you look at it, as far as Odo was concerned rules were to be followed all of the time. MC: Quark wasn’t a victimized entrepreneur, any more than Odo was authoritative. Quark simply wasn’t a very good businessman. BS: I don’t agree with your summation of Quark. Quark was a good businessman, but aboard the station he wasn’t allowed to be one. Had he been on Ferenginar I believe he would have been extremely successful, but the Rules of Acquisition are based on totally different ethical values compared to those of the Federation. Quark is a wellconnected individual who always seems to have eyes on the station, and is always one step ahead of his customers’ needs. MC: In some ways, I feel Odo’s constant badgering and vigilance may have made Quark a better person. Over the years, we saw Quark soften up, and perhaps that’s because over time he did the right thing rather than what would bring in the most latinum. There’s an exchange between them in Season 5’s “The Ascent,” which sums their relationship up quite nicely. Odo says, “I guess you’re not as successful a businessman as you think you are.” Quark comes back with, “Which means you spent the last 10 years of your life trying to catch a nobody – with little success, I might add. So you tell me: which one of us is the bigger failure?”

02 Armin Shimerman as Quark. 03 Odo and Quark spend some quality time together, in “The Ascent.” 04 Did Odo make life hard for Quark, or was it the other way around?

#STMTheNeutralZone Enter The Neutral Zone to add your opinion to the debate. Follow @StarTrekMag on Twitter, @StarTrekMagazine on Facebook, or email startrekmagazine@titanemail.com

STAR TREK

T R E K K E R S

THE STARS INSPIRED BY STAR TREK

THE HOLODECK

DAVID LISKOWSKY SCIENTIST

For half a century, Star Trek has inspired its fans to explore bold new frontiers, with writers, scientists, engineers, and even rock stars taking their lead from the sci-ﬁ institution. Talented Trekkers seeks out familiar faces whose careers have been energized by their love for the ﬁnal frontier... Words: Mark Phillips

magine, as an aspiring scientist, if your favorite TV series featured a decidedly unscientific episode in which an underwater photographer (played by Yvonne Craig – future Batgirl, and Marta in the Star Trek episode “Whom Gods Destroy”) becomes trapped on an Antarctic ice flow and is subsequently menaced by a giant tarantula, some angry cavemen, assorted dinosaurs, and a murderous boyfriend who’s having an affair with a pretty prehistoric girl? As a fan of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, teenager David Liskowsky felt so angry and betrayed by the 1964 episode “Turn Back the Clock,” that he wrote a letter of complaint to The Boston Globe newspaper. “Three-quarters of the show was made up of old clips from the movie The Lost World,” young David lamented. “It was one of the worst television programs I have ever seen!” Now retired, Liskowsky, the former Director of Medical Policy and Ethics at NASA HQ, is amazed anyone even remembers his 53-year-old letter. As a teen, he was an aspiring marine biologist, with a taste for the fantastical. “I very much enjoyed science fiction, which made up a lot of my recreational reading,” he says. Eventually forgiving the Irwin Allen-created series for its stock footage transgression, Liskowsky was primed to enjoy Star Trek when it premiered in 1966. “What made it such a long-lasting favorite were the interesting stories, the great characters, like Mr. Spock (multiculturalism was so novel then), and the imaginative science fiction,”

data. At NASA, when we talk about such a device’s development now, we often say it’s going to be ‘our tricorder.’” From Liskowsky’s informed perspective, only a couple of Star Trek inventions are likely to remain in the realm of fantasy. “While you never know what advances in science and technology may lead to, things like time travel and the transporter do seem improbable,” the NASA scientist admits.

“You never know what advances in science and technology may lead to.” says Liskowsky. While “not a dyed-inthe-wool” Trekker, he remains impressed by how it has inspired the development of real-life technology over the following five decades. “They used communications with a device that plugged into the ear, and data storage in a small disc that plugged into a computer,” Liskowsky says, comparing the Trek devices to present-day Bluetooth headsets and flash drives. “They also had a tricorder to record medical data. There are devices now in development that, by scanning over the body, can record blood pressure, heart rate, and other metabolic

01 Yvonne Craig as Marta in “Whom Gods Destroy.” 02 Retired scientist David Liskowsky.

STAR TURN

Ed “Buzz” Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon in 1969, once criticized Star Trek for presenting a simplistic “push button” future. However, years later he acknowledged that “Star Trek was an inspiration for what the astronauts were doing, and conveyed the challenge of exploring outer space.”

STAR TREK

Q U I Z

Do you know your Jefferies tubes from your matter/antimatter reaction chambers? Test your engineering knowledge in…

THE WARP CORE CONUNDRUM NAME THAT CORE

MAXIMUM WARP

Identify which class of Starﬂeet vessel each of these warp cores belongs to:

1. Zefram Cochrane’s Phoenix was the rst human vessel capable of warp speed, but what was the name of the Vulcan ship that witnessed its rst ight? A. T’Kuvma Saq B. T’Empyr Hoth C. T’Plana-Hath D. T’Ragna-Roq

2. The rare crystalline mineral Dilithium can be found on only one of the following planets. Which one? A. Rigel IX B. Dozaria C. Akritiri D. Matalas

3. Which Enterprise system was channeled through her engines when the NCC-1701 underwent an extensive re t? A. Forward shields B. Main phasers C. Replicators D. Transporters 4. What speed did the U.S.S. Enterprise attain when its engines were set to overload by a Kalandan defense system? A. Warp 9.975 B. Warp factor 14 C. Warp factor 10 D. Inﬁnite Warp

SHE CANNAE TAKE MUCH MORE, CAP’N!

1. What was the name of Montgomery Scott’s bestselling technical manual? A. Dilithium Regeneration Patterns B. Hull Plating Parameters C. Operating Protocol – Flow Sensors D. The Laws of Physics and How to Change Them

3. What was Trip Tucker’s favorite movie? A. Star Wars B. Frankenstein C. Into Darkness D. Mary Poppins

2. How many engineering chiefs did the Enterprise-D have before Geordi La Forge was assigned to the position? A. 3 B. 9 C. 1 D. 4 ANSWERS:

SHE CANNAE TAKE MUCH MORE, CAP’N! 1. C: Operating Protocol – Flow Sensors 2. D: 4 3. B: Frankenstein MAXIMUM WARP 1. C: T’Plana-Hath 2. B: Dozaria 3. B: Main phasers 4. C: Warp factor 10 NAME THAT CORE 1. Sovereign 2. Galaxy 3. Constitution 4. De ant 5. Intrepid

STAR TREK

If you scored 12 points: There be whales here! If you scored more than 6 points: This jury-rigging won’t last for long. If you scored 5 points or less: The haggis is in the ﬁre now, for sure.

CAPTIONS LOGGED ARCHIVE IMAGES LOST AND FOUND Wo r d s : L a r r y N e m e c e k

ull yourself together, Mr. Data. This is no time for a nap – don’t you know how difficult an alien first contact can be? Especially when it comes in a form as unfamiliar as Gomtuu, otherwise known as the “Tin Man” (from the Next Generation episode of the same name). Guest-starring as the brilliant-yet-troubled Betazoid first contact consultant, Tam Elbrun, acclaimed actor Harry Groener joined the regular cast on the set of the Enterprise bridge on Wednesday, February 7, 1990, to shoot scene 62 – and save the mysterious new life form from some typically antagonistic Romulans. Clearly Data isn’t too bothered, and nor is the crew member busy with his tape measure. What could he be measuring, and is Data really sleeping? You tell us!

Send your Trek caption to startrekmagazine@titanemail.com, and we’ll print our favorite in the next issue.

TREK TRIVIA The special effects used for Gomtuu’s attack were recycled from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where they had originally been used to signify V’Ger’s “evolution.”

Last Time, in

Captions Logged... Caption Logged by:

LILLIAN WARREN

SOUTHFIELD, MICHIGAN

HOLD THAT EYEBROW STILL. IT'S THE VULCANS THAT DO QUIZZICAL. YOU GUYS JUST FROWN.

STAR TREK

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T H E

O F F I C I A L

M A G A Z I N E

#65/#192 KLINGON TAKOVER! Kenneth Mitchell (Kol) Robert O’Reilly (Gowron) J.G.Hertzler (Martok)

ALCHEMY FX

Creating Discovery’s Klingons

DISCOVERY INTERVIEWS Anthony Rapp (Stamets) Wilson Cruz (Dr. Culber) Sam Vartholomeos (Connor)

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