A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 2019 Paramount Home Media Distribution and CBS Studios On Tuesday, November 12, Paramount Home Media Distribution and CBS Studios released Star Trek: Discovery - Season Two on Blu-ray and DVD almost seven months after Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman's series completed its second season on CBS All-Access, CBS Television's streaming service. Set approximately 10 years before the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS), Star Trek: Discovery chronicles the voyages of the USS Discovery, a Crossfield- class starship equipped with an experimental propulsion system that's faster than standard warp drives, during the last Klingon-Federation War and its immediate aftermath. Starring Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Michelle Yeoh, Shazad Latif, Wilson Cruz, and Emily Coutts, Star Trek: Discovery expands the lore of Star Trek while paying homage to the existing canon. Although its high-tech 21st Century production design and its sh...

  John Colicos (as Kor) in original "swarthy" Klingon makeup and prosthetic Fu Manchu facial hair. © 1967 CBS Studios Why do the Klingons in Star Trek TOS look different than the Klingons in Star Trek TNG and the rest of Star Trek series? When Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry created the Klingons as the 23rd Century avatars for the Soviet Union to serve as foils for America’s avatar, the United Federation of Planets in 1967, the new aliens were depicted as swarthy-looking humanoids with extra-bushy eyebrows and, in the case of Kor (John Colicos), a villainous-looking Fu Manchu mustache-and-goatee. Sometimes, though, the Klingons would have pigment variations and on occasion, such as in  The Trouble with Tribbles,  we’d see fair-haired Klingons alongside the basic Klingon-with-swarthy-makeup. William Campbell (Koloth) and Michael Pataki (Krax) in The Trouble With Tribbles. Note absence of swarthy makeup and more "Western-style" goatees.  © 19...

You know…I had to ask that question to a few of my friends who were into  Star Trek  back when I was in my early teens….back in the late 1970s. I was born just a few years before  Star Trek  premiered on September 8, 1966, so I wasn’t what you might call a First Generation Trekker. I think I first saw  Star Trek  in the early 1970s (or maybe 1969) when I lived in Colombia with my mom, older half-sister, and other relatives. It was, of course, dubbed in Spanish and was titled  Viaje a las estrellas.  I didn’t know what to make of it, so I didn’t watch it a lot. (Don’t judge me…I was only 7 or 8 years old at the time!) © 1966 Desilu Productions/Norway Corporation/CBS Intriguing looking ship….too bad it isn’t as detailed as the ships in  Star Wars …… When we moved back to the States in 1972,  Star Trek  was in its “lost in the wilderness” stage: NBC had canceled the show three years earlier, but it was popular in syndica...

Why is  Star Trek: The Animated Series  not often spoken of or given the same recognition as the other  Star Trek  shows? Star Trek: The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek,  as it was officially marketed, has a complex history as to its canonicity within the  Star Trek  franchise. When it was created in the mid-1970s, most of the people involved in its creation treated the series as a continuation of  Star Trek: The Original Series. (TOS).  After all, it was created and executive produced by Gene Roddenberry, it featured the voices of  most  of the main cast members (including William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and DeForest Kelley) except Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov), who wasn’t hired due to budget issues. (Koenig  did  participate on the writing end; he penned the script for  The Infinite Vulcan. )  Most of the scripts were written by men and women who had written episodes for the l...

On Quora, Cameron McCall asks: Which came first, Star Trek or Star Wars?  Star Trek, or as it is known today, Star Trek: The Original Series, was created by ex-pilot, World War II veteran, L.A. Police Department police officer, and television writer Eugene Wesley Roddenberry in 1964, sold to Desilu around that time, and approved for a network run on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in late 1965. It premiered (with The Man Trap ) on September 8, 1966 and ran on NBC for three seasons until its cancellation in March 1969. Star Wars began its long creative development as early as 1971, and by 1973 George Lucas, a graduate of the University of Southern California’s film school, had a first draft for a screenplay then titled The Star Wars. After shopping it around to the big studios, including Universal Pictures, he sold the script to 20th Century Fox after finally convincing Fox’s VP for Development Alan Ladd, Jr., who didn’t quite understand the story but nevertheles...

© 2006 CBS Studios. Photo Credit: StarTrek.com On November 21, 2006, 40 years and two months after the premiere of Star Trek (or, as it is now known, Star Trek: The Original Series  or TOS), CBS DVD released Star Trek: The Animated Series: The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek  (also known as TAS) , a four-disc box set that presents all 22 episodes of the NBC Saturday morning cartoon series that continued the adventures of the USS Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk. The DVDs also feature audio and text commentary (on selected episodes), a behind-the-scenes documentary, a featurette about the links between TAS and other series in the Star Trek franchise, plus a timeline of the show. TAS was created in the early 1970s by Gene Roddenberry at the request of NBC, the U.S. television network which had broadcast the original live-action Star Trek series from 1966 until its premature cancellation in 1969. In an ironic twist, the same executiv...

(C) 2018 CBS Studios/Paramount Home Media Distribution On November 13, Paramount Home Media Distribution released Star Trek: Discovery - Season One, a four-disc Blu-ray set of the newest television series in the Star Trek franchise. Created by Bryan Fuller and Alex Kurtzman for the streaming service CBS All Access, Star Trek: Discovery is the seventh television series set in the universe created by Gene Roddenberry in the mid-1960s and the first new show to premiere since the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. Although it was co-created by Kurtzman, one of the writers of 2009's Star Trek feature film, Star Trek: Discovery is not set in the Kelvin timeline in which the current feature films are set. Rather, the new show's setting is the Prime timeline seen in all the other television series. Like Enterprise, Star Trek: Discovery is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series, but its tale takes place a decade before the five-year mission of Capt. James T. Kirk...

The Deadly Years   Stardate 3478.2 (Earth Calendar Date 2267)   Episode Production Number: 60340   Episode Number (Aired): 40   Original Air Date: 12/8/67   Writer: David P. Harmon   Director: Joseph Pevney       " Captain's log, stardate 3478.2. On a routine mission to resupply the experimental colony at Gamma Hydra IV, we discovered a most unusual phenomenon. Of the six members of the colony, none of whom were over thirty, we found four had died and two were dying ... of old age. "  During the third year of her five-year deep space mission, the  Starship Enterprise,   Capt. James T. Kirk  (William Shatner) commanding, arrives at the experimental colony on Gamma Hydra IV.  Her assignment, to resupply the team of six Federation scientists – none of whom are over the age of 30 – who are assigned  there.  Capt. Kirk, First Officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley),  Ens. Pa...