Beam Up Buttons with Trek Cats

StarTrek.com's story about the upcoming release of Star Trek Cats created a fur-fect storm when it first ran in December. And now we can reveal the paw-some news that if you order Star Trek Cats now, you'll also get two free Star Trek Cats button. Fur real, we're not kitten you. The Chronicle Books hardcover, due meow-t on February 28, can be pre-ordered now at Star Trek Cat Pins.

Star Trek Cats is the creation of Jenny Park, a "shameless nerd" and respected scientific illustrator who litter-ally specializes in reimagining pop culture characters as... cats. Its 64 pages will be filled with claw-fully amusing new takes on iconic Trek characters and scenes, from Kirk in the Cat-pin's chair to Spock offering his fur-miliar Vulcan wisdom.

How are you feline about the book's imminent release and the free buttons?

Again, go to Star Trek Cat Pins to pre-order Star Trek Cats and beam up your free buttons.

via Star Trek Latest News

STO Season 12 Sector Space Map

Traveling the dark recesses of space is a dangerous business. Even the most prepared Captain can be caught off guard by the endless void between stars and planets. Your computer system and your helmsman will work together to guide you, but sometimes, even the best technology fails. That's why, despite how it might be called superstition, some of the best Captains exploring the final frontier bring along a good, old fashioned map – and now we're passing that map along to you.

With the release of Season 12: Reckoning, the amount of planets Captains have to discover has only grown. And so, Tim 'Suricata' Davies, the Design Lead for Perfect World EU, has taken the time to design this incredible poster for you, detailing the entire game world of Star Trek Online.

But before we get there, let's take a trip down memory lane. Here is the original sector map from when we first launched STO, seven years ago.

It's amazing how much we've grown. Check out the new map below, and click here for a full size image.

For more Star Trek Online news, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

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The Secrets of Insurrection

It was 20 years ago that story development and preproduction began on what would eventually become Star Trek: Insurrection. In early 1997, a few months after Star Trek: First Contact became a box office hit, producer Rick Berman approached Michael Piller, whose contributions to Star Trek cannot be exaggerated, to write the film. Piller had been the producer/show-runner for The Next Generation and his leadership helped humanize and deepen the show and its characters during the third season and after. Additionally, Piller's innovative policy of allowing script submissions from anyone with talent, even if not represented by an agent, opened the doors for many great TNG episodes and also helped begin the careers of many of today's best TV writers. Piller was the co-creator of Deep Space Nine and Voyager. Insurrection would be his first movie script.

We recently acquired many of the production memos and notes from the film while conducting research on the making of Insurrection. The materials reveal how and why stories change from their original conceptualizations, including having to find solutions to limitations of time, budget, and special effects technology. These are some of the fun, interesting "what ifs" and "could have beens" from these production materials.

• Piller's first treatment, entitled "Star Trek: Stardust," was completed May 9, 1997. It was a much more serious drama based on the themes of the 1902 novella by Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness. The early drafts of the script involved Picard going after an old friend named Hugh Duffy, who is claiming that the Federation is in collusion with the Romulans to destroy a world in order to gain its precious 'sarium krellide' ore.

• Early story ideas included some favorite TNG characters from the television era. The first story treatment has Picard eventually standing before the Federation Council to answer for his defiant actions. It appears all is hopeless and Picard may lose his command until Boothby begins applauding Picard's impassioned speech about his actions, inspiring a wave of support. Interestingly, the film would not resolve whether Picard was sanctioned or not, leaving that answer for the sequel. Reginald Barclay also had an extensive role in the early versions of the story, but memos indicated a concern that perhaps it was too large of role, not leaving enough to do for the regular characters of Geordi, Beverly, and Deanna.

• A planned action scene was to be a chase between Picard and the Son'a on anti-grav scooters that he brought with him from the Enterprise to help with the evacuation. There is a concern in the production material that the sequence needs to be innovative to avoid comparisons to the Endor speeder bike chase scenes of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

• One of the original themes of the film was that Data was going to argue in favor of moving the Ba'ku because he wanted his friends to live as long as he did. Picard and Data discuss this, with Picard, explaining that it doesn't matter if people live twice as long if they do so living without "the values we hold most dear." One of the reason this idea was abandoned was because it was thought that Data had already established that the moral path was opposing the plan to move the Ba'ku at the start of the film.

• The invisibility suits that were seen at the start of the finished movie, used by the joint Son'a/Federation research teams along with Data, were going to play a bigger role in the action of the film. The third draft of the script has Picard using the invisibility suits to subdue Son'a agents.

• The design of the Ba'ku culture has academic origins. Michael Piller consulted with an anthropologist about what a culture of long-lived people would likely look and act like during 1997. The comments would inform much of the eventual design of the Ba'ku. The anthropologist suggested that a long-lived culture would be rural dwellers who had vocations and not 9-5 jobs, and that they physically would be tall and thin. They would live in smaller groups. Many of these ideas were adopted by designers.

• Another original idea was to have the Ba'ku have no hair near their ears. This idea was abandoned for very practical reasons. According to a March 11, 1998 memo, the additional cost of shaving the hair on all of the extras would add $94,200 to the budget. Additionally, there was the concern that the extras and actors who played the Ba'ku would have trouble finding work again until their hair returned.  

• Through collaboration and innovation, through artistry and creativity, the production team resolved challenges and limitations to produce what has been called the most "Roddenberry-esque" of the Star Trek films in terms of its social themes. For those who enjoyed this discussion of the secrets of Star Trek: Insurrection, and for fans of the much-missed Michael Piller, the late writer's family has published his long-awaited book Fade In: The Making of Star Trek: Insurrection – A Textbook on Screenwriting from within the Star Trek Universe, which explores in detail the preproduction of the film from a writer's perspective. StarTrek.com spoke with Piller's widow, Sandra Piller, about the book in an interview last year.

 

Maria Jose and John Tenuto are both sociology professors at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, specializing in popular culture and subculture studies. The Tenutos have conducted extensive research on the history of Star Trek, and have presented at venues such as Creation Conventions and the St. Louis Science Center. They have written for the official Star Trek Magazine and their extensive collection of Star Trek items has been featured in SFX Magazine. Their theory about the "20-Year Nostalgia Cycle" and research on Star Trek fans has been featured on WGN News, BBC Radio, and in the documentary The Force Among Us. They recently researched all known paperwork from the making of the classic episode "Space Seed" and are excited to be sharing some previously unreported information about Khan's first adventure with fellow fans. Contact the Tenutos at jtenuto@clcillinois.edu or mjtenuto@clcillinois.edu.

via Star Trek Latest News

6 Things You Should Know About Brent Spiner

It's Brent Spiner's birthday today, and to celebrate StarTrek.com is pleased to present 6 Things You Should Know About Brent Spiner. Here they are:

• Spiner kicked off his career by acting on stage. In New York City, he appeared in such plays as A History of the American Film (1978), Sunday in the Park with George (1984-1985), The Three Musketeers (1984) and Big River (1985-1987).

• The actor's run as Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation spanned 15 years, from "Encounter at Farpoint" to Star Trek Nemesis. Unlike many of his co-stars, Spiner never directed an episode, but he did help develop the story for Nemesis and received a "story by" co-credit. 

• Spiner had a career year in 1996. He not only starred in the hugely successful Star Trek: First Contact, but he also memorably appeared as Dr. Okun in Independence Day and played a psychologist in the suprise hit, Phenomenon, with John Travolta. 

• Spiner, in 1991, released an album titled Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back. Joining him on the collection of 1930s and 1940s standards were his TNG co-stars Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton and Michael Dorn, who were jointly referred to as "The Sunspots."

• The actor has played himself several times over the years, including in his Web series Fresh Hell and also on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. In a 2011 interview with StarTrek.com, he discussed the challenges of playing Brent Spiner. "I've never been very good at playing myself. I'd done it before. I did it on Joey a few years ago. It's one of the most difficult characters to play. It's certainly easier in Fresh Hell because we've established all of the parameters of where I am in my life at that point. None of that is important at all when I appear as myself anywhere else. It's just a person who happens to be named Brent Spiner, who was on Star Trek." 

• The actor's most recent projects include Independence Day: Resurgence, in which he reprised the role of Dr. Okun; the horror series Outcast; and the Patrick Stewart comedy Blunt Talk. Spiner is also set to guest star as a villain, dubbed The Architect, on an upcoming episode of The Blacklist. His episode will air on Feb. 16. 

Please join us in wishing Spiner a happy birthday.

via Star Trek Latest News

Worf at Center of Headlong Flight

The latest Star Trek novel from Dayton Ward, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Headlong Flight, is available now via Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books. In it, Worf and an away team land on a planet experiencing a continual succession of random jumps between dimensions...

Here's the complete synopsis:

Surveying a nebula as part of their continuing exploration of the previously uncharted "Odyssean Pass," Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Starship Enterprise encounter a rogue planet. Life signs are detected on the barren world's surface, and then a garbled message is received: a partial warning to stay away at all costs. Determined to render assistance, Picard dispatches Commander Worf and an away team to investigate, but their shuttlecraft is forced to make an emergency landing on the surface, moments before all contact is lost and the planet completely disappears.

Worf and his team learn that this mysterious world is locked into an unending succession of random jumps between dimensions, the result of an ambitious experiment gone awry. The Enterprise crew members and the alien scientists who created the technology behind this astonishing feat find themselves trapped, powerless to break the cycle. Meanwhile, as the planet continues to fade in and out of their planes of existence, other parties have now taken notice…

Running 352 pages, Star Trek: The Next Generation: Headlong Flight is available as a mass market paperback, unabridged audio download and eBook priced at $7.99 (and $10.99 in Canada). Go to http://ift.tt/hewKkZ to purchase it.

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Takei, O'Reilly, Grunberg & More Set For Trek Las Vegas 2017

And in the blink of an eye, the number of guests locked in for Star Trek Las Vegas 2017 now stands at 50. Creation Entertainment has just announced the following additions for the event, which will be held August 2-6, 2017, at the Rio Suites Hotel:

Star Trek Las Vegas will take place from August 2-6, 2017, at the Rio Suites Hotel in Las Vegas. Go to www.creationent.com for details and to order tickets.

via Star Trek Latest News

Official Starships Collection Shuttles Available Take Flight

The latest products from the Star Trek The Official Starships Collection are available now, and StarTrek.com is pleased to present a First Look. And it's a very detailed look at that. The second set of highly detailed Star Trek shuttles in the collection brings fans the executive shuttles used to transfer personnel from Earth's surface. Included in the set are:

• The Executive Shuttle from Earth Spacedock
• The Type-7 shuttle from the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D
• The Type-15 shuttle from the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D
• NX Shuttle POD from the Enterprise NX-01.

These amazingly detailed Star Trek shuttles are finished in metallic resin and include display stands and specially commissioned Okudagram schematics, created by Mike Okuda, exactly as would have been used on the TV shows.

The latest Plaque 7 is the Enterprise NCC-1701-A Dedication Plaque, engraved with the Star Trek motto, "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Make your home, or office walls and doors pop with décor inspired by Star Trek.

The next special issue is an exclusive U.S.S Enterprise NCC-1701 11-inch model. An oversized version of the iconic ship from The Original Series with the ship that started the whole ball rolling, this detailed and faithful replica has been sculptured, die-cast and painted using references from CBS Studios' own archives of designs, physical and CG models.

The Official Starships Collection is available online only. Each issue can be delivered directly to your door, enabling you to form a fleet of ships in the comfort of your home.

For information on the other ships in the collection, visit http://ift.tt/2jRFt1N. And keep an eye on www.startrek.com for more updates and imagery.

via Star Trek Latest News