Morgan

It's.... interesting. A lot of interesting things.

I'm gonna go see it this week. Not usually a fan of Pitt's acting: he always comes across as Aldo Raine no matter what movie he's in, and he tries to seem older and sound older & it just never works. But, the trailers are intriguing and they don't spoil the whole plot, which is a rarity these days.

Haha, just as I expected Tarantino has a better grasp of storytelling and characters than these VFX-obsessed dweebs who had to read Memory Alpha articles to get in shape to write dialogue & then just drove the series into the ground.

::presses earpiece::

Just a second, I am now being told by our correspondents that that is in fact Elrond of Rivendell, not Legolas of the Woodland Realm as has been reported earlier. And that is also clearly Veronica Mars (who knew?).

But all jokes aside, this is shaping up to be a pretty diverse cast.

Actually, the big bit of news today is that Frakes, Sirtis and Jonathan Del Arco, who played Hugh Borg, aka Third of Five, will appear in the series at some point. Sirtis confirmed it on Twitter today. Does it feel like this is shaping up to be a very Borg-themes series? There's a lot of Borg stuff in the trailer for it to be just a B-plot theme of some sort. There's Picard on Earth, some more Picard in space, some cast members, but the Borg Cube is kind of a big hint. But there are also a bunch of Romulans in this thing too, so that could confirm the early talk about the destruction of Romulus.

Well, if it turns out to be Borg-centric, that's at least a good reflection that the producers know what plays well with a TNG audience.  I think the TNG film series could have easily done yet another Borg film right after FC and not lost money. Perhaps I'm in the minority with that view. 

But anyways, good to see costumes from Lord of the Rings getting some airtime, hehehe.

Wow, there's... a lot going on there. Cool update to the DS9 uniforms, super sassy Seven, a cube, Data, what else does one need really?

In regards to Data, I'd like to quote Luke Skywalker: "No one's ever really gone." Is that Spiner in some makeup or did they smooth him out with CGI? He looks great either way, tbh.

The rest of the cast is... ooof, I dunno what's going in, are they trying to do a "Firefly" type show? Makes sense I guess. And is that Legolas of the Woodland Realm?

Jpatrik, thanks man, glad you guys are enjoying these. Yeah, there's fair bit out there that was just straight up did not make it on to the internets at the time.

I think the red uniform is just a hasty mockup, and tbh it's weird that they painted a Calhoun body from a FC uniform back to a DS9 type thing. Even stranger since this is almost a year after FC came out.

I'm more optimistic about this series than since anything before "Enterprise" even debuted, which is a not a high bar, but still, guise.

I think if the writers can be cognizant enough to avoid the things that made JJverse & Discovery instantly controversial with fans, they will be okay. There are even lists of complaints on The Google -- it's not a secret what they are. Avoiding them is not that hard to do, tbh, especially for writers who are woke enough that canon should not be disrespected or wildly altered just because. A lot of Discovery is just a poke in the eye, and there are lessons to be learned there.

Whether the writers like it or not, this is a nostalgia show -- they are not starting from a clean sheet. It also shouldn't be SeaQuest 2032 where Bridger has left and is some kinda wandering beardo.

From how it's set up, it's The Motion Picture leap in time, except Picard is not itching to get his command back.

I swear, if this turns out to be another Mirror universe shtick or "time travel is an everyday thing now!" & "consequences don't matter, because reset button" show, people are gonna riot in the streets and just burn cars and block highways with overturned Target shopping carts.

For what it's worth, addressing the Picard-leaving-Starfleet thing, I don't think they'd trash the Enterprise-E for shock value -- that would be a Ping Zing 9-iron to the shins of fans. I just hope Riker is Captain now is he's off just doing regular flagship stuff, getting owned by Pakleds, etc. Here's why I don't think it's that: the narrator in the teaser does not know. If the E was destroyed, then that question would probably not be asked. I think it's more mysterious and non-obvious.

For me the First Contact figures were a huge kick in the shins: the scale was bigger but the detail was really about the same. The unified sculpts made the whole lineup feel cheaper, and the lack of articulation on Cochrane and Lily seemed lazy. But the scaling just seemed like they had run out of ideas.

I could get behind the common body sculpts that Voyager was doing at the time -- that's fine if they had to do that to save money -- but there had to have been some upside on the other end like a bridge playset or a wider cast of characters. For Hawk, all they needed was a head. Same with Barclay. Same with Alyssa Ogawa. Same with the Doc.

I honestly hope that that was the last of these movies, because the vast majority of what was seen was tremendously flawed. With Anton Yelchin gone and the producers seeming unable to get the cast financially interested... there are not a whole lot of directions for this particular franchise to go.

A tremendous bit of news, one that I'm a little cautious of simply because Kurtzman does not have the best track record of all time with Trek.

But if it brings modern Trek out of TOS-era revisitation and revisionism, I'm all for it.

The bar is set soooo high with TNG, the expectations of fans really cannot be overstated. A blank-canvas show like ::snaps fingers:: -- what's it called, Discovery? -- could redraw Trek in whatever image, but a Picard-led show has to fit within some established canon.

Kinda curious about the format: Will this be "Just Picard: A One Man Show," or will some other former cast members be a part of a regular crew?

The "easy" way out of this is to do an Enterprise-E show -- that much is certain. I would not be against that in any form, even though it's the easy way out. That would be hard for the studio to whiff or wreck outright due to a show being staffed with (for instance) Star Wars people or comic book film adapters who saw like 3 TNG episodes, tops. And that route works with Stewart's age. That's kind of a fixed factor here -- I think such a show would have to be set after Nemesis, arguably. To his credit, Stewart has not aged that much.
 

"Collectible Toy Values Are on the Rise—And It’s Not Just Star Wars"

A recent article in the WSJ, of all papers. I dunno if I buy all of the arguments in it, but there's an interesting list inside on which lines are hot now.

An interesting argument about the 1701 figures in there, made by "The Toys That Made Us" commentator.

This article gets bonus points for trashing those Funko Pop things -- I can't stand how there are entire walls of them inside collectible shops now. That fad needs to go away.

Yeah, it was a solid effort. The actors inhabited their roles well, Lando just about stole the show, and the rest of the cast was well chosen as well.

The main issue, a recurring one in all the latest Star Wars and Star Trek films, is the insane pacing (for the Adderall generation) compared to the original trilogy. Then people complain that these movies feel different and that they don't have enough time to take in the actors and the scenery. Well, when every second is either filled with dialogue or stuff exploding, it's hard to appreciate the sights and the feel of the universe. It's like watching an older Star Wars film on VHS set to fast forward.

Another thing is that (and hardly anyone ever points this out) is that the recent Star Wars films are not that rewatchable. The original trilogy could be watched again and again, just to hang out with the characters, but the latest films don't quite have that quality. They're too frenetic, too explody. I didn't see The Last Jedi a second time (and don't want to), but I watch ESB and ROTJ like 10 times a year each.
 

To be honest, guise, it's probably more likely tied to TRU closing up and thus their wholesale order being cut by a huge chunk. These types of things have been a tough sell for retailers for ages, even in the 90s.  

The trailer for the season is up, and it previews the Trek episode, among others:  https://twitter.com/...041839017529344

Hopefully this will be the first relatively objective look at the Star Trek lineups of Galoob and Playmates, and quite a contrast to action figure magazines of the time that couldn't see the forest through the trees.

Romulan Disruptor (1994)

You'll recognize this immediately as the Sela figure's disruptor in a larger scale, and it made it to the prototype and advertising stage. It just didn't make it into production.

The Romulan disruptor would would have included three light-up elements when the trigger was pressed, as well as sounds. The prototype was shown in 1993/1994, around the time that the DS9 lineup of action figures, ships and accessories was being shown, but it ultimately did not make the cut.

There are a few reasons for this that we can figure out 25 years later: The disruptor was nowhere as recognizable as the Klingon one, which came out around this time, and it would not have been very compelling on shelves as Romulan items amounted to the Warbird that came out around that time. Romulan episodes, as we recall, were not that numerous, and the screentime that the disruptor actually got was not huge. Alien accessories were also a bit of a rarity, though it's worth remembering that the Bajoran phaser and tricorder were in fact produced (a minor miracle in hindsight. The Bajoran phaser was cool, if a little obscure, but the tricorder was even more obscure).

There's also the matter of alternatives: The Starfleet phaser rifle did not get the green light around this time, and that was arguably a more compelling item if a little on the expensive side. I think that if anything, Playmates would have opted to produce the phaser rifle than the Romulan disruptor if it came down to it, but ultimately neither were produced.

25 years later, I don't know if this would have been a popular item at the time. Handheld accessories were hit or miss, and the Type II phaser and the Tricorder were the only ones that appeared to be major hits and were also produced in absurd numbers -- take a look at the serial numbers on some phasers on eBay right now. They were hits, but they also had absurd amounts of screen time in each episode. The Klingon disruptor was a tougher sell, but it did okay at retail as well. The Romulan disruptor, on the other hand, seasoned Trekkers have to think about for a couple of seconds before identifying correctly. So I can't say that I blame the manufacturer for skipping on this one.