Oh. Oh. Oh! A glimpse of the USS Enterprise from JJ Abram’s forthcoming new Star Trek movie. It appears to show the classic Starship Enterprise still in drydock as her assembly is completed; older fans like me will appreciate the details such as the proper tube-shaped warp nacelles, complete with the ‘swirly nipples’ on the end. And how cool is it that you can see inside part of the ship where the hull hasn’t been finished? Geekgasm. Effects have come a long way from the 60s when to suggest the Enterprise was damaged they showed it tilted at a slight angle…

TrekMovie.com has a much bigger image here where you can make out a lot more detail; they also have a YouTube (so not best quality, but still watchable) clip of the teaser trailer for the movie which is being shown in cinemas in the US with JJ Abrams’ ultra-mysterious Cloverfield flick. We don’t see much except for the glare of welding torches as the Enterprise is finished off. On the soundtrack a medley of soundbites from the golden age of the Space Race – the era which gave birth to Trek – from Kennedy’s inspirational speech to Armstrong’s “one small step” line, as the image pulls back to reveal the Enterprise and a certain Mister Leonard Nimoy utters the immortal lines, “Space, the final frontier…” You know, I’ve said before I am half-excited and half-worried about this film: I trust Abrams as a great storyteller, but am just not sure about how I will be able to accept other actors in those classic roles, playing younger versions of the characters I grew up with (repeats of 60s Trek and Doctor Who were my formative SF viewing in the 70s). But this tiny little clip just sparked something into life in my geek warp core. Go now and look.









Fri, Jan 18, 2008
Film, TV and radio, General