I just love this picture of Star Trek’s first lady Nichelle Nicholls posing with a fan, who just happens to be the President of the United States! I wonder if he also asked Nichelle about Martin Luther King, as, famously, when the actress was introduced to the great civil rights campaigner in the 60s she was considering leaving the show as she didn’t feel her character got enough attention or lines. Dr King told her that she shouldn’t leave – at a time when few black faces were seen on prime time screens having a lead character, a bridge officer, who was black and a woman, right there on screens was important just in and of itself (also something which chimed with the late Gene Roddenberry’s ethos too, of course, that in the future we’d embrace our diversity rather than be divided by it and distrust and hate) and so it helped her decision to stay. And decades later she here she is making the Vulcan salute with a black President. I suspect both Dr King and Gene would have loved this. The Vulcan IDIC in action… (via Live For Films)

“His genial contribution, in the form of unequalled production paintings, propelled and inspired all of the cast and crew of the original Star Wars trilogy. When words could not convey my ideas, I could always point to one of Ralph’s fabulous illustrations and say, ‘do it like this‘,” George Lucas on McQuarrie’s visual influence on Star Wars, quoted on the BBC site.

Goodbye, Ralph, you designed some of my generation’s greatest childhood fantasies, thank you. I think rather than say anything else I’ll just leave you with more of Ralph’s wonderfully imaginative artwork that set the standard for some of the movies we’ve loved so much in an Art For Art’s Sake style:

(original Galactica concept art with the classic Colonial Viper, below a Battlestar in desperate fight against the classic Cylon Raider; all art here by Ralph McQuarrie, (c) BSG, Star Wars to original studios/creators)

(Lando and Wedge in the Falcon and X-wing destroy the ‘fully operational’ new Death Star in Return of the Jedi, below the original Death Star and the famous trench sequence. Switch off the targetting computer, use the Force, Luke…)

(Ralph’s concept for redesigned USS Enterprise bridge for the reboot movie that was then to be a new series but eventually went back to being a film after the success of Star Wars at the box office)

(Buck Rogers starfighter – I still have one of these sitting on a shelf at the parental home. I’ve heard originally it was a concept for a Viper in BSG but wasn’t used for that, but was used for the contemporary Buck Rogers series instead. Either way, still a cool design; below, concepts for Star Wars’ great double act, R2D2 and C-3PO, Threepio clearly showing the influence of Metropolis’s Maria robot)

(Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father… that first dramatic duel between father and son in The Empire Strikes Back – still the best of the SW series? I think so – visualised once more by the one and only Ralph McQuarrie. Could you imagine these worlds being created without Ralph’s visual flair?

The Concept Ships site features a series of extremely cool concept designs for the USS Enterprise (‘F’ model) by Shawn Weixelman, helping to fill that Star Trek-less gap in our science fiction lives at the moment. The rest of the site also boasts some fab spaceship art, well worth a browse for SF geeks. (via SF Signal)

Well, we know now Saavik was correct to suggest going to alert status when the starship Reliant approached the Enterprise in silent mode with the nasty Khan Noonian Singh secretly in command and about to wreak his aweseome Wrath. Christer Nyberg has taken a year and somewhere between 10, 000 and 15, 000 Lego blocks to re-create Star Trek The Wrath of Khan’s USS Reliant and it looks fabbity fab fab. Star Trek and Lego, that’s like two of the best things ever brought together! Plus being Lego you can easily modify it and knock off a warp nacelle if you wanted the battle-damaged version. (via IO9)

This made me smile – it’s a Lego take on Star Trek, but look closer on the Enterprise bridge and there’s the Doctor (with Fez, Fezes are cool) and look out! They’re being attacked by the pirates of the Crimson Permanent Assurance! Genius. (link from The Brothers Brick via Geek Chocolate)

Canadian audiences (appropriate, since the Mighty Shat is indeed from the lovely land of the maple leaf) will get a chance to see it on the big screen this evening; I’m hoping there are cinema screenings here too at some point – it would be fine on DVD, sure, but these sorts of films are best viewed with a like-minded audience to be really appreciated. (link from ChrisD, via SciFiTweetn)