More Star Trek tie-in updates

Still working through my list of new purchases...


Homage to Vulcan - in Tokypop's second manga collection.

With the wonder of 20:20 retconning hindsight, Tokyopop's newest manga collection does a marvellous homage to all things Vulcan in "Amok Time" (TOS), "Yesteryear (TAS), "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock", the fourth season of "Star Trek: Enterprise", and the CGI-rejigged TOS episodes currently being made for the syndication market (and ultimately HD DVD), in their story, "Forging Alliances" by Paul Benjamin (art by Steven Cummings). The creators have managed to slip in visual and/or text references to Vulcan's Forge, the city of ShiKahr, the planetoid T'Kuht, the sites of several Spock rituals (perhaps all three of Koon-ut-kali-fee, Kolinahr and Fal Tor Pan?)... and more!


When le-matyas attack!

This story is more fun than a pack of le-matyas. And we get them, too.

Less exciting was the Diane Duane story, "Scaean Gate" (art by Don Hudson & Steve Buccellato). I guess I set myself up for disappointment, hoping for some participation by Harb Tanzer*, Naraht the horta or Lia Burke, but Ms Duane avoided any connections to her previous Star Trek work. The story premise was reminiscent of "Elaan of Troyius", in that a member of one planet's royal family was becoming monarch of a tenuously friendly rival planet. Complicating matters are a cute reptilian pet and lots of space battles. The art was nice and bold on this one, and a more enjoyable read because of that. At the same time, was it manga style? Not really. (And the queen's high-heeled pumps looked really out of place - anywhere in space!)

I'm in two minds about Christine Boylan's "Communications Breakdown" (art by Bettina Kurkoski). It's set post-"The Changeling", with Uhura gradually regaining her skills from the memory wipe performed by Nomad in that episode. Great premise (I was planning on using that story point myself once), and an interesting guest alien, but a few things just didn't gel, particularly the wacky little androgynous wild-haired replacement officer, Ensign Hodge, who looks like s/he fell out of an anime one day. Interestingly, the story mentions Cassandra of Earth mythology, who was also the inspiration for an unused "Star Trek: Phase II" teleplay.

Overall, Tokyopop's "Kakan ni Shinkou" is a worthy follow up to Shinsei Shinsei.

My complaint overall with the ST mangas so far: if they are going to be just like DC, Marvel or IDW ST comics, then I'd really prefer them in full colour. A few of the stories in this issue seemed to have one or two guest characters with anime-styled wild hair, but everyone else looking like they stepped out of a DC Comic. Reading the ST mangas on a train, at night, with the flu, was causing me terrible eyestrain, too. I much prefer "normal" sized comic pages for my Star Trek stories. For a b/w ST experience, I much prefer going back to the old "LA Times" post-TMP comic strips!

* An obvious person to tour Diane Duane's alien queen around was Harb Tanzer, I suppose, but then he'd be doing McCoy out of a main role, and most ST fans would want to read about McCoy over the lesser known Chief of Recreation.

Do you know the way to ShiKahr?

American television audiences channel flipping for random episodes of original Star Trek (TOS) in syndication are enjoying all-new special effects footage, which is being recreated/repaired/enhanced with CGI in remastered, high definition versions of the episodes. Although current syndication advertisement ratios require extensive cutting of popular lines and (sometimes) whole scenes, there is an intention to release uncut HD DVDs of the "remastered" TOS.

TOS was made on film, not videotape, which means that it looks amazing on HD TV, but the FX made in the 1960s are simply not up to scratch, due to the number of composite film layers required to produce SPFX footage of transporter effects, phaser beams, ship passes and matt paintings. The episodes still look good on regular TVs, but DVD already shows up problems (the joins on Nimoy's pointed ear tips, for one) and HD TV and DVD will show up many more faults, especially in the old SPFX.

While some fans have been angered by any attempt to meddle with a cultural icon - especially the attempts to recreate CGI versions of the Enterprise's rotating nacelle caps, and the artists putting miniature, moving versions of themselves in the new computer-drawn matt paintings - the CBS SPFX team are doing an amazing job, from the still and moving examples I've seen so far.

But last week, CBS unveiled its remastered version of "Amok Time". Suddenly, that well-known scene of Spock and Kirk's battle for T'Pring, Spock's intended bondmate, has been elevated, literally, onto an impossibly precarious land bridge, similar to those seen in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock"! And, in the distance, we can now see a CGI recreation of Spock's home city of ShiKahr, which had previously been named and visited in the Filmation animated episode, "Yesteryear" (TAS).


Left: ShiKahr in TAS; Right: a distant ShiKahr in TOS-R.

While most of Filmation's TAS was shunted out of "canon" via a Star Trek Office memo in 1989, several names and events from "Yesteryear" (plus Captain Robert April of "The Counter-clock Incident") are embraced by the "Star Trek Encyclopedia" and the "Star Trek Chronology", with Gene Roddenberry's approval. Unfortunately, Spock's city of birth is misspelt "ShirKahr" in those publications, and that pesky error has permeated TAS mentions in other licensed Star Trek products.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the moon-like object in the sky over Shikahr in the "Yesteryear" still, that is "T'Kuht", coined in the 70s by fanzine identity, Gordon Carleton, to explain the misleading TOS quote, "Vulcan has no moon, Miss Uhura" (in "The Man Trap"). Jean Lorrah once wrote Sarek & Amanda fanzine stories for T'Kuhtian Press.

The TAS error in "Yesteryear" (ie. Dorothy Fontana had scribbled "remove moon" on the art she approved for Filmation, but it wasn't noticed by the animators) was retconned as "Vulcan's twin planet" in the booklet accompanying View-Master's "Yesteryear" adaptation, "Mr. Spock's Time Trek". The planetary body was also shown to dominate the Vulcan sky in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (TMP) in 1979 (below), although it was eliminated for the director's edition DVD.



Several years later, the planetoid turned up in a Pocket Star Trek novel as T'Kuht in "The Vulcan Academy Murders" (below) by Jean Lorrah, acknowledging Gordon Carleton for the name and explanation. The planetoid is even on the cover of "The Vulcan Academy Murders" (below left) and Michael Jan Friedman's "New Worlds, New Civilizations" (below right).



The name is spelt "T'Khut" in Diane Duane's "Spock's World", Jeri Taylor's "Voyager: Pathways" and the books "The Worlds of the Federation" and "New Worlds, New Civilizations". It's called "T'Rukh" in AC Crispin's novel, "Sarek", with an explanation that the name changes are seasonal. It's T'Kuht again in "The Needs of the One" a DC Comics story in its TOS Special, Series II, and Geoffrey Mandel's book, "Star Trek Star Charts".

With the animated series often considered the bastard child of the Star Trek phenomenon, it's always a thrill to me to see TAS acknowledged. With the new version of "Amok Time", ShiKahr and TAS take a new step towards legitimacy and acceptance!