Posts from ‘Star Trek’
The next Star Trek television series
I absolutely hate hearing the term ‘motion picture television’.
No, it’s just really good television. The same goes on in the gaming industry and I just wish that they would stop comparing themselves, like their field of entertainment is somehow lessor than the motion picture industry.
There is some really high quality work going on in television, upcoming shows like The Walking Dead give me a lot of hope for the future of the medium and so my thoughts (and fanboy’ish dreams) drift to what I think will be an inevitable return of the Star Trek franchise to television.
The movie did really well and despite the last two series of the television show lacking the same pull as The Next Generation eventually some executive is going to work out that with the reboot movie’s popularity the time is probably right to produce one series (and only one series).
So what should they do?
Obviously I’m highly qualified to make grand suggestions that will never actually be produced so I’m actually a little hesitant to make my suggestions public and would rather keep them in my heart in the off chance that someone actually does produce the show. See the moment I write something fanboy’ish down it’s the moment that it will not be fulfilled.
It’s like imagining the worst thing that could happen just so it doesn’t happen. Shit works both ways despite what The Secret will tell you.
Oh well.
Here’s what I would do if I was running the Star Trek department at CBS television.
First off despite the popularity of the Star Trek reboot I would actually stay away from that era. Save that for the movies, Star Trek did that generally successfully whilst The Next Generation was on and personally I see it working now as long as they don’t try to mix the two.
Second of all I would avoid unknown. There is already an established Star Trek television demographic out there who just didn’t warm to Voyager or Enterprise, but they exist and they will watch a Star Trek show as long as it is well written and interesting (I’m not saying that either Enterprise or Voyager weren’t these but… you know, I mean they weren’t great all the time). So with this established market you want to give them a reason to come back and straying too far from the USS Enterprise is not going to cut it. But of course we can’t have an Enterprise based show but we can do the next best thing.
USS Titan captained by William T Riker.
There were a series of novels that came out that took the idea from the film Nemesis that Riker and Troi were going on to serve on the deep space exploration vessel Titan. In the full script it was also mentioned that Wesley Crusher would be joining them. So three characters from the hugely successful Star Trek: The Next Generation on a new ship doing what the original Enterprise was tasked with doing in the first place.
I’d watch that.
I’d so watch that!
It doesn’t impinge on the film series and it doesn’t abandon the Next Generation history. In fact I see no reason why it couldn’t be set in the new timeline. The universe/timeline attempts to repair itself and so future events will still try and happen along similar lines. One mention of the loss of Vulcan and it’s back on track 
Actually it’s not that hard of a concept considering the stupid Mirror Universe.
So that’s my ideal Star Trek return to television, don’t get too excited because it won’t happen now. I was also a big supporter of an Excelsior series.
Since I added a bonus custom card into the mix when I offered the Wrath of Khan sketch cards up I thought it might be nice to show you the process I go through when doing up one of these cards.
I start off using a mechanical pencil to sketch out the card, I really shouldn’t but I do use just your standard HB lead so it comes up quite dark. I don’t generally mind this but I know others use lighter pencils, I just rub out most of the heavier stuff before inking anyway.
I try and have a pretty good idea of where I’m going with the sketch cards because you don’t have a lot of room and they aren’t so forgiving if you keep erasing. Often I’ll do a thumbnail sketch on a post it note just to block it out, in this case I misjudged and cut the bottom of the Enterprise off when I was actually hoping to include it, I wasn’t devastated though because it doesn’t really affect the composition.
From here I take a 0.3 Copic Multi Liner pigment ink pen to ink in the main lines of the Enterprise. I choose the 0.3 because it’s a nice fine pen without being too fine. Your average pens are generally around the 0.5 mark so this is just a little finer than one of those. Remember too I’m working in a fairly small area on the cards so I can’t use really thick lines unless going for that look. At this stage I haven’t thickened any lines and I’m probably not going to do too much again because of the size. Notice that I’ve started to ink the swirly nebula bit, I stopped because I realised that I was going to ink the background black anyway so it was redundant!
So for the background I swap over to my Medium Brush Copic Multi Liner, the main reason I keep using the Copic line is that later I’ll use (probably) Copic colour markers and I don’t want the ink to bleed which some other brands do in conjunction with the markers. I generally have little use for the medium brush for other stuff because I don’t work big enough to warrant the size of the stroke.
Here I’ve erased the pencils and I’ve started detailing a little with my .01 Copic Multi Liner, it’s the smallest pen I have and I have to be really careful with it because I’m quite heavy handed with it. Normally I don’t sign the pieces before I finish but I was aware of having to include it on this card so wanted to make sure it would still be visible. I’ve also blackened in some of the detail which was really naughty of me because I used the .01 pen.
Yay now we have some colour! Now funny enough for all my Copic markers talk for the base purple I used a Faber-Castell PITT artist pen. Only because it had the right colour which I didn’t have in my Copics. They are nice pens to use, flow a lot of ink onto the paper, have a really nice firm brush head on them. The dashes of blue are a Copic marker.
Now I haven’t tried to do too much with the base background colour because I’m going to add to it later and also use something a little surprising!!
Now a lot happened in this step. Obviously I added the colour to the Enterprise herself. Now some will carry on with ‘but the Enterprise is white’ to which I answer go and have another look at the scene in the nebula, the lighting in that section has these tones on the Enterprise which gave it an almost sepia feel. Since this is to fit in with the Wrath of Khan collection I tried to capture that to some degree. Back to my trusty 0.1 pen and I’ve added some little details such as name and registry.
The cool thing here is the stars in the background which I have used a BIC Wite-Out correction pen which I’m using more and more in my work.
So this is another cool thing that I’m beginning to use more and more in my sketch cards at least, are pencils, colouring pencils. I use Derwent artist colour pencils because I own them and I’ve got a nice selection of colours. I possibly prefer Crayola to be perfectly honest.
I also wasn’t going to add much weight to the inked lines but after staring at the card I realised that it really needed it and it came out a lot better for it.
I hope that was interesting enough.
I also wanted to mention that since I had such a great reaction to the Khan cards you can now order individual commissioned sketch cards of any characters from anything, so if you are looking for a one of a kind gift for a friend or would like to own your own Lee Sargent sketch card check it out!
It’s shaping up to be Wrath of Khan week here at Quit Your Day Job which frankly I don’t mind one little bit. But I’m about to do something which goes against every fanboy urge I have and ask for something in the next Star Trek film.
No Khan please.
I know that hurts, I mean who asks for less Khan?!
But I considered it after the rumours started that they’d look to Khan for the sequel and I think that it is a really bad idea.
First off who are they going to get to play Khan? I mean J.J. Abrams did an amazing job casting the crew of the Enterprise but Khan is like, well Khan.
Secondly this won’t be “Wrath of Khan” Khan this will be “Space Seed” Khan, so not the same vengeance seeking bare chested big hair guy that a lot of people would only know him as. A side note, if you’ve never seen Space Seed I highly recommend it as it lays the foundation of Star Trek 2 and even then Khan was a worthy opponent.
The final thought I had was that you are going to be compared with Wrath of Khan and that’s not really an easy thing to live up to. Who needs that kind of pressure? It’s like singing ‘My Way’ and being compared to Frank Sinatra, even if you are no one is going to say that you’re better (well I won’t anyway, unless you score 9999 on SingStar).
Loading ...My suggestion would be to go with a stand alone storyline, something fun and awe inspiring. I have some other things I don’t want to see in the next Trek film too:
- Time travel
- William Shatner
- Romulans
- Giant swollen hands (I’m not picking on the scene I’m just saying that you don’t want it to become your “thing”)
- God
Anything else they should avoid?
