STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS to end with shorter fifth season

Paramount have confirmed that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will conclude with a fifth season, which will consist of six instead of the normal ten episodes. The good news is that this is still some way off: Strange New Worlds' third season is only debuting on 17 July, with the fourth season in production.

Strange New Worlds only exists because of a fan campaign, after the characters were well-received in the second season of Star Trek: Discovery (2019). Delayed by the COVID pandemic, the show debuted in 2022 and attracted very positive reviews for its focus on standalone episodes and a lighter tone than Discovery, which had a much more critically mixed reception, as well as its casting and its focus on an ensemble. Season 2 (2023) was also well-received.

Season 3 is debuting over two years after the second season, but Paramount+ are keen to the get the next two seasons out as fast as possible, hoping to release Season 4 in 2026 and Season 5 in 2027.

The move comes after the ending of Discovery, Picard and both animated shows, Lower Decks and Prodigy. This will only leave one Star Trek series, the forthcoming Starfleet Academy, in production.

Wertzone Classics: Star Trek: The Original Series

Space, the final frontier. And so forth. In the mid-23rd Century, the Federation starship Enterprise explores strange new worlds under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, making discoveries both wondrous and terrifying.

Reviewing the original Star Trek is a bit like reviewing oxygen (you're not going to convince too many people about not using it), or Lord of the Rings. People are probably already going to watch it or have decided not to. I can't imagine there's too many people sitting on the fence over it. Still, having just watched the whole thing, reviewing it is only polite.

Perhaps the most succinct review of The Original Series, as it is now doomed to be called, came from Futurama back in 2002: "79 episodes, about 30 good ones." This is maybe a little harsh but also not entirely untrue. Airing from 1966 to 1969 (with an unaired pilot produced in 1964), Star Trek was a product of 1960s American assembly line television, producing a mind-boggling 29 episodes in its first season alone. Episodes were not so much carefully written as thrown together in a mad rush, with location filming being a rare luxury and decent visual effects an even rarer one. If anything, it's remarkable that the OG Star Trek holds together as well as it does, and when it works it's still excellent television.

The core of the show is the regular cast, particularly the triumvirate of William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nimoy as Spock and DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy: the action hero, the logical analyst and the emotional heart. This trio works extremely well, with consistently outstanding performances from Nimoy and Kelley across the entire show (Kelley is easily the most underrated performer on the show and in the following movies, and is always a delight to watch; Nimoy's brilliance has been extolled so much over the years it's almost redundant to repeat it now). This focus on the core trio detracts somewhat from the wider cast: George Takei as Lt. Sulu, Walter Koenig as Ensign Chekov, Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura and James Doohan as Chief Engineer Scott (with frequent guest appearances by Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel, and a rotating cast of recurring actors as crewmen, some of whom play multiple characters). The wider group gets relatively little time in the sun compared to the core three, which feels a bit weird from a modern lens but was relatively normal practice at the time.

From a performance perspective, William Shatner is a fascinating study. He is, for the first half of the show, consistently very good. Kirk is authoritative, moral and decisive, balancing the logic of Spock with the humanity of McCoy to good effect. In the latter half of the series, starting late in Season 2, it feels like he's checked out a little. The much-lampooned cliches of over-enunciation, attempts at dramatic pauses (which just feel like he's forgotten his lines midway through a speech) and occasionally wild over-acting become much more pronounced. When he has a good day, or is in a good episode with good material, he is still great, but that does become less common as the third season goes on (his worst performance is easily in Turnabout Intruder, which mercifully is also the last episode of the series).

From a writing perspective, the show is often inventive, intriguing and relatively smart, at least in the early going. Later episodes tend to emphasise action and develop tropes that are so rapidly reused they become tedious: the godlike entity who can crush the Enterprise and its crew any time they want, but first they have to use Kirk and the crew as pawns in some game, and are eventually defeated either by semantic trickery or (less commonly) some kind of technological breakthrough. The Enterprise mysteriously loses the use of its weapons, shields and transporter so often that your eyes may roll into the back of your head. Kirk talks sentient computers into self-destruction frequently enough that you wonder why an anti-Kirk firmware update isn't in circulation in the sentient evil computer club.

But the show is also remarkably adept at employing metaphor: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield's commentary on racism is so subtle it flew over the heads of some people, who wrote into the studio to complain that the near-identical aliens hating one another on the basis of skin colour alone was stupid (right in the middle of America's Civil Rights period). It also sings when it moves away from the all-powerful aliens trope to more even engagements: Balance of Terror's WWII submarine-inspired tension is superb, and Space Seed's battle of intellect and wills between Kirk and genetically-engineered warlord Khan is excellently portrayed. The battle between two Federation starships and a powerful (but not unbeatable) planet-killer in The Doomsday Machine is outstanding. The Devil in the Dark is possibly the show's best statement on how to respect and treat sentient life even if it looks and acts nothing like you are used to.

Like most shows of the period, the idea of "worldbuilding" is absent as a conscious idea, but when it strays into it, it is excellent, such as with our first visit to Vulcan in Amok Time and the Federation conference in Journey to Babel. The Klingons and Romulans are both intriguing enemies, although the portrayal of the Klingons lacks depth (maybe aside from Michael Ansara in Day of the Dove); the Romulans appear less frequently but more memorably, with both Balance of Terror and The Enterprise Incident being series highlights.

The show also gives good comedy, with both The Trouble with Tribbles and A Piece of the Action emerging as comic powerhouses (and The Naked Time having its moments). Gene Roddenberry was definitely less keen on comedy episodes, feeling they encouraged people to mock the show, but it's something Trek has been consistently pretty good at over many different shows and episodes. The show is also adept at existential horror, particularly in the early going through episodes like Where No Man Has Gone Before and Miri which make you wonder how the hell Trek got its reputation as a family show with a lot of charm: these episodes are cold, bordering on the bleak at times. That concept doesn't really emerge until the latter part of Season 1 and really sings in Season 2. It's been said so many times as to be redundant now, but Season 3 sees a marked slump in quality, with some of the worst episodes of the show and the franchise like Spock's Brain. Excellent episodes still crop up amongst the dross, like The Enterprise Incident and All Our Yesterdays, but it can be hard going.

Production value-wise, the show is obviously almost sixty years old so doesn't look fantastic. Location shooting is a bonus, hugely enhancing episodes like Shore Leave and Arena, but most episodes are forced to rely on sets (of wildly varying effectiveness) to portray exterior locations. Makeup and prosthetics are mostly underwhelming, but imaginative design can help overcome that: the Gorn looks weak, but the drama of the script helps overcome these deficiencies. Modelwork and space shots are often decent, and the 2006 remastered version of the show is excellent for updating the space shots whilst staying true to the original design intentions. In a similar vein, the show has some wince-inducing dialogue and ideas about the treatment of women and minorities compared to modern shows, but in other respects, and especially by the standards of the day, the show is remarkably progressive (and later Trek shows aren't always fantastic in this regard either).

Star Trek: The Original Series (****) is, in some respects, dated. But in many others it is remarkably watchable, with frequently great performances. It mixes horror, comedy and SF action-adventure to good effect. It set the scene and groundwork for the most successful TV SF franchise of all time. Sure, there's a fair number of episodes which are poor and don't work very well, but when the show does work - such as in City on the Edge of Forever, Balance of Terror, Amok Time, The Doomsday Machine, The Trouble with Tribbles and more - it remains excellent entertainment. The show is available right now in most territories via Paramount+ and on DVD and Blu-Ray.

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Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 1

A group of workers on the Tars Lamora prison colony discover an abandoned spacecraft, the key to their escape. However, the starship is what the prison colony overseer was looking for, sparking a major pursuit operation. Dal, Gwyn, Rok-Tahk, Jankom Pog, Zero and Murf learn that they are the new owners of the Federation starship USS Protostar, a vessel equipped with an experimental drive system. Advised by an emergency advisory hologram, taking the former of Starfleet Captain Kathryn Janeway, the reluctant crew have to find a way of getting the Protostar home and avoiding their relentless pursuers.

Star Trek: Prodigy is the third animated Star Trek show, but the first primarily aimed at younger viewers. A co-project between Paramount and Nickelodeon, the show assembles a crew of alien youngsters to tell a story that, especially in the early going, feels completely disconnected from existing Star Trek settings and worldbuilding. Indeed, this is the first Trek show not to feature a single human regular castmember (Janeway being a hologram).

The first season is 20 episodes long, which is something of a relief in this age of 8 and 10-episode seasons that all too often sacrifice character development and standalone side-stories for a central arc (often one not remotely worthy of that number of episodes). This allows the show to be a bit of a slow burn as it establishes who the characters are and the problems they are facing before it punches the "story arc" button. Once it does, that arc unfolds with impressive skill, mixing both the modern-day plot of the characters trying to take their Federation ship home from the Delta Quadrant with an elaborate backstory revolving around the villainous Diviner (a superb performance by Fringe and Lord of the Rings' John Noble).

The main cast are excellent, with Ella Purnell adding to a powerfully impressive recent resume of roles (Arcane, Yellowjackets and the upcoming Fallout) with her role as the conflicted Gwyn. Comic lunatic Jason Mantzoukas (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks & Recreation, Paper Girls) also imbues both Jankom Pog with expected comedy and less-expected tragic pathos.

The show's real strength is taking the Star Trek ethos of peaceful cooperation and making it work without a lot of Star Trek's baggage. Whilst Picard and Lower Decks have mined a great deal of their stories and setup from earlier shows, Prodigy goes in the opposite direction of keeping the Trek universe at arm's length its early going. Pog is a Tellarite but has little knowledge of his homeworld or culture, whilst Zero is an incorporeal Medusan (who briefly show up in The Original Series), but both are deep cuts to a casual viewer. Janeway is obviously a more familiar reference point, but as a hologram limited by her programming rather than the "real" Janeway, she is not quite the character we remember. Most of the aliens, worlds, technology and ideas the crew encounter are new and fresh, which is a genuinely impressive feat for what is the tenth television series to bear the Star Trek name.

After midseason, the show is more comfortable embracing its place in the Star Trek universe and the show's integration with more familiar settings and ideas is well-handled. Particularly successful is how the show creates a situation where our heroes simply can't immediately join forces with the Federation and instead have to search for a sneaky way of getting the Protostar back to Starfleet without causing a major galactic incident in the process. The season final wraps up this initial story arc with tremendous success, resulting in what might one of Star Trek's single finest debut seasons.

The show is not without weaknesses, however. Much of the final arc revolves around the dangers of AI which, although timely, is a story idea done to death in previous shows and only recently the major focus of both a full season of Discovery and another full season of Picard. It could also be argued that central character Dal is a bit too standard a protagonist for an animated show, being snarky but resourceful, hot-headed but kind etc. He improves a lot in the latter part of the season which his quest to understand his origins becomes more pressing. The animation is also mostly good, but perhaps a little bit of a step below the CG Star Wars shows.

There is much to enjoy in the debut season of Star Trek: Prodigy (****), enough to appeal to both established Trek fans and young children looking for a fun show. A second and final season is in production. The show is still available on Paramount+ in many countries, but in some territories it has been removed pending a move to a new station. DVD and Blu-Ray sets of the first season are available (or will be soon).

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AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER sequel film gets 2025 release date

Paramount have revealed a first look at the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel film. The new animated film will be released on 10 October 2025.

The new film is set some years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender but still decades before the events of spin-off show The Legend of Korra. Based on the still, Aang and the gang are maybe 10-15 years older than in the original show.

Avatar co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko previously explored the years immediately after the events of the original show in a series of comic books and graphic novels, which explored the aftermath of the devastating war against the Fire Lord and the fate of the Fire Kingdom's colonies on the mainland, which the other kingdoms wanted removed despite some of them having been there for a century. The conflict over these lands eventually leads to the creation of a new, neutral kingdom which we know will eventually transform into The Legend of Korra's Republic City.

The Legend of Korra, which takes place 70 years after the events of Avatar, previously featured the characters of Katara, Zuko and Toph in their old age (Sokka having died off-screen and Aang, of course, having died to allow Korra to be born). That show featured several brief flashbacks to a time period when Aang and the gang were in their 30s and 40s, which left fans eager to see more.

The new film is in production at Flying Bark Productions, with DiMartino and Konietzko on board as producers, with Eric Coleman and Lauren Montgomery directing. It's not been confirmed yet if the original voice cast is returning. Nickelodeon, Paramount and Avatar Studios are collaborating on the project.

The new Avatar film is the first of several new projects in the setting coming up. Nickelodeon and Paramount are also developing a new animated series and two further films, although nothing about their setting or characters have been confirmed, despite speculation that the second film would focus on Zuko and the third on the next Avatar after Korra.

Netflix also wrapped up filming of a live-action remake of the first season of Avatar some months ago. That series is expected to debut later in 2023.

STAR TREK shows gets new seasons and airdates

Paramount have lifted the lid on some of their plans for the Star Trek franchise moving forwards.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will air its second season starting on 15 June, and has been renewed for a third, confirming more adventures for Captain Pike (Anson Mount) and the Enterprise crew in the 23rd Century.

Star Trek: Lower Decks will air its fourth season later in the summer. The precise date is to be decided, but since each of the three previous seasons aired in August, that seems a fairly logical deduction for this season as well. Lower Decks has also been renewed for a fifth season, due to air in 2024.

Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks are also getting a special crossover episode as part of Strange New Worlds' third season, mixing live action and animation.

The Paramount-Nickelodeon co-production Star Trek: Prodigy will also start airing its second season before the end of the year, but has so far not been renewed. Prodigy's seasons are double the length of the norm, though (20 episodes each) and usually air in two blocs, so it might be next year before we hear any more about that show's fate.

Star Trek: Discovery will air its fifth and final season in early 2024, whilst Star Trek: Picard is currently wrapping up its third and final, warmly-received season. Whilst there have been discussions about a follow-up series, called Star Trek: Legacy, that has not been formally greenlit yet. There is also no further word on the much-discussed Section 31 TV series which has been in development hell for some considerable time.

Still, that's a reasonable amount of Star Trek to look forwards to in the foreseeable future.

New STAR TREK movie loses director to FANTASTIC FOUR

The extraordinarily convoluted saga of the next Star Trek film has taken another twist, with director Matt Shakman dropping out to helm Marvel's Fantastic Four.

The next Star Trek movie, the fourteenth overall in the franchise and the fourth produced by J.J. Abrams, has been in development hell ever since the release of the last instalment, Star Trek Beyond, in 2016. In the six years since then - during which time the franchise has made a hugely successful return to television - plans for a new movie have swung between a continuation of the Abrams incarnation to yet another reboot to various side-stories involving different characters. Even Quentin Tarantino was on board for a while, musing a feature-length remake of the classic series episode A Piece of the Action.

After a huge amount of development, Paramount settled on a script by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson, with WandaVision director Matt Shakman signing on to direct in July 2021. The film originally had a slated release date of June 2023, but this was delayed as the Chris Pine-led cast from the last three movies only signed on to reprise their roles on the film in February this year. However, pre-production had not yet started, apparently a result of the studio having to wait until the schedules of the ultra-busy cast had aligned. This delayed production so it would not be possible for Shakman to direct both the Star Trek picture and Fantastic Four, which now as a locked-in release date of 8 November 2024.

Marvel has been developing Fantastic Four for the last couple of years, which will mark the fifth live-action film to feature the classic Marvel superhero team but the first to bring them into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jon Watts, who had helmed the Sony-Marvel Spider-Man trilogy starring Tom Holland, had been attached but apparently received a counter-offer from elsewhere within the Disney empire to work on a Star Wars TV show instead. Marvel had apparently held talks with other directors, both inhouse (Ant-Man helmer Peyton Reed was reportedly considered at one point) and from outside, before landing on Shakman as their preferred option after his work on Game of Thrones, The Great and WandaVision showed he could handle epic productions, the latter two earning him Emmy nominations as well.

Paramount have now resumed their hunt for a new director. J.J. Abrams remains attached to produce, with actors Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana and John Cho all confirmed to return. The studio has also confirmed that the role of Chekhov, played by the late Anton Yelchin who sadly passed away in 2016, will not be recast.

Next STAR TREK film to reunite the Chris Pine-led reboot cast

JJ Abrams and Paramount have confirmed that the next Star Trek film will reunite the "Kelvin Timeline" cast led by Chris Pine as Captain Kirk. This cast previously anchored three movies in the franchise - Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016) - but their future had been in doubt as the development process over the next movie had gone through convoluted hoops.

Originally, Paramount had pursued a time travel story which would have united Chris Pine as Kirk with Chris Hemsworth playing his father (a role he briefly played in the 2009 reboot movie), until that ran afoul of a pay dispute and was dropped. They then developed a remake of the classic Trek episode A Piece of the Action, with Quentin Tarantino attached to write and direct. Tarantino reduced his involvement to writing and producing, which seemed to defuse Paramount's enthusiasm for the project and it fell off the radar.

Noah Hawley, of Fargo and Legion fame, then came up with a new Trek idea, apparently revolving around a whole new ship and crew not connected with any prior incarnation of the franchise. Paramount developed the idea for a while, before ultimately passing. Star Trek: Discovery writer Kalinda Vazquez then pitched a new idea, but that also didn't seem to go anywhere.

In July last year, momentum seemed to pick up again with WandaVision director Matt Shakman was hired to direct the film, in what was seen as a coup for Paramount given the immense success of that show. Writers Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson were assigned and JJ Abrams signed back on to produce. It appears that this idea may have been partially developed with the notion of recasting the crew, but Abrams and Paramount have now confirmed the established cast will return.

As well as Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg and John Cho are expected to reprise their roles as Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scotty and Sulu respectively.

A sad absence from the cast will be Anton Yelchin as Chekov, who sadly passed away in an accident at his home in 2016. He will not be recast.

With the next Star Trek film expected to start shooting soon for the 22 December 2023 release date, that means this iteration of the Enterprise crew will become the longest-serving in terms of a film franchise, with over fourteen years passing since their first appearance. The original crew, led by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and Deforest Kelley as Kirk, Spock and McCoy, made six films in thirteen years between 1979 and 1992 (although Shatner, James Doohan as Scotty and Walter Koenig as Chekov did briefly return in 1994's Generations, which handed the franchise over to the crew of TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, who made four films between 1994 and 2002).

At seven years and seven months, this will also become the longest gap between Star Trek films since 1979, surpassing the six years and five months between Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and Star Trek (2009).

Paramount renews STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, STRANGE NEW WORLDS and LOWER DECKS

Paramount have renewed the remaining two of their three live-action Star Trek shows. Discovery will be returning for a fifth season, whilst Strange New Worlds has had a second season confirmed before its first season even debuts. Animated show Lower Decks will also be returning for a fourth season. Picard was renewed for a third season back in September and production is already underway. 

All three shows have also had their launch dates confirmed: the final batch of episodes from Discovery's fourth season will start airing on 10 February, whilst Picard's second season will launch on 3 March. Strange New Worlds will then debut on 5 May. In addition, animated show Lower Decks is expected to return with its third season in the summer, with CG-animated show Prodigy already working on a second season, expected to debut late this year or early next.

Paramount+, the rebranded version of CBS All Access, has enjoyed significant success with its streaming service, last year reporting they were two years ahead of schedule with their expected customer base. Much of the service's success has been pinned on Star Trek, with the streamer inking a $160 million deal to keep Star Trek showrunner Alex Kurtzman on board until the end of 2026. The only other long-term success on the network is The Good Fight. However, the streamer is diversifying with a larger slate of drama and comedy projects, with the mega-budgeted Halo TV series due to launch in the coming months, as well as a Frasier sequel series in late 2022 or 2023.

The streamer is also making the bold choice to go international. Paramount+ will be launching overseas versions of its content in several dozen countries starting in the Spring, in some areas in conjunction with local streaming services. Controversially with the fanbase, Paramount has started pulling its Star Trek content from Netflix and Amazon Prime ahead of the move.

The multiple renewals also mean that Star Trek is catching up on Doctor Who in terms of the number of seasons confirmed in a franchise. Doctor Who has aired 39 seasons since its its inception in 1963, with a 40th already confirmed for 2023, as well as four seasons of spinoff show Torchwood, one of Class and five of The Sarah Jane Adventures, for a total of 50 seasons. These renewals will put Star Trek on 46 seasons.

Some rumours are stating that the third season of Picard will be last one, due to Sir Patrick Stewart's age (Stewart turns 82 in July), and once it ends it will be replaced by one of two new Star Trek series in development behind the scenes, a long-gestating series about Section 31 starring Michelle Yeoh, and a series focusing on the Next Generation fan-favourite character of Worf. No official confirmation of this has been given.

Paramount announce launch dates for new seasons of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY, PICARD and PRODIGY

Paramount have announced the launch dates for their next raft of Star Trek series.

In addition to Season 2 of Lower Decks, currently airing on Paramount+ in the USA and Amazon worldwide, the first season of Star Trek: Prodigy debuts on 28 October.

The new series, the first Star Trek show to be completely 3D CG-rendered, returns to the Delta Quadrant for the first time since the conclusion of Star Trek: Voyager in 2001. The series, set five years after the end of Voyager, features an all-alien, non-Starfleet cast of characters who stumble across the USS Protostar, an experimental Starfleet vessel despatched to the Delta Quadrant. The vessel is abandoned for reasons unknown, until it is found by a group of young aliens. The ship comes equipped with an Emergency Training Hologram, based on Admiral Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew reprising her role from Voyager), who helps them get to grips with piloting the vessel.

Prodigy is swiftly followed by Season 4 of Star Trek: Discovery, which will debut on 18 November, marking the first time since 1999 that two Star Trek series will air new episodes simultaneously (when the seventh and final season of Deep Space Nine overlapped with the fifth season of Star Trek: Voyager). The new season of Discovery sees the crew adjusting to life in the 32nd Century as they help the Federation and the Milky Way galaxy rebuild after the cataclysmic event known as the Burn, only to encounter a new anomaly which could threaten everything.

Finally, the second season of Star Trek: Picard will debut in February 2022. In the new season, a returning Q (an also-returning John de Lancie) apparently changes time into a dystopian nightmare, as part of a test for Picard. Picard and his colleagues utilise knowledge from a captive Borg Queen (Anna Wersching) to time travel back to the 21st Century and repair the damage done by Q.

Picard has been renewed for a third season, alongside rumours this may be the final season since Sir Patrick Stewart turns 82 next year and Paramount+ is developing several more shows with a view to one of them replacing Picard once it runs its course.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movie wraps

Co-director John Francis Daley has confirmed that shooting has wrapped on the new Dungeons & Dragons feature film.

Shooting began on or around 29 April, with shooting based at the Titanic Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland (previously home to Game of Thrones). Location shooting has taken place in Northern Ireland, Iceland and at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland.

Daley co-directed the film with his long-term collaborator Jonathan Goldstein. Their previous projects include the comedy films Horrible Bosses and Game Night, and writing the MCU movie Spider-Man: Homecoming.

This is, technically, the fifth Dungeons & Dragons feature, following on from three increasingly low-budget movies in the 2000s (only one of which was theatrically released) and an animated Dragonlance movie. However, this project has a vastly greater budget.

The film is set in the Forgotten Realms world and the city of Neverwinter will feature. Beyond that, little is known of the plot. The cast includes Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Regé-Jean Page, who are believed to be members of an adventuring band who run afoul of a villainous plot orchestrated by Forge Fletcher, played by Hugh Grant.

The film is currently set for release by Paramount Pictures on 3 March 2023. A D&D TV series is also in development with John Wick writer Derek Kolstad developing a concept. Wizards of the Coast have teased this project may involve Forgotten Realms signature character Drizzt Do'Urden in some capacity.

Next STAR TREK film lands WANDAVISION director, gets green light

Paramount's next Star Trek feature film has hooked WandaVision director Matt Shakman to helm the feature.

Paramount has spent five years playing musical chairs with writers, directors and even castmembers for the follow-up to 2016's Star Trek Beyond. Quentin Tarantino and Noah Hawley both developed scripts, J.J. Abrams signed on and off as producer several times and even the film's setting and cast changed several times, with Paramount considering everything from a film featuring a completely new crew and ship unrelated to any previous version of the franchise to a remake of the classic series episode A Piece of the Action to a straight-up sequel to the previous movies, with Chris Pine's Kirk returning.

Paramount have now greenlit a completely new project, with a script by Lindsey Beer and Geneva Robertson, with Shakman signed up after he guided WandaVision to a startling 23-Emmy nomination haul. It is still unclear if this new script will see the return of the Chris Pine-led "Kelvin" timeline but that should hopefully be clarified soon as casting announcements are made. Paramount wants to fast-track the movie with shooting to start no later than Spring 2022. The film, the fourteenth overall in the franchise, already has a pencilled-in release date of 9 July 2023. J.J. Abrams will return to produce.

Meanwhile, work on the next TV instalments of the franchise are continuing. Animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks and Prodigy are expected to drop over the summer, whilst Season 4 of Discovery is gearing up for an autumn launch, ahead of Picard's second season in early 2022 and Strange New Worlds' first season a few months later.

Star Trek: Insurrection

The United Federation of Planets is faring badly in its war with the Dominion and seeks to bolster its chances through an alliance with the Son'a, who require resources that are only available on a remote planet. The Federation agrees to help move the indigenous population so the Son'a can seize these resources. However, a malfunctioning Lt. Commander Data exposes the Federation presence, triggering an inadvertent first contact situation. Captain Picard and the USS Enterprise arrive to retrieve their errant officer and uncover a much more complex situation is unfolding, one that endangers the very morals of the Federation.

After the enormous success of First Contact, a darker action movie, Paramount decided that the next Star Trek movie should be lighter in tone. Michael Piller, renowned for writing many of the finest episodes of Trek, was called in to write a script that could serve as the "first-ever Star Trek date movie," a request that was...dubious at best. Paramount wanted a film that was closer in tone to The Voyage Home, with light comedy and a warmer feel, rooted in the character relationships.

What they ended up with was a two-hour episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not Yesterday's Enterprise or The Inner Light Next Generation, but one of those middling Season 5 episodes that is absolutely fine but you completely forget it exists until you bump into it on a full series rewatch, mildly enjoy whilst it's on and immediately forget about the second it's over.

The film starts off well with some solid humour as Picard and Worf (whose presence in the film despite being on Deep Space Nine as a regular character at the time, is briefly but effectively explained) have to gather up the errant Data by using Gilbert and Sullivan songs to distract him. The story then gets into a moral quandary as the Bak'u not only don't want to be removed, but might well die if they are moved. Since they are not native to the planet, the Prime Directive doesn't strictly apply, although basic morality does. However, the Son'a are also suffering from their own problems, which the planet holds the key to answering.

What could be a really thorny moral quandary is let down almost immediately by portraying the Son'a as repulsive in both appearance and morals, with their leader Ru'afo (a fine, scenery-chewing turn by F. Murray Abraham) being ruthless, amoral and prone to using violence as his solution to all problems. So the Enterprise crew siding with the Bak'u is pretty much a given from the start of the film. Also, the film suggests that the Enterprise crew are really going out on a limb by risking their careers to help the Bak'u, but it's more the case that the Starfleet Admiral helping the Son'a is going off the reservation by himself, so the "insurrection" of the title never really gets going.

As I said, the film is fine. It has some spectacular scenery, a few good set-pieces between the recovery of Data's shuttle and the space battle between the Enterprise-E and the Son'a in the nebula, and the supporting cast is all solid with none of them being spectacular. But the film bogs down with technobabble. The tension between the transporter inhibitor defences and the attacking Son'a drones is weak, at best, and the film never really adequately explains why the Federation are so keen to ally with the Son'a, who seem to be a small civilisation of limited use in the war with the Dominion (which gets several mentions at the start of the film and is then dropped immediately, which seems odd).

Star Trek: Insurrection (***) continues the curse of the odd-numbered Star Trek films by being, well, not terrible, but certainly inoffensive. Some reliably solid performances by Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner and the rest of the cast fail to make up for a film that's simply blandly forgettable.

Star Trek: First Contact

The Federation's most feared enemy, the implacable Borg, have returned to mount an assault on Earth. The crew of the USS Enterprise lead the fight against them, but the Borg surprise their opponents by employing time travel to try to wipe out humanity by preventing First Contact between humanity and an alien species. With little choice, Captain Picard and his crew have to follow the Borg back through time to defeat them.

With Star Trek: Generations having done the heavy lifting of transferring the mantle of the Star Trek movie franchise from Kirk's crew to Picard's, it was time for the Next Generation production team to cut loose. First Contact was planned, written and filmed with many of the restrictions from Generations gone: the film had a larger budget, did not have to incorporate any of the original crewmembers and was given greater freedom. Writers Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga decided to bring back the Borg, the uber-terror from The Next Generation, this time with enough money to do them justice. They also incorporated a time travel storyline from a suggestion by producer Rick Berman, and incorporated Patrick Stewart's request for more action and a more heroic role for Picard. Castmember and by-now veteran Star Trek director Jonathan Frakes was also asked to step into the big chair, his familiarity with the cast and the limitations of filming on what was still a low budget for a big SF effects film (the same year's Independence Day had twice the budget and was still proclaimed a low-budget SF movie for the time).

The result is, easily, the strongest of the four Star Trek films featuring the Next Generation crew, although it is far from flawless. Central to the plot are the twin pillars of Data's desire to become more human, which the Borg Queen perverts in an effort to force Date to help her overcome the ship's systems, and Picard's guilt over his former assimilation (leading to the deaths of over ten thousand Starfleet personnel) and resulting obsession with stopping the Borg, no matter the cost. The film operates on some familiar ground to The Wrath of Khan here, with Moby Dick references getting wheeled out for a second airing, though the spin that it's our protagonist who is fuelled by ill-advised vengeance rather than the villain keeps things feeling fresh. Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner and Alice Krige (as the Born Queen) get the lion's share of the world in the film and are all excellent.

Other characters are less well-served. Riker, Troi and La Forge are shunted to Earth's surface in a comedic subplot where they try to convince Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) to make his famed first warp flight which triggers First Contact. This is very much a "TV episode" storyline and isn't very very fleshed out, despite a fine performance by Cromwell. It does feel like this story more exists to reduce Jonathan Frakes's screen time, freeing him up to direct elsewhere, and it takes out several other characters at the same time. It's also a bit odd that none of the characters in this subplot seem bothered about losing contact with the Enterprise for such a long period of time.

The main story on the Enterprise is stronger, with some pretty cool set-pieces (the zero-gee sequence with the crew and Borg fighting over the Enterprise-E's deflector dish is a great idea, though it does go on a bit too long) and a number of really great scenes, like a shoot-out with the Borg in a 1930s setting on the holodeck and the scenes of the Borg Queen "seducing" Data (figuratively and, slightly randomly, literally). There's also a grisly horror angle to the action and directing, with the Borg now able to assimilate crewmembers on the spot and a merging of biological and technological elements in a way that would make H.R. Giger break out in a cold sweat. Star Trek has, arguably, never been more of a horror piece than in this film.

The film is generally well-paced and doesn't outstay it's welcome. As a film taken purely on its own merits, it's a decent slice of entertainment and one of the better entries in the franchise. It was also the one that pretty much solidified the "even-numbered Star Trek films are always good!" meme). However, the film has problems when taken as a greater part of the Star Trek whole. It severely downgrades the threat level from the Borg. Multiple previous episodes of the TV show had established that the Borg were able to adapt to Starfleet weapons with contemptuous ease and their ships were now effectively immune to phasers and photon torpedoes. Yet in the opening space battle, ordinary Starfleet vessels pummel the first Borg ship with standard weapons until it explodes (making a bit of a mockery of the Battle of Wolf 359 in the process). The second is taken out by a desultory single volley of quantum torpedoes. Individual Borg drones are more dangerous with their new instant-assimilation ability and their familiar ability to adapt to incoming fire, but can also be killed in ordinary hand-to-hand combat without too much trouble. I get that the TV show had made the Borg effectively invulnerable and the choice was between never using the Borg again or downgrading them, but I can't help but feel that weakening them was the wrong move. Before First Contact, the Borg were an unstoppable force of destruction; afterwards, they are just ordinary Star Trek aliens, and their mythic power was forever lost, a feeling their subsequent over-use in Voyager did not alleviate.

Still, if that's the price we pay for a pretty good movie, so be it. First Contact (****) is a solid slice of Star Trek cinematic spectacle, Star Trek's finest nod at the horror genre and an entertaining SF action movie.

Star Trek: Generations

Captain James T. Kirk attends the launch of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-B. An emergency situation arises and Kirk, as usual, helps save the day, but he is apparently killed in the process. Seventy-eight years later, Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise 1701-D is put in a desperate situation when a fanatical scientist starts destroying entire star systems. Picard is going to need some help...

With the conclusion of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1994, a TV series that dwarfed the popularity and reach of its predecessors, Paramount was keen to move the show and its popular cast onto the big screen as soon as possible. Overriding the concerns of the production team, the film was immediately put into rotation to start shooting as soon as filming was completed on the TV show and to be on cinema screens before the end of the same year. It was a tall order, leaving the cast and crew exhausted from working on the TV show for seven years and then straight into a full-length feature film.

Some of this can be seen on screen. Star Trek: Generations (the first film in the series to drop the roman numerals) is a solid but unexceptional film, something of a surprise given it features Captains Kirk and Picard joining forces to take down a mutual threat, a charismatic villain played by Malcolm McDowell. There's some entertaining comedy beats and some very good characterisation, particularly of Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner) as he gets used to his "emotion chip". Most of the castmembers get at least a brief chance to shine and, in the scene where the Enterprise-D's saucer section crash-lands on a planetary surface, one of the franchise's most memorable action and effects set-pieces.

The film relies a little too heavily on the TV show for setup. Villains Lursa and B'Etor have very little motivation and if you hadn't seen them already in the TV show, you'd have no idea why them showing up is a big deal. Similarly, Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) feels like a bit of a walking deus ex machina in the film and her character has no real arc.  The story also feels a bit overworked and overcomplicated, with too many moving pieces and a TV-like approach of pressing on regardless of if the plot makes sense  (Soren not being able to beam into the Nexus from a ship already feels a bit iffy, but the jump from that to blowing up entire stars to shift the Nexus's path feels extreme). The film's big ending being a fistfight between two middle-aged gentlemen and an older one on a big rock is also rather underwhelming. Destroying another Enterprise also feels a bit gratuitous, although it is at least done in an impressive manner.

Still, it's a long way from the worst entry in the Star Trek pantheon and it has fun moments. William Shatner takes a delight in hamming up every second he's on-screen, but for once this is more charming than annoying, due to his limited screen time (he has a brief appearance at the start of the film and then at the end, more of an extended camo than the promised film-length team-up). He and Stewart make for an entertaining team, even if the gulf in their respective acting abilities is more of a yawning chasm. Malcolm McDowell can do "charming but evil" in his sleep and the film packs a lot into its running time.

Star Trek: Generations (***½) isn't going to be winning any prizes for being a classic movie, but it is a solid and entertaining piece that does its job - passing the baton from one generation to another - efficiently.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Nimbus III: the "Planet of Galactic Peace," a world where the Klingons, Romulans and Federation have agreed to put aside their differences and work together to develop a society in tandem. The plan was a miserable failure, the planet reduced to a backwater, albeit the only backwater apart from Earth where representatives of all three powers can be found. When a terrorist group takes the ambassadors hostage, the USS Enterprise is ordered to mount a rescue mission.

They say if you stare too long, into the abyss, it will stare back into you. Watching Star Trek V: The Final Frontier makes the viewer acutely aware of the accuracy of that statement, except the abyss is William Shatner, believing he is a good director and very desperately hoping he can convince you he is as well.

The fifth mainline Star Trek feature film is something of an odd beast, to say the least. After Leonard Nimoy directed the third and fourth films, Shatner invoked a clause in his Paramount contract giving him the right to direct the next film in the series and have a say in its story. Paramount braced themselves for the experience and it was a heady one, with Shatner proposing a story where the crew of the Enterprise are forced to travel to a planet in search of God but instead discover the Devil pretending to be God, and are caught in a cosmic battle between good and evil. Aware they were under a contractual restraint, Paramount executives put the story into development, managing to convince Harve Bennett (producer on the second through fourth films) to return to help guide - or make filmable - the "ambitious" project. Bennett realised that Shatner had become fascinated by the idea of televangelists, particularly corrupt ones who conned people into giving them money by promising them a place in the promised land. Script rewrites with David Loughery developed the idea that there was no real God or the Devil in the story, and instead an imprisoned alien entity would pretend to be God to try to hitch a ride on the Enterprise out of its prison.

With this new story in place - one less likely to get the franchise blacklisted by Christians - and the cast signed up (Nimoy stoically agreeing to return as a professional courtesy to his colleague Shatner, but frantically encouraging rewrites behind the scenes) things were in a promising place for perhaps a watchable movie. But The Final Frontier immediately ran into a series of big problems: Paramount decided to rush-release the film to hit the summer 1989 market rather than wait until Christmas; additional rewrites designed to iron out the remaining script problems were halted by the 1988 Writer's Strike; and Industrial Light and Magic and most of the other big Hollywood effects companies were fully booked with projects like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Ghostbusters II and Tim Burton's Batman. The only effects company available on short notice were, how shall we say, "not very good" and inexperienced, wasting a huge amount of the film's not-ungenerous budget (half again that of The Voyage Home) on test shots that went nowhere.

So, whilst Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is a diabolical mess of a movie with awful visual effects, major script problems and leaden direction, it's unfair to blame all of this on the film's director and star. In fact, the film has a reasonable amount of merit to it. It's the only film in the franchise to follow the TV show's lead and focus extremely closely on the Kirk-Spock-McCoy relationship, the emotional core of the original series. With Shatner clearly exhausted from pulling double duty as director, and Nimoy giving arguably the most phoned-in performance of his career (there are a few scenes where you can see Nimoy's soul vacating his body during some of his line readings), it falls on DeForest Kelley to emerge as the film's most valuable player. He adds charm and wit to the campfire scenes at the start of the movie, and the scene where he has to relive the death of his father might be McCoy's most challenging emotional scene in the entire franchise, and Kelley rises to the occasion tremendously. James Doohan and Nichelle Nichols have a fair bit to do, for once, and there's an intriguing hint that they're in a relationship, or might be headed that way, which is never really followed up on. Nichols also gets her infamous "fan dance" scene, which remains baffling (and where Uhura got the fans is never disclosed).

On the guest star front, the film lucks out with Laurence Luckinbill, a well-regarded stage actor who very rarely did film or television (Star Trek V is literally his last on-screen starring role). Luckinbill gives a spirited, enthusiastic performance as Sybok, the Vulcan who rejected logic to become a man of faith, very much the televangelist of Shatner's original inspiration. But he's not a lunatic or a fire-and-brimstone preacher, rather a man of charisma, intelligence and tremendous empathy who inspires trust. It's a really hard mix to nail successfully, but Luckinbill succeeds. Other castmembers are also very good, particularly David Warner, Charles Cooper and Cynthia Gouw as the ambassadors to Nimbus III, though they seem to have less screentime than was originally envisaged; Warner and Cooper were later invited back to the franchise, the latter also as a Klingon, possibly to make up for this. The other Klingon villains are a bit one-note, but they're not needed for much more than that.

So having an accomplished guest cast and some great scenes for the established regulars result in some pretty good moments in the film. Unfortunately, the problems elsewhere almost overwhelm the movie. The effects are terrible: back-projection (!) is used for some of the space scenes and other scenes that normally use greenscreen and this does not look very good, at all. Jerry Goldsmith returns for his first soundtrack in the franchise since Star Trek: The Motion Picture and seems to have gotten confused and just reused his score from that film with little in the way of new themes or development. It's the first time in the movie franchise so far that a soundtrack disappoints. The physical effects are also embarrassing. A physical fight between Kirk and a cat-alien on Nimbus III is Doctor Who-on-a-bad-day levels of cringe. The climactic battle on Sh Ka Ree sees Kirk call a photon torpedo - a device which at its lowest level is still basically a tactical nuke - down on his head and it causes almost no damage to the surrounding area. It's all deeply amateur hour, except there's Trek fan films which have more convincing production values.

But the key weaknesses of the film remain the script - even this much-improved one over the demented original story treatment - and Shatner's leaden direction. Although reportedly Shatner was a convivial director on set, even earning the respect of actors he'd annoyed over the years like Doohan and Takei, he doesn't have much sense of pacing or energy, and his shots are often rote. There's little sense of the invention or energy that both Meyer and Nimoy brought to the fore in the preceding three movies. In more than a few scenes, the lifeless takes make you horrifically wonder what the takes were like which weren't used. Mercifully, Paramount have declined Shatner's various offers of a Director's Cut, which is probably for the best.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (*½) is not a great movie, which is a shame because it does have potential. The idea of both individuals and an alien playing on people's faith to manipulate them has a lot of merit, and the character-based interplay between the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy is the closest the movies ever get to the TV show. DeForest Kelley might give his franchise-best performance, making up for Shatner and Nimoy (both off their game). But the combination of Shatner's lifeless direction, the absolutely woeful visual effects, a phoned-in musical score and a weak script eventually provides the Enterprise crew with an enemy they cannot overcome.

Wertzone Classics: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

The Genesis Device: a machine of capable of terraforming a lifeless body into a terrestrial planet within hours. But it also has the potential to be used as a terrible weapon. The USS Reliant is assigned to help the Genesis science team find a planet to test the device, but inadvertently stumbles across the exiled home of genetically-engineered tyrant Khan Noonian Singh and the crew of the sleeper ship SS Botany Bay. Khan seizes control of the Reliant and develops a plan with two objectives: the capture of the Genesis Device, and the death of the man who sent him into exile for fifteen years, Admiral James T. Kirk.

If there's a list of "what not to do" when you make a popcorn-selling, blockbuster film, Star Trek II breaks every rule on it. You shouldn't make a film in which the hero and villain never come face-to-face; you should never make a film where the plot is a sequel to a single episode of television which aired fifteen years earlier (certainly not in 1982, when you can't even buy that episode on VHS); you should not have a film completely lacking in any kind of romance plot; you should not have your villain in an inferior spacecraft to the good guys; and you probably shouldn't pepper the film with quotes from literature and ensure the script is full of thematic richness.

It's by breaking every one of those rules that Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan became not only the finest Star Trek movie ever made (a position it retains with near-contemptuous ease forty years on), but a genuinely great science fiction movie, one of the very best of the 1980s which marks a place on the podium alongside the likes of Aliens, The Terminator, Back to the Future, Predator, The Empire Strikes Back. It certainly saved the Star Trek franchise after the over-indulgence of Star Trek: The Motion Picture nearly sank it, and set the scene for everything that followed, including two direct sequels and a plethora of spin-off TV shows.

The Wrath of Khan works on every single level. Franchise newcomers Harve Bennett (writing) and Nicholas Meyer (directing) brought both a fresh viewpoint but also respect for the property when coming aboard. Bennett watched every single episode of Star Trek ever made to come up with ideas for the story, whilst Meyer engaged the actors in long conversations about their characters and motivations. The actors, who were generally not tested by the material in The Motion Picture, are given much richer material here. There seems to be more dialogue in the opening half-hour of this film than there is the entirety of its forebear, and it's great stuff. Kirk is struggling with a full-blown midlife crisis, moving between self-pity and frustration, and the oft-mocked Shatner sells that extremely well. Shatner in fact gives a career-best performance in this movie and its sequel, with the scripts calling on him to plumb emotional depths he is rarely asked to do elsewhere. DeForest Kelley also delivers impressively as McCoy tries to help his friend whilst calling him on his BS. Leonard Nimoy gives a terrific performance as Spock, as you'd expect, but goes above and beyond the call of duty, especially in his scenes at the end of the film.

The rest of the crew are under-serviced as normal, but do at least get a few good scenes: James Doohan's Scotty has to deal with the death of a family member in service and Walter Koenig's Chekov gets a promotion to first officer of the USS Reliant and more involved in the story. Nichelle Nichols and George Takei get relatively short shrift (Sulu had more material where it's revealed he's been promoted to Captain and is going out on one last hurrah, but it was cut in production). Newcomer Kirstie Alley gets a lot more great material as Lt. Saavik and is a very fine addition to the crew, and it's a shame she did not return in subsequent films. Oddly, a line referencing the fact that Saavik is actually half-Romulan, half-Vulcan was cut from the movie (and not restored in any one of the half-dozen or so different cuts and edits of the movie released over the years), whilst a later joke by McCoy referring to this fact is left in, somewhat confusingly, but it's not a major issue.

Towering over the film, however, is Ricardo Montalbán, reprising his role as Khan from the 1967 TV episode Space Seed. Montalbán was nervous at reprising the role after such a long break, especially since he'd been playing the moral Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island for five years and was concerned about his image. However, it only took a single re-viewing of the original episode to find the character again. Montalbán is a magnetic, charismatic presence who dominates the film but never overwhelms it. Whether it's quoting Moby Dick or plotting his vengeance on Kirk, he's a formidable opponent and comfortably earns his reputation as Star Trek's greatest single villain, with his defeat coming as a result of his own hubris and inexperience at commanding a starship rather than some deus ex machina moment.

The film was famously produced for a tiny budget (barely a quarter that of The Motion Picture), restricting most of the action to the Enterprise bridge (which pulls double duty as the bridge of the Reliant) and other sets inherited from the original movie, and the Regula I space station. Fortunately, a positive studio reception to early footage saw the effects footage expanded, and the visual effects in the space battles between the Enterprise and Reliant remain outstanding four decades on. The battles are well-handled, depicting the two ships as lumbering battleships able to both dish out and withstand tremendous amounts of punishment, but every hit still hurts and can still kill people. The Enterprise is a larger, more powerful ship but the Reliant gets the drop on it in the first fight, making for an evenly-matched climactic battle in the Mutara Nebula (impressively depicted with gas and fluid tanks). The battle is also tremendously visceral, with decks collapsing and crewmen getting crushed, burned or subjected to lethal radiation in a manner that hadn't been seen previously on Trek (and led to the movie getting a hitherto unthinkable "15" certificate in the UK).

Arguably the most influential, important scene in the movie in terms of technical legacy is the still-impressive sequence depicting the Genesis Device terraforming a planet. Completely generated in a computer in 1981, it is one of the first 100% computer-generated scenes to ever appear in a movie (certainly one that wasn't a simple wireframe). The team behind it went on to other things; they later rebranded themselves under the name "Pixar."

Particularly worthy of mention is James Horner's score, which re-uses a few elements from his earlier movies (particularly Battle for the Planets) but mostly consists of new material. His new overture, used for flybys of the Enterprise and the main title theme, is an instant classic. Of course, what really got people talking when the movie was released was the jaw-dropping ending, which in the pre-Internet age had successfully been kept secret in a manner unlikely to be replicated today (and rumours about it had been deflected by the opening scene of the film, which misled audiences). It's still an emotionally powerful moment played by the actors in a convincing and almost poetic manner. In fact, despite the sometimes hokey dialogue as related above, the movie has a number of iconic lines and quotes (mostly from A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick) which help give the movie a thematically satisfying through-line. This is a movie about not just revenge, but age, finding your right place in the world and the fact that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or indeed, the one). There's also satisfying attention paid to not copping out on the story. The writers couldn't conceive of a way that Khan and Kirk could meet without Kirk being killed, so they simply don't meet. And whilst victory is eventually won, it is only at a hard, hard cost.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (*****) is a great movie about revenge, family, the road not travelled and aging. It's also a terrific action movie, but one where the action is not allowed to outweigh the characterisation. It's simply a classic science fiction movie and represents the standard that Star Trek would occasionally, at its very best, match (in episodes like The Best of Both Worlds, The Inner Light, The Visitor and In the Pale Moonlight), but never exceed.

A note on versions: Star Trek II has been reissued and re-released more than any other Star Trek film, and three distinct versions now exist. The original, 113-minute theatrical cut remains very fine and can be found on the 2009 Blu-Ray collected edition of the first ten films. An extended or "TV" cut, three minutes longer, adds a few scenes that were cut from the theatrical version of the film (such as Kirk's shuttle approaching the Enterprise and Kirk meeting Peter Preston in Engineering). The Director's Cut, overseen by Nicholas Meyer and released on DVD in 2002 and Blu-Ray in 2016 (as a digitally-remastered version which rebuilds the movie from scratch from the original film elements), is now definitive. It recuts several scenes to incorporate more dialogue and characterisation and confirms that Preston is Scotty's nephew. The Blu-Ray version did accidentally omit a scene where Kirk tells McCoy and Saavik that David is his son. This version of the film has also been listed several times for 4K release, which for some reason has never appeared.

Note: I previously reviewed the film here.

Wizards of the Coast confirm FORGOTTEN REALMS setting for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movie

Wizards of the Coast, the creators and publishers of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game, have finally confirmed that the in-production D&D movie will take place in the Forgotten Realms world, ending years of speculation.

The city of Neverwinter on the Sword Coast North, a rumoured location for the film. Art: Jedd Chevrier

A much earlier, long-superseded draft of the script was set in the Realms, specifically in the city of Waterdeep and the dungeon of Undermountain beneath it, but since then the film has passed through multiple writers, rewrites and directors, leading to some confusion over the film's setting. Yesterday a film synopsis leaked placing the action in the Realms, in and around the city of Neverwinter, but according to Screenrant this is an old synopsis which is no longer completely accurate.

WotC have now confirmed that the setting is indeed the Realms, but nothing specific beyond this. This will mark the first appearance of the Forgotten Realms - history's most popular and successful epic fantasy shared world setting - in a live-action adaptation. More than 290 novels have been published in the Forgotten Realms setting, with cumulative sales approaching 100 million, well over 30 million alone sold by R.A. Salvatore in his popular Legend of Drizzt series. Authors such as Paul Kemp, Ed Greenwood, Troy Denning, Elaine Cunningham and Erin Evans have sold many millions more novels in the setting.

Around fifty video and mobile games in the setting have also been released, including the highly popular Baldur's Gate, Dark Alliance, Icewind Dale and Eye of the Beholder series. Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance, starring Drizzt Do'Urden and the Companions of the Hall, will be released next month, whilst the long, long-awaited Baldur's Gate III is aiming for release next year.

The Forgotten Realms world was created by Canadian author Ed Greenwood in 1968 as a setting for stories he was writing at school. He expanded the setting as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign world in 1976 and began writing D&D articles for Dragon Magazine in 1978, frequently mentioning characters and locations from his home setting. TSR, Inc., the publishers of D&D, bought the setting from Greenwood and brought it into print in 1987. It has never been out of print since, enjoying the distinction of being the only D&D campaign setting supported for every edition of the game and the setting most frequently used in D&D-branded adventures, novels and video games. With the release of D&D's 5th Edition in 2014, the world became the "default" setting for D&D, although recently Wizards (who bought TSR in 1997) have backed off a bit on that in favour of supporting gaming groups in creating their own worlds, or using other settings.

Alongside this news, Wizards of the Coast confirmed that 2020 was the most successful year in D&D's history with over 30% sales growth on the previous year. They confirmed plans in the coming months to bring back two "classic" and long-out-of-print campaign settings (one heavily rumoured to be Dragonlance, to accompany the release of the first new Dragonlance novels in over a decade by setting writers Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman), as well as releasing a Forgotten Realms card set for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game.

The D&D movie is currently shooting in the Titanic Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and stars Chris Pine, Hugh Grant, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Regé-Jean Page. The film is currently scheduled for release on 3 March, 2023.