Thursday, June 25, 2015
Today was a day of pure work on the script. OK, not really, I got a lot of other stuff done as well. I worked from home so I had minimal distractions and got a ton done.
First up was combining the draft Bill Hunt did of the script with V6 which I had written (and Christian had edited and wrote a bit on). I got through the first act, and started the second. Overall, some great changes, and Bill is serious about getting a complete revision done in two weeks with me.
New writers joining the crew
After that I put together a group of bloggers from the fans who had volunteered to help write for our website, and got an Aussie fan, David Hollingworth, a professional writer/editor, to run the group. This is important as we need more content on our website, including interviews with cast and crew.
Our Phone App is Coming!
How do you like what you see above? Yeah, we like it too. Expect a launch within 30 days.
From Rob Burnett, our trusty Director:
Once again… I received some unexpected goodness all the way from Germany, courtesy of Tobias Richter. He sent me a new Space establishing shot, which wasn’t included in my original story reel. What I like about this shot is… there’s an abstraction to it. You don’t immediately know what it is… yet, it certainly draws you in… then, when we cut to the next existing shot… it establishes our location… and then answers the question of what the previous shot actually is. Three successive shots bring you down into a very quiet dialogue scene between two characters. So… unlike most science fiction space adventures, which tend to announce themselves with slam-bang action, we at Team AXANAR have gone in the entirely opposite direction… we’re showing you an elegant, thoughtful, quiet scene, which serves to set the stage for the look and feel of what we’re hoping to achieve with the film we’re making.
With PRELUDE, we showed you glimpses of what our epic space battles will look like, and make no mistake, the AXANAR feature will contain some VERY intense space action the likes of which you’ve never seen before… (one scene in particular I’ve already started designing after speaking with Tobias about it). And, while we’re making a film about the cost of war, AXANAR will absolutely stand up with the very best of STAR TREK as a story about the nature of what it means to be human amidst the crashing tides of galactic change.
Of all the work I’ve ever done in the 26 years of being an entertainment industry professional, I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about any project the way I’m excited about AXANAR.
Rob, Charlie and Cliff
After that, Diana and I went to the Saturn Awards thanks to our Associate Producer Bill Watters. The entire Axanar Blu-Ray team had been nominate Rob Burnett for Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7, Charles de Lauzirika for Twin Peaks, and Cliff Stephenson for Hannibal. Charlie won, his fourth Saturn Award!
Thanks for your support!
Alec
This really does sound very cool
That app looks sweet!
I can’t wait for this. The app, the movie, everything.
This IS Star Trek.
This is the Star Trek I’ve been missing since the last of the TV shows went off the air.
Even in movie format, I feel as if Axanar is going to fill a emotional void that I believe a lot of the fan base has felt for some time now.
Having read the Geek FAQ’s, I now understand when this Axanar is taking place as meaning after Archer’s Enterprise. I understand the necessity to estimate ship’s design & technology in align with our current view of technology and design aesthetics, but you may have an opportunity to explain away the whys & what-fors of Kirk’s Enterprise at the battle of Axanar.
Seeing how there will be automatic distractors to this battle plan of “all or nothing”, I would think Ramirez would head it off the path by figuring out a way to not sacrifice the ship / s under construction. Archer’s Enterprise was introduced to an alien race that uses holo emitters ( which the Kilngon has been introduced to as well ), but it would be ingenuous to hide the ship or ships under construction in the planet’s polar orbit while projecting an image of that ship or ships in its construction bay from its construction bay hanger. Maybe this frustrating trick is what earned the humans the metaphorical name of P’TAK from the Klingons. Of course, they would also have to have a probe to emmit a false signal of being solid or having something solid in its place beneathe the ship’s image to fool the Klingon’s sensors that something is actually there and not just by a visual deception.
Mayhap by honoring the assistance of an alien race in arranging this deception & their joining the Federation is why Kirk’s Enterprise came about later on, because that alien race has other friendly alien races in their relations as they wish them to join as well, but some of those alien races are lacking the touch sensitivity to work the panels as well as the technology on board the ship that it requires for them to physically push buttons and turn knobs and pull levers that they would feel slighted and thus feel “inferior” to join. It is in this in respect to other races joining the Federation & Starfleet that Starfleet modified their ship’s design to be user friendlies for every specie joining Starfleet so that any ship run by those particular species can render emergency assistance if needed.
Also, because of this ingenious trick which the Klingons still have not figured out what had actually happened as they kept trying to destroy those new ships, thinking they have some kind of cloaking devise ( Remember STNG Pegasus’s cloaking devise? Mayhap this what inspired to develop a cloaking devise to work in that way ).
It is also the reason why later on, the Romulans insisted that the Federation do not have a cloaking devise on their ships in their treaty with the Federation as Starfleet wanted to keep the ruse that the Klingons were believing at the time. It would be some secret inside joke that may have inspired Capt. Kirk to come up with the Corbomite Maneuver when battling that Romulan vessel so that when the treaty was signed, the Federation were having two inside jokes instead of one with Kirk’s.
Of course, Axanar being the key event that explains why ship’s design were made to be alien user friendly later on, it would be some time before all ship’s are built to be user friendly for all aliens of the Federation that would operate within Starfleet so fans may enjoy future episodes with this setting still.
Why would they change it to the way STNG has it? Mayhap, later on, they came up with alien adaptable hand held devices by Starfleet Medical that these aliens can wear that would allow them to register a heat or kinetic touch to panels and technology & have them available on their starships should they need to render emergency assistence on all Starfleet vessels.
Regardless of the ruse that would divide the attention of the attacking Klingons against the “ambush”, Garth still needs to figure out a way to defeat that superior class Klingon vessel, taking the breathing room for all he can take when the Klingons consider the new ships their “primary” objective.
Not sure if you want to use these ideas or not to transition this Star Trek in how TOS came about, but it is free as your production is.
To explain the touch sensitivity problems of some aliens; consider the technology you would be using during Axanar. Being designed as a battle starship, the consoles has to be heat & touch sensitive. That means normal heat signature and physical touch from human fingertips is required to “push” as in activating a “button” because someone may rest a pad on the console or whatever wherein it would not “push” any buttons because of the lack of the average human heat necessary to activate it. Or in the case of during battle, a debris could land on it or sparks could spill across the panel wherein separately, it would not light up when touching the buttons on the board, but a flaming debris or amber would. Of course, if the control panel is logged off from a user, nothing would accidentally be activated, regardless of the flaming debris bouncing off of the control panel during battle.
Therein lies the problem. Some aliens do not generate enough body heat or no body heat at all that it doesn’t register to activate anything on the control console. Worse still, are the aliens that generate too much body heat & carrying an electrostatic resonance that just by having their hand pass over the control console, could activate other “buttons” on the console without meaning to.
An example in human terms is how we can generate an electrostatic shock when walking across a carpet and shocking someone with a touch.
This is where Starfleet would feel compel to honor the aliens for their “technical assistance” for employing the holo emmiters in such a way that defies the Klingons’ comprehension of how these new ships were surviving their attacks. ( Even though the Klingons are aware of holo imageries on a holodeck, the Klingons could never imagined that was what they were seeing instead of fathoming it to be some sort of cloaking device. ) Although the actual aliens themselves do not suffer from such handicap, but their immediate relations with other alien species do as they would want them to join the Federation also. This was to convince those helpful aliens that the Federation respects all aliens to even have them see their possibility for even joining Starfleet when it gets back to space exploration after the war. This would take time, of course, but implementation would be seen in a few years with Pike’s Enterprise.
Thus Garth and others will be using the battle starships after the war until the battle starships are retired after long use or destroyed until all future starships that are being built to replace the battle designed ones are in according to TOS designed. Which is highly suggestive that Garth’s battle starship can still be in use during TOS time.
As much as Garth & the crew would hate going to the TOS design, they respect the reason for the change for alien user friendly technology, but it makes them all the more determine to keep their ship from ever being damaged enough that Spacedock would call it quits in retiring the vessel. I would imagine a diligent captain & crew after Axanar working to prevent that from ever happening as long as they could.
Not sure if I needed to explain that heat/touch sensitivity problem for some aliens or not but I can see how Starfleet Medical could come up with a way for aliens that have cold touch to have warm gloves without warming their hands and aliens with too much heat & kinetic resonance would need the gloves that would cut back on the heat & static without containing it within these gloves to cause a build-up or become uncomfortably warm for those aliens to wear.
But you guys probably have plot points worked out already. Just thought it would somehow solve the problems of why Pike’s / Kirk’s Enterprise seems backwards in regards to today’s technology if the change in Starfleet of Garth’s battleships from where it is now to begin the reasonable transition to TOS because of the necessity for alien user friendly technology to make joining the Federation as well as Starfleet more appealing to new alien races.