Wednesday, June 16, 2021

Star Trek Designing Starships The Kelvin Timeline

When director J. J. Abrams rebooted the Star Trek film franchise in 2009 a lot changed in the series.

The costumes, equipment, environments and especially the Spaceships changed-some slightly-some radically.

In Eaglemoss Collections’ Star Trek Designing Starships The Kelvin Timeline (The Official Starships Collection) readers witness just how much the various spacecraft changed.

Get ready for some truly incredible designs from Federation Starships to the Klingon Empire’s Bird of Prey.  Of course the Romulan Warbird shows up as do many other Federation member and non-member planet Starships.

The book successfully outlines just how much work goes into designing the various ships let alone the sets, etc.

People tend to forget that the initial design of each ship took dozens of preliminary sketches and lots of brainstorming to come up with the final designs.

When it was decided by Paramount Studios to greenlight a new Star Trek movie several things had to be considered.

First and foremost the original TV show cast members were too old.  In the Generations movie Captain Kirk had died, in real life James Doohan (Scotty) and Deforest Kelley (Bones) had both passed away and Majel Barrett/Roddenbery was ill.

Most young moviegoers were unfamiliar with the original TV series so the Starship Enterprise and the Star Trek Universe needed a reboot.

J.J. Abrams (the director) and the writers decided to introduce a new timeline for the series that took place at the same time of the original Enterprise Star Trek TV show.  

They recast the main characters and were smart enough to include a tag to the old timeline with Leonard Nimoy reprising his role as an older Mr. Spock from the original timeline.

This allowed the film to revamp and update the Starfleet ship designs, the sets, uniforms, weapons and other technology for the new film while still paying homage to old series.

The movie was a resounding success.  The book delves into the new ship designs, provides vital background information, tweaked historical changes and how the mew computer generated images and technology made the film relevant to a new audience.

Old and new Star Trek fans alike are sure to enjoy the inside look at the redesigning of the Star Trek Universe with all of its complexities and challenges.

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