TOS: Through Fresh Eyes

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A recently stumbled across a series of older blog posts from Glenn Greenberg.  In it he re-watches all TOS episodes with his young daughter, adding his own and her commentary to select episodes from each season.  A fun read and worth your time I think.

Season 1 Commentary

Season 2 Commentary

Season 3 Commentary

Where No Woman has Gone Before!

 My wife found this super great Trek Cosplay from Emmaliene on deviantart. 

Go Boldly My Friends!

Looking for adventure?

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One subject I find that frequently comes up when playing Far Trek is, how do you create a good adventure?

Given that the original series dealt with a lot of social commentary issues, this can create a mental pitfall to adventure creation.  Far Trek is really meant to be more about adventures than solving deep philosophical issues so how do you get it all to come together? 

Well I could give you a lengthy dissertation...or I could point you a damn fine post that makes short work of the process.

So trek on over and check it out!

Fascinating

So I see at Gen Con this year someone is running a Far Trek session! If you are going and get to attend, I'd love to hear about it!  The revised Far Trek rules are still under construction...

Into...what exactly?

This is in no means a "get off my lawn you damn kids" kind of post.  All versions of Trek franchise from the original series through Next Gen, Voyager, etc. have had their own take on Trek.  Their own voice and their own vibe.  I think what bugs me is relaunching the original series, with the original character, but in a new "now with 70% more phasers and chases" set-up.  I am sure it will be good, but I really won;t think of it as Trek.  Why? Well read below...(article source)

Ditch Spock's ears. Lose the wacky costumes. Don't have characters spend so much time yakking on the bridge of the Enterprise.

That's the sort of advice Paramount is heeding as it prepares to open its sci-fi epic "Star Trek Into Darkness" on Thursday in the U.K., Australia and five other countries. Determined to make its sci-fi epic sequel a global hit -- unlike any of the preceding "Star Trek" movies -- the studio has gone to great lengths to make it more appealing to foreign audiences.

"I guess less Trekkie, more action might be the short story," Paramount's head of international distribution Anthony Marcoly told TheWrap Tuesday. "But since I arrived here 18 months ago, a primary part of my mission has been to make sure this movie succeeds at the overseas box office the way it will domestically, and our team has done a great deal to make sure that happens." 

Also read: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Beams Up One-Day-Earlier Debut 

The film opens in the United States in Imax theaters on Wednesday, May 15, and wide a day later. Pre-release projections show it debuting north of $90 million domestically.

Extensive research, marketing tailored to individual markets, casting designed to resonate with international audiences and extensive ground campaigns by the movie's creators and talent like Chris Pine have all preceded the international debut. Over the past couple of months, director J.J. Abrams and producer Bryan Burk have barnstormed through Asia, Europe and Latin America, screening extensive clips.
"We did a lot of focus groups in a lot of countries, and asked what they liked and didn't like and we listened," Marcoly said. "Basically, it was more action, more of the adventure elements and less of the real Trekkie stuff." The stuff, in other words, that turned the 1960s TV show into a cultural phenomenon in America and launched the film franchise.

Paramount didn't have much choice. With a $195 million production budget, Abrams' follow-up to his 2009 "Star Trek" reboot will have to score big overseas to be a success. And that's a feat none of the previous films – including the last one – have been able to achieve.

Also read: 'Star Trek Into Darkness' Early Reviews are Mixed

Since "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" launched the film franchise back in 1979, the 11 movies in the series have taken in more than $1.8 billion, but just $312 million from abroad. Indeed, the franchise's appeal and cast of characters was seen as so U.S.-centric, that Paramount didn't bother to release several of the earlier films abroad.

The 2009 "Star Trek" easily became the franchise's biggest box office hit by taking in $387 million worldwide, but didn't make much of a dent in the overseas market with just $128 million. That's not terrible, but it meant foreign accounted for less than a third of the total grosses. That won't cut it in today's box office world, where pricey tent poles often double their domestic hauls overseas.
Warner Bros. faced  the same sort of challenge last year with "Dark Knight Rises," since the similarly all-American Batman franchise had never been able to match its domestic popularity at the foreign box office.

The studio went out of its way to reverse that trend, but may have benefited most from the explosive growth in the number foreign theaters and the emergence of markets like China, Russia and Mexico. "Dark Knight Rises" was the first Batman movie to make more abroad than in the U.S. ($636 million to $448 million) on its way to $1.08 billion globally.

"Into Darkness" should be the first of the "Star Trek" movies to pull that off, according to Exhibitor Relations vice-president and senior analyst Jeff Bock.

"With the last movie, I think they essentially launched a whole new franchise," he told TheWrap. "Most of the people who will be seeing this film will know who Chris Pine is, and have no idea who William Shatner is."