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Just a quick bargain share for peeps in the U.K.

https://www.zavvi.com/books/penguin-star-trek-shipyards-starfleet-and-the-federation-hardcover-box-set/12651081.html?autocomplete=productsuggestion

Three guide books, reduced from £60 to £15. Got one ordered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVKjIT9c99Y

Watching the flip-through I'm reminded of my worst hate with books - people who design them who do double page spreads. Unless its a sown spine made of a material 10000times stronger than steel its going t obreak if you actually try to view the doublepage spread as a doublepage spread without the middle being sliced out.



That said I've fond memories (and still have somewhere) a bunch of the old ST collection magazine (way back from the 90s). It's probably suffered in storage and from my youthful self and being read; but darn it I'm tempted for £15. Even though I've not been into ST for a quite a while in a big way.

It’s certainly a good price point.

My main problem with those books (and I own two of them) is how far they go out of their way not to add any “speculation”. The TNG Technical manual is full of ideas and explanations that never made it into the show. Mr Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise, the old Starfleet Technical Manual, even the starship Spotter, all added to the lore. Some of the material was later overwritten by the shows, but it added a lot of depth to the universe and value to the books.


These shipyard books take no risks. They add no information that you can’t find on a site like Memory Alpha, no insight, almost nothing but straight-forward screen canon.

Even worse are the number of hilarious mistakes, especially mislabeled parts in the sparsely-labeled orthographic views. When you only point out five spots of interest in a ship’s hull, and one of them is a collimated phaser array on a ship with visible phaser banks... that’s just embarrassing.

They’re ideal reading for when ensconced upon the throne!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They’re ideal reading for when ensconced upon the throne!

For a decent enough price, yes.

Thanks for the heads up on that one!

No matter what the quality is, at that price, it would be rude to not give them a look. Especially considering that I recently purchased the two Haynes manuals, so I'm quite in the zone for that kind of stuff.

Got my set today, and it’s rather nice!

Nothing too in-depth contents wise, but otherwise it’s perfectly lovely.

There is a voyager documentary that has been crowdfunded. By the same people who did the DS9 documentary
https://trekmovie.com/2021/03/01/star-trek-voyager-documentary-kicks-off-crowdfunding-including-digital-blu-ray-pre-orders/
Get ready for some DRAMA, the behind the scenes where pretty much everyone hates everyone

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Get ready for some DRAMA, the behind the scenes where pretty much everyone hates everyone

As with an earlier revelation about the writing room, this does not shock me XD

Some tidbits i heard(Im going to use character names because that is easier for me and so people understand without knowing all the actors, but i am talking about the Actors.
Janeway and Kes where best friends before the show, but when they wanted to bring in a hot lady, they where going to dump Harry KIM, but he was on one of those "Hottest men in TV" so that saved him. So they dropped Kes, JAneway hated this, and therefore was really mean to 7of9 the entire time
Chakotay kept wanting out so demanded more and more money, which he got, EVERYTIME, leading to him being resented by everyone.
7of9's suit was laborous to put on and off, and because unions say whenever the actor needs to go, they go. which would lead to hours of time being wasted when she would need to go, leading to her being resented.
Everyone hated The Doctor.
The Native American consultant was a Jewish conman.

The biggest shocker to me was that they bothered having a “Native American Consultant”.

I'd have to say everyone hated the Doctor? Really? That's surprising to me. He seemed like one of the few people on the show who ever had fun.

Did they hate the actor or the character? Both? Is Richard Picardo secretly a total asshat

 LordofHats wrote:
I'd have to say everyone hated the Doctor? Really? That's surprising to me. He seemed like one of the few people on the show who ever had fun.

Did they hate the actor or the character? Both? Is Richard Picardo secretly a total asshat

I’ve only interacted with him a couple times at conventions, but he struck me as abrasive.

Aw... that's disappointing... Never meet your childhood heroes indeed XD

 LordofHats wrote:
Aw... that's disappointing... Never meet your childhood heroes indeed XD

This is why I rarely bother to look behind the scenes at films and such. Generally speaking you always find the drama. Plus there's made-up drama where small comments get blown out of proportion years later or someone has an axe to grind so makes other things sound worse than they are. Plus there's the selective nature of any documentary. Just like the ones that come out just before a film launches where every single actor loves the film and its the best most creative and amazing thing they've ever (or will ever) work on; through to the tear-down where its the worst thing they ever did and all the warning signs were there and they were not listened too when they pointed it out etc...

That said I'm always a little surprised how much variation there is in actor wages, how one actor can end up getting paid way above the others even though they are essentially doing the very same job to the same level of quality. Granted its easier to understand when you've big name actors where the studio isn't just paying for them, but their extensive fanbase that comes along with them. Though I tend to associate that with the "big" hollywood names.


Also lets not forget actors are people whom our first impressions of are, essentially, lies. Even if we remember that they are actors playing a role its still a first impression and we make all kinds of assumptions long long before we might see any of the person behind the mask that is the character, the make up and all.

For wages, seems all down to your agent.

How else do you explain the frankly talentless and thoroughly irritating James Corden getting loads of work?

He co-wrote Gavin & Stacey (his breakout hit) with Ruth Jones.

Given how consistently pathetic his following outputs have been, I’d venture it was Ruth Jones providing the real talent.

That or he only really had the magic in him once. You see that a few times with creative projects. Sometimes all the things just align at the right moment and the right time for the market and the right marketing and the right everything and its a blast. Then you can never really live up to it again

Didn't Corden and Horne have an awful sketch show after Gavin and Stacey? Caught it a couple of times and just noped out and changed the channel.

Sketches were on the quality of bad Little Britain (which isn't great even at its best) and made worse by Corden just being loud and obnoxious in every single one I saw.

Certainly didn't help that you had That Mitchell and Webb Look, possibly the best sketch show since Monty Python, still going at the time. A show which managed to combine silly nonsensical material like Numberwang! with some genuinely moving stuff like their final sketch involving an old Sherlock Holmes and Watson.

 Overread wrote:

 LordofHats wrote:
Aw... that's disappointing... Never meet your childhood heroes indeed XD

This is why I rarely bother to look behind the scenes at films and such. Generally speaking you always find the drama. Plus there's made-up drama where small comments get blown out of proportion years later or someone has an axe to grind so makes other things sound worse than they are. Plus there's the selective nature of any documentary. Just like the ones that come out just before a film launches where every single actor loves the film and its the best most creative and amazing thing they've ever (or will ever) work on; through to the tear-down where its the worst thing they ever did and all the warning signs were there and they were not listened too when they pointed it out etc...

That said I'm always a little surprised how much variation there is in actor wages, how one actor can end up getting paid way above the others even though they are essentially doing the very same job to the same level of quality. Granted its easier to understand when you've big name actors where the studio isn't just paying for them, but their extensive fanbase that comes along with them. Though I tend to associate that with the "big" hollywood names.


Also lets not forget actors are people whom our first impressions of are, essentially, lies. Even if we remember that they are actors playing a role its still a first impression and we make all kinds of assumptions long long before we might see any of the person behind the mask that is the character, the make up and all.

Not to get too far away from Star Trek, but that's why I've always been interested in film and television from a production point of view. The actor, writer, director collaborate to create a character, but you also have costuming, hair and make up, sound design, etc. etc. etc. Team effort all the way. I think it's a miracle that any film gets finished, honestly. So hearing that an actor is a jerk doesn't really take away from my enjoyment of a piece, because I see a team effort on the screen. If anything it makes me appreciate everyone else more for having to deal with them.

 LordofHats wrote:
Aw... that's disappointing... Never meet your childhood heroes indeed XD

Well, to be fair he may not enjoy the convention experience. Or perhaps I caught him on some bad days.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The biggest shocker to me was that they bothered having a “Native American Consultant”.

I'm not, particularly. Lots of shows have them on paper, though I'm even less surprised that the one they had wasn't 'authentic,' given the rather bland focus on schoolyard mysticism, facial tattoos and spirit animals.

It amused me when Stargate Sg-1 ran with the concept and made O'Neill an Air Force consultant on Wormhole Extreme. That whole bit was layers of industry and inside jokes.
It was also one of those moments where he creepily reminded me of my father, a military officer himself. The episodes where he's a jokey, snarky, 'screw the regs' Colonel never worked for me much (in terms of believability he was pure Macgyver wearing a spare officer's jacket), but when he did behave like an actual military officer it worked well.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Got my set today, and it’s rather nice!

Nothing too in-depth contents wise, but otherwise it’s perfectly lovely.

Yeah, nice looking books, but as has been said nothing in depth. Pretty coffee table books.

Littered with inaccuracies, though; you think that I don't know the difference between an RCS thruster and a phaser emitter? And don't try to tell me that some random panel line is a phaser strip, especially when there's a phaser emitter not too far away.

But, the most egregious mistake is the complete omission of the Akira class! It's even on the book cover! Someone done goofed...

I was listening to this podcast and, due to the recent death of Yaffet Koto, they gave the list of actors on the shortlist to play Picard.
Some interesting names here that would have been very different captain Picards!

Patrick Stuart
Yaffet Koto
Mitchell Ryan
Roy Thinnes
Patrick Bauchau

Yeah, IIRC, Roddenberry really wanted Bauchau for it, and was not at all impressed when they cast a 'bald, middle-aged Englishman' (Stewart's own words) for the role.

 insaniak wrote:
Yeah, IIRC, Roddenberry really wanted Bauchau for it, and was not at all impressed when they cast a 'bald, middle-aged Englishman' (Stewart's own words) for the role.

My favorite story on that was from an early press conference introducing the new cast and a reporter asked about Stewart being bald something to the effect of "in the future won't they have a cure" and Stewart (maybe?) answered "in the future they won't care".

Which is about the most perfectly Star Trek answer someone could give. While Star Trek the show didn't always live up to its ideals behind the scenes, the whole Infinite Diversity in Infinity Combinations is a good aspirational goal. And it's kind of neat to look back and think about how attitudes on baldness and age changed since the 80s.

On the podcast they did kinda touch on that; Picard is a very different vision of what a respected man can look like when compared to Kirk.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Yeah, IIRC, Roddenberry really wanted Bauchau for it, and was not at all impressed when they cast a 'bald, middle-aged Englishman' (Stewart's own words) for the role.

My favorite story on that was from an early press conference introducing the new cast and a reporter asked about Stewart being bald something to the effect of "in the future won't they have a cure" and Stewart (maybe?) answered "in the future they won't care".

Which is about the most perfectly Star Trek answer someone could give. While Star Trek the show didn't always live up to its ideals behind the scenes, the whole Infinite Diversity in Infinity Combinations is a good aspirational goal. And it's kind of neat to look back and think about how attitudes on baldness and age changed since the 80s.

When you watch TOS it's apparent that in the future no one cares about having perfect looking teeth. And then things changed the next generation...

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Everyone hated The Doctor.

There has to be more to this.

From First Contact Day -

Picard season 2 teaser: https://twitter.com/i/status/1379148372083347457
Discovery season 4 teaser: https://twitter.com/i/status/1379175189196513284