By GustavoLeao / 20:05, 16 October 2008 / Feature Films

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UGO posted a new interview with Star Trek writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurztman and here are excerpts

UGO: Fair enough. And that sort of brings up a good point. In this film you talk about origin stories, and have the whole Universe - hell, the whole Multiverse - of Trek to deal with. Are you using as your source material only canon from TOS? Or things that entered the world in the later films, or perhaps Next Generation if they were to have been around back then? Was that part of your process when you were creating the story? I'm not asking, ya know, do Cardassians or Nausicans or Breen show up, but would you have considered that part of your world?

A: To us "canon" is considered the original series onward, including the novels.

UGO: Even including the novels! Wow.

A: To some degree. There are actually some things that's very interesting including the novels and even to some degree in the shows vs the movies is that there are different interpretation of events. And some blank sports that are open to interpretation. So, I think and certainly in approaching it we saturated ourselves in everything, including the novels, Best Destiny, and Spock's World.

B: And that might mean that a lot of the continuity we take from the novels might be the character continuity. I forgot the names of them, a couple I love, and I get their names confused, but they take place between Star Trek II and III. Another between IV and V when the probe shows up and you know, Voyage Home. Those, there's a lot that could slot right inbetween those two movies.

UGO: Oh yeah. There were also great comic books done right around that time by Peter David that were phenomenal. With the trial and all that stuff.

B & A mumble affirmatively.

A: Pine is just the greatest. And the thing that's tricky obviously, as is the case with any of the actors who stepped into the shoes of these characters who were created by legendary actors, that the thing you wanna avoid in a way is somehow becoming a caricature of William Shatner, or an imitation of his performance. So, I think the way that we all went into this thinking was,"What is the spirit of Kirk? How do we embody the spirit of Kirk?" And, what does that mean? And how can we as fans know that our Kirk is being honored and protected, just speaks to the fact that we have cast a new Kirk. And that was a tricky thing. And I think what you'll find is that there is a lot of Kirk you will recognize in the performance, but Chris Pine is his own brilliant actor. And it's all about what he brings to the part. I would say that the spirit of Kirk is very much alive and well in Chris Pine.

UGO: Well you have got lucky with so much of the cast with regard to physical likeness. Not Pine so much, but some of the others really do have a physical resemblance. Obviously Zack Quinto is just perfect. And looking at the images that came out today of Karl Urban as McCoy, I was like, "Yeah! That's McCoy! That's crab-assy McCoy right there!"

B: Karl really is doing that in his performance, it's amazing. He really turned into this character.

The full interview is here.