Nov 23 | Chuckreturns to NBC with a special two-hour show on Sunday, Jan 10, 2010, before returning to its regular time slot, Mondays at 8pm on the following night. It's return to prime time television can be attributed to a successful fan renewnal campaign last year. CHUCK is a one-hour, action-comedy series that follows Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi, "Less Than Perfect") -- a computer geek who is catapulted into a new career as the government's most vital secret agent. This upcoming season will include some special guest stars, including Brandon Routh of "Superman Returns" who will play CIA agent Daniel Shaw in an episode, and the addition of SUBWAY restaurant as a major advertiser to the show. Chuck averaged a 4.0/6 rating last season, about eight percent better than the recently cancelled "Trauma". Ratings-challenged Heroes moves back an hour when Chuck returns on Monday nights. STAR TREK VOYAGER's Robert Duncan McNeill serves Chuckas a supervising producer and director.
Nov 17 | Originally hired as co-executive producer to help with the second half of the show's first season, Kevin Murphy has now taken the reins of Caprica, the Battlestar Galactica prequel on Syfy, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He now serves as an executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and Jane Espenson and oversees the day-to-day functions of the show.
Nov 12 | Star Trek star Zachary Quinto is loosely attached to star in the romantic dramedy Whirligig, reports Risky Business.Quinto would play the lead role in the independent Canadian film, which is aiming to shoot early next year. The movie centers on a man who, in a misguided attempt to woo an older woman, befriends the woman's adopted son.Chaz Thorne is directing the pic, based on a screenplay by Michael Amo, creator of the Canadian supernatural series "The Listener."
Nov 11 | The CNS Foundation, is hosting an on-line charity auction at www.charitybuzz.com. One of the items they are auctioning is a signed movie poster of the new Star Trek movie which has all the cast members and writers. The president of our organization is Carol Abrams, JJ's mother, and she arranged for the donation from Bad Robot Production Company. J.J. Abrams is also a major donor to their organization. The funds raised will go to help find a cure to neurological disorders in children. The auction link is here.
Nov 10 | Candice Bergen, Charles Lisanby, Don Pardo, Gene Roddenberry, Tom and Dick Smothers and Bob Stewart have been selected as the next inductees into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame. They will be honored at a Jan. 20 ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel. "This year's inductees have challenged and shaped popular culture, changed television for the better and entertained us royally while doing so," TV Academy Chairman-CEO John Shaffner said. More info at the Hollywood Reporter
Dressed in blue jeans and a white button-down, Brannon Braga told fans Tuesday night that the original idea for STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT was “the Borg and the Bubonic plague” in medieval times. Drones of the roundtable didn’t pan out, however, when “Patrick Stewart didn’t want to wear tights,” Braga joked while introducing the film to fans and movie aficionados gathered at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood to celebrate the eighth STAR TREK movie with a special screening and Q&A session sponsored by Hollywood’s Master Storytellers.
Grossing $92 million domestically, FIRST CONTACT was the most successful of the four TNG films, second only to ST4’s $109 million. FC owns the record for the largest opening weekend take for any STAR TREK film, raking in over $30 million dollars in 1996, and quickly becoming a fan favorite. In fact, having been able to catch the last act of NEMESIS on HBO Monday night, it’s difficult to deny FIRST CONTACT’s place as a great STAR TREK film.
Although co-writer Ronald D. Moore and producer Rick Berman agreed with Braga on putting the Borg front and center in the big screen follow-up to GENERATIONS, that’s about all they knew early on.
“When we started we knew we wanted to do something with the Borg,” he recalled. “We knew the Borg were really, really popular on TNG. We really wanted to incorporate time travel. We were really fortunate that this idea came along to set it in the near future because what’s at stake in the movie really is STAR TREK. If the Vulcans don’t land, the universe the audience has come to know and love will not exist. And then the third element to the film to come along was the idea of the great Zephram Cochran, who I think was depicted in TOS. We thought it would be interesting to have this crew meet Zephram Cochran, but he is not anything like anybody thinks--he’s a drunk. Kind of the antithesis of Gene Roddenberry’s ideals, and show how he got to be by the end of the film thanks in part to these heroes.”
At the heart of the success of FIRST CONTACT was its ability to connect with general audiences, Braga says, people who weren’t necessarily familiar with the entire STAR TREK mythos.
“Just to set it in a post-apocalyptic future was sort of more relatable to a general audience and the people who weren’t familiar with STAR TREK could appreciate what STAR TREK was all about,” Braga explained. “We created this character of Lily, played by Alfre Woodard, who knew nothing about STAR TREK because she knows nothing of the future. So this was a character to sort of introduce to the audience what STAR TREK was all about, and the philosophy of STAR TREK and what it means.”
Contemplating anecdotes to share with the audience, Braga admitted in his best deadpan, “I’ve got none,” to an uproarious crowd. “The only one...” he said, reaching for a tidbit. “The movie has a nice sweep to it and it feels like an epic Borg battle. But, in fact, creating an individual drone was very expensive. And we could only afford eight Borg, So really though it looks like there are a lot of Borg running around, there are only eight dudes! The rest are dummies that our makeup artist Michael Westmore created. We used that template for years to come on VOYAGER where we really expanded on the Borg mythos. It’s one of the reasons people like to watch this movie--we exploited the Borg ad nauseum years later, but they never looked better than they looked here.”
Getting them to look that way wasn’t easy, moderator Dennis Michael Revealed. Speaking of director Jonathan Frakes’s challenges during the shoot, he explained how Frakes was concerned with getting the immobile drones to register some movement in the frame.
“My feeling was if you get caught by the Borg you deserved to be caught because they’re like the Mummy,” Braga joked. “They don’t have weapons; they just sort of swing their arms at you, how threatening can they be? But to [Jonathan’s] credit he did a great job with them.”
Alice Krige added a lot of vivaciousness to the previously steely Collective. Braga says the studio really wanted a “voice” for the villains of the piece, and the ringing cacophony of the drones speaking at once--good enough for television--wasn’t going to cut it.
“We had the Borg for a while and I remember Jonathan Dolgen, chairman of Viacom at the time, said we ‘need a voice for the Borg.’ ‘These Borg are just automatons, and that worked for the series.’ ‘No, this is a movie, you need something [more].’,” he recounted. “So we came up with the idea of the Borg Queen, which really brought a lot to the movie--then the Data becoming more human arc was born.”
“I really liked [Krige] from the movie GHOST STORY because she had a creepy sexiness, which I thought was perfect for the Borg Queen, who was sort of a kinky, weird lady,” Braga continued. “We thought the Borg Queen should be a sensual character, tantalizing Data with the prospect of flesh. One of my favorite moments in the film is that little patch of skin that she blows on--the blow job scene [laughter]--and the little goosebumps that came up, I thought that was really cool. There has always been an element of sensuality to some degree in ST, like the moment in the film when Data says he’s fully functional, that was in the first season of TNG. There’s always a playful sensuality.”
The inspiration for the torso-separated Queen came from an unlikely place.
“There was this movie called CAPTAIN EO at Disneyland, and that was still running around the time of this movie, and Angelica Houston played this scary lady that came down on cables from the ceiling. We liked that,” he says with an eerie fascination. “And I remember discussing that that was a cool image for the Borg Queen, and we did a version of it.”
Michael went so far as to suggest that Krige’s turn as the Queen makes FIRST CONTACT the “kinkiest” of all the STAR TREK movies. Braga quickly retorted, “Well yes, but I thought in INSURRECTION when Data and the boy come out of the haystack, that was pretty sexy!”
The opportunity to see the film on the big screen is rare and FIRST CONTACT plays great to the audience. Just about all the funny lines get a collective laugh and it’s amazing just how many memorable scenes the film contains. From Counselor Troi’s drunken haze to Cochran’s antiheroic ramblings, Dixon Hill, and the EMH and Barclay’s cameos, FIRST CONTACT has an engaging story and plenty of meat to keep the eyes and mind happy. As successful as Marina Sirtis’ bar hijinks play out, Braga revealed he thought the scene should’ve been cut.
“It’s interesting and I only speak for myself, but I didn’t like that scene, I thought it should’ve been cut,” he says. “The reason is that the film is bouncing along, Data and Picard have their guns and they’re ready to ‘go fight the Borg,’ and then you have this sort of long scene, and I didn’t really think it was very funny.” He turns to the audience, “But did you guys like that scene?” [cue applause] “That’s good to hear, but I obviously didn’t win that battle.”
After so many episodes and so many movies, Braga told the audience it’s hard to come up with completely original stories. Even still, he said Gene Roddenberry’s universe and its underlying rules foster good storytelling.
“This is just my opinion but I think constrictions are good when you’re trying to write drama,” he said. “You want parameters and I personally love Gene’s universe and I don’t want to write for a show where people are at each other’s throats, it’s more interesting to do it metaphorically through the aliens that they meet and so forth. Although we did find times to have the characters in conflict, for instance here with Picard and Worf.”
The franchise itself keeps on trekking, with a fourth season of STAR TREK: ENTERPRISE on the way and a new feature project--with which Brannon says he has no involvement--in the very early developmental stages.
“Will it take a rest? Frankly I think it probably should at some point. I just don’t know,” he offered as an assessment of the overall health of the franchise. He does know UPN’s decision to move ENTERPRISE to a new night could be good news for the series. “I think it’s good. Right now we’re up against AMERICAN IDOL for god sakes! You might as well not air the episodes! Now we’re on Friday nights and I think people will seek it out. We had a great season. In part due to a writer named Manny Coto, who’s right there in the audience,” as Braga pointed him out. “He wrote some great shows. We’re very happy to have been picked up.”
Some fans want to know whether ‘Q’, at the top of his game in Braga and Moore’s Hugo Award-winning TNG finale “All Good Things...,” will pop up in the prequel.
“We always talk about it. Q kind of got de-fanged over the years. He was so great at the end of the finale of TNG and then he came back on DS9 and VOY and he was fairly soft. So if we bring Q back we want to bring him back with an edge to him.”
That episode, regarded by many fans as one of the greatest TREK episodes ever, remains a high point in Braga’s career.
“Ron Moore and myself wrote for days while we were writing GENERATIONS�"and we joke [now] that ‘All Good Things...’ should’ve been the movie because it would’ve made a better movie. But it was really a blur and we were worried that we did not do that great series justice, but it really came out so well. The fan response over the years has been so enthusiastic and embracing that I think overall that has been one of the great moments.”
Another is appearing briefly in FIRST CONTACT’s Holodeck sequence.
“For a millisecond I’m actually in the far right side of the frame, which is a real drag because on cable they don’t run the letterbox so I’m not in it at all!”
Paramount is expected to release a new DVD of STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT next year. The next collector's edition on the way is STAR TREK: GENERATIONS, dropping September 7th.
Check out ROBOCOP Tuesday, June 29th as the Hollywood's Master Storytellers summer series continues with actor Peter Weller at the ArcLight in Hollywood.
Quote:"I've seen many of your posts, and your opinions are often based on nitpicking (ie: tiny little ridiculous problems with Enterprise which, perhaps 1% of the population would care about). "
Care to enlighten us with an example? I have noted the disregard for continuity and rehashed stories. Things that other people, not just myself have pointed out. I would find continuity errors not to be petty. But of course you could be one of these morons who doesn't care about continiuty and hold the idea that "if it is good, who cares about continuity". Well I think that is a pathetic excuse.
Quote:"That was the whole point of my post. I was using logic to demonstrate that when you are being nitpicky, you are being just the sort or person that "can't hold their ground in an argument"
You didn't prove anything. You provided no example to back up your point. You just went off on same tangent. I went through the posting and gave my opinon much like I am doing here. Maybe you should do the same.
Quote:"Consider as well, that calling someone a pedophile and/or homosexual for making a joke about a scene in a movie is very childish.
Ok the reason for your "sudden comment" is finally coming out. I didn't find that comment to be funny and I think it does tend to have a homosexual behaviour to it. That is what I wrote and if you don't agree that is your right but I personally don't care what you think.
Quote:"This sort of thing is not an argument, and you certainly didn't defend your opinion with any kind of compelling evidence.
I never said it was fact.
Quote:"It's this sort of mudslinging that makes people criticise you on this board.
Like who? Braga?
Quote:"The vast majority of your post is well defended and I agree with it, but I was merely making the point that at times you can be very nitpicky.
Now you give me a compliment? If I happen to nitpick oh well. I am sure I am not there only one who does it.
Quote:"At the same time, you critique someone else for being this way.
I didn't critique him for that. What I critiqued him for was ignoring everything I said and getting off topic by some grammer error. I didn't realize people were going to be "tested" on their responses. I guess I am not allowed to make a typical spelling or grammer error. In my opinion his response was nothing more than him trying to slam me because he didn't like what I wrote. As you can see I asked him to get back on topic and discuss what points I wrote. He has yet to do so because the coward can't hold his ground. He is like a few people on here who "come out no where, make some insult" but can't back it up.
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