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Simon Pegg Says New Star Trek is Going to be Contemporary and Gritty

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By GustavoLeao / 05:19, 27 August 2008 / Star Trek: Nemesis

Yesterday morning, August 26, HardCoreNerdity.com posted an exclusive audio interview with Simon Pegg, recorded at Toronto's Fan Expo Here is a few excerpts.

HardCoreNerdity.com: Star Trek's always been about hope for the future, and there's been some talk that the reasons Star Trek had been on the slide for the last few years is that maybe it's a little too quaint. Maybe, in the post-9/11 world, we're a little too cynical that this kind of world could possibly exist in the future. What do you think about that?

Pegg: I dunno -- I think it's a shame if that's the case, because I think that's what marked it out when it first started. Gene Roddenberry created this vision of an integrated universe, it was way ahead of its time; it had the first interracial kiss, on television, was on Star Trek. The very notion of -- I love the fact that the engineer was Scottish, because Scotland has a history of incredibly innovative engineers. And he [Roddenberry] did paint this really clever future-verse. I think that to suggest that we can't still get there is just kind of giving up. So, I hope that's not the case.

Obviously, JJ [Abrams]'s Star Trek is going to be, you know, it's going to have JJ's stamp on it. It'll be like -- it'll be contemporary, and gritty, but it'll be -- it's very much Star Trek. The bridge was the bridge, it was incredible, but somehow it didn't look like it was built in the '60s. The production design was so cleverly pitched, in that it was completely credible, but still very much like you'd expect. It's very clever. I don't know if I should have said that!

HardCoreNerdity.com:
Franchises have been benefiting a lot from reboots lately -- Batman Begins, Casino Royale -- do you think Star Trek will have that kind of feel, and do you think it's gonna reinvigorate it?

Pegg: I hope so. I think it's very much in that vein. It's very much about getting back to what made it good in the first place. That's what both those films have done -- in Casino Royale and Batman Begins -- they stripped it back down to the beginning and what appealed at the very conception. What happens with things that exist for a long time is they become augmented, and gimmicky, and things change, and they kind of -- they're added to and added to -- to try and make them better -- and it ends up just toppling over, under the weight of its own sort of self-parody -- whereas this is really getting back to it.

I know there's some consternation within the fanbase, but they're gonna see new Star Trek with the original cast. I don't know what's not to be fucking excited about! I am, and I'm in it. And it's in the hands of a person who really cares about it. We had advisors on-set the whole time. If we needed to know what happened on a -- if there was an away mission, and only a certain amount of people went, then who carried the tricorder -- we got it all from the people that really know. And JJ was absolutely at pains to make sure that it's totally and utterly -- and there's a lot in it for the fan. There's a lot of little ironies in there that you'll pick up on if you know the series, and you know the mythology. It's going to be crackin'!

Thanks to 'TRexx' for the transcript.



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RE: It all fits nicely. | Report this post to moderator
By: Gothampunk (Odo's file, contact) @ 10:14:27 on Aug 27, 2008

Quote:

These two excerpts further back up my theory that the new Star Trek will follow and respect the existing canon. The characters' back stories, relationships, names and events will all be true to what has already happened. Only the visual aspect of the TOS-era will be subject to a reboot. We will finally have a TOS-era that actually visually fits within the gap between Enterprise and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.


Well, gee, I think you're on safe ground insofar as characters' names and back stories go. After all, since the movie presumably falls before Kirk's command of the big E, there's not much to go on, anyway -- Other than Spock, TOS offered extremely little character background. We know a bit about Kirk (Iowa, the Academy, a brother), and next to nothing about the rest.

Events? I doubt there will be any reference to events in Enterprise at all. I could be wrong, but why would the writers go there? Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have very little else to contradict, because we just don't know very much. That said, I would be surprised and amused to hear references to "Starfeet Control" and "the United Earth Space Probe Agency." And I'll eat my propeller beanie if there's a reference to WW III, the Eugenics Wars, Khan, or Voyager 6.

The visual look? I'm prepared to be blown away. Whether it "fits" between Enterprise and TMP, I guess that will be a subject of fanboy debate, Obviously, it's going to be recognizable in the context of TOS, but grittier. I can't wait!

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RE: It all fits nicely. by cdydatzigs @ 10:41:50 on Aug 27
    RE: It all fits nicely. by Gothampunk @ 11:14:41 on Aug 27
       RE: It all fits nicely. by TRexx @ 16:33:07 on Aug 27
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