Lets Get It Right.... This Is A ReBoot!

Discovery can't be part of the prime time line... This is the original Enterprise Built and flown 10 Years Before Discovery.... And in service 15 years after Discovery


Feeling very sad at the events in the world today....  It seems we have made no progress at all... Just when the world needs a Star Trek on TV to remind us about diversity and equality and respect the world of Trek is on edge with arguments that are mounting about the coming Star Trek Show… Not real real world problems but over some fictional stuff 

To all the people looking forward to Discovery great!  Im sure it will be an awesome show that hundreds of people have put in hard work on….  You may be new to Star Trek or just a casual fan and  how it looks or plays out may not affect you… please watch in bliss!

Just a very small selection of the books I have bought!


I am not one of those fans….

I'm a little more invested in the show…  I started when it first aired on TV… I saw every episode the night it originally aired….   It was awesome but sometime along 1970 fandom and the powers to be started adding to the story… first with some blue prints and then a tech manual… and then over the years more books came out starting with the original concordance and ending up most recently with a 2 volume encyclopedia!  Carefully gleaned fictional facts and historical record from over 750 hours of Star Trek programing…  Every reference point and fictional turn in the story. Technical manuals and CD Roms ….iPad apps that contain the thousands of facts carefully laid out in the form of LCARS screens….  Ship Models, Props, Uniforms….  An entire universe carefully crafted for the most discerning fan to fully envelope themselves in.  And when I say I am invested… I am, both Intellectually and financially….   

So as you can see the argument over the look of this new show could cause many of us fans to be a bit disappointed and actually a bit angry to see the neophytes at CBS to wreak havoc over our carefully Paramount created world.   When JJ came out it was a bit of the same feeling but we were pleasantly surprised when JJ took the alternate timeline/universe route…  We even had Mr. Spock to bridge the two….  all ended up fine….

Lets look at two other shows that have been remade and talk about their outcomes:

Lost In Space TV remake (never made it past the pilot/never aired)

Lost in Space Movie (great movie... a one off as many fans could not relate to the changes)

Lost In Space Netflix (unknown)

vs.

Battle Star Galactica (Reboot, more realistic and serious, father son relationship, Galactica remained largely

the same ship though curvier, vipers same… shuttles same many of the fleet ships exactly the same… early

cylons were a total nod to the fans…. show was highly successful) 

Even JJs version of Star Wars connected totally to the original… Rogue One Amazing!!!  

So clearly the case of Galactica and Star Wars the fans were largely respected and the shows were a success shows that changed the story and look and feel were not as successful.   It should be mentioned that The Next Gen episode Relics Deep Space Nines episode Trials and Tribulations and Enterprises A mirror Darkly parts one and two were some of the highest watched episodes of Trek to date all featured the original Enterprise!  Finally more proof of this can be found in many of the Star Trek Fan produced episodes, new voyages, ST Continues and culminating in Axinar which clearly show such massive fan approval that CBS shuttered them from making more full episodes!

So whats different now?

This new show Discovery takes place in 2255 and features ships, aliens, equipment and storylines that have nothing to do with our again carefully crafted universe…   Spock never once mentioned a human sister, Klingons never looked so alien to both versions we enjoyed and so neatly explained in Star Trek Enterprise.  The ships bear little or no resemblance to the ships of that era…   The costumes bear little or no resemblance…  and the introduction of Harry Mudd so early in the timeline just makes no sense and promises to be the new Dr. Smith of sci fi…..   

This argument could end today…right now with no more troll hater posts if CBS would just say the Discovery was a reboot, reimagining of the Star Trek Universe period.  Everyone could walk away from that pretty happy knowing that their time invested in the universe crafted and packaged and sold to over 50 years was not being trashed by a network who refused to buy the show the first time it came out!

21 Years Ago Today!!!

21 years ago today I was working my part time admin job at SciPubTech answering phones and fulfilling poster orders when I got a surprise birthday present from our licensing rep at paramount... A lovely lady named Seema Malhutra... Inside were a couple of the just released Enterprise D Blueprints!!! I was transported back to when I was 10 and had just gotten my first Franz Joesph prints!!!! It was very exciting... Inside the box was a SciPubTech flyer we had arranged to be in each box to sell our posters... standing next to my desk I saw there was a booklet that I began to devour.... Susan the office manager screamed from across the building for me to turn to page 5!!! And it was then that I began to sit down and ended up doing my best KIrk (Search for Spock) miss the chair and fell on my butt! Wow! I got a nod in the book!!! Can't begin to say how that moment felt!!! Suffice to say many of you know from my blog the difficult road I had with my Enterprise D poster... but in that moment it had all been worth it!

Getting The Details Right!

Part of working with studios on these big projects is getting the details right… I learned that there were three different models for all three films… each subtly different…  and that there were people who had already done a lot of the leg work to rectify some of these inconsistencies…  In comes Lora Johnson during the drawing process for the Millennium Falcon… Lora had worked on some of the earliest books and magazines called the Star Wars Technical Journals.

In speaking to her on the Falcon project one of the biggest misconceptions was the upper hatch Lando uses to save Luke who is hanging by a thread from the bottom of Bespin.   Many Cutaways have been drawn but only one has ever gotten this detail right… The first cutaway… My cut away.   All subsequent versions show the hatch to port but in fact the hatch in the film is on the Starboard side side.

The incorrect side

When referencing the original model you can see that the Port side shows no hatch whereas the Starboard side does show a hatch… as well the details of the set Lando emerges from coincide with the Starboard hatch and not the Port side.

Port side no hatch!

Details are everything

"After that I need to show that the lift-tube is not on the side that Lucasfilm put it in plans. These images show, categorically without any room for doubt, that the lift is on the starboard side of the ship. The images are reinforced with the logic seen on film: the movement of the ship under Luke to Starboard, and Lando taking him to Leia in the cockpit which is now closer and on the same side of the ship as the lift - instead of taking him from Port, past the medical bunk, to Starboard and then back to Port.

The surface details are from the 5 foot Falcon, Starboard side - not Port. The far-right image is the Port side - the details are completely different. " - CrazyCraig - RPF Board

The final proof comes with the use of light and perspective.... in the frame grab of the Falcon approaching Luke we see the relationship of light on the scene... the sunset like light is coming from the rear and starboard of the falcon and you can see the same light in the close up of the hatch...

What you can also see is the direction the Falcon is moving as Lando emerges establishing forward
momentum in the scene... The reward requires lightening the frame to see the curve of the top of the Falcon fall away towards starboard.  This is incontrovertible.

And that's why the first ever cutaway of the Falcon is the most accurate!  Now I’m sure there are tons of people who will vehemently disagree… Hell Lora will tell you even I was a hard sell initially but the proof is in the those small details and while Lucas film may have mental moved it post filming the facts remain that starboard is the answer!

Greed: Putting the Pieces Together…

Many of you have read the STORY first told on my blog about the lawsuit in and around of the Star Trek Enterprise D poster. After providing JDT and Associates with all of my hard work and trusting them to market and pay me for the Enterprise D cutaway poster… one of the largest and most printed cutaways ever they abdicated their responsibility to me by stopping to pay me and forcing a two day trial which they lost to the tune of $62,000.  While I won the battle I too lost the war as they filed for bankruptcy the next day.   Many years of grief and lessons learned under that bridge and while it hurt me significantly I got past it and the love of the fan became my only payment for the work in the end and let me tell you that became more than enough… It also spurred both me and my brother Matt to find a new representative in SciPubTech and we successfully published a ton of other posters for both Star trek and Star Wars.

Tonight while searching my Star Wars Pinterest I found a website by artist Brian Sauriol detailing his work on the Millennium Falcon Poster which never made it to press.  I had seen the work and sussed out the connection that JDT had dumped my Falcon concept in lieu for working with him.  The cost of the project paid for by Enterprise D moneys but now under the corporate name Nonpariel Communications…. same Address at 2242 Star Court in Rochester Hills, same owner Julie D. Targos.

Scroll back to 1991 we had just finished the Enterprise printing in Chicago and I showed Targos the idea of the Falcon cutaway I had started….  I based the illustration off of an original MPC Falcon Model kit I built… the details were not the best but the proportions were perfect.  She put the idea on hold so we could start selling Enterprise posters…

This was that concept illustration and the final line drawing and finished poster.

 

By 94 we were in court and one evening before the trial I got a phone call from Brian Sauriol who was not unknown to me as he was a teacher at Macomb Community College and one of the people who supplied the area illustration shops with new graduates… Yet I really didn’t know him so it was a strange call… He felt compelled to ask me to stop with my law suit with JDT and Targos….  I had not known the connection or why he of all people would contact me… The phone call ended badly and it creeped me out.

In 1995 I was at Miller Art Supply picking up some framed posters and thats when I saw the Sauriol Falcon also recently framed and the connection had been made.   By 1995 we were already contracted to do the Falcon, X-Wing and ATAT posters for the debut of the revised Star Wars episodes 4-6…  It became clear to me that the lawsuit and bankruptcy had foiled this duo's plans and in the end it was my Falcon that made the debut to the world!

This seemed like perfect karma yet there was always some level of supposition of the Sauriol, Targos connection based on the scary phone call and details I did not have.   Tonight it all became clear with THIS SITE found.  

The site was published in 2013 and bills the Falcon as a project hidden for two decades! The details of the sources he used explain why the illustration is so inaccurate…. the photos shown of the hasbro kids toy… bloated and out of proportion and the list of details are limited…. By the time I worked on finishing the Falcon Lucas Film had supplied me with full blue prints and photos but was also interested in a Falcon that squared three films worth of changing details into one final illustration… I consulted with designers and received notes from Lucas himself.

Who would admit to using a hasbro kids toy as reference for a serious cut away?

Tonight the details finally and completely come together… Now I know…  What I feel is more completely vindicated but I also feel a sense of forgiveness for two truly pathetic people who took my ideas and art and tried to take the benefits of that work and make it their own.  I have to forgive them because the alternative is to be consumed by the anger over the greatest loss in my professional life.

But there is more to it than that... there was the lesson to never give up on my dreams to keep pushing for what was right and so I want to impress upon anyone who takes on a project such as this... They are labors of love and they are for the fans and they come before money and profit... and with all honesty they come from the heart!