Dayton's Blog: A pimple on the ass of the Internet.

For you Trekkies who are missing the late and lamented Star Trek: The Experience attraction, which stood proudly within the environs of the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel from January 1998 to September 2008, there's now something which just might fill the void, if only a bit.

Digital Properties, a firm specializing in "360-degree virtual tours" for a variety of uses from showing off houses for real estate websites to hotels and other commercial properties, has made available for public viewing a tour package they originally created for the attraction's management team as a "historical archive" as well as being a gift to the employees. The tour covers all areas of The Experience, including staff areas which only were available to the public if they took the "Behind the Scenes" tour. So far as I can tell, they don't go so far as to spoil the illusion of how certain aspects of the attractions were "brought to life," but it's still fun to drag your mouse around the different pictures and zoom in on this or that.

Check it out: Digital Properties: Star Trek: The Experience 360-Degree Virtual Tour

You can even get a look-see at Quark's Bar, which is mighty damned important, if you ask me....





Thanks very much to the staff at TrekToday.com, who brought this very cool bit of news to my attention.

So, I recently discovered that this event was coming to Kansas City in December. I've talked it over briefly with Michi and Kevin, and we finally decided we were going to go. The idea sounds fun enough on the face of it: the entire Star Wars saga presented with highlights from the six movies shown on massive HD screens and accompanied by live performances of music from the films. Sounds like a bigger, louder version of Star Wars: A Musical Journey, a DVD feature included with the soundtrack CD to Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

Sweet.

Being a Star Wars fan, this sounds like it could be a fun evening. Anybody else heard anything more about this, or -- better yet -- seen it themselves? If so, whaddaya think about it?

Okay, tell me something: Is there any context, any at all, in which you might think I (or anyone else, for that matter) would -- with actual serious intent -- insert something like the following passage into a Star Trek story?

-----

"What's your name, scumbag?"

"Sir! James T. Kirk, sir!"

"T? What's the T stand for? Thumbdick?"

"Sir! No, sir! Tiberius, sir!"

"Tiberius? Well, holy shit. We've got ourselves a fucking Roman emperor here. You know the Romans were only good for two things: orgies and the second finest military force the fucking civilized world has ever seen. You best learn how to fight, Tiberius, because you don't look like you could get laid in a fucking whorehouse with gold-pressed latinum strung around your pencil neck."

"Sir. Yes, sir!"

-----

Apparently, at least one person thinks so.

And people wonder why I laugh and shake my head when I read message boards.



(For those looking at the time stamp and wondering: Yes, I'm having another bout with insomnia.)

I am an addict, and Doug Drexler is my dealer.

This bastard, with all his pictures and graphics and stories about Star Trek as told from the point of view of someone WHO WAS THERE, working on shows every day; how dare he post such tantalizing morsels of fanboy goodness on his website and just leave them there for me to drool over? It's killing me, I tell you! I am powerless to resist. No matter how many times I say aloud, "I won't go back. He can't keep posting good stuff like that forever. He has to have run out by now," I succumb to temptation over and over again. And each time I return? There's more stuff to ogle.

DAMMIT!

What's new there since my last visit? Among the juicy tidbits and insights from Trek's past he's offering now, are two entries of particular note:

The First, posted on October 11th, showcases pictures and reminiscing of Doug and other members of the production crew in 1996, working on the re-created sets for the original Enterprise, as seen in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations." It's not enough that these folks get to do something like this and get paid for it. Oh, no. They have to joke around and have all sorts of other fun while they're doing it.

Rub it in, why dontcha.

The Second, also posted on the 11th, revisits a graphic Doug created for the Star Trek: Enterprise two-part episode "In A Mirror, Darkly." Yeah, the one where they got to build the original series sets AGAIN, with even more detail and AwesomeSauce thrown in this time around. The graphic is a "cutaway" technical schematic of a Constitution-class starship. Here's a taste, but you need to go to the site and see the full-sized version to really get your nerd on in first-rate fashion:


(Not responsible for any inadvertent release of body fluids you may experience upon viewing at full size You've been warned.)

Yeah, I had to change my shorts after seeing that one, too.

If the original Star Trek series is not your thing, Doug's blog is chock full of all kinds of other stuff. For example, check out this recent entry highlighting visual FX master Gary Hutzel as he works on a Piece of Sweetness for the still-forthcoming Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica. That'll get your pilot lit.

My name is Dayton, and I'm a fan of Doug Drexler.

"Hi, Dayton."

Way back in 1977, Doug Drexler published the Star Trek Giant Poster Books, a series of magazines which unfolded to reveal a big-assed poster featuring an image from the original Star Trek series. During the Great Trek Drought of the 70s, stuff like these magazines were manna from heaven. The series ran for 25 issues before riding off into the sunset of Trek lore, of which Doug oversaw the first 12.

My favorite of the run is Issue #10, which featured a look at the state of the original Enterprise and Klingon cruiser filming models after their internment at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Doug has reprinted the pages from the magazine in a recent entry on his blog, and included with it the original photos which accompanied the article. Two words to describe this blog piece? Suh weet.

DrexFiles: The Smithsonian Report - Poster Book Flashback - 1977

This kind of stuff is crack to old-school Trekkies like myself. Go forth, read, and dig it. Personally, I can't get enough info and images detailing the behind-the-scenes aspects of the original Star Trek series. I particularly love finding new info on the filming model, or rediscovering articles and photos I'd all but forgotten. If I could dry this out and smoke it, I would.

Related entries:
A ship called Enterprise: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 1
The little shuttlecraft that could: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 2
How it all began: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 3
The Real Story: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 4
Sketchin' it: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 5
Waxing Nostalgic: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 6
The History of the Future: Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 7

Oh, and:

Wax that baby, while you're at it.

Digging around in the picture directories, and happened across this pic, taken at Star Trek: The Experience late in 2006:



All hail the nerdity!

Okay, this is pretty cool. What do you get when you mix equal parts original series Star Trek and a certain horror film from 1979 directed by Ridley Scott? Well, you get something like this:



A little talky (for TOS) in places, and some of the dialogue didn't ring true to my fanboy ears, but otherwise this is a top-shelf fan effort. The music and sound FX cues are spot-on, and the overall look is just awesome. The trailer for "the next episode" had me laughing out loud in a couple of places.

I was digging around in the Vault the other day, looking for some other materials which I planned to look through in preparation for a forthcoming writing project, and I came across this prized tome sitting on the shelf:



Published as a tie-in to the then recently-released Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this book was one of several produced by Pocket Books (and its now-defunct imprint, Wallaby Books) tying into the new movie. For my money, this was the coolest of the tie-ins they did for that flick (the refit Enterprise blueprints are decent enough, but they don't hold a candle to Franz Joseph's set for the original Enterprise even farther back in the day). Years before the concepts of timelines and "canon" would drive fanboys to the depths of rabid obsession, this nifty book laid out a comprehensive history of human space travel, from the earliest orbital pop shots to the brand-spankin' new U.S.S. Enterprise (movie edition).

Filled with log entries, excerpts from news sources, mission reports, personal anecdotes, and whatever else the authors, Stan and Fred Goldstein, could conjure, the book made for a fascinating version of Trek "future history" long before Gene Roddenberry decided to (essentially) start from scratch when he began developing Star Trek: The Next Generation. What really makes the book sing is the artwork by Rick Sternbach, who of course has had a long and distinguished association with Star Trek over the ensuing decades. Mr. Sternbach provided all of the book's illustrations, including "technical schematic" versions of every ship covered in the book as well as fully-painted beauty shots of many vessels, including both versions of the original NCC-1701 (No bloody A, B, C, D, E, or Abramsverse, yo.).

An abridged version of the book was released in the UK by Phoebus Books, including just excerpts from the timeline and the "fact sheets" for the more prominent vessels. Not sure what the backstory on this version is; I stumbled across a copy at a con one year.



Despite being mostly incompatible with "history" as TNG and the later spin-offs defined it in the Trek universe, the Spaceflight Chronology remains a favorite "old-school" Trek reference work for me.

Previously:
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 1
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 2
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 3
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 4
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 5
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 6

Oh, and:

Wax that baby, while you're at it.

I got an interesting e-Mail today. A reader of this here LJ asked me to dig up and provide for her a post I made some time ago whereby I answered the "request" of an aspiring Star Trek author to help him get his book(s) published. It took some extra jogging on said reader's part to remind me of the post in question, after which I had to go digging in the archive to find it for her. I originally posted this back in April of 2008.

Having read it again, and while I don't apologize for what it says, I did fail to make one important point the first time around: This ain't how I typically reply to people who ask me about writing, be it Star Trek or anything else. I think my record on how I usually tackle such queries speaks for itself.

That said, the FuckMuppet(tm) who sent the query to which I responded with the following screed was altogether a different variety of arrogant, insulting, delusional "fan," possessing an overdeveloped sense of entitlement wrapped around an alarming lack of interpersonal skills. It demanded a proportional response.

So, from the vaults, I once again offer up "(Hopefully) Helpful advice for aspiring Star Trek writers," as originally posted:


-----

Came home this evening to an amusing message in my e-Mail box. Without going into specifics, let's just say that the sender of this particular missive is a passionate Star Trek fan, which in and of itself ain't really a bad thing.

However, our messenger friend fancies himself a writer. Not only that, he wants to be a Star Trek writer because, damn it, he's got the cure for all that ails the Star Trek franchise these days.

(Since first writing this entry, I've learned that several Trek authors also received the same e-Mail, outlining our hopeful writer-to-be's plan to submit his work to Pocket for consideration.)

He's pursued his goal with verve. He's visited the Pocket Books website. He's read the submission guidelines for Star Trek fiction, and has come away unsatisfied with what he's found. Of course, he's made the mistake committed by a goodly number of aspiring writers, in that he's either failed to comprehend what he's read, or else has ignored those things which are not in line with what he wants to hear in order to pound his chest and continue his crusade.

Because of that, he now appears to be fueled by a host of misconceptions which, if he's actually followed through with what he says he plans to do (assuming he's serious and this wasn't some elaborate practical joke), will result in his Star Trek opus, along with all of its unrealized potential, being sent to the trash.

So, in the unlikely event he's reading this (I suppose it's possible, as he got my e-Mail address from somewhere and may well know about my website), I'm posting the following bits of (hopefully) helpful advice, for him as well as anyone else who might harbor similar ambitions and perceptions:

( Read on, brave souls.... )

My work here is done. I'll be here all week. Be sure to try the veal, and remember to tip your servers.

-----


And there you go. The original post, and the responses from readers that it generated, can be found here.

Reading the boards, I see there's a fresh bout of "ZOMG! The new Trek movie wiped out the old timeline!" hysteria going on. I've been hit with a couple of e-Mails requesting begging that we Trek writers not acknowledge the new movie timeline, and instead go on about our merry way.

Folks, relax. Breathe regular.

The film itself -- during one of those rare moments where it's not cock-slapping us with special effects that make you want to reach for Dramamine, Saltines, and a barf bag, lens flares that make Stevie Wonder cover his eyes, music dialed up to 11, and extreme close-ups of the mole under Chris Pine's right ear (Kirk doesn't have a mole there! It's not canon!) -- does actually downshift long enough to explain that the "new" timeline is, in effect, an alternate reality.

As Spock (either one) might say, "Logic dictates that the existence of an alternate reality presupposes the continued existence of the original reality, if indeed it was the original reality and is not itself an alternate version of some other reality."

Cripes. Reading that back makes my head hurt.

Screw it. Here's Doc Brown to explain it all:



Any questions?

So, to recap: There now are two timelines: RodTrek, and JJTrek and, for all intents and purposes, they're separate. Never the twain shall meet, except perhaps in the realm of fanfiction or if Paramount/Bad Robot/CBS/whoever/etc. feel the need to rope in Shatner for the next movie. As Paul Buchman might explain it to his lovely bride, Jamie, on an episode of Mad About You:


Paul: "James, sweetie, listen: A, there's original Trek, the stuff Roddenberry made up. And 2, there's this new Trek, whatever this knucklehead Abrams came up with."

Jaime: "And they're different from each other?"

Paul: "This is what I'm sayin'."

Jaime: "Why can't they just...I don't know...squish them together somehow?"

Paul: "Never gonna happen, my friend."


Stuff like books, comics, toys, and so on will continue to depict either/both incarnations of the original crew of the Starship Enterprise as they see fit, possibly from now until the very day the Doctor rocks "Tainted Love" while watching our sun go nova. Seats for that are going fast, BTW.

Doug Drexler has posted some awesome pics and ruminations about working on the "Captain Proton" sets for various episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. Among the pics are shots of Proton's ship from various angles, which are worth the price of admission all by themselves:

The Drex Files: Captain Proton!

I may not be the biggest Voyager fan out there, but I absolutely love anything to do with Captain Proton. Raise your hands if you read the Proton piece(s) I did for Star Trek Magazine earlier in the year. Man, that was more fun than should be allowed by law.

Anyway, hang out at Doug's site for a while, and be sure to get a good loook around. The stuff he's posting there will make your little fanboy (or fangirl) mouth water.

I'm a bit late getting this posted, but here we go:

Long story short: We had a pretty fun time down in Tulsa.

Long story longer:

( The Long Story behind the cut! )


Many thanks to all the fine folks who worked their butts off to make Trek Expo a fun weekend for fans and guests alike. We appreciate your hospitality, hope we held up our end of the bargain, and wish you well until our paths cross again.

This coming weekend, Kevin and I will be author guests at the annual Trek Expo convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to the numerous guests who will be on hand, the big headliners this year are Leonard Nimoy on Saturday and Avery Brooks on Sunday, both of whom I hear are pretty famous dudes.

Also invited as author guests are Robin Wayne Bailey (robinbailey), who will be acting as MC, and Selina Rosen, founder of Yard Dog Press and the Bubbas of the Apocalypse anthologies, for which I have a confessed fetish. Both Robin and Selina were contributors to my recently released Space Grunts anthology, and we're hoping to have a few copies of those lying around, as well.

So far, our schedule is largely open, which means we'll be hanging out, hoping to sell and sign a few books, wandering the con floor, pestering the "real guests" and so on. Kevin and I also are scheduled for an hour or so on the main events stage, starting at 11am on Saturday. There's no telling what we'll do with that one, but it's possible poultry will play a role.

(Just seein' who's paying attention....)

So, if you're in the vicinity and/or planning to attend to the con, we hope to see you there!

Courtesy of the one and only Doug Drexler comes this link to a blog maintained by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, and a couple of features detailing the museum's first restoration of the U.S.S. Enterprise filming model from the original Star Trek series.

Blog.NASM.edu: Restoration of the Starship Enterprise
Blog.NASM.edu: X-Ray Analysis of the Starship Enterprise

The model was donated to the museum in March of 1974, and was in pretty poor shape. By July of that same year, however, the old girl had been returned to something approaching her former glory. It underwent a second minor restoration in August of 1984, the result of which was what I saw when I first laid eyes upon it in January of 1986 and took these pics:



(Click to enlarge.)


There was another, more extensive restoration performed in 1991, soon after which the model was part of a long-running NASM Star Trek exhibit commemorating the original series. The model went into seclusion for a little while after that, but since the early 2000s has been on display in the museum gift shop's lower level.

The blog entry features several photos from different points during the restoration. It's neat stuff for old-school Trekkies (like me!) who love reading about behind-the-scenes aspects of the original series. There's also an information page about the model's history and its current display.

Many thanks to Doug for providing the heads-up!


Related info:
Blog.SmithsonianMag.com: How Big is the Starship Enterprise?

Here's something that's good for a chuckle. I was digging around in my files and such earlier today, and found this little memento of a trip out to Las Vegas and the late Star Trek: The Experience...



One of these things is not like the others; one of these things just doesn't belong.



Can you tell which thing is not like the others, by the time I finish my song?

During the weekend prior to my reporting for duty at the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base in California in February 1986, I did some sightseeing in and around Los Angeles, Hollywood, etc. One of the places I stopped was at the Movieland Wax Museum, which was located in Buena Park.

Among the various wax likenesses of television and movie stars, music celebrities, political figures, and so on, was a certain merry band of misfits. I found these pics - again taken with my crappy little 110 camera - while digging around in some of our old photo albums:




(Click pic to enlarge)


The museum closed up shop about four years ago, and a lot of the wax figures were sold at auction. I did some Googlin', and discovered that the "Trek Seven" went for $34,000. No idea what happened to the bridge set; if it didn't go to the person who bought the figures, then maybe it'll turn up in a fan film or something one of these days ;)


Previously:
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 1
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 2
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 3
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 4
Feelin' Nostalgic, Part 5

You know, the internet is an interesting animal, to say the least. Just trying to figure out the sheer number of ways it's allowed people to connect and communicate with one another is enough to blow one of my brain fuses.

Consider the e-Mail I got earlier this evening, from a reader who contacted me to tell me how much she enjoyed In the Name of Honor, the first Star Trek novel and indeed the first novel I wrote going on nine years ago. Even more interesting was how she came across the book: She found it laying on a vacant seat on the bus she rode home from work one day. This in turn reminded me of a website I hadn't thought of in quite some time: BookCrossing.com, a fun site which is devoted to tracking the movements of books around the world, with the help of eager army of volunteers who catalog individual books on the site, and then "release" the books into the wild, leaving them wherever they might be found by an appreciative reader. The idea is that the finder then goes to the website, makes a note on the book's page to indicate where it was found, reads it, then releases it again for someone else to find. Looking over the site, I was happy to see 76 different copies of my/Kevin's and my books floating around out there, traveling in this manner.

So, I had an idea. Actually, I'm borrowing it from Wil Wheaton, since he's the coolest person on the Web.

It's getting ready to be summer vacation season. If you're reading this and plan to take one of my/our books with you to read, let's have some pictures! Give it to Mickey Mouse to hold up for a photo op. Lean it up against that sandcastle your kid's building on the beach in Panama City. See if the guard outside Buckingham Palace will let you prop it up against his boot for a shot. Hand it to a booth babe at Comic-con. Make kradical pose with it at Shore Leave. If you live near something unique or unusual, let's see a shot with that. Go nuts. Extra points awarded for originality as well as sheer lunacy. I've already had one friend threaten to take a book to a strip club, while one promises to hook me up with a cool photo on the evening of July 4th (Yikes!).

If I get some fun responses, I'll set up a dedicated LJ entry for the pics. We'll hold a poll to pick the best/favorite pic, and the owner will get some kind of prize.

I can already hear my sister laughing as she begins to plot and scheme....

Came home today to find a box from Amazon.com. Inside: the Burn Notice novel The End Game by Tod Goldberg, along with the soundtrack for the new Star Trek film as well as the audiobook of the film's novelization, written by Alan Dean Foster and read by Zachary Quinto (the new Spock). Running time for the unabridged audiobook is 8.5 hours; nice commuting fodder for my Zune.

Whatchoogot?

Well, the new Star Trek flick is upon us, and though I had a fun time with it, I'm still enjoying my trip through the Wayback Machine by revisiting another book that takes a look behind the scenes of the original series: The Star Trek Sketchbook, by Herbert F. Solow and Yvonne Fern Solow.



This snappy tome offers readers an inside look at the work of four talented artists who were essential to realizing the original series' distinctive and evocative visual style: art director Matt Jefferies, costume designer William Ware Theiss, makeup artist Freddie Phillips, and prop designer Wah Chang. A section of the book is devoted to each of these talented individuals, giving them some small measure of recognition for the work they created and echoes of which remain even in the newest Star Trek movie.

From the creation of the original uniforms, phasers, and communicators to the genesis of the Gorn and Spock's ears to the design of the original U.S.S. Enterprise itself, each section of the book is fascinating reading. My favorite section is that devoted to Jefferies, and I've spent hours poring over the pages of sketches taken from his private collection for use in the book. Despite my being familiar with most of the information before I read the book, the chapters devoted to the design of the Enterprise and its interiors are noteworthy.

Special mention must be made of the in-depth look at the scale model of the sets, built by Jefferies at nights and on weekends, and representing the Enterprise interior sets as they would appear if all of them were standing at the same time. Doing so was a practical impossibility on the actual Desilu Stage 9, given the size of the soundstage and the need to strike portions of sets in order to accommodate filming equipment and so on. The scale model provided episode directors with a three-dimensional representation of the sets, allowing them to plan their shots without having to walk the actual sets, which of course were in use or struck as the shooting schedule of a given episode demanded. So taken was I with this model that when I later built my own AMT Enterprise bridge set model from the boxed kit, I mounted it in a wooden frame which allowed me to hang it on the wall, just like Jefferies did with his creation all those years ago while working on the show.

Yes, I'm a nerd. Have we met?

Anyway, fans of the original Star Trek looking to transport back in time to the days of the series' production should seek out this book. It belongs on any old-school fan's shelf.

Up next? I'm torn. I thought I'd go with Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay That Became the Classic Star Trek Episode, but I said that last time, and the Star Trek Maps are calling to me....

I keep forgetting to post about this, but seeing robinbailey's post about this reminded me that I need to get on the stick!

Kevin and I will be guests at this year's Trek Expo convention, the weekend of June 26-28 down in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We were guests there back in 2005, along with kradical, and when we ran into one of the con promoters during our recent jaunt to Denver for Starfest, he invited us back. We've actually been invited back a few times, but schedules and whatnot prevented us from taking them up on their kind offers. Not so, this year!

Also in attendance will be my friends and fellow writer Selina Rosen, founder of my favorite little kick-ass micropress, Yard Dog Press. Acting as Master of Ceremonies will be the aforementioned robinbailey, and having him and Selina there means we can do some serious Space Grunts pimpin'! Also in attendance will be writers R.A. Jones and Michael Vance and artist Keith Birdsong!

What, you say you want to know about "real" guests? Well, I suppose Leonard Nimoy, Avery Brooks, Marina Sirtis, John DeLancie, Cirroc Lofton, Anthony Montgomery, Garret Wang, Corin Nemec, Mira Furlan, Phil Morris, Chase Masterson, and Tony Todd fit the bill rather well. Still, you know you're gonna want to hang out at our table.

If this one's like the 2005 show, we should have a lot of fun. I'm even bringing Michi and the kids down for this one. I know some folks on my f-list are within spitting distance of the con location, so maybe we'll see you there!