Search Results for: george takei

Company Man

Posted on by theLogBook.com

HeroesThe Past: 15 years ago, Noah Bennet joined the Company and went undercover at the Primatech Paper plant in Odessa, Texas. He was assigned a partner, a Englishman named Claude who had the power to turn invisible. He was also given a baby, rescued from the burned-down home of a woman with pyrokinetic abilities, and instructions by his superior, Mr. Nakamura: if the child, the product of two parents with special abilities, manifests her own powers, the Company expects Bennet to turn her over to them for immediate study. Upon learning that Claude has been sheltering others with special powers rather than handing them over, the Company orders Bennet to execute his partner. After Claude is shot twice, he vanishes, and Bennet assumes he’s dead.

The Present: Originally setting out to comb Bennet’s home for evidence, Ted Sprague – with Parkman in tow – sees Bennet himself pull into the driveway, with his entire family. A break-in to find incriminating information becomes a hostage situation. Able to read Claire’s thoughts and discover her self-healing ability, Parkman shoots her to prove his ruthlessness. Sprague keeps Bennet’s wife and son hostage at the house while Parkman follows Bennet to the paper plant. Worried about Sprague’s ability to keep his nuclear temper down, Parkman helps Bennet, but even when they return to the house with the evidence, it may not be enough to satisfy Sprague. And if he goes nuclear, Claire may have to demonstrate her ability – with the Company watching closely – to save the day.

Order the DVDswritten by Bryan Fuller
directed by Allan Arkush
music by Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman / vocals by Shenkar

Guest Cast: Eric Roberts (Thompson), Ashley Crow (Sandra Bennet), Matthew John Armstrong (Ted Sprague), Missy Peregrym (Candice Wilmer), Jimmy Jean-Louis (The Haitian), George Takei (Kaito Nakamura), Christopher Eccleston (Claude)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

World Enough And Time

Posted on by theLogBook.com

Star Trek: Phase II

This is an episode of a fan-made series whose storyline may be invalidated by later official studio productions.

Stardate 6283.4: A distress call takes the Enterprise into the Neutral Zone, where they see a helpless cargo ship destroyed by Romulan Birds of Prey using a new weapon not seen before by the Federation. After it destroys that ship, however, the weapon backfires, enveloping everything nearby in an energy field, including the Enterprise. Sulu and exo-tech expert Lt. Chandris take a shuttlecraft to the wreckage of the lead Romulan ship to learn more about the weapon, but waves of instability wreak havoc with the ship’s structure, tearing it apart and leaving only seconds before the warp core breaches. Sulu and Chandris run back to find their shuttle has been lost, and when Sulu calls the Enterprise for an emergency transport, he’s literally a different man when he returns: he has aged over 30 years, and Chandris doesn’t rematerialize at all. Sulu explains that a rift led them to safety on a habitable world in another dimension, and they spent that time settling down and starting a family. Sulu introduces his crewmates to his daughter, Alana, whose transporter pattern Scotty can barely lock onto. The only way to keep her molecules from scattering is to create a field that stabilizes her pattern. Every time Kirk orders the Enterprise to try to break away from the distortion generated by the Romulans’ weapon, Alana starts to fade out of existence. With mere hours before the distortion destabilizes the space within it enough to destroy the Enterprise, Sulu must try to recover his memory of how to navigate a ship through the distortion – with the full knowledge that escape may condemn his daughter to death.

Watch Itwritten by Michael Reaves & Marc Scott Zicree
directed by Marc Scott Zicree
music by Alan Derian

Cast: James Cawley (Captain Kirk), Jeffery Scott (Mr. Spock), John Kelley (Dr. McCoy), George Takei (Sulu), Grace Lee Whitney (Commander Janice Rand), Christina Moses (Alana), John Lim (Lt. Cmdr. Sulu), Andy Bray (Lt. Chekov), Julienne Irons (Lt. Uhura), Charles Root (Scotty), Ron Boyd (DeSalle), Lia Johnson (Dr. Chandris), Mimi Chong (Demora Sulu), Natasha Soudek (Lt. Soudek), Mallory Reaves (Ensign Mallory), Kaley Pusateri (Sulu Granddaughter), Kurt Carley (Stunt Guard #1), Brian Holloway (Stunt Guard #2), Cali Ross (Ensign Juvenia), Cynthia Wilber (Lt. Wyndham), Kitty Kavey (Lt. Turkel), Katrina Kernodle (Yeoman), Katia Mangani (Dead Romulan #1), R.M. Martin (Dead Romulan #2), Don Balderamos (Dead Romulan #3), Steve Perry (voice of Pilot), Majel Barrett Roddenberry (Computer Voice)

Notes: The costumes for Sulu and his daughter were designed by Star Wars prequel art director Iain McCaig, along with his own daughter, Mishi McCaig. Fencing coach Tom Morga is also a stuntman who has featured in past Star Trek adventures, including Star Trek VI, Deep Space Nine and Enterprise. Michael Okuda is credited with “graphics” for this episode.

Review: The second New Voyages episode in a row to feature a crew member’s miraculous aging and the return of the original actor, World Enough And Time thrills me and bugs me in equal measure. It’s actually a much more effective story, in many places, than To Serve All My Days (the installment which brough back Walter Koenig as Chekov) – there’s some real emotional resonance here, rather than an odd conversation between the character’s old and young incarnations. It certainly doesn’t hurt that George Takei is simply magnificent as Sulu, giving the character more depth than his appearances in the original series and all of the original movies ever allowed. Helping matters considerably is that he’s not the only one – Christina Moses, as Sulu’s daughter from another dimension, is outstanding. Between these two, everyone else has to bring their “A” game to the table, especially James Cawley. If nothing else, these “special guest” episodes have helped to raise the acting bar on New Voyages.

Defenders of Peace

Posted on by Philip R. Frey

The Clone WarsWhile the Jedi and clones recuperate on the planet Maridun among the Lurmen, a Separatist ship lands.  It is commanded by General Lok Durd, who declares Maridun a Separatist colony and intends to use the planet as a testing ground for a massive new weapon.  With the pacifist Lurmen seemingly unwilling to help, the Jedi must find a way to stop General Durd’s evil plans.

written by Bill Canterbury
directed by Steward Lee
music by Kevin Kiner / original Star Wars themes by John Williams

Cast: Dee Bradley Baker (Commander Bly / Captain Rex), Matt Lanter (Anakin Skywalker), Alec Medlock (Wag Too), George Coe (Tee Watt Kaa), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), Jennifer Hale(Aayla Secura), George Takei(General Lok Durd), Matthew Wood (Battle Droids), David Acord(Aqualish technician), Tom Kane (Narrator)

LogBook entry by Philip R. Frey

Ephraim And DOT

Posted on by theLogBook.com

Star Trek: Short TreksA member of the tardigrade species that travels the mycelial network is looking for a place to lay her eggs when a chance collision suddenly turns the starship Enterprise into her next nest. This doesn’t sit well with one of the ship’s DOT7 maintenance robots, more concerned with keeping the ship free of any infestations than with providing a safe nesting ground. After the tardigrade lays her eggs in engineering, she is forced out of the ship by the DOT7, and then uses her own means to try to catch up with the ship at various points in its future. But little does she know that the Enterprise, still carrying her slow-incubating eggs, has a date with destiny at a nameless world in the Mutara Sector…

Order DVDsStream this episode via Amazonwritten by Chris Silvestri & Anthony Maranville
directed by Michael Giacchino
music by Michael Giacchino

Voice Cast: Kirk Thatcher (Narrator), Jenette Goldstein (Enterprise Computer)

Voice Cast appearing in footage from classic Star Trek episodes: William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Ricardo Montalban (Khan), George Takei (Sulu)

Short TreksNotes: Ephraim spent several years trying to catch up with the Enterprise, ranging from her arrival (apparently during the events of 1967’s Space Seed) through a rapid-fire succession of the original series’ greatest hits, including The Trouble With Tribbles, The Naked Time, Who Mourns For Adonis?, The Doomsday Machine, The Tholian Web, The Savage Curtain, Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. These events sometimes appear in a different order from their original broadcast, but as stardates were seldom consecutive (or, indeed, really meaningful) in the original series, there’s some wiggle room for interpretation there. (How Scotty’s engineering crew missed a nest of large tardigrade eggs for years – including throughout the Enterprise‘s refit between the end of the original series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture – is left for the viewer to imagine. There’s also an error in shots of the movie-era Enterprise with the registry Short Treksnumber NCC-1701-A – a ship that didn’t exist until Star Trek IV.) This is the second directorial credit for Michael Giacchino, better known as a composer with dozens of high-profile credits, including Rogue One and the trio of Chris Pine-led Star Trek movies between 2009 and 2016. The DOT7 repair robots were established in the Star Trek: Discovery episode Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2. Kirk Thatcher, one of the producers of Star Trek IV, also appeared in that movie as the boom-box punk on the bus; Jenette Goldstein has also made an on-screen appearance before as a member of the Enterprise-B crew in Star Trek: Generations.

Along with another animated Short Trek, The Girl Who Made The Stars, released on the same day, Ephraim And DOT is the first animated Star Trek adventure produced by either CBS or Paramount since the early 1970s animated series.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

In A Mirror Darkly Part II

Posted on by theLogBook.com

Star Trek: EnterpriseArcher’s gambit to salvage a ship from a hundred years in the future works as he watches the destruction of the Enterprise from the bridge of the U.S.S. Defiant. Liberating the Defiant from the clutches of the Tholians is no easy matter, however, and even once the ship is free from their asteroid salvage yard, Archer discovers an unwelcome passenger aboard. With the most advanced ship in the fleet, Archer experiences delusions of grandeur and power, but after hearing the service record of the Captain Archer who lived in the alternate universe from which the Defiant came, he begins to experience other delusions as well. The Empire’s top brass proves incapable of removing Archer or his mighty new ship, and an uprising among the enslaved Vulcans proves no more effective. But Hoshi, lusting for a power beyond what she can achieve as the “captain’s woman,” may just succeed where Archer’s other opponents have failed…

Order DVDsteleplay by Michael Sussman
story by Manny Coto
directed by Marvin V. Rush
music by Dennis McCarthy & Kevin Kiner

Guest Cast: Gary Graham (Soval), Gregory Itzin (Admiral Black), Derek Magyar (Kelby), John Mahon (Admiral Gardner), Pat Healy (Alien), Majel Barrett (Computer voice)

Notes: This episode marked the first appearance of the Gorn since the original Star Trek episode Arena; there were some notable physical differences, with some subtle touches lost in the rubber suit-to-CGI transition, but those can probably be chalked up to evolutionary differences between “our” Star Trek universe and the Mirror universe. The Defiant’s service records of the 22nd century Enterprise crew note that Archer was considered that century’s pioneering explorer and has even had planets named after him (possibly including Archer IV from Yesterday’s Enterprise), and also credits Hoshi Sato, in her late 30s, with the development of the Linguacode translation matrix first mentioned in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Guest star Gregory Itzin appeared with Scott Bakula once before in a 1993 episode of Quantum Leap; he has also appeared in Max Headroom, twice (as different characters) on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and in the Critical Care episode of Star Trek: Voyager. He also appeared alongside classic Trek alumnus George “Sulu” Takei in the TV movie DC 9/11: Time Of Crisis, in which Itzin portrayed Attorney General John Ashcroft to Takei’s Norman Mineta.

LogBook entry by Earl Green