At Comic-Con, Guests Talk Trek Importance, Future

Star Trek actors, novelists, artists and merchants all contributed to the Star Trek revival kicked off at San Diego Comic-Con the week before last with the release of the first Star Trek XI teaser poster and much discussion of the future of the franchise in books, comics and toys.

StarTrek.com has posted a round-up of Star Trek news from the convention, including a picture of the ad from Daily Variety featuring drawings of Star Trek characters through previous eras. As previously reported, Paula Block declared that reports of Star Trek's death had been greatly exaggerated. "There was a period between the end of the Original Series and the birth of the first movie when nobody except the people who loved Star Trek knew that Star Trek was still alive," she pointed out. "We're in a period like that...the people at CBS are very excited to have inherited the franchise, and they want to do a lot with it."

Block said that there were behind-the-scenes discussions that she was not at liberty to discuss until she knew whether they would come to fruition, ranging from "really cool new products to things that you can actually go watch, but I can't tell you more than that." CBS Consumer Products' John Van Citters mentioned the new Star Trek magazine launching in the U.S. along with a brand new fan club as some of the things fans have to look forward to.

In the exhibit hall, in addition to the booth where Paramount distributed the miniature teaser posters for the upcoming movie, Christie's displayed some of the items that will be auctioned in October, with Michael and Denise Okuda present to discuss the importance of the props and costumes. There were also booths where fans could get a glimpse of Diamond Select's action figures, upcoming Star Trek games like Legacy, Pocket Books' Star Trek novels and Lightspeed Fine Arts Inc.'s artwork, offered at times with unscheduled autograph appearances by convention guests such as Robert Picardo (The Doctor), Garrett Wang (Kim), Connor Trinneer (Tucker) and Dominic Keating (Reed).

Featured convention guest Walter Koenig (Chekov) spoke about his appearance on the fan series Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. He said he appreciated these new opportunities "to make the character come alive" and have an opportunity for Chekov "to express how he felt about things." He also talked about his co-stars, saying, "We all know that several of us had trouble with Mr. Shatner, but God bless him he must be doing something right because he keeps landing on his feet. And I think he's marvelous in Boston Legal."

Another convention guest, Eugene Roddenberry Jr., spoke at a panel on Star Trek as a cultural phenomenon, where the show's relevance as an artifact of the 1960s and the impact it had on futurists was discussed. Roddenberry also had a panel about his documentary Trek Nation, which he revealed would include an interview with Star Wars creator George Lucas.

For more on Star Trek's presence at Comic-Con, see the original article here.

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