Reaction – “The wait is over”

OK, Star Trek instant reaction:

Bloody hell, that was good.

Near-instant reaction (i.e. having returned home afterwards) – with SPOILERS – below the cut.

Fiddling about in Photoshop

I occasionally mess around with Photoshop – I would classify myself as “crap at it”, but for my complete lack of skills, I am quite pleased with what I manage to pull together sometimes.

For example, ages ago, I tried to mock up a teaser poster for the new Star Trek film, and put things like the novelization and the soundtrack on the credits. With the official announcement of the book, I went back to fix it, and then ended up creating another one using MadMan’s brilliant from-scratch rendering of the new-Ent. And here they are (click to enlarge, obviously):

(The first one, of course, uses Gabriel Koerner’s “reimagined” Ent).

I know they’re nowhere near as good as this, but I quite like them.

Suiting up…

You know, I’ve always wanted to own a Star Trek uniform.

I’m quite proud of the fact that I happen to own a screen-original uniform from season 2 of seaQuest DSV. But the Trek uniform has long eluded me. Back in the mid 90s, Rubies Costumes and Warp One were the people producing the replica uniforms. I was too young to be able to afford one back then, and I’ve always seemed to miss the command division uniforms on eBay since. Of course, a screen-original uniform would be far too expensive, as has been seen from the It’s A Wrap! auctions over the last couple of years.

Anyway, the point of this post was to note that Rubies now has the license to produce uniforms based on the new Star Trek movie, and they’re available to preorder in the UK already. And they look pretty good. There are two versions available: “Deluxe” (which makes little sense, as it’s the basic version) and “Grand Heritage”. Now, the Grand Heritage is a mite too pricey for my liking (£80), but the Deluxe (£40) just might be worth the purchase. I’ll have to see them in better detail first, though.

They can be preordered from Forbidden Planet here, with a release date of 31st July. Pictures below.

Deluxe Command uniform

Grand Heritage Command uniform

Quiet as the grave…

Sorry about the temporary loss of communication, folks.

My modem has malfunctioned, and is only working very intermittently. A replacement is on its way (although they were supposed to have sent it over a week ago) which will hopefully get me back on the writing bandwagon. Things that are in the pipeline:

• Review of WALL-E (published)
• Review of Star Trek: Myriad Universes – Infinity’s Prism (published)
• Review of Greater than the Sum (published)
• Speculation on Star Trek: Destiny (published)
• Possibly a reappraisal of Dr. Horrible Act Three (the songs are growing on me, I just need to rewatch the act itself)

Some of these have been on the backburner for a little while, so it may take some time to get back the train of thought I had when I was originally writing them.

In the 23rd Century…

In which our hero steps bravely into the light, and opens himself to public scrutiny…

So, an introductory post.

This blog is designed to hold my opinions on a wide range of subjects related to various fandoms – primarly Star Trek, but also comic books, Doctor Who, and whatever else comes into my head. I may also just babble on random subjects – it all depends.

I decided to create a separate blog for this, rather than using my LiveJournal account, simply because I felt that my LJ was more of a personal diary, and this was something different. I may crosspost posts that I make here to there anyway, but people who don’t want to read my moaning about life therefore don’t have to…

The idea came to me in the bath – as ideas so often do – and I went ahead with it, rather than waiting a bit, and forgetting I ever had the idea – as so often happens.

You may notice that I like to write in a very odd way – rather formal-casual, to steal a term from the world of fashion. I apologise in advance if my turn of phrase occasionally jars… (See?)

So now… let us begin.