This and That

A few little updates from various things Trek:

The second Starfleet Academy book is now titled The Edge, rather than the earlier working title The Competitive Edge. The Simon and Schuster website now also confirms Amazon's recent listings of a third and fourth book in the series in by Rudy Josephs in April and Rick Barba in May next year.

Cross Cult have released an updated version of the cover artwork for their German language edition of A Stitch in Time. Looks like this:

As brought to my attention by Therin of Andor's blog, an Australian company, Wilkinson Publishing, has now started reprinting IDW Star Trek titles for release in the Australian market. They started a couple of weeks ago with TNG: Ghosts and Motion Picture Trilogy omnibuses, and with the first issue of Burden of Knowledge, and have now released the second issue of that series as well. Therin has a comparison of that second issue on his site. And a press release about this new arrangement can be found, here.

UPDATE: Having looked into Wilkinson a bit more, it seems they have release the Ghosts omnibus in hardcover! Nice.

Mark Rademaker has announced his plans for the Voyager Full Circle refit. The plan includes several updates to the hull, new warp nacelles and a new deflector. A full listing can be found on his blog.

And finally, Star Trek Online players can now play as an Excelsior class!

DST: Dilithium Collection

The Art Asylum blog has releases images of the latest two-pack figures from Diamond Select Toys, the Dilithium Collection, each themed on a TOS episode and available now apparently:

Spock and a Romulany-Kirk from "The Enterprise Incident"

Kirk and Spock from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (complete with laser pistols!)

Kirk and the Gorn from "Arena"

More images on the Art Asylum blog.

New STO episodes

Cryptic have announced the details of their weekly Star Trek Online episodes, which star this week end with the first episode in Series 1: The Breen, which is described as follows: "Beginning in late August, Series 1 introduces a fan favorite: The Breen. A longtime enemy of the Klingon Empire, the Breen have grown even more aggressive and have taken particular interest in the planet Defera. It's up to you and your crew to determine what's brought the Breen to Defera and to save the Deferi people."

The three episodes are:

#1: Cold Call
Starfleet and the Klingon Empire both respond to call for aid after the Breen attack the planet Defera.

#2: Out in the Cold
While searching for a lost ship, the crew uncovers a plot to enslave the Deferi people.

#3: Cold Comfort
Breen slavers leave a ship and its crew crippled while they hunt for buried memories among the Deferi.

Here's one picture that accompanied the release, you can see more, and release dates, on the original report:

IDW November

Newsarama have released IDW's solicitations for November, which includes one whole Star Trek comic...

Khan: Ruling in Hell #2

What was once a paradise begins to crumble between Khan’s fingers. Following a planetary cataclysm, Khan must contend with the rapid deterioration of his formerly ripe and bountiful new home on Ceti Alpha V. In the face of dwindling resources and the beginnings of a revolt from within, Khan continues to hold out hope for rescue and the eventual salvation of his people. But for how long?

New prose covers and blurbs (updated)

A load of new covers and blurbs, exciting stuff from Simon and Schuster's online catalogue:

DTI: Watching the Clock

In a universe where history could be erased, two of the most disciplined, obsessive government employees face the existential uncertainty of it all.


In a universe where history could be wiped out at any moment by time warriors from the future, misused relics of ancient races, or accident-prone starships, unflappable Agents Lucsly and Dulmur are the Federation’s unsung anchors in a chaotic universe. But when a series of escalating temporal incursions threatens to open a new front of the history—spanning Temporal Cold War in the twenty-fourth century—Lucsly and Dulmur will need all their investigative skill and unbending determination to keep the present and the future from falling into the kind of chaos they really, really hate. 

Indistinguishable from Magic

In this all-new original novel, the crew of the U.S.S. Challenger, Geordi LaForge, and Scotty find that the past is always very much of the present, and that, as the truism goes, anything sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.


The most talented Starfleet engineers of two generations unite to solve a 200-yearold technological mystery that turns out to be only the beginning of a wider quest. With the support of Guinan and Nog, as well as the crew of the U.S.S. Challenger, Geordi LaForge and Montgomery Scott soon find themselves drawn into a larger, deadlier, and far more personal adventure. Helped by old friends and hindered by old enemies, their investigation will come to threaten everything they hold dear. 

UPDATE: Cover now posted by the author, David A. McIntee, on his blog:

The Delta Anomaly (Check out that nice use of the starfleet delta! Ans also note the lack of a Star Trek in the title.)

And from Cross Cult's Star Trek facebook page, the new Demons and Air and Darkness cover (Which you could mistake for a Voyager novel!), by Arndt Drechsler

UPDATE 2: Finished cover too:

Star Trek Mighty Wallets

StarTrek.com and Dynomighty Design have announced a new range of Star Trek Mighty Wallets, a brand of wallets using a tough paper-feeling material with rich graphics and a clever stitchless expandable origami design. The company are initially offering three designs, available now, two featuring artwork from classic Gold Key Star Trek comics and the third using what appears to be one of the new technical drawings from the forthcoming Haynes Enterprise Manual:

According to the StarTrek.com interview Dynomighty hope to release more designs later in the year, and explore the other Star Trek series. They also point out they would appreciate feedback to determine the nature of future products. More images can be seen on the Dynomighty Design website, and StarTrek.com.

Wizkids games preview

io9 have done a feature on two prototype games shown by Wizkids at the recent Gen Con. They are:

Fleet Captains, in which you command little model ships on missions determined by a deck of cards.

And Expeditions, in which you visit and planet and help it deal with a Klingon problem in a choose your own adventure style gameplay.

Expeditions will be out early next year at $49.99, Fleet Captains will follow later, price not yet known. More details and photos at io9.

Burden of Knowledge #3 preview

StarTrek.com have posted a four page preview from this week's third issue in the Burden of Knowledge series, this one titled "A Matter of Perspective". Here's one page:

 You can see the rest of the very los res preview at StarTrek.com.

Khan: Ruling in Hell preview

Chris Ryall has posted up a preview page from Khan: Ruling in Hell. Looks like this:He also posted up the first photo of the cuddly Khan retail incentive:

Project Full Circle update

Mark Rademaker has posted a couple of updates on his blog, detailing the progress on his project to model the Project Full Circle fleet. First up, the Aventine mark II model has been scraped (just as I was getting used to the new pointer design!), Rademaker is considered giving the two Full Circle Vesta class ships, using rebuilt version of the mark I model, different paint jobs to distinguish them from the Aventine and each other. He is also working on the Merian class, of which there are to be three in fleet, so presumably the three science vessels, like the recently previewed USS Planck.

Rademaker expects the rest of the fleet to progress in the new year after having worked on a refit design for Voyager, updating her escape pods and deflector, giving her new slipstream friendly longer nacelles, and otherwise bringing the design up to date.

Licensing updates

As reported by TrekMovie, CBS announced a bunch of new and products at the Vagascon. They include:

A USS Enterprise pizza cutter, coming in the fall from ThinkGeek, with more products on the way

The next Mondo poster will feature the Borg Queen

QMx are working on making USS Kelvin salt and pepper shakers like those seen in the film!

StarTrek.com will be launching a Starfleet Academy bookstore, with branded products like those found in college shops.

And CBS are still considered if and how they might go about bringing TNG up to HD for bluray release, with the expectation that it will eventually happen.

TNG soundtrack details

TrekMovie has posted details of the recently announced Film Score Monthly TNG soundtrack collection. The featured episodes will include: "Where No One Has Gone Before", "Datalore", "Heart of Glory", "Skin of Evil", "A Matter of Honor", "Q Who?", "Who Watches the Watchers", "The Defector", "The High Ground", "The Offspring", "Brothers", and "Final Mission". Some previously unreleased tracks from "The Best of Both Worlds" will also be on the set, but not the entire score as another company already holds those rights. The two games featured will be "Starfleet Academy" and "Starfleet Command".

Infestation, and hints from Chris Ryall

StarTrek.com have posted an interview with Chris Ryall. It doesn't give us much news, except for hinting at something coming early next year: "Star Trek TOS factors hugely into IDW’s “Infestation,” our big event starting in early 2011"

He also talked about IDW's general approach to Trek, in interesting contrast to Andy Mangels' recent report: "That’s been the goal from the start, even when just working on TOS and TNG properties: to offer something for every era of Trek fans. That’ll always be our ongoing mission, too, to make sure there’s a Trek in every pullbox of any comic fan who wants one, whatever the era."

UPDATE: Been doing a bit of googling, it seems Infestation was announced at the San Diego Comic Con, and is a big event coming next year featuring Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Ghost Busters, CVO (?), and potentially some other series! What sort of event isn't specified, a common foe across realities, infesting realities? Or direct crossover?? Who knows, other than that it "will be in continuity and will have lasting effects within each series". (I hope they talk the Jurassic Park and Doctor Who licensors into this too, I'd love to see Trek crossovers with those two!)

In non-Star Trek related news, it also seems that John Byrne will be doing a three part Jurassic Park series next year!!

Treking in the jungle

TrekMovie have reported on some new Star Trek figures available from Rocket World International, a set of three figures from their Insurgents Wilderness Gruppo line in Star Trek uniforms.
Each figure is limited to only 300, so get them before they're extinct!

Behind the scenes on Ships of the Line

The Drex Files has posted a couple of behind the scenes articles focusing on two images from next year's Ships of the Line calendar, Deg's "High Voltage Paint Scrapper" (featuring the Enterprise doing battle with a D4), and Mark Rademaker's "Enterprise XCV - The Great Experiment" (the ringship). Both articles also include nice high res versions of the images (ringship desktop wallpaper, hello!).

StarTrek.com has posted a preview of the next issue of the Star Trek Magazine, which will include "an interview with Barney Burman, Oscar-winning makeup designer of J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek film; a first-person feature by longtime Star Trek collectibles expert Alec Peters; a preview of Abrams Books’ upcoming coffee table tome Star Trek 365; and looks at both Star Trek: Season Two and Star Trek Live."

StarTrek.com has extracts up from a couple of those articles, have a looksie.

Titles change like Magic

David A. McIntee has announced his 2011 novel Indistinguishable From Magic, which was initially to be titled under the general Star Trek banner, will now be coming out under the Star Trek: The Next Generation branding. CBS having apparently decided that the TNG bias in the featured characters is enough to align it with the series.

Paths of Disharmony cover

Dayton Ward has released the cover for his Typhon Pact novel, Paths of Disharmony, on his blog. It looks like this:Ward also recently posted a status update on his works, which includes several upcoming Star Trek titles.

The Titan comics that never were, and IDW's new focus

Andy Mangels has posted up some interesting and disappointing news on the TrekBBS; after years of hounding IDW to do Titan comics he has finally been informed it won't be happening, and isn't likely to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Mangels has been informed by IDW's Chris Ryall that going forward IDW will be focusing exclusively on tie-ins to the new movie (and possibly classic TOS too), which means there's no room or market for Titan, or even TNG and DS9! This new focus is apparently brought about by IDW struggling to get TNG and DS9 to sell, and slightly disturbingly for fans of the prime reality, it is apparently Paramount's preference to focus on the new reality...

And just to kick you while we're down Mangels' proposed Titan miniseries would have been co-written by Tim Russ (aka Mr Tuvok)!

Looking on the bright side this does mean we should have more new movie reality comics to look forward too, I wonder what IDW have up their sleeves... I also wonder whether the new movie only focus might extend as far as TNG in the form of the Enterprise under Captain Data, as established in the new movie tie-in Countdown (lets hope so!).

You can read Mangels original post, and lament the passing of Titan comics, here.

Huge TNG soundtrack on the way

Film Score Monthly have announced they are planning to release a huge TNG soundtrack collection, with 14 CDs and the complete soundtracks from 40 episodes and two Interplay computer games!

The set will be released in September, with a limited edition of 5000 and a price tag of $149.95.

Prose updates

A couple of updates from Simon and Schuster:

Their online catalogue has been updated with a cover for David R. George III's DS9 Typhon Pact novel, Rough Beasts of Empire.Amazon.com now lists a fourth instalment in the Starfleet Academy young adult series, in paperback and hardcover again, due in May 2011.

Ships of the Line, in motion

Doug Drexler's excellent Drex Files blog has added a new feature, The Drex Files - A Video Addendum, which is being cross posted on startrek.com, featuring behind the scenes featurettes on various Star Trek bits and bobs. The first edition includes a feature on the Sphinx shuttle, a look at the construction of the NX-01's engineering room, an interview with Barbara Luna, and animated versions of various Ships of the Line images (which are insanely cool).

Check them out on Startrek.com, or in HD at the Drex Files.