Then, in 1977 I saw Star Wars and most of my interstellar travels involved the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon rather than the bridge of the Enterprise. I did though pay close attention to The Motion Picture when it came out, and later The Wrath of Khan. I even got the Dinky toys die-cast 1701 to woosh around any time I wanted, and periodically hyperspace had to make way for Warp Speed.

Then, Christmas of 1983 my Dad — much to my Mom’s chagrin — continued to further his over-smart, under-sized son’s development by buying me the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set in the red box. I found l really liked role-playing and saw ads in the included flyers for TSR’s Star Frontiers. As much as slaying orcs was cool, rolling the dice to ply the spaceways would be better, so I caught a ride to my local game shop with Mom to look for that. (She was convinced D&D would make me a Satan worshipper, so the jump to SF RPGs was highly encouraged.) I did not find Star Frontiers that day though; what I did find was FASA’s Star Trek: The Role Playing Game. With but a single Starfleet character generation, my love for the universe was reignited and despite Lucas’ best efforts I was once more in the hands of the Great Bird of the Galaxy.

Keep in mind we were still in kind of a Medieval Age of fandom. Sure, if you were near a city there were conventions, but if you were thirty minutes south of Sierra Vista, Arizona — itself at the time only a town of 30,000 or so — no one was throwing conventions or making clubs etc. My fandom came from scouring thrift and used bookstores to find old issues of Starlog, the rest of the Blish books, and finally little collections called Best of Trek.

Trek: The Magazine for Star Trek Fans started out as your typical fanzine and ended up running for nearly 20 years. A lot of the shared fan speculation now known as “fanon” came from articles in Trek and eventually its notoriety became great enough for the editors, G.B. Love and Walter Irwin, to start collecting well regarded articles into paperback book collections. As my own fandom grew in the years leading up to the debut of Star Trek: The Next Generation the Best of Trek volumes helped me fill in gaps left by the Original Series. They discussed things that seemed odd about Classic Trek and its two — then three — movies and made them work.

See, here is a dirty secret we tend to forget these days: Classic Trek was not perfect.

I love Classic Trek like I love my wife, kids, and dogs combined, but there are flaws. That’s okay though, because back in those days of fandom we didn’t sit around complaining about continuity fails on the part of Trek writers. We figured out how they weren’t failures. When Spock says in Classic Trek that Vulcan has no moon, but The Motion Picture shows one, an article in Trek magazine posited Vulcan’s sister planet of T’Khut. When “Turnabout Intruder” says women cannot command starships, but The Voyage Home has a woman in command of the Saratoga, Trek talked about why Janice Lester’s belief was part of her madness. We loved Star Trek so much we wouldn’t let it be wrong.

I realize I am nearly eight hundred words into this and haven’t started my argument, but I wanted to establish two things: I am a Trekkie (and I neither balk nor shy away from said moniker) from way back, and those things we love that entertain us deserve our protection rather than our derision. Now, let’s talk about JJ Abrams.

I saw the 2009 Star Trek film with one of my dearest friends, also a Classic Trek fan from way back. We went in prepared to hate the film. How dare this upstart Abrams — who damn near ruined Superman with a horrible script a few years earlier — think he can remake our beloved show? Arms crossed, I scowled through the Bad Robot stinger and then, well, I fell madly in love with this film. Yes, it was bigger, louder, and faster than the Treks we were used to, but the characters were there; more importantly the adventure so ingrained in Classic Trek, and perhaps lost in subsequent sequels, was also there. Even some of that fanon or pseudo-canon from the old days was there. A nearly exact update of the teasing Vulcan children from the Animated Series was there. The Katric Ark and Vulcan Hall of Ancient Thought from the novelization of The Search for Spock were there. We even, finally, got an actual first name for Nyota Uhura. That’s right; no previous canon version of Trek had given us that.

Yet, I saw some things that made me go “grrrr” from the continuity perspective as well: The Enterprise launched in 2258 and it’s now bigger than the 1701E from a century later? The Kelvin has a crew of 800? Chekov is 17 when he was born in the Prime universe only 13 years earlier? Engineering looks like a brewery?

Honestly a few of these changes happen because of the chosen visual style. The Narada is a “simple mining ship” but looks like a nightmarish behemoth easily dispatching older warships. It looks that way so the bad guy is scary. Enterprise was originally going to be about the same size as its classic counterpart, but the physical shuttle set was much larger than the classic shuttle and therefore led to a scale increase in the CGI model. That’s nothing new to Star Trek however. Fanon found it necessary to create three different models of the Klingon Bird of Prey, identical in appearance but completely different in size, to account for different directors in episodes or films choosing to film the single model at different scales. In First Contact the Defiant is reduced in scale to appear tiny next to the Enterprise E during the Borg battle. I won’t even discuss how Voyager’s Delta Flyer would not fit in an Intrepid Class shuttle bay. I argue though that rather than just ignore some stylistic changes there’s a better option: go old school, and give some Trek Magazine like explanations.

How does the Kelvin, which should be unaffected by changes until the arrival of the Narada, have 800 people on board? Don’t assume it’s a standard fleet patrol. It’s assigned to colony duty. A vessel would drop a colony, ferry supplies and then likely remain assigned to an area of space to protect said colony. When we catch up with the Kelvin it is about to drop its first group of colonists and equipment and then head back to Earth. The Kirks plan to stay on Earth for the birth of their second son, but the Narada attack sends her into labor early. (That may not be necessary to resolve the story change; James Kirk never says he was BORN in Iowa, only from there. I’m from Arizona, wasn’t born there.) What colony could the Kelvin be attached to? Obviously it was Tarsus IV. We know Jim Kirk is living on that failed colony in the Prime Universe when he is 12. Why? Because his family, still assigned to the Kelvin, will be patrolling that sector and he is a Starfleet brat. This explains the enormous compliment on the Kelvin, and ties nicely to canon on the original series.

So why is the 1701 suddenly so damn big? I see two logical reasons. Remember in the canon universe, no one really knows in 2233 what a Romulan looks like. The Kelvin gets Romulan language transmissions from the Narada, establishing this doomsday vessel has come from one of Earth’s oldest enemies. No one in the Fleet recognizes the Narada has come from the future until 2258, which means Starfleet has to assume the Romulans may have an entire fleet of five-mile long killer ships massing on the far side of the Neutral Zone. The Abrams-verse Starfleet would have a completely different attitude from the Prime Universe. They are also going to need more tech. Luckily, 800 (or slightly less) people survive the Kelvin with all of that sensor telemetry. Retroengineering that data takes some time, so rather than the 289 meter 1701 rolling off the assembly line in 2245, the future enhanced version takes until 2258 to complete. The Narada data would change all Fleet tech on some level, as would a stronger focus on weapons technology. Hence, everything from transporters to torpedoes to phasers are different. (Some of the spoilers I have seen for Star Trek Into Darkness would indicate this trend continues.)

How about the brewery? Not my favorite part, but it is there. The Narada itself is the source of this particular switch. We see she is a fairly unfinished looking beast, but aspects of that design are going to be driven by the tech. Some of those aspects will make it into the tech derived from those scans, hence an unfinished looking Starfleet engineering section. The Narada itself? A killing machine dubbed “simple mining vessel”? I know we have the explanation in the Countdown comics of Borg technology on top of what was once a mining ship. However, I think that was Kurtzman and Orci bravely doing what I am doing here; offering in universe explanations to stylistic decisions, and I respect that. Let me say though, I don’t think you need it in this case. The Narada is a mining ship, but what does it mine? Likely asteroids: Huge chunks of planetary matter. Of course it had giant grabby arms on a five-mile long frame; it needs to hold enormous space rocks in place. It has a laser capable of drilling through a planet’s entire crust. It has missiles capable of breaking big planetoids into little rocks. This thing really would need Doomsday Machine like capabilities depending on its mission. The interior simply proves that Romulans have no OSHA. Otherwise, more handrails I think.

And Pavel Chekov? The Star Trek Chronology by Mike and Denise Okuda give Chekov’s birthday in 2245 based on the episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” in which Pavel is 22 years old. 2245 is extrapolated from the idea that season two of the Original Series took place in 2267. Here is a simple fact though: nearly every date in the Chronology for Classic Trek history is supposition based on Data placing the first season of The Next Generation in 2363 in the episode “The Neutral Zone.” When Roddenberry first created TNG he put it 79 years after The Voyage Home (roughly 2284). From there we only have generalizations on when things were supposed to have happened. The Wrath of Khan was likely about a year prior to The Voyage Home. In that film Kirk states “a man out there I haven’t seen in 15 years is trying to kill me.” That would put “Space Seed” from the first season of Classic Star Trek in 2269. My point is not to show how wrong everything is, and my respect for the works done by the Okudas to assemble their encyclopedia and chronology is profound. Many of these dates are nebulous however, and it would be no great stretch to place the original five year mission at least a hundred years before TNG. Just moving the first season to 2263 makes Chekov 22 in 2264 and brings us within 18 months of the 2258 date for the modern film.

That brings me to my final point. I railed against Star Trek: Enterprise for its seeming continuity violations even in episodes I found entertaining. What should my focus as a fan be? Yes, consistency in character and story telling is important, but any narrative when it gets long enough begins to have holes: Star Trek, comic book histories, Doctor Who, real history. All of these long narratives have details that don’t jive with other details. We as fans can decide we hate something pretty entertaining because it doesn’t line up with our own interpretation of previous stories, or we can try to figure out ways it does. That’s why Trek Magazine existed. That’s why Marvel handed out “no prizes.” That’s why we still mourn the Ponds even though the Statue of Liberty can’t possibly be a Weeping Angel because it’s made out of copper and not stone. Star Trek has been around long enough to tell some pretty diverse stories in some pretty diverse ways. Let’s give people who are trying to mold stories out of the existing eight-hundred hours of Trek the benefit of the doubt for trying to actually entertain us. I am not saying you have to like Abrams’ vision, but it is Trek and worth at least a fair comparison with other versions. As a long time fan I will be first in line when Star Trek Into Darkness opens, hoping to revisit new takes on old friends and see some great new Star Trek.

You better not screw it up, JJ.

UPCOMING INVESTIGATIONS

· Why does gas cost so much? Can we use science to make fuel for free?

· Is modern technology affecting our hearing?

· Are digital storage formats safe? What does it take to wipe computer memory?

· How do architects control the flow of crowds?

· What are the health risks of wireless signals? Is wire-free electricity possible?

· Do we really need to drink eight glasses of water a day?

· How do hormones and blood sugar affect a person’s energy and mood?

· What is behind our special relationship with dogs? Can they be good for your health?

· Why haven’t we cured cancer yet?

THE TEAM

Dallas Campbell (@DallasCampbell)
Dallas’ mantra is that you don’t need to be a scientist to be in love with science. Before Bang Goes the Theory he investigated the scientific world from a layman’s point of view in Dallas in Wonderland and The Gadget Show, among others. The former saw him having a crack at breaking the men’s 100m record and journeying to the center of the Earth.

Liz Bonnin (@LizBonnin)
Liz has a degree in biochemistry from Trinity College, Dublin, and more recently returned to academia to study for a masters degree in wild animal biology and conservation. She now works for conservation programs at the Zoological Society of London, helping snow leopards and tigers. Liz has presented Top of the Pops, Brat Camp Unseen, RI:SE and Science Friction, covering topics such as nuclear power, stem cell research and obesity.

Jem Stansfield
Jem has a degree in aeronautics and a qualification in welding. He creates special effects for movies like Lost in Space and Van Helsing, and produces exhibits for the Science Museum and Royal Observatory. He’s even worked with Wallace and Gromit. Jem has won a New Scientist prize for boots that walk on water. Before Bang Goes the Theory, he brought his hands-on approach to science and technology on UK programs Scrapheap Challenge, Men in White, Science Shack and Home on their Own.

Dr. Yan Wong (@DrYanWong)
As an undergraduate at Oxford, Yan studied under celebrated scientist Richard Dawkins and later undertook research for Dawkins on the evolutionary relationships between major forms of life. One result of their collaboration was a book, The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. Yan has a PhD in computational and mathematical modeling of self-incompatibility systems in plants and has lectured in evolutionary biology at Leeds University.

EPISODE SYNOPSES

Episode One
The team investigates why gas costs so much, and whether we can use science to make fuel for free. Liz experiences life on an oil rig, and Jem and Dallas compete to make their own DIY fuel alternatives. Episode One premieres June 4, 9:00pm ET/PT.

Episode Two
The team asks whether modern life is damaging our ears. Dallas explores how safety-conscious scientists are putting the noise back into driving and Liz learns to like the sound of being sick. Episode Two premieres June 4, 9:40pm ET/PT.

Episode Three
Liz looks at the safety of digital storage formats, and whether the Cloud is the answer to all of our problems. Dallas and Jem see what it takes to properly wipe your computer memory, and presenter Maggie Philbin investigates how hackers can access smartphones. Episode Three premieres June 4, 10:20pm ET/PT.

Episode Four
Dallas finds out how crowds can cooperate subconsciously, Liz learns how architects control the flow of crowds, and Jem meets scientists trying to understand how crush injuries occur. Episode Four premieres June 11, 9:00pm ET/PT.

Episode Five
26 years after his first report on the issue, presenter Howard Stableford brings us up to date on the health risks of wireless signals. Meanwhile, Jem explores wire-free electricity, and Liz finds out how mobile phone signals could protect us. Episode Five premieres June 11, 9:40pm ET/PT.

Episode Six
Jem dreams of flying on a homemade airplane, while Liz explores how hormones and blood sugar affect our energy and mood, and Dallas asks if we really need to drink eight glasses of water a day. Episode Six premieres June 11, 10:20pm ET/PT.

Episode Seven
The team looks at travel nightmares. Liz investigates what causes traffic jams, whether lane switching works, and how to beat travel sickness, while Jem heads for his workshop to build his own solution to traffic jams: a homemade airplane. Episode Seven premieres June 18, 9:00pm ET/PT.

Episode Eight
What is behind our special relationship with dogs? Liz visits researchers who are comparing dogs to wolves to see the effects of domestication, and presenter Philippa Forrester takes her pet to a lab to discover how dogs can be good for your health. Episode Eight premieres June 18, 9:40pm ET/PT.

Episode Nine
Jem makes his own diamond, and then proves that they aren’t forever. Yan explains the science of popcorn, while Dallas investigates why we haven’t cured cancer yet, and meets the team that hopes to change that. Episode Nine premieres June 18, 10:20pm ET/PT.

Episode Ten
Liz hits the beach with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to experience the power of rip currents, Yan attempts to demonstrate evolution by drawing a couple of lines, and Jem is back in the workshop, turning everyday scrap into gold. Episode Ten premieres June 25, 9:00pm ET/PT.

Episode Eleven
Jem witnesses the awesome power of rockets with the Bloodhound land speed record project, Yan re-enacts an Ancient Greek experiment to measure the earth’s circumference with a couple of sticks, and Dallas goes in search of a robot to call his own. Episode Eleven premieres June 25, 9:40pm ET/PT.

Episode Twelve
Liz investigates new stem-cell research that could change the face of organ transplant surgery, Yan tries out the Nocebo effect (the placebo effect’s evil twin), and at a memory boot camp Dallas discovers how to remember where he left his keys. Episode Twelve premieres June 25, 10:20pm ET/PT.

Returning June 23 at 10:00 PM, BBC AMERICA’S highest rated original drama series, COPPER, blasts into action with the first trailer from the upcoming season. With Donal Logue (Sons of Anarchy, Terriers), Alfre Woodard (Twelve Years a Slave, Steel Magnolias) and guest stars, Eamonn Walker, Lee Tergesen and Andrew Howard joining Tom Weston-Jones, Franka Potente and Ato Essandoh this season, prepare to re-enter the city that has no limits.

The eight part series is from Executive Producer Michael Bay and is currently being shot on location in Cape Town, South Africa.

Check out the official synopsis of Black Sails from STARZ and watch the teaser videos; full screen and volume up. I can’t wait.

The pirate adventure centers on the tales of Captain Flint (Toby Stephens) and his men and takes place twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island.” Flint, the most brilliant and most feared pirate captain of his day, takes on a fast-talking young addition to his crew who goes by the name John Silver (Luke Arnold). Threatened with extinction on all sides, they fight for the survival of New Providence Island, the most notorious criminal haven of its day – a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers, a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality.

The series also stars Zach McGowan (Shameless) as rival Captain Charles Vane; Toby Schmitz as Rackham, Vane’s right hand; Hannah New as Eleanor Guthrie, a determined young woman who runs the smuggling operation on New Providence; Jessica Parker Kennedy as Max, a tortured young prostitute who sees the dark side of New Providence; Clara Paget as the beautiful but cold-blooded Anne Bonny and Tom Hopper (Merlin) as Billy Bones, boatswain of Flint’s ship.

Black Sails is executive produced by Michael Bay (Transformers, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) and his Platinum Dunes partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, producers on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and Nightmare on Elm Street (2009). The series was created by showrunner and executive producer Jon Steinberg (creator Jericho, Human Target) and co-executive producer Robert Levine (Touch).

Startling new mysteries and secrets are in the works as Syfy’s hit series Haven goes into production today, May 8, on an all-new 13 episode Season 4 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

When Haven premieres this October, Colin Ferguson (Eureka) returns to Syfy playing William, a handsome mysterious stranger, whose secret agenda leads him to Audrey (Emily Rose).

Season 4 of Haven picks up six months after the devastating events of the Season 3 cliffhanger in which the town was pummeled by a violent meteor storm. Audrey and Duke (Eric Balfour) vanished into thin air leaving an injured Nathan (Lucas Bryant) marooned in Haven.

Ferguson recently starred as the lovable Sherriff Jack Carter on the long-running hit Syfy series Eureka. Ferguson was also a producer on the series and directed several episodes. Ferguson’s many feature film credits include Because I Said So, Rowing Through and The Opposite of Sex. He has also starred in a number of movies for television and was a regular on the NBC remake of the hit British comedy series Coupling and the sitcom Then Came You. His many guest-starring roles include CSI, Malcolm in the Middle, Crossing Jordan and Becker.

Haven, based on the novella, The Colorado Kid, from renowned author Stephen King, follows former FBI agent Audrey Parker, who becomes a cop in the small town of Haven, Maine, and soon discovers the town’s many secrets – which also hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of her lost past.

From leading independent studio Entertainment One (eOne), Haven is co-commissioned by Shaw Media in Canada and globally via Universal Networks International (UNI).

Shane Black faced a daunting task. Not only did he inherit a well-established franchise, but Iron Man 3 would also be the first Marvel film since the insanely successful Avengers film. I’m sure many folks have been wondering if he would be able to deliver a sequel that was not only better than it’s predecessors, but that could also kickstart Marvel’s Cinematic Phase 2 series into high gear. Two years ago I wrote an article on the reasons why Shane Black was the perfect director to take over Iron Man from Jon Favreau. You can read that here. Now the world can see for itself as Iron Man 3 has hit theaters. So, the question remains, how did Shane Black do? Pretty exceptionally, as it turns out.

Obviously, the first two Favreau-directed Iron Man films had a very specific tone and rhythm to them. Black deftly handles keeping the feel of the first two while also bringing his sensibilities into play. He wisely is able to forego any sort of ego in order to recognize what makes a great Iron Man film. While Favreau leaned more towards improvisational dialogue it’s clear that, while some of that remains, this time it was more tightly scripted. Honestly, I think the film is better for it as I felt the second film almost went to far with the loose talk. The banter here feels sharper and less rehearsal-ish, if that makes any sense. Basically, we just got our definitive Iron Man film, one that doesn’t feel out of place in line with the other two and gives us a shining bookend to the first.

As for the story, the film opens thirteen years ago, literally at the very end of the millennium. Amidst the revelry we see a familiar face and meet a couple of new ones. The familiar person plays nicely into the first film, while the other two show up later in the present day. After the flashback, we arrive in 2013, to find a broken Tony Stark, basically going through PTSD due to the events of Avengers. He can’t sleep and he’s building and refining new suits of armor at an alarming rate. Tony is having frequent panic attacks and can’t shake his near-death experience through a wormhole. He is obsessed with protecting those closest to him, namely Pepper Potts, but his very actions seems to be driving everyone away. At the same time, the Mandarin has made his presence known on an international scale with a series of bombings using an unknown incendiary device and directly threatening the US President. When the Terrorist makes it personal with Stark, the Industrialist finds himself more lost and alone than he thought could be possible. Heavy metal super-heroics ensue and I leave the resolution for you to discover for yourself.

The acting is superb in this film. Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow are very comfortable as Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, making their fourth appearances as their respective characters. The chemistry between the two is as sparkling as ever. Don Cheadle makes his sophomore appearance as James Rhodes and while he doesn’t get a tremendous amount of screen time he certainly makes use of it. Guy Pearce never lets Aldrich Killian descend into a one-note character and James Badge Dale makes you wish his character had more to do. However, Ben Kingsley nearly steals the movie at least a couple of times as the uber-terrorist, The Mandarin. From the trailers and previews I honestly thought he was going to be the weakest part of the film, but he is actually pretty phenomenal. You’ll have to see for yourself as to why I think that. Of course, it is always fun to see Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan, especially with his flashback mullet.

Overall, this is a terrific film, full of humor, drama, heroics, twists, turns and surprises. Iron Man 3 not only serves as a boost or adrenaline for Marvel Movies Phase 2, but kicks off the summer movie season in fine fashion. Iron Man 3 also works extremely well as a bookend to the Iron Man series and makes the perfect ending to Tony Stark’s cinematic journey. This is definitely a case of a sequel outshining what has come before and raises the seemingly insurmountable bar set by Avengers to new heights. Tony Stark and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have never looked so good. And, as always, be sure to stay all the way through the end credits for a little extra treat followed by a promise for the future.