Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1574
ix television series, including the 1966 origi- nal spread across 23 seasons. Ten feature fi lms. Dozens of games, hundreds of novels, and a themed attraction in Las Vegas. e Starship Enterprise. Warp drive. Vulcans. Romulans. e United Federation of Planets. Starfl eet. Spock. Captain Kirk. Scotty. Uhu- ra. "Bones" McCoy. Sulu. Holodecks. Phaser Guns. Transporters. Gene Roddenberry's fi ctional Star Trek universe embedded itself deeply into the pop culture long ago. So, when director/producer J.J. Abrams, writer and director for Mission Impossible III and executive producer for the TV series Lost and Alias, considered taking on the 11th Star Trek feature fi lm for Paramount, he didn't follow the Star Trek tradition of going where no man has gone before. Instead, the 11th Star Trek takes audiences to a frontier the franchise characters have visited before, but we haven't— to the beginning, the time before the fi rst episode in 1966. e only actor from the earlier series and fi lms to star in the Abrams prequel is Leonard Nimoy as "old Spock." Twenty-nine- year-old Chris Pine plays James T. Kirk, 32-year-old Zachary Quinto is Spock, and the remaining members of the Enterprise crew are actors in a similar, under-40 age range. "J.J. didn't want to make a movie for just the fan base," says In- dustrial Light & Magic's Roger Guyett, overall visual eff ects super- visor and second unit director. Guyett had worked with Abrams as visual eff ects supervisor for Mission Impossible III, so he was the obvious go-to person for Abrams when the director/producer became concerned about creating blockbuster visual eff ects on a tight budget. "Paramount had a perception about what the box offi ce would May 2009 30 ■ ■ ■ ■ Visual Effects