I was gonna wait till january to start posting again, but I might just remake the blog on another site... Maybe Twitter... Or Instagram... Or some other blogging platform, who knows...
I would honestly really like to keep this going. So imma keep the blog on hold for now, and make some posts in the meantime because neat trek facts are still out there, I just simply have a fulltime job and not a lot of freetime
Pictured: A Klingon scientist, Antaak, before and after being injected with the Augment Virus. Left: Antaak with ridges. Right: Antaak with out.
[caption: Enterprise’s “Divergence” and “Affliction” episodes gave us an in canon explanation for the missing ridges. That reason was, those Klingons were infected with an Augment Virus, to make them super warriors, that had a side effect of taking away the ridges. While this is an in canon explanation, the real reason was that TOS simply did not have the budget for the ridge prosthetics.]
Pictured: Left: Jeri Ryan publicity photo of her as Seven of Nine wearing the silver catsuit. Right: The dreaded corset that Jeri had to wear.
[Caption: The silver catsuit Jeri wears was designed to look like a second skin because the show-runners wanted to show off Jeri’s body. Robert Blackman, designed a corset for Jeri, it was extremely tight, making it difficult to breath, and had built in ribs which made it impossible for Jeri to bend. It also had “ Breast mounds” to make her breasts look taught. Jeri referred to it a “feat of engineering”.]
Additional notes: It also took 20 minutes to remove, so whenever Jeri had to use the restroom during a shoot, she had to bring in a personal dresser to help her out of it.
Pictured: Left: Odan, a Trill from TNG, with facial ridges in the shape of a pronounced ‘M’ shape. Middle: Jadzia Dax test makeup, the makeup was modified to be a small ridge in a soft ‘V’ curving outwards to each side, very understated. Right: Jadzia Dax final makeup for DS9 where she has spots that go along the sides of her face, down her neck, and her body (which is obscured by the uniform).
[Caption: The reason Trills in DS9 and VOY look different than the Trills in TNG, is mainly due to how the producers wanted Terry Farrell to look. Instead of budgetary concerns, the producers were only concerned with whether or not Farrell, as Jadzia, looked pretty. Even though the test make up had been modified smaller, the producers thought they made Farrell look ugly.]
Pictured: Syl Dutton standing next to the Matte Painting he had done of a Romulan City. The City is surrounding a circular structures, contains tall spire like buildings and small flat topped buildings. Between the buildings are marshlands.
[Caption: The planet Romulus, the homeworld of the Romulans, was designed to have marshes covering most, if not the majority, of the planet. This is an almost direct contrast to Vulcan, which is covered in desert.]
Pictured: Still from Star Trek the original series’ Balance of Terror, featuring a Commander, a Centurion, and an unknown soldier
[Caption: Romulan society was heavily influenced by Roman society, hence the planetary names Romulus and Remus. The Romulan military also uses the rank of Centurion, which is a rank directly from the Roman military. However, the lowest rank, Uhlan, is a Polish military rank.]
Pictured: The title card from the Animated Star Trek series. it reads: Star Trek, Created by Gene Roddenberry
[caption: The original Star Trek font used in the original series and the animated series was designed to look like Russian Constructivism fonts. This would have been a bold choice to make in the 60’s during the Cold War era.]
Pictured: Screencap of Leonard Nimoy as Spock wearing Romulan clothing in Unification Part II
[caption: Although Unification II is the second part in this two-parter TNG episode, it was filmed prior to the production of Unification I as a way to accommodate Leonard Nimoy’s schedule. Furthermore, the two-parter was designed to help gain audience hype for the plot of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which was set for release only one month after.]
Pictured: Colm Meaney as Chief O’Brien with his fictional family, Keiko, Yoshi, and Molly, in What You Leave Behind
[Caption: The only six actors to appear in the season finales of two separate Star Trek series are: Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, Michael Dorn, Colm Meaney, and Jeffrey Combs.]
Pictured: Brent Spiner as Data and Deforest Kelley as McCoy walking down a hallway on the Enterprise in Encounter at Farpoint.
[Caption: Data is the only character from TNG to share scenes with all three TOS guest characters that appeared on that series (Admiral McCoy, Ambassador Spock, and Captain Scott).]
Pictured: Leonard Nimoy as Spock in the 2009 reboot movie, holding up the Vulcan salute.
[Caption: 4864 Nimoy is the name of an asteroid that is part of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It was named in honor of Leonard Nimoy in 2015, shortly after his death earlier that year.]
[Caption: Denise Crosby was originally cast to play Deanna Troi, and Marina Sirtis was cast to play Tasha Yar (previously named Macha Hernandez). Roddenberry decided to switch their roles, renamed Macha to Tasha to fit Crosby’s ethnicity, and proceeded with filming Encounter At Farpoint swapped from their original casting assignments.]
Pictured: Screencap from the 2009 Reboot Star Trek movie in which Dr. McCoy is giving Jim Kirk a hypospray in the back of the neck. He is not being gentle, as evidenced by Kirk’s pained expression.
[Caption: The iconic Hypospray, which uses air to inject patients instead of needles, is currently in development for real world use. The first was created in 1960, 6 years before TOS aired. It was a bulky device called the “Pedo-o-Jet”, referring to it’s use in pediatric care. Since then, the technology has become more and more developed as our understanding of medical science has advanced.]
Summary of the science under the cut. Please refer to sources for research done, especially if you want to dive in further.
The Ped-o-Jet was created by Aaron Ismach in 1960, 6 years before the original series aired on television, possibly giving us origins of the hypospray. However, the Ped-o-Jet was a very bulky item, resembling a heavy duty airbrush system, rather than the sleek traditional needle like look we see Dr. McCoy wielding against Captain Kirk. The Jet-injectors, as many tend to go by, made it possible to administer vaccines much faster than regular needle injections, and therefore, made it possible to eradicate Smallpox by 1977.
(pictured youths in Africa being injected with a smallpox vaccine using a Jet-Injector)
The way they work is, the injectors have a tank of air, usually nitrogen, that they use to open the pores to let the vaccine through into you veins. The upsides are that in terms of contamination, you don’t need needles, and it is less painful, however, it is quite uncomfortable. The downsides are that it is not completely free of contamination, there is still a chance that you can spread contaminants and infections from person to person if you use it on one person after another. Another downside is that in earlier models, you couldn’t extract blood/fluids, or anything without damaging the vein and harming the patients.
(Pictured: The Jet-Injector created by MIT researchers)
However, as our understanding of medical technology have improved far beyond what researchers and technicians believed in the past 50 decades, the Jet-Injectors have seen a massive improvement in how they work. Newer models are more compact and resemble what they look like in Star Trek. In the past decade alone we have seen a huge leap forward in terms of design, efficiency, and cost. A Professor and a few researchers at MIT have studied the technology and have designed prototypes that can inject and extract effectively without pain. Others at National Medical Products, inc, created a disposable J-Tip injector, and have demonstrated the use of their technology, though their injector makes a very loud popping noise when it releases air. And researchers from the University of California have created injectors that inject small amounts of powder vaccine into the veins over a period of 10 minutes.
Currently the Jet-Injectors are FDA approved and are used. The main problems are getting them to where they are effective and at a less expensive rate than the Traditional needles. However, there questions from the Medical Community on if this is truly going to revolutionize the industry, and to that I say, only time and research will tell.
Pictured: Susan Bay as Admiral Rollman using the communications terminal in Past Prologue
[Caption: Susan Bay, also known as Susan Bay Nimoy (married to Leonard Nimoy 1989-2015), played the role of Admiral Rollman in the DS9 episodes Past Prologue and Whispers.]
Pictured: Screenshot of Nichelle Nichols during a 2013 interview with Emmy TV Legends, from the Archive of American Television.
[Caption: Nichelle Nichols thought about quitting the Original Star Trek series for a role on Broadway. She was persuaded to stay by Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who explained how important her role as Uhura was. Nichelle’s role as Lt. Uhura inspired many young people like Mae Jameson, an Astronaut, and Whoopi Goldberg, an actress who played Guinan. Both Appear in Star Trek TNG.]
Pictured: Vaughn Armstrong pictured in the middle with six of his characters pictured on both the left and right side of his picture. Characters Left: Admiral Forrest (Human), Alpha Hirogen (Hirogen), Danar (Cardassian). Characters Right: Korris (Klingon), Telek R’Mor (Romulan), Kreetassan Captain (Kreetassan)
[Caption: While Jeffery Combs is known for his recurring roles as 8 different Trek characters, it is Vaughn Dale Armstrong Jr. who holds the record of preforming the most Star Trek character. Armstrong has portrayed a total of 12 characters including several Klingons, two Cardassians, a Romulan, and a Borg. He is most known for his recurring role as Admiral Forrest in Enterprise.]
Armstrong’s other roles include; Maximilian Forrest (the mirror counterpart to Maxwell Forrest), Korath (Klingon), Klingon Captain (Klingon), Vidiian Captain (Vidiian), Seskal (Cardassian), and Lansor (Borg/Former Borg).
Armstrong is one of five actors to play seven or more characters. The others include; Jeffery Combs, J.G. Hertzler, Thomas Kopache, and Randy Oglesby. Refer to sources for them.
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