NEWS ------ Compiled by Simon Plumbe -------------------------- * Shock news from Paramount. Following Gene Roddenberry's death, Paramount decided to close it's STAR TREK office as from November 20th 1991. This resulted in Richard Arnold (Research Consultant) losing his job and Guy Vardaman who also worked in the office being "demoted" from his role of Stand-in and extra and Research Consultant to just being a stand-in and extra. I urge you all to contact Paramount and demand that these people are reinstated NOW. Without them, the continuity that is essential to STAR TREK will not be with us for much longer. From what we have heard, they were given no warning and returned to their office after delivering some mail on 20th November to find the office closed with all the locks changed on the doors. They were then approached and told that they were only allowed on the premises to collect their belongings and they were told that they had been sacked. It is believed that their excuse is that Richard Arnold was not vetting the novels/ merchandise properly and that he was stopping novels being released that others at Paramount had no objection to. There are rumours in circulation that Paramount had been trying to get rid of Richard for a few years. We invited Paramount President, Brandon Tartikoff, to comment on this, but he refused. Is he starting to feel guilty for what he has done? The latest news is that Richard Arnold and Guy Vardaman are now working with an attorney in order to get their jobs back. Their case was put forward to Paramount in mid-February, but Paramount refused to re-instate Richard or Guy and it is now looking extremely likely that the case will go to court. If you want to support Richard and Guy, write to Paramount. We, as fans, need to keep the pressure up to ensure the return of Guy and Richard to TREK! Let Paramount know what you think, by writing to it's President at the following address: Brandon Tartikoff President of Paramount Pictures 5555 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles CA 90038 USA To make sure that your correspondance will be read, make sure that: a) The letter is typed. b) The address on the envelope is typed. c) There is NO mention of STAR TREK on the envelope. * For those of you who buy the CIC videos, you may have noticed that the speed on the season 3/4 tapes seems to be a little bit fast. Well, you're not imagining it! To improve the picture quality, CIC used a new method of transferring the episodes from the original film format to PAL video. However, this has resulted in an unavoidable 4% increase in speed because the film runs at 24 frames a second compared to PAL video which runs at 25 frames a second, meaning that the episodes are slightly shorter than their American counterparts. Don't worry though, the Americans have to put up with a similar problem for their episodes when they are converted to NTSC - they run 4% slower as the normal American framerate for videos is 30 frames a second! * Season 5 has yet another cliff-hanger! Once again, it features the Borg in a story called "I, Borg". The plot revolves around the premise that there is still some of Locutus left in Picard and a sub-plot that the Borg are returning to Earth in force with AT LEAST 20 ships! The episode is believed to see the return of Elizabeth Dennehy as Shelby, we get to see the Borg homeworld and the rumoured ending is spectacular (skip the next paragraph if you don't want to know it!). The closing scene sees Picard losing his struggle against Locutus and he decides that death is the only way to stop his other personality surfacing. Picard then turns to Worf and orders Worf to kill him. Worf, obviously, refuses. However, Shelby raises her phaser and fires..... * I know it isn't really STAR TREK related, and you may have already heard it, but Tobias Richter's latest game, Cubulus, is NOT PD. It is a commercial game on sale in Germany so if you are sent a copy of it, please re-format the disk. * Bad news for all UK TREK fans! Although the BBC finally purchased the few remaining episodes of Season 3, they have NOT bought the rights to show seasons 4-6 of TNG. Instead, they were out-bid for the rights by SKY. Whether the BBC will come to an arrangement with SKY or not is unknown, but at the moment it looks like there will be no new STAR TREK on TV for a while. They will still be showing the original series, but this will be transmitted in the slot vacated when THUNDERBIRDS finishes it's run on Fridays. * The latest news on the future of STAR TREK. From what I have heard, Paramount are no longer pursuing the cast of THE NEXT GENERATION with the view of running for a seventh season. Instead, they will definately be making movies and in it's place Paramount ARE making a new series, with a new cast and crew. From what I have heard, Paramount are planning to do this after every sixth season as long as STAR TREK is still receiving good viewing figures, so it looks like STAR TREK will be with us for a long time to come! An update on this is that Paramount have STARTED on the pilot for a new series called STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE!!! The show will have an all new cast, and is set on a Starbase somewhere bordering on Klingon and Romulan space and is supposed to be located next to a wormhole(!) and the series is set in the Next Generation era. Casting will take place in April '92, and filming of the pilot will commence in June. The Co-Executive Producer on the show will be Michael Piller and I believe that some of the oter TNG production team will be involved. From what I have heard, there are also plans to move several TNG characters over to the new series - Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney), Keiko O'Brien (Rosalind Chao) and Ensign Ro (Michelle Forbes) along with one or two others. Whether this would work as a series or not is doubtful, as the show would be severely limited by staying in one location, but as an occasional TV Movie, it would make a welcome break from the crew of the Enterprise. However, from what I have heard, the Starbase is located next to a wormhole so we would probably see small scout vessels using this on a regular basis. From what I have heard, the pilot is due to be transmitted in January 1993, with a 19 part season to follow, with a rumoured budget of $1.4 million an episode! There will then be a 26 part season starting in September 1993, which will fill the gap when THE NEXT GENERATION has ended. * STAR TREK VI was a big success in America, jumping straight into the charts at number one and taking $27 million in it's first five days! It slipped to number three the following week, but it had to compete with HOOK and Bruce Willis' latest film which took the top two slots. So far, it has taken over $70 million. Although not as big a success as the previous films, it has made more than The Rocketeer or The Addams Family, so a seventh film is looking likely. As a footnote to the above, STAR TREK VII has just been given the go-ahead with the original cast! Presumably, a script is already finished so maybe we could see a seventh film released this year? * Rumours are now going around that STAR TREK VII will be a collaboration between the Original crew and that of The Next Generation. Whether this is true or not nobody knows, but rumours like this were around for STAR TREK VI as well! It is rumoured that the film will see the original crew going forward in time to the Next Generation era. The working title of this rumoured film is supposed to be "The Deadly Years"!! * One final surprise news item from Paramount. We have now heard that Paramount are clamping down on all "unofficial" uses of STAR TREK characters, terminology and trademarks in ANY form, particularly in the area of Public Domain software. We know that they have sent out letters to authors of a number of TREK PD and Shareware games asking the authors to either remove all references to STAR TREK or to withdraw the games completely. One such game is the popular TREK TRIVIA game. Whether this new enforcement will apply to animations and slideshows is uncertain, but if they try to stop us from producing THE FINAL FRONTIER, they won't succeed without one hell of a fight! I mean, we're just a fanzine so if they want to stop us, they'll have to shut down every TREK fanzine and every fan club magazine in existence! I would presume that, with the release of Electronic Arts' new game, there are plans for more STAR TREK games, and so Paramount want to stop any potential competition. It could also be down to the fact that most TREK games are Shareware and the authors are receiving money without officially licensing the game from Paramount. I will be contacting Paramount shortly to find out whether they intend to prevent animations, slideshows and disk magazines from being released as well. Hopefully, they will see that slideshows, anims etc. are NOT made for profit and are simply created for FUN! I can understand their point of view when it comes to Shareware, but for Freeware titles or software that would never sell commercially (e.g. Quizzes, slideshows and animations) they are just being petty. If you want to write to Paramount and let them know what you think of this new scheme, write to: Lee Parnell Trademark Administrator Paramount Studios 5555 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles CA 90038 U.S.A. As with any letters to Brandon Tartikoff, make sure that addresses on the envelopes are typed and that the letters are typed as well. If nothing is done very soon, classics like the TREK games by Tobias Richter, Eric Gustaffson and Jim Barber will be lost forever. It's time for us Trekkers to fight for what we believe in again!! One final point. If Paramount decide to stop ALL software, then I will do everything I can to make sure that THE FINAL FRONTIER is endorsed by Paramount so we can continue producing one of the most innovative fanzines around! * Finally, rumours are now going around that William Shatner has been approached to appear in THE NEXT GENERATION!! From what I have heard, he has been offered, and rejected, $2 million! Some people are never satisfied! Got any news? Send it in! Thanks to Colin Gunn, Edwin Yau, John Kitts and Tobias Richter for their assistance and information in producing this article.