The Roddenberry Estate and OTOY unveil beautiful and fully realized recreations of Gene Roddenberry’s iconic Starship Enterprise bridge across time and space – with testimony from Star Trek luminaries including William Shatner.
LOS ANGELES, April 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The Roddenberry Estate and OTOY are proud to share the next phase of their multi-decade collaboration on the Roddenberry Archive – capturing Roddenberry’s lifetime of works for future generations to explore with quiescent historical accuracy and holographic immersion.
As a coda to the epic conclusion of Star Trek: Picard, the Roddenberry Archive team is is presenting its largest set of iconic Star Trek digital archive works to date, organized in a new web portal – bridging the legacies of all three major eras of Roddenberry’s Star Trek – with help from William Shatner (Star Trek), John de Lancie (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and Terry Matalas (Star Trek: Picard)
Today’s release allows fans to see the many dozens of evolutionary iterations of the famous Starship Enterprise bridge, across every epoch of Star Trek’s history. Each bridge is presented in the timeline as a 1:1 scale “in-universe” 360 recreation.
John de Lancie, who has portrayed Gene Roddenberry’s beloved character ‘Q’ since 1987’s Star Trek: The Next Generation premiere, narrates a deep dive exploring the evolution and legacy of the Starship Enterprise bridge – from its inception in Pato Guzman’s 1964 sketches, through its portrayal across decades of TV shows and feature films, to its latest incarnation on the Enterprise-G – as revealed in the final episode of Star Trek: Picard.
The combined documentary and exploratory online experience brings the legacy and history of the iconic starship Enterprise to life through meticulous recreations of the filming sets used for production as well as “in-universe” life size, functional immersive virtual interiors. Audiences exploring the Starship Enterprise bridge can see working turbolifts and consoles – and immerse themselves as if they were living in the Star Trek Universe.
The recreations were produced for the Gene Roddenberry Estate, and overseen by iconic Star Trek artists, including Denise and Michael Okuda, authors of The Star Trek Encyclopedia, Daren Dochterman, Doug Drexler and Dave Blass.
For a limited time, the Roddenberry Archive portal is testing an experimental technology preview on desktop web browsers, allowing fans to walk onto the bridges of the Enterprise and explore them in every detail, all from an instantaneous live stream available on the web page.
Accompanying the interactive bridge experiences and evolution documentary film, is a series of 2023 featurettes exploring Star Trek’s behind-the-scenes production process with commentary by Star Trek luminaries sharing Gene Roddenberry’s vision for the iconic film and TV franchise.
The first featurette teases William Shatner’s hours-long testimonial for the Roddenberry Archive, captured holographically within a perfect recreation of the 1979 USS Enterprise bridge. The legendary icon shares his memories, aspirations and intentions in bringing Captain Kirk to life in 1965, portraying his death in 1994 – and his personal views on the future he envisions for this beloved character, including visualizations of form his 1995 novel “Ashes of Eden”.
The second featurette includes interviews with leading cast and crew, including: James Conway, Director, Star Trek: The Next Generation; David Livingston, Producer / Director, Star Trek: The Next Generation; David Gerrold, Program Consultant, Star Trek: The Next Generation; Andrew Probert, Consulting Senior Illustrator, Star Trek: The Next Generation; Herman Zimmerman, Production Designer, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Terry Matalas, showrunner, Star Trek: Picard; and Dave Blass Production Designer, on Star Trek: Picard.
The release of the immersive Enterprise recreations and documentary testimony is accompanied by a new 765874 concept video, touching on elements from William Shatner’s “Ashes of Eden” novel and Star Trek: Picard’s resurrection of the Enterprise-D. Actors Mahé Thaissa and Lawrence Selleck return to explore these iconic themes from the history of Star Trek. A life size physical prosthetic Arex was created for the production, bringing the much beloved character from Star Trek: The Animated Series to life, not just in CG, but also in live action.
The archive has completed work on bringing Majel Roddenberry’s voice to life, based on phonetic recordings she made in 2008, with the goal of adding her signature vocalization to the archive.
Numerous environments and set recreations are continuously being studied and worked on by the Roddenberry Archive for future updates covering production work from the ‘The Cage’ pilot onwards, as well as a full and complete 1:1 scale recreation of the entire interior of the original USS Enterprise, featured in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
“The Roddenberry Archive portal gives the public a first glimpse into the many years of incredible work done by the archive’s world class production team both in preserving Gene Roddenberry’s legacy in tandem with visually documenting 60 years of Star Trek history in quiescent detail” said CEO of OTOY and Roddenberry Archive, Jules Urbach. “Through new technology, we can bring audiences back in time as if they were there on set during the making of Star Trek, providing a window into new dimensions of the Star Trek universe,” added Urbach. The team’s efforts to capture Star Trek history in full lifelike detail with the highest degree of historical accuracy is an important milestone in preserving Gene Roddenberry’s vision for future generations to explore and see, through the lens of those that worked with him.”
“Over multiple decades, we have been exploring the frontiers of new technology to how we might document my father’s vision, work and ideas in ways that can be experienced by generations yet to come” said Rod Roddenberry, President of Roddenberry Entertainment. “The Roddenberry Archive is not just a way to honor my father’s legacy, but my mother’s, Majel, as well. She voiced the Enterprise computer for decades. In 2008, before she left us, she meticulously recorded her voice phonetically, with the intent to preserve it for some future technology to bring it back to life. We waited 15 years, and today I am so proud to have her voice, just as I remember it, welcoming visitors to the Roddenberry Archive portal”
About OTOY Inc.
OTOY Inc. is the definitive cloud graphics company, pioneering technology that is redefining content creation and delivery for media and entertainment organizations around the world. OTOY’s Academy Award®-winning technology is used by leading visual effects studios, artists, animators, designers, architects, and engineers, providing unprecedented creative freedom, new levels of realism, and new economics in content creation and distribution powered by the cloud. For more information, visit www.otoy.com.
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