Notes From a Commentary

As a topper to yesterday's movie experience, it seemed only reasonable to combine my plans to spend time on research today with a bit more Trek - indeed, a bit more Khan.  Wrath was the obvious choice, of course.  But, since I wanted not to be concentrating on the film too much, I opted to listen to it in the background, as it were, with director's commentary playing.

My mistake, of course, was to turn on Mike Okuda's text track as well.  (Have I geeked out and mentioned lately that Mike Okuda follows me on Twitter?  How awesome is THAT???)  Here are some thoughts from his contributions ...

• I love that Roddenberry had the "no smoking allowed on the bridge" sign removed because he hoped smoking would not survive into the future.
• Okuda observes the then-state-of-the-art CG and states, the more advanced a computer, the faster they seem to become obsolete.  Has to make production design pretty challenging!
• Wait, we didn't establish the Klingon neutral zone until 1982??  Amazing.
• "One can't help but wonder how wise it is to use live explosives  as part of a training exercise."  Hee!  (One might also wonder why the crew of the Federation's flagship is acting as part of this exercise ...)

He's too good to waste - so I had to turn his feature off in order to get through more research.  But still - there's this: