Josh Reviews The Center Seat II: 60 Years of Star Trek
Five years ago, in celebration of the fifty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek, Brian Volk Weiss’ Nacelle Company released The Center Seat, a phenomenal eleven-part documentary that explored the history of the Star Trek franchise. I loved every minute! It was thorough, filled with interviews with a deep bench of the talented people (both in front of and behind the camera) who had been involved in the creation of Star Trek, telling all sorts of interesting, juicy stories. The show was fun and well-made, and infused with a true love of Star Trek.
That last point is probably the most important one. It was clear from every second of that documentary series that Mr. Volk Weiss and his team were huge Star Trek fans, and the show was clearly made with that love and attention to nerdy Trek detail. (What other series would devote an entire episode to the short-lived Star Trek animated series from the seventies???)
I am delighted that this series has returned with The Center Seat II, now in celebration of the SIXTIETH anniversary of Star Trek!!
Five new episodes were made, and they’re all fantastic.
These episodes carry forward and explore areas of the franchise that were not covered in the original documentary series, specifically the movies that came after the original cast’s movies wrapped up in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
And so the first three episodes of The Center Seat II cover the four TNG movies, Generations through Nemesis, that were made from 1994-2002, while the next two episodes cover the three rebooted “Kelvin Universe” films overseen by J.J. Abrams, released between 2009-2016.
The episodes are as insightful and thorough as I’d hoped. These episodes feel like the type of in-depth “making of” docs that I wish had been made for any of these films’ release on DVD/blu-ray/4K.
Do I wish we had even more episodes? Of course!! Episode three covers both Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis, while episode five covers both Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond. It’d have been great had each movie gotten its own episode. The various making-of TV shows that Mr. Volk Weiss has created have often liked to focus on the juicy gossip/drama of behind-the-scenes tension and disagreements, so I’m a little surprised they didn’t want to spend more time exploring those less-successful (both financially and creatively) movies. I bet there were lots more stories to be told. Still, I understand the logic of giving more episode-time to the better and more popular films.
Gates McFadden returns as the host/narrator, and she does a fantastic job. The depth of interview subjects is fantastic. While some of the bug names didn’t participate (no Shatner, no Patrick Stewart, no J.J. Abrams… in fact, none of the major cast-members of the Kelvin films participated), they did get a lot of big names, such as Jonathan Frakes, who is terrific and gives a lot of honest, in-depth commentary, as well as plenty of the key behind-the-camera creatives. I was particularly happy to see the involvement of Doug Drexler & Denise and Michael Okuda. Those three talented designers were key players in creating the beautiful (and consistent) look of much of the Star Trek I grew up with (basically all of the Berman era of Trek series).
I have to make special note of the interview segments with Scott Chambliss, the production designer on J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek film. I was incredibly aggravated watching Mr. Chambliss! His arrogant and, in my opinion, completely off-base comments help explain, in a nutshell, the many design problems that drive me crazy in J.J. Abrams’ version of Trek. Mr. Chambliss asserts that mimicking the designs of the Original Series would be boring. Right, some of the most famous and well-designed sci-fi iconography of all time would be boring. And what did they come up with? They destroyed the look of the Enterprise exterior and gave us the awful Apple Store-looking all-white Enterprise bridge. (Talk about boring.) Mr. Chambliss actually admits that the bridge design was based on the look of Apple products!! Wow, I can’t believe that long-standing joke actually is based in truth. The show also got a great interview with designer John Eaves, a talented artist who discusses the insane decision to forbid anyone who’d ever been involved with Trek before from working on J.J. Abrams’ film. God bless Doug Drexler, who is hilariously candid in speaking for all the Star Trek fans who felt insulted and abandoned by the way these films ignored everything that had come before. Sigh!
While some of Brian Volk-Weiss’ documentary shows (such as The Movies That Made Us) have erred on the side of being almost annoyingly silly, I was pleased that was not the case here. The tone of this series is definitely light and playful, but it was clear they were approaching Star Trek with respect and love. This made me happy. (Great example: I grinned ear-to-ear watching the opening of each episode, which mimicked the opening of Star Trek III, with images at first appearing in a small box and a blueish tint. I loved that!!)
My main complaint about the original run of The Center Seat was that it was aggravatingly difficult to watch, with episodes spread across different platforms (including the “History Vault”, the subscription-only streaming service of The History Channel). Happily, all five episodes of The Center Seat II were easily available on youtube.
I had a blast watching this series. I hope they make more! I’m sure there are LOTS of fun, juicy stories of behind-the-scenes drama in the making of all of the modern (mostly awful) Star Trek shows, under supervision of Alex Kurtzman!
Click here to watch The Center Seat II on youtube.
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