How OTOY Just Changed Star Trek Forever

By Jack Kiely / December 9, 2024

18 November was 30 years to the day of the theatrical release of Star Trek: Generations. That's not the burning fire Soran would have us believe, but it is a lot of time. After all of it, we had no right nor reason to expect a coda. We certainly never dreamt of one quite as beautiful as 765874: Unification from OTOY and The Roddenberry Archive.

It has also been nine years since Leonard Nimoy left us, and eight years since the touching tribute in Star Trek: Beyond. To show us his version of Spock once more required the greatest care and compassion. Susan Bay Nimoy, Leonard Nimoy's widow, was brought on board as executive producer for Unification. The film is dedicated, "For Leonard Nimoy".

What would you do with about eight minutes to change Star Trek forever? Bring back Sisko? Finally explain Voyager's shuttle situation? Of course, if you go in with lofty aspirations, there's no room for history to make its own judgements, to coin a phrase from the next film along the way. By all accounts, the creatives behind Unification didn't set out to make an impact. They just tried to make the best piece of art they could.

The fact remains. OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive have achieved something exceptional in such a short space of viewing time (plus a little more with the tie-in shorts). Strip it down, strip all of Star Trek down, what you'll find is a story of friendship — on the inside and on the outside. Kirk and Spock are the epitome that began it.

Re-add the artistry, the countless hours of hard work, hand-in-hand with the innovative technology, and you get the formerly impossible of a farewell. In the extraordinary, OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive have made things look simple. If they've changed Star Trek, then it's because they reminded us that the simple is always the most extraordinary. Unification wears its name well. Now, it is as much the integration of two peoples as it is the meeting of two friends before the end.

Pursed Lips

"There's a certain level of audacity and foolhardiness that has gone into the creation of this," Sam Witwer told Seán in an interview for the TrekCulture podcast. As the actor behind the William Shatner veil, and producer of, 765874: Unification, he's in a position to know. Bold? Without the slightest shadow of a doubt. Reckless, however? We might have to agree to disagree. Most definitely changing the game.

Every millimetre of this project was scrutinised with the utmost attention. Witwer was brought in for his talents in front of the camera, as well as for his knowledge of the technical process behind it. Physically, and importantly, he was also a match for Kirk, a match for Shatner. Actor Lawrence Selleck plays Spock in the piece, as he had in the previous OTOY/The Roddenberry Archive short films 765874: Memory Wall and 765874: Regeneration.

"Movies are special effects," Witwer went on to note to Seán. The 'move' is merely the illusion created by a series of sequential images. We know Muybridge's horse is not in the room, and yet it is. Belief has to be created and then suspended. What's exceptional, revolutionary even, about 765874: Unification is that you'd never know Shatner wasn't there.

And yet, from those first moments of boots on the ground, to the clasping of the hand of his dearest friend as the sun sets over New Vulcan, he is. It's all Shatner in appearance — with his blessing — as Kirk. It's all very much Witwer at the same time, at every moment on set.

This is not an impression, an impersonation, and nor is it a de-aging. It's Witwer's embodiment — of Shatner's, of Kirk's, physicality, his mannerisms, the way he enters a room (or a garden), in the most minute, studied detail, all the way down to the pursing of the lips.

As Witwer put it to Seán, he treated William Shatner's Captain Kirk "as if he was a historical figure," a "pop-culture icon". The technology was always in addition — a mask over the top of the human performance underneath. That makes all the difference.

The Arm of Hephaestus

At risk of being more and more of a rarity, for 765874: Unification, it's safe to say that technology was the tool in service of the creation, of the creators — the invention that extends — and not the other way around. "There's no machine making decisions. That's not a thing," Witwer added to Seán.

On their website, OTOY go into some detail about how the effect was achieved:

Witwer and Selleck were filmed in costume, performing as Kirk and Spock on set, aided by both physical and digital prosthetics resulting in period-accurate portrayals matching the appearance of the characters as they originally appeared in TV and film at the time.

Shatner also had a hand in forging the film, assisting the "OTOY team to fine tune the technical and creative direction required". With his permission, and that of Paramount, Shatner's voice — an excerpt from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan — was also added as Kirk begins to walk forwards in that interstitial space towards New Vulcan. Commenting on the digital prosthetic technology used by OTOY for Unification, Shatner noted that, "[It] takes years off of your face, so that in a film you can look 10, 20, 30, 50 years younger than you are".

As technology continues to march forward at a seemingly exponential rate, the eerily uncanny effects of just ten years ago are the breathtakingly real of today. In the right hands, change is nothing to be afraid of. OTOY have proven that. Paramount would do well to take note… and to invest! As an extra measure of how they did it in Unification, OTOY adds on their website,

Visual effects in 'Unification' were created using OTOY's Octane rendering software and the Render Network decentralised GPU rendering platform. Characters and props were digitised using OTOY's Academy-Award winning LightStage scanning system.

That's also the same technology used to help create the Roddenberry Archive, preserving Gene's creation for future generations (more on that later). By transcending, by criss-crossing media, OTOY and The Archive have invented whole new ways of doing Star Trek. Apply that to the rest of the franchise with the actor talent behind it, and you get the possibility of seeing any and all characters from across Star Trek in live action again.

For Sam Witwer, this was also "an opportunity to make a statement to everyone across the industry". As he noted to Seán,

The technology is here. […] This is an opportunity to colonise this space for actors. […] Actors don't just need to be a part of the process; they need to be essential to the process.

In creating new job opportunities for actors, the technology already employed by OTOY could also help secure them in the future. Witwer went on to imagine a world in which an actor went to get a scan each year "like going to the dentist" — scans the actor would then own. Instead of the studios having to pay large amounts on de-aging, the actor could license out their scans from previous years, ensuring the actor gets paid more money, and that the studio saves money. "Everyone's happy," concluded Witwer.

In that sense, OTOY haven't just changed Star Trek, they've broken a path for the industry. By making the technology work for them, and for and with the actors, OTOY are crafting a whole new way of being on screen.

By the Fountain, We Observe

A Star Trek: Discovery character takes Kirk to the Kelvin timeline.

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That needs to be said more. pic.twitter.com/4txCyh3fF3

— Kris Thompson (@EditKrisEdit) December 1, 2024

To change Star Trek forever requires a good sense of what is forever Star Trek. It's a truism because it's true, that AllTrekIsTrek. OTOY has understood that without value judgement. 765874: Unification exemplifies Star Trek's multi-series, multi-movie, and multi-century make-up. After all, it is a (Kelvin) character introduced in Star Trek: Discovery who transports Prime Kirk to the Kelvin timeline. In that one moment, the entire franchise is tied together.

Yor was far from the only one waiting, watching by the fountain. In one of many heart-rending sequences of the film, Kirk stops to exchange glances with Saavik, played once more by (an aged-up) Robin Curtis. Steps forward a man from behind her, equally in Vulcan attire, who we know from the credits to be Sorak. Who we now know is Spock's son.

Without a single line of dialogue, 765874: Unification confirms what was in the first draft script of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home:

Kirk: Have you told Spock?

Saavik: He is not yet prepared to know. […]

Kirk: Saavik… I'm sure you'll find the proper time to tell him of his child.

765874: Unification writer/executive producer, as well as founder and CEO of OTOY, Jules Urbach, told TrekMovie that he also spoke to the Nimoys who were "sure that Leonard's intent for Star Trek III and Star Trek IV is that this is what happened".

Urbach went on to point out that Spock and Saavik were married in the beta canon novel Vulcan's Heart. Moreover, in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Sarek, Picard notes to Riker that, as a "young lieutenant," he had attended the wedding of Sarek's son. That's a bit late for Sybok!

Whether Unification is canon, or rather, whether it canonises all the above, is almost besides the point. It certainly should, but, in this case, it's perhaps up to the audience to decide. As is evident in the TrekMovie interview, Urbach purposefully wrote the short film to be open to multiple interpretations — the literal, the emotional, and the spiritual. That is its beauty, that is its selling and buying power. OTOY might well have just changed Star Trek forever by canonising the very idea of 'head canon'.

Gods With a Starship?

As if all that weren't evidence enough that those at OTOY know what they're doing when it comes to Star Trek, we've only just dipped our toe in the waters of that fountain. Plus, the fountain is not even half the story.

As the TrekMovie interview piece points out, the man we see in late 24th century Starfleet dress uniform, in front of the pastels as Kirk enters the scene, is played by John Daltorio. Daltorio is credited as "Crusher". "Urbach didn't offer any details," TrekMovie adds, "except to say he is 'a descendant of Beverly Crusher.'"

Just the little bombshell of a detail that this is either Wesley, Jack (other children notwithstanding) or one of their descendants, then! The style of uniform would certainly fit with Wesley's travelling (and wedding) MO in Star Trek: Nemesis.

The very eagle-eyed will also have spotted a watcher in the crowd who looks an awful lot like Doctor Kovich. Kovich, as we now know, is agent Daniels. That's not the only link to Star Trek: Enterprise in Unification. By the fountain too is a (half-)Xindi Primate (thank you, Jörg) wearing an initiation medal, like the one Daniels gave Captain Archer aboard the Enterprise-J in the 26th century in the episode Azati Prime.

Credited as one of the "Observers by the Fountain," we think this Xindi might have been played by Greg Ellis. Ellis was notably the redshirted Chief Engineer Olson in Star Trek (2009), and Cardassian Ekoor in What You Leave Behind.

All of the parkland and fountain scenes could be taking place aboard the Enterprise-J, in fact. Go to the ship's listing on The Roddenberry Archive, and you'll find the interior photos (save for the fountain) are a striking match. The Archive goes on to add that,

[Enterprise-J designer Doug Drexler envisioned] entire cities and parks in the saucer section, and new technology enabling space folding at the edges of the disc to accommodate a much larger volume inside the saucer section than outside.

Before we begin to fold up in the intricacies of those eight minutes, we must get to Gary Mitchell and the star at the start of them. You can't keep a now good god down, played again by Gary Lockwood, looking just like he had in 1966. According to TrekMovie, OTOY took direct inspiration for that opening scene from the Star Trek #400 comic story A Perfect System. In that, Mitchell "builds solar systems". Urbach noted,

[Mitchell] has come full circle. He is sort of playing god and learning about humanity's future… He is looking at all of Star Trek's future and all of time… And he is very much responsible for everything you see later [in Unification]. […] His contribution is he has seen enough to pass along information.

Urbach didn't specify the nature of that information, but he did say that it was being sent "to the group holding Kirk's body at Daystrom". From there, it made its way to probably the most important person in all of this, the one after whom the OTOY project is named: (Yeoman) J.M. Colt. All that should be largely enough to convince Paramount to give Urbach and OTOY at least some office space. Hold your canonical horses, however, because there's more!

765874

'765874' is Colt's serial number, given in the 13th issue, Future Tense, of the comic series Star Trek: Early Voyages in 1998. In it, Colt is displaced in time from 2254 to 2293, creating an alternate timeline, and then sent back to repair the changes. As Urbach noted once more to TrekMovie, "It's on the way back she sees all of Star Trek's timeline".

For Urbach, Colt and Spock are "observers" for the purposes of the OTOY short films, able "[to see] different moments throughout Trek history". Urbach reportedly took inspiration for Spock from the novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which depicts the Vulcan's mind-meld with V'Ger as "an awakening". As TrekMovie also points out, in 765874: Memory Wall, released on 26 August 2022, Prime Spock can be seen performing a mind-meld on what appears to be Prime Colt.

As for the version of Colt viewing the Kirk Daystrom Station data, Urbach had yet another surprising revelation for TrekMovie,

Colt is in a Kelvin uniform because this is the Kelvin timeline. […] This is not the same Colt. She didn't walk over from Prime to Kelvin, she is from Kelvin. […] And she is not in the Daystrom Institute [sic], but that data, that information is what she is looking at.

Oh, and just in case you didn't know, Mahé Thaissa, who plays Colt in all of the 765874 short films, is Urbach's wife!!

So, for anyone who's been paying attention:

Gary Mitchell gets Daystrom information to Colt.

Somehow, she brings Kirk back to life from the ashes.

Kirk bumps into some bloke named 'Crusher' in a park on the Enterprise-J.

There's a Xindi Primate with an initiation medal.

Kovich is stood right behind.

Kirk meets Saavik, and Saavik and Spock's son, Sorak.

Yor, the one from Star Trek: Discovery, hands Kirk his Generations badge.

Kirk is transported to the Kelvin universe.

He becomes the TOS version of himself, sees himself as an Admiral.

Generations undershirt Kirk walks back in.

Kirk goes to Spock's dying bedside, holds his hand.

The photo case from Star Trek V and Star Trek: Beyond is on the table, and an IDIC.

The pair look out over New Vulcan as the sun sets.

We all cry.

This could all easily be taxed with 'fan service,' although that shouldn't always be a dirty phrase. And besides, if all of 765874 is 'fan service,' it's probably the best fan service you'll ever see! Unification, unified. By deftly taking from so many elements of Trek, it has reinforced the connective tissue of the franchise. Through technological innovation, OTOY and the Roddenberry Archive are keeping Star Trek's past (and future) alive for the next generation of custodians.

Histories of the Future

What is Star Trek if not a history of the future? Gene Roddenberry's famous vision is but one way of writing down how things will turn out. His optimistic outlook for humanity is as unique now as it was in 1966 (and '64). That is what The Roddenberry Archive — a "multi-decade collaboration between The Gene Roddenberry Estate and OTOY" — seeks to preserve.

To do that, OTOY's scanning technology is pushing the frontiers of conservation — from models to nearly a million pages of documents. Go to The Archive's homepage, you'll now find another kind of archive — that of Kirk's records from Daystrom Station, with Kelvin Colt standing just in front. Before 765874: Unification, OTOY had changed Star Trek forever by transforming the way we can experience it.

The Roddenberry Archive already allows visitors to "virtually explore the complete history and legacy of every bridge of the Starships Enterprise as 1:1 scale 'in-universe' experiences," and so much more, text narrated by Majel Barrett's computer. You can go from watching Star Trek to 'taking a seat' within it.

The efforts of preservation and exploration for current and future generations of fans were in operation during the making of Unification. As OTOY states on their site,

Major scenes in 'Unification' were filmed twice, ensuring coverage to create video and spatial content mastered for Apple Vision Pro. All outdoor filming locations were scanned in and merged with GC set extensions, becoming part of The Archive's growing library of 3D worlds and locations.

765874: Unification has surpassed four million views on YouTube at time of writing. That is a sea of fans watching a change. There is overwhelming fan support (and a lot of tears) for a world where OTOY's skill and technology is implemented readily to the franchise. And if the greenlighting of Star Trek: Legacy required the arrival of OTOY and The Roddenberry Archive, it will be worth the wait.

How has OTOY changed Star Trek forever? They've just rewritten the history of its future.