While Paramount publicly states the reason for pushing back Star Trek is the studio’s confidence in the movie as a summer tentpole, there’s a different story happening behind the scenes. Literally five minutes after the WGA struck their new deal and ended the strike, my cellphone lit up and I was told to report to the set ASAP to set up an emergency writer’s room. They’ve got a team of five rewrite guys going over the script right now, making changes both major and minor to the film’s script. There’s already a new “significant” character added to the movie, who’ll be inserted into already-shot scenes for reaction shots and the like. Her name? Janice Rand. I’ll get you more as soon as I know it.

While Grace Lee Whitney may be a bit too old to handle the role now, can we hope that Hayden Panettiere may don the miniskirt? Stay tuned!

Turns out that they are paying attention to at least one aspect of Kirk’s history. The second-draft script I’ve got features a scene where Kirk speaks to Carol Marcus over subspace about her pregnancy! Not to go into too much detail (as it’s probably already been dropped from the shooting script), but JTK is not happy with her keeping the child.

Several of the Enterprise command staff are allowed pets in their quarters. Lt. Uhura has a tribble, we see Chekov feeding a parrot, and we catch a glimpse in Mr. Spock’s quarters of something the set dressers called a sehl-oda — it looks like a cross between a bear trap and a litterbox, and is apparently a hygiene aid for some (unseen) childhood pet of the science officer’s…

Call sheets today included an actor I’d never heard of, who’ll be playing Sybok in a brief scene set during Spock’s youth.

Shooting a major bridge scene today. Kirk facing down the big bad over the monitor, just like Shatner did Khan in Star Trek II. The conversation ends, and Kirk orders the newest addition to the crew - Lt. Imran Hooth - to get a team ready to beam down. Imran Hooth, if the name didn’t tip you off, is a turbanned Muslim security officer. Abrams mentioned this specifically in a meeting - saying he wanted to reach out to the Muslims of today like Roddenberry did the Russians of the 1960s. Stunning and brave, to say the least.

so today i was given an old-school, 60s show uniform to deconstruct. turns out it was one of the tunics shatner wore in the third season! they’re going to incorporate some of the fabric from his top and pants into every main character’s costume as a good luck charm! chris pine cracked me up when he said “I bet there will be enough to go around.”

hey, admiral! still haven’t gotten those photos of the uniforms yuo wanted but you’ll never guess who was here for a fitting tuesday morning! wil wheaton - who’s really excited about his tiny role in the film. apparently, we’re going to see wesley and teh traveller very briefly in an sequence set in starfleet academy!

Tyler Perry filmed his first scene in the movie this morning and all I’m going to tell you is what came out of Chris Pine’s mouth: “Lt. Roddenberry, do you know why they call this the final frontier?”

OMG, right?