Review of the book 'The Art Of Star Trek The Kelvin Timeline', by Jeff Bond (2017)

Published by Titan Books, A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd., London.
First edition: December 2017.
Printed and bound in China.

This is a big format book (31 x 27,8 cm) dedicated to the art created to the new series of Star Trek films: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek: Beyond (2016), referred here as The Kelvin Timeline series.  The core of the book are the illustrations for the art concepts, reproduced in colour with great quality, and usually complemented by a short text.

The conceptual artists are the people charged of the task of translating the script into images.  Once the script is approved, and before models are built and wardrobes are sewn,  the conceptual artists sit at their drawing tables and design the appearance of everything: characters, props, rooms, buildings, cities, ships, worlds.  The process isn’t always straightforward, and sometimes the designs mutate and evolve along time – for instance, the book shows the evolution of the design of the U.S.S. Franklin.

The illustrations for the book are gorgeous and worth admiring, even to non-Trekkers.  The insights about the development process are interesting.  As for the text, its size is too small.

List of contents:

• FOREWORD BY JUSTIN LIN: Justin line, director of Star Trek: Beyond, reflects on the development of the film.  He also writes “We were all working 90-hour weeks”, which I take as an admission to being guilty of forcing his subordinates to work an excessively large quantity of hours – something that is immoral by any standards, is actually illegal in many countries and should also be in the rest.
• STAR TREK: The U.S.S. Kelvin, The Narada, Nero, Rura Penthe, Future Iowa, Starfleet Academy, Kobayashi Maru, Aliens, Vulcan, The U.S.S. Enterprise, The destruction of Vulcan, Delta Vega, Spock Prime, The Jellyfish ship, Enterprise versus Narada.
• STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS: Nibiru, Future London, Jumpship attack, Advanced torpedoes, Technology, Weapons, Kronos, Khan, Khan in the brig, Jupiter facility, The U.S.S. Vengeance, Space jump, Warp core, San Francisco chase
• STAR TREK BEYOND: The Enterprise redesigned, Uniforms, Krall and crew, Aliens, Yorktown, Destruction of the Enterprise, Altamid, The U.S.S. Franklin, The rescue
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All in all, a great book about the development of the latest Star Trek series of film, as much interesting for fans as it is for non-fans.