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In 2024, a computer graphics company called Otoy teamed up with the Roddenberry Archive to make a sanctioned, perhaps even canonical "Star Trek" short film called "765874 - Unification." The 11-minute short, directed by Carlos Baena and written by Jules Urbach, was released on the Roddenberry.x.io website on November 18, and many Trekkies were surprised to see the presence of notable actors such as William Shatner, Gary Lockwood, and Robin Curtis. Shatner and Lockwood were especially surprising, as Shatner is 93 years old, but looked exactly the same way he did in 1994 when he shot "Star Trek: Generations." Lockwood, 88, was de-aged to look like he did in his 1966 "Star Trek" episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before." At the end of the short, Leonard Nimoy, who died in 2015, was digitally resurrected for a brief encounter between Kirk and Spock. 

"Unification" was the...

This Japanese docudrama is an excellent primer on the scary near- meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. After the earthquake, a tsunami triggered a ‘major nuclear event.’ A group of dedicated engineers struggle against odds to regain control. It’s another 21st Century disaster writ large — we applaud the camaraderie and commitment of the response teams while bureaucratic and political Bs threatens to doom half of Japan. As with last week’s Spacewalker I’m betting that most negative reviews were written by people who saw the English language dub job … in the original Japanese, star Ken Watanabe’s performance is terrific.

Fukushima 50

Blu-ray

Capelight

2020 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date April 13, 2021 / Available from Amazon / 29.98

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Takumi Saitoh, Kôichi Satô, Tomorô Taguchi, Mark Chinnery, Yuri Nakamura, Justin Leeper, Yasuko Tomita, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Riho Yoshioka, Masane Tsukayama, Masato Hagiwara, Shirô Sano.

Cinematography: Shoji Ehara

Visual Effects...