So you’ve seen 765874: UNIFICATION…but what did it MEAN???

By now, a vast swath of Star Trek fans have viewed the new A.I.-enhanced “fan film” 765874: UNIFICATION released by OTOY, THE RODDENBERRY ARCHIVE, WILLIAM SHATNER, and the LEONARD NIMOY estate. It’s already had half a million views in just two and a half days. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look…

Timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the 1994 release of Star Trek Generations, 765874: Unification premiered at the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY with WILLIAM (Kirk) SHATNER and ROBIN (Saavik) CURTIS both in attendance. Also present were LAWRENCE SELLECK, who is the stand-in for the A.I.-generated Spock, and MAHÉ THAISSA, who is the stand-in for J.M. Colt from the first TOS pilot, “The Cage.”

For more information on the making of this ambitious production, there is a wonderful article on TrekMovie.com based on information presented on the OTOY website. So I won’t get too into the weeds today discussing how they did it (although I have reached out to OTOY to try to get an interview with someone involved in the project). Instead, I’m going to look at the content of the film itself.

Fan reaction has generally been extremely positive with a few complainers here and there. If nothing else, the quality of the A.I. on both Kirk and Spock (as well as Gary Mitchell) is pretty spectacular, and the musical score by MICHAEL GIACCHINO (recorded at the famed Abbey Road Studios in London) is flawless and emotionally mesmerizing. The costumes, props, make-up, and green screen compositing are all amazing, and it’s obvious that no expense was spared in creating this content that OTOY will be using to demonstrate what their cutting-edge technology can do.

But amidst all the “I had tears in my eyes!” and “This was so beautiful!” plaudits posted to social media were a fair amount of “What the heck was that???” comments from the head-scratchers…which, admittedly, included myself. With only one piece of dialog (an original re-recording of Kirk’s final log from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) the rest of the presentation was essentially silent but for the music. Indeed, I got a very 2001: A Space Oddessey feeling of déjà vu. And just as sci-fi fans are generally confounded trying to figure out what was going on with Dave Bowman at the end of STANLEY KUBRICK’s 1968 masterpiece (I think he was mirroring the evolution of man himself), Trekkers are being left to their own devices to interpret 765874: Unification.

Having now read a wide range of postings on social media, I think I can clear up at least a few things about this film. Some items I’ll be sharing are straight-up facts and pieces of established Star Trek canon. Others require a little more open-mindedness about things that may or may not be canon. And then, of course, I’ve got some theories that could be right or wrong…and we may just never know for certain.

Okay, you ready…?

---

WHAT DOES “765874” MEAN?

In May or 2022, OTOY premiered the first of its A.I. Star Trek fan films, titled 765874, on The Roddenberry Archive and their YouTube Channel…

The vignette featured CGI visuals of Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco and a young Yeoman J.M. Colt getting ready to embark on her first deep space mission aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701. The title came from a single comic book panel from “Future Tense, Part Two,” the 13th issue of the Marvel Comics series of Star Trek: Early Voyages comics in 1998. It featured the second of a four-part arc in which Colt was sent into an alternate future.

Since then, all subsequent OTOY Star Trek fan films on The Roddenberry Archive have included Colt’s service number in their title, including 765874: MEMORY WALL, which also featured Colt along with the first glimpse of A.I. Spock (also from 2022)…

…and the stunning 765874: REGENERATION (from 2023), which featured Spock traveling to Viridian III to discover the gravesite of James T. Kirk marked by his Starfleet emblem pin…

(Speaking of A.I., 765874: Regeneration inspired me to create an A.I. Star Trek fan film of my own, AN ABSENT FRIEND, which I invite you to view if you haven’t already seen it.)

So “765874” is the “branding” of OTOY‘s series of A.I. Star Trek fan films, most of which feature Yeoman Colt, including this latest one.

WHAT’S WITH GARY MITCHELL?

Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, de-aged and played by original actor GARY LOCKWOOD, was last seen marooned on planet Delta Vega and assumed dead at the end of the second TOS pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” Of course, when you have the power of a god, getting caught underneath a falling three-ton boulder might not actually be enough to kill you, and the Star Trek/X-Men crossover comic book showed Gary resurrected.

Of course, that’s not necessarily canon, but the idea of a god-like being marooned on a planet and needing a starship to escape is not completely unknown in Trek lore (ahem, Star Trek V), so perhaps an older and wiser Gary Mitchell—able to monitor the galaxy, keep an eye on his former friends, and still play god a little—might be aware of both of the passing of Kirk and that of Spock in another reality. Kirk was there with Spock when the latter died the first time in Star Trek II, and then Kirk died alone in Generations, but perhaps Gary might be able to work a little “magic” to make Spock’s death a little less lonely.

So the first 30-40 seconds of the film apparently show us what Gary sees, which includes footage of Spock on Viridian III, a city in what appears to be the Kelvin timeline, some shots of J.M. Colt and a mind-meld she had with Spock, and then Colt in a Kelvin-verse uniform wandering through the computer archives of the Daystrom Institute, which, as we learned in the third season of STAR TREK: PICARD, contains the physical remains of James T. Kirk in its vault.

WAIT, DID MITCHELL RESURRECT JAMES KIRK?

Yeah, I think he did! At this point, there are two theories that a majority of fans seem to be going with. The first (and the one I believed initially) is that Kirk’s essence went to the Nexus, and he was able to emerge wherever and whenever he wanted to. In Generations, Kirk chose to return with Jean Luc Picard to Viridian III to help stop Dr. Soran. But even though Kirk died on the surface of that alien world, part of his essence remained in the Nexus, and that grouping of people that Kirks walks through in the garden (filmed at the Huntington Gardens in San Marino, CA) could all be in the Nexus.

Or possibly not.

If we assume that everyone in that scene is in the Nexus, then why have Gary Mitchell in the film at all? Kirk could just manifest himself anywhere at anytime and see Spock whenever he wanted to…or anyone else he wanted to. And if they are in the Nexus, then they are either not real (like Kirk’s horse and his burning breakfast) or else Saavik also went to the Nexus—along with Yor…more on him in a moment.

It makes more sense that Gary resurrected Kirk’s body—wearing the clothes he was buried in, and telepathically cleaning up both the uniform as well as the decaying corpse—and then plucked Kirk’s essence out of the Nexus to put into his reanimated body.

Then Gary created a sort of “Garden of Eden” to deliver Kirk and a lot of other people to. Why? I have no frickin’ idea! But at least one of them is wearing a 24th century Starfleet dress uniform. A wake, perhaps? A send-off? An outdoor Star Trek convention? And then, of course, there’s two Vulcans and one guy in a gold TNG season one-era jumpsuit. Let’s discuss them…

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE IN THE GARDEN???

While I had no idea who nearly all of the humans in the colorful robes are in the garden, I can identify the two Vulcans and one gray alien for you. Many fans recognized actress ROBIN CURTIS as an older Saavik. And indeed, Robin talked about the role, being directed by Leonard Nimoy twice back in the 1980s, and her experience making this film in a video posted to the Roddenberry Archive…

The Vulcan male behind her is Sorak (played by actor MARK CINNERY). Who the heck is Sorak, you ask? This comes from the 1999 novel Vulcan’s Heart, which has Spock and Saavik married in the 24th century with a son named Sorak. This is before Spock heads off for Romulus. Sorak is a product of Saavik and the resurrected teenaged Spock doing the pon farr shuffle on the Genesis planet (without protection, obviously) in Star Trek: III. In fact, in a deleted bit of dialog from the original version of the script for Star Trek IV, it was actually revealed that Saavik was staying on Vulcan because she was pregnant with Spock’s child…

Now, the next logical question to ask is, “Why are they there?” And as I said above, this is one I don’t have a good answer to. It’s possible that Gary “informed” everyone that Kirk would be going to see Spock on his death bed, and maybe this was an opportunity for Kirk to say, “Hey, Saavik and Sorak are doing great. They said to tell you they miss you…or rather, they thought it at me because everyone was eerily silent.”

As for the other alien, meet Lt. Cmdr. Yor…

For those fans who didn’t watch STAR TREK: DISCOVERY (or stopped watching), Yor appeared briefly as a hologram at the beginning of the ninth episode of season three, “Terra Firma, Part 1”–affectionately known as “the one where we learn that the Guardian of Forever is really named Carl.”

Yor was, apparently, both a time traveler and a dimension hopper. According to Dr. Kovich, Yor “…traveled forward from 2379 and across from a parallel universe caused by the incursion of a Romulan mining ship.” This is actually the only acknowledgement within canon (if you consider Discovery to be canon) of the Kevin Universe within the Prime Universe. Yor became a temporal warrior, so the fact that Spock died on New Vulcan in 2263 (nearly a century before Yor was even born) isn’t a problem.

Of course, Kirk died on Veridian III in 2371—also a century after Spock died. But the Nexus can dump you out anywhere and anywhen, so maybe he came out of the Nexus in 2263. On the other hand, that would be decades before Spock was resurrected and Sorak was conceived, and both of them are in the garden and pretty old.

OH, MY BRAIN HURTS!!!

Okay, I think Gary just gathered everyone in the garden in 2271 and had Yor tackle both the dimension-transporting of Kirk and the backward time travel, as Yor could handle both tasks. And the reason that only Kirk made the journey is probably because it was a one-way trip (perhaps Yor could only take one person?), and since Kirk was already dead at this point, he wouldn’t be sacrificing anything to be with Spock at his bedside when he passed away.

WHY DID KIRK NOT HAVE HIS STARFLEET PIN AT FIRST?

This was one of the more problematic elements to explain. I mean, I understand the poetic nature of the fact that Kirk was buried without his pin, as Picard used it to mark Kirk’s grave on Viridian III. So Yor went to retrieve the pin and handed it to Kirk before jumping him through time and relative dimensions in space. (Hey! No, wait. Wrong show.) That was the item that Yor hands to Kirk in the garden, and then Kirk puts it on his uniform as he walks through the halls of time (or whatever that was).

However, the reason this was problematic is the Gary Mitchell has been shown to have the ability to create something from nothing, as he did on the surface of Delta Vega when he turned that desolate valley into the new Garden of Eden. (Admittedly, his Garden 2.0 in his fan film was MUCH nicer!) So if Gary can conjure objects out of thin air and fix up Kirk’s uniform and dead body, why not create an insignia pin while he’s at it? The answer, of course, is that this is a frickin’ film, and we should all just go with it.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH KIRK MEETING HIS OTHER SELVES?

Okay, this was (for me, at least) the most obvious homage to the final sequence from 2001, where astronaut Dave Bowman sees himself at different ages in his life…only minus the bathroom, dinner, monolith, and space baby. It was also a fun way for OTOY to show off how many ways their A.I. could de-age William Shatner, as we got to see both a TOS Captain Kirk in gold velour as well as Admiral Kirk from STII: TWOK in a monster maroon. Was Kirk walking through some kind of time tunnel on his way back from the future? Probably. Who knows, right? Like 2001, this is one of those moments where it’s left up to the viewer’s interpretation.

For what it’s worth, my own theory for the presence of these two particular past Kirks is that they are both critical elements in his decades-long friendship with Spock. The TOS years of Kirk’s five-year mission on the Enterprise were the crucible, the womb from which their close bond was first developed and nurtured. Then Admiral Kirk’s appearance, along with the lone voiceover of the entire film, was the moment that friendship ended with the (first) death of Spock. Yes, we all know that Spock eventually came back to life, but that moment for Kirk when Spock died in Engineering and Kirk didn’t beat the no-win scenario, that was significant and powerful. And so it was included here in this transition.

A ROOM FULL OF CANON!

Once Kirk emerges into Spock’s apartment on New Vulcan, fans get treated to a room full of shout-outs to Spock’s and Vulcan’s history. The first thing we see is the wall behind Kirk, which includes a lyre on the right and that hexagonal tambourine thingy that was being shaken during Spock’s marriage ceremony in the TOS episode “Amok Time.” (If anyone recognizes the other objects on the floor or knows what the hexagonal tambourine thingy is called, please let me know in the comments.)

And then we get the close-up of the table next to Spock’s bed. And here we see an IDIC pendant, a lapel pin with a Vulcan symbol on it, and (really deep cut!) the box holding the photo of Spock and the Prime Universe Enterprise bridge crew that was part of Spock Prime’s personal effects delivered to ZACHARY QUINTO’s Spock at the end of Star Trek Beyond.

And then, of course, the two old friends come together, and Kirk grasps Spock’s hand in both of his. If that scene also felt familiar, it’s because it was the same camera angle and pose from Star Trek: The Motion Picture when Spock awakens after his spacewalk encounter with V’Ger…

A UNIFICATION OF STAR TREK ITSELF

Like all of this touching film, the interpretation is left primarily up to the viewer. But having now written this blog, I’ve realized one, final thing. Star Trek is a vast—VAST!—conglomeration of characters, settings, images, feelings, and experiences for us fans. Whether original viewers viewers who watched Trek when it first aired on NBC, long-time “lifers” like myself who grew up with TOS reruns in the 1970s, the “next generation” who were introduced to Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D, or more recent “cadets” who came on board with the J.J. Trek movies or the streaming series on Paramount+…we all share this universe and our love for what it has provided to us. And heck, it isn’t even just one universe or one reality! Star Trek spans not only a quadrant or a galaxy but an expanding multiverse with history and lore dating back millennia.

And this film brings it all together—quietly and gently—in a way no other Star Trek offering ever has before. Think about the various facets of the franchise that these seven and a half minutes of film “unify”:

• The original pilot “The Cage”
• The second pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before”
• The original series
• Star Trek: The Motion Picture
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Star Trek Generations
• Star Trek Beyond
• Star Trek: Discovery
• Star Trek: Picard
• At least one Star Trek novel plus two different comic book stories

And finally, this film has unified fans in a way that I haven’t seen in decades…perhaps ever. Sure, I’ve read a few complaints and criticisms here and there (it’s amazing how many fans know how to make A.I. even better than companies who specialize in it…and these fans are eager give away their “expert” advice for free!). But honestly, the enthusiastic response to this heartfelt film and the obvious care, hard work, dedication, fealty, and love that went into making it has been near-universal. And anything that can unify Trekkers and Trekkies and even casual fans in such an far-reaching way is truly precious.