JJ Abrams' Star Trek went into production on Wednesday, but that hasn’t stopped the casting news from coming. Spock’s human mother, Amanda, will be played by Winona Ryder, who instantaneously becomes one of the biggest names on the cast list. (Thanks to Sci Fi Wire ) . TrekMovie.com also has a link to the first glimpse of actors in the new look Starfleet uniforms, though with the production crew cunningly wrapping the cast in trenchcoats, you’ll have to look very hard to see anything...
Meanwhile, the effects of the Writers Guild of America’s strike action are starting to have a major effect on production beyond early, topical casualties like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live. As we reported on Wednesday , both Lost and Heroes are considering running half series and early season finales in the event of the strike being a long one, and other shows have taken more drastic action - non-genre shows The Office and 24 have stopped production, the latter because the powers-that-be decided they didn’t want to show the real-time series with breaks. However, production is continuing on Journeyman and Smallville (for now), and the big winner could be the back-from-the-dead Jericho – with all seven episodes of its short run in the can, the once-axed show is one of the few series invulnerable to the strike action. You can see a round-up of how the strike’s affecting your favourite shows at Digital Spy .
