Like the Persian army descending upon Sparta, hordes of geeks, nerds and fanboys (in other words, the world's most creative, intelligent people) invaded San Diego last weekend to convene for an event embraced like no other by Hollywood, the toy industry, publishing, gaming, and every other industry that has anything to do with pop culture.

Comic-Con International 2007 no doubt surpassed last year's attendance tally of 123,000, and those who were ultimately able to survive the incoming crunch toward the convention center and get past the tracks — where you never know when a ginormous slow-moving freight train would hold up all traffic, vehicular and foot, for half an hour in the peak of rush hour — were treated to dozens and dozens of previews and sneak peeks of upcoming movies, TV shows, DVDs, books, comic books, videogames, action figures and you-name-it.

There was hardly a preview or screening that wasn't met with a great deal of enthusiasm by the Comic-Con crowd. Bryan Fuller (formerly of Star Trek: Voyager) totally won over the 2,000 people viewing the full pilot of his new fall show, Pushing Daisies. The Sarah Connor Chronicles starring Thomas Dekker (a former Trek guest star) as John Connor also thrilled a similar audience. The trailer and the full second reel (the only part that's finished) of Robert Zemeckis' "Beowulf," featuring Dominic Keating, screened several times at an off-site movie theater to packed houses.

Thousands filled the auditoriums to see Matt Groening make presentations on the upcoming Futurama revival and on the future of The Simpsons. If you're a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fanatic, those guys were there plugging their new straight-to-DVD project "The Film Crew," and they were hilarious. And one of the absolute hardest events to get into was the Heroes panel in the upstairs ballroom, where the entire principal cast of that show — whose popularity can be attributed in part to its preview at last year's Comic-Con — appeared on stage, including the new "Spock," Zachary Quinto.

Of course, the big news for the Trek world coming out of Comic-Con has already been reported, but we have obtained higher-quality footage — with much better sound! — of the announcement by director J.J. Abrams that both Quinto and Leonard Nimoy will play Spock in the upcoming prequel movie. New poster art was also unveiled, which indicates that the title of the 2008 film may simply be "Star Trek" though a specific statement to that effect was not made. See our updated video of the full presentation at the top left side of this page. (Our transcript of the panel has also been slightly corrected.)

The "Star Trek" announcement was the climax of the two-hour Paramount Pictures presentation on Thursday. Abrams actually first came out earlier in the session to talk about his mysterious monster-attacks-New-York project which has been code-named "Cloverfield" or "1-18-08," and which had an untitled trailer attached to "Transformers." In his brief remarks, Abrams said he has always wanted "a great monster movie," but one that was more "insane and intense" than Godzilla or King Kong. "Cloverfield" is almost done shooting, and after watching the dailies he is more excited about it than ever. To the crowd's great disappointment, Abrams would not reveal the title. What he did say, in response to Internet rumors, was: "You think we'd call it 'Monstrous'? No." The new poster art for this movie was also revealed. A video of this talk is posted at left, along with the new artwork.

Those who attended the Paramount session were handed a bag of some pretty cool free stuff — an "Indiana Jones" art book, a "Beowulf" comic — and the coolest thing was the new "Star Trek" T-shirt: black, with the Starfleet delta on the front containing the words "Star Trek" in Original Series-style lettering just like the new poster, with "STARDATE.12.25.08" in red on the back. These were also available at the Paramount booth in the Exhibit Hall, along with several other promotional shirts.

There was another shirt in the swag bag that left people confounded: A gray one with a logo on the front depicting a drink called "Slusho!" with the motto on the back: "You Can't Drink Just Six." There was no indication that this shirt had anything to do with anything presented by Paramount that day — but not so fast: Apparently it is connected to Abrams' monster movie, some kind of viral marketing campaign meant to lead you to the website www.slusho.jp and perhaps to some clues regarding the movie. There is already plenty of blogging taking place around the internets regarding this.

Attendees who redeemed a voucher in a different room also got a tube full of posters, including the new "Star Trek" art (as shown here at left). The new poster for Abram's monster movie was included, though the printed version was slightly different: it has the word "Terrifying" at the top. A new poster for "Sweeney Todd" (scripted by "Star Trek Nemesis" writer John Logan) also was given away, touted as a Comic-Con exclusive, showing Johnny Depp as the grim 19th-century title character sitting in a barber chair holding a razor, along with a mini-poster for Jon Favreau's "Iron Man." (There was also a very cool glow-in-the-dark "Iron Man" shirt in the swag bag.)

Of course, the J.J. Abrams movie announcement was not the only event of interest to Star Trek fans. Simultaneous to the announcement on this site that Season One of the Remastered Original Series will be released on HD-DVD in November, a panel was held in San Diego to discuss this. Eugene W. "Rod" Roddenberry Jr. was the special guest, along with frequent Original Series extra Billy Blackburn ("Lt. Hadley," "White Rabbit," etc.). Also in attendance were David Grant and Ryan Adams from CBS DVD, and Jason Hillhouse and Andrew Carlson from New Wave Entertainment.

The DVD producers spoke about how thrilled they were to work on Star Trek, and what a challenge the Remastering project was. "It definitely was exciting, but it also was intimidating because Star Trek fans are some of the loyalist fans out there, so we wanted to get it right," said Adams. "We really took our time and we did the research, and, y'know, we extended out to Rod and we dove into it and gave it the most respect we could."

Hillhouse remarked, "It's really great to see some of this stuff cleaned up, because no matter how many times I watch these episodes, I see something new almost every time."

Roddenberry reiterated a comment he's made before: "When I first heard about the 'remastering' of Star Trek, I kinda felt like a lot of fans out there, which was, 'Don't touch it, just don't touch it.' I didn't want the 'Star Wars' effect to happen to it... So when I found out that Mike Okuda and Denise Okuda and Dave Rossi, who are people I have worked with and really have grown to care about and love, were going to be involved and had some decision-making power, I felt much better ... The original DVDs are still available for those die-hards out there who don't want the Remastered, so that's when I got on board." Roddenberry emphasized that he is not directly involved in the Remastering project, but he's very enthused about it. "In fact, I just downloaded on iTunes the beginning of the first season Remastered. So, I look forward to seeing it in HD."

For Grant, the Remastering project was truly validated when they got a call from Original Series producer Bob Justman. "He was blown away," Grant said. "With the HD transfer everything is truly the way they wanted it on the set. He said, 'We were trying to get that look forever, and you guys got the look.' So, we're very happy about that."

The panelists showed an eight-minute promotional video for the Remastered DVD, which drew a big laugh from the audience when the narrator exclaimed, "And after 40 years, you will see a Gorn blink!"

Among the special features on the new DVD set will be "Billy Blackburn's Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories." During the panel Blackburn explained: "I had an 8mm [camera], and I just took it to set, and everybody kind of performed for me. I really didn't think, 'Am I supposed to do this?" or what. But then I got into the second season and I bought a Super 8, and still everybody performed. So I put [the film] in a shoebox and kept it for 40 years ... Then I met Ryan who happened to live right next door to me, and when he found out I had footage, he flipped. So that's how it got started. I never really thought of presenting it before, I don't know why — I had kind of pushed being on Star Trek as yesterday, and moved on."

By the way, this same panel, with most of the same guys, will be held again at the Creation Entertainment official Star Trek convention in Las Vegas next weekend. They are scheduled for 1:20 p.m. on Saturday.

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