Skip to main content

A strange new alien arrives in Star Trek Beyond charity campaign vid

It’s been less than a month since we learned the official title of the next Star Trek movie, Star Trek Beyond, but now it appears a charity campaign tied to the film may have just revealed one of the movie’s new alien characters.

Launched last week, the “Star Trek: Boldly Go” charity campaign was created to raise funds for nine different charities supported by the film’s featured cast. The campaign will see one lucky fan winning a walk-on role in the film each week, over the course of nine weeks. In the latest video promoting the campaign, Star Trek stars Simon Pegg (who’s also a co-writer on the film) and Anton Yelchin offer an update on “Boldly Go,” announce the first week’s winner, and — in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment — provide a peek at what seems to be a new, alien from the upcoming film.

Covered in spine-y hair and whiskers, the alien head appears around the :36 mark in the video — right before a brief scene featuring a tray of pointy, prosthetic ears being prepped to wear.

Here’s what the alien looks like:

star trek beyond alien full
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Organized via the Omaze fundraising platform, “Star Trek: Boldly Go” encourages fans to make $10 donations to each week’s charity, with every donation offering the chance to win the coveted walk-on role in the film or various other prizes related to Star Trek Beyond. Larger donations also grant other rewards, including limited-edition t-shirts, posters, a cast-autographed “red shirt,” an advanced private screening of Star Trek Beyond, and even a freaking replica Captain’s chair — imagine that in your home theater room.

In addition to the nine walk-on roles offered in the campaign, six additional fans will be honored as “Star Trek: Boldly Go” crew members, winning the opportunity to visit the set of the film in Vancouver and see some early footage from Star Trek Beyond.

You can get more information about the campaign — including the list of charities and prizes — at Omaze.com.

Star Trek Beyond is scheduled to hit theaters July 8, 2016.

Editors' Recommendations

Rick Marshall
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
Does Star Trek have a future on the big screen?
The Enterprise crew looks at the camera in the 2009 film Star Trek.

The launch of the most recent Star Trek series, Strange New Worlds, marks the sixth new Star Trek show to drop in the last five years -- as many as there were during the first 40 years of the franchise. Given that the streaming service Paramount + is using Star Trek as a flagship brand as it grows and develops its service (it launches in the U.K. and South Korea in June), it makes sense that it would lean into more Star Trek television.

But Trek has as much history in the movies as on television. And since J.J. Abrams' splashy "Kelvin Timeline" reboot dropped out of warp after three movies made between 2009-2016, no new big-screen adventures have been definitively announced. Does Star Trek have a future on-screen? As we await word, we recap the multi-decade legacy of Star Trek in the movies.

Read more
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds review: Old school is new again
Rebecca Romijn, Anson Mount, and Ethan Peck walk in the hallway of the USS Enterprise in a scene from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

It might not have a big movie on the horizon, but Star Trek is still in a pretty great place right now. The long-running sci-fi franchise has multiple critically praised series currently in production, spanning a wide range of audience demographics and formats, from family-friendly space adventures (Star Trek: Prodigy) and serialized cosmic drama (Star Trek: Discovery and Picard) to raunchy animated comedy for adults (Star Trek: Lower Decks). That covers a lot of ground, but the latest addition to the franchise -- the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds -- still manages to find plenty of fresh stories to tell in fascinating ways.

Created by Akiva Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman, and Jenny Lumet, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is ostensibly a spinoff from Star Trek: Discovery chronicling the adventures of Capt. Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise after their appearance in season 2 of Discovery. The series brings back Anson Mount (Hell on Wheels) as Pike, along with Ethan Peck as Spock and Rebecca Romijn as Number One, Pike's second-in-command.

Read more
New Star Trek videos pave the way for Strange New Worlds
Anson Mount in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Casual Trekkies think that Star Trek began with Captain Kirk, Spock, and Dr. McCoy in the original series. However, the most passionate fans know that it all started with Captain Pike, his first officer, Number One, and a noticeably younger Spock in the unaired pilot, "The Cage." Nearly six decades later, the original crew of the Enterprise is finally getting its own show in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. And to set the stage for next week's series premiere, Paramount+ has released two new videos to allow both new and classic fans to boldly go into the future.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | Bringing A New Series To Life | Paramount+

Read more