Trek Alumni Receive Oscar Nods

Several Star Trek alumni were placed in the running for Oscars when the 76th Annual Academy Awards nominations for this year were announced early Tuesday.

StarTrek.com compiled a list of Trek-affiliated cast and crew up for awards on February 29th, when the coveted statues will be handed out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Every single film put forth for Best Visual Effects has at least one Star Trek staffer among its number.

Jim Rygiel and Joe Letteri, both nominated for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, worked on Trek films Insurrection and The Undiscovered Country respectively. Win or lose, Letteri will receive a Technical Achievement Award for "groundbreaking implementations of practical methods for rendering skin and other translucent materials using subsurface scattering techniques."

Robert Stromberg, nominated for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, worked as a matte artist on The Next Generation and Voyager.

John Knoll and Terry D. Frazee, nominees for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, both worked on Star Trek: First Contact, while Knoll contributed to The Next Generation's "Encounter at Farpoint" and Star Trek Generations and Frazee has been involved in the last five Trek feature films.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan composer James Horner earned his ninth nomination for the original score for House of Sand and Fog, which is also up for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. Horner won two Oscars for the score and song from Titanic.

Actor Michael McKean, who played the Clown in Star Trek: Voyager's "The Thaw", was nominated for the original song he co-wrote for A Mighty Wind, "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow."

Edouard F. Henriques and Yolanda Toussieng, nominees for makeup for Master and Commander, both worked on Star Trek movies: Henriques as a makeup artist on The Final Frontier and Toussieng as a hair stylist for Insurrection. Their fellow nominee Ve Neill of Pirates of the Caribbean was on the crew of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Two sound technicians also came through Star Trek's ranks. Doug Hemphill, a nominee for sound mixing for Master and Commander, was on the crew of The Voyage Home and The Final Frontier. One of the sound editing nominees for Pirates of the Caribbean, George Watters II, also served as sound editor on three of the original cast Trek films.

The full listing is here.

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