Time Travel

Moore gleefully visited the set of the new "Trek" film and Abrams even confided that there is "a shout-out" to Moore in the film that "Battlestar" fans will absolutely catch. More than that, Abrams, who grew up as more of an intense "Star Wars" loyalist than a "Trek" follower, said the George Lucas universe and its visual sensibilities were key in the new "Trek," while the battle scenes are influenced by the gritty dogfights of the new "Battlestar."

The new "Trek" was written by the "Transformers" screenwriting team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wanted to take the combat scenes away from the large-ship, "submarine style" of combat choreography in past Starfleet movies and introduce more of the fighter-pilot ethos of "Battlestar" and "Star Wars." The special effects for "Trek," by the way, are the handiwork of the Lucas-founded effects house, Industrial Light & Magic.

"Star Wars" still stands apart from the other two long-lasting franchises for several reasons -- most notably, Lucas is still the wizard behind the curtain. But with the launch of "The Clone Wars" animated series on Cartoon Network and hints dropped by Lucas that he'd like to add a live-action weekly series in the next few years, the filmmaker is at least borrowing the "Trek" model of isolating in on certain time periods in his saga as the settings for episodic television.

Frank Oz, the man who gave voice to Yoda, said "Star Wars" endures because of the imagination of Lucas, and he doubts very much that the filmmaker frets when critics say that the saga has lost some luster.

"George has created this story of good and evil and these characters that stand up as symbols through the years," said Oz, himself a director ("Bowfinger," "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"). "Some people say that the acting isn't nuanced or that the dialogue is too broad. But look at what's on the screen, the acting and dialogue fit what's going on. The story has connected with people all over the world. George knows what he's doing."

Oz said one of his favorite touches in the "Star Wars" films was the "lived-in" look of the universe, with pitted spaceships and battered droids and none of the untouched gleam of most prior sci-fi films. "You see that now in all the films" -- and certainly in "Battlestar" -- "and when I see that I always think, 'They got that from George.' "