TrekToday

William Shatner believes that aliens exist, and is puzzled as to why they haven’t yet communicated with humanity.

Shatner’s recently launched series, William Shatner’s Weird or What? addresses such topics, trying to “explain the unexplainable.”

“There is no doubt that there is life out there,” said Shatner. “The mathematics of it leads you to that absolute conclusion. In my mind, there is no doubt that the universe teems — teems! — with life in all its forms. But why they would come visit here and not let themselves be known to everybody is beyond my sense of logic.

“Why would you fly the years or millenniums (it would take) to (get here)? Why wouldn’t they just land and say, ‘Here we are, we’re tired, got any ice cream?’”

Although Shatner believes that aliens exist, he considers himself to be a rational person. He explained what superstition was and what makes someone engage in it. “Superstition is … a figment of some need or neurosis, and everybody has them,” he said. “And when all else fails, you throw salt over your shoulder, or walk under a ladder, but the fact of the matter is that (when) things happen, forces of nature are in control, and there is always some resolution to two opposing forces. And that resolution is the action that takes place, and it doesn’t have anything to do with superstition. But because there is so much we don’t know, this is the weird part of the what; we tend to ascribe metaphysical things to it.”

William Shatner’s Weird or What? debuted last week on Canada’s History Television.

Zoë Saldana may look small and fragile, but don’t mistake that seeming fragility for weakness.

The actress, best-known as Uhura in Star Trek XI and Neytiri in Avatar, is perfectly able to take care of herself. “I can be tough,” she said. “I learned to ride a dirt bike when I was nine, and I can be deadly with a bow and arrow. Don’t mess with me.”

As an actress though, Saldana has been offered roles where she would be the damsel in distress, much to her dismay. “Hollywood has made a living out of portraying women as needing to be rescued all the time because we’re so incompetent,” she said. “I’d rather quit this business than constantly play the girlfriend of the action hero.

“Because in reality, if Spider-Man was always coming to my rescue, I’d get to the point of saying, ‘Come on, man, I can do it myself!’”

Saldana grew up tough due to her family. After the death of her father, her mother took Saldana and her sister to the Dominican Republic. “Women were the caretakers and the soldiers,” she says of her family. “Our way of thinking was very masculine.”

That toughness doesn’t include dealing with dead rats though. While in the Hawaiian rainforest training for Avatar, Saldana stepped on something. Looking down, she realized that it was the half-eaten corpse of a rat. “I screamed,” she said ruefully. “It had no head! And Jim [Cameron] just cried laughing.”

William Shatner spoke recently about his lengthy acting career, including Star Trek, his relationship with his fellow actors, and his fear for the future.

When Shatner realized that his childhood performances affected his audience, he realized that acting was for him. “[I could] make people laugh and cry,” he said. “Sometimes they laughed when I played drama and cried when I played comedy.”

Shatner likes to make audiences laugh, but isn’t always successful. “I think of myself as somebody valiantly trying to get laughs all the time,” he said, “missing about half the time which is shameful so I run around humiliated and exonerated about fifty percent of the time, ’cause a laugh is as delicate as an orchid … it can be there and it can be gone, it’s a will-o-the-wisp.”

Star Trek was a dramatic show, not a comedy, and Shatner, like most at the time, had no idea that it would be so successful especially since it didn’t do well during its initial run. “Nobody knew that Star Trek would be successful, in fact it wasn’t,” he said. “It was only subsequently, as it was in syndication, that it became more popular. Then the movies began and the other iterations of Star Trek and conventions and all that took place; ten, fifteen, twenty years later. It’s a phenomenon, nobody in their right mind … now there may have been crazed soothsayer in some cave in the Yucatan, who said but Star Trek will be… but nobody listened to her, because nobody knew. I never thought it’d become a big deal, just thirteen episodes and out.”

Over the years, several actors have spoken up about how hard it was to get along with Shatner and he addressed that issue. “I didn’t think I was hard to get along with,” he said. “There were a few disaffected actors who came in once a week. I had nothing to do with them. Friendly! I was working seven days a week, learning ten pages of dialogue a day. They had one line! Then after the show was canceled and the Star Trek phenomenon began, those actors would go to the conventions. They’d get applause, praise, and begin to think, Hey, I was wonderful, and Shatner stole the spotlight.’”

Even though Shatner has had a lengthy career, like many actors, he is insecure. “After seventy years, the fear never leaves me,” he said, referring to the fear that his last acting job will be his final acting job.

Supposedly, there are five basic plots, so sooner or later, fans will see a story that looks rather familiar to them.

According to UGO, some of the movies from this summer could be matched with Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes like Tapestry, Lower Decks, and Journey’s End.

Shrek Forever, according to UGO, can compare with Tapestry. In Tapestry, Picard sees how his life could have been different had he not got into a brawl with a Nausicaan which resulted in him receiving an artificial heart, while in Shrek Forever, Shrek imagines what his life would have been like if he had stayed true to his ogre roots.

Of course, the “what your life could have been like” story has been done before, in movies such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and in television shows such as Dallas.

The Other Guys, which tells the story of the NYPD accountants and benchwarmers “in the shadow of the Big Collar Cops” can be compared with Lower Decks, in which non-senior staff who are usually seen in passing, if at all, are featured.

Salt can be compared to Face of the Enemy, as “A raven-haired beauty who may be fighting on the side of freedom or may be working from within on behalf of a totalitarian empire.” This description might describe Angelina Jolie as a Russian double agent Salt, or Marina Sirtis as Troi, who ends up working from within on behalf of the totalitarian Romulans.

To see more comparisons, head to the link located here.

John Billingsley and his wife Bonita Friedericy will join Kevin Sorbo and Jim O’Rear in voicing Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher.

The audio drama of the Fall of the House of Usher, an adaptation that “stays true to Poe’s original vision with only minor changes in dialogue,” has four speaking roles: Roderick Usher, voiced by O’Rear; Madeline Usher voiced by Friedericy; The Doctor, voiced by Billingsley; and the narrator, voiced by Sorbo.

The Fall of the House of Usher is the first in a series of planned original recordings by Macabre Mansion, who hopes to “produce and preserve significant works of classic literature in an audio theater format.”

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the audio CD will go to A World Fit For Kids, which “give kids the training, tools and support they need to achieve their goals and lead fit and fulfilling lives,” in hopes of mitigating the current childhood obesity epidemic.

The Fall of the House of Usher will be available on CD in October.

Michelle Forbes, best-known to Star Trek: Next Generation fans as the Bajoran Ensign Ro, feels that the time for talking about her days on Star Trek is over.

It has been years since Forbes appeared in Trek, yet she is still asked about it. “When people ask me those questions, I just think, ‘Really guys?’ It’s 2010, two decades later. I’ve answered those upwards, downwards, forwards, sideways. The show went on, it was great. Everybody’s still breathing, everyone’s doing fine. Are we still asking those questions? For me, I only did nine episodes! I hardly remember anything.”

Her Star Trek character, Ensign Ro, was an appealing character, which may explain the continuing fascination with her Trek days, even after so long. “I think I just got really lucky with writers who create very fascinating characters,” she said. “I’m also usually playing roles that come in and out of shows. I’m a gypsy, I like to pop in and pop out. I’ve been very fortunate to hit these great shows.”

Now appearing in the Canadian Durham County, where she plays demented psychologist Dr. Penelope Verrity, Forbes would like fans to give that show a chance. “Durham County was a real game-changer in terms of Canadian television,” she said. “It swept the Geminis [Canadian TV/Movie awards] for its first season… And yet, no one in Canada (or the U.S. for that matter) really knows about the show. I was really quite shocked that people weren’t seeing it as a show with a profound Canadian voice.

“I mean, this is a show that wasn’t copied from an American show – so many Canadian shows are – which usually results in a watered-down version. That’s what I think is smart about Durham County. It’s not derivative of anything American. It’s more in the vein of the BBC miniseries I grew up with.”

For Star Trek fans who have seen it all, take a peek at some of the offbeat Star Trek merchandise offered for sale recently.

Fans are used to seeing merchandise for their favorite shows, from toys to clothing to posters, but occasionally some of the items offered for sale are guaranteed to elicit a muttered, “What were they thinking?”

UGO has collected eleven Star Trek merchandise oddities, including a wallet, dog tags, cupcake toppers and even a Kirk and a Spock nutcracker.

The Kirk and Spock nutcrackers, which sell for $19.99 at the official Star Trek site, “come with both Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock [sic], so you don’t have to decide on just one!” This entry gets bonus points for the “Dr. Spock” error.

Or how about a Spock holiday center piece? “Get in the spirit of Spock!” says the description for this item. Spock is standing amongst a pile of presents and Tribbles, and he has opened a present only to find the box full of Tribbles! One can only suppose that the box originally contained a pile of quadrotriticale or perhaps Tribbles like holiday fruitcakes. How does one say “Merry Christmas” in Vulcan?

Some of the truly weird offerings are courtesy of Etsy. Fans can purchase a Captain Spot antique plate, where a photo of a dog in a TNG uniform is pictured in the center of the plate.

Or how about a painted phaser on one’s black trousers? It’s an Abramsverse phaser and certainly every hot-blooded male will want to appear in public with these trousers! Be sure to put the “Spock’s Breast Meld Wallet” in the pocket of these trousers and you can’t go wrong on a date!

When aliens link them telepathically, Picard and Crusher are forced to confront feelings for one another they have buried for years.

Plot Summary: When Picard and Crusher beam down to Kesprytt to evaluate the unusual request of the Kes to join the Federation without the consent of the xenophobic Prytt, their transporter beam is diverted to a Prytt prison cell, where a Prytt leader named Lorin tells them that they are charged with conspiring with the enemy – the Kes. The Prytt have put implants into Picard and Crusher’s necks that are designed to align with their thought patterns and reveal their motives. To the captain and doctor’s surprise, the implants also begin to allow them to sense one another’s thoughts. Riker sets up a meeting with the Kes leader, Mauric, who comes on board the Enterprise with a full security team, fearful of Prytt spying. Mauric wants to invade the Prytt capitol to rescue Picard and Crusher, but Riker insists on trying diplomacy before force. Lorin rebuffs his attempts to contact her people, threatening to attack the Enterprise if further attempts are made. Meanwhile, Picard and Crusher find a tricorder hidden in a platter that’s supposed to hold prison food and use it to escape, though the map newly added to the directory is vague and leads them along a dangerous path. The link between them is growing stronger, and when they try to separate, they become incapacitated. While camping under the stars, Picard and Crusher discuss their pasts and admit not only that they both knew an attraction had existed between them, but that Picard had been in love with Crusher while she was married to his best friend. Mauric tells Riker that he has an operative in Prytt territory looking for them, but when Picard and Crusher see the man in a Prytt uniform, they hide. Their disappearance leads Mauric to suspect that the pair are conspiring with the Prytt. Stymied and frustrated, Riker has Lorin beamed aboard without permission and forces Mauric to negotiate with her, though neither has useful information about Picard or Crusher’s location and both believe the other is in secret negotiations to get weapons from the Federation. Riker informs them that he is certain the Kes will be denied Federation membership and warns Lorin that if she isn’t more helpful, dozens of Starfleet ships will arrive to look for the missing officers, making contact with many of the Prytt. Though she is reluctant to help, the Enterprise receives a signal that Picard and Crusher have been found by the Prytt at the Kes border, and Lorin has their coordinates sent to the ship so they can be beamed back. Later, Picard and Crusher agree that they’re relieved not to be reading each other’s minds but they also miss the intimacy of the experience. Picard believes they should pursue this relationship, but Crusher says that perhaps they should not, and tells Picard good night.

Analysis: It should surprise no one who reads these reviews regularly when I say that I’m an even bigger ‘shipper than I am a sci-fi fan. The X-Files was primarily about Mulder/Scully for me, not whether the truth was out there, and it took me till the Ninth Doctor to really become a Doctor Who fan because that was the first time I loved the companion as much as the Doctor (please note: I missed Sarah Jane Smith the first time around, or it might have happened much earlier). While I’d never claim that I love Star Trek only for the relationships, the things I’ve loved most passionately about each show has been primarily relationship-centered (Kirk/Spock, Janeway/Chakotay, the myriad wonderful interactions of Deep Space Nine from Garak/Bashir to Kira/Odo), and I’ve often wondered if part of my lack of adoration for Next Gen the first time around was frustration with the lack of relationship development, or at least the glacial pace of it. “Attached” represents everything that irritates me about intimacy in the first of the Star Trek sequels, so even though I enjoy the performances of Patrick Stewart and Gates McFadden, and there’s nothing terribly wrong with the direction or pacing of the episode, most of what I’m about to say concerns this long-simmering gripe.

We’ve known that Picard and Crusher had a complicated past since “Encounter at Farpoint.” We’ve known since the episode just after the pilot, “The Naked Now,” that with her inhibitions repressed, Crusher can’t keep her hands off Picard. We’ve known since the early Wesley Crusher series takeover that Picard has messy feelings about the entire Crusher family, that he carries around a load of guilt for Jack’s death, that he can’t decide whether to treat Wesley as a son or push him away the way he keeps all children at arm’s length, and we’ve known through Q’s meddling, plus the presence of Jenice, Kamala, Nella Daren, et al, that Picard has major issues integrating how he sees himself as a Starfleet officer with his ability to carry on an intimate relationship. We’ve known that on multiple occasions – “The Arsenal of Freedom,” “Remember Me” – when Crusher thought she was going to die, she’s started to tell Picard that there’s something she needs to say, only to be cut off. These aren’t two people who haven’t spent any time playing what-if or working out what they might say if the right moment ever arose, and they’re neither naive nor unfamiliar with one another; we’ve seen that they’re close enough as friends to have serious arguments about work and about the philosophy behind that work, yet continue to have social breakfasts together. As we learn in “Attached,” in fact, they both value those breakfasts so much that they’re willing to eat things they don’t like just to make the other one happy. There’s no way both these characters haven’t played out scenarios in their minds where someone didn’t leave after dinner or someone arrived earlier than breakfast, in a wouldn’t-it-be-fun sense or a happily-ever-after sense, even if there are practical reasons why it might be a bad idea to take it out of the realm of fantasy.

Now we get a scenario where Picard and Crusher are joined at the brain. If you discovered that someone could read your mind, what’s the first thing you’d think about – after “Oh my god, isn’t there some way I can get this person to stop reading my mind or at least to control what they see?”? Snape in Harry Potter is so worried about what Harry might see that he takes certain thoughts out of his mind during Occlumency lessons and stores them in a Pensieve, which seems much more like normal human behavior to me than the absolute lack of concern shown by Picard and Crusher, even if they’d had no personal secrets. Everyone has embarrassing anecdotes from the distant past they wouldn’t want their best friend or their spouse reading in their thoughts, and everyone has occasional irritated thoughts about their nearest and dearest that it’s just as well the nearest and dearest can’t hear. Joined at the brain with someone, no matter who, and even if Prytt agents were chasing me, I’d be wavering between “Oh no, I better not think about how I’ve pictured you naked!” and “Oh no, I’d better not think about how much I hate it when you pick your teeth!” or something very similar. Picard may have wonderful discipline over his words and actions, but I simply don’t believe he has similar discipline over his innermost thoughts – not if he’s human. Yet even though I’d expect the first thing to enter Picard’s mind upon learning of the connection with Beverly would be, “Oh no, I’d better think about anything except the fact that I was in love with Beverly while she was my best friend’s wife,” Picard is entirely focused on escape, then on figuring out what they can eat, then on Crusher’s sense of humor, then on the fact that they both like to watch fire. It isn’t until Crusher actually mentions Jack that Picard remembers he doesn’t want to think about how he was in love with her.

That would have been fine if the episode were coming out of a context and heading toward a resolution where that was firmly in the past. If we’d never had an inkling before of unresolved attraction/passion/sexual tension, if Picard could shake his head at himself and say he knows now if was youthful folly, if Crusher’s inclination was to blush and say oh dear and try to change the subject, then it might be plausible that this secret from the past could surface and lead to a moment of awkwardness and then, a few hours later, easy smiles and jokes. But this is something that’s been lurking, not even dormant, for a lot of years; we’ve seen Crusher jealous when Picard had Jenice on board, we’ve seen Picard open up to Crusher in a way he never opens up to anyone else on the ship, we’ve been made aware of the possibilities (dramatic as well as personal) of a deeper relationship between them. Crusher is inconsistent; first she wants to talk about it, she doesn’t understand why he never told her that he was in love with her, then she wants to sleep, and apparently doesn’t want to think about it any more. She seems more flustered than Picard, who’s usually the one knocked off his game by a big emotional scene he can’t avoid. They’re back to being professional the next morning – they have to be, since Prytt agents are chasing them – and when they’re trapped on either side of the Kes border, with the situation looking as if they might be separated, there’s no “Jean-Luc, I have something to tell you” moment, even though it’s precisely the sort of scenario where we’d have seen one in an earlier episode.

Has something changed? Picard seems to think so; his quarters are lit by candlelight when Crusher comes by after they’re rescued, they’re drinking wine, he’s not embarrassed by her flirting, not even when she implies that she saw some suggestive things in his mind while he was dreaming. But when he takes up the obvious line of questioning after she tells him so, asking whether they should stop being afraid to explore these feelings, she says that perhaps they should be afraid, and flees the room without any further explanation. As frustrating as this must be for Picard, it’s equally frustrating for viewers. When did Beverly Crusher turn into a coward? I don’t mean because she thinks they shouldn’t hop into bed together – there are a lot of good reasons for that, the foremost being that if he couldn’t face the possibility of having to order Nella Daren to risk death while she was his lover, how much worse would it be with Crusher, whom he has known for much longer and for whose husband’s death he holds himself responsible. There are chain-of-command issues, there are interpersonal issues involving the people they work with, there’s the fact that Crusher’s son may hold Picard responsible for his failure to graduate from the Academy…lots of things they could talk about. But Crusher doesn’t want to talk. It’s like she wants verbal confirmation that Picard desires her, and once she’s got that, she’s not interested in any kind of reciprocal sharing or even in saying it’s nice to know but she needs time to think. We’ve seen that Crusher is very careful with her feelings and a bit conservative – she wouldn’t give Odan a chance in a woman’s body – and if I don’t read her exit as timid, then it looks insensitive to Picard’s feelings, so I’d rather assume she’s scared.

Which, maybe, is a good moment to look at the episode as a whole. The Kes think they’re ready to join the Federation, yet they’re incapable of dealing with outsiders without paranoia that almost seems like teenage “who do you love” competitiveness – they suspect Starfleet has asked the Prytt to the prom as well. The Prytt, meanwhile, have no interest in being courted or even spoken to, and react to a simple “hello” by threatening to pull out their weapons. Riker tries to be friendly to both, then realizes that neither respects him for it and both take it to mean he’s waiting to see who’d make the best companion, so he resorts to condescension and warnings instead; it works well enough to get Picard and Crusher back, but so far as we know, the Enterprise leaves without knowing whether their visit might have sparked a civil war or a new alliance. (Do the Kes and Prytt get nauseous when they move apart?) I understand that we’re not supposed to take this planet and its problems overly seriously, they aren’t the focus of the story, but the Kes/Prytt situation is left as unresolved as the Picard/Crusher situation. Don’t we deserve a little closure? Two decades on, we still haven’t got it; oh, Picard and Crusher married and divorced in the series finale, and married in some of the Pocket Books novels and in countless fan fiction stories. But unlike their colleagues Riker and Troi, they seem destined for eternal might-have-been status – for themselves and for us.

Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted with Encounter at Farpoint, where Bandi Groppler Zorn, supervisor of Farpoint Station, was found to be forcing a shape-shifting being to do his bidding.

Bell, who played Groppler Zorn, shared his memories of working on that episode, from landing the role, to his thoughts on the character and on The Next Generation Actors. Bell originally came in to read for the part of Q.

Landing the role of Groppler Zorn meant first responding to a phone call from director Corey Allen. “Actually, I met Corey Allen, the director, early in my career,” Bell explained. “He was teaching drama and I became a pupil. I’d just come to Hollywood and was star struck, of course, and studying with him was a no brainer. We struck up a firm friendship. He was one of the few people in Hollywood who was truly loyal to the talent he worked with, and always remembered to call them in for projects if the role was right. He called me in to read for Star Trek, for Q. I read for him and Gene Roddenberry, who reminded me I worked for him before in the Then Came Bronson pilot. After I finished reading, they both asked me to read for Groppler. The rest is Trek history… at least for me.”

The character of Groppler Zorn was similar to that of politicians, according to Bell. “The role of Groppler was carefully etched, not patently evil, but certainly unprincipled where his general comfort was concerned, and not unlike many past and present politicians. I loved playing against that and Corey allowed the room to discover. However, even if the character was one-dimensional, I’d never have passed. Supporting actors, unlike major stars, do not have the luxury of picking and choosing.”

One thing that stands out years later for Bell was the kindness of Patrick Stewart. “I (was excited) when I was introduced to Patrick Stewart. Did you see him in Ricky Gervais‘s Extras? Brilliantly sick. What an actor. As I think back, we met several years later at a sound studio where we were both working. He said he requested the character of Groppler be reintroduced in the final show, but alas it was not to be. What a gentleman. Imagine him even thinking of me? These were all professionals, and although their characters would gel and firm even better after several months on the series, they were well on their way in the pilot.”

Action figure collectors who are fans of the original series will enjoy the “Dilithium Collection” released by Diamond Select Toys.

Three new sets, from three original series episodes, can be pre-ordered, with delivery expected in late October. The sets will sell for $31.98 each.

The sets, which include two figures each, are from the following episodes of the original series:

• Where No Man Has Gone Before. Kirk and Spock.
• Arena. Kirk and the Gorn.
• The Enterprise Incident. Spock and Romulan Kirk.

To pre-order any of these sets, head to the link located here, click on Products, then Star Trek, then Action Figures.

Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager) will be producing a new magic drama for NBC.

The project comes from Sony TV, with whom Moore signed a two-year deal back in May.

The drama is described as an adult Harry Potter-type show, set in a world that is ruled not by science, but by magic. According to Entertainment Weekly, it is a “police procedural set in a world of magic.”

Issue six of the Star Trek Movie Adaptation comic from IDW Publishing arrives in stores today and fans can have a preview before heading out to purchase it.

Star Trek Movie Adaptation #6 was written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Mike Johnson and Tim Jones, with art and cover by David Messina.

In Star Trek Movie Adaptation #6, “The official comics adaptation of the blockbuster film Star Trek comes to an epic conclusion in this mini-series presented by J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman! Kirk, Spock and the crew of the Enterprise fight to save Earth from Vulcan’s fate! Brought to you by the creative team behind the best-selling Star Trek: Countdown, this series includes scenes not included in the original film!”

Thirty-two pages long, the issue will sell for $3.99.

Click on the thumbnails for full-sized images. More images can be found here, about two-thirds of the way down the page.

A new Mondo poster, featuring artwork by Ken Taylor, will go on sale tomorrow and this poster features the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) from Star Trek: First Contact.

This Trek poster is the first Mondo poster to be taken from a Star Trek movie and not an original series episode.

Mondo creative director Justin Ishmael explained why they chose a movie this time. “The first two releases in our Star Trek series focused on episodes from the original series,” he said. “Space Seed and The Trouble With Tribbles both featured iconic characters and creatures, so we decided to focus on one of the most recognized and loved of all Star Trek characters…the Borg. Not only are the Borg incredibly interesting and visually stunning, but they function as a cohesive unit with the queen as their leader.”

The Trouble With Tribbles poster sold out in only ten minutes, so fans wanting to get their hands on the First Contact Borg Queen poster need to move fast. The poster will be sold at MondoTees.com and news on when the sale will begin will be tweeted by Mondo’s Twitter feed @MondoNews.

Click on the thumbnail of the image to see a larger photo of the poster.

Fans of The Big Bang Theory who also like Star Trek will have a double dose of enjoyment as George Takei is scheduled to appear on the show, and if all goes well, Wil Wheaton may return.

Takei will appear in an episode, in a cameo, playing himself, opposite guest star Katee Sackhoff.

According to executive producer Bill Prady, Takei and Sackhoff will play different sides of Wolowitz’s conscience. “George Takei plays himself,” said Prady, “and he’s the other person guiding Wolowitz [Simon Helberg] in his thoughts as he tries to figure out what to do about Bernadette.” Bernadette (Melissa Rauchberg) is Wolowitz’s ex-girlfriend and he is thinking about getting back together with her.

Prady spoke about his hopes for getting another Star Trek actor, The Next Generation‘s Wil Wheaton, back on the show. Wheaton appeared on the show twice in the third season, playing Sheldon’s (Jim Parsons) enemy. “We started talking about the idea of minor celebrities cutting in line,” said Prady. “And we thought it might be funny to have our guys waiting in line for a one-time-only midnight screening of something like Raiders Of The Lost Ark with restored footage, and Wil Wheaton and three of his friends cut the line.

“When it comes time for our guys to get in, the line stops – Wil took the last four seats and Sheldon is just furious. Because it doesn’t make sense to him. Wil’s celebrity is not applicable here. This is not Star Trek. It’s just wrong.”

This story would be based on a real life incident in Las Vegas. “We were mostly talking about our good friend Adam Savage from Mythbusters,” explained Prady. “He was apparently in Las Vegas, there was a Star Trek auction, and there was a preview and he got to cut the line.”

The fourth season of The Big Bang Theory begins on September 23.

First there was Klingon opera. Now fans of both Klingons and Shakespeare can see selections of Shakespeare classics performed in the Klingon language as well as in English.

On September 25 in Arlington, Virginia, the Washington Shakespeare Company will perform an evening of Shakespeare, featuring selections from Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing.

George Takei will be the featured guest at this performance, in which actors will speak the verse in both English and Klingon, with the lines of each corresponding to the Bard’s iambic pentameter. Takei will only be speaking English, doing a monologue from Julius Caesar.

The Washington Shakespeare Company is known for its offbeat performances of Shakespeare classics. Three years ago, the group performed Macbeth – in the nude. This time, Shakespeare will go sci-fi. “It kind of fits into our company identity, of trying to breathe some fresh air into the classics, of doing something really, really different with them,” said artistic director, Christopher Henley. “It seems a way to say that we’re not as reverent as other companies in town.”

According to Henley, fans need not worry about not being able to comprehend the scenes. “Even the most die-hard Klingon fan would find it hard to follow seven or ten minutes in Klingon,” he said. Scenes in Klingon will be short. “What we’ll try to underline is the different kinds of cultural impulses. The Klingon version will be much more violent.”

Tickets for the event can be purchased here. VIP tickets include an exclusive reception with Takei and Marc Okrand, creator of the Klingon language.

Last night, the NAACP’s 20th Annual Theater Awards ceremony was held and Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s LeVar Burton walked away with an award for his work in The Caterer.

Burton won his award for “Best Lead Male, Local.” In The Caterer, Burton portrayed a man who sold people their “appropriate deaths.” The Caterer ran last spring at the Whitefire Theater in Sherman Oaks, California.

Burton tweeted about his win last night, saying, “I won!!!” He has posted several photos from the event, including one of the award he won as well as one featuring The Caterer cast.

A mammoth fourteen CD box set containing forty complete episode scores by Star Trek: The Next Generation composer Ron Jones will debut in September.

The box set, limited to a run of five thousand copies, and retailing for $149.95, contains over sixteen hours of music.

The forty complete episode scores are from the first four years of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In addition, there are bonus tracks from the two-part Best of Both Worlds, and from two Interplay computer games from the late 1990s; Starfleet Academy and Starfleet Command.

Jones scored forty-two episodes over the first four seasons, including episodes such as: Where No One Has Gone Before, 11001001, Heart of Glory, Q Who, Who Watches the Watchers, The Defector, The Best of Both Worlds, Brothers and Final Mission.

Fans can also read the Film Score Monthly online notes, which features insights from Jones on each episode, and where clips of selected music may be heard.

The box set can be purchased here.

There will be six conventions or shows in September and October that feature Trek actors of interest to Star Trek fans. This listing of conventions and shows feature actors from all five televised series, plus from the Star Trek movies, including guest actors.

In September, fans can see many Trek actors at Dragon*Con, which will be held on Labor Day Weekend, from September 3-6 in Atlanta, Georgia. Trek guests of interest in attendance at Dragon*Con will be: René Auberjonois, Scott Bakula, Robert Beltran, Avery Brooks, LeVar Burton, Denise Crosby, John de Lancie, Michelle Forbes, Jonathan Frakes, J.G. Hertzler, Robert O’Reilly, Mark A. Sheppard, Armin Shimerman, Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner and Garrett Wang.

In addition, Trek authors A.C. Crispin, Peter David, David Gerrold, David Mack and Josepha Sherman will be at Dragon*Con as well as Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II’s James Cawley and Carlos Pedraza.

October will feature five conventions of note to Star Trek fans. First up is Con-Version, which will be held October 15-17 in Calgary, Canada. In attendance will be John de Lancie, Chase Masterson, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo and Marina Sirtis.

HollywoodXPo will also take place on October 15-17 at the Hilton at Universal Studios, Hollywood, California. With over one hundred and twenty guests, there will be plenty of people to see. Of note for Trek fans are the many Trek guest attendees of note: Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Alan Ruck, Tim Russ, Jonathan Frakes, Michael Dorn, Rene Auberjonois, Connor Trinneer, John Billingsley, Dominic Keating, Cirroc Lofton, Robert Duncan McNeil, Nicole de Boer, Gary Graham, Vaughn Armstrong, J.G. Hertzler, Richard Herd, Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, Ronald B. Moore, Stave Rankin, Grace Lee Whitney, Suzie Plakson, Manu Intiraymi, Arlene Martel, Jack Donner, Doug Drexler, Rick Sternback, Larry Nemecek, Catherine Hicks and more.

From October 16-17, Australian fans can attend Armageddon 2010, which will be held in Melbourne. In attendance will be Jeffrey Combs and Nana Visitor.

Next up is Creation Entertainment’s Official Star Trek Convention 2010, to be held in the Chicago area on October 22-24. Trek fans can see the following actors at this convention: Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lloyd (Kruge), J.G. Hertzler (Martok), Barbara March and Gwynyth Walsh (Lursa and B’Etor), Robert O’Reilly (Gowron), Max Grodenchik, Armin Shimerman, Jacob Kogan (young Spock), Vaughn Armstrong, Jeffrey Combs, Casey Biggs and Marc Alaimo.

Finally, October wraps up with Hal-Con, which will take place October 29-31 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In attendance will be Denise Crosby and Walter Koenig.

It has been five years since Star Trek: Enterprise ended and Scott Bakula shares his opinion on what was good and what went wrong. Plus: Will a Quantum Leap movie happen?

In spite of Star Trek: Enterprise ending too soon, plus the ending which was more of a Star Trek: The Next Generation show, Bakula looks back fondly on his time as Captain Archer. “Oh, it was a fantastic experience,” he said. “I had a ball. We had some fantastically talented people on all sides of the camera. We had great actors, tremendously creative effects people and set people and makeup people and… It was fantastic. You were working with some of the most talented people and ground-breakers in the industry, and I got to do it for four years.”

Like many others, including fans and actors alike, Bakula wasn’t keen on the ending. “I have to say that when I first read the script I was off-put by it,” he said. “I had a long talk with Rick (Berman) and Brannon (Braga) about it and they explained their idea and philosophy to me. I don’t know that I ever … Gosh, the end of anything is always hard to write. It was a little odd, but that was their call.”

What would Enterprise have been like, had it had the full seven year run? “Things were dictated by the times, by it being post-9/11, but I wanted us to hopefully get back to having a little bit more fun on the show and to get out of that whole Xindi thing,” said Bakula. “That would have been fun. I think we were pointing in that direction. I think the group was ready to go. The cast was ready to get there, and I think we could have had a blast. But we just didn’t get to go there.  And I wanted Archer to kind of grow up and lighten up a little bit.”

There are rumors that Bakula’s other well-known show, Quantum Leap, might be revived as a movie soon. According to Bakula, “I have spoken with Don [Bellisario] and he’s been approached by a producer to write a script and produce a Quantum Leap film. He’s intending to do that and has begun work on it. And my understanding is that Dean [Stockwell] and I may have a small cameo element to the movie. But it hasn’t been written yet. So we’ll see.”

If J.J. Abrams called Bakula and offered an Archer part in the next movie, would Bakula be interested? “Yes,” he said.

Lwaxana Troi collapses from repressing a secret that Deanna must use telepathy to uncover.

Plot Summary: The Enterprise hosts a diplomatic mission with the Cairn, a telepathic species being educated in the use of spoken language by Ambassador Lwaxana Troi – who is also trying to arrange a marriage between her daughter and Cairn leader Maques. Deanna is initially outraged, but her quarrels with her mother seem to trigger headaches and emotional distress for Lwaxana. Maques warns Deanna that her mother seems to have a hidden, dark area in her psyche, which Deanna dismisses at first as a normal need for privacy. Crusher advises Lwaxana to avoid using telepathy, since she has depleted her neurotransmitters, but Lwaxana makes psychic contact with Maques during a tour of the arboretum, then collapses while everyone is distracted by Maques’ young daughter Hedril, who has stumbled into the pond. Maques believes that Lwaxana’s meta-conscious mind has collapsed inward and believes that only telepathy can reach her, but he doesn’t know her well enough to interpret the images he can access in her mind. Deanna volunteers to try to reach her mother, entering her mother’s thoughts and finding herself on a duplicate of the Enterprise where first Picard orders her to leave, then a wolf chases her down a corridor, trapping her in an unknown house where she sees her dead father. Turning her back on him, Deanna is surprised to see Hedril in the vision, particularly when a furious Lwaxana appears and orders Deanna to leave the girl alone. Waking, Deanna talks to Hedril, who has had no traumatic contact with Lwaxana but says that she knows she makes Lwaxana sad. Deanna searches her mother’s journals for clues and is interrupted by Picard, who notices that seven years’ worth of entries were deleted from before Deanna’s birth until many months afterward. Entering her mother’s mind again, Deanna finds herself in the arboretum which now seems to border the house where she saw her father. Hedril is there, but she has the black eyes of a Betazoid child, and her mother calls her Kestra. As Deanna watches, she discovers that Kestra was her older sister, who drowned while their parents were distracted by the infant Deanna…an accident for which Lwaxana has always blamed herself. Deanna encourages her mother to say goodbye to Kestra, which enables Lwaxana to awaken and finally to talk about the child she lost.

Analysis: I haven’t seen “Dark Page” since it first aired in the 1990s, and had remembered it as somewhat overblown and manipulative – I thought the acting was good, but I hate insipid sentiment, so movies like Terms of Endearment and Beaches generally make me roll my eyes rather than work on me as tear-jerkers. Imagine my surprise when I story I remembered quite well, which had no surprises to offer me in terms of its drama, proved to be gut-wrenching upon rewatching. I’m sure that part of the feeling is because Majel Barrett Roddenberry died so recently; she didn’t just play Troi’s mother, she played the mother of all of Star Trek, a loss for every one of us who’s a fan. I was also a very new mother when I first saw the episode and now I have teenagers, so my sense of what’s emotionally authentic versus what’s socially constructed in terms of parental feeling has changed. I still dislike the idea that someone who’s always seemed as true to herself as Lwaxana Troi could have lived a lie for so long – on top of the question of how she got away with it, considering that she’s an empath and ambassador whose servant knew from the beginning, it’s hard to believe that someone who’s so expressive about living life to the fullest could have shut away such a big part of herself yet kept that spirit. We never had a clue that she carried such a loss when she mentored Alexander or tried to convince Timicin to keep living; if anything, despite what must have been the enormous grief of losing Deanna’s father while Deanna was still a child incapable of sharing Lwaxana’s grief because she didn’t really understand it, Lwaxana always seemed capable of carrying on, keeping the past where it belonged without having to wish it away. The woman who accompanied Timicin to his ritual suicide had no need to deceive herself about how much it would hurt her to lose him, nor that remembering their time together would make it worthwhile.

On the other hand, learning now about such a traumatic loss helps make sense of some of Lwaxana’s more erratic behavior, the sort that makes one wonder how she managed to become and stay an ambassador despite a unique penchant for embarrassing people, particularly her nearest and dearest. She’s been on Deanna’s case to find a husband since we first saw her, so her initial attempts to fix Deanna up with Maques don’t seem excessive or at all out of character. Her relentless insistence on living in the moment sometimes makes her seem reckless and childlike; it’s no wonder she gets along with Worf’s troubled son, and it’s possible to imagine that Lwaxana wants her daughter paired with Hedril’s father to keep the young Cairn girl in her life. Yet always, before “Dark Page,” we’ve been led to believe that Lwaxana’s eccentricities are calculated, that her success as a diplomat lies in her ability to catch people off their guard and spark an emotional reaction that as a telepath she can sense and cultivate. It’s not a happy thought that maybe the quirks that have served her so well – the pushy front, the loud laughter, the bawdy sense of humor – developed as a defense mechanism in the face of an unimaginable tragedy. Lwaxana’s relationship with Deanna has always had quite a bit of tension, though they clearly care deeply about one another; are we now to believe that Lwaxana deliberately held her empathic daughter at a distance to keep the sensitive Deanna from uncovering her secret?

I still feel like it’s a lot to swallow about a character we thought we knew, but it makes for a gripping storyline, and it tells us quite a bit about Deanna as well. In particular, we finally get to see her father and to hear about how his death affected her, something mentioned before only in passing. I know the writers tried to keep Troi and Riker apart because they believed romantic tension served the characters better than a love affair, but it’s always been necessary to pause and ask why they weren’t together when it seemed so apparent that they never stopped loving each other…particularly in the wake of First Contact, knowing that their romance will be revived and end in a wedding, it can seem rather arbitrary when one or the other has an intimate relationship with someone else. There’s a ring of truth in Lwaxana’s entirely inappropriate declaration that Deanna would probably be married to someone else by now if Riker didn’t have a claim on her. Deanna has expressed to his transporter clone how abandoned she felt by Will after he left for Starfleet, but her unwillingness to risk love with a Starfleet officer may go deeper, back to when she was a little girl whose father never came home. It’s a shame that we only see a child’s memory of her father – what Lwaxana expects Deanna to want to see – rather than some broader hint of who Ian Troi was, his interests and his career; we know so much about how Lwaxana’s Betazoid background shaped Deanna but other than songs and stories she recalls from early childhood, we know almost nothing about what she got from her human parent. It’s also not possible to see in such a short glimpse what made the colorful Lwaxana Troi fall in love with a human when as the Daughter of the Fifth House, Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed, she could surely have had her pick of Betazoid men. He appears to have been a devoted husband and father, yet entirely human; like his wife, he was distracted when his little girl ran after their dog and fell in the water.

Despite the heavy material, there are some funny moments: Lwaxana’s insistence on calling Worf “Mr. Woof” and telling him that his brain isn’t sophisticated enough for Cairn communication; Lwaxana announcing that as a half-Betazoid, Troi would be useless communicating with the Cairn; a crewmember flustered by Deanna’s verbal scolding of Lwaxana when, unable to hear her telepathic nagging, he doesn’t believe Lwaxana has said anything at all. It’s also a joy to see a young Kirsten Dunst in the role of Hedril, and there are nice continuity moments for the regular characters like Picard evading Lwaxana’s attentions and Data using his recent dream analysis experiences to try to interpret the images from Lwaxana’s mind. Visually, the telepathic sequences are excellent, combining rooms on the Enterprise with unknown places from Deanna’s early childhood in a dreamlike fashion that seems more real than the visions in Data’s nightmares in “Phantasms.” Maybe it was a mistake to air the two episodes so close together, and that’s why I didn’t fully appreciate “Dark Page” the first time I saw it. Now I’m going to recall it as one of the high points of The Next Generation’s last season.