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05-05-08 'Ghost Whisperer,' 'Star Trek: TNG' to Haunt Sci Fi Channel - Network can also access 'Charmed' and 'Early Edition'

Source: scifi.com

Doohan Trekking To Space

The remains of actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, on Star Trek, will be blasted into space this month, the company organizing the flight told the Reuters news service. The Canadian-born actor died two years ago at the age of 85.

The Houston-based commercial company Space Services told Reuters that some of Doohan's remains were packed into a rocket at Las Cruces, N.M., on March 30, ahead of the flight scheduled for April 28.

The company had originally planned to blast Doohan's remains into space two years ago. But the flight was delayed by tests, then by a misfire during a practice launch last year.

From azcentral.com 9/21/06 

Remastered 'Star Trek' holds course with original

Sept. 21, 2006 12:00 AM

After watching two remastered episodes of the original Star Trek, I have one word of advice for Trekkers: Relax.

As a lifelong fan of the series (let's not go down the whole Trekker/Trekkie road), I was ecstatic to hear they were blowing the mustiness off the original series. Purists may cringe, but it's nice to see the starship Enterprise looking shiny and new, and orbiting real-looking planets.

As you may or may not know, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Star Trek, Paramount put the influential sci-fi TV series through a digital wash and rinse and swapped out the stodgy '60s special effects for modern computerized ships, planets and phaser fire. advertisement





To me, everything just looks better, including the planets, which now have cloud cover and no longer resemble big colorful blobs. The audio is clearer and the distinctive uniforms are vibrant again, and gone are the scratches, hairs and other junk that gummed up the negative.

Unlike George Lucas with the Star Wars series, or Steven Spielberg with E.T., the Paramount people say they didn't add or subtract any content. They just souped up what's already there. The Enterprise doesn't do barrel roles, nor do hundreds of enemy ships suddenly appear out of nowhere.

The computerized special effects are essentially digital replicas of the original models; Paramount even visited the Enterprise model hanging in the Smithsonian, taking exact measurements for the ship's computerized counterpart.

Over the weekend, Star Trek's new local home, Channel 61 (KASW), aired two refurbished episodes: "Miri," which starred Kim Darby as a teen survivor on a plague planet, and "Balance of Terror," in which Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) matches wits with a Romulan commander (Mark Lenard, who's better known for playing Spock's dad).

"Miri," with just a few special effects shots, isn't that great a test for the "HD quality" Star Trek. The uniforms look vivid (like they did on my grandmother's giant console TV set), but the show is set in a post-apocalyptic slum, not in outer space. I couldn't tell if the blue-red sores on the landing party were jazzed up; they still looked just as gross as I remember.

"Balance of Terror," essentially a Star Trek version of the submarine movie The Enemy Below, showcases the new format. The episode includes dozens of effects shots of the Enterprise battling a cloaked Romulan warbird. Actually, the Romulans benefit most from makeover. The warbird wasn't a staple on the show, and it looked like a flimsy model.

Now, as the camera sweeps over the top of the Romulan ship, we see what appear to be real metal plates, with variation from one to another. Wow. The techies also improved the look of the Romulans' plasma projectile, which chases the Enterprise into the interstellar hills.

A note for true Trekkers: When the Enterprise fires its phasers in "Balance of Terror" (a first-season episode), the blasts come in short bursts, like photon torpedoes. As the series went on, this inconsistency would be addressed, but Paramount doesn't tamper; the only improvements are brighter bursts and added reverb.

This may seem like a minor point (OK, it is), but it does prove that the digital remastering is meant to help the original effects shine through, rather than just re-doing them totally.

While some will consider these "improvements" as a betrayal of the original work, it's not worth too much righteous indignation. Star Trek, remember, is a sci-fi show, so the changes seem much more natural and hardly an affront.

And if any show deserves to have the best technology available, it's Star Trek, which inspired thousands to invent that technology in the first place.
 

From star-ecentral.com 9/26/06

From cinemablend.com

Star Trek Is A Rumor Wreck
By Josh Tyler: 2006-09-16

Seriously Paramount, give us some real information on Star Trek XI soon, or we'll tear ourselves to pieces. We can't take much more of this.

Forget every rumor you've heard about Trek casting over the past few months. We're back to square one again.

Remember how William Shatner confirmed that he'd been contacted about being in J.J. Abram's new Trek prequel? Forget it. He's now contradicting himself. On his official site he now says, "There are lots of underground rumblings about STAR TREK. Some of it is burbling, some of it is barely noticeable. I know nothing except that where’s there’s rumblings, there’s gas and in this case, the gas is coming from JJ Abrams and none of it seems to be directed in my direction."

Confused yet? Wait, there's more. Remember all the rumors about how Matt Damon was being approached to be Kirk? Remember how Abrams' approached Shatner about getting his blessing to cast Damon? Well apparently he wants him so bad that he's not even returning his calls. IESB asked Matt Damon about it at a recent press junket, and Matt denies everything. Apparently he hasn't heard anything from Abrams or Paramount. His publicist even went so far as to admit that they've even been calling around to Matt's talent agency to see for themselves if there have been any inquiries, and the answer is absolutely no.

The fact that Damon has his people checking on the project makes me think that perhaps he's interested in doing it, but if nobody offers it to him then it's going to be kind of tough for him to take it. What's going on with Star Trek XI? It's anybody's guess. At this rate there's a good chance that the Enterprise will end up being crewed by nothing but tribbles. They'll work for scale. Meanwhile, I'm going to my quarters with… a headache.

Kirk and Spock in new 'Star Trek' movie
Source: Jam! Movies
Date: 31st August, 2006
Posted by: Paul Heath

Jam! Movies have a bit of scoop. It seems that Spock and Captain Kirk (Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner) could be returning for the new STAR TREK movie. Nimoy dished some gossip to the site.

"The head of production at Paramount called my agency to tell them about this project and they are aware of Bill's and my contribution to the franchise, and they'd like us to know they might want some involvement. It was all very, very general.

"They might possibly want Bill and I to set up the story as a flashback. But that's just conjecture on my part."


Leonard Nimoy continues to prosper

Behind the iconic ears and bowl haircut you'll discover an interesting guy named Leonard

By JIM STOTEK -- Toronto Sun





Leonard Nimoy (AP file photo)
Three decades ago, as the craze over a long-cancelled show called Star Trek became feverish, Leonard Nimoy wrote a book called I Am Not Spock.

A little over 10 years ago, noticing that when people called out "Spock!" on the street he'd turn around, Nimoy bowed to the inevitable and wrote a book called I Am Spock.

Now J.J. Abrams is coming up with the next Star Trek movie, in which a young Kirk and Spock meet at Starfleet Academy. That means somebody else will be cast as Spock.

Which means, we tell Nimoy, you are not Spock again.

The Vulcan laughs. Nimoy lets go a loud guffaw over the phone from his Lake Tahoe home and says "I never thought of that. My next title should be 'I Am Not Necessarily Spock.' "

Retired, and devoted to his family and his photography hobby, Nimoy doesn't much care about doings in Hollywood. But the actor/director -- who'll be appearing this weekend alongside old friend William Shatner at the Canadian Expo at the Metro Convention Centre (the annual Nerd Woodstock) -- could be coerced to boldly go back for the right set of pointy ears.


"The head of production at Paramount called my agency to tell them about this project and they are aware of Bill's and my contribution to the franchise, and they'd like us to know they might want some involvement. It was all very, very general

"They might possibly want Bill and I to set up the story as a flashback. But that's just conjecture on my part."

Whether or not it brings him back to the screen, Star Trek has brought Nimoy out of the house quite a bit more this year -- the occasion being the 40th anniversary of the launch of the USS Enterprise's five-year mission on NBC, Sept. 8, 1966 (the episode, for trivia buffs out there, was "The Man Trap," about a salt-eating vampire creature let loose on the Enterprise).

"It is a long time ago," Nimoy says, "yet some of it is extremely fresh in my mind. I vividly remember some of the earliest makeup tests and wardrobe fittings, the first days of shooting. I remember shooting with Jeffrey Hunter on the first pilot (1965). And then the phone call I got from the studio saying they wanted to make a new pilot and they wanted me back."

Well, sort of wanted him. The most common studio memo that greeted the original Star Trek pilot (with Jeffrey Hunter as Capt. Pike) was "get rid of the guy with the ears."

And even 40 years ago last August, Nimoy recalls, "I opened up my mail one day and found a brochure from NBC's sales department which they were sending to potential sponsors. And in the photographs of me in that brochure, the pointy ears had been removed. I called Gene (Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry) and he said he explained that somebody in sales had become concerned that the religious Bible Belt might be offended by the idea of a devilish looking character coming into their homes. So to play it safe they got rid of the ears."

Instead, he became Trek's most popular character, surviving even his own death in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. "I really thought I was finished when I saw that script, it's over."

Nimoy likens today's appetite for Star Trek to the '70s, "when there was this great demand and no product" (the last Trek series, Enterprise, was cancelled two years ago).

In fact, though much is made of a rivalry between "Trekkers" and Star Wars fans, Nimoy credits George Lucas for giving Trek life. "In '77 I was in Equus on Broadway and I kept hearing about the phenomenal success of Star Wars. I went to a theatre in Times Square and the place was packed with screaming, shouting, cheering people. And I thought 'Wow. I think we're going to be getting a call from Paramount. And sure enough, three weeks later, they announced their Star Trek movie."

Along with Shatner, Nimoy had the active non-Trek career, his as a director (Star Trek IV and two movies shot in T.O., The Good Mother and the smash hit Three Men And A Baby).

"These days I'm very much involved with my photography. My work is in several museums in the U.S. and in galleries. I work with nudity, female figures." Some of them -- the ones in his Full Body Project --quite, shall we say, Rubenesque. "That's one of the areas of my work," he says. "Not all of it, but it is a definite thread."

(See it on leonardnimoyphotography.com).

As for attending Trek conferences, "That's like taking a victory lap," Nimoy says. "They say wonderful things and stroke your ego. They tell you how you've affected their lives in a positive way, and thanks for all the years of entertainment."

Ditto, we say, and thanks for talking to us.

"Live long and prosper," Nimoy says with a chuckle.

THE LEONARD FILE

BORN: March 26, 1931 in Boston, Mass., to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants

MIDDLE NAME: Simon

MORE THAN JUST SPOCK: Film director, poet, author, musician and photographer (check out his work at leonardnimoyphotography.com)

ROLE REVERSAL: Nimoy replaced Martin Landau in Mission: Impossible in 1969. Ironically, Landau turned down the Spock role to play the "Rollin Hand" character in Mission Impossible.

MUSIC MAN: Nimoy also has released several albums of vocal recordings including Trek-related songs and cover versions of popular tunes.

DID YOU KNOW?: Nimoy directed a 1985 music video for The Bangles' Going Down to Liverpool.
-- source: wikipedia.com

SPOCK POINTS


He is part alien: half-Vulcan, half-Human.

Mr. Spock was in "constant struggle between the Vulcan logical self and his human emotional self"

Famous for his Vulcan nerve pinch. "This manoeuvre renders most humans and humanoids unconscious by applying pressure at the intersection of the shoulder and neck of humans."

Takei takes to Net Trek

George Takei, famous for playing helmsman Hikaru Sulu of the celebrated starship USS Enterprise in Star Trek (the original series), is returning to the role for a fan-produced, downloadable Internet-only episode of the show.
It's part of The New Voyages, a series of full-length Web episodes produced by longtime fan James Cawley. What started out as a fan effort has evolved into a slick production with professional outfits donating their time and resources, Cawley told the Associated Press.

The series unofficially continues the mythology of the original show, with its storylines taken from unfilmed scripts written for a planned 70s revival that never materialised.

Takei's episode, World Enough and Time, will see the intrepid helmsman being transported to an alien world. He spends 30 years there, aging and even having a child.

Cawley himself plays Captain James T. Kirk in The New Voyages.

Trekkers should check out the link below for more info on the series and to download the episodes.

Surfing: http://www.newvoyages.com/

From TVGuide.com 8/31/06
Exclusive! "New" Star Trek Is Set on Stunning by Michael Logan
Behold Star Trek's "new" Enterprise.
Star Trek purists, take a deep breath! On Sept. 16, the iconic ‘60s series will return to syndication for the first time since 1990, but with a startling difference: All 79 episodes are being digitally remastered with computer-generated effects not possible when Gene Roddenberry created the show 40 years ago. The news could cause Roddenberry loyalists to have a collective cow, but the longtime Trek staffers in charge of the makeover say they're honoring the late maestro's vision, not changing it.
"We're taking great pains to respect the integrity and style of the original," says Michael Okuda, who spent 18 years as a scenic-art supervisor on Star Trek films and spin-offs. "Our goal is to always ask ourselves: What would Roddenberry have done with today's technology?" Okuda's teammates on the two-year project are his wife, Denise Okuda, with whom he's authored several Trek reference books, and 14-year Trek production vet David Rossi.
The upgraded episodes — to be shown out of order and one per week — will kick off with "Balance of Terror," a big fan favorite "that gives us a chance to really show off the ‘new' Enterprise," says Okuda. "The exterior of the ship now has depth and detail, and it will fly more dynamically." Painted backdrops will also be brought to life: Once-empty star bases will have CGI people milling about, while static alien landscapes have been given slow-moving clouds and shimmering water. Okuda notes that a view of Earth in the 1966 episode "Miri" has been "replaced with a more accurate image, now that we've gone into deep space and looked back at ourselves."
Trek's opening theme is also getting an overhaul: The music has been re-recorded in stereo, and a new singer has been hired to wail those famous but wordless vocals. And goofs will be corrected: In "The Naked Time," there was no beam coming out of Scotty's phaser when he tried to cut through the bulkhead outside Engineering. Now there is.
The "new" Trek debuts Sept. 16.
Star Trek fans, pick up the new TV Guide to see what William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy have to say about the series' 40th anniversary.
Send in your comments about this article to letters@tvguide.com 

Zone, Trek Producer Piller Dies
Michael Piller, co-creator of USA Network's The Dead Zone TV show and a veteran Star Trek writer/producer, died in the early morning hours of Nov. 1 after a long fight with cancer, the official Star Trek Web site reported. He was 57.

George Takei (Sulu) told the world he was gay 10/27/05.  Most Trek fans responded with tolerance as usual.

Past Time Magazine articles from Time Magazine

November 25, 1996

ALIENS! ADVENTURE! ACTING!

BY RICHARD CORLISS

Captain Jean-Luc Picard is building up a head of righteous steam about the Borg, the evil race that once enslaved Picard and has now infested the Starship Enterprise with plans to do something very naughty to Planet Earth. Well, the Captain will not abandon ship. He will face up to the Borg, he says. "And I will make them pay for what they've done." As Patrick Stewart delivers this line with a majestic ferocity worthy of a Royal Shakespeare Company alumnus, the audience gapes in awe at a special effect more imposing than any ILM digital doodle. Here is real acting! In a Star Trek film! From the successor to William Shatner!

This is just one of the small wonders in Star Trek: First Contact, eighth in the big-screen series and second with the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here, for a change, is an action movie that takes its subject but not itself seriously. It has a theme: the temptation to become something other and powerful, instead of cozy, ordinary you. It borrows not only from the Trek canon, but from other science fiction (eek!--there's a killer alien on board!). Yet First Contact is no grab bag of camp gewgaws; it stands proud and apart, accessible even to the Trek-deficient. This old Star, it seems, has a lot of life in it.

In the script by Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, the Enterprise is sailing through space, with its Frisbee contours and fabulous tail fins, toward mop-up duty in the Federation's war against its ugliest nemesis. The Borg are flying back to the 21st century to prevent the first rendezvous between humans and benevolent extraterrestrials, then to "assimilate" all earthlings and turn them into crusty, cranky robots. Picard, who has been denied active duty for the very reason he needs to fight--because of his earlier assimilation by the Borg--disobeys orders and, y'know, saves the galaxy. But not before his android Data (Brent Spiner) is captured by the seductive queen Borg (Alice Krige).

Under the suave direction of Jonathan Frakes, who also plays the Enterprise's second-in-command, the movie glides along with purpose and style. It also allows for a fun detour into a "holographic novel" set in the dear Deco days of Indiana Jones. But it's mainly a three-way tug of souls among Picard, Data and the queen of all the Borg. When she whispers to her onetime conquest Picard, "You can't begin to imagine the life you denied yourself," she opens the movie up to the ache of memory--to a good man's second thoughts when he considers the road not taken, even if it's the road to Hell.

For their sequel, the Next Generation stalwarts will do battle with a creature even meaner and mouthier than the Borg: the McEnroe.

November 28, 1994

Trekking Onward

BY RICHARD ZOGLIN

FOR STAR TREK FANS, THE MEMORY STILL HURTS. IT WAS A Saturday Night Live sketch eight years ago, and William Shatner -- the indomitable Captain James Tiberius Kirk from the original TV series -- was playing himself making a guest appearance at a Star Trek convention. After fielding a few dumb questions from the nerdy, trivia-obsessed fans, he suddenly exploded: "I'd just like to say Get a life, will you, people?! I mean, for crying out loud, it was just a TV show!"

No matter that Shatner, in the sketch, quickly recanted, telling the crestfallen Trekkies that his outburst was, of course, a re-creation of "the evil Captain Kirk" from Episode 37. The put-down was like a phaser to the heart. Trekkies (or Trekkers, as many prefer to be called these days) have always existed in something of a parallel universe of TV viewing. They're the ones who can debate for hours the merits of the episode in which Mr. Spock mind-melded with a bloblike alien called the Horta, or the one where Captain Kirk time-traveled back to the Great Depression and fell in love with Joan Collins. They know the scientific properties of dilithium crystals, they have memorized the floor plan of the Starship Enterprise, and they can say, "Surrender or die!" in the Klingon language. They have immersed themselves, with a fervor matched by few devotees of any religious sect, in a fully imagined future world, where harmony and humanism have triumphed and the shackles of time and space can be cast aside almost at will. Trekkies are true-believing optimists, and a few of them may be nuts.

They are also the custodians of perhaps the most enduring and all-embracing pop-culture phenomenon of our time. Consider the industry that has grown out of a quirky TV series that ran for three years in the late 1960s, only to be canceled because of low ratings. Two decades later, a second series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, ran for seven seasons and became the highest-rated syndicated show in TV history. A third Trek series, Deep Space Nine, if not quite as big a hit, is currently the No. 1-rated drama in syndication. Six Star Trek movies have earned a total of nearly $500 million at the box office. Videocassettes (of every series episode, as well as the movies) are so popular that most video stores devote an entire section to them. Star Trek is seen around the world in 75 countries, and Trek mania has hit many of them; the official Star Trek fan club in Britain has 18,000 members. Trek-related merchandise, ranging from T shirts and backpacks to a $2,200 brass replica of the Enterprise, has exploded in the past five years, with total revenues topping $1 billion. More than 63 million Star Trek books are in print, and new titles -- from tell-alls by former cast members to novelizations of Trek episodes -- are appearing at the rate of more than 30 a year.

And the Trek phenomenon is bursting again like a fresh supernova. A seventh feature film, Star Trek: Generations, which opened over the weekend, brings together for the first time the two Enterprise big shots: Shatner as the heroic, headstrong Captain Kirk of the original series and of every movie until now; and Patrick Stewart, the bald-pated Brit who succeeded him as the more cerebral Captain Picard in The Next Generation. The new film, a smashingly entertaining mix of outer-space adventure and spaced-out metaphysics, almost certainly marks the last movie appearance of the classic Trek crew (Kirk, in a secret no one seems able to keep, dies at the end of the film) and launches what promises to be a new string of movies featuring Stewart and his Next Generation gang. With Deep Space Nine continuing, and yet another TV series, Star Trek: Voyager, debuting in January, the pump is primed for more TV-to-movie transfers in the future. The mother ship of all TV cult hits seems poised to boldly go where none has gone before: into eternity.

For all that, Star Trek has never won much respect. In the realm of long- running entertainment phenoms, Sherlock Holmes has more history; James Bond, more class; Star Wars and Indiana Jones, more cinematic cachet. And while no one sneers at the Baker Street Irregulars, noninitiates consider Trekkies to be pretty odd: Trekkies like Pete Mohney, a computer programmer in Birmingham, Alabama, who leads a double life as captain of his local Starfleet "ship," the Hephaestus NC-2004, and publisher of a 40-page Trekkie newsletter; or Jerry Murphy, a Sugar Grove, Illinois, business manager and father of two, who is commander of a local Klingon club and frequently dresses up as one of the big-browed aliens for charity events. "Nobody messes with Klingons," he says. "We're the bikers of the Star Trek world."

After all, you have to wonder about people who would pore over The Star Trek Encyclopedia, with 5,000 entries on every character, planet, gadget or concept ever mentioned in the series, from gagh ("serpent worms, a Klingon culinary delicacy") to Pollux V ("planet in the Beta Geminorum system that registered with no intelligent life-forms when the Enterprise investigated that area of space on Stardate 3468"). Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek's late creator and guiding spirit, once got a letter from a group of scientists who complained about a scene in which Captain Picard visited France and looked up at the night sky. By their calculations, they said, the stars could not have been in that position in France in the 24th century.

Yet Star Trek has legions of more temperate fans too. General Colin Powell is a watcher; so are Robin Williams, Mel Brooks and Stephen Hawking, the best- selling physicist (A Brief History of Time) who made a guest appearance in an episode of The Next Generation, playing poker with holographic re-creations of Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton. Rachelle Chong, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, has decorated her office with Trek paraphernalia and dressed up as Captain Picard for Halloween. "I like the show because it shows me tomorrow," she says. And sometimes today: the cellular phone-like communicators used by the Trek crew back in the 1960s are almost exact precursors of the personal-communication systems the FCC has just begun issuing licenses for.

According to Paramount TV research, Star Trek's regular weekly audience of more than 20 million includes more high-income, college-educated viewers (as well as more men) than the average TV show. Even at the better than 200 Trekkie conventions held each year, the clientele is more likely to be middle- ! aged couples with kids in tow than computer geeks sporting Vulcan ears. "In the early days, everyone had a shirt and a costume," says Mary Warren, who was selling Trek apparel at a recent convention in Tucson, Arizona. "Now you get all these normal people in here." Among the 2,000 who attended was Elaine Koste, who came with her husband David and five-year-old daughter Karessa. "I use Star Trek as a tool to educate my daughter," said Koste. "It's good for her to see the characters deal with other races and teach good values."

"People have not gotten a real sense of what Star Trek fandom is really all about," says Leonard Nimoy, who played Mr. Spock, the superrational, pointy- eared Vulcan on the original series. "I talk to people in various professions all the time who say, 'I went to college to study this or that because of Star Trek."' Jonathan Frakes, Commander Riker on The Next Generation, concurs: "If you go in looking for geeks and nerds, then yeah, you'll find some. But this is a show that doesn't insult the audience. It is intelligent, literate and filled with messages and morals -- and that's what most of the people who watch are interested in."

Star Trek has evolved over the years from the brash, sometimes campy original series, with its Day-Glo colors and dime-store special effects, to the more meditative, slickly produced Next Generation, to the relatively conventional action-flick pleasures of the feature films. In all its incarnations, however, Star Trek conveys Roddenberry's optimistic view of the future. Sinister forces and evil aliens might lurk behind every star cluster, but on the bridge of the Enterprise, people of various races, cultures and planets work in utopian harmony. Their adventures, in the early days, were often allegories for earthbound problems like race relations and Vietnam -- problems that were solved with reason. A key concept of the show, which began during the Vietnam War, was the Prime Directive. It stated that the Enterprise crew must not interfere with the normal course of development of any civilization they might encounter.

The comforting ethos of the series was expressed not merely in the amity of the crew -- who never fought amongst themselves except when one or another had been taken over by aliens, which seemed to happen about every third episode. Beyond that, the freewheeling way the starship broke the constraints of time and space was a testament to unlimited human possibilities. Hundreds of light- years could be traversed in minutes (just accelerate to "warp factor"); crew members could be transported from place to place in an instant ("Beam me up, Scotty"). Time travel was a particular Star Trek favorite; characters were often shuttling back and forth to the past, trying to rectify mistakes of history and avoid disasters of the future. Talk about power trips!

Despite its techno-talk, Star Trek and The Next Generation were, at bottom, shows about the nature and meaning of being human. The endless parade of evil aliens and perverted civilizations -- from the bellicose Klingons to the pernicious Borg, with their hivelike collective consciousness -- was always contrasted to the civilized humans on board the Enterprise. The most popular characters were the nonhuman ones -- Spock, the "logical" Vulcan, and Data, the soulless android -- precisely because they were constantly being confronted with the human qualities they lacked: the emotions they either scorned (in Spock's case) or craved (in Data's).

Star Trek: Generations (directed by David Carson, who did several episodes of the series) continues the exploration of this theme. Data (Brent Spiner) has an "emotion chip" implanted in his brain, then suddenly has to deal with unfamiliar feelings like fear, remorse and giggly irresponsibility. Captain Picard, meanwhile, must overcome the siren-like lure of the Nexus, a timeless zone of pure joy that is being sought by the villainous Dr. Soran (Malcolm McDowell). The Nexus is a personalized fantasyland, where Picard experiences the idyllic home life he never had. Captain Kirk is there too, going through his own homey fantasy, but both must reject the Nexus and return to the real world to help defeat Soran. Responsibility, caring for others, recognizing your mortality -- these things too are part of being human.

Star Trek's optimistic morality plays were especially appealing when the show first went on the air in 1966. "It seemed like there was a hell of a lot of trouble in the world," says D.C. Fontana, a writer on the original show, "and it was a time there might not have been a whole lot of hope in America. And here comes this series that says mankind is better than we might think." Says Ian Spelling, who publishes a weekly Star Trek newspaper column: "It's a story of a positive future in which people are getting along. And if they're not, they're trying to work things out."

The multicultural Star Trek crew -- a Russian, a Japanese, a black woman, a ! Vulcan (make that multiplanetary) -- was of symbolic importance to many viewers. "As a teen, I was a fan," says Whoopi Goldberg, who had a recurring role in The Next Generation. "I recognized the multicultural, multiracial aspects, and different people getting together for a better world. Racial issues have been solved. Male-female problems have been solved. The show is about genuine equality."

Star Trek has won praise from many science-fiction writers. Ray Bradbury, a close friend of Roddenberry's until the latter's death in 1991, finds the show's popularity unsurprising: "We're living in a science-fiction time. We're swimming in an ocean of technology, and that's why Star Trek, Star Wars and 90% of the most successful films of the last 10 years are science fiction." Indeed, Star Trek has helped spark a revival of science fiction on TV, including such shows as Babylon 5 and SeaQuest DSV and an entire cable network, the Sci-Fi Channel.

Many scientists too admire the show for its faithfulness to the scientific method, if not to factual science. "They have a respect for the way science and engineering work," says Louis Friedman, a former programs director at Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "For example, when you make measurements of a planet and try to determine its atmosphere, then get into the transporter ... well, if you had a transporter that's probably how you'd do it. They make it believable because they go through a reasonable process."

Others attribute Star Trek's popularity less to its science than to its dramatic and mythic qualities. Richard Slotkin, professor of English at Wesleyan University, says the show echoes the pioneer stories that dominate American history and literature. "What's so appealing about Star Trek is that it takes the old frontier myth and crosses it with a platoon movie," Slotkin says. "Instead of the whites against the Indians, you have a multiethnic crew against the Romulans and Klingons."

Star Trek has always had its literary pretensions; allusions to Shakespeare abound, and it has often been compared to The Odyssey. "There was something heroic and epic to the underlying themes," says Patrick Stewart, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. "In terms of its ambition, the stage on which it was set was Homeric." Says Shatner: "I think there is a need for the culture to have a myth, like the Greeks had. We don't have any. So I think people look to Star Trek to set up a leader and a hearty band of followers. It's Greek classical storytelling." Not that the stars buy all the highfalutin analyses of their work. Kirk has been described as a classic Kennedyesque cold warrior. "That's too esoteric for me," says Shatner. "All I wanted to do was come up with a good character. I always played Kirk close to myself, mostly because of fatigue."

Shatner wouldn't have played Kirk at all if the original pilot for the series had pleased NBC. The show, which Roddenberry produced in 1964, starred Jeffrey Hunter as the captain. But NBC wanted changes, and by the time a new pilot was done, Hunter had dropped out. One actor who remained from the first pilot was Nimoy as Mr. Spock -- though only after Roddenberry persuaded NBC not to drop the character. The network had other alarming suggestions: at one point, Roddenberry recalled, NBC executives suggested that Spock smoke a space cigarette, to please a tobacco-company sponsor.

The original Star Trek never drew much of an audience, and it was saved from cancellation after two seasons only with the help of a letter-writing campaign from fans. But in its third season, NBC moved the show to a weak time slot, on Fridays at 10 p.m., and cut its budget by $9,000 an episode, putting a further crimp in the already bargain-basement special effects. The show was gone after that season.

But three seasons and 79 episodes were just enough to put the show's reruns into syndication, and there they were an enormous hit. By the end of the '70s, the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind had prompted Paramount to give its TV space crew a crack at the big screen. Star Trek: The Motion Picture displeased hard-core fans. But it made a sturdy $82 million at the box office and launched a series of films that peaked in 1986 with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, which grossed $110 million. Only Roddenberry felt left out. Though listed as executive consultant on all the films, he was largely supplanted by other producers. "He was pretty bitter about the films," recalls writer Tracy Torme. "He really felt like they took the films away from him."

Yet Roddenberry got a second chance on TV, when Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987. The show, set 80 years after the original, introduced a new Enterprise crew and had a much bigger budget. But still there was turmoil: Roddenberry's insistence on rewriting scripts alienated many of the writers. Things settled down when Rick Berman, Roddenberry's second-in- command, and co-executive producer Michael Piller took control. The show soon hit its stride, with an accomplished cast, better special effects and some of the most imaginative sci-fi writing ever for TV. The series was ended last May, at the height of its popularity, because Paramount wanted to switch it to the big screen exclusively.

Deep Space Nine is a drearier show, set in a kind of outer-space bus stop, where another imposing commander (Avery Brooks) presides over a melting pot of alien riffraff. The upcoming series, Voyager, aims to return to the exploration theme of the earlier series. Its premise: a Starfleet ship, chasing a band of rebels who oppose a Federation peace treaty, is transported (through a pesky space-time anomaly) to a distant part of the universe. The Starfleet crew and the rebel band must then join forces to find their way back home. The new show also responds to one longtime complaint about the Star Trek series: the lack of prominent roles for women. The captain of this Starfleet ship is played by Kate Mulgrew (replacing Genevieve Bujold, who quit the show after two days of shooting).

The Star Trek mystique has grown big enough that there's money to be made in debunking it. Two cast members from the original show, Nichelle Nichols (Uhura) and George Takei (Sulu), have written books in which they describe Shatner as an egomaniac on the set. Shatner has given his side in two volumes of Trek reminiscences, and some ex-colleagues charge that he has exaggerated his creative role. "The only thing that surprises me about Bill's (first) book," says Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who played Nurse Chapel in the original series and later married Roddenberry, "is that he managed to get it in the nonfiction category."

Bruised egos also resulted, not surprisingly, from the effort to combine the two TV casts for a passing of the torch in the new movie. Nimoy declined a role after he saw how small his part would be. "I told them," he says, "'The lines that you've written to be spoken by somebody named Spock can be easily distributed to any of the other characters on the screen."' Which is what happened: Captain Kirk appears with two lesser members of the old crew: chief engineer "Scotty" (James Doohan) and Ensign Chekov (Walter Koenig). Several members of the Next Generation cast, meanwhile, were less than thrilled with their relatively small amount of screen time. Says LeVar Burton, who plays Geordi: "Hopefully, if we do another one of these, we will have an opportunity to spread the wealth more."

Then there was the film's controversial ending. As originally shot, Captain Kirk was killed by a phaser in the back. But test audiences were reportedly dissatisfied, and the scene was reshot just weeks before the film opened. Kirk now has a more action-packed, though considerably lower-tech demise; Trek fans are already grumbling.

None of which will matter much if the film is, as expected, a big hit. Then all that Paramount will have to worry about is trying not to squeeze too much out of its cash cow. The studio plans to produce a new feature film every two years, while keeping two TV shows running simultaneously. "Star Trek will do fine if they don't kill the goose," says Barrett Roddenberry. Berman acknowledges the danger: "There's always the question about taking too many trips to the well, and one of the tasks Roddenberry left me with was at least to try to prevent that from happening."

Yet Roddenberry's old optimism seems to be prevailing. "Gene Roddenberry had a point of view that space is infinite as far as we know, and therefore the possibilities for stories are infinite," says Brent Spiner, with Data- like precision. "In the original series, I think they had explored some 18% of the universe. We (The Next Generation) went into another 15%. So that leaves 67% of the universe left to explore." Which, by our calculations, should carry the show well into the 21st century, and that's not even traveling at warp speed.

November 28, 1994

Star Trek: the Timeline

BY TEXT BY DAVID E. THIGPEN

1964: Desilu Studios tries to sell Star Trek to CBS, which declines and decides to air Lost in Space instead.

Sept. 1966: NBC broadcasts first episode, The Man Trap: Kirk outwits a vampire-like alien who has eyes for McCoy.

March 1967: McCoy says, "Dammit, Jim, I'm not a bricklayer, I'm a doctor!" First variation of this phrase.

1967: Even at its ratings peak, Star Trek ranks No. 52, behind such shows as Mr. Terrific and Iron Horse.

Dec. 1967: Trouble with Tribbles, peak of Star Trek humor.

Summer 1968: NBC announces cancellation of series but receives 1 million letters of protest and renews it.

Nov. 1968: TV's first interracial kiss, between Kirk and Uhura. Censors insist "no racial overtones," no open mouths.

1969: After 79 episodes NBC cancels series.

Feb. 1972: First Star Trek convention is held in New York City. Sci-fi guru Isaac Asimov attends.

1976: After reveiving 400,000 letters from Trekkies, NASA names space-shuttle prototype Enterprise.

1976: Leonard Nimoy writes I Am Not Spock.

Nov. 1979: Star Trek: The Motion Picture released. The franchise lives.

| Dec. 1982: Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan released; it features Kirstie Alley and Ricardo Montalban's cleavage. Spock dies.

June 1984: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Spock lives!

1986: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. In 1980s San Francisco, Spock and Kirk save the whales.

1986: In Saturday Night Life skit, Shatner tells convention of Vulcan-eared Trekkies to "get a life".

1987: Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series debuts with Shakespearean actor Patrick Stewart on the bridge and an android riding shotgun.

Oct. 1990: With 80th episode, TNG surpasses original series. Classic Trek fans aghast.

1991: Gene Roddenberry dies.

March 1992: "Star Trek the Exhibition" opens at the National Air and Space Museum and becomes the most heavily attended exhibit ever.

Jan. 1993: Spin-off series Deep Space Nine debuts. Alien soap opera.

Nov. 1994: Star Trek Generations. Kirk dies. Really

Jan. 1995: Star Trek: Voyager premieres. Lost in space.

24th century: Star Trek forgotten; cult forms around Shatner's '80s cop show, T.J. Hooker.

November 28, 1994

The Torch Has Passed Off-Camera, Too

BY MICHAEL WALSH

WHAT BECOMES A LEGEND MOST? FOR RICK BERMAN, who teamed up with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1987 and inherited the franchise mantle after Roddenberry's death four years later, the challenge has been to honor the creator's concept while also moving it forward. The original series was set in the 23rd century, The Next Generation in the 24th; but the century Berman has to worry about is the 21st.

"Star Trek was never, and hopefully never will be, my vision of the future," says Berman, 48, a former documentary filmmaker and children's TV producer. "It's Gene Roddenberry's vision that I agreed to uphold." The job is trickier than it might seem. Berman, a vice president at Paramount when Roddenberry tapped him as the producer of The Next Generation, has had to sail his enterprise between the Scylla of Roddenberry's own "prime directive" -- a stricture against any conflict among members of Starfleet -- and the Charybdis of mass-market appeal.

"I went through a rather strenuous apprenticeship," recalls Berman, a workaholic with few outside interests other than his wife Elizabeth and their three children. "I learned what was Star Trek and what wasn't. I learned all the nomenclature, all the rules and regulations. I learned the difference between shields and deflectors -- that was a day right there. Slowly, Gene began to trust my judgment and also to trust that I would adhere to the rules, that I would not be someone who would want to change Star Trek."

Still, he says, "there were some things that existed with Roddenberry that were very frustrating to us. Not to have conflict among your characters makes it very difficult, because all the conflict has to come from outside. On The Next Generation, with the exception of an android and a Klingon, pretty much everyone was human, and they weren't allowed to be involved in conflict, so that was very frustrating for the writers."

So frustrating that in the first two seasons TNG writers came and went like Tribbles as Roddenberry assiduously rewrote nearly every script to conform to his notion of futuristic collegiality and his distaste for warfare. He had written for such popular shows as Dragnet and Have Gun Will Travel, and candidly envisioned the original Star Trek series as a "Wagon Train to the stars." In his quintessentially '60s view, the final frontier may have been full of hostile Klingons and dangerous Romulans, but they were generally susceptible to a pep talk -- only occasionally augmented by a punch in the nose -- from Captain Kirk. "Everyone always wants me to do space battles," Roddenberry remarked in 1989. "Well, screw them. That's not what Star Trek is about."

Conflict, however, is the stuff of drama, and space battles are what the paying public wants to see, especially on the big screen. Since Roddenberry's death, Berman has evolved Star Trek into something darker, more elemental and more mysterious. "Rick was a little more broadminded about what I was permitted to explore as a character," observes Patrick Stewart, TNG's Captain Picard, and the new shows are stretching the Star Trek guidelines even more. On the current Deep Space Nine, set on a remote space station, Starfleet officers tangle with the alien races who share the outpost. And in the forthcoming Voyager series (which features the first female starship captain in a leading role, albeit in a form-fitting uniform), Federation stalwarts must make an uneasy truce with a contentious band taken on board in a distant part of the universe. "This way," explains Berman, "you have a core group of people who were not all brought up on Gene Roddenberry's 24th century Earth. They don't have to follow the rules."

Whether that reasoning will pass muster down the line remains to be seen, since Trek fans are notoriously alert to any noncanonical deviations from Roddenberry's holy writ. "The laws of Star Trek are totally fictional but are held by the fans with such reverence that they have to be followed as if they were Newton's," says Berman. "You have to treat them very carefully, because there are people who for 25 years have considered them sacred." Even so, there are times he contemplates heresy: on his desk sits a bust of Roddenberry, its eyes and ears covered by a blindfold. "Things are sometimes said in this office that he probably would not like to hear," Berman says.

December 28, 1992

Star Trek: The Next Frontier

BY JANICE C. SIMPSON

The setting, while not exactly Blade Runner territory, is a desolate space station -- a decidedly hostile environment. It includes a promenade with a space-age cash machine and a holographic brothel. Through it passes a contentious assortment of humans and aliens. Station Commander Benjamin Sisko, while as courageous and honorable as U.S.S. Enterprise captains James Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard, openly expresses his discontent with his hardship assignment.

What's going on here? Can this dark, gritty show really be the latest spin- off in the Star Trek saga -- that seemingly never-ending cult series about a Utopian future in which knowledge and technology conquer disease and poverty and all the races and species in the universe coexist in near perfect harmony? Yes, Mr. Spock, this is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a syndicated show premiering the week of Jan. 4. It takes Star Trek, created 27 years ago by visionary producer Gene Roddenberry, further into uncharted territory than ever before, and is the first Trek venture initiated since Roddenberry died last year. "We've managed to create conflict without breaking the ideals of what the show is all about," says co-executive producer Rick Berman. "That's one of our rules: You don't mess with Gene's vision. We bend things a little bit, but I believe we bend them in the same way that he would have."

They'd better. After all, a whole empire may be at stake. The initial 79 episodes of Star Trek, originally seen on NBC, are venerated as TV classics and are available on videocassette. A sequel series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, is in its sixth season in syndication and is seen by 20 million people each week, making it second only to Wheel of Fortune among syndicated shows. Six Star Trek movies have been made, grossing an aggregate of $500 million. There is a TV cartoon show, a theater-style attraction at the Universal Studios theme park and a legion of annual conventions of "Trekkers." A retrospective exhibit of Star Trekiana was held at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum earlier this year, and a chain of "virtual reality" Star Trek entertainment centers will open across the country next year.

In most ways, Deep Space Nine follows the familiar course charted by its predecessors. It is set in the same 24th century as The Next Generation and deals with many of the political situations introduced in that show. Familiar faces from older series pop up: Enterprise captain Picard appears in the pilot, and another Enterprise crew member, Miles O'Brien, has transferred completely to become chief operations officer for Deep Space Nine. "The synergy between the shows will become immediately obvious," says the other co-executive producer, Michael Piller.

The primary conflict in the new series is between the warmongering Cardassians, who gutted and abandoned the space station after being forced out, and the spiritually minded Bajorans, who have resorted to terrorism to end a century of foreign occupation in their homeland. The Bajorans' appeal for help to the Federation, the interplanetary U.N., brings Sisko and a motley crew of officers to Deep Space Nine. There they interact with a constantly changing cast of aliens who pass through the frontier outpost.

Like its predecessors, Deep Space Nine will explore philosophical questions and social problems. Plots in upcoming episodes deal with topics like racial prejudice and single parenthood. Captain Sisko is played by African-American actor Avery Brooks, who beat out 100 other contenders from all racial / backgrounds for the job, making him one of the few black actors to star in a dramatic series. Others in the cast include former model Terry Farrell as science officer Jadzia Dax, an alien who combines the personalities of a 300- year-old androgynous life form and a 28-year-old female in one being; Rene Auberjonois as security officer Odo, a displaced alien with shape-shifting capabilities that allow him to change into any form; Nana Visitor as first officer Kira Nerys, a former member of the Bajoran underground; Armin Shimerman as Quark, the money-grubbing bartender who provides comic relief; and Siddig El Fadil as medical officer Dr. Julian Bashir, a human doctor who adds hunk appeal.

But the real stars of the new series are set designer Herman Zimmerman and special-effects wizard Rob Legato. The basic set, which fills three sound stages at the Paramount studios, includes a five-level operations command center, the crew's cavelike sleeping quarters and the 80-ft. promenade. A good chunk of the $2 million-per-episode budget goes toward eye-popping optical effects, like travel into the wormhole that provides shortcuts through space and gives the station its strategic significance.

Before his death, creator Roddenberry "had gotten awfully mellow, and the show had begun to lose some of the excitement and nonsense and folderol that can make it fun to do," says his widow Majel Barrett, who provides the voice of the computer on all three series. Deep Space Nine "lends itself to a lot more excitement. It will be different, and yet it will fit into his universe." As Roddenberry knew all along, there are no final frontiers in the world of Star Trek.

February 28, 2000

William Shatner

BY JOEL STEIN; WILLIAM SHATNER

William Shatner, Captain Kirk on Star Trek, sings on TV for .

Q. Have you made more on priceline stock or on 30 years of milking suckers for everything they're worth at Star Trek conventions?

A. When priceline asked me how much it would cost them to do their commercials, I named my own price.

Q. Do you even know what a good price for Cheerios is?

A. $1.25 is a good price for a very large box of cereal.

Q. Not even close. You starred in the only movie ever made in Esperanto. Can you say bad career move in Esperanto?

A. Malo carrero.

Q. There's a Shatner building at McGill University. What gets taught there?

A. How to get laid without much trouble. That's what happens in the student union.

Q. When you were doing T.J. Hooker, could you tell that Nicole Eggert had what it took to be a Baywatch babe?

A. I could tell because of the see-through dresses that she was well on her way.

Q. Could you tell that Heather Locklear was going to be a much bigger star than Heather Thomas?

A. She told me she was going to be a huge star.

Q. When you first get a line of dialogue, how do you decide which words to stress? Dice? Darts?

A. It's done with a stress meter. You read the line to a stress meter, and when the arc of the line is at its highest point, you know that is the word to emphasize.

Q. What other songs will you do?

A. Madonna. And a little Esther Williams: emerge from a pool, dripping water from a clinging bathing suit.

Q. She did one of these Q&As. She can talk dirty.

A. Maybe she gets off talking dirty, and I bet you get off hearing her, huh, Joel? Secretly?

Q. There's no secret there.

November 28, 1994

Reconfigure the Modulators!

So you think you're Star Trek literate just because you know that phasers can stun and that while Klingons used to be bad guys, now they're good (most of the time, anyway). But can you decipher the techno-babble that Enterprise crew members are constantly spouting? For some help, TIME consulted Michael Okuda, one of the Star Trek technical experts:

"We need to remodulate the main deflector dish."

Deflectors are devices that protect starships by setting up an energy field. Dishes, which operate at specific frequencies, control the deflectors. Remodulating the frequency boosts the strength of the deflectors against incoming attacks.

"We can do it if we reconfigure the lateral sensor array."

Sensors are used to detect objects, life forms or anomalies in space. Reconfiguring them simply adjusts them, like focusing a lens. Watch for terms like "reconfigure" and "remodulate"; they're the workhorses of the Trek vocabulary.

"It should be possible if we decompile the pattern buffer."

Transporters can send people instantly from one location to another by converting their molecules into energy, then reassembling them. Every living being has a distinct pattern of molecules; the pattern buffer fixes the configuration by adjusting for the Doppler effect -- the apparent change in the frequency of the energy waves caused by motion.

"I'll verify the Heisenberg compensators."

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you cannot know a subatomic particle's exact position and its exact direction and velocity at the same time. To transport people you have to know all those things, so the Heisenberg compensator was devised to overcome that problem. It's an attempt by the Trek writers to signal that they are at least aware of the issue. And how does the Heisenberg compensator work? "It works very well, thank you," says Okuda.

May 14, 2001

Kate Mulgrew

BY KATE MULGREW; JOEL STEIN

Kate Mulgrew stars in Star Trek: Voyager; the finale airs May 23 at 8 p.m.

Q. I promise this will be painless.

A. I like it painful. Then I know I'm fully alive. Let's engage here.

Q. Why didn't you and Chakotay ever get it on? I have no idea what that means.

A. To get it on?

Q. No, Chakotay.

A. Chakotay is my first officer, right?

Q. Sure.

A. I had a hell of a task in front of me, to demystify a female in command for all those teenage boys who are Star Trek fans. Dropping trou, getting into all that trouble--red alert.

Q. Jeri Ryan plays this half borg, but the only inhuman thing I can see about her is this little design on her cheek, unless borgs have giant breasts.

A. She's amply endowed, but I don't think that's typical of the borg.

Q. You've got the second highest rated show on UPN, but isn't that like being the second best student at Gonzaga?

A. How dare you. That's my former husband's school.

Q. You played Mrs. Columbo. How much time did you have to spend visualizing having sex with Peter Falk?

A. As an actress it was my obligation to do so on a daily basis. As a human being I summarily avoided it.

Q. At home before sex, do you ever yell "Engage!" at your husband?

A. No, I talk about tachyon emissions.

Q. What's that?

A. Tachyon emissions are the most powerful subspace emissions. So I just pretend my husband is the ship. And we go to impulse.

Q. How do you spell this tachyon thing?

A. This is a hopeless interview because you've never watched even two seconds of Voyager. T-a-c-h-y-o-n. And I'm sure you know how to spell emissions.

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