Star Trek: The Experience to end
Star Trek: The Experience is ending after an 11 year run at the Las Vegas Hilton on September 1st, 2008. The interactive ride contained elements from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.
Chad Boutte, Operations Manager and Director of Marketing, said in a press release, “Hailing frequencies open. We’d like to thank all the fans and friends of Star Trek, whose constant and amazing support we’ve enjoyed throughout our tenure at the Las Vegas Hilton. As we boldly go into the futures that await, know that we take your love of Star Trek: The Experience with us. We share the memories of time spent in the most unique place in the Galaxy, and we carry those memories into our futures with us. Live long, and prosper. Hailing frequencies closed.” He said it in this fashion because he’s a big nerd.
Appearing in the ride was Jonathan Frakes as Commander Riker, Levar Burton as Geordi LaForge, Robert Picardo as the Holographic Doctor and Kate Mulgrew as Admiral Kathryn Janeway. The ride was in two parts: the Klingon Encounter and Borg Invasion 4-D, the latter of which was added in 2004.
Having been to the ride twice in the past ten years, it was a lot of fun. Still, these are trying economic times and Star Trek doesn’t quite have the popularity it once did. I will always treasure the Spock Teddy Bear I picked up at Star Trek: The Experience, as well as the Wil Wheaton-autographed Wesley Crusher photo. I’m only kidding about one of those.
JJ Abrams’ Enterprise Feels Fully Functional
Harry Knowles got the chance to see some early footage from JJ Abrams’ Star Trek. The few short clips he saw were early edits without proper cg or color timing. The one bit I found particularly interesting is the first description of the bridge of the USS Enterprise:
“For the first time in the history of Star Trek, [the bridge] looked amazingly functional. It echoes that classic Trek look – but imagine if you handed that design to the folks at APPLE and said… Make it really work. I instantly believed in the functionality of everything. That’s hard to quantify, but it is true. Remember when you saw the war room underground on Hoth in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK? How it just felt functional – that’s what this looked. And it looked Star Trek, without looking as cheap as Star Trek. It was a tech-fetishists wet dream.”
You can read Harry’s full report on AICN.
LOL: The Many Faces of Rainn Wilson in Entertainment Weekly
In this weeks issue of Entertainment Weekly, Office star Rainn Wilson (The Rocker) did a photoshoot as Xena: Warrior Princess, MacGyver, Pauile Walnuts from The Sopranos and Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Check out the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly for the full photos. EW.com has a video from the Xena photoshoot.
Appreciation: "Oh My God, They’re Turkeys!"
Maybe you know turkeys can’t fly. But Mr. Carlson…Well, he didn’t.
WKRP in Cincinnati’s “Turkeys Away,” maybe the funniest and, in terms of sheer bird casualties, deadliest holiday-themed TV episode of all time, was written by Bill Dial. (View the entire episode at Hulu.com.)
Dial died June 2 at his home in South Carolina, various sources, including WKRP’s “hometown” newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, reported this week. He was 66.
Dial acted in, as well as helped write the 1978-82 sitcom. (He popped up a couple of times as station engineer Bucky Dornster.) Later, he coexecutive produced the Jerry O’Connell sci-fi series Sliders and scripted episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
But it is for dreaming up one, fatally flawed publicity stunt that Dial will be best remembered. Certainly, Mr. Carlson never forgot.