One of the new features of the big Season 2 update for Star Trek Online is mini-games, and one of those mini-games is Dabo! Yes the roulette-style game seen in Quark’s bar on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. And to make it even better, DS9’s Chase Masterson has herself voiced the holographic Leeta for the [...]

Time to add another project to the list of things JJ Abrams has on his to do list. Abrams and his Bad Robot Production company are going steam punk. Through Paramount they have picked up the rights to the novel “Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel”, which is about a Victorian era robot.   JJ and the Steampunk Robot According [...]

In his work on $#*! My Dad Says, William Shatner is exploring a whole new frontier in a new age of television show production.

Shatner began his career on live television, but how shows were made was very different back then. “I was there when the cameras were as big as this table had internal fans that were whirring because of the heat of the tubes and had to come as close as this for a close up,” he said. “Now we’re talking about green screen and putting us on locations we’ll never visit, unfortunately. We can put us in Paris on this show and never leave the warmth of Warner Bros. It is beyond irony. It is trying to catch the tiger by the tail. The miracle is our inventiveness and the tragedy of our lives is the inventiveness. It’s beyond irony. It’s whatever term you guys can come up with.”

In addition to a different way of making live television, Shatner is appearing on his first sitcom. “You cannot begin to imagine the shock I had when I came down on that floor for the first time,” he said. “First of all, there’s this whole thing about playing sitcom comedy. A lot of people, writers, directors and actors, have got into a sitcom thing. I didn’t want to do the sitcom thing but I didn’t know what else to do. So I was starting low and slow and not enough of that comedic energy but you don’t want to do too much. I went slowly through the week of rehearsals. Then we got on the floor with the cameras which I’m used to from my live TV days.”

Taping a live show meant discovering the energy of doing so in front of a live crowd. “There’s the cameras and two hundred people wandering around: agents, actors, mothers-in-law, party, eating pizza. We’re doing the circus up here. It was stunning. The fourth wall was totally gone. I’m talking to the audience. We now correct lines, the writers come up with other lines to try and the audience is aware of the process. I’ve got to learn the other line, I’ve got to say it a couple of times, everybody laughs. It was exciting, chaotic, totally stunning. I’ve never experienced that before as an actor. I was part minstrel, part actor.”

$#*! My Dad Says airs this fall on CBS.

Interviewing one of the D.C. snipers responsible for seventeen deaths was something that will remain with William Shatner for a long time.

Shatner interviewed Lee Boyd Malvo, who was seventeen at the time of the shootings, for Aftermath with William Shatner, a show that examines “what happens when people are tragically or infamously transformed from unknown citizens into household names overnight.”

The interview was conducted via telephone from a southwest Virginia prison cell where Malvo is serving a life sentence for his role in the October 2002 murders. “Getting the opportunity to speak with Lee Malvo is a moment I’ll never forget,” said Shatner in an A&E press statement. “He was only seventeen when he committed these horrific acts, a monster forged by the only father figure in his life, and it was simply astonishing that he’s found the maturity and humility to admit so many new crimes in his effort to make amends.”

According to Malvo, three other co-conspirators were to have worked with Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, to “create terror along the entire Eastern Seaboard,” using rifles with silencers. The would-be conspirators backed out however, and Malvo shot two of them on orders from Muhammad. Malvo also told Shatner that one of the men was killed, but by Muhammad. The whereabouts of the third man is unknown.

Muhammad and Malvo had been linked to twenty-seven shootings, resulting in the seventeen deaths, but Malvo claimed that the duo had carried out approximately forty-two shootings.

Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed in 2009 by lethal injection.

Confessions of the D.C. Sniper with William Shatner: An Aftermath Special, will air on Thursday at 10 P.M. on A&E.

William Shatner’s new sitcom $#*! My Dad Says has stirred up some controversy but at a TCA event yesterday the actor talked about the word not allowed on TV. And in other Shatner news, A&E has just announced an "Aftermath" special airing tonight where Bill gets exclusive new information out of the DC Sniper  Lee [...]

Looks like Damon Lindelof is going to leverage his Star Trek prequeling to another sci-fi franchise. Star Trek producer and Lost writer/executive producer Damon Lindelof has reportedly closed a deal with 20th Century Fox to do some rewrite work on Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel. Lindelof may also have nabbed a new original sci-fi project for [...]

A campaign started by a fan on the Star Trek Online messageboards to have the voice talents of actress Chase Masterson (Leeta) included in Star Trek Online was successful and players can now hear her as “Holo Leeta.”

The campaign began back in March, when the fan, Kirkfat, contacted Masterson and got her permission to try to convince Cryptic. “I’d love to do this,” Masterson said. Kirkfat started a thread on the STO messageboards to gather support.

At first, those involved with Star Trek Online told the fans that while they had no objection to the plan, not to get their hopes up. “They will contact her and see if this might be a possibility. … This doesn’t mean it will happen, in fact there is a very, very good change that it probably won’t. We don’t have huge budgets for VO, soooo there is a good chance that she might be too expensive.”

Later, word came that Star Trek Online was “contact with Chase Masterson and do plan to get some audio recorded for “Holo” Leeta.” In May, Masterston let fans know that she had been contacted by Cryptic regarding her participation in the game.

Finally, last week, fans heard the voice of Masterson as “Holo” Leeta. According to poster Z3R0B4Ng, “I couldn’t believe my ears when I walked into Quarks after the build today…I opened the door and heard a voice saying “DABO”!”

“Kudos to Cryptic,” said Kirkfat. “We love you Chase.”

Masterson is the third Star Trek actor to do voice work for Star Trek Online, following Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto.

Fans of Quantum Leap may again get to see Dr. Sam Beckett leaping through time and into strange bodies and situations.

At Comic-Con last weekend, Bakula told fans that a film may be in the works for the popular show, which aired from 1989-1993.

“It’s a great piece of TV history,” said Bakula. “[Beckett] is what I’m known for, and it’s a great show to be known for.”

A script is supposedly being written by Quantum Leap creator/executive producer Donald Bellisario.

Secret Selves, an exhibition of twenty-six color photos taken by Leonard Nimoy, will open August 1 at the Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.

Although some of Nimoy’s photography can be seen in various museum collections, this is Nimoy’s first solo show at a major museum.

In an interview with A.V. Club, Nimoy explained how he chose the subjects for Secret Selves. “I came across a story that comes down to us from ancient Greece; supposedly, Aristophanes, the playwright/philosopher, was at one of Sophocles’ symposia and posited a fanciful explanation for human angst, anxiety, and emotional discomfort. He said that at one time, humans were double people, with four arms, four legs, and two heads, attached back-to-back to one another in all the various combinations of male and female. So when man became powerful and arrogant, the gods were angry and sent Zeus to solve the problem, which he did by taking a big sword and splitting everybody in two, sending them on their separate paths. And ever since then, said Aristophanes, humans have been searching for the other, lost part of themselves, to make themselves feel whole again, to reintegrate.

“I was struck by that idea, that many of us have another side to us that we are not in touch with, or that we do not get a chance to explore or present. We present a certain aspect of ourselves, but there are other unexplored, or hidden, or lost parts to ourselves. So with that in mind, I gave that story to my gallerist in Northampton, Massachusetts, a very active and creative guy in the community, and I told him “I want to photograph a lot of people—try to round up a hundred if you can—and ask them to come as their secret selves.”

Nimoy chose one hundred people and each subject was asked “Why do you think you are?” The photographs are a result of each person’s “alternate identity,” which include identities such as Superman, a wizard, a dancer, a violinist and more. Nimoy explained that “They all came with their own story. Each of them had written a brief statement about who they were in their obvious daily lives, and what their hidden or secret fantasy self was all about. They came with their own wardrobe and their own props or whatever.”

There are a number of new interviews with Star Trek celebs, but not really about Star Trek. Below we have videos of Chris Pine talking about the big 3-0, Zachary Quinto talking about magicians and comic books, and Scott Bakula talking about TV and Comic Con. Plus we have excerpts of Nimoy talking about his [...]