There are many lessons that can be learned from Star Trek. This has now been recognized by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs who have gone to the final frontier to get out a message about how to avoid the flu.   VA wants you to live long and prosper…and wash your hands The following is an [...]

John Billingsley spent four years aboard the NX-01 as Dr. Phlox in Star Trek: Enterprise. And in a new fan Q&A, the actor says he is ready to play Phlox again, as well as weighs in on the controversial finale for the series. Excerpts below     Billingsley on returning to Trek & Enterprise Finale The actor is open [...]

Star Trek: Enterprise’s Dr. Phlox shares his opinion regarding the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Many fans may not have been happy with the finale to Star Trek: Enterprise, and Billingsley himself had mixed feelings about it, but he urged fans to rethink their annoyance toward Rick Berman and Brannon Braga.

According to Billingsley, the finale didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the fourth season. “The last season had so much of [writer and executive producer] Manny Coto’s fingerprints on it that I think one of the things fans felt was a tonal and almost spiritual disconnect between the nature of the scripts throughout the fourth season and the final script. It was as if suddenly somebody from another cosmos dropped in and wrote the script, above and beyond the fact that the Enterprise’s story was swallowed up by the framing device. I think people had just gotten used to Manny’s voice. I missed it in the final episode. Frankly, it should have been a two-parter. Our storyline needed to wind up.”

But Billingsley felt that Berman and Braga were expressing their emotion over what they felt was the ending of Star Trek after years of hard work on the franchise. “There are obviously mixed feelings among the fans about the legacies of Rick Berman and Brannon Braga,” Billingsley said, “but they were largely responsible for shepherding the franchise through many, many years of shows that people loved and kept watching. So they deserve a lot of credit. I think for them, the idea that they were going to be saying goodbye to Star Trek had a tremendous emotional weight. So they felt, and I can understand this, that they wanted to write the last episode of Enterprise.”

The finale story seemed to trivialize the third and fourth seasons of Enterprise, according to Billingsley. “I’m all over the map on this one because I have a lot of different feelings about it,” he said. “My problem with the final episode, ultimately, was that by jumping ahead however many years we jumped ahead, it was as if anything we did in the third and fourth seasons had no real weight. It seemed like the third and fourth seasons were being dismissed, which I’m sure was not the intention, but that was one of the things that bothered me.”

The finale meant the last appearance of Dr. Phlox. Would Billingsley return as Phlox again if he could in a Star Trek project? “I’d be delighted,” he said. “But is there any chance that one could make a wager on the odds of it happening? I’d bet my house it won’t happen, but if it did, sure, I’d want to be involved. I enjoyed playing Phlox.”

Hybrid Apparel will be unveiling a new line of Star Trek T-shirts at the Magic Marketplace show in Las Vegas this week.

The new collection will begin with t-shirts and in time other apparel will be added, all aimed at mid-tier and mass-market retailers.

“Star Trek fans love to connect with the brand,” said Liz Kalodner, Executive Vice President and General Manager of CBS Consumer Products. “This program with Hybrid Apparel will provide us with a great opportunity to bring innovative apparel design and products to the audience.”

“We are very pleased to be working with CBS Consumer Products on such an amazing franchise as Star Trek,” said Derrick Baca, Vice President of Licensing at Hybrid Apparel. “The customer base for this franchise transcends generations old and new. We are excited for the growing momentum that Star Trek continues to experience and look forward to adding value to the brand in the future.”

The shirts can be seen in larger photos here.

Syfy has been getting a lot of buzz for their upcoming origninal movie Sharktopus, but they have another Syfy monster movie coming this fall with Monsterwolf, starring Star Trek Voyager’s Doctor, Robert Picardo. More details on that, plus we have a Sci-Fi TV update with Syfy’s full fall schedule below.   Picardo unleashes Monsterwolf for Syfy [...]

Here is a bit of news to file under: no news is good news. A leaked email memo highlights Paramount Pictures upcoming slate of films and the Star Trek sequel (planned for 2012) is still on the Paramount list as a "go". More details below.   Star Trek still on deck The Wrap is creating some [...]

The venerable UK sci-fi magazine SFX is celebrating their 200th issue with a countdown of the top 200 sci-fi and fantasy characters based on polling from the magazine readers. They have released Top 20 polls in a number of categories, with Star Trek’s Mr. Spock coming out on top in the Favorite Alien list, but [...]

Star Trek producer/director has added yet another project to the production slate for his Bad Robot Productions. This time he and fellow Star Trek producer Bryan Burk are developing a new thriller based on the teenage kissing party game "Seven minutes in Heaven" but with a twist. Details below.   JJ Abrams deadly 7 Minutes in Heaven According [...]

In Sci-Fi TV this week we have lots of news coming from Syfy with renewal news from Eureka, special X-Mas episodes for Eureka and Warehouse 13, and a new show from Syfy too. There are also new tidbits for the upcoming seasons of Smallville and Fringe. All that plus the latest television ratings, casting bites [...]

The last time we saw Ensign Sue, Spock had put her into a red uniform and sent her on an away mission…with the usual result. Find out what happens next, in the 24th strip of Ensign Sue Must Die the comic strip inspired by the new Star Trek movie.     Ensign Sue Must Die 24: Ensign Sue [...]

Star Trek T-Shirts have been a staple of licensed Trek products for decades and this week at the fashion industries MAGIC Marketplace trade show the latest Star Trek licensee was announced. Hybrid Apparel will begin selling new Star Trek T-shirts in September. More details below and a first look at Hybrid’s first Trek T-shirts below. [...]

At seventy-nine, most successful actors might want to kick back and enjoy retirement in some pleasant locale, but that’s not the case for William Shatner, who is busier than ever with his established and new television shows.

Shatner spoke recently about his most recent show, Aftermath with William Shatner; a new show to debut this fall, $#*! My Dad Says; and his experience with Twitter.

In Aftermath, Shatner interviews people who became famous in the news, some of whom did things which landed them in prison. Why do such people want to talk to Shatner for his show? “They’re anxious to tell their story,” said Shatner. “They’ve had their fifteen minutes [of fame] and here’s an opportunity to present that story once again from their side. It may also be they know me in some manner and want to talk to me.”

His subjects soon find out that they’re talking to a regular human being, not just an actor. “…they get past [Shatner being an actor] and see that it’s not an actor, but a human being who is vitally interested in them.” Shatner has an “innate interest in them and what they’re thinking and feeling as a result of the experience they went through.”

Shatner’s new show $#*! My Dad Says, which debuts this fall, has already stirred up controversy due to the word “shit.” “We call it ’shit,” said Shatner. “I urge you to look at the word ’shit.’ It’s the vernacular, not the act of defecation. All you’re arguing is should the word ’shit’ be allowed in the English language in nice company. If you’re talking to a jazz musician and he says, ‘I’ve got to get my shit together,’ are you appalled, or do you say, ‘Yeah, I understand?’”

The modern age of communication has not passed Shatner by, although he needs a little help from those a little more technologically-savvy to participate. Shatner has his own Twitter account. “I’m quite active in it,” he said of the account. “I don’t know how to technically do it, but I have some young people who do it for me. I try to be a little informative, but mostly I try to instigate.”

How does Shatner keep up with so many projects? “I’ve discovered the answer,” he said, “which is to get up a couple of hours earlier. You can get anything done if you’re up early. That and Omega-3s.”

Bruce Greenwood, who played Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek XI, would like to see more of Pike in future Trek.

Greenwood would love to return to Trek, and he couldn’t resist giving his tongue-in-cheek opinion of Pike’s importance to the Star Trek franchise in a recent interview. “I think Captain Pike is an essential component to the whole franchise,” he said. “I think there should be a whole offshoot of Pike’s adventures.”

But what about Pike’s physical impairment? Would that make a difference? Not according to Greenwood. “There’s nothing that says Pike can’t get up and out of that wheelchair, get his own ship and go off on some adventures of his own. I’m now an admiral, but I want to get out of the wheelchair.”

It is not known if Pike will be back in Star Trek XII, but fans, as well as Greenwood, can only hope.