You’ve seen the skit a million times, but not like this. This nifty little mashup takes the Monty Python Camelot scene from the Holy Grail movie to a whole new dimension.

I watch a lot of Star Trek. There’s really just something comforting about the show to me, and I don’t mind watching the same episodes over and over. I’m usually doing something else while it’s on, like surfing the web or reading, but there are always little things about the show that I want to look up. Maybe I’ll recognize an actor and want to know what other characters they have played on the show (most guests have had several appearances), or maybe I just want to look up some earlier episode the show references. Of course I could always run over to StarTrek.com for the official word, but I’ve found that MemoryAlpha provides a much nicer way to find those Trek answers. A wiki is the perfect way for big groups of disparate contributors to create reference documentation, and MemoryAlpha provides a wonderful reference for all things Trek.

While at I-Con this past weekend, I heard Tim Russ (you’ll remember him as Tuvok, the vulcan on Voyager) talking up a fan film project he’s been involved in recently called Star Trek of Gods and Men. An aside: I’ve posted about Star Trek fan films before here, here, and here. I was already familiar with New Voyages (now renamed Phase II after the abortive Trek series that never happened in 1978) and while I always thought they were doing great stuff, at times there were just too many amateurs on screen at one time. A seasoned actor or two can make a scene believable even if there are a few goose eggs being laid. Their third episode, World Enough and Time with George Takei absolutely *rocks*. If you haven’t watched it and you like Star Trek, you have definitely missed a killer episode. The Phase II folks are really starting to grow on me too.

What Tim Russ has done is to gather a bunch of his Trek buddies to work with the New Voyages (Phase II) folks in their upstate (Port Henry) New York homemade studios, including Ethan Phillips and Garret Wang (Neelix and Harry Kim of Voyager), Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, and Grace Lee Whitney (Uhura, Chekov, Janice Rand of TOS) to name just a few. The first two “acts” have been released on the internet free of charge while the crew tries to work out a deal to sell the show on DVD or download with CBS. Read more about it on Wikipedia or on the official website: http://www.startrekofgodsandmen.net.

Many years ago I was probably the only gaming geek on the Island whose mom attended more I-Cons than I did. She would go back when they had Dr. Who guests, but as Dr. Whos popularity faded in the US, she stopped going. Now into it’s 27th year (next weekend - I-Con April 4-6), I-Con is a science fiction convention held on the campus of Stony Brook University. Usually they’ll have somebody from Star Trek or Babylon 5, and lots of sci fi authors and sci-fi film makers, anime artists, sci-fi movies around the clock, science shows, filking, medieval re-enactment fighting exhibitions, and lots of gaming of all kinds. My friends and I would attend mainly for the gaming - non-stop role-playing and board games run by volunteers filling entire lecture halls with long-haired, dice-wielding miscreants. Trek guest is Jeffery Combs (who played, among many more unsung roles in heavy makeup, Weyoun on DS-9). Weekend pass is $55 if you didn’t hook up with a membership long ago. Anyone interested this year?

One of the coolest home theater setups I’ve ever seen, I wouldn’t be able to rationalize spending the money it would take to reproduce a working replica of the Enterprise D in my own home, but I’m glad somebody could! Check it out here.

Cathy mentioned that she heard about a new Star Trek movie announcement. I checked the official Star Trek site and found
this announcement from paramount. Apparently Rick Berman is not involved, and the story will revolve around the early days of Kirk and Spock at the academy.

update 5/4:
this may not be true. I wonder if paramount hopes to cash in on the ground swell from fan movies like those being produced by New Voyages which recently made deals with the actors who played Sulu and Chekov in the original series to agree to play those roles in upcoming releases of the fan-made series in the near future. update 9/27/06: There is an official ST XI page set up, so check there for details.Stay tuned to this Wikipedia article for updates on this story. Latest rumors from there indicate it may feature the cast from Enterprise if the movie centers around the Romulan War.

There were two obituaries of note this month in the Star Trek Universe. Romulan Commander Tomalak of Next Generation fame died of Lung Cancer at 59 and Lt. Lee Kelso of the second original Star Trek pilot “Where No Man Has Gone Before” at 72.