Star Trek The Original Series

3 seasons = 79 episodes

Star Trek The Next Generation

7 seasons = 176 episodes

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There’s a teaser trailer for “Star Trek XI” attached to Cloverfield. As a long time Trek fan, the trailer hits a few good notes: the Enterprise being built as a visual metaphor for the movie trying to rebuild the franchise after several years, and tugging on those heart strings with Spock and some iconic lines.

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So in case you’ve been living under a pile of quatrotriticale for the past year, there’s a new Star Trek movie coming out in late 2008. It’s going to be one of those “reboots” or possibly a “reimagining” that takes us back to the beginning of the original series, with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. But since those iconic actors are now well into social security collecting days (or at least starring in Sandra Bullock movies or doing “art photography“) - the brain of JJ Abrams is recasting younger actors in the roles.

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In the most cynical sense, a fan film has nowhere to go but up, but the latest episode of Star Trek New Voyages: World Enough And Time is the best I’ve seen yet, to where I can’t imagine any further improvement save hiring the original cast. This episode returns George Takei, the one and only Sulu, to the original series.

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I’ve checked out all the episodes of Star Trek: New Voyages over the past year or so, which isn’t too hard to do since the self-financed fan-film production doesn’t move very quickly. Essentially, the series centers around the idea of following a later year of the multi year mission of the starship Enterprise. All the production is done by fans with no profit motive, at surely great personal expense and time commitment, but thanks to the modern production available via computers and digital cameras, the end result has the potential to create a better product than a major television studio back in 1967. I say potential because while the technical aspects and over all effort of Star Trek: New Voyages is impressive, it’s frankly impossible to reach the high bar set by the original Star Trek.

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I read the fact that Spock is a vegan over on Elaine Vigneault’s blog. I never really thought about Spock’s eating habits before, but being a fan of Original Series Trek I should know if this is true.

I can only think of a few instances where Spock is seen eating a meal. First is the episode Amok Time where he undergoes Pon Far and throws a tray of plomeek soup that Nurse Chapel has made out of his cabin door. Plomeek soup has no meat and is some sort of bland breakfast dish. If you want to make an approximation for yourself, follow this recipe.

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I’m a pretty big original series Star Trek fan, so any news about a new Star Trek movie catches my interest. The latest news is that “Star Trek XI” will come out at year’s end, 2008. J.J. Abrams (responsible for Mission Impossible III, Alias, Lost) is supposedly directing this thing.

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So I received the complete first season of The Original Series Star Trek from Amazon recently. Contained within is a standard, CD sized booklet with photographs from some of the episodes. For some reason, I decided it would be fun to ask my wife Tanja, who doesn’t watch this stuff, if she could identify any of the much beloved, space faring characters.

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The incomparable Tunequest tipped me off to downloads of Original Star Trek, now available from the iTunes music store, for around two bucks per episode.
So why would anyone want to buy individual episodes of Star Trek online? Well, at work, casual discussion over this development led to someone mentioning one particular Star Trek Voyager episode [...]

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Okay… this is a truly strange cult classic. It’s a black and white horror film starring William Shatner. Plus, all the dialogue is in Esperanto (an invented language, intended to be understandable worldwide).

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