TVSquad

Having grown up in a Star Trek household from way back, I'm fairly familiar with a lot of the catch phrases from the original series, which ran from 1966 to 1969. Here are six that still make their way into conversation around here:

1. "Beam me up, Scotty." Gracing bumper stickers and coffee mugs everywhere, and often followed by "There's no intelligent life down here," this is likely the most recognizable phrase from the series. Here's the thing, though. According to Wikipedia, the exact phrase was never actually spoken in any Star Trek television episode or film. Capt. Kirk comes closest to saying the phrase in the episode, "The Gamesters of Triskelion" ("Scotty, beam us up"); in the animated episodes "The Lorelei Signal" and "The Infinite Vulcan" ("Beam us up, Scotty"); in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ("Scotty, beam me up"); and in Star Trek Generations ("Beam them out of there, Scotty.")

Don't you just love the web? News traveling so fast, ideas extrapolated and speculated upon based on the simplest of facts. That said, here's a sweet little tidbit that I found amusing. Tom Cruise was spotted on the Los Angeles set of the new Star Trek feature film. He reportedly was visiting writer/director JJ Abrams. The two men, you'll recall, collaborated on Mission Impossible 3.

This exclusive, courtesy of JFXOnline, revealed that Tom stuck around the set for a couple of hours. Prior to this sighting, there had also been talk last fall that Abrams had wanted to enlist the superstar to make a brief cameo appearance in the revamped Star Trek opus, telling the story of how creator Gene Roddenberry's original characters came to be. How Captain Kirk made it out of the Star Fleet Academy (in The Wrath of Khan he said he cheated on his Kobyashi Maru simulation test), as well as the first time Kirk met the half-Vulcan, half-human Mr. Spock.

Recently, TV Squad reported that NBC has added all kinds of classic TV shows to their online outlets. Now comes the announcement that CBS is also bringing a variety of well-loved TV dramas to the web. CBS Interactive is raiding the CBS Library, which is "one of the largest television programming libraries in the entertainment business," to present TV series online across the CBS Audience Network.

Like the NBC fodder, the CBS offering is gangbusters: full-length episodes of classic Star Trek, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place. CBS plans to add more programs and clips in the coming months, including sports and other kinds of entertainment.

(S04E11) "Denny Crane. Denny Crane. Denny Crane. Denny Crane." - Taken from the legal briefs of Denny Crane

Is it 1989 or was that Bess Armstrong I saw in the opening scene? All jokes aside, William Shatner, once again, makes me jealous of his life by squeezing the butt that I have longed for ever since I saw The Four Seasons. I was very excited when Denny insisted on trying the case by himself. I have long wondered if he still has what it takes to keep his perfect record and this is where my question gets answered.

So is it yet another Star Trek alumnus coming on-screen, or a reunion of former Murphy Brown costars Candace Bergen and her on-screen amore Scott Bakula, as TV Guide says. Looks like it's both, as Bakula has signed on to join Bergen and William Shatner for an upcoming episode of Boston Legal. In it he will play one of Shirley Schmidt's (Bergen) exes who runs into her at a bar. No word on if his will be a multi-episode arc or a one-time appearance.

Bakula has shown himself to have a bit of comedic chops recently on The New Adventures of Old Christine, and with BL being a dramedy, he might do very well there. Either way, it is good to see Bakula back on the small screen. Quantum Leap remains one of my all-time favorite shows and I'm still mad they haven't found a way to bring it back (despite periodic rumors that they may), while Knight Rider gets a revival. It'd be great if they can get Bakula's character and Denny Crane (Shatner) together in a scene and have them salute one another or slip some other Trek teaser for the audience in the know.

According to industry speculation found on IESB, J.J. Abrams is set to cast 28-year-old Pennsylvania native Mike Vogel (who has appeared in such movies as Poseidon and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) as Captain James T. Kirk in the upcoming Star Trek movie, a role made famous by William Shatner on the TV series from 1966 to 1969. Vogel also appears in J.J. Abrams upcoming untitled Cloverleaf project.

If Vogel joins the cast, he would be alongside Zachary "Sylar" Quinto as young Mr. Spock, Leonard Nimoy reprising the role that he made famous as the older Mr. Spock, Zoe Saldana as Uhura originally played by Nichelle Nichols and Anton Yelchin as Pavel Chekov originally played by Walter Koenig.

Are you a Captain Kirk fan or a Captain Picard fan? On one hand you have toupees and overacting and awesome songs, and on the other hand you have a calm, tea-drinking guy who pulls at his shirt all the time. I lean more toward Picard, but I often find that punching an alien instead of talking to him and sleeping with various female life forms gets the job done too.

In honor of Star Trek: The Next Generation's 20th anniversary,* Marty Beckerman makes a case for Jean-Luc Picard as President of the U.S. in this Huffington Post piece. More specifically, he compares the leadership qualities of the Enterprise captain with the leadership qualities of our current President.

It's a great piece, even if you're not a Trekkie geek virgin Star Trek aficionado.

* God I'm old.

Here's some cool news for any Star Trek fans who have been enjoying the new digitally remastered Star Trek episodes currently airing in syndication:

CBS will re-air "new" digitally-cleaned-up episodes of the original Star Trek series starting next month. Forty episodes will be shown in total, starting September 15, 2007 and ending August 2, 2008. You'll have to check your listings to see what time they're airing, though it'll be either on a Saturday or Sunday.

Now that James Brown is gone, maybe we can give William Shatner the title "the hardest-working man in show business."

I mean, he's on Boston Legal, he does those Priceline commercials, appears in movies like Dodgeball, he has his own web site, he hosts game shows. Hell, he even sold his own kidney stone! And now he has signed up for a new show titled Shatner's Raw Nerve. It will air on the Biography Channel. Shatner will interview celebrity and political guests. The show will run for 13 episodes to start.

This could be fun, if they let Shatner be Shatner and write his own questions. This is all part of Biography Channel's change to "true stories about fascinating people." Huh. Hasn't that been their goal all along with a name like Biography Channel?

We've already heard that Matt Damon might be asked to play Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek movie that J.J. Abrams is going to direct (if you haven't heard, Matt Damon might be asked to play Captain Kirk in the new Star Trek movie that J.J. Abrams is going to direct). Now comes word that not only is Damon in talks to star in the flick, but that Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise are in talks with Paramount too to play Mr. Spock and Dr. McCoy.

Of course, the latest "breaking news" a couple of weeks ago said that Abrams wasn't going to direct the movie but it was officially announced this week that he is going to direct it, so who knows if this is true or not. But it's interesting to talk about. I think those are all good choices, especially Damon as Kirk.

Trekkies? Trekkers? Who do you want to see as Kirk, Spock, and Bones?

I'm referring to Spock from Star Trek, not Dr. Spock the baby expert. Although, I'd have loved to see a baby book written by the latter while he was on drugs. That would certainly be entertaining. At any rate, my good pal Wild Bill sent me a link to a video consisting of some trippy scenes from the original Star Trek set to Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." The video mostly features Spock, Bones and Kirk from the episode "Shore Leave," which is one of few Star Trek episodes I actually remember. Sorry, I was a Star Wars nerd and always will be.

I'm not sure if this video should be viewed as pro-drug or anti-drug. Spock certainly seems to have trouble coping with altered perceptions, but Sulu doesn't seem to have a problem with it at all. My conclusion? If you need help with your math homework, call Spock. If you want to party, call Sulu.

There has been much chatter about ABC's somewhat unconventional scheduling of Lost this season. In an effort to avoid a repeat filled schedule, they have split the season into two parts, handing off the time slot to Day Break for three months in the middle. While they will tell you it was because of outcry from the fans, the cynic in me thinks that the fact that Lost doesn't repeat well had something to do with it.

Either way, it's not working. Rather, it's really not working. Day Break premiered with a somewhat disappointing 11 million viewers, despite having the Dancing with the Stars finale drop 27 million sets of eyeballs on their doorstep. But 11 million sounds just grand compared to this week. With the dancing shoes stowed away for the foreseeable future, Captain Kirk's Show Me The Money is delivering just under 8 million viewers as the lead in. And Wednesday, Day Break only managed to hang on to 5.12 million of them. 5 million? The worst repeat of Lost would never approach 5 million viewers.

Laura Goodwin (for some reason referred to as a man in this digg) has created an exhaustive web shrine to female characters from the original Star Trek -- complete with photos and descriptions of each. Her point (not that she needs to have one) is to show that Trek women were more than just "babes" for Kirk to tussle with. Janice Rand is described as "a real trooper."

Characters are divided into categories like "Starfleet Heroines," "Villains and Femme Fatales," and my favorite "They Were Not Women," -- a necessary category for the inclusion androids, shape changers, phantasms, etc. A handy guide to bookmark in case you happen to forget what say, Yeoman Mears from "The Galileo Seven", or Yeoman Smith (pictured), and need to access that information right away. I love it.

Fun Q and A with Captain Kirk himself over at Wired magazine. It's mostly about his new video game Legacy, where he plays Captain Kirk for the first time in ten years. Among the tidbits you'll discover from the interview:

• He still has no idea how to use a computer.
• He doesn't care who plays Kirk in the new movie, as long as they're thin and rich.
• There's no way he's going to do any appearance as Kirk on those fan-made web Trek episodes.

[via Pop Candy]

William Shatner has faith that a new video game will give Star Trek a higher profile, after it has apparently fallen off the American radar. The game is called Star Trek: Legacy and, of course, he's voicing Capt. Kirk's character. The game will span all five of the franchise's television series, allowing players to fly 60 different space ships and encounter all sorts of aliens, including battling the Klingons and The Borg. Shatner hopes the game will hold over fans until 2008, when the next movie is due out.

Star Trek: Legacy comes out in October.