But now a lost "Star Trek" script is back, and despite his feelings on it, Norman Spinrad wants to ensure fans have a chance to see not only the good, but the bad in Star Trek.

Spinrad, who wrote the popular "Star Trek" episode "Doomsday Machine," had written another script as well -- "He Walked Among Us." Spinrad wrote the script in 1967 for the show's second season. According to Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha, a Federation health food nut takes over a planet, and in violation of the Prime Directive, becomes a god on the planet, and makes it almost impossible to have him removed without disrupting the entire planet.

The story was meant to bring Milton Berle into the fold, a comedic actor who had expressed a huge interest in making an appearance in "Star Trek." Spinrad wrote the script as a serious subject, but late producer Gene L. Coon decided to take a different approach as a way to complement Berle's comedic strengths. The end result was far less than what Spinrad had hoped for.

"This is so lousy, Gene, that you should kill it," Spinrad said he told Roddenberry in a recent blog post. "You can't, you shouldn't, shoot this thing. Read it and weep."

Roddenberry agreed with Spinrad and killed the episode, "which, down through the years, has cost me tens of thousands of dollars in lost residuals," Spinrad said.

The script popped up recently when Spinrad was signing autographs for fans, and one held in his hands a faded copy of Spinrad's script. Spinrad signed it, under the condition the fan would scan it in and let him have a copy of it. That copy is now being sold to fans through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Spinrad is probably much better known for his literary works, including 1969's "Bug Jack Barron." It was published in the British magazine "New World," and was a bit controversial because of its use of language and its disdain for politicians.

Like many shows, "Star Trek" did have its fair share of unproduced scripts that have become a bit noteworthy (or even infamous) over the years. One was "Deep Mudd," what was supposed to be a third story involving the character Harry Mudd from "Mudd's Women" and "I, Mudd." Stephen Kandel, who wrote the previous two Mudd episodes, wrote this one, but it was never shot because the actor who played Mudd -- Roger C. Carmel -- was not available.

Another would've been a sequel to "The Trouble With Tribbles" in the show's third season called "More Troubles, More Tribbles." The third season showrunner, Fred Freiberger, apparently hated the original David Gerrold story from earlier in the series because of its comic approach, and was not interested in bringing the popular characters back.

That episode was made later on, however, for "Star Trek: The Animated Series."

(Michael Hinman   airlockalpha.com)

send a sase along with two toploaders to protect the cards

If you’ve ever sat up at night, wondering just exactly how much effort you’d have to put in to building a working to scale replica of the Death Star, you know, just because they said you couldn’t, and wouldn’t it totally impress that special person, and anyway what has this planet done for you lately why not just blow it up to teach it a lesson?

Well, if such questions have ever marched through the silent halls of your mind in a quiet moment, you might want to take a look at this project done by a student team at LeHigh University, which, if nothing else, is a lesson in scale.

They started with the assumption that the first Death Star was reportedly 140km in diameter, and based the rest of their conjecture on the technology used to make modern warships. Scale up the amount of iron used to make the HMS Illustrious to that size, and you’re looking at 1.08×10¹⁵ tons of steel. That’s 1,080,000,000,000,000 tons. Which seems like a lot, until they mention that if you took all the iron ore in the Earth, you could make slightly over 2 billion Death Stars.

So. There are just a few caveats:

But, before you go off to start building your apocalyptic weapon, do bear in mind two things. Firstly, the two billion death stars is mostly from the Earth’s core which we would all really rather you didn’t remove. And secondly, at today’s rate of steel production (1.3 billion tonnes annually), it would take 833,315 years to produce enough steel to begin work. So once someone notices what you’re up to, you have to fend them off for 800 millennia before you have a chance to fight back. In context, it takes under an hour to get the steel for HMS Illustrious.

Oh, and the cost of the steel alone? At 2012 prices, about $852,000,000,000,000,000. Or roughly 13,000 times the world’s GDP.*

But then again, you can just take out a loan from the entire planet and then default on them in the most awesome way possible.

In their article this statement is immediately followed by a picture of the Death Star blowing up Alderaan.

This is certainly not the final word on reverse engineering the cost of the Death Star: as one commenter pointed out, nobody’s added in the cost of getting all those materials to space in the first place, which just raises the question of why we aren’t getting them from space, but things swiftly start arcing into the area of “magic technology” and other fictional time and money saving enterprises. Anyone willing to improve on their methods may, we assume, do so.

(via GeekSugar.)

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/grenache/2012/02/17/clobberin-time-2011-thursday-night-trek-talk

I’m not sure what it is but one science fiction television franchise, which has been dormant for awhile now is Space 1999 and this is despite a number of attempts to bring it back.

Over the years have seen a number of fan productions as well as much art work inspired by the series, which was Gerry Anderson’s second run at doing a feature television series, and ultimately perhaps the best loved.

The series was based on what is a scientifically ridiculous plot thread of the moon traversing through space after a bad explosion, which pretty much wreaked havoc and saw the surviving Eagle ships on the moon base exploring the various worlds that the moon base would pass.

Anyway it looks like we’re finally going to get a reboot of this fantastically imaginative series, which I’d wake up every Saturday for during the 70s.

According i09 the new take is to be called Space 2099 and is being done by the same team that includes the same studio that brought you the V remake, which is both a good and bad thing depending on your point of view.

The original run during its opening season put much focus on scientific exploration and was far more character driven than the more adventure driven second season of the original run.

So my guess is that a modern run on the show would likely go for the slow burn approach in which mist weeks would centre on moon as an interstellar base where the focus would be on the romantic troubles and sexual escapades of the crew. But we’d likely also see a big storyline around who should be in command.

Another possible story thread may involve wormholes.

Possibly a combination of the above romance and political plot threads and anomalies out in space. In any case Space: 2099 is in its early stages. There is no script at present and nothing has been shopped at any of the networks as yet.

http://www.interstellarodyssey.com/apps/videos/videos/show/15865411-odyssey-opening-credits

The pic you see is real. IDW will be publishing a Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation comic in May.

I have returned and I've brought a good friend and fellow Trek / SciFi fan named KENNETH.  Please join me in giving him a welcoming shout out.

Thank You  

KeSha  

formerly known as "Shaharazod"