April Fool's Day Round-Up

As every year, Star Trek fan sites used April Fool's Day as an opportunity to pull pranks on their visitors. But only Paramount's official Trek site dared go for the big one by claiming Star Trek: Enterprise had been renewed.

• StarTrek.com posted a whole series of April Fool's articles, including one that claimed Paramount had agreed to a fifth season for Star Trek: Enterprise, but only at a much-reduced budget - leading the studio to bring in South Park and Team America creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to run the show. Parker and Stone would rename the series Team Enterprise, and only use the current stars of the show to voice the puppets that would from now on be portraying their characters. "We're also gonna re-do the opening title sequence," the site quoted Stone as saying. "Record a new theme -- something bombastic, action-oriented. Y'know, something that isn't, like, totally gay."

  Other April Fool's articles on the official site included a new ad banner promoting the services of legal expert Samuel T. Cogley ("If you clicked here from a banner ad and want Mr. Cogley to fight for your latinum, then please call (415) 555-GOLD"), an article on several Trek pilots that had recently been rejected (including Desperate Yeomans, Ferengi Apprentice and Klingon Eye for the Starfleet Eye), and a "non-production report" on episode 99, "The Rest is Silence." Sadly, all of the official site's April Fool's features have since been deleted.

• Pocket Books editor Marco Palmieri recounted on the Trek BBS how he had been "punk'd" by many of the Trek novelists. "So I open up my email this morning, and WHAT do I find?," he wrote. "A flood of proposals from at least a dozen established ST authors, all submitted simultaneously." Palmieri was amazed by the coincidence, and not too happily surprised, as he was already drowning his workload - something many of the authors in question should have known. Still, Palmieri didn't immediately think of a conspiracy.

  Palmieri continued, "With some trepidation, I start to open the files, glancing through the proposals...and each one is more outlandish, insane, and preposterous than the last. (And while my taste in porn is very particular, I'm nonetheless as strangely intrigued as I am repulsed by much of what I'm reading). Then I get it. April 1st. [...] Color me punk'd...and very touched."

• Over at Five-Minute Voyager, Zeke finally found the solution for his immense Enterprise backlog: he renamed the site into Five-Minute Enterprise, and was thus able to provide a full list of Enterprise Season Four Fivers.

• Chris Howell at the Great Link had the scoop that planning for Series VI, currently known as Star Trek: Academy, had already begun. "Paramount wanted to appeal to the younger generation of fans – and they want to do that as quickly as possible," the site quoted Trek producer Rick Berman as saying. "so were going for a kind of Star Trek : The O.C. approach. Previous shows have explored space – now, Trek is coming home to Earth – to Starfleet Academy, to be precise. We’re going to focus on the adventures of a young, fresh, hip group of cadets, starting out at the Academy. I’m thinking that the series will take place 5 years after the Romulan Wars." Berman promised guest appearances by Alicia Keys and Christina Aguilera over the course of Enterprise's first season.

• Finally, according to the United Federation of Planets, fans should take Rick Berman's promise that the Enterprise finale will be a valentine for Trek fans very literally. The site posted word from an anonymous set spy who claimed that "These Are The Voyages..." will feature a visit by "Q-pid" and his famous arrow, in some scenes set aboard the NX-01.

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