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Hello World!

My kids went back to school this week after two weeks off, and I am still trying to catch up on everything that didn't get done while we were on vacation. We took a couple of local trips to Baltimore and Philadelphia to see the historical sites and we enjoyed unseasonably warm weather, which reached 70 degrees over New Year's weekend.

We also saw a lot of movies. The Phantom of the Opera was by far my favorite; I've been waiting for the film since I saw the play on Broadway in 1988 with the original cast, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. Gerard Butler, who plays the Phantom in the film, isn't quite the singer that Crawford is, but he has tremendous screen presence and does a fine job with the role. It's Emmy Rossum as Christine, however, who impressed me the most; I've always been very frustrated with that character, felt that she was much too passive and let everyone else push her around, and even though I'm still not overly fond of the ending, she's much stronger in the film than any Christine I've seen onstage.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a very well-made film as well; I wasn't sure I'd like it, as I sometimes can't stand Jim Carrey, though I loved his last few films, particularly Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind which was my favorite film of 2004. He was very good and the set and costume designs were superb in the Lemony Snicket film, but I found it very distancing, not quite a film for adults and not really a film for children either, with characters just a tad too outrageous and a gleeful sense of nastiness that then made it hard to care about the little hope offered the children in the end.

Next to Eternal Sunshine, Finding Neverland is probably the best movie I saw last year, so I saw that again as well. It also shows children living in a frightening world where they must create their own magic to cope, but it doesn't try to make light of their suffering, nor to stretch it into comic absurdity. And Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet are both superb.

Now I just need to make it to Sideways before the awards season starts.

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-New Trek, new Galactica...where's our new Space: 1999?

-What if Voyager had followed TNG without DS9 in the interim?

-How much has Enterprise improved since its first season?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from January 2003:

• Stewart: Saying Goodbye Was 'Agony'
  "I shot one of the final scenes where the entire crew is going their separate ways after 16 years together and Riker (Jonathan Frakes) says to me, 'Serving you has been an honour captain,' and I broke down crying," Patrick Stewart said in an interview. "Saying goodbye when we wrapped this film was agony for me...we're not just a crew, we've really become a family."

• Dawson To Direct Her Fifth 'Enterprise'
  Roxann Dawson (B'Elanna Torres), who began her directing career with an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, signed up to helm her fifth Enterprise episode in March 2003, a follow-up to "The Andorian Incident", "Vox Sola", "Dead Stop", and "Dawn', which had not yet aired.

• 'Nemesis' Takes $3.2 Million In The UK
  Star Trek Nemesis opened strongly at the British box office, taking more than $3.2 million on its opening weekend and making it a "solid second" to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Across the Atlantic, the film managed only $2.5 million on its fourth weekend, ranking 14th at the domestic box office.

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

New Year's Resolution? Get a life 30.9% - (378 Votes) To boldly go where no one has gone before 12.7% - (156 Votes) To explore strange new worlds 12.6% - (154 Votes) Try to create a united federation of allies 9.4% - (115 Votes) Have a talk with the Prophets about the state of the universe 8.9% - (109 Votes) Build superweapon, destroy Earth 7.9% - (97 Votes) Take over the Alpha Quadrant 7.1% - (87 Votes) Haul the Enterprise away AS garbage 6.1% - (75 Votes) Get the ship home 4% - (50 Votes) Total Votes: 1221

Please vote in our new poll and pick the early Academy Award front-runner!

Happy Birthday!

Today is the birthday of Mark Allen Shepherd, who played Morn on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Wednesday, January 12th is the birthday of Kirstie Alley, who played Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Today's Television Listings

Next Friday, a week from tonight, Star Trek: Enterprise returns to UPN at 8 p.m. EST with "Daedalus." Here is a synopsis of the episode:

The inventor of the transporter, Emory Erickson, comes aboard Enterprise for a risky experiment.

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