News Bullets

• George Takei (Hikaru Sulu) has posted a new tribute to his friend James Doohan (Scotty). "James Doohan was admired by so many," Takei wrote in the introduction to his article. "Star Trek fans throughout the world loved Engineer Montgomery Scott and came to know Jimmy, the actor who portrayed him, from the countless conventions all over the world that became a part of his life. He loved meeting fans. He was an exuberant people person. Jimmy reveled in laughing, talking, and, especially, drinking with people. He embraced the joy of living with the gusto of a Falstaff."

• Jerioholics! notes that the first OC episode starring Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine) will air on the 8th of September, 2005. Meanwhile, on Monday the 8th of August at 8:00pm, CBS will repeat Ryan's episode of the sitcom Two And A Half Men.

• And according to WilliamShatner.com, Boston Legal will return to ABC on Tuesday the 9th of August at 10:00pm, for now still with repeats. The legal dramedy stars both William Shatner (James T. Kirk) and René Auberjonois (Odo).

• Over on Sev Trek are the finalist punchlines for the Intelligent EMH, Part 2 cartoon.

• Musician Rufus Wainwright recently spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times about, among other things, working with William Shatner (James T. Kirk) on his album "Has Been," saying he learned a lot from the Trek actor. "It's hard to explain," Wainwright said. "Sometimes I would be watching this classic guy performing and realizing that there's not a damn thing he can do about being William Shatner. You turn on the tape, and you get William Shatner. And you could've approached that as if it were something to get over, but that wouldn't have been honest. I wanted him to be exactly who he is, and I eventually realized I had to go for that same honesty and feeling in my own album."

• SF Site columnist Rick Norwood calls for Gene Roddenberry projects The Questor Tapes, Specter, Genesis II, Planet Earth and Strange New World to be released on DVD.

• BakulaNews.com has a few new quotes from the recent Star Trek Magazine interview with Scott Bakula (Jonathan Archer), in which the Enterprise actor thanks his fans for always being open-minded.

• Viacom last week announced it earned $753.8 million during the second quarter of 2005, about the same as last year. However, according to Forbes the company's television earnings were down 1% compared to last year, due to the absence of licensing fees in the year-ago period from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and other shows.

• Shiri Appleby, who starred in the WB's (and later UPN's) Roswell, recently told the Sci-Fi Wire she doesn't believe the show will ever be resurrected. "People ask about it all the time, but I've never heard anything real or concrete that we'd be actually making a movie," she said. "I mean, I think it sounds like a really great idea, but I don't know if there's any plans in the works." Roswell was executive produced by Jonathan Frakes (William T. Riker), and in later seasons featured Trek writer Ronald D. Moore on the writing staff.

• In order to raise money for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, collectSpace is running an auction whereby LeVar Burton (Geordi LaForge) will visit the classroom or home of a winning bidder's child to share space stories. Burton previously served as the master of ceremonies for the 2005 Astronaut Hall of Fame inductions held this past May.

• To celebrate the fact that 40 years and one month ago, Gene Roddenberry filmed the second Star Trek pilot, TrekWeb has posted an article looking at an alternate, never-released version of this pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

• And TrekWeb also has Bill Williams' review of "Hollow Men," a new Deep Space Nine novel that is a sequel to the classic episode "In The Pale Moonlight." Williams awarded the novel three out of five stars, praising the main plot, but criticising the B-plot, which he felt had no connection to the rest of the book.

• Xan.co.uk has posted a new satire proposing a recast Star Trek, featuring Brad Pitt as Kirk.

• Space.com recently examined a new NASA device bearing a striking similarity to Star Trek's tricorder.

• The official Star Trek site celebrates today's birthday of Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko).

• Decipher has announced that due to production delays, the street dates for some of its upcoming Collectible Card Games products have been revised. The "Adversaries Anthology" for the Trek CCG is now scheduled for the 26th of August, while the "To Boldly Go" expansion is planned for the 30th of September.

• To help Trek fans participate in the Strange New Worlds fiction-writing contest, the Sci-Fi Pulse has published the first article in a three-part series on how to write Trek short stories.

• Travel writer Harry Pearson tells the Observer that virtual travel on the internet will never be a substitute for the real thing, as the "internet is a strange parallel universe where sex is 95 per cent of everything, Star Trek is 3 per cent and there is only 2 per cent left for everything else."

• The Star Trek: Enterprise finale, "These Are The Voyages...", recently aired on Sky One in the United Kingdom, and British reviewers appear to have found the episode underwhelming, too. On DigitalSpy, one reviewer wrote, "Riker and Troi turned up for the finale, which, somewhat anticlimactically, took place on a holodeck (if you don’t know what it that is, it’s too late to explain now) in the 'future.'"s

• Modern Guitars Magazine has posted an interview with Scarlett Pomers (Naomi Wildman), focusing on the young star's emerging music career.

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