Giant Freakin Robot

If you’re a huge Star Trek fan, and let’s face it, most of the people that frequent this website surely are, you won’t want to miss this. A few weeks ago Wizard World Comic Con in Philadelphia managed to wrangle the five captains from each of the Star Trek television series – William Shatner from TOS, Patrick Stewart from TNG, Avery Brooks from Deep Space Nine, Kate Mulgrew from Voyager, and Scott Bakula from Enterprise – into one room for a panel of epic proportions. They’d never been together, all at once, ever before.

Shatner wasted no time making passes at the lovely host of the panel, but eventually he and his proteges answer a wide range of questions from the audience about events as far back as Shatner being offered the role of James T. Kirk. Check out the entire hour long clip below courtesy of GeekNation.

UPDATE: If you’re having problems with the embed below, you can try downloading it directly as an MP4 file here

Anyone looking forward to J.J. Abrams’ next Star Trek flick take heed: Paramount has announced that Star Trek 2 (or whatever they end up calling it) will be getting a 3D IMAX release on May 17, 2013. For those keeping track, that’s the same day as its regular release, so if you’ve got an IMAX theater near you you’ll have the option of experiencing it in a format that will barrage you with 3D lens flares the size of office buildings.

I kid, of course, and while I could care less about the 3D part of the equation, the IMAX element is exciting. Regardless of your feelings on Abrams’ Trek movies, there’s no question that they’re visually spectacular, and the extra oomph added by having certain action scenes expand to fill the entire IMAX screen will be something to see. The only film I’ve seen recently on IMAX was The Dark Knight, and when the film switched over to IMAX mode, it would literally take your breath away. Hopefully Trek 2 will manage to serve up a storyline that’s worthy of the visuals (and won’t involve friggin’ Khan).

Walter Koenig is a Star Trek icon. He, of course, played Pavel Chekov on Star Trek: The Original Series for three years and a long string of Star Trek movies in the late 70s and throughout the 80s. He recently headed up north for the 20th annual Vulcan Spock Days in the Vulcan Country in Alberta, Canada.

Vulcan Spock Days is an annual summer gathering of Star Trek fans in the rural county of Vulcan. The people of Vulcan, for the past 20 years, have converted their county into a safe haven for all things Star Trek. Their Vulcan Spock Days is one of the biggest tourist events for this small Canadian county.

In an interview with the Vulcan Advocate, Walter Koening spoke about the importance of fan conventions to Star Trek’s legacy.

“What I do, it’s generally for the public or involves the public. If they’re not interested or enthusiastic about my contributions, then I’m not going to get much work! The fans have always been there — they’ve been an extraordinary avenue of reinforcement and affection.

MIT researchers are currently working on a technology that can inject drugs and medicine into human tissue without the use of hypodermic needles. Does this sound like something you’ve seen on Star Trek? How many times have we seen Dr. McCoy on the original Star Trek or Dr. Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation inject drugs into someone without a hypodermic needle?

Bones uses a hypospray but this actual device is called a “jet injector” and it works by “pushing” medication into human tissue at the speed of sound. The benefits of this technology are numerous. Everything from dealing with squeamish patients to reducing medical waste to making insulin more “user-friendly,” can all benefit from these jet injectors.