So, the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation (including Wesley) recently reunited in honor of TNG’s 25th anniversary (yes, TNG is 25 years old) in Calgary. Why Calgary of all places? Don’t ask me to explain the mysteries of the universe. Thankfully there were cameras rolling, so you can watch the entire panel after the jump.

Highlights include the fact that all the hostile alien planets visited on the show were covered in cat s–t, Patrick Stewart’s love of the smoke machine while directing (“smoke made s–t look good, didn’t it?”), a surprise pro wrestling-style run-in through the crowd by a certain Trek antagonist with a one-letter name, and the revelation that Patrick Stewart is the only white man LeVar Burton will kiss on the lips.

Come on, how can you resist with teases like that? Hit that jump!

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Yes, I know, I know, feed the heretic to the baby dragons. Calling out George R.R. Martin’s classic fantasy series for not being as good as an “adaptation”, even one as great as “Game of Thrones”, is nerd heresy. But it’s really past time we, as nerds, admitted something, and that something is:

The show’s better. Quite a bit better, actually.

This isn’t to say the books are big piles of flaming dog turds, because they’re not. But a TV series offers certain advantages that the books can’t match. Advantages like…
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Well, we were promised violence and bloodshed. And boy did the finale deliver.

We won’t get into spoilers, but we will say that we’ve been…tentative about this season. While the last three episodes have paid off pretty amazingly, the entire arc of the first half of the season seemed practically designed to make us hate Rick and think Shane, as douchey as he acted, was the voice of reason.

Not anymore, apparently. It’s become clear that the second season is really, in the end, all about how Rick turns from believing that humanity can make a comeback and the walkers are just temporary into accepting that nothing is going to be the same, full stop. When Rick cuts through the B.S. at the camp site, it’s welcome, to say the least.

We have complaints about the finale: Rick’s announcement of what he learned at the CDC was…kind of obvious. Also, we’re not sure introducing the character that they did is going to be a good idea for Season Three.

Still, after a season this uneven, Season 3 is looking better and better. We can’t wait.

How about you? Let us know what you thought in the comments.

image courtesy AMC

Want a job at Microsoft? Well, you’d better break out the Next Generation DVDs, because apparently being a Trekkie is an asset. Microsoft is already working on a holodeck, but that’s not the only Trek staple they’re striving to make a reality — they also have a universal translator in the works.

Microsoft engineers have created a software program that can analyse your voice, translate what you’re saying, then replicate your voice in another language. It works with 26 different languages, so in theory you could have a computer-generated voice that sounds very much like yours reading a speech in French, Italian or Mandarin.

There are still some kinks to work out — it takes around an hour for the program to get a sense of your voice, and even then it will sound kind of robot-ey in any language but English. Nevertheless I’m still anticipating a future where I don’t have to learn any new languages — frankly I’m not that great at this English one to begin with.

Random nerdy Trek-related observation — a guy named Frank Soong developed Microsoft’s universal translator. The fictional doctor that created Data from Next Generation was named Noonien Soong. Suddenly all this Trek tech coming out of Microsoft makes sense.

via DVICE & TechnologyReview

We could talk about last night’s episode.

Or, since about half of you apparently missed it for the Oscars last night, we could instead talk about how awesome it is to screencap the series. So, spoilers on the following slides and in the comments thread below, although we will say this: if you look closely at the bus scene, we’re pretty sure we just saw how, if they are going to kill Shane, they’re going to do it.

Anyway, have a whole bunch of spoilery GIFs under the cut.
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So, how well do you know your Star Trek: The Original Series? Have you memorized every line of every available script? Not anymore you haven’t, because an unfilmed, lost Trek script has just shown up online.

The script was originally meant as a vehicle for guest star Milton Berle. Milton who you say? Let’s just say he’s one of those guys, along with Jerry Lewis and Al Jolson, who people found the funniest thing ever for a short time, but is painfully unfunny when seen through modern eyes. Basically he was the Jim Carrey of the 50s.

The original script written for Berle was pretty much a straight-ahead serious Star Trek episode, but then head writer Gene Coon got hold of it and decided to make it a showcase for Berle’s style of humor, which was already considered horribly hacky and outdated by the mid-60s. The script’s original writer, Norman Spinrad, begged Gene Roddenberry to kill the episode rather than commit a crime against both Trek and comedy, and so Star Trek guest starring Milton Berle never happened.

For years Spinrad thought his original version of the script was lost forever, with only the mutilated version remaining, but recently it resurfaced. The script, titled “He Walked Among Us” has since been converted into PDF, and you can download it for only nine bucks from Amazon. Get memorizing fellas.

via The Mary Sue

Kirk perusing his script via the pretty awesome Star Trek Prop Authority