Going, Going... Boldly Gone

I was sad to hear that Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is closing on September 1st. Fortunately for me, I heard about the closing in time to plan a road trip to see the attraction one last time. I'm astonished to learn how many people -- SF Fans, even Trek fans -- had never been, or didn't even know it existed. On the other hand, I didn't know that there was a Trek CON at the Hilton each August, or I might have planned said Road Trip to include it.

In the end, though, heading for Vegas on a Tuesday two weeks before closing proved to be the ideal plan. We had the I-15, and the Experience, largely to ourselves. My companions on this adventure were my college pal Shadow (a game designer/recovering lawyer with one of those mimetic memories that comes in handy when playing Star Trek Trivia games) and my fellow TV writer Lisa Klink (whose years on Voyager make her the ideal companion for debating the sociological implications of replicator technology).

Colloquially known as "The Star Trek Experience" -- a subtle difference, I admit -- the attraction consists of two rides, the original motion-controlled Klingon Encounter that was installed in 1998 and the more recent Borg Invasion in 4-D. (The 4th Dimension apparently being "touch.") There is also a "museum" of props and a timeline of the Trek Universe, which were originally installed to entertain customers during an hour or so of standing in line for the rides. Now that a single ticket is 'ride all day' and the admissions don't cover the electricity costs, according to one employee, there's no line to speak of, but the museum portion is still fun to look at. It's not clear which of the props on display are real and which are replicas, but that doesn't take away from the fun of peering through a case at the "Stone Knives and Bearskins" vacuum-tube-and-tricorder array from City On The Edge of Forever, or at Jean Luc Picard's family scrapbook, fortunately spared from the fiery wreckage of the Enterprise D.

Shadow and I had each visited the attraction years earlier, but neither of us had seen the new Borg ride. Lisa, on the other hand, had written it, so she had her own reasons for indulging in a mid-week weekend to wish it farewell. I'll bet she got a kick out of watching our faces as SPOILER REDACTED and SPOILER REDACTED.


The food at Quark's Bar didn't live up to my memories from my first visit, but these days I don't eat Onion Rings (excuse me, Rings of Betazed) and HamBorgers (hee) as freely as I once did. Reading the silly punny menu was still fun, though. ("James Tea Kirk." Sounds refreshing!) Sadly, the shopping Promenade from DS9 was largely closed -- apparently, most of the merch had been bought out by the Convention two weeks earlier. No sign of the "I'm with Illogical" t-shirt I'd seen on the website. I was able to get the Phaser Water Pistol I wanted, though, so no complaints. It's actually pretty nicely made; it looks great on the shelf at home next to the Han Solo Water Blaster I've had for years. Finally, the Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate can be settled -- with water!

By now, I'd guess they're selling out down to the bare walls -- when Shadow and I came back through Vegas on Friday after continuing our road trip to take in a Shakespeare Festival in the next state over, there was a price tag of $4300 (SOLD) on the Borg Queen statue, and the sort-of-life-sized maquette of the Gorn that had stood outside Quark's on Tuesday had disappeared -- presumably sold as well. I say sort-of-life-sized in that I hope the real Gorn was taller than me. I'm sorry that I failed to get a picture of our little troupe with old greenhead before he got sold. After all, I seem to be responsible for the fact that my friend Darla's 19-month-old daughter knows that the cow says moo, the dog says woof, and the Gorn says RAAR. (Thanks to Kerry for the Beanie Baby Gorn, which I'm now told also came from the ST: Experience shops!)

When we were there, the curving wall behind the shops was completely covered with hand-written letters from people, expressing their sadness that The Experience is closing. Some were from people young enough to have grown up there. Many had traced their hands on the paper in the iconic Vulcan salute. A number of the letter-writers mourned a tradition of visiting yearly with friends. Those touched me particularly, because it's not The Experience, but the experience of visiting The Experience, that those people grieve. It's my favorite aspect of Conventions, the constant reunion with other con-goers, birds of a feather forming lasting attachments for which the event is the excuse, not the reason. It's the same dynamic whether it's Trekkies at The Experience, Dead Heads on the road, Xena Fans coming to Los Angeles en masse this past January to join the WGA picket lines, or James Joyce Scholars spending Bloomsday in Dublin.

Vegas isn't that far from LA. Hotels there are cheap. I find myself wishing we'd taken advantage of The Experience while it stood, had planned yearly rendezvouses there with friends from near and far. I'm glad we at least got there for this farewell visit. Too often, "Hey, we should..." turns into "I wish we had..." It's always nice to actually find the time and motivation and come back saying "I'm glad we did." When it comes to road trip adventures with friends, I don't think I've ever come back saying I wished I hadn't.

YAARG!

Or is that YA ARG?

I recently heard about this new project from Scholastic books (hence the YA) called The 39 Clues, a sort of DaVinci Code for the under-16 set, that includes books, trading cards, and a real-time scavenger hunt that seems to spill out of the Internet into the real world (hence the ARG).

Although the attempt to create a Potter-esque phenomenon by design, as opposed to by catching lightning in a bottle, is fraught with pitfalls, they do seem to have a catchy premise, so I'll be watching with interest to see if it catches fire.

Does anyone else remember Masquerade?

Panda, Stiller, Iron Man

I've been hearing about the Parody Promo Video for Tropic Thunder, and so glad to have come across a link to the actual vid.

Speaking of Gillian Anderson

Yesterday at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, I saw the Barbie & Ken X-Files Collector Set for sale. Okay, I'm proudbarassed to say I recognized Barbie as Scully at 30 yards. The friend I was with wondered what qualified the doll as "Barbie." He had a good point -- she has short red hair and really is more like a 12-inch-doll of Gillian Anderson as Scully, with Barbie branding.

The Barbie & Ken Classic Star Trek set, by contrast, consists of actual Ken and Barbie, in gold command shirt and red minidress respectively, along with a cardboard bridge and cardboard Kirk and Spock to scale. (And yes, the reason I know this is because I own one. What can I say, I have a fascination with clever licensing.)

Being the Marketing Geek that I am, this really has me wondering about the decision process behind these Collector's Editions. Are there different lines at the manufacturer, depending whether the release is a licensed doll or just props and outfits for the existing dolls? I think I personally prefer the latter -- Barbie in that case is a fan like us, with a Star Trek costume and an understanding boyfriend.

Because the "Baywatch" Barbie (and Ken) were in stores while I was working on Baywatch, I have quite a few of them, in their red bathing suits and lifeguard jackets. (As an aside, the Crew Jackets on Baywatch were identical to the wardrobe worn by the characters, with the addition of an embroidered logo on the back. As such, they are so similar to REAL LA County Lifeguard jackets that we were specifically asked NOT to wear them to the beach, to avoid being mistaken for Lifeguards in an emergency.)

My Baywatch Barbie lifeguards are out of their boxes and on display in my guest room, where they get played with frequently by my under-10 visitors. I have both the original and the African-American versions of Baywatch Barbie and Ken, and two beach jeeps for them to ride in. (I recently realized that the plastic jeeps include little plastic seatbelts. Safety first!) Since each doll came with different props, among them they have quite the assemblage of gak -- whistles, binoculars, cameras, sun visors, jetskis, a pith helmet, little tevas, a dolphin (?), and of course the iconic red 'rescue can.' On my trip to the Flea Market, I saw a NIB Baywatch Ken for sale, with a different collection of stuff! So my little lifeguard family is about to get a Frisbee, a boom box, and a wind up Waverunner with "Realistic Motor Sounds." Yeah Baby. Five Bucks well spent.

Ken's Tevas

The Collaborative Medium

While at ComiCon, I saw the preview of the first two episodes of the animated "Iron Man: Armored Adventures." I thought it was great, at the end of the hour I was eager to see more. There was one complaint at the mike that the storytelling is unsophisticated, which I thought was handled well with the reminder that the show, and the channel, are primarily serving 8-14 year-olds, with adult viewers an added bonus. They're not going to alienate their intended audience by going over their heads. It's refreshing to see some programming aimed at the future Comic Geeks. (Steven Moffat had a similar insightful comment during the Doctor Who panel, about making the show for today's 8-year-olds, not the nostalgic adults. To each generation their own Doctor.)

That being said, as an adult I found the show suspenseful and witty. And I was hugely impressed with its look and feel. Which got me to wondering about the always-hot-topic of Residuals. WGA members are fortunate and justly proud of the gains we've achieved in this area, where a person who creates a storyline or character has an ongoing financial interest, however small, when that intellectual property is exploited. But watching this Iron Man show, I was struck by the extent to which the design of the technology -- most notably Tony's heads-up display -- seemed to have been influenced by the film. In the ideal world wouldn't that Production Designer be receiving some kind of credit or residual? (Not to mention the comic book artists, but that's a whole other column!) What about sequels that draw heavily on the production design of their predecessors? What about all the myriad Star Trek licensed gak that uses the LCARS look? Do Production Designers and Art Directors swell with pride when they see their work influencing ancillary properties, or do they curse the studios and the Work For Hire business model?

Welder Needed

Paramount (and apparently Intel) had an interesting game set up at their booth at ComiCon, which I unfortunately didn't discover until Sunday. Paramount's booth was not near the other big studios and not well-marked on the map, but they did have an ad in the program book, which I finally noticed on Saturday night, urging people to come to their booth to form a Construction Crew and win a prize. The gimmick was, they handed out scratch-off cards every hour, which had job titles on them like "Gravity Engineer," "Electrician," etc. If you formed a team of eight, one of each type, you would win Star Trek laptop bags. They had excellent intentions with this game, which ideally would have resulted in people clipping the cards to their badges and spending the weekend scanning other people's ID to put together a team. In this crowd, this could easily have turned into a self-designed LARP, and lifelong friendships could have resulted.

In the event, the real-life result was that people collected stacks of the cards, and if they managed to put together all 8, they grabbed a bunch of friends or passing strangers and collected their prize. All of this was explained to me by a fellow attendee holding a sign that said "Welder Needed," which I thought at first meant he was an exhibitor with a broken display. But no, he needed a virtual welder to help him build an imaginary Enterprise.

I hung around for the card distribution, hoping to get a Welder card for my new friend, but both cards I was given said "Inspector" on them, which seemed appropriate. Then one of the booth staffers explained to me that I could take my photo at a laptop station in the booth and get a construction team ID, and if I did, I'd receive in the mail a 4-part poster for the new Star Trek movie. Considering that around the corner in the other half of the booth people were elbowing one another in the face to collect that very same 4-part poster one piece at a time, I found this hilarious. (I got two yellows and no blue.)

I was gratified to see that the crew chief I'd been chatting with found a Welder in the crowd. He'd worked for it.

Open House

No way! Open your house with a Marvel-licensed key! How cool is that?!

I came across this on an emergency trip to the hardware store -- there's an excellent plumber here today fixing my kitchen sink and the faucet in the guest room. This is the kind of craftsman that's hard to find these days -- a man who takes real pride in his work, goes above and beyond the call of duty, and even thinks ahead in terms of what order to dismantle and reassemble everything so that no time is wasted. It's a pleasure to watch him work, and after he dismantled the Reverse Osmosis system for cleaning, I discovered that I only had 3 of 4 replacement filters in the house, hence the rush to the nearest hardware place.

I was actually tempted by these keys. There were a bunch of Marvel characters and some Peanuts characters, as well. I love visual shorthand and the incomprehensible-to-outsiders jargon that can result -- imagine telling a housesitter a mnemonic like: Wolverine at the front, Snoopy in the back. (My current house keys are color-coded yellow and green, for front door and back, because my house is yellow and my yard is green.)

But is choosing a key graphic like choosing a personal avatar? This isn't a "Wolverine" house, and they didn't carry an "Athena" key or even a "Red Sonja." (I'll accept "Wonder Woman" in a pinch!)

So I walked away empty-handed, wondering whether stuff like this finds a market. Because while I can understand why Len Wein would want a Wolverine key for his house -- and you do, don't you, Len? -- I'm still sorting out who the rest of the customers are.

Lost and Found

William Daniels rocks the Knight Rider GPS! It's about time!

TomTom's been doing celebrity GPS voices for a while. I was tempted by John Cleese and Eddie Izzard, especially since samples on Eddie Izzard's website include such gems as "Thank God you're there, I can shut up now."

But this is the Gold Ring of Geek GPS:



It even comes preloaded with 300 common names! How can anyone named "Michael" resist this purchase?

My friend Larne chimes in with the question, when are they doing one with Majel Barret Roddenberry, the voice of all Star Trek Computers? Another winning concept.

But the Kitt car still wins.